[ 2024 September - December | 2024 May - August | 2024 January - April | 2023 September - December | 2023 May - August | 2023 January - April | 2022 September - December | 2022 May - August | 2022 January - April | 2021 September - December | 2021 May - August | 2021 January - April | 2020 September - December | 2020 May - August | 2020 January - April | 2019 September - December | 2019 May - August | 2019 January - April | 2018 September - December | 2018 May - August | 2018 January - April | 2017 September - December | 2017 May - August | 2017 January - April | 2016 September - December | 2016 May - August | 2016 January - April | 2015 September - December | 2015 May - August | 2015 January - April | 2014 September - December | 2014 May - August | 2014 January - April | 2013 September - December | 2013 May - August | 2013 January - April | 2012 September - December | 2012 May - August | 2012 January - April | 2011 September - December | 2011 May - August | 2011 January - April | 2010 September - December | 2010 May - August | 2010 January - April | 2009 September - December | 2009 May - August | 2009 January - April | 2008 September - December | 2008 May - August | 2008 January - April | 2007 September - December | 2007 May - August | 2007 January - April | 2006 September - December | 2006 May - August | 2006 January - April | 2005 September - December | 2005 May - August | 2005 January - April | 2004 September - December | 2004 May - August | 2004 January - April | 2003 September - December | 2003 May - August | 2003 January - April | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 ]
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.
At a Gaza solidarity encampment in Northeastern University, "pro-Israel" counterprotesters shouted "Kill the Jews! Anybody onboard?", acting as a dishonest provocateurs. The encampment responded with shouting and booing.
The university administration soon after cited this as a reason to tear up the encampment and arrest the protesters.
They have since tried to bury the crucial distinction between what the Gaza solidarity protesters said and their adversaries' provocations. That is deceitful.
If I learned I had made a mistake like this, I would be mortified, and I would do everything possible to unmake it. I would apologize for the arrests, drop all charges, return or replace any property stolen by cops, and authorize the reestablishment of the encampment.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Chatbots can lead people to suicide. What should we make of that?
It seems that chatbots can build, with susceptible people, various sorts of self-reinforcing loops of conversation, such that both get stuck in the loop together.
Of course, this happens to people in interactions with other people. Getting out of them is a challenge.
Inga Rublite died after waiting 8 hours in an emergency room in Britain. None of the staff had even looked at her or taken her blood pressure.
The fault does not belong to the overloaded staff. It belongs to the Tories, who have cut medical spending over and over, simply so the rich can pay less taxes.
Now that Labour has also caved to the rich and their demand for low taxes, Britain needs a party to champion what Labour used to stand for.
A four-legged robot with a flamethrower is now available for anyone to purchase in the US. Supposedly it is not intended for war. Maybe that means it is intended for criminal gangs?
I suspect that flooding in East Africa was caused by atmospheric rivers.
I think it can happen anywhere that the prevailing winds arrive over a large body of water.
*Gaza's 37m tonnes of bomb-filled debris could take 14 years to clear, says expert.*
A leader of an indigenous tribe brought a headdress onto an Air Canada flight and was told it had to be put in the baggage compartment. She objected that her headdress was sacred and therefore deserved special treatment.
That demand for privilege should be refused. We all face the possibility of being required to check some item rather than carry it into the cabin, and we deserve equal treatment.
The rules don't have to be rigid; it is good if they are somewhat flexible. However, that flexibility should apply equally to all passengers, not in a discriminatory way based on a passenger's ethnicity or religion.
Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian of Hebrew University in Jerusalem was arrested and treated quite harshly, and charged with publishing unacceptable views.
(They are similar, in grand lines, to my views and the views of many of my readers.)
Many colleagues and other academics have condemned the arrest as political repression. Even Hebrew University condemned it.
The cruel treatment of Shalhoub-Kevorkian in jail adds to the nastiness of this, but the core of the issue is the intention to prosecute people in Israel who demand a cease-fire.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Climate experts fear [the wrecker] will follow a blueprint created by his allies to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), disbanding its work on climate science and tailoring its operations to business interests.*
*Taxing big fossil fuel firms "could raise $900bn in climate finance by 2030."*
China reaffirmed its plan to eliminate cash, and thus keep track of all purchases anyone makes.
Despite some recent compromises, the government remains dead set on tracking everything that people do.
The anonymous use of cash is the basis for other freedoms. If you think that using cash is too inconvenient, please approach the matter with a problem-solving spirit. Can you find a way to make it convenient enough to bring enough cash with you whenever you leave the house?
Freedom of the press is being hammered in several European Union countries.
Torres Strait Islanders, who live on islands between Australia and New Guinea, are suing about the damage that sea-level rise will do to their homes if we don't curb global heating in 20 years.
Robert Reich warns that SCROTUS are already warning that they might arbitrarily override the next congressional election as a stepping stone to stealing the presidency.
The public revulsion against anti-abortion extremes is splitting the Republican Party.
May the fragments fall on the ground and be trampled by Americans' boots!
Unawareness of the injustice of "modern digital society" leads to thinking about internet connections that misses half the point. Here is an example.
The concept of "digital inclusion" as a goal presumes that the ways people normally participate in "modern digital society" are just fine, and labors systematically to help people surrender to what is demanded of them.
Most people judge every Internet "service" in superficial terms, and know no other way because they have never learned about the injustices: massive surveillance, demands for personal data, addictivity, anti socializing contracts, DRM, and more. In addition, people confronted with a demand to "use snooper.com now to do this" tend to see the immediate inconvenience of refusing now more vividly than the long-term harm of having an account on snooper.com.
In Spain, a friend has told me, banks are making it inconvenient and expensive to withdraw cash from your own bank account. You can do that only if you physically go to a bank branch when it is open, which is some hassle outside of big cities. But he has decided now to withdraw cash enough to last for some weeks so he can make a habit of paying cash.
Justice Sotomayor had better retire now, so we can replace her with another liberal, rather than risk dying in office and be replaced by Republicans with another right-winger.
Ecuador has voted to affirm its constitutional ban on ISDS clauses, which I call "I Sue Democratic States" clauses.
Some have criticized my term, saying that ISDS clauses are not specifically limited to democratic states. That is true — but in practice it tends to be democratic states that are targets for them. That's because the kind of law that foreign corporations target that way is a kind that tends to be passed by democratic states. Most dictators rarely pass laws that would make foreign corporations treat the populace better.
Professors at several US universities which have brought in thugs to arrest students, steal their property and make them homeless, are showing strong support for the violated rights of those students.
If those university presidents thought they were going to quickly crush all opposition, they have now learned otherwise.
I expect to see some law professors bringing suit against the universities from students who were suspended or made homeless.
Turning back to the reason all of this is so important, it seems that Israel continues not to attack Rafah. Maybe Biden has brought sufficient pressure to make Netanyahu change that plan.However, I have not seen that Gaza is getting enough humanitarian aid to prevent thousands of additional avoidable deaths.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Summarizing what is happening to the participants in the corrupter's fake electors scheme to steal the 2020 election.
* QAnon Was Born Out of the Sex Ad Moral Panic That Took Down Backpage.com.*
I've seen a number of sex-related moral panic articles the Guardian, and I generally find they are based on a series of exaggerations of the likely magnitude of side issues — the tail wagging the dog.
I've read articles in which prostitutes say that legalization enables them to look up information about the customer's behavior towards other prostitutes. It makes sense that would be useful for them, but it boggles my mind that anyone considering being a prostitute's customer would agree to reveal per real name to anyone involved in the transaction. Or pay by a credit card at all. That seems like asking for trouble. If I were ever inclined to be a a prostitute's customer (which is unlikely), I would pay cash and give no one any identifying information. We can't help knowing the sorts of scandal that have resulted when the wrong person found out, and anonymity is the only plausible protection.
Enshittification, and the detailed story of how Google decided to enshittify search.
It should be clear that making users depend on nonfree software is a considerable part of what makes a company "too big to care". So this is one more reason why we need to reject nonfree software.
The article makes a vague comment using the incoherent term "IP laws". Those laws have very little in common, so it is a mistake to generalize about them by using that term; I carefully never use it, because anything that is meaningful to say is a matter of one particular law, or perhaps the subtle interaction of more than one of them. The article gives no details, so I have no idea what actual events that vague comment refers to.
An appeals court ruled that Harvey Weinstein's New York trial in which he was convicted of rape, was carried out wrong. This does not mean he has been found innocent. It means the trial needs to be done over.
I am no expert on trials, but I think the result of the new trial is likely to be the same as the first trial. Nonetheless, it is important to give each accused a fair trial.
The right-wing judges that dominate the Supreme Court have decided to use the corrupter's ridiculous claim of immunity as an excuse to delay his trial for insurrection.
Using the terms "pro-Palestine" and "pro-Israel" leads people to think of those two nations as pure enemies, and assume that one's gain is always the other's loss. This is the feeling with which I've stated that I am pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
I love the call, quoted at the end of the article for *liberation for everyone "between every river and every sea."*
I like the spirit shown by celebrating Jewish and Muslim holidays in encampments. That makes their total rejection of antisemitism and antimuslimism as clear as can be. However, I don't want my rejection of antisemitism and antimuslimism to submerge my peaceful and persistent advocacy of Atheism.
Hmm. If and when it is normal to have a 4-day work week, people could (if they wish) celebrate the Muslim sabbath on Friday, the Jewish sabbath on Saturday, and the Christian sabbath on Sunday. The fanatics of each religion could rage against that.
That sort of combine-them-all approach can be good for things that are mainly symbolic, like sabbath. It is not applicable, however, to substantive questions of right and wrong — for those, we need to think about each issue in substance.
Doctors without Borders carried out a large drug trial, seeking approval of a treatment for tuberculosis, was able to do it for only 34 million dollars, Big Pharma claims they cost billions, and use that as an excuse for making drugs so expensive.
It seems that is one more reason for taking drug trials away from pharma companies. The main reason is that their influence corrupts the results.
The research should also be funded by governments or noncommercial organizations. That would eliminate all the supposed arguments for patents on medicines.
The EPA has made a rule that coal-powered generators must in the future capture most of the greenhouse pollution they emit, or shut down.
The article is not clear about exactly which kinds of pollution this covers. Does it include all particulates? Does it include toxic chemicals? Does it include the fallout that consists of uranium naturally present in coal?
The coal industry continues demanding to be given billions for development of "carbon capture and storage", but when it sees a demand to start using that everywhere 15 years from now, it wants to fight. That demonstrates that their unending "development" of such capture is not meant as a serious solution, but rather as an excuse to let it continue.
*Fears grow over rising number of oil lobbyists at UN plastic pollution talks.*
Allowing any representatives of oil companies in events intended to reduce the dangerous uses of petroleum simply invites their sabotage. Even if they claim that it is impossible for them to change faster, we can be sure that the real reason it is impossible is because they are trying hard to resist it.
Slovakia's new right-wing government is moving to exert political control over government support for independent media.
Thugs fired rubber-coated hard bullets at protesters in Emery University, as well as tear gas.
USC canceled its combined graduation ceremony entirely, claiming this was because of "safety measures."
That is balderdash. The only new safety concern on the USC campus comes from the thugs that are arresting students at the behest of those same administrators. They can cure the safety problems easily by simply resigning.
There are several standard kinds of falsehood that are normally used as excuses for repression.
Brazilian indigenous groups rallied together in Brasilia against the construction of a railroad through Amazonia, intended by its backers to facilitate mining and deforestation.
It disturbs me that Lula was not there. We was formerly a strong protector of the forest. I hope he has not surrendered to the deforesters.
*Council of Europe human rights watchdog condemns UK's Rwanda bill.*
Various countries are trying to make it difficult for people to ask for asylum there. Sending them to another place to wait for years while their cases are considered is a popular method, which has been used by Australia, the UK and the US. It is an injustice regardless of details.
But that's not the only method in use. Another is to slow down the processing of each case. Reducing the funding for handling cases will generally achieve that. If each asylum seeker has to wait for years while forbidden to work, it will drive many to give up.
An experiment on one species of bird found that traffic noise stunts their growth even in the egg. And continues to do so after they hatch, too.
Robert Reich: a university's mission is to encourage students to debate and consider ideas. Shutting down protest is betrayal of its mission.
A "new government" was installed in Haiti. The article says nothing about who chose the members of the new government. The previous one was chosen, more or less, by the US government.
The House Anti-Education Committee (not its official name) has called the New York City School Chancellor to testify. Here is advice for him.
The European Parliament has voted to take the EU out of the Energy Charter Treaty.
That treaty is a threat to civilization because it penalizes member countries for effective measures to reduce use or extraction of fossil fuels.
Even worse, it was designed to be impossible to effectively get out of. It says that countries that abrogate it are still subject to the treaty's punishments for reducing the profits of petroleum companies.
If the EU decides to defy that, it may be powerful enough to kill the ghost of the treaty.
Word is that TikTok will shut down in the US rather than sell its US business to some other company.
To shut down TikTok would be a great start. Maybe then we could shut down the other sites that use "recommendation engines" programmed to maximize "engagement with the site" — in other words, addiction.
However, much of the harm done by addictiveness could be prevented by taking recommendation engines out of the control of the platform itself.
The US is building a pier in Gaza to receive aid. But Biden has given Israel plenty of opportunity to choke off the flow of aid once it gets onto the pier.
I also wonder if there will really be a "third party" available to transport the aid into Gaza. It would not surprise me if the amount of aid that really arrives is far too little.
Biden should have taken Netanyahu down a peg by showing that the US does not need Israel's approval to deliver aid to Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Being a woman in Afghanistan is so horrible that even being a woman in Iran is a big step up.
I'd be tempted to support forcibly removing the Taliban from power so that they can't do these things any more. But that is not a real solution. We tried that already, and it led to 20 years of war that we were slowly but steadily losing.
I don't think we know a way to fight that war and win.
This is why I still believe that removing US troops from Afghanistan was the right thing to do.
If you thought that the insertion of a back door in XZ indicates a problem with free software, please compare that with the worse problem of nonfree software. Microsoft's servers are in far worse shape.
And that's not to mention the ways the developers/owners of those programs can break those programs' "security" — that exists only if they choose to let it exist.
India drove out an Australian journalist for the ABC network by various sorts of harassment including sending DMCA take down notices for her stories. The government objected to what she said in news coverage.
There is an "AI beauty contest" for images drawn by generative systems, whose "conversations" (if they pretend to have any) are output from bullshit generators.
This is an extrapolation of the absurdity of beauty contests with real women, and highlights that absurdity.
The corrupter bought a beauty contest, and was accused of rigging the outcome so that the contestants had to go to bed with him to have a chance of winning.
The corrupter's torpidity in his criminal trial punctures the false "strongman" image that he cultivates with so much bluster and pretension when he is in control of his life.
*Iranian women violently dragged from streets by [religious thugs] amid hijab crackdown.*
British doctors' associations have condemned the suspension of Dr. Sarah Benn from medical practice, which was done for no reason except that she was convicted of protesting against government policies that endanger human health.
There is no reason whatever to think that she has become incapable of properly practicing medicine.
*Nestlé has been criticized for adding sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries.*
*Germany to resume funding of UNRWA aid operations in Gaza… after review says Israel has provided no evidence of terrorist links.*
Other countries must do likewise — because the alternative is horrible.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Labour says it will re nationalize Britain's railways.
At last a clear decision that it will improve one area that right-wing rule has wrecked.
*Honduras referred to UN human rights committee over total abortion ban.*
*UK accused by Amnesty of ‘deliberately destabilizing’ human rights globally* for political reasons.
*The damning Amnesty report also criticizes Israel's allies for the failure to stop the "indescribable civilian bloodshed" in Gaza.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Robert Reich: Universities should protect the right to stand for views that disagree with whoever-it-might-be, while protecting students from practical harassment.
This calls for insisting on the difference between (1) actual harassment and (2) supposed "harassment" that consists of disagreeing. Punishing so-called "microaggressions" can easily be stretched into an excuse for macro-intimidation.
The UK now claims that engaging in protests of civil disobedience makes one unfit to practice medicine.
As a reason, that's absurd, but as an excuse for unjustified punishment of protesters it may fly.
Unless/until old growth trees increase again, the only way to save the mountain caribou of western Canada is to kill some wolves in those regions.
A long-suffering British cop confronted a Jewish activist who tried to cross the route of a protest for Palestine, claiming it was to get to the other side. The cop repeatedly offered to escort him to the other side, but the activist did not find that satisfactory; instead he tried to provoke his own arrest.
The cop did not take the bait. Despite that, the activist is going to all lengths to present the cops as having acted antisemitically. I don't think that was the case.
I admire that cop who refused to be a thug. All cops confronting nonviolent protesters ought to maintain that level of self-control.
*The Maidan martyrs: a decade on from Kyiv’s bloody revolution.*
A description of violence by Israeli colonists (often helped by soldiers) against Palestinians in the West Bank part of Palestine.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
San Francisco has built a public toilet for only 200,000 dollars.
The toilet's existence is an improvement, but the city can't afford to do the whole job if it is that expensive.
If the city required every restaurant, while it is open for business, to allow any orderly person to use its toilet, it would have thousands of toilets available for the public, and the total burden of taking care of them could be far less.
*Taiwan pledges to remove 760 statues of Chinese dictator Chiang Kai-shek.*
The US was hypocritical to claim to be defending freedom by supporting military dictators in Taiwan until the 1980s. But, ironically, freedom had the last laugh; Taiwan is a democracy now.
What to do with all the removed statues? Here's an idea: add old weapons and make them into a mockery of an ancient dictator's terra-cotta army.
New Hampshire Republican crazies are working on repealing the existing vaccine requirements for polio and measles. The danger this poses to other people will not be limited to the children of right-wing fools.
There should be no religious exceptions to the duty to protect the whole population from dangerous diseases by getting yourself and your children vaccinated. The only exception should be for medical reasons, in case a person for special medical conditions cannot be vaccinated.
A clever idea to attract coral gametes to dying reef could help them evolve to adapt to increasing heat.
However, this will do nothing to protect against ocean acidification, caused by increasing concentration of CO2 in the water itself. At some point this will dissolve the shells of all coral, as well as mollusks and crustaceans in general.
Governor Sununu, Republican, proudly told America he would swallow any lie in order to make a Republican the next president. "Grab power" is all that the Republican Party stands for how -- that and intimidating mainstream organizations that might dare to condemn those lies,
200 years ago, Haiti's slave revolt won freedom, and nominal independence, but since then rich countries have intervened over and over to drive Haiti into submission.
Haitians showed their capacity for democracy by twice electing Aristide president. I think they could succeed if only the US did not knock them down again.
It is not unusual to recruit people in poor countries to "work" in another country, where they find themselves enslaved. Now some are slaves in the Russian army, fighting for Putin to conquer Ukraine.
Guangdong province in China is the latest place to be hit by formerly-unusual torrential rains.
Will this teach China that continuing to increase its greenhouse emissions would be deadly?
Due to global heating, *northern permafrost region [now] emits more greenhouse gases than it captures.*
This is an example of a positive feedback. Positive feedbacks, which we can't entirely predict, are what can destroy civilization.
Salafi Arabia is running a marketing campaign to pretend it is something other than repressive and sexist.
Yanis Varoufakis presents the text of the speech over which Germany banned his presence and even from presenting videos of his views. This puts political freedom in Germany under grave threat.
In the text he affirms his solidarity with all victims of atrocities, including Jews and Palestinians. I don't agree with every detail of his views, but rather than quibble, I say his heart is in the right place.
Zoom demands that users make accounts and identify themselves before they can participate in a call. This puts Zoom in position to block any conference in Germany in which Varoufakis tried to participate.
That is one of many reasons why Zoom is an injustice and we should denounce and reject it.
Some hospitals in abortion-forbidding states turn women away from emergency rooms so as not to get stuck choosing between the crime of saving them or the liability of letting them die.
The US government s trying to enforce the law that emergency rooms can't just send a patient away. Now the case has come to the Supreme Court, where right-wing fanatics may decide to kill women in the name of the sacredness of fetuses.
The new president of the World Bank wants funds to invest in decarbonization of poor countries.
This lending program would be a good idea, but the highest priorities for investments in decarbonization are:
But if we don't require these actions. decarbonization won't get off the ground.
*Salman Rushdie warns young people against forgetting value of free speech.*
How dangerous, how foolish, and what a shame: young people motivated by good causes think they can make the world better by tactics of bullying. It makes them kin to fascists, and once they eliminate freedom of speech, it is the fascists that take advantage.
Modi is building a cult of personality to manipulate the Indian public.
I urge Indians to think deeply and do what Dr Ambedkar would have done.
The US and Europe have put sanctions on two right-wing Israelis who are leaders of the movement to take Palestinians' land, and associated with pogroms against them.
I don't know how much good this will do, but at least it is an effort in the right direction.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The California thugs who killed Mario Gonzalez by holding him down for a long time face charges of manslaughter.
Apple removes WhatsApp and Threads from [Apple' China] App Store,
We could hardly expect Apple to defy government orders to stop distributing a certain program, whether those orders are backed by valid judgments or arbitrary commands. But why does that choice come down to Apple at all? For a simple reason:
Because Apple doesn't allow users to freely install application programs!
Apple is compelled to serve repressive governments in repressing Apple customers because Apple designs the software to give it unjust power over users in the first place.
We should not forget that the apps for WhatsApp and Threads (like those for Facebook and Instagram) are themselves nonfree and therefore freedom-trampling.
There was an air attack on Iraqi army auxiliaries that unofficially support Iran. At the moment it is hard to know whether the attack was done by Israel or by PISSI. The US probably knows but is not telling us.
If this was Netanyahu's doing, he is playing a dangerous game, and the US should demand he stop provoking Iran if he wants any help when Iran retaliates.
The Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Association of University Professors have condemned the president of Columbia for repression of students protesting in support of Palestine.
They said, “We are shocked at her failure to mount any defense of the free inquiry central to the educational mission of a university in a democratic society and at her willingness to appease legislators seeking to interfere in university affairs.”
The president of Columbia has acted like a coward, and had better develop some courage soon.
"In favor of Palestine" includes a range of views — including some I agree with and others (for instance, calling for the elimination of Israel) that I oppose. People, including students, are entitled to the right to advocate any of those views, or other views different entirely, whether you agree with them or not, whether I agree with them or not. We depend on this freedom and we must defend it firmly.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Questioning the claim that trees communicate and plan.
To control transfer of nutrients is far simpler than consciousness. Trees can do fairly complex behaviors without anything like consciousness,
*54 Columbia Law School Faculty Condemn Administration for Mass Arrests and Suspensions.*
Politicians right and left are trying to censor political views, but censorship by the right wing has an easier time succeeding.
Louisiana State University is accused of selling oil companies the opportunity to influence research topics or even control research.
I have the impression that many other US universities do this, and even more in other countries.
Wales (part of the UK) has given local communities control over which streets to limit to 20 mph.
Many citizens had objected to the way the Welsh government set this up.
* insiders say UK water firms knowingly break sewage laws.*
If the government really wanted this to stop, it could stop them. Seeing as the UK government can make it a crime to protest in "annoying" ways, it could, it could clearly make it a crime, punished by imprisonment, to intentionally pollute the waters.
So why doesn't it? I speculate that it is a matter of values. Under plutocratist rule, letting the "investors" extract money they are supposedly entitle do takes priority.
Advertainment is taking over movie-making. Why spend money on product advertisements to accompany some sort of show if you can have the show based entirely on your product?
The article highlights a general tendency towards milking assets that are available rather than making anything new.
To describe the result, the article falls into the intellectual pitfall of the misleading term "intellectual property", which twists thinking about any of the disparate laws that have been crammed into it.
If you want to think clearly about copyright, for instance, shun the term "intellectual property" and say you are talking about "copyright". Don't bring patents into that discussion — they are totally different from copyright. Also don't bring in trademarks, or trade secrets, or publicity rights.
For this article's point, the term "licensing rentierism" would fit better and avoid that confusion.
The US has adopted the law to conscript people in to spying on computer and phone data for US secret agencies.
It's not really "everyone" in the US that could be forced to spy in his way. But it is more people than you might think.
*Former and current U.S. officials told The Washington Post that the new language was intended to apply to data [server] storage centers, but civil liberties advocates like Goitein warn it could be used to compel any business — such as a grocery store, gym, or laundry service — to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to scoop up data from its phones or computers.*
*"The provision effectively grants the NSA access to the communications equipment of almost any U.S. business, plus huge numbers of organizations and individuals," Goitein wrote on social media early Saturday. "It's a gift to any president who may wish to spy on political enemies, journalists, ideological opponents, etc."*
The UK is gradually eliminating the right to protest in ways people might actually notice. Nonviolent protesters have been sentenced to years in prison.
A Republican-packed US appeals court approved state laws that hold nonviolent protest organizers liable for unplanned and unorganized violence at the protest. This is an attack on the right to protest.
The Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal against that ruling.
Volkswagen workers in Tennessee voted to unionize.
Breaking waves launch enormous quantities of certain PFAS into the air. Does this make the distribution in manufactured products insignificant by comparison?
To what extent are these the same PFAS that get into the environment via manufacturing?
Columbia University's president has bent over to placate right-wing congresscritters by attacking protesting students.
The cops that the president called to clear out the protesters bent over backwards to destroy their things and supplies, and deny them access to medicine.
*Biden administration moves to restrict oil and gas leases on 13m acres in Alaska.*
Alaskan planet roasters called the new rule "illegal." I hope that killing you is illegal, because that's what more drilling would do.
Netanyahu launched an air attack against an Iranian air base. Reportedly it did little damage, and Iran does not plan to retaliate.
Israel could consider that its honor is now satisfied, and let the fighting drop.
But I have a feeling that Netanyahu will not be satisfied with this sword dance, because his manipulation has not succeeded, and that he will continue attacking Iran until he provokes a substantial counterattack.
Boeing engineer Sam Salehpour testified to Congress that there is no longer any safety culture at the company, and engineers who point out dangers are ignored, shunned, and even threatened.
*Salehpour says he faced retaliation as he repeatedly sought to raise the flag inside Boeing over three years. "I was ignored," he told the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations. "I was told not to create delays. I was told, frankly, to shut up."*
I am skeptical that the current management could undo the harm that they have become part of. It is hard for a person to change attitude that drastically and fully understand what it means. Replacing the upper management alone would not be sufficient — several levels would need to be replaced. But I don't see how that could be possible either. I hope someone knows.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the surveillance bill that would allow government agencies to conscript any conveniently available American to start spying on whoever the agency directs.
Alas, I don't have any more details about this. But we should treat it as a real danger. Please phone each of your senators at 202-688-0628 and urge per to oppose that bill.
While you are at it, you could also urge those same senators to refuse to extend section 702 mass surveillance.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The Lower Sioux tribe has developed hempcrete as a building material, and reports that it saves energy in summer and winter, as well as being low cost.
Barcelona has removed bus line 116 (which goes to the beautiful Parc Güell) from Google and Apple maps, to discourage the tourists from using it to get to the park.
This seems perverse to me. Do they want the tourists not to visit Parc Güell? To take taxis to get there? To travel by a more circuitous route? To walk a long distance?
If lots of people use line 116, the sensible and helpful thing to do is to run more frequent buses on part or all of that line.
California cities have privatized destruction of homeless encampments. Companies have been paid at least $100 million, and perhaps much more.
Privatizing a government activity tends to make it more expensive. It also tends to become less accountable, leading to more cruel abuse and more callous careless abuse.
*Arizona Republicans again block effort to repeal 1864 near-total abortion ban.*
(satire) *Eric Trump Only Potential Juror Uninformed Enough To Serve At Father's Trial.*
Kari Lake, an insurrectionist Republican candidate for the US Senate, called on Republicans to carry guns around the time of the election. We know that will lead to killings, which insurrectionists hope will give them a chance to steal the election.
Lake said that Washington is a swamp. Evidently she is an alligator that can't wait to get in and bite people.
Russia exports lots of oil from the Baltic Sea in ships that go through the narrow passages around Denmark. These ships are badly maintained, and likely to cause disaster even without an intention to do so.
Whether the ships are insured is almost irrelevant, since an insurance company could hardly make up for the damage that a big oil spill could do in those confided waters. The crucial issue is to stop allowing unseaworthy ships to pass through.
Regardless of future between Ukraine and Russia, it would be wise to require all oil shipments between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to be sent through pipelines across Denmark, not by ship. Pipeline leaks on land will make smaller spills than ship disasters.
Paris is displaying the usual Olympian cruelty by "cleaning up" homeless people and squats to look pretty for the games.
These games tend to do permanent harm to street vendors, due to new strict laws, and to everyone that travels on streets, due to new surveillance measures. In addition they tend to enrich companies at the expense of the public.
If your city proposes to host the Olympic Games, I urge you organize to defeat the proposal.
St Louis thugs went on a rampage at a protest, attacking based on no grounds. Oops! They attacked an undercover thug.
Some of the attackers were jailed for this, which is good. But what we really should demand is that thugs be jailed for rampaging against innocent people even when those are not actually thugs in disguise.
*US reimposes sanctions on Venezuela as hope for democracy crumbles.*
Maduro and his lieutenants deserve sanctions, but US trade sanctions tend to fall on the people who are victims, not culprits.
*Britain’s latest descent into authoritarianism fits a depressingly familiar pattern. This is how it tends to work: a subversive group is identified by political elites and presented as a danger to the nation, often being additionally labeled as allies or dupes of hostile foreign enemies. An air of national emergency is contrived, with exaggerated, distorted, or simply invented evidence used to justify claims of an imminent threat. The ensuing repressive measures are supposedly to defend the security of both individual citizens and the nation alike.*
This year's target is "supporters of Palestine", a term that covers a wide range of views.
*Israel has sped up settlement-building in East Jerusalem since Gaza war began.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Pro-Israel money pours in to unseat prominent progressives in Congress.
*Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050. Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2°C, study finds.*
Richard Stallman dará una conferencia, El software libre, libertad, y sociedad, en Córdoba, Spain, Viernes, el 26 de April, de 17:30 a 18:50 en la Colegio Mayor Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. La conferencia es en español.
As predicted, the US "assurances" about Julian Assange's US trial are designed to give the misleading impression that the First Amendment would apply to him.
*Leaked Cables Show White House Opposes Palestinian Statehood.*
*Lethal heatwave in Sahel worsened by fossil fuel burning, study finds*, perhaps by 1.5°C.
Leasing of federal land for oil and gas extraction will no longer be a near-giveaway.
*Belarus [political] prisoner smuggles out account of brutal jail written on toilet paper.*
Present-day bullshit generators' output may be recognizable by certain words they tend to use strangely often, including "delve".
*I Want My Taxes to Be Used for Our True National Security: Helping People in Need.*
Israel's fight with Iran has given Rafah a respite from an attack by Israeli ground troops (if indeed Israel still intends to attack Rafah).
When an enemy tries to attack you, but the attempt does essentially no damage, this is an opportunity to end the cycle of retaliation by doing nothing in response. If Israel had leaders who were statesmanlike and wanted peace, they would gratefully welcome the opportunity. Instead, it has war hawks who want to push the US into war with Iran, are galled by their lack of success at this, and are planning to try again.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
On cloud seeding — what it can do, and its limits.
[This note was posted on Monday with a major editing error:Iran launched many missiles and drones against Israel.
the word "not" was mistakenly inserted after "simply."
That has now been corrected.]
Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate was not, in and of itself, a war crime. It was an attack on military personnel of a country which was already at war with Israel.
I don't know what specific targets Iran's missiles and drones were aimed at, but I don't see a reason why that attack would be a war crime. It seems that this is simply war.
Judged in terms of its effects in the current context, Israel's attack was a manipulative provocation. Netanyahu must have figured that Iran would retaliate, and that this would give Israel an opportunity to attack Iran in a much bigger way and justify it as "retaliation". He may have hoped that this would talk western countries into "standing by Israel" in war against Iran.
I am not the only one to suspect that.
I hope those countries' governments are wise enough to refuse to fall for Netanyahu's efforts to lure them into war, or lure them into disregarding the urgency of ending the siege of Gaza.
This could be an opportunity to squeeze Netanyahu out of the Israeli government. They could tell Israel, "We will support Israel against Iranian attack, provided it adopts a defensive posture and provided Netanyahu is not its prime minister."
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Greece will ban bottom trawling in protected marine areas.
The UK is considering a law to forever ban sales of tobacco to anyone born after 2008.
Tobacco is deadly and addictive. I wish everyone would avoid ever using it, and I wish all smokers would quit. I personally urge people to quit. But I oppose prohibition of drugs that people want to use, because it tends to cause great harm to society in other ways.
University of Cologne retracted an offer of a visiting professorship to Nancy Fraser over opinions she stated about the war in Gaza.
I disagree firmly with Professor Fraser's views — legitimization of HAMAS's large terrorist action, and assertion that Israel's very existence is an injustice. But those are tangents to the issue at hand. People have a right to advocate those views, and should bot be blacklisted for them.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*USC draws backlash for canceling valedictorian’s speech due to support for Palestine.*
Whether she was actually going to talk about that in her canceled speech is unknown, but supposing she was, "support for Palestine" is a rather broad category. There are many different views that qualify, and most of them are not threatening anyone.
The concern for "security" that the university claimed was a bogus excuse — in effect, "We are gagging you for your own safety."
The UK has banned the destructive fishing method of bottom trawling. giving some real protection to several "protected" marine areas. The ban applies to all fishing boats, including French ones.
[irony]
France should retaliate by banning bottom trawling in some French
waters. Eventually the two countries could entirely eliminate
that practice near their coasts.
[/irony]
Iran is reportedly threatening to attack Jordan if it does not allow Iran's attack drones to cross Jordanian airspace to get at Israel.
The New York Times stated rules of word usage that support Israel's point of view about Gaza and its inhabitants.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Communications companies plan to launch a total of a million satellites by the 2040s. So many satellites could damage the ionosphere or Earth's magnetic fields.
This is in addition to the danger that some will be hit by space junk, creating a chain reaction that will block humanity off from space travel for millennia.
Investigating the Los Angeles thug department for a series of shootings in which thugs encountered people who were carrying various harmless objects and jumped to the conclusion that they had weapons.
Reportedly US, UK and Jordanian planes shot down Iranian attack drones before they reached Israel.
That was a good way to defeat the Iranian attack — not attacking any Iranians, only their machines.
Modi is weaponizing Hindu pilgrimage sites in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, and trying out repression of Muslims.
Explaining and puncturing the fossil fuel industry's five principal disinformation approaches.
Here's another one: politicians who want to act fast enough to avert disaster are overeager -- the "grown-ups" are the ones who will move slowly, surely, and therefore arrive too late."
Perhaps these grown-ups would buy a fire engine that can't go faster than 10 miles per hour.
Israel used the influence of its American supporters to quash American Jews' criticism of treatment of Palestinians.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*To Save US Democracy, Prioritize the Common Good.*
Democracy is weakened (and then threatened) by policies that serve specifically the plutocrats, rather than people in general.
In the US: join rallies for curbing global heating on April 19 and April 22.
(satire) *Residents [of a Gated Community] Establish More Exclusive Gated [Nested] Community Within First.*
*The UN-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which certifies whether a company is on track to help limit global heating to under 1.5°C,* has bought into the idea that "carbon offsets" are valid methods for curbing global heating.
The organization's staff condemn the plan and say it is not in fact based on science.
I've said for many years that we cannot trust a company to achieve the goal, because it is easy to set up bogus offsets that won't really reduce emissions but only pretend to.
For similar reasons, a "carbon market" would be easy to game and therefore to render ineffective. It appeals to the worshipers of the Invisible Hand.
By contrast, a carbon tax really would pressure companies to emit less greenhouse gas.
*"What we’re seeing is not tele[medicine]": alarm over doctors using AI and prescribing without seeing patients.*
Medicine is intended to result in better health (better than it would otherwise have been), but it is misleading to refer to medicine as "health", and likewise to refer to telemedicine as "telehealth".
Ocean temperatures of 25°C lead to the premature death of octopus mothers, from heat stress, before their eggs have hatched.
The article is confused when it talks about "unborn offspring". Octopus eggs are not "born", any more than birds' chicks are "born" when they hatch. Baby octopuses do not develop inside their mother. However, the mother must circulate water for them constantly until they are ready to swim away.
It is too bad that the experiment did not report on the visual capabilities of octopuses that did hatch at 25°C. That is the only way to tell for certain whether that water high temperature will damage their vision.
It is possible that octopuses can evolve to adopt to warmer conditions, if the change is not terribly fast. Or they can survive farther from the equator.
Amazon's notorious checkout-less stores supposedly used secret scanning and AI systems to figure out what each shopper bought. Actually they used remote workers in low-wage countries to watch the shoppers.
What Amazon had invented was a new method of replacing workers in the US with outsourcing to low-wage workers. But if they ever succeed in really automating this, workers will lose even more.
Hong Kong's people have been silenced by China, which is using many different laws to disguise the extent of repression.
This repression is what China today means. This is why we must defend whatever targets China aims to conquer in the future.
*Starmer is courting Tory voters so hard it’s almost as though he wants to lose his own.*
I think he wants to convert the Labour Party into a competent but mainly plutocratist party, which would make policies mainly to benefit the wealthy, and carry them out competently. This would occupy the space that the Tory Party has abandoned to become the party of cruel rigidity.
Labour would then try to win elections by preventing any non-plutocratist opposition party from becoming a real alternative.
It is true that victory for a political cause usually requires compromises. The crucial thing is to distinguish the compromises that you can safely make from the compromises that would undermine your values.
The cheater is about to be tried for violating campaign finance laws to hush up a scandal that could have interfered with his chances of getting elected. Describing it as a matter of a "sex scandal" covers up what is really at stake.
*Negative experiences during military service are the main drivers of extremist beliefs amongst veterans, [suggests a small survey].*
These "negative experiences" are likely to involve hatred, bullying and war crimes. How ironic that their reaction to such violence leads them to commit or advocate similar violence themselves.
It is a mistake to classify "Antifa" as "extremist", since it means only participation in organized activity against a form of violence (fascism). That sometimes takes the form of fighting violent fascists, but basically it is nonviolent resistance against fascists.
Right-wing disinformation in the US portrayed Antifa a few years ago as a violent movement, which it was not.
Due to El Niño plus Global heating, much of South America is suffering from record droughts, and Bogotá is facing exhaustion of water in two months.
Britain has had a year of heavy rain, which has damaged wheat production.
This is surely related somehow to global heating. Whether it will continue, get better, or get worse, I have no basis to predict. But it is a dangerous situation.
China is building new coal-fired generators faster than the US and Europe are closing them.
A corporation that changed its name to "abrdn" claims to be entitled to certain kinds of human kindness that we think humans deserve. Corporations are not in fact persons, and they are not entitled to human rights or even human kindness.
I conjecture that the name "abrdn" was meant to acknowledge that large corporations are often a brdn on society, and to encourage regulating them more strictly ;-}.
Where the article comments on a matter of trademark law, it injects gratuitous confusion by using the propaganda overgeneralization of "the intellectual property" instead of the objective and concrete term, "the trademark".
Trademarks are nothing whatsoever like copyrights or patents or trade secrets — be careful never to generalize about all those laws.
Google is testing a response to California's "news link tax", which is to remove all news links from what users post on Google platforms.
I see this as a counterattack rather than as a compelled reaction. But it is a fact that nothing can stop Google from retaliating this way. Whether Google's claims are right that the tax encourages further concentration and hollowing out of the newspaper business, I don't know.
The article talks about possible "better alternative" in a vague way, and I have no idea what Google means to suggest. But I do have a suggestion.
Adopt a tax on web sites that display advertising and allow users to post their own messages. The tax should be based on the amount of usage and/or the amount of advertising. The money should be distributed to news organizations in a way that does not depend on who does or does not post links to them. This way, Google and other platforms could not evade the tax by counterattacking.
Reportedly US military drones have proved unreliable in Ukraine, so Ukraine is buying commercial Chinese drones (and spare parts), which work better.
There is evidence that peer reviewers are using bullshit generators (chatbots) to generate evaluations of submitted papers.
Since those programs don't really understand the articles that are being reviewed, or the subject that those are about, this is asking for error.
Please don't call those programs "AI"!
*The pro-Putin far right is on the march across Europe — and it could spell tragedy for Ukraine.*
Israel promised to allow more aid into Gaza, but it has not really done that. Famine has started.
Israel said it would allow aid into Gaza from the north, but instead of doing this using the existing crossing, it has decided to build a new crossing first. That's as absurd as extinguishing a life-threatening urban fire by ordering a new fire engine and waiting for it to arrive.
However, there seems to be other impediments to distributing aid inside Gaza once it gets across the border.
Perhaps these are not directly Israel's doing, but they are consequences of Israel's actions. I can imagine that truck owners don't want to risk that their trucks be destroyed by Israeli drones, and drivers don't want to risk getting killed that way.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Network of "ghost roads" paves the way for leveling Asia-Pacific rain forests.*
Not all Palestinians are Muslims. Israeli soldiers came to arrest an unarmed Christian Palestinian at home, at night, in the West Bank.
They are planning to hold her in prison indefinitely, with no official charges and therefore no trial. However, there is suspicion that she is in prison for political organizing.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The UK is erecting a repressive system to crush protests, especially protests demanding measures to save civilization from climate disaster. People are imprisoned for holding protest signs, as in China.
I don't recall that Starmer Labour is any better on this issue than the Tories.
Iran launched 100 drones, or more, in attacks on Israel. This was a response to an Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria.
Israel and Iran have been, formally, at war for decades. Can anyone point me at info on how and when that state of war started?
Here is more background.
The UK proposes to use facial recognition systems on important streets, including mobile vans, to find people wanted for arrest. And not only for heinous crimes — even shoplifters would be sought this way.
In Braga, Portugal, April 17th, Richard Stallman will give a talk, Free Software and Freedom in a Digital Society.
It is early spring, and the US Midwest is already suffering from wildfires.
*Mexico calls on UN to expel Ecuador over embassy raid as tensions soar.*
To legitimize the practice of invading other countries' embassies would further destabilize what remains of the conventions and rules of international relations.
That may have helped arrest a crook this time. In London, 10 years ago, it would have enabled the UK to grab Julian Assange sooner. But overall, these specific effects will average out to zero; what will remain is less stability.
*US imposes first-ever limits on levels of [four specific] toxic PFA substances in drinking water.*
No level of these substances is absolutely safe, but a smaller concentration causes a smaller danger. Even though no nonzero level leads to zero danger, a small enough level makes for a danger that is insignificant, practically speaking, compared with the other dangers of life. The effort to reduce PFA substance levels beyond that is not efficient reduction of the danger.
(satire) *CDC Recommends 6 Hours Of Clicking Per Day For Healthy Fingers.*
(satire) *God To Delete Several Million Humans Due To Inactivity.*
*Colombian Amazon deforestation surges as armed groups tighten grip.* The groups started as rebels fighting a repressive government, but now they use the forest as a hostage. Meanwhile, the erstwhile provincial rebel group made peace and disarmed, so it is no longer there to keep the others down.
Violent Israeli colonists in Palestinian territory attacked a Palestinian village, killing one Palestinian and injuring many. They were searching for a missing teenager who seems not to have been there at all. However, people who hate some others are often in a rush to declare them guilty of crimes, which may not even have happened at all.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Ireland and Spain reiterate plan to form alliance to recognize state of Palestine.*
*Belgium investigates alleged Russian payments to MEPs.*
*Belgian [prime minister] says Russia is trying to influence forthcoming elections to weaken European support for Ukraine.*
Enormous excesses of sargassum seaweed are choking coasts in the Caribbean, and emitting hydrogen sulfide gas, which is foul-smelling and even toxic in large enough amounts.
The dangerous excess is partly caused by the large amounts of fertilizer runoff that humans' farms now release to the Atlantic Ocean.
US citizens: call on the US to drop charges against Julian Assange.
See assangedefense.org/press-releases for more information
Foreign doctors who volunteered to work in Gaza claim that Israel intentionally targets medical facilities and personnel.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Alabama IVF ruling leaves Republicans stuck between their base and the broader public.*
I am not surprised by this good news As the bully pushes his followers into increasingly extreme and cruel positions, he is sure to generate more and more opposition. Republicans' usual methods of rigging elections won't help them if the demographic groups that normally vote Republican start doing rejecting them.
Colombia's former president, Alvaro Horrible, will be tried for witness tampering and fraud.
He has been tied to the paramilitaries, gangs of criminals with close connections to the army, who were Colombia's worst terrorists.
A bomb was planted on the Satanic Temple. It did little damage, due to an apparent malfunction, but it looks like right-wing terrorism.
A new EPA rule will require 200 US chemical plants to be redesigned to reduce toxic pollution.
*US will require background checks for gun shows and online firearm sales.*
This is a step forward, but we urgently need strict laws about safe storage and transport of guns.
The US has sabotaged the WTO by blocking appointment of "judges" to implement its dispute appeals procedure. See how I have condemned the WTO in the past.
The WTO "dispute resolution procedure" is much like an ISDS clause except that businesses cannot directly sue countries for making laws to protect human right, public health, the environment, or their citizens' standard of living. In the WTO, only another member country can do that. But a big enough company can generally get the government of the country it claims to be located in to sue on its behalf.
With the dispute resolution system spiked, the WTO will be unable to do much to countries that relax the unjust copyright laws that persecute people who share with other people, and may be unable to pressure countries to make exceptions in patent law for software, medicine and agriculture.
If the WTO limited itself to preventing international dumping of products, I would support it. But it goes far beyond that, into injustice.
Trade agreements is one of the few areas in which the corrupter did good things, For instance, keeping the US out of the TPP, and spiking the WTO. But that is no reason to vote for the corrupter, since Biden has continued the same policies. What's more, Biden has taken broad action against monopolies in the US.
In any case, the danger that the corrupter would impose fascism and abolish human rights in the US outweighs other the political issues.
Antarctica has begun experiencing big temperature fluctuations which are likely to make global heating start causing bigger changes there.
There have been 2500 arrests of people simply for being homeless in the UK since 2019.
Google tried to make its bullshit generator respond to questions about morals by saying that it can't judge those questions because they are for each person to judge. That's not a bad idea, in general. However, on some specific questions, such as *'Who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?'*, to assert that is there is no right answer is taking a kind of stand.
Perhaps if it said, "That asks for a moral judgment — this system lacks the capability to make such judgments," it would achieve the intended result.
Of course, there are many other topics about which a bullshit generator lacks the capability to give valid responses.
Vending machines installed in a university in Canada have cameras, but various companies assert that they don't identify persons or store photos of them. They only detect that some person is in front of the machine and perhaps wants to use it.
In my view, the injustice of most cameras that watch people lies in tracking people. A camera that can't identify a person (or a car) is not an injustice. But it makes sense to demand that the company demonstrate at the technical level that these cameras cannot identify persons.
We can't take on trust any statements about what the machine actually does today if that depends on software, because the machine's owner could install different software any day.
*More than half of federal funding for "climate-smart" agriculture in the US goes to farming practices that are unlikely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.*
In some cases, this is because the funding pays for changes that reduce emissions, but they effectively subsidize raising livestock, and that is likely to mean more livestock and therefore more emissions.
Australia kept an Egyptian refugee in deportation prison for 12 years because the government gave undue respect to a conviction in absentia in an Egyptian court which used torture to get "evidence".
Kafkaesque rigidity prolonged his imprisonment.
Some Republican-ruled states want to prohibit lab-grown meat.
Some of those states have already passed laws to punish making pictures of how farms treat their animals. We know the reason for both kinds of laws: to serve the powerful few companies that dominate US agriculture, and also to oppose efforts to curb global heating.
A new French law says that people who move into living spaces near existing activities that normally make noise have no right to demand an end to the noise.
This is simple common sense.
A UK thug accused press photographer Dimitris Legakis of "assaulting" per, and arrested him. Seven months later, just before the trial, prosecutors realized Legakis had committed no crime, and dropped the case.
The thug seems to have accused Legakis of a fictitious crime — something not unusual for thugs. Dropping the prosecution was the right thing for prosecutors to do, but it isn't enough. It is necessary also to teach thugs to lose that unjust habit.
What has been done towards that end?
HP invites customers to rent printers, with a contract that requires the printer to be reachable over the internet from HP, so it can monitor lots of things about what the renter prints.
Supposedly HP makes this snooping legitimate by making the renter explicitly consent to it. Balderdash! Massive surveillance cannot be justified by the manufacture of consent.
If we seriously want to stop companies from putting digital shackles on people, this sort of monitoring and control should be a crime. It should be punished with prison for the people who implemented it, as well as with fines to, or dissolution of, the company.
*Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science.*
Science thrived in the Islamic world until around 1000 CE, but since then has lost its impetus and its influence. The article speculates about what the causes was, and whether there is a chance of changing it today. One suggested cause is that Islam never recognized autonomous institutions of study that were not controlled by religious authorities.
Today there are Arabs who do science, but they often do it in parts of the world where Islam does not dominate.
*Lawsuits filed by a civil rights group allege that county jails in Michigan banned in-person visits in order to gouge prisoners and their families, as part of a "quid pro quo kickback scheme" with prison phone companies.*
The reason "prison phone companies" exist is to exploit an opportunity to gouge people who can least afford it — people who can't work except for a minuscule wage.
We need laws to require that these phone calls have a low price, or even zero price.
TikTok is accused of tracking journalists to find out who has met physically with TikTok employees to investigate the company.
*"BJP v democracy": India’s opposition alliance cries foul as election nears.*
New York City has set up a Chatbot, supposedly to give people information about legal questions based on official web sites. The site uses a bullshit generator, so its answers are often incorrect.
The article describes this behavior as "lying", but that cannot be true. The definition of "a lie" is a false statement, made knowing that it is false, intending that it deceive someone. A bullshit generator doesn't know that its output "means" anything, let alone whether a statement in that output is true or false.
US citizens: call on the IRS to make a web site for filing tax returns that is libre, not merely gratis.
*Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists.*
The world has warmed more in the past year than models predicted, and has exceeded the 1.5°C limit at which drastic consequences were expected. Scientists wonder whether this is an inexplicable temporary blip or an inexplicable lasting change.
Decades after recognizing that asbestos is dangerous to humans who breathe it, the US is slowly moving step by step towards banning its use.
The head of the Colorado Republican Party, an insurrectionist trumppet, ordered the exclusion of a local reporter, preemptively prohibiting her from covering the event.
(satire) *[The bullshitter's] Best Excuses For Delaying Legal Hearings.*
(satire) *Israel Orders [Air] Strike On Chef José Andrés' Boyhood Home.* (He is the founder of World Central Kitchen.)
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Indiana has prohibited spending state research funds for studying sexuality and sexual behavior. The Kinsey Institute and its extensive collections are now threatened. The university trustees are about to vote on some way to react to this and have refused to tell the institute's staff what the plan is.
Indiana Republicans' next planned attack on academic freedom is to undermine the system of tenure for professors, which is supposed to protect academic freedom. Once undermined it will no longer achieve that purpose.
I have to point out that universities have already, with no compulsion at all, eliminated tenure for a large fraction of their professors: they are "adjunct" professors, hired term by term, who can be "junct" after any term without giving reasons. One of my friends was junct by Harvard University in this way.
*"We stand together": Bradford Muslim and Jewish leaders join forces for Ramadan event.*
*Manchester theatre restores canceled Palestinian event after artists protest.*
It was initially canceled because a mainstream Jewish organization accused one of the participants — false, as it happens — of trying to excuse the Holocaust.
Distinguishing various kinds of antisemitism.
Israel has withdrawn its troops from southern Gaza, leaving a smaller number in northern Gaza where not much active fighting is happening.
This could lead to an end of the fighting, but we can't take that for granted.
*The Israeli cabinet’s decision followed warnings from foreign ministry officials that if aid was not increased, Israel would risk sanctions and arms embargoes.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop arms for Israel if it doesn't fully allow humanitarian aid access.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Ukraine's air defense missiles are running out, Zelenskiy warns.*
Political Assassination is spreading to more and more countries.
The US continues to practice it occasionally, but not as much as in the decades from 2000 to 2020, when it was often carried out using fighter planes and drones.
US citizens: Call on Congress to establish postal banking, so as to support the USPS and under-served communities.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Thugs in Saskatoon made a practice of arresting indigenous people and leaving them at isolated places, on freezing cold nights, when their clothing was not adequate to survive. They were likely to die as a result. One victim knew a place where he could find shelter, and survived to testify.
Two thugs who were known to have killed indigenous people in this way were later convicted of a crime for that, and sentenced to prison. That's better than what usually happens to killer thugs, which is that they are never prosecuted at all; but the crime they were convicted of was an understatement.
They should have been charged with murder. They must have expected that the men they dumped in the cold were likely to die as a result, and intended that result.
It seems that the attempt to kill Darrell Night was motivated only by his being merely a nuisance.
Things are looking up in Turkey for democracy; a secularist and democratic opposition party won most of the votes in local elections.
But it is not certain that the public will be allowed to go ahead peacefully to vote that way. Erdoğan has used horrible dirty tricks before, even starting a civil war as an excuse to redo an election and get more votes by appealing to a misguided idea of patriotism, much as Dubya did by attacking Iraq.
Paris is constructing "15-minute neighborhoods" (what most people want every day is available close by), and people generally like them a lot.
It is a shame that right-wing disinformation killed this in the UK. This is far from the worst harm that right-wing disinformation has done, but it is noteworthy for being so evidently false, so easy to confirm as false. We need to change our social systems so that they cease to facilitate lies, even lies as blatant as this.
*US prisoners are dying from treatable conditions… inmates who died of preventable conditions were deemed malingerers and "time wasters".*
(satire) *Clarence Thomas Announces 50% Discount On All Favorable Rulings.*
About a mosque in Varanasi where both Hindus and Muslims come to say their respective prayers.
I myself do not pray to anything, because I don't believe there is anything to pray to. But I am glad that Hindus and Muslims coexist in peace and tranquility.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to hold Israel accountable for possible war crimes. "Hold accountable" is rather vague — I don't see precisely what the resolution called for.
Meanwhile, Biden threatened to cut off support, and this compelled Netanyahu to agree to open more channels for humanitarian aid into Gaza. This demonstrates that Biden can compel Israel to change an inhumane practice in war.
Whether these changes will end the starvation in Gaza remains to be seen. I would not sell Netanyahu anything on credit.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Australia demands that Israel save pertinent evidence and permit an independent investigation into the killing of an Australian aid worker
who was in the WCK aid convoy attacked by a drone.
The biggest US brands of bandages contain PFAS, which can be absorbed directly into the skin.
How much of a dose a person is likely to get from wearing these bandages, the article does not say, and perhaps no one knows. I think it would not be an easy experiment to do. But it would surely be safer not to have them in bandages.
No Labels has abandoned the idea of running a candidate for president. Its director said that between Biden and the wrecker he would vote for Biden.
Israel has implemented in real life the most horrible fictional scenario of a bloodbath caused by letting algorithms choose targets for bombing.
| ♣ | When it came to targeting low-ranking Hamas and PIJ suspects, they said, the preference was to attack when they were believed to be at home. “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” one said. "It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations." |
| ♣ | Another said that after the 7 October attacks by Hamas, the atmosphere in the IDF was "painful and vindictive". "There was a dissonance: on the one hand, people here were frustrated that we were not attacking enough. On the other hand, you see at the end of the day that another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians." |
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Biden to direct Medicare to lower drug costs and fight Big Pharma's greed.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on the FTC to enforce the law and stop supermarket chains from putting massive profits over consumers.
*Protect civilians and aid workers or risk losing US support, Biden tells Israel.*
That is a big step towards making Israel stop killing them. We now know it, that the cause was a central policy, not mere mistakes or randomness.
*Amid the slaughter and with famine looming, Israel’s allies must say enough is enough. If not now when?*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Biden's threat to stop support for Israel led it to make a concession to allow aid into Gaza through Israel.
Whether Israel will really allow all the food, water, medical supplies and other aid that the people of Gaza need is something that remains to be seen. We can't take for granted Israel will sincerely implement what it has agreed to.
However, there is also the matter that we now know from whistleblowers that the Israeli army was disregarding its obligation to avoid wanton killing of civilians. The US must not tolerate the continuation of this attitude towards causing civilian casualties.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
New York State is suing JBS, the biggest meat company for greenwashing that tried to pretend it was reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
US citizens: Call on Biden to pressure the Israeli government to allow increased aid to Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on the US to push for a strong treaty to reduce global plastic waste.
Kathryn Archer's fetus was developing birth defects that were likely to be fatal shortly after birth. Prenatal surgery could partially correct them, giving it a longer life of helplessness. She wanted an abortion, but Republicans dominating Tennessee had prohibited this.
Robert Reich sees a sign that the pressure to wear a tie may soon fade away: Biden appeared in public with Obama and Bill Clinton, none of them wearing a tie.
It is not impossible; I've read that President Kennedy freed American men from the demand to wear hats by refusing to wear one himself. Thanks perhaps to him, no one has ever tried to pressure me to wear one.
Ironically, this winter I started wearing a hat sometimes, but I don't treat it as an obligation: I simply do what feels comfortable based on the weather.
As for ties, however, I reject them actively, firmly.
*What a teacher in hiding can tell us about our failure to tackle intolerance.* British campaigners for Islamist censorship of "blasphemy" stirred up violent hatred against the teacher of a class that was studying religious hatred and the means used to stir it up. Now, three years later, perse is still hiding from the death threats they inspired.
Google was caught tracking users' browsing even when they had enabled "incognito mode". In the settlement of a lawsuit, Google has agreed to destroy the data it thus collected.
Abuses like tracking the actions of users cannot be excused by mere consent.
*EU pumps four times more money into farming animals than growing plants.*
Arguing that Justice Sotomayor should retire now and thus ensure her replacement can be chosen by Biden. I agree.
Justice Breyer was going to stay on the court until death, but he yielded to this same argument and retired so another Liberal could take his place.
Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr has gone off the deep end in regard to preserving democracy in the US.
He has clamped onto a borderline issue of government influence on antisocial media platforms, and says that is more dangerous than the insurrectionist's stated plans to impose fascism if he can.
Proposing to pay farmers to grow trees instead of cows, as a way of ending global heating.
As stated, that proposal is too simplistic. There are many places on Earth where the native ecosystems did not include many trees, including the Great Plains in the US.
The British government promised to compensate the harm it did to thousands of immigrants who moved lawfully to Britain from colonies decades ago, when young, and had no proof of what happened. That was five years ago. But it is so slow to carry out that promise that it seems to be "waiting for them to die" so it won't have to compensate them for real.
The UK government seems to become incompetent when facing any sort of task that involves correcting mistakes or dealing with unusual situations. Sometimes it is due to privatization of dealing with citizens — something that is generally harmful to the citizens who need whatever service. I suspect that putting computers in charge is a cause, and cuts in spending on functionaries is another.
Ekrem Imamoğlu, a secularist, seems to have a chance to be the next president of Turkey, if only Erdoğan doesn't sabotage the election.
Developing mechanical and thermal batteries to store store energy as compression or heat.
Israel's rules of engagement in Gaza are secret, but evidence shows that either they are so lax as to be meaningless, or else generally ignored in practice.
*Zomi and her colleagues [killed in the aid convoy] were saving lives. Their deaths deserve our outrage.*
Things like this happen in war, and no army can make them absolutely impossible. But a civilized army takes steps that make them far less frequent. Israel seems to be shrugging that off.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Canada's enforcement of laws against overfishing of eels was carried out in a way that endangered the lives of accused illegal fishers.
Over fishing leads to extinction. Around the world, treaties are cited as an excuse to continue over fishing, but no treaty can justify causing extinction. Where the world has the benefit of real enforcement against over fishing, it should enforce them against everyone, regardless of per ethnicity.
However, thugs must protect the lives of those they arrest. The thugs should have brought those men to a place where they could stay indoors and be safe without shoes. A police station would have sufficed.
Confiscating people's shoes outdoors in a cold region can result in maiming or even death, so it should be prosecuted as attempted murder. Countries should enforce this against everyone, including uniformed thugs. Likewise against the person on duty at the gas station, who threatened their lives by making them walk into the cold.
Every gas station should be required to make its phone available for people to call for help. This should be a legal requirement. However, things should not have reached that point. The thugs presumably had a phone, or a radio. They also had a responsibility to make this call.
One of the leaders of the corrupter's attack on the Capitol was sentenced to 7 years in prison.
Despite the influence of the corrupter, who claims that these convicts are "hostages", juries keep on convicting them.
Iraqis subject to privatized US government torture at Abu Ghraib are about to have their case heard.
One of the reasons why government activity must not be privatized is that the company is not the state and its employees are not state employees. If they do horrible things, it is much harder to hold them accountable. If the company outsources its workers, that makes it even harder.
Emma Thompson and Greta Thunberg, and other prominent people, have called on Shell to drop its case against Greenpeace.
Exxon boasted about a supposed carbon-capture system which it never actually started to build. The mere idea of it was basis enough to produce the results Exxon wanted — to reduce public pressure to reduce fossil fuel extraction and combustion.
Sources in Israeli intelligence agencies say that Israel approved killing 20 civilians to get one low-ranking HAMAS fighter, who may have been identified only by heuristics.
Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as "dumb bombs", the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants."You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it's very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],"
If someone's death was not important enough to use a smart bomb, but worth killing 20 civilians, those civilians' lives must have been valued at very little.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
A machine learning system has been trained to distinguish bee-eating Asian hornets from other types of wasps.
If this works in practice, I will judge it to be artificial intelligence, since it will have demonstrated some understanding of a narrow but important domain.
The corrupter is seriously attempting to bully courts into letting him be a above the law.
He seems to believe it is possible, and he may be right.
If he can indeed do this, it is a reflection of the fact that these charges are legitimate and his trials are honest. No one facing bogus charges in China, Russia or India could entertain hope of overcoming them this way.
The "Bookseller of Kabul" rebuilds the book store destroyed by the Taliban and accumulates copies of the books they destroyed.
I expect that there is no way to buy from his business except via unjust nonfree software, and that makes me sad. Of course, people in Afghanistan face much bigger attacks on their freedom than this. But this is saddening nonetheless.
US citizens: call on the biggest US banks to stick with the Equator Principles.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban voter-ID laws and other artificial obstacles to voting, by passing the Right to Vote Act.
Rebecca Solnit: *The Republican party has become a full-fledged anti-sex movement.*
Research aims to generate 10% of electricity demand from geothermal power by 2050.
If the technology works, we could do it faster than that — by spending money to build faster.
The US Supreme Court may soon rule that US states cannot make any rules about how banks treat their customers.
Although atmospheric rivers in California have caused floods and mudslides, doing lots of damage, they have lifted the state out of the drought that has lasted many years.
The drought was a stage in global heating, and the heavy rains another stage. We don't know what the next stage will be.
*Poland launches inquiry into [right-wing] previous government's spyware use.*
For the today's fascist Republican Party, run by the corrupter, "election integrity" means stealing the election.
*Flow of arms from US to Israel continues despite [the US's] ceasefire abstention [in the UN Security Council].*
Israel is about to ban the operations of al-Jazeera.
Margaret Thatcher did Britain great harm through privatizing many public services, including water supply. Since then, the "investors" in water supply have extracted profits without actually investing in the upkeep of the facilities.
Now they have run it into the ground and want to raise rates, supposedly to pay for the belated investment that they skimped on before. But it appears the government has decided to make them go bankrupt instead.
That could create a great opportunity to re nationalize those facilities, but I can't believe Tories would want to do that.
A bullshit generator happened to output text that made a valid point about Modi, and this triggered a sort of scandal.
It has to happen sometimes.
I have a suspicion that Google added special code to prevent outputting accurate criticism of the insurrectionist, but had not likewise so about Modi.
In Trento, Italy, April 10th, Richard Stallman will give a talk, Free Software and Your Freedom.
An Iranian dissident living in London and working for a Farsi news channel was stabbed by a group of attackers outside his home.
One must suspect they were sent by some organ of the Iranian government.
The channel says that Iran has been harassing relatives of their employees for over a year.
There are once again claims that symptoms called the "Havana syndrome" result from Russian ultrasound beams. But scientists have found no sign of any hostile cause.
Before the question of whether Russians are intentionally generating some sort of ultrasound, the first question ought to be, is there any unusual ultrasound in the places and times where people report having the "Havana syndrome"?
Sound waves are well understood physically. Has an ultrasound spectrum scanner been developed, and used to determine for certain whether the symptoms' onset is associated with anything unusual in the sonic spectrum?
An Israeli sniper in East Jerusalem shot and killed a Palestinian boy who was holding a firework that makes pretty lights. At a time of celebration.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Apple told podcast host Jon Stewart not to interview Lina Khan, Biden's antitrust crusader.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I expect that Apple attacks viewers' freedom with every episode of Apple TV. I expect that "TV+" signifies "TV+DRM+surveillance+NDA", ‡ and now "+censorship" as well.
Please summon your willpower to reject it, along with other similar unjust disservices.
‡ For the issues of surveillance and the antisocializing contract, see GNU philosophy. That page is about ebooks, but streaming disservices typically do the same things.
A Republican Congresscritter called on the US to kill everyone in Gaza with nuclear weapons. He claims that this would somehow be better, but that cannot be true in any rational sense. I would guess that trumpery has lead him into deranged thinking.
He also wants to attack Russia with nuclear weapons, apparently not realizing that Putin would retaliate with nuclear weapons and wipe out civilization and maybe extinguish humanity.
Republicans' speeches are not meant as serious policy proposals; they are only meant to stir up hatred they can use.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Foreign volunteer doctors in Gaza report on Palestinian children apparently shot by snipers, with a shot in the head, a shot in the chest, or one of each.
This fits a pattern of Israeli soldiers' shooting at civilians, even groups carrying makeshift white flags. Some old people have also been shot dead in the same way.
The article also describes the Israeli army's pattern of not convicting soldiers for even outrageous killing of obviously harmless civilians.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Aid workers in Gaza were returning from distributing food that had arrived by ship, when three successive Israeli drone attacks hit their three vehicles and killed 7 of them. In response, the humanitarian charities that ran the operation have suspended their activities in Gaza.
Israel said that the attack was done intentionally, and offered the excuse that an armed HAMAS fighter was accompanying them (but not in order to attack anyone). So what? That is no excuse to attack a group of civilians, let alone a group of aid workers!
That statement shows that Israel's policies are such as to systematically lead to attacks on aid workers, and that its "cooperation" with aid deliveries is bogus.
The article reports that that HAMAS fighter had in fact remained at the warehouse and did not accompany the aid workers who were attacked. But that detail does not matter. Even if he had accompanied them, that would not have excused the wrong of attacking an aid convoy. Local temporary truces are normal and important in war, and Israel must respect them when aid agencies make them. It must also generally avoid attacking civilians even though some HAMAS fighters are near them.
The US government response, though critical of Israel, was too weak. We cannot expect the demanded investigation to seek the truth, and Israel could easily draw it out for six months hoping the world will get distracted. Perhaps the US made that response before Israel stated the details in the article.
Unless the facts stated in the article are incorrect, the only remaining question is why commanders concluded it was acceptable to knowingly attack an aid convoy that they had agreed to protect. Such a sensitive policy decision must have come from a high level — from ministers, I expect.
One must speculate that the purpose of this attack was to make the aid operations suspend bringing food to Gaza. A hypothetical sincere investigation might confirm this, but governments are not often that sincere about their motives.
The US should skip the useless "investigation" and tell Israel to change these policies and respect truces for aid deliveries, or it will receive no more arms.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Rabbi Avi Dabush hid his family from HAMAS on Oct 7. Now he campaigns internationally for peace in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to increase taxes on corporations in these several ways.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A 19th century law limits the liability of the shipowner for destroying the bridge in Baltimore. Ship-owning companies have lobbied hard to block revision of that law.
US citizens: call on Congress to make the rich pay the same tax rate for social security as other working Americans.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The history of US use of Juan Hernández, both as president of Honduras and before and after.
Here are the notes I made about the coup against President Zelaya.
Enormous quantities of used clothing are sent to Chile through the port of Iquique. Those not resold get dumped in the Atacama desert, where the synthetics do not degrade. Instead they catch fire and spread pollution.
Boeing-style management, coming soon to an emergency room near you.
Budget cuts for public services (that help non-rich people) not only make life difficult and painful, they teach people to give up hope that voting can make things better.
That is exactly what right-wingers want. The rich people they serve know from experience that voting for plutocratist politicians can make their lives more wealthy.
*Montana supreme court strikes down Republican-passed voting restrictions.*
The Biden administration corrected 7 of the 31 blows that the wrecker, when president, struck against endangered species protection in the US.
US citizens: call on House to pass the RECA bill, which would continue compensating victims of radiation sickness caused by nuclear bomb tests and uranium mining.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge blocked the port of Baltimore. That damages the US economy as a whole.
As the main remaining US newspapers become paywalled (and therefore off limits to me), disinformation "news" sites are springing up which are gratis.
US citizens: call on the Media to make sure voters know the stakes for Social Security.
*Song lyrics getting simpler, more repetitive, angry and self-obsessed*
— in various genres at once.
US intelligence agencies have a continuing tendency to skew their reports to please the president.
This undermines their ability to help the president face reality — whatever the unpleasant aspect may be.
The UK government claims that extracting oil and gas in the UK supports 200,000 jobs. Activists are calling that claim into question.
I would not trust any claims the fossil fuel industry makes about how much it benefits the rest of society. But whether that claim is true or false is a secondary issue.
The principal question in this issue is how many additional deaths it will cause in the coming climate disaster. When the government downplays that question, it is prioritizing the short term over the long term.
Biden has increased prosecution of corporations — it is a good start but he should increase it more.
The decrease in this is part of one of plutocratists' goals: impunity for the plutocrats. Plutocratist Democrats have joined with plutocratist Republicans to achieve it.
*Israel's attempt to destroy UNRWA is part of its starvation strategy in Gaza.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The US cannot assure Britain that that the First Amendment will apply to Julian Assange outside the US, because an old Supreme Court decision says it does not. This probably means that Assange's last appeal will proceed, and go on for a long time during the US election campaign.
The article contends that Biden's interest, as well as justice, argues for dropping the charges against Assange.
The concept of spying means reporting secretly to some entity. Public reporting about state crimes that Americans have a right and a duty to consider in their political activities is not legitimately considered spying.
Palestinians fleeing Gaza cannot apply for asylum in Australia except inside Australia, which means they must first go as visitors, then wait in penury.
This is a consequence of Australia's policy of maximum repression forever against refugees who arrive without authorization.
Pertinent to the US-Mexico dispute about allowing US GMO corn exports into Mexico, a study found high levels of toxic pesticides in genetically modified corn in the US.
Since corn is pollinated by the wind, the modified genes will spread from one field to another. No one in the US, or Mexico if it allows GMOs corn, can be confident of not propagating these genes.
Ten years ago, Twitter filed a lawsuit against massive US government surveillance, It thus gained a reputation for standing for privacy, though the lawsuit was lost at the appeals court level. Ex-Twitter, however, is now owned by Elon Husk, and it has become in general an enemy of privacy as well as other liberal values.
The Texas woman who was convicted of voting while ineligible, which she did unaware that she was ineligible, has been acquitted on appeal.
He was a target of right-wing lawfare.
The Taliban have resumed execution by stoning. Christians and Jews used to practice the same cruelty, but have learned it is wrong.
The US tried for 20 years to support a somewhat liberal government in Afghanistan, but it never won enough support to win. The Taliban' vicious fanaticism recruited fanatics more than the non-fanatical government could recruit supporters. That approach, tempting though it was in principle, did not succeed in Afghanistan. even in 2012.
But that doesn't mean nothing can be done. There must be Afghan women who would willingly die to kill some Taliban. Is there any feasible way to train them and infiltrate them into Afghanistan?
The harm done by CO2 emissions goes beyond climate disaster. The higher level of CO2 in the air leads many plants to grow with smaller amounts of nutrients. That can cause widespread malnutrition.
The article says HarvestPlus's new varieties are not patented. The use of the word "patent" here is a confusion, since plant varieties made by breeding cannot be patented. I think the article is referring to plant variety monopolies, a narrower system that the WTO imposed on most of the world. It is not much like patents, but it does create a private monopoly over selling seeds or plants. It does not last as many years as patents do, but it does make farmers pay "rent" (in economic terms) for what they grow.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a loyal servant of the bullshitter, has demanded information from the US military about African generals that launched coups d'état after receiving US military training.
It is a good question to investigate, but Gaetz may not like the answers. I expect that those generals' training by the US began before Biden was elected and that it has been going on under the last several US presidents, including the bullshitter when he was president.
(satire) *Evan Gershkovich Given Final Warning About Return-To-Office Mandate.*
For those who don't recognize the name, reporter Evan Gershkovich has been a prisoner of Putin for over a year now.
Bolton, formerly an official appointed by the bullshitter, says the latter lacks the brains to be a real dictator, and has no coherent political philosophy to base policies on.
If that is true, that does not imply he is no threat to democracy and freedom. If he is not coherent in his thinking, he will follow advisors, and some of them will propose extremely harmful policies. Some of the sabotage measures he imposed in his first term have not been corrected, including Postmaster DeJoy, repression of unauthorized immigrants, medical disinformation that poisoned public health efforts, tax cuts for the rich, and a coup attempt.
Some of his attacks on the United States may never be undone, such as the defeat of efforts to keep Iran non-nuclear and reconcile the conflict with it, the three right-wing extremists he put on the Supreme Court, the elimination of a constitutional right to abortion and birth control, the pardoning of criminals convicted of helping him try to cheat the United States, and the dropping or surrendering of lawsuits meant to punish big companies for cheating or mistreating the public.
If he had enough brains to do, or let others do, those things, he has enough brains to do tremendous harm if he grabs the presidency again.
Big US companies, now with reduced competition, are pushing inflation up again. As always, plutocratist politicians say this demonstrates a need to impose more hardship on non-rich Americans.
Biden's reinvigoration of antitrust law in the US will hamper schemes to reduce competition even further, but won't eliminate the mergers of the past.
Senator Warren's bill could counteract the high prices that insufficient competition tends to lead to. However, I think my progressive tax proposal for corporations could impel large companies to split themselves up and thus give us back some of the lost competition.
On the container ship that destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge, there were containers with toxic chemicals inside that were destroyed by the collision, and others that may fall off.
Every time a container ship is damaged, there is a risk of poisoning from toxic contents of containers. It seems to me that we should make special containers for such cargoes, and have laws to require their use when the contents call for them.
The same safety containers could prevent train derailments and truck collisions from causing something even worse.
Neoliberalism can be understood as a philosophy designed to justify the domination of society by bullies.
On the sociopathic aspects of humans' love of dogs.
The decision to buy a breed which has lots of health issues may in fact be deliberate. These dogs require care, and this in turn produces feelings of love and satisfaction in their carers. We stunt and cripple them in order to nurse them, in order to feel good about ourselves.
There are many injured human beings that could be being cared for, and not because of any choice of their own.
Extractors of oil and fossil gas are rapidly building new facilities and eliminating any possibility of limiting global heating to 1.5°C.
The Republican opponent of Senator Sherrod Brown is claiming that Colombia was a socialist country in 1971, when he left it. That is not even remotely close to the truth.
A video shows an act of torture in Indonesian-occupied New Guinea, allegedly carried out by Indonesian soldiers.
The Indonesian government said it will try to identify those who did it.
US citizens: call on Biden to end solitary confinement in deportation prisons.
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 reject Republican plans to privatize Medicare.
The Biden administration has set new environmental standards for trucks and buses, to reduce the toxic pollution and greenhouse pollution they emit.
*The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza.* It also ordered HAMAS to free all its hostages.
I wonder what the court can do if one or the other disobeys this order.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Richard Stallman will give a talk, Le basi della libertà nella società digitale, in Reggio Emilia, Italy, on April 7, 2024 at 16:00 at Unimore.
Richard Stallman will give a talk, Software libre and freedom in the digital society, in Bologna, Italy, on April 9, at 15:00 - 17:00 at University of Bologna.
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to uphold the appeals court decision that cities cannot fine, ticket, arrest, or otherwise punish homeless people for sleeping on public property when no shelter is available for them.
US citizens: call on Congress to fund humanitarian aid to Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Australia's government is proposing national travel bans against countries that sometimes refuse to cooperate with deporting their citizens from Australia.
Facebook and Google are accused of censoring information about abortion and birth control while allowing misinformation.
Putin has made sexual violence a policy of occupation in conquered parts of Ukraine. This article offers suggestions for future prosecution of the criminals, and systems to discourage states from doing this.
Chinese students in Britain who criticize the Chinese dictatorship face various sorts of intimidation, and one university has blocked professors from teaching them about the issue.
It would be useful to organize a system to give Chinese students the advice to rent post office boxes, or find non-Chinese people to receive snail mail for them, so they can give their families addresses which are not where they live.
*The UK says it "does not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone" torture, but it shares secret information on individuals with other countries while realizing that they might in response torture them.
*Tories are taking to heart [the wrecker]’s playbook of division and lies.*
Salafi Arabia has turned the UN Commission on Status of Women into a mockery by winning the leadership of that commission.
I can only imagine that it used its financial power to corrupt other governments, but I am amazed that no country opposed its selection.
*Phoenix passes landmark rule requiring heat protection for outdoor workers.* Enforcing these rights for enslaved outdoor workers will be difficult. Typically they are either blocked or intimidated out of communication with state officials. The lack of these protections threatens their lives.
Local climate disasters cause lasting neurological problems -- for children,
and for fetuses
(supposing that they later become persons).
Antiabortion campaigners publish articles with bad science designed
to create an appearance of reasons to restrict abortion medicine.
Then other antiabortion campaigners cite those papers in court cases.
The Tories have hit on a clever method of excluding university
students from voting in the next UK election.
This method is simply to hold the election in October.
The problem follows from the current rules of the electoral system. It
needs fixing by changing the rules.
Part of the cause of the problem is the ID requirement that the Tories
introduced recently.
ID requirements in the US are imposed by right-wing parties for the sake of voter suppression, and the UK is no different.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress and the White House to
affirm immigrants' rights.
US citizens: call on Congress to end the "Citizens" United era and pass
the Freedom to Vote Act and the DISCLOSE Act.
Measurements of pollution in a small German village found that burning
wood doubled the level of some pollution that is dangerous for human
health.
Israel interferes in many ways with delivery of humanitarian aid to
Gaza. There are many ways it could increase the amount that other
countries can deliver.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Democrats who attack inequality do better in elections. The party
should take notice.*
The reason most Democrats in office are plutocratists is, I suspect,
that the plutocrats give them money and AstroTurf campaign support.
The US government UFO craze of the past few years has no meaningful
basis.
US citizens: call on US states not to divert public school funds to
private schools.
Tories, even their leaders, are spreading falsehoods for their campaign
against London's mayor,
in addition to voter suppression, and changing
the voting system too.
President Maduro of Venezuela blocked the main opposition candidate
from signing up to run.
This violates an agreement he made, as well as being obviously unjust.
A container ship hit an important bridge in Baltimore, and the bridge
collapsed.
The bridge was not designed to survive such a collision, as such large
ships did not exist when it was built.
What caused the ship to go off course. and whether that was anyone's
fault, is a side issue. Accidents will happen and mistakes will
happen. We should design systems so that mistakes and accidents won't
turn into disasters. The replacement bridge should be designed so
that ships traveling near or under it cannot possibly damage it no
matter what strange things they may do.
GM's response to being caught massively collecting data on drivers' actions
is to say it will stop providing that data to two particular data brokers.
That minor change is intended to avoid change in GM's fundamentally
unjust basic decision: to track drivers and collect data about them.
It appears that GM did not provide drivers' location data to those
data brokers, but that data is being collected by the network through
which the data are transmitted. I would expect that GM collects GPS
data from the GPS receiver in the car. It should be illegal for a
car's systems to record that data.
*Tech firms poised to mass hire fact-checkers before EU elections.*
Too bad for the US that they won't do this in the US.
When referring to the platform formerly known as Twitter, please don't
use the name that its fascist purchaser wants us to use. I recommend
calling it Ex-Twitter.
* The US abstained in a vote for a resolution that “demands an
immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan”. It also demanded the
release of hostages by Hamas, but did not make the ceasefire
dependent on hostage release,*
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez points out that it is illegal, by US law, to
provide weapons to armies that block US humanitarian assistance.
Israel's army is doing that now.
She calls for cutting off immediately the supply of US weapons to Israel.
I support this.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
San Diego is trying out a software system to recognize "homeless encampments".
They define "encampments" more broadly than you might expect. For
instance, they define "vehicles that people are living in" as
"encampments". While breaking up an encampment in the usual sense of
that word is likely to bring attention from the press, forcing someone
who lives in an RV to move it is not big enough to do that, which
means they could get away with it without even reproach.
San Francisco went to the absurd length of prohibiting parking an RV
in the city. As a result, people who live in houses but own an RV
can't leave the RV nearby in order to prepare for a trip.
China is accused of using cracking to harm Chinese expat dissidents
and various others who interfere with China'
efforts to export
its tyranny.
The US government ought to publish an official list of those targets
who wish to prove they were attacked by China. For political
candidates, this would be an endorsement that few can match.
Show China what you think — Vote for me on November 5!
The crime of coercive control turns out to be hard to prosecute.
This article
describes various difficulties.
The musk-ket lost his lawsuit against an organization that scraped many tweets so as to
measure how Ex-Twitter handled disinformation.
One of the dangers of services' (or dis-services)' requiring a nonfree
client program to access them is that these client programs give them
more power to interfere with scraping. They may go beyond threatening to sue, and make it actually impossible.
Australia has developed a
laser system to destroy drones.
The article says nothing about its effective range, but I think
Ukraine needs this, and fast. So do ships passing through the Bab
al-Mandeb.
Some local governments in the US have passed surtaxes on very expensive
apartments and houses.
We should do this at the state or federal level —
that would be more effective.
San Diego is trying out a software system to
recognize "homeless encampments".
They define "encampments" more broadly than one might expect. For
instance, they define "vehicles that people are living in" as
"encampments". While breaking up an encampment in the usual sense of
that word is likely to bring attention from the press, forcing someone
who lives in an RV to move it is not big enough to do that, which
means they could get away with it without even reproach.
San Francisco went to the absurd length of prohibiting parking an RV
in the city. As a result, people who live in houses but own an RV
can't leave the RV nearby in order to prepare for a trip.
Putin's state boasts about torturing the terrorists that killed
attendees at a music event.
I have no more sympathy for those terrorists than you do,
but we must never tolerate torture, not even torturing terrorists.
Australia plans to order people awaiting deportation to take various steps
to arrange permission for
their own deportation.
Right-wing judges will soon have a chance to allow US private medical
insurance plans to
charge for preventive medicine.
Measles infections are growing rapidly in the US; anti-vaxxer are
putting people in danger,
and not only the
people who heed what they say.
Julian Assange's
ultimate appeal
ruled that (1) the US has to provide
assurances of protecting Assange from certain cruel practices that are
not unusual in the US, and (2) if the US does that, he will get
another appeal in the UK about whether the charges against him were
politically motivated.
This isn't victory but it is a step in that direction.
The other side of children's spending a harmful amount of time
on antisocial media platforms is children's spending little time
playing outdoors — because playing outdoors is
firmly discouraged
by society.
This is related to the hyper cautious attitude promoted by parents' fear.
Starbucks has decided to negotiate with the employees' union.
Russia and China vetoed the US security council resolution on Gaza
complaining that it did hold back from actually ordering a ceasefire.
I agree that this is a shortcoming. Biden is playing the asymptotic
approach again. Russia and China complained about this, validly.
(Quite possibly they were also trying to deny the US any credit.)
Nonetheless, I would have approved it because it is a step forward,
even though not quite as much as to end the asymptotic approach.
Republicans openly demand impunity for official thugs; they demand
prosecutors resign for prosecuting thugs.
If we don't want thugs to maim, kill and imprison with impunity, we must stand firm against it now.
Various companies and even unknown individuals publish mushroom
identification books, or offer online dis-services that purport to
identify them, falsely claiming these are based on "artificial
intelligence".
In fact, they are based on bullshit generators, and taking their
advice can leave you sick or even dead. But people call these
"artificial intelligence", which suggests that the output they generate
is based on knowledge or understanding of the subject matter.
I urge people to criticize writers and companies that stretch the term
"intelligence" to cover the capacity to fabricate plausible-sounding
bullshit.
In the 1970s, Britain had policies that rendered owning houses and
renting them out unprofitable; private landlords sold their rental
houses to cities for use as public housing. Then in the 80s the
Tories specifically set out to promote private landlords again and
to eliminate public housing.
It is clear how the private landlords made rental housing far more
expensive. What I to not see is how this created a scarcity of
housing available for rental. However, the practice of building
mansions which rich people will buy only as investments has certainly
taken much housing space off the rental market.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice
to break
up UnitedHealth's medical treatment almost-monopoly.
Xi thought he could crush the spirit of Hong King and still benefit
from it economically. He crushed its spirit, indeed, and ended up
with a wreck of a once-great city.
The Republican governor of Wyoming vetoed a bill passed by the
Republican-dominated legislature that would have
permitted carrying
concealed guns in public schools in public meetings.
It's good that at least some Republicans are not total extremists.
Food delivery companies can only be profitable if they exploit their
workers by underpaying them.
This is in addition to the ways they exploit restaurants and their customers.
Banks have a clever (but unsupported) theory to claim that their
sneaky extra profits can't be reduced. It asserts that these
extra profits are irresistible, and any laws again one scheme
will lead banks to replace it with another.
The article presents boast theoretical arguments and empirical facts to
reject that theory. What is really happening is that banks are trying
to intimidate the public by saying, "You can't beat us, so give up."
But we can beat any sort of gouging if we elect politicians who really work
for us and really want to beat them.
Political violence comes mainly from right-wing extremists, whipped up
by right-wing extremist leaders. But many falsely blame the left.
Oil-company executives and their loyal servants held a meeting at
which they declared that reducing fossil fuel use was a "fantasy", and
that we should give up on it.
Their statements appear to claim that the task is intrinsically hard,
but in fact the difficulty is created by them. The part they don't
say is that the main obstacle to achieving that goal is all the money
they spend opposing it. They spend it on misleading the public and
they spend it on the support of politicians.
If the public is "unwilling to pay for a world with less carbon
pollution," it is because they don't grasp the scope of the disaster
the current path is leading to, from fires, floods, medical problems
and failures of agriculture. By denying this, the planet roasters
lead the public to suppose that they have a painless option.
*The Dutch airline KLM has misled customers with vague environmental
claims and painted “an overly rosy picture” of its sustainable aviation
fuel, a court has found.*
I saw a partly similar instance of subtle greenwashing recently: an
airline company ad on a wall in Boston asserted that the gas generated
by a collection of trash could power one flight per day. (Presuming,
I suppose, that some planes' engines are converted to operate on
methane.) It might be true -- I can't insist that it is false -- but
it would make hardly any difference to the harm global heating is doing.
*‘Man-made famine’ charge against Israel is backed by mounting body of
evidence.*
A UN court may consider charges.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The Texas law that authorizes the state to arrest and prosecute people
given a mere suspicion that they are unauthorized immigrants has been
blocked by a federal appeals court.
We depend on the Supreme Court to block state laws that tie federal
law in knots, but right-wing judges can't be trusted with that
responsibility.
Biden has announces stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions from
cars and trucks.
The progress has been slowed down in response to planet roasters'
lobbying.
The US now advocates a UN Security Council resolution to call for an
"immediate ceasefire in Gaza" and release by HAMAS of its remaining
hostages.
It was clear that Biden was moving in this direction for several
months with small steps. I am sure he had pressing political reasons
to do it that way. Nevertheless, given the thousands of civilians
being killed, the US had an obligation to reach this point much sooner.
Both of those ought to happen, but suppose HAMAS refuses to release
the remaining hostages -- what then? Israel has an obligation to
protect the civilian population, hostages or no hostages; the
resolution needs to reinforce that obligation too, or it could fail
entirely.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Bats are important parts of ecosystems; some farms are setting up bat houses
so as to get the benefit of their presence.
Several white Mississippi thugs have been convicted of torturing two blacks,
apparently out of sheer hatred and are receiving long prison
sentences. One has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
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 join in disgust for the thugs who committed this crime, the whites
referred to as "white" in that article. But the article does not
suggest reserving that lower-case form for torturers and other violent
bigots. On the contrary, it practices simple race-based bigotry, similar in its root to
the bigotry that underlay the thugs' crime of torture.
I do not make a false equivalence here. Symbolic verbal bigotry is
far less as an evil than physical torture. Torture is correctly
punished as a crime, while verbal bigotry, in itself, is punished only
by our expressions of disapproval. But said verbal bigotry and that
particular act of torture are both instances of bigotry, and bigotry
is always wrong. We should reproach minor symbolic bigotry as well as
extreme violent bigotry.
Normally I will not link to articles that practice this symbolic
bigotry, but I make exceptions for some articles because I consider
them important -- and I label them like this.
A student in an English boarding school describes the persistent
cruelty that crushed the
humanity out of the students.
Students at such schools included elite children, and many became political or business leaders,
and the cruelty they are taught manifested itself in many government policies.
*Labour has become a
hostile
environment for anyone believing in the very policies Starmer relied upon to secure the
leadership.*
The UK government is blatantly disrespecting freedom of speech as it
arrests someone
for singing a song
that calls for eliminating Israel.
I don't agree with the political position of that song, but people have a right to sing it.
DeMentis has obtained
a
law in Florida prohibiting sleeping in parks and on sidewalks. It is part of the
Republican campaign of persecuting the homeless.
Republicans
propose to prohibit states
from subsidizing school lunch.
[ironic truth]
US citizens:
call
on Biden to condition US military aid to Israel on Israel's allowing US humanitarian aid to
reach people in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject the extension of dangerous,
unlawful spying under Section 702.
We may have already won this one, but it is not certain yet.
Signing this is still important.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Biden
to end the gouging of private Medicare Advantage insurance plans.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
*US and Japan push
for ban on nuclear weapons in space with UN security
council resolution.*
An Indian
opposition
party leader has been arrested on corruption charges one month before the election.
I can't say it is impossible that there is a valid reason for charges, but given Modi's general
tendencies. I think this is more likely to be a dirty trick.
Maduro's government in Venezuela has barred an
opposition
leader from running in elections, after she won an election, and now has arrested her
campaign staff, accusing them of bizarre plots, more extreme than what
the wrecker does in the US.
* A searing heatwave that struck west Africa in February was made 4C hotter and 10 times more
likely by human-caused global heating,
a study
has found.*
*Public Citizen […] proposed the idea […] to
prosecute
[fossil fuel] companies
for millions of deaths due to climate crisis.*
*Each year, extreme temperatures take 5 million lives, while
400,000
people die
from climate-related hunger and disease.*
Penury in Britain is spreading among the citizens.
It
is visible in malnutrition, theft of food, and homelessness.
The Tories have been ramping up the poverty, in small steps, for 13 years, but they managed to
disguise it. Now it is visible everywhere and cannot be disguised,
Corbyn would have found ways to so something about poverty — for instance, through
a
customs union with the EU.
A
genetically
modified pig's kidney has been transplanted into a human who suffered from kidney failure.
Robert Reich: Tracing Boeing's frequency of bad manufacturing and maintenance to its use of
top-down management which prioritizes increased
profit over
all other goals.
*UN [high commissioner for human rights] says Israeli restrictions on Gaza food aid may
constitute a war crime,*
because *Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid may amount to "starvation as a method of war."*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Rat fur, arsenic and copper: the dangerous
ingredients lacing US
prison water.*
This joins many other
cruel
and gratuitous forms of punishment,
including solitary confinement which is a form of torture.
Don't pander to China's "panda diplomacy" — China uses these
cute-seeming animals to extract diplomatic
concessions that have
real importance.
I've posted
about this before.
China doesn't give or sell pandas,
it
only lends them for a limited time, and any offspring belong to
China. So China can demand concessions from countries that have
pandas and don't want to relinquish them.
Oddly enough, Taiwan has some pandas which it actually owns.
If Taiwan can produce some baby pandas, it could undermine
China's panda diplomacy.
*Yes, TikTok sucks. But the rules for
tech giants must be better than
"it's only bad if China does it."*
I think countries can indeed be safer by barring antisocial media
platforms that accumulate data for adversary countries.
It is true that this also helps dictatorships block the influence of
anyone from outside the dictator's power. But dictators already do
that, as it suits them, So I don't think this is a valid argument
about what a free country should do.
However, it is equally dangerous for a "domestic" company to collect
lots of personal data about people, with which to manipulate and
control them. And using peer pressure to make almost everyone
"consent" is not an excuse. We need to protect American minors, and
American adults, from Facebook and Ex-Twitter as well as Lies Social,
and to do it in a way that respects freedom of speech.
My proposal is to require recommendation engines to be independent
from platforms, using a standard protocol, so that any user can choose
to send an edited subset of per viewing history on any platform to any
recommendation engine, anonymously. then choose to follow (or not)
some or all of the recommendation.
When the
US supported the coup
against
President Zelaya of Honduras,
the coup-installed government under President Hernández gave coup
investors large parts of the country to rule as fiefs.
The new government has revoked these fiefdoms, and Hernández is
in a US prison convicted of narcotrafficking, but the coup investors
are trying to impose their
long-term power through a secret court
run by the World Bank.
It seems that CAFTA,
a business-supremacy treaty, includes an ISDS clause
which they hope the World Bank will help them enforce.
Honduras has announced it will abrogate its membership in CAFTA and
defy the World Bank. Bravo!
Such treaties often have a clause saying that the special power of
foreign investors will continue for some number of decades even if the
country pulls out of the treaty. Rejecting CAFTA may not be enough to
make the World Bank drop the cases. If not, there will be struggles
around the world to convince other governments to refuse to support
the coup investors.
I can't forecast which side Biden will take, but it is clear that
the wrecker would take the side of the investors if they bribe him enough.
GM cars snoop on their drivers, and GM makes the data available
(through a broker) to
insurance companies.
To make this data available to anyone but the owner or renter of the
car should be a crime. If the car is owned by a rental company, that
company should not have access to it either.
The campaign by poor countries for the World Trade Organization to
temporarily suspend patents on treatments and vaccines for Covid-19
was defeated by governments in the
pockets of Big Pharma.
Patents are the expensive, gruesome way to fund drug research. We
should abolish those patents and fund the research with public money.
In case there is any doubt that the wrecker's talk of a "bloodbath" if
he loses the election was a threat to seize power through violence,
there sure plenty of instances of his making
such threats and inciting
violence.
The wrecker was caught after a speech telling someone he wanted Americans
to show him the sort of deference that
North Koreans show Dictator Kim.
North Koreans have a rational reason to show total obedience to Dictator Kim:
he will have them jailed or killed if they don't.
That is indeed what he wants. He recently called for imprisoning Liz
Cheney for participating in the congressional investigation of the
wrecker's role in the Jan 6
attack on the Capitol.
Americans who don't want to be ruled by a repressive and brutal tyrant
must make sure to defeat the wrecker in the election, and be ready to
defeat his violent supporters afterward.
In advocating peace and an end to the injustice of the occupation of
Palestine, we should welcome support from
Israelis that work for these
goals.
The doctrinaire hostility towards Israel, described in the article,
seems designed to create a mirror image of Netanyahu, and thus make
sure the conflict can never be resolved except by total defeat for
Israel or Palestine.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*It's time to ask
why the US and UK fund Rwanda
while atrocities [it supports] mount up in DRC.*
The western sponsors of Rwanda may be racists and they may enjoy seeing black Africans suffer.
But I am skeptical that they join such a complex and selective scheme involving dividing groups
of blacks against each other. I suspect that money is somehow at the root of that.
California is
considering a bill
that would require companies to test large "artificial intelligence" models for "unsafe"
behavior before "releasing" them, and set up ways to shut them down completely.
The best known large language models do not properly qualify as "intelligence", but I expect
that the bill would define the term with the usual misguided usage. In terms of substance,
that is the right decision: the bill would be useless for its purpose if it did not cover
bullshit generators.
The bill would apply to "released" programs. Bullshit generators are typically not released at
all -- you can't get a copy of GPT4, not even an executable copy. They are made available for
use only as SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute):
I expect that the author intends the law to apply to those systems, and it would be ineffective
if it did not apply to them. That implies that the bill's sponsor, or perhaps the author of
the article, is distorting the word "released" to include unreleased programs.
This will cause further confusion. It is surely possible to write the law to have the intended
meaning without spreading confusions about the meaning of words.
There is a substantive issue, too. Will this law effectively prohibit the real release of free
software to do machine learning? It could do that, depending on the precise wording.
*Climate experts sound
alarm over thriving plant life
at Greenland ice sheet.*
Ride companies Guber and Lyft threaten to leave Minneapolis now
that the city has voted to require them to
pay at least minimum wage.
The officials that voted to require paying drivers decent wage say that those
exploitative
and gouging companies are
welcome to leave. May this start a world-wide movement to end such exploitation of workers.
US citizens:
Support Senator Schumer's rebuke
to Netanyahu, and the pressure on Israel to stop the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Everyone:
call on Canada
to power ships with renewable energy, not fracked methane.
US citizens:
Tell ExxonMobile:
you caused the climate crisis — not us.
When a few powerful entities — such as, major oil companies — reshape the system
that most people live in so that only by making difficult efforts can they avoid putting the
world in grave danger, those entities become responsible for the harm they have led and
pressured people to do.
Kidnapping of children is so rare in the US that parents who worry
about it are giving
themselves pointless grief.
The article compares that risk with other risks children face.
A court in Peru decided that the River Marañón has
"intrinsic rights".
In philosophical terms, that is absurd, because exercising rights
requires volition, and the river is not capable of that.
The practical content of the decision is good. To preserve the
river's existence, ensure it continues to flow, restore damage, reduce
pollution in it, and protect it's ecosystems are legitimate and
important responsibilities — of humans, including the state.
However, to call those goals "rights" of the river itself is absurd,
because the river cannot think, want, or decide anything. It is not
in fact capable of exercising rights.
There is no need to base policies to protect nature on an incoherent
philosophical foundation. We can establish a responsibility to
protect rivers without asserting that they have rights.
Biden negotiated changes in NAFTA, weakening business power in the area of
international
digital business.
Canada will halt arms sales to Israel, based on reproach in the
legislature for Israel's disregard for the likes of
Palestinian
civilians in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Some districts in the UK are experimenting with an unofficial primary election
which helps the voters figure out which opposition party they support has the
best chance of
defeating the incumbent party.
This is not part of the official electoral system, but helps voters
determine how to vote tactically in the official election.
How Putin is returning Russian spying and murder operations in foreign countries
to resemble the
Soviet Union's activities
in the 70s and 80s.
He seems to expect that
the corrupter will convince US Republicans
to root for the Russian side instead of the American side, so the more outrageously he attacks
the US, the more support he will win.
*Putin bromance has US intelligence officials
fearing second Trump term.*
*Rule of law declining across EU*, due to the
influence
of far-right parties which
don't believe in respecting legal rights.
Alongside general antimuslimism, the US now has
bigotry against Palestinians.
Toxic chemicals buried next to defunct factories can make people in
the neighborhood sick. They can spread into the grounds of
neighboring homes. New construction on
the
same ground can mobilize them to spread more.
For-profit bail bonds companies are trying to prohibit the operation
of charities that
provide bail for non-rich people.
ALEC, the perverse organization that pushes any sort of right-wing law
at the state level, is supporting the campaign.
*Wealth of US Billionaires Hits $5.5
Trillion—Up 88% Since
Pandemic Hit.*
* Bernie Sanders Says US Must 'Fundamentally
Rethink' Its Foreign
Policy.*
It must stop launching coups to put right-wing plutocratist governments
in power.
*The man who married a hologram in Japan can no longer communicate
with his virtual wife.
The software that allowed the interaction is
no longer supported…*
If a computational activity is truly important to you, never depend
on being able to continue it by means of nonfree software controlled
by someone else! That is asking to lose.
France is passing a special sales tax on "fast fashion" to reduce
the
environmental harm that it does.
The UK economy and low-wage workers are
suffering from the high interest rates.
The ostensible reason for high rates — to control inflation — was
foolish because the cause of inflation was
the greed of the rich.
The increased rates enabled companies to gouge and be even more greedy.
*Financiers providing billion-dollar support for
industrial livestock
companies
to expand leading to unsustainable rise in production [of meat and dairy].*
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has
a plan to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions
but it does not include eating less meat.
Social Security
has a long-term fiscal shortfall because its last
reform, in the 1980s, did not reckon with the increased inequality
of incomes in the US since then.
The simple fix is to make rich people pay the same share of their
high business income that the rest of us pay out of our smaller incomes.
US citizens: call on
state
governments to stop funding
phony abortion services ("crisis pregnancy centers").
If you take any advice from a "crisis pregnancy centers", you're
likely to find yourself having a cry, sis ;-{.
In the US, or wherever these stores operate:
call on Walmart and
Target
to stop pretending that shoplifting is mainly in neighborhoods
where blacks live, and stop pushing cruel "tough on crime" policies.
*Medical studies find
no
trace of physical harm
in Havana syndrome patients.*
This gives support to the theory that the problem is psychosomatic.
Areas of Gaza where Israel believed it had defeated HAMAS and kicked it out
have seen
HAMAS fighters reappear.
It looks like truly defeating HAMAS
is
not possible
— they would have to continue the war indefinitely.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
A right-wing Australian political leader is attacking renewable energy
by making
false
criticisms of a study of electricity options publicized by CSIRO. This time, CSIRO is
rebuking the false criticism, which is likely to be motivated somehow by money from
the planet roasters.
*Australia reinstates funding to UNRWA to
provide aid in Gaza.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Brazil is deploying bacteria-infected mosquitoes to block
the spread of
dengue fever.
People in Maui are organizing to help the survivors of the Lahaina fire
to avoid desperately selling their burned houses to people who aim
to
profit by reselling to rich people.
Bernie Sanders has proposed a
law to require a 32-hour work week.
This might be an improvement in businesses in which working is "just a
job". I think it would be a big problem for idealistic nonprofit
organizations such as the FSF. The staff are already as productive as
one could reasonably wish for; they couldn't become more productive
just because of a cut in hours.
China falls prey to lunatic nationalism which resembles in spirit the
QAnonsense disinformation in the US.
* Bolsonaro presented top military
officials with a plan to carry out a coup d’état after his defeat
in the October 2022 election, two
former commanders have told the
police.*
I hope this sends Bolsonaro to prison for the rest of his life.
Some writers are boycotting PEN America events because
it
has refused to take a stand about
the war in Gaza. In one case they demanded that PEN America uninvite another writer for per
stand about the war in Gaza. (They too had been invited to the same event.)
PEN is right to refuse to take a side on that conflict, and all other conflicts, so it can
influence all sides to respect the safety of writers and their freedom to write and publish.
PEN has acted similarly in regard to Putin's invasion of Ukraine: reproaching the Putin forces
for their bombardment of Ukrainian museums and cultural institutions, but not calling for war
to defeat Putin's aggression and repression.
I don't have a principle of political neutrality in my personal life — do not hesitate to
say that Putin is the enemy of freedom and call for defeating his aggression — but I
appreciate PEN's reasons to have such a principle, and I respect it for sticking to that.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Florida Republicans passed a bill to imprison people for conviction of
driving
without a driver's license.
Since unauthorized immigrants can't get a license, they tend to do this. So they are the ones
who will mainly be imprisoned -- and, perhaps, deported very soon.
Massachusetts made arrangements so that anyone who resides in the state and is capable of
driving can get an official driver's license, valid for driving.
Three US states forbid divorce for anyone who is pregnant.
That can be used by the other spouse for coercion.
I wonder whether it is feasible to get around this problem by going to
another state — Nevada.
Almost
7% of Americans
(around 18 million) currently have symptoms of long Covid. Around 4 million have it to a
debilitating degree.
This is a national catastrophe. Governments should take more measures to reduce the spread of
Covid-19; we know that won't eliminate it, but reducing the number of people who get sick will
also reduce the number that get long Covid and become incapacitated.
*Biden says Schumer made "good speech"
in breaking with Benjamin Netanyahu.*
Schumer called Netanyahu an obstacle to peace. Amen. He also called for the US to pressure
Israel into changing its deadly approach to Gaza. Amen.
Biden's expression of support suggests he is telling Netanyahu that he's approaching the point
of real pressure on Israel. I just hope Biden's approach is not going to asymptotically slow.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Hamas says that Israeli soldiers fired directly at a crowd of
Palestinians waiting for some aid to arrive. They killed 20 and
wounded more than 150.
Israel said that this did not happen. We don't know for certain what actually happened.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
British physicians are threatened with
loss
of their license to practice medicine as further punishment for being convicted of climate
defense protests.
You can see this as further damage to non-rich Britons by Tories, who don't care about the
non-rich, or as further repression intended to keep the drilling for oil and gas going.
Humanity
is closing in on the last few areas where wild polio may still survive.
*Climate activists across Europe
block access
to North Sea oil infrastructure.*
Governments that refuse to recognize that drilling for oil and methane
is deadly are showing contempt for the lives of their young citizens.
Increased plutocracy is increasing the income disparity between countries
along with income disparity within most
countries.
Bullshit generators such as ChatGPT increasingly show racial stereotypes
in
judging people's employ-ability.
They don't actually understand anything, including the concept of
"employ-ability" or "bigotry", so employers should not use them for
that purpose.
Singer Olivia Rodrigo became a champion of freedom by distributing
condoms and emergency contraception pills at her concerts. But now
she has ceased that practice, citing a
vague concern about "children"
that attend.
I can't tell whether "children" in her statement refers to the people
we normally call "children" — pre-teens — or to everyone under 18.
But either way, I can't see even a lick of sense in that decision to
stop. Whatever a person's age, if person is going to be sexually
penetrated, it is good for that person to have a condom available. Whatever a
female's age, if she may get pregnant, it is useful for her to have
emergency contraception available.
Unless she presents clearly some other reason, I have to think that
she has yielded to an incoherent right-wing moral panic.
Advances in brain-machine
interfaces are dangerous.
Musk has spoken in favor of fascism more than once. He could make
Neuralink implants trigger pleasure in the brain whenever the patient
hears words that endorse fascism. If the Neuralink itself is not
capable of relaying the sound that the patient is hearing, the
apparatus to run it could simply have an internet-connected
microphone.
The only way to make them safe is if users have full control
over the software that operates them and talks directly with them.
They also need to be able to study the circuit diagram and verify
that the device was built honestly.
Unofficial groups of Republicans are trying to rig elections by
pressuring local election officials in some states to
remove voters
from he voting lists.
In Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia they have had successes.
George Monbiot: *It's as if Keir Starmer is seeking out all the
positive reasons to vote
Labour — and deleting them.*
Modi made a campaign promise to Indian farmers, then broke it.
When they protested this,
they met with repression
of the sort that
he had previously reserved for Muslims.
In Rapperswil, Switzerland, Richard Stallman will give a talk.
The title of the talk will be Free Software and Your Freedom.
US citizens:
call
on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth
ahead of the G20 summit.
Congress is considering a bill to
demand
TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese owner, in order to keep operating in the US. Yet
articles continue to talk about this as a plan to ban TikTok, rather than a plan to disconnect
it from China. Why misrepresent this point?
Its intense collection of personal data clearly has the power to increase the harm it does,
compared with Facebook. What that suggests is a law to prohibit any company from collecting
data in this way. Ideally it would also limit the data Facebook can collect about its useds
— that would increase the benefit of the law.
In Geneva, Switzerland, Richard Stallman will give a talk.
The title of the talk will be Free Software and Freedom in Computing.
Scotland plans to require owners of large tracts of land to
divide
their lands among multiple owners.
It is generally a good thing to split up big properties of any kind.
* Location, extent and strength of recent freshwater [melt] events [in
Greenland] suggests an
unusually warm and dry summer
over southern Europe this year.*
*The cries from Britain's struggling CEOs are growing louder —
can
they survive on a mere £4.4m a year?*
That amount is clearly an average value. To assign that amount to each and every CEO is an
oversimplification, and incorrect. Probably some of those CEOs receive a mere £2m per year.
We could feel sorry for them, if we forget about how low-wage workers are suffering in Britain today.
*UK scheme to spur
take-up
of heat pumps delayed after gas lobby pressure.*
Over and over, the UK government has dropped or slowed its efforts to curb global heating,
putting the priority on planet roaster profits.
Phoenix had over 600
excess deaths last summer.
At present levels of heating, many of these deaths can be prevented, but that depends on
willingness to spend money to protect the health of poor people — often homeless people.
Plutocrats consider that a waste of money that could instead be increasing their investments.
It may also depend on whether workplaces are willing to permit precautions to be taken. The
Republicans that control
Florida
oppose that.
*Automakers Spend Millions to [weaken]
EPA's
Proposed [limitations on pollution that damages human health].*
* Impact on ecosystems [of geoengineering] must be predicted
before
technology is used,
US atmospheric science agency chief says.*
So far, human geoengineering has been done unthinkingly, as a side effect of actions carried
out for other purposes. Some of these side effects are extremely dangerous. Sometimes humans
were ignorant of the eventual consequences; in other cases, they
corruptly buried the
knowledge.
Some of them continue the
disinformation today.
I see no reason to object in principle
to intentional geoengineering. With the knowledge we
have learned, and some planning, we could make it less dangerous than unintentional
geoengineering has been.
But that should not be an excuse to let the disinformationists win. Reducing the causes of our
harmful geoengineering has to be safer than trying to counter one geoengineering with another.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the Public Banking Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*US energy industry [methane] leaks are
triple
the official figures, study finds.*
The leaks can be fixed, but we can expect those planet roaster companies to lobby against any
effort to compel them to fix the leaks.
Columbia University
suspended the school chapters
of Students for
Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which joined many
other groups in
a
peaceful protest against Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza. Now the ACLU is suing,
accusing the university of acting illegally and in a discriminatory manner.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The FBI warns that the killing of 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza is likely
to radicalize many American Muslims and cause a big increase in the
threat of
terrorism in the US.
This is a reason why it would be to America's advantage to make Israel stop its atrocities in
Gaza. But I think the moral reason, that we all have a duty to prevent atrocities, is the most
important reason.
I call into question the validity of classifying "homegrown violent extremists" as a "foreign"
terrorist threat. It seems to me that nothing can be both "homegrown" and "foreign" at once.
But that is a minor detail, not part of the substance of the matter.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The US continues supplying jet fuel to Israel; both countries are
defying the interim ruling
of the International Court of Justice.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Several Palestinian refugees report that Australia
gave them visas and
then canceled
the visas at the last minute.
A minister tasked with investigating accusations that British special forces committed
many murders
in Afghanistan came to the conclusion he was facing a cover up.
The article explains how they enjoy impunity, not only informally, but built into the formal
structure of command.
The fascist’s second White House chief of staff, John Kelly, tried to convince him to
praise Mussolini rather than Hitler,
because Mussolini was less evil.
Kelly said that the fascist loves dictators because he was dissatisfied
with the comparatively limited power of the President of the United States.
One correction to the article: The figure of 400,000 American military killed is actually the
global total for World War II, not the number killed in Europe alone.
*UK, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and Denmark have failed to align
oil
and gas [extraction] policies
with Paris pledges, say campaigners.*
*The Conservative Political Action Conference has turned itself into a center of the
global
anti-democracy movement and anointed Trump its head. [The Wrecker] surrogate Jack Posobiec
kicked off the conference by saying, "Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow
it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of
it and replace it with this, right here." The crowd went wild.*
They brought tyrants from various other countries to show their alliance
with the American movement for tyranny.
This has gone well beyond expression of views; it is a stated intention to convert the US
government into a repressive tyranny, using violence when convenient.
There is no obligation to delay further before arresting them for this.
Record
rains have cut travel and shipping between Australia's east and its west. It will take
time to repair the damage.
*Radioactive waste, baby bottles and Spam:
the deep ocean
has become a dumping ground.*
I wonder what density these contaminants amount to, given the size of the ocean.
A clear explanation of how Starmer Labour has fenced itself into a
right-wing position that will
serve the rich and not the rest.
A court settlement has greatly narrowed the scope of the Florida law that prohibits teaching about
sexual orientation and gender identity.
This settlement eliminates much FUD that the law inspired in the teachers restricted by it.
The narrowed interpretation of the law remains a change for the worse, but it's a smaller change.
*Palestinian citizen of Israel granted UK asylum in case said to be
unprecedented. "Hasan", 24, argued he would face persecution in
Israel on grounds of his race, faith and
its "apartheid regime".*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Exposure to new technologies including
trackers,
robots and AI-based software at work is bad for people’s quality of life, according to a
groundbreaking study from the Institute for the Future of Work.*
*Pharma's Dems are doing
[the wrecker]'s dirty
work on drug prices.*
*[UK] ministers and
officials
to be banned from contact with groups labeled extremist.*
Aside from the general point that this would undermine democracy, there is the question of who
to label as "extremist". What about the big Tory donor who recently said that
MP
Diane Abbot should be shot? I don't think you can get more extremist than that.
How about prohibiting ministers and officials from meeting with business lobbyists? Those are
the most dangerous people for ministers to meet with.
The UN has rebuked Israel for attacking journalists that were carrying
clearly visible identification as journalists.
The governor of Massachusetts said she will pardon everyone convicted
of simple
possession
of marijuana.
This is a very good thing, but the pardons should cover people convicted of other
marijuana-related crimes, as long as they don't involve violence or fraud.
*Republican Pac released 100 testimonials of former Trump voters
explaining while they will
never
again vote for [the cheater].*
*Analysis finds 58 people have died due to cold homes every winter day
in the UK since 2013 Tory pledge to
"cut
the green crap."* That amounts to thousands of deaths every year. I am sure it causes a
far larger number of nonfatal illnesses also.
Several years ago, India passed a couple of laws that add up to an excuse
to
strip
Muslims of Indian citizenship if they can't prove their ancestors have been in India for a
long time. Protests convinced the government to delay putting the law into effect, but
it is about to do so now.
The result will be to exile millions of Muslim Indians to Bangladesh
or Pakistan, where they are not likely to survive very long.
US citizens:
call on state legislatures
to reject and rescind any calls
for an Article V convention.
US citizens: call on the US to
end weapons exports to Israel.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the national abortion ban that most Republicans are pushing for.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main
Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call
on Congress to end government shutdowns (and the threat of them) once and for all.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Almost any set of political views can generate a violent extremist
fringe. To protect democracy from those extremist fringes cannot be
done by persecuting
specific non-extremist starting points.
Robert Reich describes his "nauseated optimism" that Americans'
long-term turn toward progressive values will defeat
the increasingly
twisted Republican Party.
The key witness in the trial of Jimmy Lai, in Hong Kong, had been
tortured into
condemning Lai.
That testimony proves no more about Jimmy Lai than the testimony
of a prisoner in Guantanamo that had been tortured would prove about
anyone.
However, there is a crucial difference between China and the US on
this point: US courts recognize this point and won't accept testimony
that was extracted by torture. Chinese courts don't care. China
deals with such blow back by treating those who criticize the phony
trials of political prisoners into the next batch of political
prisoners, in line for phony trials of their own.
The worst evil of the charges against Jimmy Lai is not the dishonesty
of the trial itself, it is the basic decision: to treat raising funds
to call for democracy as a crime.
Commercial nuclear power propaganda is hiring politicians
again in Australia.
As usual, it functions by being absurdly optimistic, underestimating
the time and money required to bring new technology to the point of
wide commercial use, drawing attention away from the future harm
nuclear waste can do over
a long period of time,
and misrepresenting the facts about the renewable
alternatives,
The companies (and politicians) involved will use the
fallacious "sunk
costs" argument
to demand subsidies rather than cancellation. (Why
not try — it succeeded in
Britain in the past decade.)
Thus they hope to profit handsomely
even if the project doesn't see widespread adoption.
Part of the EU funds given to Tunisia for a deal to impede migration
went
straight to the dictator's pocket.
(satire) *White Castle Announces Its Sliders A
Result Of Inbreeding.*
*Prosecutors Buried Evidence and Misled the Court. Ten Years Later,
They Got a
Slap on the Wrist.*
It seems Putin has corrupted the Russian Red Cross to betray one of the Red
Cross principles: neutrality in war.
"Pharmacy benefit managers", companies that act as middlemen in
insurance payments for medicines in the US, by making
demands that
harm patients.
The biggest spend tens of millions of dollars stopping Congress from
fixing the problem.
The three biggest of them are owned by giant companies that they have
to work with — one is owned by a pharmacy chain, and two by insurance
companies. This creates a conflict of interest. In addition to the reforms
proposed, such connections should be specifically prohibited.
Thailand's government is moving to abolish the party that got the most
votes in the 2023 election — for simply
proposing to reduce censorship.
*Minister consulted BP over ‘right incentives to maximize’ oil production,
FoI
reveals.*
RSF: *Foreign correspondents increasingly refused permits,
visas,
access in India.*
This is part of the slow but steady move to eliminate democracy and
human rights, which can be seen across the board in Modi's rule.
Australia has privatized its deportation prisons — always asking for
injustice. The company uses a secret algorithm to compute how to
treat each prisoner, based on secret data that
prisoners cannot challenge.
(satire) *God Unveils Plans To Bulldoze
Heaven For Luxury Condos.*
Funny parody commercials tell the straight
truth about global heating.
Please don't watch them from YouTube itself.
For instance, here's the URL for the
parody Chevron commercial.
And here's the one where a climate scientist explains the issue
to a
right-wing know-nothing.
A large protest in London condemned the bombardment and siege of Gaza
and demanded
imposition of a cease fire.
The speakers rebuked the Tories who had baselessly and arbitrarily
claimed that protesters were "extremists", seeking to justify repression of
these protests.
Several organizations of Jews who criticize Israel's occupation of
Palestine protested an event in New Jersey to
sell luxury apartments
in Israel and occupied Palestine.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
New York Governor Hochul gets funds from big investors in Manhattan
real estate, and
modified a public records law
to let them continue to conceal their identities from the public.
Concern that some
factions in Iran
want nuclear weapons.
But there is nothing we can do to discourage that, not any more.
The wrecker's aggression
destroyed the non-nuclear deal and made it impossible to restart.
Now that some US states are using, or may use, nitrogen gas for
executions, there is a campaign to block that method by restricting
what the
buyers of medical nitrogen
can use it for.
As one who opposes the death penalty
on principle,
regardless of the method used, I am always puzzled by the fuss that people make about those
details. I'm especially puzzled by the question of whether the person being executed feels
pain during the process. Does it presume that temporary pain is worse than death?
Imagine that you are in Gaza and you are wounded. You may be lucky enough to find a surgeon
but there will be no anesthetic available. Would you say, "Please don't operate, just kill
me"? You might, I might — but if you have the fortitude to handle days of pain after surgery,
you'd say, "Operate! I will suffer so I can live."
So I don't see how a painless method of execution can make execution legitimate.
Meanwhile, it is dangerous and unjust to allow the sellers of products
any
say
in how purchasers use them. That power is very broad and lends itself to injustice.
Few of the purchasers of any product want to use it for executions. What if you buy something
so as to use it for something innocent, such as copying DVDs or Blu-ray disks? Should the
seller be allowed to forbid you to use it that way? We must not allow companies to have such
power over their customers! We must defeat any law that would give a company that kind of
power.
What, then, about using nitrogen for execution? If we are opposed to the death penalty, and we
have the political support to put a stop to it, we should refuse to get distracted by the side
issue of giving producers of nitrogen the power to control what purchasers will do with it,
refuse to get distracted from this by the idea of blocking some
methods of execution (but not all) in this way.
Instead we should use that political support to prohibit the death
penalty. We could insist that purchasers of nitrogen be free to
use it for any lawful activity, which would no longer include executions.
US citizens:
call on the CEOs
of BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
*[The blackwhiter]
flip flops on TikTok.*
Whatever Biden is for, the blackwhiter opposes.
*New Report from the Institute for Policy Studies Reveals the
True Cost of Billionaire Philanthropy: the ultra-wealthy use
[tax-exempt] giving to avoid taxes and exert influence, while ordinary
taxpayers foot the bill.*
Momentum, the left-wing camp of Labour, is considering ending its
formal affiliation with the Labour Party, and allowing people to join
it who are not
members of Labour.
This change is absolutely essential if Momentum is to have real
influence (on Labour, or on anyone). As long as the people in charge
of Labour are "we don't dare fix much of what the Tories have broken"
plutocratists like Starmer, they are only using Momentum and it cannot
influence them.
The head of a UK government investigation into the career of a
government spy inside the IRA accused
military intelligence of
blocking the progress of the investigation.
*The Luddite's Guide to
Defending Cash (Part 1).*
This is great advice for a way to convince people that cash is a good
system and we should not let it be taken away. It provides several
good arguments.
Missing from the article is awareness of the injustice of nonfree software.
The existing systems for digital payment on the internet typically require
users to run nonfree software, and that alone is a reason to refuse.
In my view, tracking all purchases is such a grave injustice
that non-cash payments for everyday life are actively dangerous.
The article views that as a trade-off between privacy and convenience.
I think that view is foolish.
But these disagreements don't invalidate the article and its suggestions
may be very useful. I am eager to see part 2.
Ukrainian civic officials in regions conquered by the Putin forces
were imprisoned under very bad conditions to pressure
them to agree to
work for the Putin forces.
Ukrainians in those regions who decline to vote in Putin's "democratic"
re-election ceremony are beaten up and given another opportunity to
vote for him.
The Putin forces
(I suggest not calling them "Russian")
have disappeared thousands of Ukrainians in the occupied territories
for showing in any way continuing to support Ukraine.
Suggestion to civilians who flee clandestinely: render your house
uninhabitable before you go. Why provide quarters to Putin forces
soldiers?
*Europe is not prepared for the rapidly growing climate risks it faces, the
European
Environment Agency (EEA) has said.*
What various leading bullshit generators say about how and where to
vote in
US elections is full of errors.
If your voting info comes from a bullshit generator, you could
easily miss your opportunity to vote.
I expect they are equally lousy when it comes to facts that would
influence who you would vote for.
*"Socialism", "anti-fascism" and "anti-abortion" on [a UK]
list of terrorism
warning signs.*
Well, perhaps that is partly valid for anti-abortion-ism. Many of its
supporters in the US are indeed extremists who sometimes use violent
tactics, and threaten our democracy.
But anti-fascists and socialists are not dangerous. It is their enemies, the fascists and plutocratists, that are dangerous to society.
In any case, the UK's "prevent" program's methods are on the edge of
repression and sometimes drift fully into it.
(satire) *Archaeologists Uncover First
Caves Gentrified By Homo Sapiens.*
*US not hiding aliens or UFO technology from the
public, Pentagon says.*
I believe it. If anyone had been reverse-engineering alien technology
for decades, there would be some successes by now, and we would be
inquiring about how anyone thought of them.
The government of Haiti has been brushed aside by gangs, which are now
fighting to take over
the most important central resources.
The government of Haiti became so weak because the US
imposed
presidents
through
coups and rigged elections.
No one thought of them except as viceroys.
Haiti has not had a legitimate president since a coup orchestrated by the US
forced Aristide out in 2004.
A prisoner in Panama, in a prison that was full of refuse, started a
program for prisoners to work on cleaning it up. The result
was to involve hundreds of prisoners in
doing skilled work that is legitimate
and constructive.
Programs for prisoners to learn, and work in useful ways, and be
rewarded, were known in the past as "rehabilitation". They were
widespread in the US, but a right-wing "tough on crime" wave
eliminated them, equating enlightenment with softness.
The US intervention in Somalia has continued for more than 20 years,
without ever making a coherent plan for
what it was trying to do.
The Pentagon investigated what went wrong there and discovered
this basic problem.
Somalia had almost become stable under a government that had the bad
quality of being Islamist. So it got Ethiopia to intervene and get
rid of it, leaving al Shabaab in guerrilla war against a government
that the US supports. It seem to me that
that intervention made
things worse.
(satire) *Marianne Williamson Successfully Primaries
Biden In All 63
Counties Of Astral Plane.*
The New York City subways' crime rate is very low, but Governor Hochul
was sent soldiers to patrol entrance gates and demand to search
passenger's bags just to make
them feel comfortable.
I don't think the ones who are racially profiled and searched
repeatedly will feel comforted.
Oil companies began lobbying against
renewable power in the 1960s.
*Sweden and Canada will resume aid to
UN agency for Palestinians.*
*To unblock the aid, UNRWA had agreed to "allow controls,
independent audits, to strengthen internal supervision and extra
controls of personnel".* This is to ensure that they don't work
for HAMAS.
Israel has not provided proof of its accusations that some UNRWA
employees work for HAMAS.
But it would not surprise me if that were true, since it is hard
to hire a lot of people in Gaza without including some HAMAS
members.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
(satire) *Blood-Covered Mark Zuckerberg Informed That Murder He Just
Committed
Was Not In Metaverse.*
A low-traffic neighborhood in the UK has a one-time cost of 100 UKP
per person (or less) to build, and save 200 UKP per person per year
by benefits to health.
I think those benefits come from (1) more exercise and (2) less
pollution.
*AI [they seem to mean the large language models, rather than real
domain-specific intelligence] will likely increase
energy use and
accelerate climate misinformation.*
In the 1980s, the Tories used the government's intelligence agency to
attack the striking miners' union,
which they sought to destroy.
SCROTUS has put a budget resolution on the table, to be voted on,
which would set up a secret
committee to impose cuts
in
Social Security and Medicare.
That will serve their declared goals of less for the non-rich and more
for the rich, which I refer to as dooH niboR.
US citizens: phone your representative in Congress and say to
preserve funding for the IRS. Thanks to Biden it uses that
money to investigate rich tax cheaters.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Tory budget cuts have forced several
British local governments into
bankruptcy;
now they are using that as an excuse to inflict cuts on
local programs that the non-rich depend on.
The US did the same thing
to Puerto Rico some years ago, with a financial "bailout" that turned the island's elected
legislature into repo men for creditors.
Starmer-Labour supported the Tory imposition by threatening to expel
members of the council if they did not rubber-stamp the cuts. This
confirms once again that Starmer-Labour is actually Tory Lite. They
should have quit the Labour Party right then and there.
They could start the Robin Hood Party.
Modi is campaigning for votes from the
Hindu minority in Kashmir
after gerrymandering that state.
This follows
a total state of repression.
India ought to let Kashmir have the referendum about whether to be part
of India
that it promised Kashmir in the 1940s.
*Greenpeace accuses Russia of ‘unprecedented escalation’
if it restarts
Zaporizhzhia reactors.*
Without a secure source of power to prevent a meltdown if the reactors
were to shut down, restarting them would be very dangerous.
Putin has
a pattern
of making
wild nuclear threats.
Maybe this is another of them.
Female genital mutilation
is increasing in total.
In some regions it has gone underground to avoid censure
from the general public in those regions
Following current trends, the
human population would start to decrease
in the 2080s. With all the real problems that could cause human extinction, the lack of
interest in procreation is hardly worth mentioning.
Current trends cannot continue until the 2080s. If we don't curb
global heating soon, and various problems of pollution, the population
by then will be much smaller than now.
We can't maintain the current population and give a good standard of
living to everyone, barring a spectrum of miraculous scientific advances
which one cannot count on. We need it to decrease, and it will.
There are three ways for the human population to decrease: the humane
way (birth control and abortion), the depression-filled way (mass
celibacy), and the gruesome way. We are heading for the gruesome way.
*We
all are
the living manifestation of 13.7bn years of flukes.*
Governor DeMentis has plunged Florida into disease threat by putting
an antivax
fanatic in charge of public health.
Said lunatic was judged guilty of scientific fraud
for fabricating evidence to discredit Covid-19 vaccines.
When these anti-health measures produce chaos,
Trump-pets call that success; their campaign to put their strongman in power is
based on chaos.
Reviewing the current state
of mifepristone access in the US.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the Social Security Expansion Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on the Senate
to issue subpoenas for Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow
to investigate their corrupting of Supreme Court justices.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A UN investigation *concludes regime murdered, imprisoned, tortured and raped
those who protested
the death of Mahsa Amini.*
Biden proposed in
the State of the Union address
to transfer lots
of money from rich people and corporations to non-rich people.
If Americans want this, they will need to reelect Biden and also boot
out many plutocratists from Congress. May it happen thus!
Biden also warned that US democracy is threatened, which it is, and called for
legalizing abortion.
Biden did not highlight protecting the climate, but I forgive that because he tried hard to go
further. He was blocked by Republicans in Congress. For the US to do more,
it is SCROTUS we must replace, not Biden.
*Panama orders
MSF to stop treating people
who crossed Darién Gap.* That will mean much less resources available there to treat them. In
effect, Panama is deciding to let them die if they get sick or injured.
The article does not state what motive Panama has given for this.
The
EU will shortly deliver
aid to Gaza by sea.
Biden has announced a US plan to do something similar,
but it will require weeks of preparation before it can start.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Florida Republicans rushed to
stop one county
from setting requirements for companies to take steps to protect their workers from getting
sick from excessive heat. Even requirements to post advice on how to cope with dangerous heat
will soon be prohibited by the Florida Republican work-them-to-death party.
Describing the starvation that
Israel is imposing on Gaza.
*I asked a close colleague in the US who works in this area what would be the most comparable
war situation. "Rwanda?" I asked. He responded that there was no previous conflict "that used
bombing, snipers, starvation all at once with such intensity."*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Here are reasons to reject FLIXbus, as well as its subsidiary,
Greyhound.
(Satire) People say that the company's name is actually FUXbus, but it took to
writing the U strangely.
Many Palestinian men imprisoned temporarily by Israel
reported being
tortured.
American soldiers did this to Arab (and other Muslim) prisoners,
especially when suspected of
some
connection with terrorism. I would expect Israelis to do it too. Some of the victims were
real terrorists, but most were suspected erroneously based on vaguely suggestive evidence.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
HAMAS is once again (or is it still?) in
control of parts of
northern Gaza.
To wipe it out seems indeed to be impossible.
*[At] What Age Would You Let Your [10 year old] Child Go to a
Different
Aisle at the Store?*
Florida's Republican-dominated legislature is considering a law to
require all insurance companies to cover so-called "conversion
therapy" to convince trans-people to adopt the gender that goes
with
their biological sex.
Norway now judges approval of undersea oil wells counting the carbon
emissions from burning the fossil
fuels extracted from the well.
This is a necessary part of any regulatory system intended to curb
global heating from fossil fuels. The fossil fuel companies fight
against this, not only in law but in people's minds. They emit
publicity about their efforts to reduce the (fairly small) emissions
from their own activities, distracting people from the
emissions from
burning the fuel they sell
Global heating is going so fast that Arctic summers
may be iceless by 2035.
Prisons can be deadly in the summer
because of hazardous heat.
In the US, prisons in Florida and Texas are the hottest, and those
states have governments that think it is fine if the heat kills prisoners.
A study found that when companies required employees to work from the
office again, this provided no benefit for the company's work, but
did
make employees dissatisfied.
*The data [are] consistent with bosses using RTO to reassert control
and scapegoat workers.*
UK thugs arrested some Northern Ireland journalists after collecting
evidence with secret surveillance. The journalist, once freed,
demanded an investigation of that surveillance. The investigation is
occurring,
but it is being kept secret.
Tories are considering a proposal to forbid MPs from talking with
members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. That would be an offense
against democracy in the UK.
The people who join the PSC's protests are representing their own
political views as individuals, as they have a legitimate right to do.
They do not all agree completely; I expect that some call for the
elimination of Israel, while others do not, and surely some are
antisemites. However, the PSC's views as stated here by its director,
I can agree with.
The people whom MPs should never meet with are the lobbyists who are
paid to represent the desires of the rich.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Nikki Haley has abandoned her campaign for
the Republican nomination.
The votes she received demonstrated a considerable fraction of Republicans
are reluctant to vote for the fascist.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and call on each
to fully fund the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Citi, BofA, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo have dropped
the Equator Principles,
which among other things provide minimum environmental standards,
I speculate that their executives now feel less pressure to hold back
even from the most outrageous forms of damage. There is a campaign
calling on Citi (pronounced "seetee", or perhaps "sheetee") to
stop
funding expansion of US exports of liquid methane.
US citizens:
support the EPA's plan to charge companies
for excess methane emissions.
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 SEC has published a proposed rule for companies to publish their climate risks, but it has
been
weakened considerably and may not achieve
its purpose.
Ralph Nader: Both Israel and HAMAS have
reasons to undercount the deaths
in Gaza. It could be far more than 30,000 already.
Much like Iraq Body Count, the practice of
counting only identified
corpses
will inevitably underestimate the number of dead.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Kenneth Stern in 2019: *I drafted the [IHRA] definition of
antisemitism.
Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it.*
He says it was not designed to be a basis for censorship and objects to its use for that.
Nowadays, said weaponization has spread to the entire right wing, both
Jews and non-Jews, including powerful right-wing Christians with
billions of dollars. In 2022, Stern, himself a Zionist, condemned the
use of
this
distortion of his work
to falsely label political support for Palestine as "antisemitic".
He also explains that encouragement of a culture of hatred of some groups — whichever
groups they may be — promotes hatred of other groups. One bigotry promotes other
bigotries. Thus, right-wing leaders that justify hate in the name of opposing antisemitism
indirectly promote antisemitism (as well as the hate they try to justify).
Some Google employees reportedly wrote that "open source" LLMs
are progressing faster
than Google or Open"AI" can possibly do.
There are even small models that can run in personal computers, and that can
run on CPUs, not as prisoners of the GPU (*).
Most "open source" programs are free software, but
there are exceptions.
It is crucial to verify that at least one of these systems entirely composed of free
software &mdash with zero nonfree or unreleased components. And ideally more than one.
*
State Political Directorate
(GPU) of the Soviet Union.
The
US Supreme Court
eliminated any possibility of barring insurrectionists with the support of a major party from
government office using the 14th amendment.
US citizens:
call on NOAA
to protect North Atlantic right 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.
*Starbucks and its workers’ union
agree to talks.*
*UN finds
"convincing information"
that Hamas raped and tortured Israeli
hostages,* based on the testimony of released hostages.
This adds to the
evidence of the corpses
of people that were raped and then killed on Oct 7.
But there was never any doubt that HAMAS attackers committed even worse crimes: killing
civilians or kidnapping them with the threat to kill them.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The Houthis sank a ship carrying fertilizer, which could
leak and
poison the Red Sea.
The owners wanted to tow the ship to a port to repair it, but no port would allow it because of
the environmental risks it would have caused there. Would towing that vessel's to deep water
have made it less of a threat? It seems that no organization has authority and funds for doing
that when necessary.
George Monbiot: the plans to increase global food production call for
using more water
for irrigation, but no more fresh water is available to use.
Today's bullshit generators need a lot of energy to run, and a lot of water. The next
generation will use so much that
that itself will be a problem.
A study argues that
moving to sustainable food
production globally would
fix many of the world's problems, including global heating, malnutrition
and environmental degradation.
Death by
starvation has begun
among Palestinians in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Dr. John Gartner, psychologist, says that the bullshitter manifests
rapidly increasing cognitive failure,
and that it is often visible in
his speeches but the media only show the parts in which he is coherent.
He also says that many other psychologists have noticed this but are afraid to say it openly.
I lack the expertise to judge the validity of this claim, and I hardly wish
to watch the bullshitter's speeches to look for myself.
Saddam Hussein's taped conversations
with ministers and generals show he was certain that the CIA knew he had destroyed his projects
for chemical and nuclear weapons.
The CIA had some idea of this, but Dubya
pressured the CIA
into not consciously recognizing that conclusion.
Kenan Malik: *Blurring the
line between criticism and bigotry
fuels hatred of Muslims and Jews.*
This leads him, among other things, to reject the term "Islamophobia", for slightly different
but related reasons:
I agree with his point that the choice of meaning is more important than the choice of word.
But often an article uses the word without explanation, assuming the reader knows what it
means. In those articles, the choice of word is the core of the article's communication about
the meaning intended.
Another gem from the article:
Rhiannon Giddens rejects the idea that genres of music belong to
certain groups and that
others should be excluded
from playing them.
For music, and for everyone, we must reject the idea that
"cultural
appropriation"
is something bad. That view is wrong, regardless of which group's rights are being attacked.
(satire) *[Senator] Mitch McConnell Donates Body
To Lobbyists For Research.*
The US has for decades spent far more on roads than on public transit.
In the past that was unfair to Americans in cities. Now it's resisting
efforts to
minimize climate disaster.
An interview with a leading campaigner for legalization of MDMA
and
its use for therapy.
I dislike the part that tries to validate the idea of "spirits" as something
other than a metaphor, because there is no way those can exist; it can only
be an instance of confused thinking.
That doesn't invalidate the beneficial results of the therapy, or the
arguments for legalization.
Catalonia's three-year drought has gone beyond mere inconvenience.
Agriculture
is being destroyed.
It has plans to use desalination to get drinking water.
I hope they will not be powered by fossil fuels, as that would
accelerate the increase of drought over all Spain and large parts
of the world.
There was hardly any ice in
Lake Erie this winter.
*Gardens in England and Wales blooming four weeks early,
says National Trust.
I expect this is happening all across the temperate zones.
This flowery symptom of global heating may be pleasant, but these
sorts of changes don't affect a whole ecosystem in a uniform way. The
resulting disconnects break relationships between species, and can
cause some to go extinct. It also attracts invasive species, which
can displace or eat other species and cause their extinction.
There are now click bait farms filled automatically with the output
of
bullshit generators.
They are not intended to make any sense to humans who visit them,
only intended to attack advertising income.
*Aerial surveys of Great Barrier Reef ordered after flights
confirm mass coral
bleaching.*
It appears that high ocean temperatures in 2014-2016 reduced the population
of humpback whales by around 1/5. It has not rebounded yet.
This sadly suggests that global heating could make them vulnerable to
extinction, or
even cause their extinction.
Bangladesh has worked hard to improve its ability to cope with weather
disasters, but
global heating is making them worse.
A supporter of the insurrectionist has used bullshit generators to
make "photos" showing
the insurrectionist with black supporters.
They are fake.
The European Parliament has given
preliminary approval to a directive
requiring restoring natural ecosystems, with explicit quotas.
The article fails to give any details about the concessions given to protesting farmers. I
wish I knew what they were. Without specific information, I can only speculate that the
farmers had some valid demands, and that a careful compromise could have grafted those more or
less, but that right-wing politicians stirred them up to make extreme and harmful demands,
which I hope they did not gain.
Why we need to
overturn the "Citizens" United decision.
Thousands of Burmese are trying to flee so they will not be conscripted into
the Burmese army, which they consider to be
an occupying enemy.
The Burmese military goes to extreme lengths to
prevent soldiers from
defecting,
but many manage to do it anyway.
It is better to die than to fight for the dictators. if the people fleeing recognize that, and
form groups ready to fight if they must, they have a better chance of surviving to escape.
I wonder why Thailand is not letting refugees in.
Is this due to China's influence in Thailand?
(China backs the Burmese dictators.)
If you know the answer, please tell me.
*Sacked UK borders inspector tells MPs he was removed "for doing his job".*
The Tories appointed David Neal as "inspector of borders and immigration", meaning it was his
job to report to a ministry about the cruelty that it was steadily finding ways to increase.
When he saw the government had no interested in correcting the problems he reported,
he told the public instead.
Proposing several kinds of US sanctions that would hit Israel's colonies in Palestinian
territory, and the
people and institutions
located in them.
The article continues with other ways to pressure Israel to move towards peace with Palestine.
Gush Shalom (founded by Uri Avnery) launched a boycott in Israel of
products made in those colonies.
They withdrew the boycott when Israel adopted a law designed to bankrupt anyone in Israel who
promoted it, but since I am not in Israel
I continue to support that boycott.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to show support for a Gaza ceasefire
at Biden's State of the Union speech.
Sefton Delmer's propaganda messages to Germany induced Germans to doubt the
validity of Hitler's propaganda. Ukrainians have learned from them.
I wonder if there is a chance of applying these methods to the
delusion of trumpet propaganda. Delmer had more than a clever idea:
he had the resources of the British government available to carry out
the idea. There are surely Americans who could try to do something
like that -- but what institution would give them a voice loud enough
to be noticed?
London thugs knocked over a legal observer watching events at a rally
for Palestine, leaving her unconscious and bleeding. There were 30
thugs in the group, and none of them attended to her injuries.
This was not the only recent instance of violence by thugs toward
legal observers.
I can see why thugs might feel hostility towards legal observers,
feeling that the observers' mission is to observe and report
wrongdoing by thugs. But that is no excuse for violence against them.
It should not be difficult for the department to determine from the
video which thugs did what. Then we will see whether the department
is sincere in saying that these actions are unacceptable.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for ending Section 702 mass
surveillance.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US ski resorts are losing money because global heating has reduced the
amount of snowfall.
We can live without skiing, but reduced rain on farmland will make
food scarce.
*Gaza airdrops might not be necessary if Israel faced more pressure on
aid.*
I agree with the article, but it will be hard to make delivery of aid
from Israel itself function properly. It will always be easy to make
snags occur, to set up regulations that will slow the flow based on
whatever pretext.
Sea delivery would avoid that problem because the aid would not pass
through Israel.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
It is only March, but the Texas panhandle is so hot and try that the
spreading giant wildfire is hard to control.
Come June, normally 25F hotter, it may spread much faster and may be
totally unstoppable.
Americans, vote for climate defense!
Robert Reich: how Democrats' abandonment of the working class and
labor unions opened the door for the bullshitter to offer the white
working class a bogus sense of power.
Most Tory supporters endorse anti-Muslim
hostility and disinformation.
Is Islam incompatible with the British way of life? The answer is
"yes and no", just as for Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism.
Each major religion has different variants of belief, and Islam is no
exception. Each has some extremist variants which are incompatible
with tolerance and democracy. That includes Christianity, Hinduism,
Islam and Judaism.
Each also has mainstream forms which are compatible with living in a
tolerant and democratic society.
Alabama is almost finished passing a law to shield in-vitro
fertilization from its recent court ruling that
every embryo is a
"child".
This covers the part of that ruling's effect that is arousing the most
focused hostility. But not the worst parts of it. This law will not
protect women who have abortions, or miscarriages.
*Government agencies typically have to secure a court-approved warrant
before obtaining private data on Americans from a phone or a tech
company. But U.S. agencies have skirted this requirement by arguing
they do not need a warrant if the information, like precise location
records or net flow data, is openly for sale to
anyone who wants to buy
it.*
This convinces me that the wrong is not located in the buying of that data,
but in offering it for sale. We should not allow that to happen. However,
as
I've stated,
data once collected will surely be misused. To prevent the sale of
collections of data about more or less everyone, we need to prohibit
systems that collect such data.
More than a small fraction of foreign ownership of critical facilities
can make a
country vulnerable to attack.
It would be wise to prohibit that outright.
The man who shot and killed a passenger in a car that drove up his
driveway by mistake
has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Is this enough to teach people that you can't shoot people based on
an unlikely surmise? I think we should make more efforts to inform
the public that this really is a crime.
Russia's mediation between Fatah and HAMAS has brought them a big
step closer to
agreeing on a unity government for Palestine.
*Revealed: at least 22 Californians have died while being held face down by
[thugs],
like George Floyd, since 2016.*
*"They took our home, our land, everything": Palestinians
displaced by illegal
settlers
tell their stories.*
"Illegal settlers" means the ones that Israel officially says are grabbing Palestinian land
without Israeli government authorization. These settlement are also called "illegal" in
Israel, though the government almost
never does anything to interfere
with them,
In fact,
all the settlements are illegal
under international law.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*UK and US
accused of obstructing inquiry
into 1961 death of UN [Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld].*
There is evidence
that the plane crash was no accident.
The US will drop
aid to Gaza
by air.
This can't provide enough, but it will show Israel that the US will not let
Israel limit the amount of aid delivered.
To provide more aid, the US could land it on the beach using landing
ships and invite civilians to come and get it.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Computerized bullshit generators are leading would-be US voters astray
with incorrect information about coming primary elections.
Electric trains produce much less greenhouse emissions than electric cars.
The FAA ordered Boeing to "commit to real and profound improvements"
in its quality control.
I expect that the change needed would include more staff working at a somewhat
slower pace -- in Boeing and its subcontractors. It will be difficult to
achieve that. Boeing may need to buy its subcontractors so that it can
have sufficient control to ensure that agreed-on reforms truly occur.
*Senate Democrats to force vote on protecting IVF access across the
US.*
I think there is a good chance enough Republicans will support this bill
that it eventually gets 60 votes and passes the Senate. That will
be a step forward -- but how big a step, compared to what is needed?
I can't tell, because this article gives little detail about how the
bill aims to achieve that goal. I am against punishing the death of
embryos made by in-vitro fertilization, but what happens with embryos
made with in-vitro fertilization is a far more important issue. That
determines whether people have a right to use some kinds of birth
control. Republicans also try to punish women for suffering from
miscarriages.
*As British Jews, we call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.*
Rabbis, too
Bernie Sanders calls for the Senate to bring back the Special
Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program,
also known as the Truman Committee because it was headed by Senator Truman (who later became vice president and then president).
The Truman Committee reports on profiteering had great impact because
the Senate supported its goals and followed its advice. I don't think
trumpets in the Senate would stand by their country if the
insurrectionist tells them to sabotage it.
The term "abortion trafficking" absurdly equates woman who
want abortions with victims of enslavement.
Masha Alekhina, of Pussy Riot, calls on the world to support Ukraine
in order to free Russia of Putin.
All patriotic Russians should support Ukraine, as she does.
I said in 2022 that Ukraine's supporters should not demand Putin's
overthrow as a condition for peace. I still think so, for the same
reasons.
But as long Putin defiantly continues his war of conquest, we have
no reason to refrain from saying we hope that Putin's defeat will lead
also to the liberation of Russia.
*French journalist arrested [while visiting] Ethiopia accused of
"conspiracy to create chaos".*
This refers, apparently, to the intention o commit journalism.
The US may soon join the shameful club of nations that prosecute
people
for committing journalism.
*Researchers say the number of Americans exposed to unhealthy air will
rise by 50% by the middle of the century.*
Currently 1/4 of the population are exposed to it. The cause will be
increasing wildfires caused by global heating.
*UN warns Rafah attack would be ‘nail in coffin’ of Gaza aid as
deliveries halve.*
Israel already knowingly limits aid to Gaza to an amount far below what
the population requires. Lowering it further would compound the crime.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Right-wing rich people are funding an attempt to buy the election of a
right-wing government in San Francisco by fomenting fear based on
exaggerating the city's problems,
which in fact are comparable to other American cities, and often smaller.
Louisiana's governor wants to put a end to judicial reconsideration of
convictions based k evidence of illegality in the trial.
Also, to make parole much harder for people that some members of a parole board
are prejudiced against -- blacks, typically.
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 because I
consider them important -- and I label them like this.
Australia is trying to crack down on the importation of vapes.
A foreign seller that ships to
Australia is defying the restriction.
Prohibition of addictive dangerous drugs tends to cause
various
forms of harm. Which can be worse than the harm caused by the
drug itself. However, this prohibition does not criminalize users, so
maybe it will avoid the worst harms that prohibition usually causes.
However, a government that can succeed in blocking vapes being shipped
in could succeed in blocking mifepristone being shipped in.
Calling for targeted sanctions and an arms embargo against
Israel to make
it cease its war crimes.
*Sanders Report Warns Nearly Half of Older Americans
"Have No
Retirement Savings."*
Israeli army firing at a crowd of hungry Palestinians near some aid trucks
caused a
total of 400 casualties.
Israel says its soldiers never shot at the crowd, but witnesses there say
people were shot. The Israeli army has a decades-long
tradition of lying
about such things.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Texas is on fire while oil companies are
fueling the flames of climate chaos.*
Israel is sabotaging humanitarian organizations that aid Palestinians
in the occupied Palestine
by not giving visas to their workers.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Global heating effects in part of Italy have wiped out the harvest of
the rice
varieties used for risotto.
Putin seems to be using the "my puppets are pleading for my help" game
with Transnistria, a breakaway part of Moldova with a
garrison of
Russian troops.
There is no easy way Putin can send reinforcements to Transnistria:
they would have to fly over Ukraine or cross the Black Sea.
Either way, Ukraine could attack them
But first, surely some of those Russian soldiers would like to get out
of Putin's power. Let's give them a chance and encourage them to take it.
AI systems already control many kinds of mistreatment of workers.
This article
starts with some examples.
It ends with a number of recommendations, which seem wise to me.
However, when the article discusses the use of AI to evaluate the
continually monitored work of an employees, I think it focuses too
much on the use of AI for the evaluation, and that the crucial wrong
is in the monitoring itself rather than how it is evaluated.
In its list of real AI systems that really know something about some
domain, the article perhaps includes bullshit generates as well in
some points. The author doesn't distinguish.
*People displaced by climate crisis to testify …
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear how climate is
driving
forced migration across the Americas.*
UK ministers accuse protesters of trying to intimidate MPs with threats.
Indeed, a democracy must not tolerate that. Some senators reported
that threats to their lives and their families' lives convinced them
not to vote to convict the insurrectionist after his second
impeachment.
Starmer planned to seize the Labour Party before the 2019 election.
How the film Notting Hill damaged the neighborhood Notting Hill —
through gentrification.
At that time, I was dating a woman who lived in Notting Hill. I told
her I had enjoyed the film, and she said that she resented it for
forcing her to move to a farther part of London. Indeed,
gentrification is shown right on the screen. I still enjoy it despite
that, perhaps because it's a romantically inept bookish man's perfect
romantic fantasy.
At the end of the first encounter between the two main characters, Ms
Scott steals a kiss from Mr Thacker. Would you call that a "sexual
assault" and comparable to rape? Do you think she should be
prosecuted for that? I can imagine the scene in which Thacker
testifies at Scott's trial and falsely claims to have given verbal
consent in advance, thus sparing her a prison term. After hearing the
verdict, she runs over to him and kisses him, and they arrest her
again.
A Russian journalist, exiled abruptly when Putin attacked Ukraine
because she was reporting from there, describe how his repression in
Russia is so intense that it tears apart families.
An appeal has upheld the UK's practice of canceling people's citizenship
for committing crimes.
Going to help PISSI was certainly a crime, but a citizen of country C
should have the right to go home and serve a sentence there, rather than
being exiled.
Tunisia's once-elected dictator is sentencing opposition politicians
to prison.
Some of them are safely living in exile, but that doesn't help Tunisia
become free.
The UK has a proposal to ban product labels for using variants of
dairy product names to label non-dairy substitutes.
I don't think anyone is likely to think that "I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter"
is butter. However, I did once buy a product with "cheeze" when I wanted a
version that had real cheese. If I had checked carefully, I would have understood the difference, but I didn't realize it might be a mistake.
I would suggest allowing the names that say "not FOO" when the "not"
is large and visible. But a substitute name that differs only a little
from the dairy product name does cause a risk of confusion and should not
be allowed.
*Wisconsin's extreme gerrymandering era ends as new maps come into force.*
Texas has set up a special court system for businesses, so right-wing
extremist governor Abbott can personally choose the judges.
He can pick them to defend businesses from accusations of mistreating
customers, employees or people who live in the area. That is part of
his plutocratist politics.
A study of human placentas found microplastics in each one.
I have seen a series of results about the presence of microplastics in
various places and various kinds of organisms. All of these address
one side of the crucial question: are we exposed to microplastics?
Whether this is a real problem depends on the other side: how
dangerous are they? We speculate that they may make various medical
problems more likely, but we don't have any firm knowledge about this.
The UK has jailed hundreds of refugees for traveling to the UK
without prior approval, including victims of trafficking and torture.
Their aim was to ask for asylum.
This is part of a global tendency for countries to make it effectively
impossible for people without plenty of money to ask for asylum there.
A lawsuit accuses Tinder and some other dating apps of only pretending
to seek to find people good matches; instead, the plaintiffs charge, they
are designed to keep people on those apps for as long as possible
through addictive design.
*As Indian democracy rapidly declines, will [US Ambassador] Eric
Garcetti uphold his commitment [to democracy]?*
*European nations must end repression
of peaceful climate protest,
says UN [special rapporteur on environmental defenders].*
A meta-study has linked the consumption of ultra-processed food to
many different medical
problems
including heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, mental disorders and early death.
More than 100,000
Michigan Democrats voted symbolically
for "uncommitted" rather than "Biden" to pressure him to reduce military support for Israel.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to appoint the USPS governors who will fire Postmaster DeJoy.
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 defeat the Orwellian MAGA resolution about Jan 6.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to bar members of Congress, and their immediate family, from owning stock in companies that do
business with the Pentagon.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to end disenfranchisement of ex-cons, nationwide.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
"A Trojan horse of legitimacy": Shell launches a "climate tech"
startup advertising jobs in oil and gas.*
China proves that disincentives can achieve a substantial rate of
population decrease.
Just Stop Oil is fielding a candidate for a seat in the UK Parliament
as a rebuke to the cowardice of Starmer-Labour.
A refugee who was compelled by people smugglers to drive an overloaded boat has
been convicted
of manslaughter because some of them drowned, because supposedly the smugglers forced on
him the "duty of care" — to have required qualifications, to refuse to allow too many
passengers, to drive it safely, etc.
This is morally bullshit. A person who is forced to do a job can
never deserve punishment on account of being unable to do it properly.
(satire) *New Study Finds Cavemen Had Trouble Sticking To Paleo Diet
Without Frozen Meal Kits.*
The UK, and other countries, rightly resisted an attempt at a UN
conference to declare that "nature" has rights.
This must be rejected because it is an incoherent idea. Exercising a
right requires volition. "Nature" as such does not have volition.
Neither does a species, an ecosystem, or a ship … or a
corporation, for that matter.
Although many countries treat a corporation as a "person" and accord
it rights, that policy is harmful. and we need to change it.
In the US, we need to override the Corporations United decision
which says that constitutional rights apply to corporations.
Laws to protect aspects of nature are a different issue. Those are
coherent, and in general I support them. Indeed, I think we need to
make some of these laws more strict
and add more.
But we can protect aspects of nature without
confusing ourselves philosophically.
The rare harmful consequences of Covid-19 vaccines are being tracked
with great care. A couple of side effects have been found to happen
to 1 or 2 people in every million that has been vaccinated.
But if you have the bad luck to get one of these, you'll probably
recover anyway. And you're more likely to get either of them after a
real Covid-19 infection than after a vaccination.
*Progressives lambaste Biden over potential move to restrict asylum.*
Not everyone has ground for asylum, but rejecting people without a
hearing is evidently unjust.
Trying to "compromise" with the Sabotage Party is futile. Their
specific demands, ordered by the fascist saboteur, are meant only as
trolling, and when he wants them to block government he can invent a
new excuse at any moment.
Several European countries have now pulled out of the Energy charter
Treaty.
Alas, this is not as beneficial as it might have been.
Pre-existing foreign investments remain covered by the treaty
for many years after a country leaves the treaty.
What is really needed
is something stronger: for the countries that belong to it to agree
to an "update" which turns this part into a no-op.
(satire) *New Law Requires SNAP Recipients To Balance Food On Nose
Until Receiving Command To Eat It.*
The UK's trial of 4-day work week was a success. 9/10 of the companies that
started it a year ago are still using it.
The UK is systematically trying to prosecute the passengers that
people smugglers force to drive boats.
*Embryo shipping services to halt business in Alabama after IVF ruling.*
That puts the Alabama IVF clinics that no longer dare to continue with
the implantation of the frozen embryos that they are storing on
patients' behalf into a quandary. There is no course of action
that won't make them liable.
I expect it is not safe to be pregnant in Alabama either.
*[The insurrectionist] told the National Religious Broadcasters that "the
greatest threat" to the US is "people from within our country".*
Nice of him to admit it.
The Alabama court ruling that every embryo is a "child" makes no sense
in terms of biology and medicine, and is based on mistaking science
fiction (artificial wombs) for reality.
When the judges grasp the reality, that none of those stored embryos
can develop into a baby except by being implanted, I have a hunch they
will conscript women to forcibly implant them into. Or maybe they
will force the woman who made the eggs to suffer implantation of all
of her stored embryos at once. These would seem like justice to
people who don't care about human suffering.
But I doubt they could find any doctors willing to perform
those procedures.
Emulators that pretend to be
radio keys make stealing a car
faster and easier than ever before.
*Revealed: car industry was warned
keyless vehicles vulnerable
to theft a decade ago.*
These cars are full of computers with nonfree software and little
security. But the insecurity (like the surveillance) depends on
their attempt to communicate by radio.
If you deactivate the antennas, the car may be safe.
How difficult is that in practice? Does anyone collect information on
converting connected cars into disconnected cars?
US citizens:
call on the FTC
to intervene in the bankruptcy case of Near Intelligence and stop it from ever again selling people's location data.
US citizens:
call on the Federal Trade Commission
to block the Capital One / Discover merger.
US citizens:
call on the Fish and Wildlife Service
to protect monarch butterflies.
US citizens:
tell the executives
of some insurance companies to stop insuring LNG export terminals.
*Antarctica
sea ice reaches alarming low
for third year in a row.*
The UK government is trying to
eliminate a defense
that climate
defense protesters have used to convince juries
to acquit them.
There is another defense that is valid for all climate defenders on trial for protesting: the
necessity defense, for trying to prevent the bigger crime of ecocide.
The
UNRWA says that, given the desperation for food of people in southern Gaza, they can't
safely carry aid to northern Gaza.
The only place they can bring aid into Gaza is in the south, from Egypt. Transporting a fraction
of that insufficient aid across southern Gaza, means carrying it past injured and starving
refugees, whose families will steal it.
As long as the aid is insufficient, and someone is going to starve, I suppose
it makes no moral difference who draws the short straw, The real point is to
bring in enough aid for everyone in Gaza.
The US could do that — it could land the aid on Gaza's shore by boat.
It could land, each week, enough for everyone in Gaza for a week.
Even Netanyahu would not dare attack the US aid force.
What it does require is boldness of spirit.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Lukashenko, tyrant
of Belarus,
is holding bogus elections. All the candidates he permitted to run are his supporters.
*Mexico City may be just months away from
running of out water.*
It has been emptying an aquifer and now the aquifer is almost empty.
Global heating has put most of Mexico into a drought. Decades of
population growth has also contributed to creating this crisis.
*[16000 miles of]
abandoned pipelines
could release [large amounts of
mercury and lead] into North Sea, scientists warn.*
* At [Julian Assange's extradition hearing],
lawyers posed the pivotal
question: how can exposing crime and torture be worse than committing them?*
US citizens:
call on the EPA
to strengthen and finalize the Climate Pollution Rule.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to secure a ceasefire in Gaza to save lives in Rafah and beyond..
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on North Carolina Governor Cooper
to make bridges or
tunnels so endangered red wolves can cross highways without getting killed.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stop Politicians Profiting
From War Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress not to start a war with Iran.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Florida Legislature to pass Rep. Dana
Trabulsy's bill to limit book bans.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject "fiscal commissions" to cut
programs that non-rich Americans depend on.
SCROTUS have expanded this; the targets now include many government programs
that either benefit the non-rich or inconvenience the powerful.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Most US businesses are now required to report who effectively owns them.
However, some big businesses won a special exception by expensive lobbying.
They include venture capital funds, hedge funds and private equity
funds.
The UK's tax agency is following the path of the US IRS: investigating
rich people less.
I conjecture that the reason is the same in both countries:
the state has surrendered to the demands of the rich,
who demand to be allowed not to pay their taxes.
How the mass media mislead Americans to think their children are
in real danger of being kidnapped on the street.
Disentangling the wrong that racist prejudice does to people from the
benefit that cultural mixing between racial groups gives to culture.
A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine, then went to live in Spain,
has been murdered.
I see little reason to doubt that Putin organized the killing.
* Lobbying firms work double-duty, representing political interests of
victims and perpetrators of climate [disaster] in state capital.*
We must expect any one lobbying company to work for many clients. And
normally that is not particularly scandalous. But continuation of
global heating will destroy almost anything, and using the same
lobbyist will help that lobbyist become better known and more
influential with officials.
(satire) *Scientists Discover Birds Lied About Being Related To
Dinosaurs.*
A UK minister, given the job of investigating whether British troops
in Afghanistan committed war crimes, said he has found no evidence to
deny it — and information suggesting that they did.
The UK economy is held back by a record number of workers who
are disabled by long-term illness.
Two important causes are the Tory-beset NHS, so damaged that it cannot
treat all the disabled workers so they can return to work, and long
Covid.
Imprisoned Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova has not been
heard from since a year ago.
Racist, crooked cop Derek Ridgewell went on framing man after man, as
the thug department protected him. Then he was caught and convicted
of thefts like those he had framed others for — but nothing was done
to find all his victims and exonerate them.
China has crushed a thriving independent cinema movement. Many of the films
have been preserved in an archive in the UK.
If Republicans take over the US, they will crush independent cinema here.
(satire) *God Admits Sending Great Flood Was Just Misguided Attempt To
Impress Jodie Foster.*
The level of PM2.5 particulate air pollution in the US causes a large
increase in cardiovascular disease.
Even at the WHO-recommended (lower) concentration limit, the
contribution to disease is significant.
It also seems to increase the rate of dementia.
As global heating continues, there could be more and larger wildfires.
They create this pollution and spread it widely.
So, if my memory serves, does burning wood in a stove in your home.
Putin is persecuting right-wing Russians that criticized him.
They used to be tolerated.
*NRA and Wayne LaPierre
found liable
in lawsuit over misspending of funds.*
A court decision has made in-vitro fertilization effectively illegal
in Alabama, by ruling that the
destruction of a frozen embryo
constitutes "killing a child." As a result, to carry out IVF
there is now too risky.
This is the sort of lunacy that religion leads to. And if this decision stands, it would be a
short step further to rule that abortion is murder.
In addition, the world desperately needs to reduce the human population through humane means,
so as to decrease the disaster that global heating is starting to produce. Discouraging IVF is
a legitimate contribution to that. The good thing to do, if you want to raise a child, is to
adopt one. That will not increase the world's population, and it will help someone who is
otherwise likely to suffer.
Former president Hernández of Honduras is on trial in the US for
accepting
bribes from leaders of drug gangs.
His corruption was bad for Honduras, as corruption always is; but if the alternative was a destructive
"War on Drugs",
what he did may have been less harmful. But it would be better to legalize and tax the
transshipment of drugs than to take bribes to look the other way.
*Twenty-five US universities face
calls [by students, teachers and
staff]
to cancel Starbucks contracts [on account of its union-busting].*
Distinguishing support for Palestinians from support for terrorism is
the mirror reflection
of distinguishing condemnation of Israeli government actions from antisemitism. Lobbying for
Israel's policies campaigns to erase both of those distinctions.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The Putin forces
won a Pyrrhic victory
when they captured Avdiivka. An extreme nationalist Russian revealed the figures, and was
targeted with so much hostility that he shot himself.
If Putin conquers enough small parts of Ukraine with such a high rate of casualties, he will
lose the war.
Two large US credit card companies
want to merge.
The government should not permit this. The benefits of capitalism,
when there are some, come from the existence of competition, but
businesses keep seeking to eliminate that benefit.
Senator Warren
thinks the same.
The US again vetoed a simple Security Council resolution calling for
a cease-fire in Gaza, saying that
its own proposed resolution
would have a better chance of making a cease fire happen.
I do not see what its advantage would be.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on state legislatures
to take the lead in regulating guns.
US senators have proposed a bill that they say would
"criminalize the
spread
of nonconsensual, sexualized images generated by [so-called] artificial intelligence." I agree
with the goal, but a vagueness hides a dangerous detail in the bill.
I support criminalizing the making, publication and republication of nude deepfakes without the
subject's permission. Any deepfake that misrepresents the subject's words or actions should
get the same punishment. You have the right to claim someone said or did something, but
creating fake evidence that falsely purports to prove that is the moral equivalent of perjury.
However, to criminalize "receiving" or simply holding on to a copy of
such a deepfake is a broad threat to freedom.
This is not to say that there is anything redeeming about nude or disinformational deepfakes.
Whatever you wish to say, it is wrong to say it that way. But they will be made, and people
will receive them. What then?
To prohibit having a copy of an image or text — any image or text,
no matter what it presents, no matter how disgusting we consider it —
is an attack on history, journalism, and democratic politics.
Ultimately, it becomes an attack on memory, creating the danger that
governments will command people to forget. It becomes an attack on
justice, since people will be ordered to destroy evidence of crimes
they may wish to fight.
If we tolerate a law requiring people to forget one specific kind of material, that would
invite more laws ordering people to forget other things as well. That road leads to tyranny
(China is an example) and puts truth in danger.
It also opens the door to a kind of digital swatting. Once some texts or images (it doesn't
matter which) are designated as criminal to possess, people could accuse you at random of
having some. Then the digital SWAT team will seize all your computers and storage devices to
check for them.
With a physical SWAT team of today, if you're still alive by the time it has ascertained that
there was no need to break into your home, it will leave you in peace with the repair bills.
Being raided by a digital SWAT team would be painful and dangerous too. They might find no
forbidden deepfakes but they could copy your secrets. Worse, they could find something that
you had been sent and did not remember to delete. They could find an email you had not noticed
or with an attachment you had not tried to view, but you could not prove that. And supposing
you could, would that exonerate you?
If Republicans get away with claiming to have won the next election, what sorts of documents or
videos might they punish people for having?
We will all be safer, and democracy safer too, if we establish that no such law can be considered.
*US proposes UN [Security Council] resolution calling for temporary
ceasefire in Gaza and for Israel
not to attack Rafah.*
Step by small step, Biden is increasing the pressure on Israel.
The small but painful US
sanctions on certain Israelis
may expand. I think he intends to ramp up the pressure until Israel stops the attacks.
That will be a good outcome, but if he doesn't speed it up, Israel's steadily mounting
atrocities may truly amount to genocide before that happens.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on the US government
to stop using single-use plastics.
Israeli attacks have
effectively ruined the Nasser hospital,
which was
the largest hospital that was still functioning in Gaza last week.
Israel claims to have arrested "100 suspected HAMAS militants" in the hospital courtyard. This
sounds impressive — we are supposed to assume that Israel must have had some specific
reason to "suspect" each of those people, and therefore proves an enormous level of HAMAS infiltration.
More likely it means is that Israel found 100
men "of military age"
there, and followed
a policy of suspecting
each of them on general principles.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Dozens trapped [inside Nasser hospital without water, food or
electricity] after
Nasser hospital raid
as G7 warns Israel over Rafah offensive.*
If the wrecker gets
power next year,
this article argues that the American Republic would collapse, followed by the current world
order, the US economy, and efforts to curb global heating.
An FBI informant who gave the FBI incriminating testimony about Hunter Biden has been
charged criminally with falsifying
that testimony.
Right-wing billionaires could supply plenty of money to recruit liars to testify against Hunter Biden.
US citizens: Support the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and
Transparency Act.
US citizens: call on the United States to insist on a full
investigation into accusations of military election rigging in Pakistan,
before recognizing a new government there.
US citizens: call on the Senate to complete the investigation into the
wrecker's foreign ill-gotten gains.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the proposal to label fentanyl
dishonestly as a "chemical weapon" and charge people with "terrorism"
for possession of it.
Laws must not lie. The illegal fentanyl trade has harmful effects — the usual
effects of black-market sale of drugs.
Some of the people who buy fentanyl on the street buy it because their
doctors won't prescribe them enough oxycodone to last the whole day.
(Each pill works for 6 hours.) They are victims of the War on Pain Sufferers.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The Israeli army showed reporters extensive tunnels under the UNRWA's
main office in Gaza.
We cannot trust either HAMAS or Israel to tell the truth about events
in Gaza, or about tunnels that exist there. But I think it must be
true that these tunnels were built by HAMAS. I don't think Israel
could have built tunnels 700 meters long in a few months in Gaza in
the middle of the fighting. It could perhaps have set up a room full
of electrical equipment supposedly connected to the tunnels, but I won't
say those couldn't be the work of HAMAS.
I would expect that the construction of military facilities amidst
UNRWA's facilities was a war crime committed by HAMAS. We already
know HAMAS commits much worse violations of international humanitarian
law.
It is plausible that the tunnels got their electricity from the UNRWA
camp. Stealing electricity happens world-wide, but it is a minor
issue compared to the war crimes in Gaza.
I don't think the UNRWA knew about these tunnels. I expect that HAMAS
recruited some of the UNRWA staff and they ensured no one else learned
of the existence of the tunnels.
Israel has accused some of UNRWA's staff of serving HAMAS.
That accusation is not proof as regards the guilt of specific
individuals,
but it is perfectly plausible that HAMAS infiltrated the staff of
UNRWA. I expect Israel tried too but was not in a position to succeed
very much.
This infiltration of UNRWA is no reason to cut the funding for the
humanitarian aid it gives to Palestinians, and no excuse for
continuing to subject hundreds of thousands in Gaza to death from
hunger, thirst and disease.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Almost half the people privately enslaved in Britain nowadays were not
trafficked from some other country. Rather, they are boys who were
pressured by local criminals into supporting their crimes.
Germany is harshly silencing those who criticize Israel.
After Hitler's mass murder of Jews became public knowledge, Jews were
compelled to confront the question: is it "never again" against us,
or "never again" against anyone whatsoever? Humanitarian morality
must choose the latter interpretation, and that is what I support.
Germany has, according to the article, adopted the narrow
interpretation, according to which Israel cannot be criticized for
predictably killing tens of thousands (and perhaps eventually more) of
Palestinians in Gaza, and those who do criticize it are
"anti-Semitic".
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Tennessee advances bill to [imprison] people [for] helping minors
obtain abortion.*
This demonstrates the fanaticism of the religious extremists that are
determined to prevent abortion, whatever the cost (to those who are
pregnant).
The bill says specifically anyone who "recruits, harbors, or
transports a pregnant unemancipated minor" commits a crime. I wonder
what it means, concretely, to "recruit" someone for an abortion.
Does that ever really occur?
I also wonder what is covered by "transports". Does it include
giving someone money, which she might use to buy a bus ticket?
Small farms in the US are having trouble, while large farms are bringing
high profits. Congress is proposing to increase subsidies that are
independent of size. That won't address the problem.
*Denouncing critics of Israel as ‘un-Jews’ or antisemites is a
perversion of history.*
There is an old current in Jewish thought
which stands up for anyone who is mistreated — including Palestinians
mistreated by Jews. And another old current of deplatforming them.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Explanations for why Netanyahu clings so tightly to defeating HAMAS militarily
even though the war is not going well, and why the US finds it so hard
to stop this.
The fact that HAMAS is not dead even in occupied northern Gaza may
help convince pertinent people that the idea of militarily eliminating
HAMAS is an impossible dream.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The hottest January ever recorded has caused fire disaster in southern
South America.
Governments need to change many policies so as to prevent and
discourage fires.
*Ill-judged tree planting in Africa threatens ecosystems, scientists warn.*
Projects to plant lots of trees have gone awry before.
Sometimes the problem is simply that most of the trees die, having
been planted in places where those species will not grow.
In this case, it seems worse problems threaten.
*Plastic producers have known for 30 years that recycling is not an
economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution.
That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.*
This could be the basis for big lawsuits against them.
*[The bullshitter] says mixing [up] Haley with Pelosi and Biden
with Obama was tactic, not gaffe.*
One advantage of training your supporters not to accept truth from you
is that you can get away with bullshit about your bullshit.
Why Pennsylvania coal miners moved to the right wing after the 1950s.
Yanis Varoufakis: *Why is Labour still using the self-defeating,
discredited "maxed out credit card" analogy?*
*Global awareness of women’s health being "hijacked by vested interests"*
to sell quackery.
Rampant unrestrained capitalism does that in every area.
Society needs a framework that doesn't elevate profit above all else.
States are banning the "captive audience meetings" in which businesses
order workers to listen to anti-union propaganda.
The
new president of Indonesia
appears to be
General Subianto,
who served
dictator Suharto
and is accused of torture.
Australia's parliament
has called for freeing Julian Assange.
*Global media freedom at risk as Julian Assange back in UK court
facing
possible extradition to USA.*
The US is the prime mover of imprisoning Assange, but the UK is responsible for its willingness
to extradite people for acts of journalism. It is doing so under
a treaty
that the UK ratified but the US never did. It demonstrates the subservience of the UK.
The substance of the treaty is outrageous because it agrees to extradite to the US for actions
that are not crimes under UK law. That discards a basic principle of extradition known as
"dual criminality": that country A should not extradite a person to country C for an act that is
a crime in country unless that act is also a crime in country A. This principle spares country
A from becoming an accessory to country C's repression.
We used to envision the Soviet Union or China as playing the role of
country C, but in this case the US plays that role.
*We have seen
Assange’s plight in a UK prison, but extraditing him this week would be a disaster for us all.*
Suggesting that we stop treating the subject of cancer as a taboo or
unmentionable. And stop comparing it to a "battle".
My cancer treatment never felt like a battle to me. It was sometimes
annoying and hurt only occasionally. As for bearing up against cancer,
that was easy after almost four years of practice in bearing up
against cancellation.
*Leaked emails reveal organizers of leading science fiction and fantasy
awards (the Hugo awards) [excluded] works of a "sensitive political nature"*
to cater to Chinese censorship.
The World Science Fiction Society should change its rules so that
Worldcon cannot be held in a country that would impose political
censorship on books to be sold, discussed, shown or judged at the
event. Teams bidding to hold a future Worldcon should have to
sign and publish an affirmation to this effect.
I understand, of course, that bidders cannot take responsibility for
stopping the sate from censoring Worldcon. But I think bidders in
countries that impose political censorship would hesitate to sign such
an affirmation, and that would achieve the goal of protecting Worldcon
from being held in one.
*China, Russia and Cambodia top list of regimes targeting critics in exile.*
*The mysterious, violent and unsolved deaths of Putin's foes and critics.*
Robert Reich explains why "preaching to the choir" in politics is
useful and worth while.
The Guardian has covered some modern Luddites, whose views are
somewhat similar to my ideas -- on free software and neighboring issues.
Ms Crabapple even cited an FSF slogan!
If you know any of them, please tell per about fsf.org/tedx and gnu.org/philosophy. gnu.org/gnu/first-hackers-conference-1984.html
could be useful to mention as well. And it never hurts to mention stallmansupport.org.
Reforestation in some US regions is keeping those regions from heating up.
Even more important, it is working against global heating -- though it isn't
enough to overcome the greenhouse emissions of other parts of the world.
Arguing that Israel should release Marwan Barghouti from prison,
so he could win free elections and lead Palestine in a secularist direction
towards making peace with Israel.
That is supposing Israel is willing to accept such a peace.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
"Virtual hospital beds" can now monitor a patient's recovery
while perse stays at home.
It sounds like a useful idea, for certain patients (not those who
might need a rapid intervention if something goes wrong). Except that
I suspect it is implemented in an unjust way, depending on nonfree
software plus connection to the internet.
If that is the case, I'd have to refuse to allow it in my home.
It would be easy to implement such a monitoring system with free
software. But I expect that the NHS never even thought about the
issue.
US citizens: call on Senator Dick Durbin to subpoena Harlan Crow and
Leonard Leo about their corrupting influence on Supreme Court justices.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject section 702 mass surveillance.
I read that one attempt to pass the bill was rejected, but not conclusively.
There will be more attempts.
*Senior Pakistan official admits election rigging as protests grip
country.*
*Ireland and Spain demand EU [review] Israel trade deal over rights
obligations.*
*Amazon rainforest could reach ‘tipping point’ by 2050, scientists warn*
*Authors of study call for action to prevent possible collapse of
region's ecosystems and climate impacts that would result.*
I don't think anyone can tell how long it will take for this disaster
to be unstoppable. The question we face is one of how far to press
our luck.
*Mississippi prison delayed [prisoner]'s cancer diagnosis until it was
terminal, lawsuit says.*
I wish it were possible to get courts to intervene before it is too late.
The EPA is concealing the measurements of the amount of
PFAS in plastic containers
from he public, calling it a "trade secret".
In general, the US government gives businesses' desired for secrecy much more weight than it
deserves. Trade secrecy is fundamentally antisocial. At the same time, compelling people to
publish everything they know would be tyranny; therefore, when a business's secrecy about some
specific thing does no particular harm, we should go along with it.
However, when
trade secrecy collides with anything important
for society or the public, trade secrecy must yield.
The verdict in the insurrectionist's
fraud trial
fined him 364 million dollars.
It was not a criminal trial on charges of fraud. If it were, he could have
ended up in prison once found guilty.
*The "law-and-order" candidate is an
adjudicated fraudster.*
He is already responding by escalating the
super-big-lie.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and insist on clean funding bills that attach no new
restrictions to government services. These bills need to be passed by March 1 to avoid
shutdowns of parts of the government.
I think Democrats should stand by as SCROTUS shut down some large part of the government,
rather than join with them in a compromise that would damage government programs and policies.
With courage we can defeat those disinformation-wielding saboteurs.
Some waste dumps occasionally release a
large
quantity of methane in a short time. Preventing more such leaks would take a substantial
step towards avoiding global heating disaster. But the biggest problems are in Pakistan, India
and Bangladesh; it won't be easy to get them to spend money on this.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to cut Pentagon emissions and help save the planet.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
In 2023, Guber made a profit for the first time…by squeezing it out of
the drivers.
It's paying them less
than peanuts, now.
Many reasons to refuse to do business with Guber.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to protect the National Labor Relations
Board from the musk-et's lawsuit designed to destroy its funding.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A relative of Herbert Hoover
rebuked Biden
for comparing the wrecker to Hoover.
I have a different criticism: comparing the wrecker to Hoover is an understatement.
Herbert Hoover was a Republican president who worshiped the Invisible Hand and therefore
refused to take effective action to get the US out of depression. The many people made
homeless by his inaction built shanty towns that they called "Hoovervilles".
But Hoover did not try to overthrow democracy. He was a plutocratist, not a fascist. He ran
again for president, lost to FDR, and accepted defeat. Then FDR instituted the New Deal.
The wrecker, by contrast, is a fascist and is trying to
eliminate democracy
and
rule of law
in the US by turning democracy and the constitution into a sham to
disguise a dictatorship.
Although Hoover did not try to overthrow democracy, other plutocratists did try, and
asked
recently retired General Smedley Butler
to lead the coup for them.
Butler surprised them by upholding the Constitution and testifying about their plot.
US citizens:
Call on the Supreme Court
to affirm that the insurrectionist is not above the law.
El Salvador's president
Bukele
was reelected despite the constitution's prohibition on reelecting any president.
He made El Salvador crime-free, by means of putting 75,000 people in prison without charges. A
trial is an imperfect way to judge a person's guilt, but a non-trial is much worse. Surely
many of them are not criminals. Will they ever be released?
(satire) Ohio Begins Executing Random People
In Hopes They're Criminals.
An activist threatens to destroy some
prized works of art
if the UK does not free Julian Assange.
I support that goal, but I think that method is misguided and harmful
because it uses the art works as hostages.
How so? It is not a threat against the owners of those art
works. They have given him permission to destroy them for his
protest, and legally that may be sufficient for him to avoid criminal
charges. But the permission of the owner is not morally
sufficient. These paintings are part of the heritage of humanity, and
humanity too has a right to protect them.
More deeply, it is an error to take the construct of property rights
for the sole and total basis for judgment of right and wrong. It is
useful to have a concept of property, and useful to legally protect
property to some extent. But destroying art works would also do wrong
to the rest of us who do not own them. Including those of us who
advocate freeing Assange.
The importance of these paintings to humanity is not a direct
consequence of their market value. Rather, their market value
reflects the idea that they are important.
US citizens:
call on the Supreme Court
to keep mifepristone legal.
US citizens:
call on your congresscritter
to vote to ban spraying neonicotinoid pesticides in wildlife refuges!
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to end surprise medical bills in the next COVID-19 package.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The UK's foreign minister,
former
PM David Cameron,
said that Israel must allow Gaza food and water
or else it would violate international law. He also said that the UK
will not support Israel in attacking Rafah.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Al Jazeera accuses Israel
of specifically targeting a TV team at work in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Old radio-controlled car locks are insecure, so Canada plans to ban
digital radio analyzers
On those few occasions when I have driven cars with wireless locks, I
have felt extremely uncomfortable with them — but not because of theft. It is because of pitfalls, such as the ease of walking off with the key while leaving the engine running for a friend to borrow the car. I'd feel safer with a key that must be in the lock for the car to run.
If Biden is serious about recognizing an independent Palestine alongside
Israel, he could make Israel accept that by means of additional
sanctions on people and
businesses like the ones he has already made.
Those sanctions could be viewed as a warning shot at Netanyahu.
This would, in my view, be using sanctions for a worthy goal.
However, it also shows the extent of arbitrary power
that the US exercises in this way.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*National self-interest stymying global cooperation,
a [poll of
powerful people] finds.*
* The world has entered a new era marked by zero-sum thinking in which
countries seek relative advantage through protectionism, self-interest
and rejection of mutually beneficial cooperation…*
Zero-sum thinking is more foolish now than ever, as we are all
threatened together by global heating disaster, and avoiding it
requires efforts by all. But there will always be countries that
are threatened more in the short term and others threatened less.
If that becomes an excuse to refuse to pull together, the shortsighted
foolish will doom themselves as well as their "rivals".
Before the Super Bowl had been played, Google and Microsoft bullshit generators
fabricated statistics for the game.
Why do people insist on calling them "artificial intelligence"?
"Artificial stupidity" would fit these bullshit generators better.
The wrecker
threatened to dun NATO members
for not paying enough by encouraging Putin to destroy them.
Other NATO members should contribute their share to he common defense, but being bullied
by the US would feel more like a protection racket than like protection from Russia.
Thus, the wrecker is seriously trying to wreck NATO while making it deniable.
Sycophantic Republicans go
overboard in supporting everything
the wrecker has said, and what they think he might perhaps say soon.
*The
super-rich got that way
through monopolies.*
I don't believe rich people inherently deserve to keep riches even if they have "earned"
them. When they have done so, it is a point arguing that they deserve a bigger part
rather than a smaller part, but does not imply that they deserve to keep all of it.
The system of trading and business is very useful, and eliminating it would be foolish, as
the Soviet Union and China have at times demonstrated. It does not follow that we should
bow down to the invisible hand and place business above the most important things,
as Boeing
and Pfizer
do. We must have the strait jacket ready for when it goes nuts.
Millions of Americans are obsessed
with a celebrity couple and tossing their
money away on conditioning themselves to feel even more obsessed.
It's a trap — stay out!
*Columbia Scolds Students
for "Unsanctioned" Gaza Rally Where They Were
Attacked With Chemicals.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
I heard the song, Daisy a Day, on an oldies radio station this week. I had never heard it
before. It's sweet and sad, and I drifted with the feelings. But then, when I heard the line
The
Mississippi
and the
Rhine
were so dry last summer that they could no longer carry shipping. And the Panama Canal didn't have
enough water supply
to operate normally.
Many Britons are using license plates, copied from other cars,
so that they can
dump fines on someone else.
Even worse, various agencies punish the victim and close their eyes to evidence that they
were victims of this.
That is a very British form of government screwup. I conjecture that it is caused by the
combination of automation and outsourcing to private companies.
*[The insurrectionist] is too old and incited a coup.
Biden is too old
and mixes up names. America, how to choose?*
Otherwise put, which is worse — forgetting details or a Big Lie?
The insurrectionist's memory is
not so good
either.
Biden said, of Israel's atrocities in Gaza (my words), that
"it's
gotta stop".
He gradually gets closer to insisting, but it is not clear whether he means that the
fighting has "gotta stop" or that fighting this intense has "gotta stop".
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The AMOC ocean current cycle is close to running amok.
It could
happen any year.
If it does, it could raise the height of the Atlantic Ocean by one
extra meter in a few decades, as well as making northern Europe colder
and drier and wiping out the Amazon rainforest.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to vote NO on unconditional aid to Israel.
You can also phone 1-833-STOP-WAR to convey the same message.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on YouTube to stop profiting from
global heating denialism.
(wordplay)
The petition also use the term "content creators" to refers to the makers of videos that
pretend global heating is unreal or not disastrous. The term fits in a way, since those
videos are designed to make people content with seeing our world go down the tubes.
Civilization depends on people to refuse to be content with this.
Please be a malcontent creator like me!
UK voters who consider Labour too right-wing, especially in its total
support for Israel's war policy, are organizing to run candidates
against Labour
They have concluded, as I have, that they cannot influence
Starmer-Labour except by running against it. I expect they will
influence Starmer-Labour's stand on Gaza. I hope they will also
influence Starmer-Labour stand on plutocracy and the environment.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
* China "threatens relatives in Tibet" to exert control over activists in
exile.*
China threatens relatives of dissident Chinese overseas, too.
*US climate scientist Michael Mann wins $1m in defamation lawsuit*
against right-wing denialists.
Tesla faces punishment for inadequate security on customer data.
Since Tesla cars snoop so much on customers, the data that can leak
is more than you might expect.
I recommend that before buying any car made in the last decade or so
you investigate how to prevent it from phoning home with any data,
prevent it from contacting cellular data networks (since they would track
the car's location), and cut off its access to GPS (so it can't remember that
for the next time it is serviced).
Europe's focus on data protection is a basic distraction. Data,
once collected, will be abused. The key to privacy is preventing
data collection.
*The world is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels — except for in three key
sectors*:
shipping, aviation and industry.
In addition, agriculture causes global heating due to
deforestation, fertilizer and methane from cows.
Resistance is growing in Brisbane to the
expense of stadium
construction for the planned 2032 Olympic games there.
In general, government subsidies to big stadiums
benefit various wealthy interests at the people's expense. The people of Brisbane got
angry at this and may have caused cancellation of part of the plans.
Olympic games tend to cause
nonfinancial kinds of harm, too — such as
repression of street vendors, repression of people passing by, and lasting increments in surveillance.
*[One] US hospital
treated 441
patients with severe injuries from border wall last year.* But
that's just one sector of the wall.
*‘It would be devastating’: inside [the wrecker]’s plan
to destroy
the EPA.*
*California fast-food
workers launch
new union.* Bravo!
*Israel appears to be in breach of ICJ orders on Gaza, [UN special
rapporteur] says.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Georgia police and FBI conduct Swat-style raids on "Cop City" activists'
homes.*
Some of the targets have no links to any known crimes, and were not
charged with crimes.
Thugs are carrying out repression fascist style, with the help of the
FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Will
Biden not make these agencies stop?
*The world is waging war on its children, in an
obscene mockery of international law.*
The article focuses on the short term harm which is occurring in a
number of regions. But let's not ignore that it will get worse in the
long term. The biggest attack against children is governments'
tolerance for continuing global heating, manifested in the failure to
firmly curb the planet roasters. This is likely to kill a large
fraction of today's children in a few decades.
In the Netherlands, couples who are gravely ill
can now
have euthanasia together and die hand in hand.
I think the couple presented in the article as an example would have
chosen to stay alive together if their medical problems had been
adequately treatable.
A survey of women in one Australian state found
that 2/5
suffer from chronic pain.
The main causes of this pain are affecting large numbers of people, so
they should have high priority in medical research.
Some rich people say they will
be proud to pay more taxes.
By raising taxes on the rich, we will make patriotic millionaires glad
and the greedy bastards unhappy. Both of the sides are good.
US citizens:
call on Citibank
to stop financing liquid natural gas.
US citizens:
call on your senators
to vote to ban polystyrene foam.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Arguing that the US must insist Netanyahu release Palestinian
politician Marwan Barghouti
from prison, so he can challenge HAMAS for leadership of the Palestinians.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Cyber-attacks by North Korea
raked in $3bn
to build nuclear weapons, UN monitors suspect.*
*For the past 15 years, the government has allowed Boeing to conduct its
own inspections related to many
manufacturing and safety issues.*
Government inspections generally exist for good reasons — reasons of safety.
Getting permission to inspect their own work is a favorite route to corrupting the
inspection system. It gives businesses a way to defeat the purpose of inspections.
Israel has besieged the al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis for 18 days. It
ordered people to leave,
but many wounded people were unable to leave and many medical personnel would not leave their patients.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
220 Israelis have been jailed for expressing various views criticizing
Israel'
s bombardment and siege
of Gaza.
I probably agree with some of them and disagree with others, but that
question is, in each case, a side issue. I support their freedom of
speech.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
* Refugees [in Gaza] crammed into the border city [of Radah] face a
terrifying choice:
stay for the expected attack, or flee back north through a war zone.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
HAMAS has proposed a
three step plan
to make a truce, release all the
hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, with the aim being
to agree on peace by the end of this.
This puts the hardest part at the end. Nonetheless, I find it promising, since it shows
HAMAS is not opposed to ending the war.
I think the US should demand that Israel drop its opposition to ending that.
Ibrahim Hamed, a US citizen, called on Biden to
rescue his mother,
Samaher Esmail, also a US citizen, from the Israeli army, which took
her prisoner recently in the West Bank.
There are no criminal charges against her. If there were, a trial
could perhaps determine whether there are grounds to imprison her.
But
Israel often
imprisons Palestinians
for
years
without trying
to
justify
it.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on your U.S. Senators and Representative
to protect free speech on campus.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The head of UNRWA says he fired employees that Israel accused of
aiding HAMAS
without having evidence
that they really did so.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The UK plans to make it
a crime to wear a mask
at a protest.
Always
more repression
in the UK.
*EU to take action against Hungary's
"sovereignty" law.*
*This is the year of the
climate election.
Journalists should cover it that way.*
I've treated
the
slowly developing
climate crisis as crucial
since 2000 or before.
*Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics:
he stood up to
the oil industry.*
He doesn't do this as often as we need, but he's a lot better than many
politicians that are entirely plutocratist. I also appreciate his
efforts to improve antitrust law and regulation of corporations,
which I've commented on here.
His efforts to end Israel's chain of atrocities are not firm enough
but they are
better than most
American politicians would dare do.
*American Base in Jordan Where Drone Killed 3 U.S. Troops Dogged by
Inadequate Air Defenses.*
I expect that it would be cheaper, as well as wiser, to provide better
defenses than to retaliate. A group of religious fanatics can't be
deterred by retaliation or threats, but its weapons can be defeated
like anyone else's.
Taylor Swift threatened to sue Jack Sweeney for posting public data
about the movements of her private jet.
I would expect that any one rich person's private jet contributes too little
to global heating to be worth a moral fuss for its own sake. But all the
private jets do amount to a significant (though small) fraction, and a campaign
calls on people to stop using them.
Keep in mind, when considering the excuse repeated in the article,
that many "carbon offsets" are bogus
and that the system of ill-checked "carbon offsets"
is of substantial help to the planet roasters in deflecting
justified public pressure for true decarbonization.
This is why I call for a carbon tax rather than "carbon trading".
*Italy's far-right government submits plan to decriminalize abuse of office.*
I'd expect right-wing plans to include abusing various offices.
But it is alarming that they openly propose changes in the law
so they can get away with that.
*Ugandan climate activists face charges after a month in maximum
security jail.*
Thugs already brutalized them. Now they could be imprisoned for a
year for a nonviolent protest.
The law being used to prosecute them was imposed by Britain when
Uganda was a British colony. Ironically, Britain is on nonviolent climate defense protesters.
*Quitting smoking
reduces cancer risk at any age,
says study.*
*U.S. immigration authorities locked
thousands
of people in solitary confinement in 2023 as the United States continues to flout
international human rights standards in its sprawling network of immigration detention facilities.*
Facebook and Instagram plan to label all images that were
created with generative machine
learning
systems.
It is misleading to call generative machine learning "intelligence",
but labeling its output is a good thing to do.
Groups that support Iran attacked US troops in Iraq. The US
counterattacked, but that was probably futile.
I would expect that the attackers are religious fanatics and would be
thrilled to be martyrs, so fighting them will tend to be ineffective
unless the US army can destroy them. That would be quite difficult.
The US must refuse to be intimidated by them.
If the US were to drop its support for Israel's fighting in Gaza
to appease fanatics, that would only make the US seem weak.
However, for the US to insist on supporting Israel's fighting in Gaza
in order to spite hostile fanatics would be childish.
The US should do the right thing in Gaza, and the right thing
is to make Israel stop its war crimes.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*US court bans three weedkillers [based on dicamba] and finds EPA
broke law in approval process.*
*Federal Court Halts Spraying of Monsanto’s Dicamba Pesticide Across
Millions of Acres of Cotton, Soybeans.*
The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing
four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing
maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again.
Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part
of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up
and running. That's where the real fault is.
I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair
companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on
their boards. Perhaps 66%.
US citizens: call on the US Supreme Court to protect the abortion pill.
I usually don't post (or sign) petitions addressed to courts, because
courts are likely to ignore public opinion about the judgment. But
this time they might calculate they should heed it.
US citizens: call on President Biden and Secretary Granholm to reject
all LNG projects.
The UK government has cut funding for universities to the point where
many will have to shut down entirely, if they cease to get foreign
students from wealthy families who pay heavy fees.
*[The saboteur-in-chief's] allies and advisers have hinted at a more methodical second term:
driving forward fossil fuel production, sidelining scientists and
overturning rules.*
*EU lays out plan to cut greenhouse emissions by 90% by 2040.*
Often you can detect these right-wing systematic liars by their
constant pretensions to be telling the truth. Compare with the
bullshitter, for instance.
*Repetition has blunted the art museum protests so much that the pumpkin
soup assault on the Mona Lisa felt pathetic. More effective tactics are
needed.*
The UK has a procedure for ministerial staff to raise complaints of
mistreatment by ministers, but staff say that invoking it is so
painful to use that it discourages anyone from filing complaints.
*"Bitter Blow" to Biodiversity and Health as EU Pulls Proposed
Pesticide Rule.*
Julian Assange's final hearing
is Tuesday, February 20. A rally that day at noon is at
the State House in Boston. We're hoping Rep Jim McGovern will send
a statement to be read by his staff and are asking other big
speakers, and will also want our regulars to speak. We'll do our
best to get press there.
Furthermore in Boston, on Saturday, February 10, starting at 11:00
there will be a two-hour "postcard party" for asking each the
441 members of the US House of Representatives to sign onto
H
Res 934 to drop the charges against Assange.
*World "not prepared" for climate disasters after
warmest ever
January.*
Unprecedented disasters have just occurred in California (extreme rains)
and the Valparaíso region (wildfires entering a major city).
Private equity is gobbling up large parts of the
US nursing home business.
This puts patients in danger since private equity can amass lots of money,
create an oligopoly, and get away with abuses.
The study suggests that "regulation may be needed." I will take a
stronger stand and call for firm limits — perhaps even prohibiting
private equity combinations from owning home nursing businesses.
I've also proposed prohibiting private equity from
buying up lots
of rental housing.
Pakistan's government has democratic forms but the substance is military rule.
I have no way of knowing whether Imran Khan is guilty of those
corruption charges. (I don't know the details of them.) I also don't
know whether this is an instance of selective prosecution over
something all politicians do. But the "un-Islamic marriage" charges
clearly demonstrate that the Pakistani state is repressive and unjust.
That has, however, been true for a long time, because Pakistan sentences
people to death for "blasphemy".
I urge everyone to stay away from Pakistan.
A UK court has ruled people cannot be fired for being anti-Zionist.
That policy is just: whether to be Zionist or anti-Zionist is a matter
of political views, and people should not be fired for disagreeing
about those.
Being antisemitic is a different matter: that is a form of bigotry,
like antimuslimism or antiarabism. We must be careful to distinguish
clearly between antisemitism and criticism of Israel or its actions.
I am pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
If misogynistic porn isn't bad enough, propaganda against masturbation
goes one harmful step further.
I have a hunch that "masturbation abstinence" advice comes from the same
people that campaign to prohibit abortion and birth control.
The London thug department arrested a homeless man for refusing to
leave the tent where he was living. Then, viciously, the thugs stole
and destroyed his tent and his other belongings.
The department has apologized and agreed to pay damages. That's
better treatment than is normal for thugs. But even when they arrest
someone for a valid reason, that does not excuse confiscating or
destroying poor people's property when preserving it was possible.
Students at Northwestern University face criminal charges for publishing
a parody of the school's student newspaper. It criticized the school's
support for Israel and its atrocities in Gaza. They wrapped their parody
around some of the copies of the newspaper they were parodying.
They are being prosecuted under an obscure law against "theft of
advertising services". It prohibits inserting other material into
newspapers. Does the law cover wrapping a different cover around the
newspaper? In terms of advertising, that is very different.
More deeply, prosecuting people for expressing their political views
in a parody is an attack on freedom of speech. No matter if it is
offensive to someone -- since it is about a real political issue, we
must recognize its redeeming social value whether we agree with it or
not.
It seems clear that this is part of a campaign of persecution,
in the US, Britain and parts of Europe, of people who publicly
defend Palestinians rights.
I disagree with those people on a least one point. They call Israel's
war in Gaza "genocide"; in my view, it has not reached that level yet,
but it is heading that way.
But that disagreement is not pertinent to the issues of raised
by prosecuting them.
(Later): The prosecutors have dropped the charges.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Researchers say that the recommendation algorithms of "social media"
platforms are "amplifying misogynistic [messages]."
This is because companies design them to get users addicted by
amplifying whatever leads users to stay on the dis-service longer.
I've proposed passing a law to
disconnect recommendation engines from the platforms,
and allow users to choose the recommendation engine to use with any given platform.
Please don't call works "content."
Doing so disparages all
works. The works which are misogynistic
may all be disgusting and despicable on account of that, but equating
works with "content" implies that all works -- whether misogynistic or
not -- have no value except to keep a box full.
*Most Republicans aren't aware of [the insurrectionist]’s various
[criminal accusations and lawsuits].*
Putin has launched intense persecution of gays in Russia.
US citizens: call on the SEC to propose again the Stock Buyback Disclosure
Rule.
Stock buybacks used to be prohibited entirely, before a plutocratist
change in the law. We should undo that change and prohibit them
entirely once again. But this rule will be much better than no change.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
This would not do as much good as raising taxes generally on high
incomes together with limiting the ability to shelter large amounts of
wealth from taxation. We should continue to push for that as what we
really want.
*A 100km-long curtain moored to the Amundsen Sea bed in Antarctica could
prevent catastrophic flooding elsewhere, say scientists.*
I can see things that might fail, but it may be worth a try.
Reportedly, former president Do-Dirty of the Philippines is advocating
secession of the large island, Mindanao.
Do-Dirty was elected for the fame he got by running a "war on drugs"
in which official thugs killed people on the street, then claimed they
were drug dealers. Some were really drug dealers and some were not.
Without putting them on trial, the thugs had no way of knowing.
The article makes the error of describing Mindanao as a "town". I am
not very confident about the rest of what it says, but I have no other
information.
Mississippi Republicans want to make it impossible to repeal abortion
restrictions through a vote by the public.
Much of what Putin says about Ukrainian prisoners is bullshit. Some
could be true, but we can't be sure of any of it on his say-so.
Putin's henchmen are bullying and brainwashing the kidnapped Ukrainian
children. Ukraine has the name of around 20,000 kidnapped children,
but there are probably much more.
There are strange variations in how Russians treat kidnapped children
and the Ukrainian relatives who search for them. I theorize that he
has not systematically informed all Russians of what he is trying to
do, and not given everyone orders to cooperate. The result seems to
be that individual Russians who deal with these children react
to events according to their views and values.
Forest fire has invaded the city of Viña del Mar, Chile, just north of
Valparaíso.
I asked a friend there if he is ok.
there is bipartisan support for a federal shield law to protect
journalists and their sources.
(satire) *NRA Narrows Search For New Leadership With Round Of Russian
Roulette.*
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.
Biden seems to have in mind a deal for diplomatic recognition of Palestine. But it faces many obstacles, and probable obstruction by Republicans
under orders from the wrecker is not the biggest of them.
I don't think the US can wait several months to stop supporting the
killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, not even to achieve
the hoped-for progress.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Scientology-linked UK drug rehab left vulnerable people "traumatized".*
The asylum seekers in the UK, given housing only on a remote barge,
are living
in terrible conditions and say it is like a prison.
MPs told ministers, "We were disheartened to see some of the living
conditions on the Bibby Stockholm, with many individuals having to
share small, cramped cabins [originally designed for one person],
often with people [up to six] they do not know [some of whom spoke a
different language to them]."
One said told a reporter tat "We are concerned that housing asylum
claimants on Bibby Stockholm is leaving them in a claustrophobic
environment, isolated from external support, including legal advice,
and without important links to community, faith or family, potentially
for months on end."
Companies that write phony scientific papers for a fee have
infiltrated the editorial boards of "real" academic papers.
That led to 10,000 articles retracted last year.
Municipal surveillance cameras installed in Ukraine but produced in Russia
could be doing surveillance for the Putin forces
You can't trust a product with nonfree software..
British school inspectors used unreliable portable computers to take
notes when they interviewed school the personnel. A visit to a school
could last for some time, and if the computer crashed during a visit,
the notes already entered were lost and the inspector had to
reenter them from memory.
Careers could be wiped out because of the unreliability of reentering them.
Why did the people managing this believe that was acceptable?
Gauging that the US approval of Bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds)
without trustworthy regulation makes them sucker bait.
I certainly will not but into them. I don't want to speculate; I want
safe investments that don't require being watched with an eagle-eye
every day or second-guessing everyone else.
Israel's siege and bombardment has made most Palestinians in Gaza want
to flee to Egypt.
That is what Israel wants -- to depopulate Gaza of Palestinians. And
the cruelty of its treatment of them seems designed to pressure them
to run.
To enable Israel to succeed in terrorizing Palestinians into fleeing
is not a just outcome. Israel should stop its reign of terror, and the US
should make sure that it does.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Deadly, cheap and widespread: how Iran-supplied drones are changing the
nature of warfare.*
What makes them so dangerous to the US now is that the religious
fanatics that use them cannot be deterred by the expected losses from
a probable counterattack.
Small, cheap drones have destabilized warfare, but I don't think the
instability will last. Every country now needs a defense against
drone-bearing fanatics. I expect the US will have a cheap
counter-drone weapon a few years from now.
*Robocalls with AI voices to be regulated under [existing law, the]
Telephone Consumer Protection Act.*
* [Governor] Abbott is using the same misguided legal arguments once
used by the Confederacy. Some of the supreme court is listening.*
A long interview with Bernie Sanders, about the insurrectionist's threat
to end
democracy in the US, and related issues.
*[Right-wing] activist
who led ouster of Harvard president linked to "scientific racism" journal.*
The
trade pluses and minuses
of taking Britain out of the EU add up to an enormous minus.
This is not to count all he suffering that the Tories have imposed on
Britain by restricting immigration, and the sadness of people who
cannot go to work or retire across that border.
I forecast that leaving the EU would be a disaster for Britain
if
the Tories were in charge, and that it might be beneficial if Labour were in charge. The
first one is what happened, and my forecast came true, and for the reasons I gave. A
plutocratist party would use all "opportunities" for dooH niboR. By contrast, it is clear
that Corbyn's preference to maintain a customs union with the EU would have avoided a big
part of the harm, and he would have encouraged foreign workers to come and keep the NHS
and other public services functioning.
As for Starmer Labour, he is almost as plutocratist as the Tories were
then, so that party would not reduce the harm much.
Thailand has forbidden campaigning to change the law that forbids
speaking of the monarch or the monarchy in a less than respectful way.
The coral reef heat damage warning system has added new levels of
warning that will be required by the higher ocean temperatures our
greenhouse emissions have brought about.
As the British state cuts funds to universities, it makes them turn
increasingly to wealthy foreign students, whose money keeps them afloat.
This is, of course, bad for British students. But that's the general
pattern: right-wing budget cuts are bad for nearly all the non-rich.
The cuts were started by the Tory party when it stood purely and
simply for dooH niboR (take from the poor and give to the rich).
Now that the Tory Party has moved towards the extreme right, it sees
this as an opportunity to knock down the non-rich and weaken them.
The Labour Party of the past would have offered to undo the cuts,
but now that it has become a center-right party it is not interested.
(Here's the latest example
of Labour's new alignment.)
Labour is also about to eliminate most of its planned investment in avoiding
environmental disaster
even as it courts business with deregulation.
A campaign based on what some call "ableism" condemns the plan by a
woman to play Richard III. Peculiarly, not because of a gender
difference, but because she is not "disabled".
Can a non-disabled 21th-century actor properly play a powerful but
physically disabled 15th-century noble? Can a disabled 21th-century
actor properly play a powerful non-disabled 15th-century noble? I
think we can only answer, "Maybe — try and we'll see."
This production raises a similar issue about gender: Can a
21th-century woman play a 15th-century male king? Is it reasonable
for her to try? Can a 21th-century man play a 15th-century reigning
queen? Is it reasonable for him to try? I think we can only answer,
"Maybe — try and we'll see."
Interestingly, the article does not even mention that question. It
accepts that a woman can play a male character. If society accepts
that, why object? Try it, and we'll judge your acting ability.
So why not do the same for disability?
The dispute may be based on confusion about the 15-th century facts.
Was Richard III "disabled" as we understand the term? I can't be
certain but it seems that he was not.
Whatever pain or inconvenience scoliosis caused him, it did not
interfere with his physical activities. He could ride a horse in
battle, wield a sword in battle, and lead an army to victory.
He impressed people through success in vigorous sports.
My conclusion is that he was not disabled in any practical sense.
I think that disabled actors will be better off if they are accepted
for playing any and all roles, rather than guaranteed all the disabled
characters' roles.
Alleging local business magnates illegally contributed indirectly to
the re-election campaign of NYC night-mayor Adams.
The reason to do this would be to buy support for their interests, and
that would not work unless Adams knew what policies he had to support
or block in order to earn those contributions.
The UK's decaying post office shows Americans what DeJoy is aiming to
achieve here.
*Paris residents set to vote on plan to triple parking charges for
SUVs.*
The extra parking charge would be good, since it would discourage
SUVs. But parking is only one of the areas in which SUVs do harm.
They make collisions more damaging to pedestrians and people in other
vehicles, and they increase pollution. The SUV penalty should be bigger
and apply everywhere.
Ohio is voting on a constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering in
that state, by having an independent commission draw the electoral
districts.
Are socially harmful widespread practices caused by
market failure, or
by bad government
regulations? This article argues that "market failure" is usually caused by bad
regulations, and often that is true. But what causes those bad regulations, and why don't
we change them?
Why, for instance, doesn't the US regulate the emissions of SUVs and
pickup trucks
like cars?
Environmentalists have pressed for this, but they have been rebuffed by the US government.
That is lobbying at work. Any bad regulations in the market tends to
benefit some companies, and they will spend part of the benefits to
lobby to maintain the regulations that benefit them.
Most economic policy choices are not between a "free" market and a nonfree one.
A market requires rules;
the question is, which rules will it have? And how are they to be chosen?
In a democratic country, those rules are decided democratically. In a flawed democracy
such as the US, they are decided by contention between democracy and lobbying. Almost
every bad regulation is protected by lobbying, so fixing it requires a battle.
That's why I support election of progressive officials, such as Senator Sanders and
Representative Pressley, who will be eager to go against the lobbyists and fix the bad
regulations and laws.
Human Rights Watch reports that *human
rights are in decline globally
as leaders fail to uphold laws.*
How
Greta Thunberg was arrested
and charged with a crime for a nonviolent climate defense protest.
The thug that conveyed the threat to Ms Thunberg did so in a refined
way, avoiding verbal brutality. However, the substance of the demand
supported a policy that kills a substantial number of people now,
and will kill much larger numbers in the future. The message of
the protester at the trial was right on:
Canadian thugs arrested journalist Brandi Morin as she was covering their dismantling of a
homeless indigenous people's
camp.
Climate defenders were prosecuted for continuing a nonviolent protest
in London after being ordered to stop.
The case was dismissed on the grounds that the order was not communicated to them properly.
That was the right result, but the reason for it means that human rights are not safe in
the UK. In effect, this judge turned this case into a warning shot.
*European politicians weaken climate policies
amid farmer protests.*
It's much more comfortable in the short term not to bother preparing to keep climate
disaster small enough to survive it. But it is foolish in the long term.
Climate defenders called on the US Department of Agriculture
to take account of the contribution to global heating of
meat and dairy production.
George Monbiot: *In the UK and around the world, those who challenge
rich corporations are being hounded and crushed with
ever-more inventive penalties.*
*Why in the UK, can you now potentially receive a longer sentence for "public nuisance"
— non-violent civil disobedience — than for rape or manslaughter?*
Monbiot connects this to plutocracy.
See the recent Greta Thunberg example.
*One toilet for 500 people:
death and disease
as Palestinians flee to Rafah.*
*Unless Israel changes course, it
could be legally culpable
for mass starvation.*
So far, what Israel has done to Palestinian civilians in Gaza is
violent killing of many civilians, and imposing great privation. To
call it "genocide" is an exaggeration. But if Israel continues adding
to this crime, including by knowingly causing famine in Gaza, the crime
will grow to become genocide for real.
Israel's true friends must join Palestine's true friends in making Israel stop.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
A Canadian man who sent many people suicide kits has been charged with many murders. Equating
facilitation of suicide
with murder is willful blindness.
The article obtusely refuses to entertain any doubt that providing means to commit suicide
constitutes murder. Even if the author believes that, does perse not recognize that it is
possible to disagree?
At the same time, it occurs to me that someone may have requested means to commit suicide,
not in order to commit suicide, but in order to murder someone else. Ideally, people who
want to commit suicide should be able to get the means from someone who would refuse to
provide them to someone like that.
Robert Reich explains how the bullshitter and Republicans
are trying to spread
chaos to discourage non-fascists from voting. After creating as
much real chaos as they can, they pretend there is even more of it,
hoping Americans will give up and not vote, or support a fascist
strong man.
I urge you to vote in Democratic primaries for the progressive
candidate, if there is one. And in the final election I urge you to
vote for Democrats, unless a liberal independent had a good chance of
winning.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the
American bumblebee as an endangered species.
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 special meal highlights well-known foods that are in danger of
becoming unavailable due to global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the assault Weapons ban.
In the US: Say you stand with union journalists in the face of illegal
firings.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate
Gov. Abbott's human rights abuses.
You can tell Labour is a plutocratist party when it gives higher
priority to satisfying the demands of bank CEOs than to achieving the
goals of the voters.
Some Israeli ministers call for restricting the already inadequate
humanitarian aid to Gaza, as a means of war.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*AOC says no one should be
‘tossed out of public discourse’
for accusing Israel of genocide.*
I disagree with that accusation — I've explained
the difference
between
genocide and a series of atrocities — but I agree completely with AOC's point.
As long as we tolerate people in public discourse despite their advocating the horrible
things that Republicans espouse (or, should we say, "rape"?) nowadays, it is absurd to
condemn a person totally for a disagreement over the level of condemnation Israel deserves
for killing 25,000 Palestinian civilians.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The Norfolk Southern mega-railroad responded to the derailment in
East
Palestine, Ohio,
by increasing its lobbying expenditures to make sure Congress
does nothing to require it to hire enough workers to ensure safety.
The derailment, the toxic gas leak and the fire would not have
happened if the train had had
a full crew.
California is proposing an interesting approach towards
antisocial media platforms.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these
options should not be limited to minors — every user
should have this choice.
(Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them
like children and
retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's
addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it
yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices
on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or
none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not
only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the
right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And
collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
China seeks unceasingly to recruit spies in Taiwan.
Why should Taiwanese fight China? Not out of hatred for China the
country, but rather to protect freedom in Taiwan -- and someday,
perhaps, to bring it to China as well.
*[Tory] ministers plan to push cash-strapped English councils to sell
assets.*
The Tories cuts in support for local government now turn out to be
part of a two-part dooH niboR scheme. First, cut the aid to local
governments to the point that they can't do anything for the non-rich,
not even parks and public libraries, not even the most essential
(which they must do anyway). Then, compel them to make up the
shortfall by selling public buildings and land in a hurry, for less
than their market value, which is in effect a hand-out to the rich.
The two parts add up to dooH niboR as a whole: take from the poor, and
give to the rich.
A seabed mining company is using NAFTA to prevent Mexico from
protecting seabed ecosystems in the Gulf of California.
NAFTA is a business-supremacy treaty
and it contains an ISDS clause.
Businesses can use those against any government. I call them "I Sue
Democratic States" clauses because democratic states sometimes heed
popular demand to make regulations to stop business operations from
doing massive damage. This damage can be enormous -- it can include
global heating disaster, which may result in the collapse of
civilization -- so preventing it justifies war.
One of the few good things that the wrecker did as president, one of
the few cases in which he did what he said he would do, was replacing
NAFTA with a new version, which ISTR eliminated the ISDS clause.
I wonder, didn't that treaty eliminate this case? If not, why not?
Could a further revision of NAFTA succeed in abolishing all the
existing cases under that one treaty?
The EU has delayed a rule requiring each farm to set aside 4% of its
usable farmland for protection of wildlife and the soil.
It is safe to delay this, but in the long term such protection is
absolutely necessary to avoid disaster. I suggest phasing it in,
perhaps introducing the rule by increments of 0.5% each year. After 8
years of that, it will reach 4%, but by going slowly it will give
markets time to adjust.
Some investors in BP are demanding it cancel plans to ramp down fossil
fuel extraction, saying it could make more money pumping more.
A few decades from now, if we do not curb global heating, all that
wealth will disappear along with the framework in which it is
meaningful, But these fools don't look at the long term.
What this shows is that we must force the world to reduce fossil fuel
extraction at a planned pace. We must make sure the world does not fulfill
these short-sighted investors' expectations.
Thailand has arrested a Russian dissident rock band and threatens to
deport them to Russia, where Putin would imprison them.
The band was allowed to leave Thailand, so it is out of danger.
Understanding why nocturnal insects orbit lamps shows why light
pollution at night can wipe them out.
Fossil fuel companies were warned about the danger of global heating
in 1954, from research that they funded to track the level of CO2 in
the air.
The US should pay compensation for the civilian casualties of its
fighting in Somalia. And elsewhere, too.
*New Zealand to ban PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in cosmetics from 2026.*
Australia finds that car manufacturer are still publishing greatly
underestimated figures for pollution emissions.
The Tories are now considering imposing conscription on the UK because young
people don't want to join the army.
There is not much about the UK as it is misgoverned that would inspire
people to fight to defend it. The only argument I know of is,
"Government could be even worse."
Global heating is causing sea-level rise. The better-off people in
the prosperous parts of Miami (mostly whites) want to move west to
higher ground, into neighborhood now inhabited mainly by blacks.
To facilitate this, redevelopment projects tear down old housing projects
and build new housing, most of which is rented out for more than the old
inhabitants can afford.
Because of the extent of racism in the US, this phenomenon has a
racial tinge. The wealthier people who drive poor people out of
higher ground are more often white, and the poor people driven out
tend to be nonwhite.
But that detail is not what makes this an injustice. If the people
moving in were the same mix of races as those being driven out, only
richer, the injustice would be the same. A good society is not cruel
to anyone.
Governments ought to buy out every residence in what is or will be a
flood zone, and build new flood-safe rental housing for tenants to
move to. And help people move out of regions such as Florida, which
are going to be too hot and wet whether inundated or not. That is
what progressive officials would do -- while reducing the size of this
problem by vigorously curbing global heating.
*EU [proposes] force cosmetic companies to pay to reduce microplastic
pollution.*
This is just a first step, but it will get started on a path that the
world needs to follow much further.
*Israeli ministers attend conference calling for ‘voluntary migration’ of
Palestinians.*
I am sure any such migration would be no more "voluntary" than the use
of nonfree software today: done under pressure that is hard to resist.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to overturn the "Citizens" United decision.
Those corporations called their organization "Citizens United", but I have no reason to
endorse their distortion, so I call it the
Corporations United decision.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
There are proposals to impose censorship on material being shared
digitally between individuals by means of requiring that computers
(including snoop phones) contain a specific nonfree program which
would check for forbidden communications before end-to-end encryption
goes to work. That system design is called "client-side scanning".
For me, the first argument against this is self-evident: nonfree
software is unjust and requiring any nonfree software is inexcusable.
The second argument is monitoring of people's private communications
is tyranny, and that once the system exists it will surely be used
to censor political views.
However, to persuade officials who don't care about those human rights
issues, neither the unjustice of nonfree software nor that of privacy
will suffice. Other arguments are needed.
Here are some practical arguments against
mandating client-side
scanning.
*The women suing Tennessee for being
denied abortions [which they
needed
for medical reasons].*
Vicious Republicans, shame on you!
Economist James Meadway integrates
awareness of global heating
and its effects and consequences into understanding of the economy.
When the climate was fairly stable, and fluctuations were temporary
("weather"), it may have worked to treat those as externalities.
They are small changes and can be modeled with perturbation theory.
But when global heating is taking every measurement off the charts,
to assume they are small perturbations is simply false.
*It's right to probe UNRWA's problems &mdash yet what would replace it? Its
critics have no answer.*
Swatting has extended to various right-wing US officials and
politicians.
Swatting is a dangerous form of violence, and its existence is a blot
on our society. It used to be focused on people hated by
right-wingers, and that often led the SWAT thugs (often right-wing
themselves) to shoot first without noting that there was nothing
wrong.
Now that the victims may be themselves right-wing, thugs may learn the
habit of considering there may be nothing actually wrong, before they
shoot anyone.
Proposing an international network of Green Cross organizations that
would help the people struck by climate disasters beyond the ability
of a national government to deal with.
Bernie Sanders: *The United States must make it clear to Netanyahu
that we will not provide another dollar to support his inhumane,
illegal war.*
I agree.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Delays have made the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant so expensive that
the main investor, EDF, looks to lose money on it.
Hinkley Point C should be canceled and the sunk costs written off.
Building nuclear power plants as a means of decarbonization is idiotic
because renewable electric generation and battery storage are much
cheaper and much faster to build. The decision to build that power
reactor has to have been influenced by illegitimate goals.
*How [defunct] Beloved Indie Blog "The Hairpin" Turned Into an AI
Clickbait Farm.* The article reports that some businesses are
systematically buying expired domain names of sites that were of value
once, and doing this to them.
The copyright on the articles formerly posted on that blog site did
not expire with the site's domain. What the site is described as
doing to some of those articles sounds like copyright infringement to
me. This article does not say who holds those copyrights, or how the
clickbait farmer could have found those old articles.
You may have heard that I advocate major relaxation of copyright law.
If the changes I propose there were carried out, that would not alter
the legal situation of this issue.
*Kagame's government [in Rwanda] targeted journalists who uncovered killings,
disappearances and torture linked to the regime.*
Many young Britons can't afford the education needed to get a good job.
A substantial number can't afford the costs of working, such as clothing
and commuting.
I suppose the latter will eventually compel employers to offer higher
wages. But the education problem won't solve itself that way.
The NSA gets Americans' location data without any sort of warrant
by buying it from data brokers.
The NSA kept this secret, and Senator Wyden had to block a
nomination to extract the admission that the NSA does this. I presume
he knew this for a fact, from secret sources he was allowed to see,
but in order to take action to stop the practice he needed something
he could lawfully cite.
The NSA currently says it "minimizes" such collection, which means
doing no more than it finds "necessary" for whatever goal it is
working on. How much is that? We don't know.
We do know there is danger that a year from now the US will have a
dictator nominally called "president", a dictator that cooperates with
Putin and whose supporters include state officials who seek to repress
abortion and women who get abortions. What will the NSA and other
government agencies do then, with the location data they can obtain?
Of course, we should do our best to make sure that the wrecker loses
to Biden again, and we should prepare to crush the coup that he
already encourages his followers to mount.
But this should also remind us that it is unacceptable for the systems
we use to keep track of our activities. The most sensitive personal data
is about details:
Hostile urban architecture, designed to eliminate all opportunities to
comfortably rest or pause, makes cities unpleasant for doing anything
other than rushing through to the next purchase or errand.
This fits perfectly with the spirit that criminalizes homelessness
and, in some US cities, spends far more to persecute homeless people
than it would cost to give them homes.
Governor DeMentis has one year left to attack freedom in Florida.
Citizens wonder what more they will lose.
How could people who want to make Britain just, kind and welcoming possibly
get past Starmer? This article suggests ways.
Oil and gas utilities, and electric utilities that use fossil fuels,
spend customer's payments on climate crisis denial. California is looking
at prohibiting this.
(satire) *Congress Reduces SNAP Benefits To One Free Treat On
Recipient's Birthday.*
Restrictions on abortion in the US are interfering with sex and with
forming sexual/romantic relationships.
However, it has encouraged more use of birth control, including condoms.
That is good -- but that good consequence does not justify the anxiety
and fear caused by banning abortion.
Americans (and everyone else):
get vaccinated for measles
(unless you've already had all the diseases it covers, or the vaccine).
Moscow now requires clinics to record the audio of
every meeting with
a patient.
A
Houthi attack
set an oil tanker on fire, just south of Yemen.
* UN court's ruling is
devastating for Israel
and awkward for [its] allies such as the UK and US, which belittled South Africa's case.*
The court did not label the crimes Israel has already committed as "genocide", but pointed
out properly that they head in a direction which, if continued, would amount to genocide.
And it ordered Israel to bring these crimes to a halt.
The US should help make sure it does so.
If this judgment is not heeded, how
can Putin ever be held
to account?*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Biden has ordered a reconsideration of the criteria for
approving
fossil gas export
terminals. As a consequence, several proposals are now on hold.
If this leads to stricter criteria, and to less construction of new export terminals, that
could be a significant step towards avoiding climate disaster. (Although nowhere near
enough by itself.)
*We
must start urgently talking
about the dangers of a second [insurrectionist bullshit] presidency.*
Congress was considering a deal which would trade military aid for Ukraine for restoring the
wrecker's
border wall and cruel treatment
if people crossing the border.
The articles I've seen do not explicitly say, but I think that the aid
for Ukraine would be temporary and the border repression would be permanent.
That alone makes it a deal for suckers. Never make a permanent concession in exchange for
a temporary one! If you accept that kind of deal, you're inherently at a disadvantage and
you will lose ground every year.
Israel accused 12 members
of the UNRWA staff of fighting for HAMAS or other terrorist groups. This is being used as
an excuse to cut off the aid to the Palestinians. Israel kept the information secret for
months until a time when it badly needed to distract public opinion from the war crimes
court's judgment
against Israel.
The UNRWA is a UN humanitarian aid agency, not intended as a police
force or peace keepers. It has 13,000 or so staff in Gaza,
99% of
whom are Palestinians from Gaza.
If 12 of them were fighting for HAMAS, that amounts to 0.1% of the
total staff. For a large organization in Gaza to have such a small
fraction of HAMAS fighters is doing pretty well at avoiding them.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Famine in Gaza
is being made ‘inevitable’ says UN rapporteur. Countries defunding UNRWA, the main aid
distributor in Gaza, are accused of collectively punishing more than 2.2 million Palestinians.*
* António Guterres says loss of funding from US and [other countries],
[for humanitarian aid for Gaza], means aid into Gaza for whole of
this
month cannot be guaranteed.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Governor Abbott of Texas has declared that he can disobey the federal
government in the name of Texas. He has also clearly echoed the
manifestos of the secessionists
of 1861.
The wrecker's supporters have been
preparing for rebellion
for over three years. They used violence on 6 Jan 2021, followed
shortly thereafter by threats of violence against senators and their
families. So I've been expecting an open confrontation sooner or later.
Better now than later!
The bullshitter's campaign strategy is to talk tough and defiant, giving the impression
that he is "stronger." Biden tends to try to avoid sharp confrontation, which plays into
the wrecker's hands.
Abbott's hint of secessionism gives Biden a chance to show that he is the stronger one.
For instance, he can federalize the Texas National Guard now, and order it to take down
the barbed wire it has helped place at the border.
That would provide an opportunity to discharge immediately any guard member who refuses to
obey that order. Showing that insurrectionists will not be tolerated will help keep the
guard loyal in any future rebellion, both by expelling the disloyal and by reminding the
loyal guard members of their duty to defend democracy against insurrection.
Ukraine builds
long-distance attack drones
and uses them to attack Russia's oil export terminals.
*Rampant Biden Administration Oil, Gas
Drilling Approvals Continue
to
Undermine U.S. Climate Commitments.*
No amount of renewable electric generation will avert global heating
disaster unless it leads to reducing total greenhouse gas emissions.
For civilization's survival,
that must be the goal.
Bird flu is infecting some chicken farms in the US. When a farm is
infected, it will infect nearly
all the chickens,
and the government requires killing all the chickens to hinder spread to other farms.
If that were the only way the virus can spread, this would be an effective way to stop the
spread. But it may be useless while wild birds continue to spread the virus.
I wonder, therefore: if we let those chickens live, would a few of them, resistant to the
virus, survive and recover? Would that lead to resistant breeds?
Apple has announced a
plan for allowing other app stores
for the iMonsters, and it seems likely to exclude free (libre) software.
The problem is that users will have to pay a fee, and it sounds like
the redistributor will have to collect that fee — but there is no way
to do that without using nonfree software and insisting that users run it.
That is not certain, though. Depending on details, the problem may exist or not.
The operating system of the iMonsters is
full of nonfree software
(which is, as usual, malware). That is unfortunate and unjust, but
it's Apple's doing, not ours. Distributing free software that can run
on iMonsters would not make us culpable for what Apple does. If Apple
charges the user money to install our free programs, Apple would be
culpable for that too, but again we would not be.
If Apple requires whoever redistributes the code to pay a fee and
collect it from the users, participation in that would be odious, and
perhaps (depending on details) financially prohibitive, but supposing
it is possible it would not be culpable for us. This culpability would
naturally fall on Apple, along with all the rest.
However, if collecting that fee from the users requires us to ask the
user to run nonfree software — for instance, the nonfree JavaScript
code sent by Stripe for payment — we would be culpable for that.
There is no getting around this.
Compare with the Android situation. The site f-droid.org uses
free/libre programs which you can download and install with free
software. The Android/Linux operating system includes nonfree
software, and even malware, but that is not f-droid's doing nor that
of the developers of the free programs distributed there.
Why hasn't the EU required Apple to permit an Fdroid-like distributor
for free/libre software for iMonsters? It is because the EU directive
is based on the concept of more "competition" and not on "freedom for
users." In the competition framing, all people need is "more choices",
never mind if all of the choices are unjust.
The military rulers of Burma have suffered major defeats; large
units have
surrendered.
In 2008, Israel
and Palestine came very close to agreeing on peace and mutual recognition. The deal they
almost accepted then could be modified into a deal for today.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The local toxic air pollution released by tar sands oil extraction has
been
underestimated by a large factor
because of a flaw in the system used to measure it.
The article misuses the concept of percent; as a result, I can't tell
for sure what the factor might be. As best I can tell, the
factor of underestimation ranges from 18 to 62, but I can't be sure.
A UK court ruled that
victims of trafficking and slavery
should be allowed to stay in the UK while their asylum claims were heard. Tory ministers
secretly decided to disregard that ruling.
To me it seems unjust to make
asylum seekers leave the country
they are asking for asylum in while their cases are decided. Especially by sending them
to a country which is unsafe (Rwanda) by means of a law saying that courts should
disregard that country's unsafeness.
A UK proposal for
taxing the wealthy
more heavily refers to family
with middle-class family incomes, equivalent to $85k per year, as "wealthy".
Using the word "wealthy" with such a low threshold surprises me, and I can
understand why people and families with such incomes conclude that "the
highest 10% of incomes" is too broad a filter to be defined as "wealthy".
US citizens:
call on Congress
not to make new tax cuts for the rich in 2024.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:
call on Congress
to reject the creation of a "fiscal commission",
since that is a scheme to cut Social Security and Medicare.
US citizens: support the End Child Poverty Act.
If you watch US TV news networks: call on them to stop inviting
election deniers on the air.
US citizens: call on Biden and Congress to Expand Social Security.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to stop Big Pharma from jacking up the price
of prescription drugs.
US citizens: call on Congress not to add permanent restrictions to the
right to seek asylum.
A permanent concession is too high a price to pay for a temporary
benefit.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to condition further military supplies
for Israel on respecting the human rights of Palestinians.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call for ending the death penalty.
Note that the wrecker wants to expand use of the death penalty. It
might seem appropriate, poetic justice even, to compromise by
authorizing the death penalty only for those convicted of trying to
overthrow democratic government, but I think that that would be
harmful in the long term — it would be responding to hatred with more
hatred.
*16 … humanitarian and human rights organizations call to stop arms
transfers to Israel [and to] Palestinian armed groups.*
They include Amnesty International, Oxfam and Save the Children, among others.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The FBI searched many people's deposit boxes in a single massive
operation, and seized valuables found. An appeals court ruled
that this was unconstitutional.
When the FBI applied to a lower court for a warrant, before the
massive search, it misled the court about what it planned to do.
The 2023 World Science Fiction Convention was held in China, and it is
clear that China imposed censorship on the Hugo awards.
The WSFS should either separate the Hugo awards from the Worldcon when the Worldcon is held in a country that imposes political censorship, or make a rule
to exclude those countries from holding the Worldcon.
US citizens:
call on Congress
not to give government subsidy to phony abortion clinics.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Propane companies are presenting that carbon-containing fuel as "renewable"
based on
a chain of exaggerations.
You can use it, if you are pro-pain, but that would not avoid the impending
destruction of civilization due to global heating effects.
*Germany unearths pro-Russia disinformation
campaign on [Ex-Twitter].*
The campaign operated 50,000 fake accounts.
Anyone supporting Putin, who is known for repression inside Russia's
borders and wars of conquest outside them, is probably either an
intentional disinformationist, or someone persuaded by intentional
disinformationists.
Robert Reich: Ending the war in Gaza, and ending the oppression of the
occupation of Palestine, calls for moral clarity. The US called on
Israel to manifest that.
Biden should show that Palestinian lives matter to him by insisting
that Israel end the atrocities in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate autobullshit-generated
voter suppression disinformation in New Hampshire.
Please don't refer to automated bullshit generators as "intelligence".
US citizens: Demand the Pentagon compensate civilians harmed in
US airstrikes.
Food products should notify customers of any changes in the recipe.
Interviews with Jewish and Arab inhabitants of the Israeli town of Lod.
I find it noteworthy that the Arab residents face repression and are
barred entirely from holding political rallies.
Invasive ants could wipe out the native ants that defend acacia trees
in east Africa. This could indirectly harm many other species, and indirectly
protect a few.
*Alexandre Ramagem ran Brazil’s intelligence agency under Bolsonaro,
allegedly using spyware to track political opponents.* Computers
have been seized from his home.
(satire) *Chick-Fil-A Announces They Will Only Serve Chickens
Conceived In Wedlock.*
How the UK government uses bogus arguments to justify extracting the maximum
possible fossil fuels.
We could call the arguments sleight of mind, since they are the
equivalent, for thoughts, of what sleight of hand is for physical
operations.
Allowing convictions by 10 votes out of the 12 jurors may have been
adopted in the UK as a way to facilitate repression of minorities.
In Tiningu, Pará, Brazil, outside farmers have bought land that includes the
area's springs, and now claim all the water belongs to them.
The EU has made significant reductions in CO2 emissions from fossil
fuels.
It's going in the right direction but we all need to do it, and faster,
if we are to avoid disaster.
An Australian local government council, about to vote on a proposed
event about Harry Potter, was told that each member had to sign a
nondisclosure agreement in order to receive information about the plans.
This violated government's democratic duty of transparency for the
public.
Businesses often demand, and get, secrecy pledges from businesses,
and often they apply to facts that affect possible issues for safety
of people and the environment.
*Thousands trapped in Gaza hospitals as Israeli troops encircle Khan Younis.*
And civilians can't easily get in or out of the three main hospitals.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Devastating drought in Amazon result of climate crisis, study shows.*
The forest is close to the predicted transformation into a savanna,
which would mean most of the trees die and release their carbon
into the air.
*Biden administration reportedly pauses approval of "carbon mega bomb" gas
export hub.*
If this export terminal is built, it could speed up global heating to
the point that sea-level rise forces it to stop operating. That would
be ironic, but what we need is not an ironic self-defeat for some of
those working global disaster. Rather, we need to avoid that
disaster.
A Proud Boys member who joined in the Jan 6 insurrection, then planned
to try an insurrection in Portland, Oregon, has been sentenced to only
6 years in prison.
Given his unrepentant determination to support a fascist take-over of
the US that is a combination of massive crimes, he will be eager to
support a right-wing coup when he gets out. It would be wiser to give
him a sentence several times as long.
The most worrisome part is that if the bullshitter grabs power, he
will pardon violent supporters like this one, then use them in an
unofficial extralegal repression squad. That is the fascist way.
US citizens:
call on the BLM
to save the Gunnison sage-grouse.
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
nationwide strike against the president,
who calls himself "the madman," shut down much of Argentina.
In addition, tens of thousands protested. I wonder how many
he will arrest
under his new law.
Milei's supporters target feminist leaders and media figures with
threats of personal violence.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass the Women's Health Protection Act and Abortion Justice Act, to establish Abortion as a human right
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*The UN court in The Hague told Israel
it must "take all measures
within its power"
to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention
of the genocide convention, and to prevent and punish the incitement
of genocide and facilitate the provision of "urgent basic services".
The court did not find Israel guilty of genocide, but seems to
consider Israel's conduct as leading in that direction, hence orders
to make sure it does not commit genocide.
I think that ruling is right for the facts of the situation: Israel's crimes include mass
killing of civilians, and potentially many more. That doesn't amount to genocide —
this far — but it is an enormous crime.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The court ordered
the bullshitter to
pay 83 million dollars
in damages for raping and then defaming E. Jean Carroll.
I can imagine the bullshitter riding on a broomstick and a stereotype
witch's hat while saying, "I'm the victim of a witch hunt!"
Speaking of which. if you are a cartoonist and you'd like to draw
cartoons for me occasionally as a volunteer, please write to me.
The cheater
(another name for the bullshitter) has
a history
of
refusing to pay
his debts.
Even debts to
contractors who did work for him.
I predict he will refuse to pay this
debt, and dare the court to do something. That fits his general strategy of daring courts
to stop him from acting as if he were above the law. His supporters admire whoever is
strong. Biden needs to deal with him in a way that demonstrates
the cheater's weakness.
Ralph Nader suggests
Democrats provoke the cheater to defeat himself,
Jujitsu style.
An eleventh-hour rally for Julian Assange will held today, Saturday,
Jan 27th, 11–12:30pm at Park St Station, on the Boston Common.
The Tories plan a massive expansion of extracting oil and fossil gas
from the North Sea, violating the commitment to phase out fossil fuels.
US courts have rejected a demand to equate Palestinians' rights with
"support for terrorism".
However. strong lobbying muscle is pressuring for private organizations
to make this false equation.
Workers at the California State University will go on strike on all 23
campuses, demanding a raise.
Keep in mind that the cause of inflation a year ago was not the raises
for some workers, it was intentional gouging that business did (and
still do) because they can get away with it.
And they could get away with it because of the insufficiency of
competition, which is due to the failure to properly enforce antitrust
law since Reagan's days.
Modi has celebrated the partial construction of a Hindu temple where
the Babri Masjid used to stand, treating it as a symbolic defeat of
Islam.
Former Indian governments tried to promote interreligious peace and
tolerance. No longer. Modi's party (BJP) has used religious hostility to boost its power, much as American fascists do. Now it
wants to make Hinduism the de facto official religion, and oppress
others.
In the past, some Muslim rulers repressed Buddhism generally, as did
some Hindu rulers. Some historians maintain that the Dalits of today
are the descendants of people who were Buddhists. In recent decades,
Dalits have faced forcible opposition from Hindu fanatics when they
try to hold ceremonies to convert to Buddhism.
Anti-vax propaganda and other factors are
spreading measles in
countries where it had become rare.
The WHO warns that measles occasionally causes lifelong disability, or death.
One of the factors is
difficulty in arranging for babies
to get vaccinated.
Fossil fuel companies' disinformation in US public schools.
With plentiful drones, neither Ukraine nor the Putin forces can
advance along the front. A breakthrough is impossible.
I am puzzled that the Putin forces don't attack again across the frontier.
HP's CEO admits that the company wants to make printing a "subscription".
I am concerned about malware in printers. That includes malware
inserted by third parties, and malware inserted by the printer
manufacturer. Any software designed to snoop on, restrict or
interfere with the user is malware.
One way to block malware from affecting anything outside the printer
is to put the printer on a separate ethernet which talks only to a
special computer which won't allow it to communicate with anything
else.
Election sabotage in New Hampshire: a deepfake audio call pretended to
be Biden telling people to stay home rather than vote for him in the
state's Democratic primary.
An earthquake destroyed roads near the Shika nuclear power plant in
Japan, trapping 400 people within the evacuation zone. Fortunately
the plant was idle and there was no leak.
Seeing Israel in the context of European settler colonialism:
it partly fits, and at the same time it doesn't.
The other colonial powers were looking mainly for profit and power,
not for survival against murderous persecution. Morally that changes
some things, but not everything: it does not entitle Zionists to
oppress Palestinians,
let alone to commit massive and repeated atrocities.
Keep in mind that colonization is not limited to European
countries. Ancient empires practiced colonization — Rome, for instance.
Nowadays, China is practicing settler colonialism in Tibet,
and Indonesia in its half of New Guinea.
India's treatment of Muslims under its system of
Hindu nationalism
is not "colonization' in a territorial sense, but it has
much in common.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Biden must press Israel to agree to recognize the state of Palestine
and end the occupation.
Since Netanyahu says that "The prime minister needs to be capable of
saying no to our friends," Biden must likewise be capable of saying no
to America's traditional friends.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
St Louis thugs crashed a car into a gay bar, then bullied and arrested
the bar's owner. This while concealing video evidence of what happened.
Arguing for the unlimited right for anyone who is pregnant to have an
abortion, at no cost, — with no exceptions.
Future people, not yet born, are entitled to certain things in case
they are born: namely, a livable world to be born into, and a free and
compassionate society to be part of. But that does not impose an
obligation to bring someone into that world.
Germans are protesting against the new German fascist party, recently
revealed as such.
900 UK post office branch managers were accused and convicted of
stealing funds from the branch's accounts, the grounds being that
their records did not match what the Fujitsu software said. The
software's reports were incorrect because of bugs.
We now know that Fujitsu staff knew about these bugs at the time of he
prosecutions, and tried to inform the courts about them, but
management of the Post Office altered their witness statements.
Australia (and the rest of the world) are unprepared for the global
consequences of the changes global heating will cause in Antarctica.
And not putting much effect into figuring out what those changes or
their consequences will be.
Gaza civilians arrested by the Israeli army report torture.
Then they may be released far from their families with no way to
rejoin them.
Both the place they are released, and the place where the relatives
are, may be in danger of bombardment, and likewise the route between
them.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Ohio Pastor Charged for Opening Church to Homeless People in
Freezing Weather.*
Hospitality to poor, homeless people is at the basis of Christianity.
I do not hold with Christianity in general, but I do admire that part
of it. Many Christians, by contrast, disdain that part.
People have noted the irony of seeing Christians worshiping an ancient
homeless refugee family and being so cruel to refugees and homeless
people today.
A US court further weakened the Voting Rights Act by ruling in favor
of a mass challenge of 36,000 voters, based on an algorithm with no
attempt to investigate those individual voters.
This is a practice right-wing parties use to suppress minority voters.
People whose lives are stressful may just give up. The purpose of the
Voting Rights Act, passed in the 1960s, was to block voter suppression,
but right-wing judges have ruled for weakened interpretations that negate
the law's purpose.
Republicans know that the only way they can win power in the US is by rigging the electoral system. Voter-suppression is one approach; gerrymandering
is the other.
Students at the University of Massachusetts held a sit-in strike
calling for
disassociation from manufactures of weapons
Israel uses in the occupation of Palestine. The university is prosecuting 57 protesters
for trespassing.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Biden to
stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
from Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*[Columbia University] students protesting Israel's bombardment of
Gaza reported being
sprayed with a chemical
that caused nausea and
headaches.*
Ironically, they may have been sprayed with a chemical used in Israel
against protesting Palestinians.
Protest organizers accused two former Israeli soldiers who are now students there.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to
restore the strength of the Voting
Rights Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your
state governor to protect bees
by expanding bee-friendly habitat.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass the Raise the Wage Act,
which will raise the US minimum wage.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*"No one should have more than [US$15 million]": the author of
An absolute limit on any person's wealth is roughly equivalent to a
100% marginal tax rate on income beyond a certain point. A 93% tax
rate would give similar results, and we know it is feasible and works. So I think
we should try that instead.
To fully implement that 93% marginal tax rate entails eliminating the deductions and
manipulations currently used by the rich to shelter much of their wealth and income from it.
US citizens: call on Congress to
tax the rich and expand Social Security
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Jamie Dimon,
CEO of the bank JP Morgan Chase,
has started to give
mendacious praise for the bullshitter's policies while president.
Evidently he doesn't mind joining in the bullshit in order to win the favor
of someone who may become dictator of the US.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Democracy for All amendment and
reverse the Corporations United decision.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to
ban single-use plastics
to protect our environment and public health.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass Right-to-Repair legislation.
Fully effective Right-to-Repair legislation must require the software to be something
close to free.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Five examples of the UK’s crackdown on
climate protesters.*
Has Starmer said that Labour would end this repression, or defend the
climate enough to the protests unnecessary? I don't think so, but I'd like
to be reminded if I forgot.
*Tal Mitnick, 18, on going to
prison instead of joining
[the Israeli army].*
Burning wood indoors for cooking is a bad idea because the wood smoke
harms people's health. Projects to hand out wood-burning stoves in
poor countries are supported by "carbon offsets" which are
fraudulent
in the usual way.
I've heard of projects to give people inexpensive solar-powered
cookers. They don't cause any pollution; the users don't even need to
buy or cut wood.
The Cop28 climate conference failed to set a target for decarbonizing,
but it did set a target of
tripling nuclear generation.
The US is rushing to carry out.this plan.
Nuclear generation is more expensive and slower to build than renewable
generation, it pollutes at many levels, and it carries the risk of disaster.
We should not carry out that agreement -- we should build renewable generators
and batteries instead.
The Bureau of Land Management has proposed 22 million acres of public land
to designate for
solar power use.
This is 1% of the land area of the US. I think we can spare that much,
especially since civilization's survival depends on that.
Sports teams
bully cities
into paying for expensive new stadiums which the teams will get the profit from. Now they
sweeten the deal by promising to build housing too — but once the stadium is built,
the team may not carry them out.
Teams exert the pressure by making cities bid against each other for
which will have the team. I've proposed a law to stop businesses of
all kinds from making cities or states
bid on how much subsidy to
offer.
I am absolutely against spending municipal funds on enriching sports
team owners. There should be a federal law prohibiting this — any
assistance to the team should be a loan which must come first on the
team's list of creditors. The city can spend those loan payments on
housing if it wants to.
The law could require that all such loans be paid back at 150%.
German farmers are supporting the extreme right-wing after the center-left government reduced the subsidy on fossil fuels.
It made the usual mistake that governments make in how they do this:
they cut that subsidy and changed nothing else. The effect on farmers
was an immediate loss of income and they had no better alternative to
shift to.
The subsidy for fossil fuel must end. One way to end it without
crushing the farmers is to make the subsidy not depend on whether
they buy fossil fuel.
Then they will have an incentive to switch to a substitute — if and
when one exists. The government should actively make electric
tractors a reality.
Don't forget that farmers can no longer own a tractor — the manufacturer
designs them with proprietary software, which is malware: it snoops on
the farmer's actions and on data it measures about the farm, and it even has
a remote shut-off switch.
This ought to be illegal.
The UK has a military base on Cyprus, which it is using for attacks on
Houthi missile and drone launching facilities that it is using to
threaten shipping. Now some Cypriots demand an end to this cooperation.
They make two arguments. One is the reduction-ism that labels the
Houthis and their patron, Iran, as "good" because they act against
Israel. The other is using cowardice as the basic premise — "What if
Cyprus becomes a target?" They don't seem to notice the fundamental
contradiction between these two arguments.
Gaza or no Gaza, it is unacceptable to allow Houthis to menace the
whole world's economy when and as they see fit.
As a separate matter, governments including the US have a duty to
make Israel stop the bombardment and siege of Gaza. But we didn't
need the Houthis to teach us that.
We agree with then on that one point, but that doesn't change the fact
that they are violent and repressive religious fanatics who would
oppress us if they could.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Ralph Nader: *What If Our Society Valued Civics as It Does Entertainment?*
When private equity firms buy US hospitals, the hospitals become worse.
*The [private] equity firms cut corners, slash services, lay off
staff, lower quality of care, take on substantial debt, and reduce
charity care, leading to lower ratings and more medical errors, the
[two] reports collectively find.*
*Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds.*
*Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to
keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.*
The FBI concocted a fake plot and inveigled people into a fantasy of
planning terrorism. Those people were since known as the Newburgh
Four. Now they will be released from prison.
If they had really taken initiative to plan such attacks, they would
deserve prison sentences, but the FBI does the country no service by
protecting us from fantasy terrorism.
Employees at Spirit AeroSystems, a subcontractor that Boeing spun off,
accused the company of disregarding high levels of defects.
This attitude is common in US businesses, and it makes life painful.
We need to change the system that makes it profitable to run businesses
with this attitude.
Structural reasons why Boeing is doing badly in the safety field:
it's owned by banks and asset managers, its outsourcing is out of control,
and the US doesn't have laws to ensure workers' safety concerns are heeded.
A study has found that children learn to read better when they read on
paper.
A school that banned snoop-phones on campus found that this made
life and education much better. Most of the students agree.
Alas, they are still being tracked, and perhaps listened to, by the
non-"smart" portable phones that they carry. These phones are likewise
running nonfree software that the user can't change but others can.
Still, this is a big step forward. If you can take that big step, you
can probably take the smaller step that remains.
On the ethical issues of fictionalizing parts of a movie which claims
to present true events.
It is impossible to recount history with perfect accuracy, no matter
how hard you work. Even for recent history there are always things
which the best research cannot determine. For events further in the
past, there are often disagreements about how to interpret the primary
sources, and even major uncertainties. You may have to choose which
interpretation to dramatize. Whichever you choose, it may be mistaken
or only part of the truth. One can only do one's best.
But that doesn't excuse intentionally choosing not to do one's best.
I am deeply disappointed by gratuitous falsification of history simply
to make the plot "more exciting". When I learned that The Great
Escape was mostly fiction, I felt cheated by it. It presents a
notice which tries to acknowledge that parts are fiction, but phrased
misleadingly: the notice states that the way they dug and used the
tunnel were accurate, but did not explicitly say that most of the rest
was not.
Even in Midway, which is mostly accurate, some points have been
made erroneous -- and it would have been so easy to get them right.
*Fears grow for largest remaining hospital in Gaza as Israeli forces bombard
Khan Younis*, bombing sometimes very close to the hospital.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*As the election looms, we must be alert to [the insurrectionist's]
threats of vigilante justice.*
The insurrectionist has already bullied senators into voting not to
convict him of insurrection. Now his followers are threatening
judges. Next November he will surely launch his fanatics into bigger
violence. We must be ready to defeat it crushingly so that it cannot
try again.
The head of the Michigan Republican Party has been ousted by the state
committee after claiming to have won votes within the party that in
fact perse had lost.
Now, following the lead of their greatest inspiration, perse has
refused to honor the vote that ousted per, and the two fractions look
like fighting in court soon.
It is beautifully ironic for Republicans to get a taste of their own
medicine. I laugh at their predicament. Will they learn a lesson
from it? Will they recognize, in these events, a reason not to
support the bullshitter as candidate for president?
*How an Alabama utility wields influence by financing news broadcasting.*
A German minister accused the fascist-tinged far-right party of
secretly planning mass deportations if it gets power.
*AfD leader "wolf in sheep’s clothing," says German Social Democrats head.*
Google promised to delete location data about visits to abortion
clinics -- and some other places, too. But the changes are
only effective in a fraction of cases.
*Crime in the US is once again falling. Can we rethink policing?*
Oakland, California, is an exception. Oakland's Operation Ceasefire
cut the murder rate by almost half, during 2012-2017, but then it was
altered and made ineffective; the murder rate almost to the previous
level.
It worked by identifying gang members who were likely to get involved
in deadly fights, then -- rather than repressing them -- making
relationships with them to lead them away from that danger.
The HAMAS killers and kidnappers were
raving with hate
to a degree that they
raped and mutilated Israeli women, some in the process of killing them, and
perhaps also corpses of those they had already killed.
This demonstrates how humans can be lead to depravity that destroys
their reason and humanity. We see this happening to Israeli soldiers, too.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
(satire) *Study Finds Children Of Divorce
Better Prepared For Life’s
Relentless Misery.*
The insurrectionist is intentionally obstructing his civil trial,
daring the judge to
order him to leave
the courtroom.
The judge understands that ordering him out of the courtroom is what he wants, and
therefore doesn't do it, but the result is that the insurrectionist comes across as more
powerful than the judge in the judge's own court. That surely serves his political
strategy
too.
*Manufacturers of 10 Drugs Slated for Medicare Price Negotiation Spent Billions More on
Buybacks, Dividends and Executive Compensation
than R&D.*
US drug companies have worked hard to
corrupt the system of studies
to measure the effects of approved and proposed medicines. They can do this
because the investigations get their funds from the drug companies.
Therefore, we should take those studies entirely away from companies. The government
should pay for these studies, getting funds from drug companies through taxes but denying
them any say about what will be tested or by whom.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has listed
Israel as tied with
Iran
for sixth place on the "worst jailers of journalists" list.
Fishing by dragging a net across the sea bottom does worse than
destroy habitat and ecosystems; it also
releases lots of CO2,
half of which gets into the atmosphere.
There was already a one sufficient reason to ban it. This is another.
A recording of a clear proposal to assassinate Rep. Nadler or
journalist Eric Swalwell was turned in to the Capitol Police. But it
isn't clear whether it is a real recording or a deepfake.
The clothing industry contributes significantly to greenhouse
emissions and to the waste society ultimately discards. How to reduce
these two burdens is not clear.
One thing which is not clear to me is how this accounting deals with
remaindered garments -- like the ones you can find in Marshalls. Are
they included in the "sold" category (after all, they do eventually
get sold by the company that ordered their production) or the "waste"
category? If these are considered "sold", how come any garments
remain as "waste"? Why aren't they all remaindered, and thus
eventually put in the hands of someone who will wear them?
Some fraction must be bizarre styles that hardly anyone wants to wear.
But it seems implausible to me that they would be a substantial
fraction of total production.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to sign the discharge
petition to bring HJ Res 25 to a vote. This is the resolution to
bring the Equal Rights Amendment into effect by recognizing the
ratifications that a sufficient number of states have already done.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Studies have found that workplace "wellness" programs fail to make
workers healthier or happier.
New EU advertising rule: *Products and services billed as climate
neutral, biodegradable or eco [(organic)] must provide proof, with
carbon schemes banned as evidence.*
*Georgia county to use program linked to election denier to flag
ineligible voters.*
Global heating's consequence, sea-level rise, will increase the arsenic
in Bangladesh's water.
This is the result of a series of chemical consequences.
*Serbian opposition leader says secret service tortured and threatened him.*
(satire) *[DeMentis] Going Door To Door To Beg Own Campaign Staff To
Vote For Him.*
AT&T in California has been cheating its customers, the public and the state
for over a decade. All the details are here.
The Tories have decided to build and run a "carbon capture and
storage" plant at the cost of 50 billion dollars, if fully
implemented.
"Carbon capture and storage", if it works, will reduce greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. We will need to do that in he future, once
we have cut greenhouse gas emissions, if we have damaged forests and
algae so much that they can't remove the excess CO2 we will have
emitted.
However, what we need now is to reduce the rate of increase down to
zero, and the money used for this absurdly expensive system could
achieve a lot more of that if spent on building renewable generation,
battery storage, and grid enhancement.
I suspect that the Tories' decision was intended to please those who
will get that money.
Boeing and its spin-off Spirit put *Profits And Payouts Over Passenger
Safety.* This article gives the history and details.
The US system of business is fundamentally broken, systematically
producing results that don't resemble what is said to make capitalism
beneficial. It is no longer "If we do a good job of XYZ, we will make
a lot of money"; rather, "Let's make more money by doing a bad job and
screwing our customers, our workers and the public."
*The far right infiltration [and even domination] of Israel's media is
blinding the public
to the truth about Gaza.*
There is a peace movement in Israel which demands to end Israel's
atrocities in Gaza, and an end to the fighting there. Fair access to
the media would help it succeed.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on states to stop funding fake abortion clinics.
US citizens: call on Democrats to stop spending money on advertising
in Ex-Twitter, since it mainly funds Musk.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Public Banking Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate DeJoy's coverups of
neglecting to protect postal workers from heat stroke.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Several countries in Latin America are tossing human rights on the
garbage pile in trying to defeat gangs by making war on them in parallel with
arbitrary imprisonment of suspects.
This war of repression looks like "the only way" for the government to
end gang violence, but that assumes the government will win the war —
and they don't seem to actually win. (The US government likewise
assumed it would eventually win in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it
never did.) The governments of El Salvador and Ecuador may not win
either. Haiti's government eventually surrendered to gang rule.
I don't know what these governments should do. Maybe it is hopeless.
But it seems to me that this war is an extension of the US "war on
drugs". If the US switches to a harm-reduction policy, with
decriminalization and treatment, it could reduce the profits that
keep gangs interested.
How conservatives in the US have for decades misrepresented Martin
Luther King Jr as being on their side, only color-blind.
The laws now being invoked against the insurrectionist grew out of the
response to violent southern racists, after the Civil War and during
the Civil Rights Movement.
*Elon Musk has become the world's biggest hypocrite on free speech.*
Data brokers collect lots of data about most people, including location data
that they get from snoop phones, apps for saps, and web sites and use machine
learning to identify patterns in that data and what the patterns mean.
The FTC is suing individual data brokers and making them agree not to
do these things in the future.
It is a brave effort, but when one company stops, another will pop up
to do the same thing. To make privacy secure. we need to require
products and services to be designed so that they don't tend to track
anyone.
Oil companies are arguing in court that the First Amendment prevents them
from being held liable for damages caused by misleading people.
The European Court of Human Rights found Lithuania guilty of allowing
the CIA to use one of its "black sites" to torture someone accused of
participating in the September 2011 terrorist attacks.
*Oxfam GB says aid cannot be delivered effectively [to Gaza]
while bombing continues and supplies are rejected.*
*Canadian man who claimed wildfires were a federal conspiracy admits arson.*
That demonstrates the moral values of right-wing conspiracy thinkers
in a nutshell. They treat their country and its people as "the
enemy", and try to harm them both by any possible means.
A court case demands that Georgia stop using voting machines that
write the votes on ballots in a code that voters can't read if they try.
As explained here, devices like this create
the possibility of a centralized fraud that would be hard to detect.
This case is not about any specific allegation of actual rigging.
Republicans have used many efforts to rig US elections, including
gerrymandering and voter suppression, and are continuing to do so, but this case is not about those
methods. Facts suggested that a few
US elections were rigged
through
voting machines around 20 years ago, but there was no proof.
Fraud can be committed using paper ballots too, and that has been done
for centuries. However, a big fraud with paper ballots tends to be bulky
and thus hard to hide.
Chatbots seem to be good at giving a superficial imitation of the emotional
responses humans want from sweethearts.
The article discusses several potential dangers to society if many
people decide to have fake-intelligent sweethearts, but doesn't take
that far enough. Society could fragment increasingly into male and
female fractions, perhaps more than one of each. As a science fiction
fan, I am reminded of A World out of Time by Larry Niven, in which
the Boys and the Girls (each immortal) became separate groups and
fought a war.
The author, unaware of the issues raised by the free software
movement, omits the one we would think of first: each one of these
chatbots, if it isn't free software running on the user's own
computer, will be controlled by a company. Barring unforeseeable
major changes, those companies will profit by emotionally manipulating
the users they supposedly serve. They will program the servers, and
the apps for interacting with them, to make the customers obey the
company and serve its goal.
Calling chatbots "artificial intelligence" helps lull humans into
treating them like persons. That is why I decided never to do that,
and refer to them instead as "bullshit generators".
*The US isn’t the biggest power in the Middle East any more. Iran is.*
The fact that foolish US actions, and sometimes unjust US actions,
helped bring about this result does not make it a good thing. Iran is
a cruel, repressive state,
much like Russia
and China
which are its allies. We face, this time for real, an "axis of evil."
*Pro-Israel Effort to Smear [University of Pennsylvania] President
Started Well Before Oct. 7.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The UK's subsidy for fuel for fishing boats endangers fish from two
directions at once.
Putin's official *accuses US of plan to meddle in its election.*
The first level of lie in this accusation is the assumption that Russia
is free enough that its elections could be influenced. With all the meddling
that Putin directs in Russian elections,
there is no space for anyone else to meddle.
Meanwhile, people who criticize Putin are likely to end up in prison.
This sort of lie is typical of right-wingers. Whatever accusation
could be validly made against them, they make it against their
critics, because the truth is of no significance to them.
*Florida school district pulls dictionaries for "sexual conduct" descriptions.*
They look for opportunities to be absurdly repressive as a way of
proving their loyalty to extremism. The sad thing is that progressives
go in for something similar — it is called "virtue signaling".
I resent being pressured to do anything for such reasons, so I often
resist such pressure, even for a cause I fully support. I may like
your way of stating these views, and follow you. But if I don't like
it, I will state our shared views in my own way.
You're entitled to do that too.
*The Ukraine war is no excuse for endless fossil fuel expansion.*
Destroying everyone on all sides does not constitute victory.
*Ex-Shin Bet director Ayalon calls on Israel to release intifada
leader [Marwan] Barghouti [and negotiate with him to recognize the
state of Palestine].*
*“We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, …
have hope.*
Be careful to avoid confusion about Palestinian leaders named
"Barghouti". There are other political leaders in the Barghouti
family, and they follow different approaches.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Due to big Tory cuts in support for local government, plus inflation,
1/5 of the local governments in England will go bankrupt in 2025.
Tories won't help avoid that, of course. Clearly that crisis is
something they desire. What could their motive be? They have
adjusted the fuse to make it explode after the next election; that
could be one purpose, but I think they must have another alongside
that.
It would be natural for the Labour Party to try to fix this, but that
would require spending money. Starmer understandably refuses to
borrow that money, but he won't do that because he has changed the
party into Tory Light.
A former leader of Labour said, "The Labour Party is a moral crusade
or it is nothing."
Starmer's choice is "nothing". How can Britain get itself a true
Labour Party, or something comparable?
I think it must start with Corbyn,
Ideally he should be joined by several progressive-minded
Jews, to demonstrate that this party may criticize Israel's actions,
but it will never tolerate antisemitism.
Missouri's governor is rushing to execute Marcellus Williams and
disregard the evidence that he was convicted unjustly. He was
convicted of murdering Felicia Picus using a knife. Later DNA was
found on the knife, and it certainly did not belong to Picus or
Williams.
It looks like the governor is trying to bring about something we could
call an "abortion of justice".
* Human Rights Watch warns [that the Taliban's] bar on women [as
teachers] means unqualified men now teach boys, fewer subjects are
taught and beatings [of students] are routine.*
*[Data show that] adopting rightwing policies "does not help
centre-left win votes."
Study of European electoral data suggests social democratic parties
alienate supporters by moving towards the political centre.*
I conjecture that parties do this to cede to pressure from the
rich. rather than pressure from the voters. Even if it did win more
votes, it would be wrong.
*World's First Trillionaire Just 10 Years Away as Richest Men Double
Their Wealth.*
Texas state thugs blocked US border patrol agents from approaching the
border to rescue some Mexicans who had drowned while trying to cross
the Rio Grande.
I find it strange that article reports, unquestioningly, that Texas
personnel could bar US border patrol agents from Shelby Park if the
former insist. I would expect the border patrol to arrest them
rather than heeding their objectives.
Two Iranian women journalists were jailed for not covering their heads;
then they were freed on appeal. They celebrated this by appearing in
public and not covering their heads, so now they face new charges.
They seem to be determined to show their rejection of these unjust
laws.
The US Senate rejected
Senator
Sanders's resolution
to investigate Israel for using US military aid for killing tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
This is bad news, because it means that Israel is likely to continue its policy of killing tens of thousands.
Thank you for trying, Bernie.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to pressure Israel to commit not to carry out colonization or depopulation in Gaza.
The words in the petition are not as clear and plain-spoken as that, but that is what they mean.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Russia illustrates the consequences of failure to maintain
separation
of church and state.
The Romanov dynasty converted the Russian Orthodox Church into an arm
of state power. The people who reject this change were called the
"old believers",
and were persecuted. Putin is continuing this practice.
An eleventh-hour rally for Julian Assange will be on an upcoming Saturday,
Jan 27th, 11–12:30pm at Park St Station, on the Boston Common.
US citizens:
call on the Senate
to support Senator Sanders' resolution
to direct the State Department to investigate Israel's war crimes in Gaza.
The question is whether Israel is using weapons from the US to commit war crimes.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Texas governor Abbott said he would like Texas to kill immigrants crossing the border,
if he could get away with it.
I'm sure most Republicans are more harmful to the US than most refugees. Does that
justify shooting them?
The latest step in the bullshitter's blackwhiting: calling people in prison for
joining in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol
"hostages".
In effect, he aims to make the Big Lie as big and false as possible. While denying he
incited for the Jan 6 insurrection, he is explicitly endorsing it now and preparing to
start another one.
If he succeeds in capturing full control of the US government, he will go full 1984,
punishing anyone who refuses to assent vigorously to his lies. The right-wing members of
the US Supreme Court will be reduced to his puppets, no longer free to trade their
decisions voluntarily for money.
Will they recognize that this year, in time to rule that he can't run for office?
*Wisconsin: far-right group bids to recall speaker [of the Wisconsin legislature] for
resisting [the insurrectionist's] big lie.*
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to restore the Network Neutrality rules that the wrecker eliminated.
*Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn.*
These tipping points are not easy to reverse -- if they tip, small
changes in the other direction would not tip them back. Perhaps large
changes could do that, but we would have to cool the Earth a lot
to achieve that.
Kelsey Carpenter had a miscarriage and was prosecuted for murder.
She spent almost two years in jail as the prosecution continued.
Eventually she was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
That was a partial defeat for her, not a victory, and it doesn't mean
that other women are safe from similar treatment.
*Ohio woman won’t be indicted for abuse of corpse after miscarriage, grand
jury decides.*
I'm glad that the grand jury, a body of citizens chosen at random, decided to
stop this persecution. But grand juries usually convict whoever they
are asked to convict.
We should not count on the next grand jury to save the next woman who
had a miscarriage. We should make it absolutely clear in the law.
*Water shortages disrupt the Plaquemines parish as millions of gallons
are used to construct Venture Global’s LNG terminal.*
(Humorous aside) It has also caused the encrustations on the teeth of
corpses in cemeteries, which made possible the plaque mining industry,
which gave that parish its name.*
Robert Reich: the insurrectionist has a strategy to dominate the
election: by making a big nuisance of himself all the time, he aims to
direct all attention to him, and that he hopes will people perceive
him as powerful and perceive Biden as weak.
Some people will vote for whoever seems strong. They'd vote for a
tyrannosaurus to threaten them. It seems that many Americans don't
have a clear focus for deciding their votes based on which candidate
will do the most good.
Ralph Nader lists five sources of possible destruction of humanity or
civilization.
Vienna has half-solved the problem of giving all residents affordable
and decent housing.
This puts it miles above all other prosperous cities in Europe or the US.
Republicans are pushing for further tax cuts for big business.
*[Olive] harvest rots as West Bank
farmers cut off
from trees.*
Because Starmer has clamped down
on any proposals for more than small changes
in the Labour Party, Britons who see that big change is needed see no proposals
from any party except the even-more-right-wing competitors of the Tories.
The right wing has shut the left completely out of British politics
with the help of Labour. Britain desperately needs a progressive
party such as Labour sometimes was.
Research finds that requiring workers to work in the office (rather
than from home)
does not make the company more profitable.
In other words, the companies have no objective reason, in business
terms, to make workers go to the office.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose H.J.Res 98, which would
cancel a regulation Biden's officials adopted to give some outsourced
workers more of the rights of employees.
That regulation is a change for the better, since it will reduce the
exploitation of American workers, so naturally plutocratist politicians are
being paid to oppose it. But they will hesitate to do so if they hear
from enough US voters.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Analyzing the legal case
of the accusation of genocide
brought by South Africa against Israel.
I do not know the law about genocide, as the author does, but I read
about what is happening in Gaza and I think I understand how to
characterize it. Killing 20,000 or more civilians out of a population
of 2.5 million is a series of atrocities, a crime, and it must stop.
However, calling it "genocide" is an exaggeration.
Some people think that exaggerative rhetoric is legitimate, that the
harsher-sounding condemnation is justified because it will be more
effective at putting an end to the atrocities. Why do I disagree?
In the snort run, it makes sides hate each other more and thus
interferes with deescalation.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*"It is a time of witch hunts in Israel":
teacher held in solitary confinement
for posting concern about Gaza deaths.*
He is accused of thoughtcrime: "intent to commit treason". In Israel, he is not the only one.
We have seen similar efforts in the US, for instance those using
university presidents as show victims.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The
US and UK bombed Yemen,
reportedly attacking Houthi "military facilities" (a vague term).
If these attacks make Houthi attacks on shipping hard or impossible, that could stop them.
Otherwise, I expect this retaliation to have little effect on the Houthis' actions.
Others
agree.
The Houthis knew the ways the US can attack them, and have surely figured in advance what their
anti-shipping war will cost them.
They say that their attacks will
"punish" the US for counterattacking
them, but they don't think of being counterattacked as punishment for
their own attacks. I don't think they evaluate the results of their
actions by comparing their victories with damage they take.
I don't think the Houthis' attacks on shipping will have much effect
on fighting in Gaza.
There are some who say that the US should pressure Israel to accept a
cease fire in Gaza instead of retaliating against Houthi attacks on shipping.
I agree with half of that — the US should pressure Israel to accept a cease fire in Gaza.
But not "instead of" anything. The reason to demand a cease fire in Gaza is that
Israel continues to kill
thousands
of Palestinian civilians, and that is a great crime.
That reason is so strong that no other reason is required.
By contrast, terrorist attacks against global shipping are not a reason to grant the attacker's
demands. A world order dominated by violent religious fanatics is no improvement over the
current world order.
As regards
repelling further such attacks,
the US needs a cheap anti-drone drone. It could be designed to collide with the attacking
drone, or tangle it in a net and bring it down. Since it would not need to carry a bomb, it
could be smaller and cheaper. These defensive drones could have other uses — for
instance, to deal with drones operating dangerously near airports.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Study calculated that there was an 11% increase in mortality [when
patients used] hydroxychloroquine*, the "cure" that the bullshitter recommended
based on zero evidence.
Causality has not been established. It could be that the people who
followed the bullshitter's advice were a priori less capable of
resisting Covid-19.
Various officials involved in prosecuting or resisting the wrecker
have been swatted.
This confirms what we knew: he is the leader of a fascist movement
to overthrow democracy in the US.
US citizens: Tell Congress: No New Tax Cuts for the Rich in 2024.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop giving white phosphorus to Israel,
which uses it on civilians.
Biden has allocated $500 million in funding for chargers for EVs.
I wonder if any of them allow charging a car without identifying
yourself? I doubt it.
Slowly and steadily flying under the media, the establishment of total
surveillance in the US advances step by step.
This article complains that the world is not focusing outrage
especially on the women who were captured and then raped in Gaza by
HAMAS.
The rape of around 100 people would in ordinary circumstances stand
out as an major atrocity. However, in Gaza it happened alongside the
killing of 20,000 people and wounding of 60,000. That is an atrocity
800 times bigger, and it continues to grow.
The Jewish victims of HAMAS terrorism are not responsible for the
Israeli bombardment and siege, Neither are the Palestinian victims
of the Israeli bombardment responsible for the HAMAS terrorism.
Neither group deserved to be the victims of an atrocity.
These atrocities are both gravely morally culpable, but it is proper
to focus first on the far larger atrocity, especially if it continues
to happen.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*"Astounding" ocean temperatures in 2023 intensified extreme weather, data
shows.*
In 2020, the wrecker (while still president) told EU leaders that
the US would refuse to help defend Europe if it is attacked.
This is no surprise to me, since the only likely attacker is Russia,
and the wrecker considers himself to be allied with Putin rather than
with Europe.
*Rightwing Billionaires & [the wrecker] Want a Nation Where Everything is For
Sale.*
Where they will be allowed to disregard any law by paying a big enough bribe.
During the Jan 6 insurrection, a tweet appeared on the wrecker's
Ex-Twitter account saying "Stay peaceful." Turns out one of his staff
sent that on his own initiative; the wrecker had nothing to do with it.
Some Jewish students at Harvard have sued the university for
"tolerating" antisemitism.
The allegation could be true; antisemitism is found in many places,
and it may have been manifested at Harvard. However, it could also be
an instance of the frequent distortion which construes condemnation of
Israel's actions as "antisemitic", and erroneously equating support for
Palestinians rights with support for HAMAS.
There is also the question of whether respect for the constitutional
rights of the accused students requires some of the toleration that
the plaintiffs object to.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Robert Reich: *How the oligarchy shrank America’s middle class (Why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 8).*
George Monbiot: *There are no savings from austerity and
privatization, just a wholesale shifting of costs. The rich pay
less tax and the public service companies in which they own shares
make greater profits. The rest of us pick up the bill.*
He had been on a train run by a privatized train company, but the
train was stopped by extreme weather. The company found a clever way
of reducing discharging its legal duty to give the passengers
alternate transport to London: it gave them taxi vouchers, which most
of them couldn't use since few taxis were available.
The rest of the passengers just had to wait hours in the rain. The
company never had to actually pay those vouchers because the vouchers
were never used.
Clever and destructive!
California is giving cities and counties the power to regulate
driverless vehicles.
This is a step forward, but part of the benefit is that it will allow
cities and counties to ban them entirely.
Most criticism of driverless vehicles is because they cause various
sorts of local danger. That issue is properly treated as very
important, but we must not overlook the surveillance threat they pose.
No taxi company should be allowed to operate on the basis of
systematically identifying everyone that hires a ride -- there must
be a reasonable way to travel anonymously.
What a psychotherapist says to clients that are overcome with grief from
seeing global heating disaster doing major harm to the Earth.
FBI agents pretending to work for PISSI convinced a mentally disabled
teenager to fly to Syria or Afghanistan (it wasn't clear to him which
one) to join PISSI. As soon as he turned 18, they told him to head for
the airport, where they arrested him.
A competent person who was capable of actually doing these things
could be a real terrorist and a real threat. But that young man was
hardly capable of hurting anyone without being led on a leash to do
it. If the FBI had not set out to do just that, he would have been
harmless.
What strikes me as wrong is that the FBI is eager for the chance
to make headlines by setting traps for Walter Mitty terrorists,
which doesn't do much good against real terrorists.
Israeli border patrol thugs repeatedly drove over the body of a
wounded Palestinian who was lying helplessly in the street. Some of
the border patrol had shot him just before, but he may still have been
alive.
An Israeli peace supporter told me 20 years ago that the border patrol
were especially cruel towards Palestinians.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The insurrectionist former president threatens to start more
insurrections if his first insurrection is judged by courts to
bar him
from running
for president.
Members of a drug
gang seized a TV broadcaster
in Ecuador, terrorist-style, but surrendered when the police came in such large
numbers that the gangsters could not imagine defeating them.
Selling drugs is not the sort of cause that can inspire people to be willing to die for it.
*Revealed: Congress backers of Gaza war [had already]
received most
[money]
from pro-Israel donors.*
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The planet roasters are
citing the bombardment of Gaza
as a supposed reason to increase oil production.
I see the parallel. That increase in global heating would do to the
whole earth what Israel is doing to Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens:
call on Biden
to shut down the Line 5 pipeline.
If you phone, please spread the word!
White House: +1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: phone your Congresscritter and say to fully fund the WIC
supplemental nutrition program (for young children and their mothers).
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A report on the tax systems of the 50 US states presents how most of
them tax the poor more heavily than the rich — but some are much
worse than others.
*The Guardian view on Bangladesh's phoney election: a bad day for
democracy.*
Global heating of the ocean is wiping out cod, from south to north.
The only way to avoid this is if (1) cod adapt to reproduce at a higher
temperature or (2) we keep the Atlantic Ocean cool.
US citizens: tell Congress that a vote for a "fiscal commission" is a
vote to cut Social Security and Medicare.
*Hong Kong to restructure primary education to make it more "patriotic."*
(satire) Since Florida governor DeMentis can't run for governor again
thus year and probably won't be a candidate for president, maybe he
will seek a post in Hong Kong's education redesign, which (aside from
superficial details) has a lot in common with his philosophy of
education.
*Israeli public figures accuse judiciary of ignoring incitement to
[atrocities, or even genocide,] in Gaza.*
Some instances of such incitement go so far as to call for genocide.
Other instances call for atrocities and killing that might or might
not reach the scale of genocide -- but would clearly be criminal
in the absence of specific justification.
The complainants point out that Israel's government hyperactively
prosecutes anything it can construe as support for HAMAS's violence,
while going to the opposite extreme in tolerating advocacy of
anti-Palestinian violence.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on global leaders at the World Economic Forum to tax extreme wealth.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop Wall Street and big tech from
exploiting the housing crisis.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Facebook/Instagram, Ex-Twitter and YouTube to
protect their users and our democracy in 2024.
US citizens: call on Justice Thomas to Recuse himself from the case
about whether to disqualify the insurrectionist for his insurrection.
US citizens: call on the CFPB to apply the same rules to payment apps
that banks and credit cards are already subject to.
* In this imagined [Tory] reality, sharp-elbowed parents [of children
with disabilities] are handed ‘golden tickets’ for endless support.
Meanwhile, we battle for the bare minimum.*
*The Billionaire Next Door Driving Up Housing Costs for Everyone.*
Almost 3/4 of fishing ships turn off their tracking beacons while fishing.
Some of them are hiding the fact that they are fishing in protected waters.
Due to a fuel leak, the Peregrine moon lander won't be able to land.
I wonder if they could put it into an orbit from which a future
spacecraft could recover it and land it.
Three French thugs are on trial for beating and maiming a young black man
who was part of a group that they decided to stop and search.
2023 was the hottest year ever recorded, and came very close to 1.5°C of heating compared with before the mass use of fossil fuels.
As predicted, this level of heating has caused extreme weather
disasters around the world.
Bad as 2023 was, 2024 will be worse.
Israel fired rockets at a car, killing two al-Jazeera journalists in
it. Al-Jazeera accuses Israel of intentionally targeting them.
I wonder, how many people were in that car, and what were they doing?
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The war in Gaza is killing civilians (Palestinian civilians, nowadays)
much faster than other recent wars. It has wrecked most of the
buildings and most of the hospitals. The schools that have not been wrecked
are sheltering people driven out of their homes.
The World Food Program says that around 700,000 people are facing
catastrophic hunger, and that 577,000 of them are in Gaza. Evidently
food aid agencies are doing a great job of providing food to people
who otherwise would be starving — except in Gaza where Israel is
making it too hard.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Environmental harm affects bees, and it has reduced the production of honey.
The residents of Berchtesgaden, once Hitler's secondary home,
have decided to actively discourage visits by Nazis who use
it as a kind of shrine.
Emissions from the motor sector could have fallen by more than 30%
between 2010 and 2022 if vehicles had stayed the same size,*
if people had not switched to buying SUVs instead of regular size
cars.
*The reason for these cynical [Tory] power grabs: the weaker the
Tories become, the stronger they need to appear.*
Israel still claims it will totally eliminate HAMAS and free the
hostages it took, saying that this will require an additional year of
fighting.
I don't think it is possible to achieve both of those goals -- they
are essentially incompatible. Also, I wonder what fraction of the
Palestinian population of Gaza could remain alive after such fighting,
with the deadly hunger and thirst which Israel imposes there. I
expect it would be much less than 50%.
At some point soon, the US must say to Netanyahu, "We can't let you go
on this way."
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Artificial intelligence could supercharge threats to civil liberties, civil rights, and privacy.*
*Programs aimed at "situational awareness," like those run by many
parts of DHS or police departments preparing for public events, tend
to have few safeguards. They often veer into monitoring social and
political movements,*
When the authors say "Artificial Intelligence," that includes
degenerative systems such as bullshit generators. Spying uses them to
converse with people, pretending to be human beings.
Production of solar cells and efficient modern storage batteries are
growing enormously. Perhaps we can beat greenhouse gas emissions that
way.
Aside from generation of electricity, we must decarbonize other causes
of global heating, including transportation that uses fossil fuel, and
agriculture (including deforestation).
*Head of Britain's association of police chiefs says the police departments
there are "institutionally racist."*
That they acknowledge this is a step forward, but the thing is to change that.
US citizens: call on Congress to give us an enforceable Supreme Court code
of ethics.
China is using DNA profiling to help monitor Tibetans in Tibet.
A US company was selling the suppression forces DNA identification kits
which it was using to do this. It has ceased to sell them there.
It's obligatory to cease the sales, but that won't end the repression.
I wonder if Tibetans living in territory that China annexed around
1960, which is ostensibly not Tibet, are repressed as much as Tibetans
living in the regions still called Tibet.
The insurrectionist said that if he captures the Presidency this year
he will pardon the people who participated three years ago in the
insurrection he launched.
He is the enemy of democracy in the US and intends to destroy it.
The five truths [he] hopes you will forget about 6 January 2021.
He is a narcissist, and he gets pleasure when anyone says his name.
I've decided not to give him any that pleasure. That's the first step
in fighting him -- but not the last, or course.
Astronomers call for care in deciding where on the moon spacecraft
should land, lest they damage things or sites that should be saved for
more important uses, or use up scarce resources.
An oil company is trying to use the Energy Charter Treaty to eliminate
the EU's windfall profits tax.
The Energy Charter Treaty will kill millions of people if we let it.
Even war could be justified if it's necessary in order to eliminate
that treaty. But perhaps the threat of trade sanctions could suffice.
An organization that represent DRM interests is suing security researchers,
claiming that investigating their technology is copyright infringement.
This is part of the general tendency to make copyright more and more
oppressive.
The article's use of the propaganda term "intellectual property"
incorporates that tendency.
Can anyone tell me about a service similar to patreon except that it
doesn't require donors or recipients to run any nonfree software (not
even JavaScript code)?
More evidence that the elections in Serbia were rigged.
A review of climate optimism: the valid points they make, and the side
that they brush over.
The EFF has endorsed "real privacy protections", but I have doubts
that their approach is strong enough to achieve the goal of protecting
privacy.
The basic philosophical flaw is that they don't recognize that real
privacy requires anonymity.
There are parking garages in the US and Europe which require the
motorist to enter the car's license plate number into a digital
system. Other parking garages take a photo of every car that enters,
or every car that leaves, which would imply recording the car's
license plate number.
When considering a proposed privacy protection law, we should
challenge it with this question: would it be absolutely forbidden for
the parking lot ever to make any of those license plate numbers
available to any government agency, except under direction of a
specific, narrow court order?
We we talk about deleting records to protect privacy, we must ask
about any backup systems that might hold these license plate numbers
past the time that the car has exited. Are they a security hole that
threatens motorists' privacy?
Of course, sending any of that data to a cloudy system which could
store a copy outside of the parking lot itself would totally destroy
the privacy of those motorists.
Massachusetts has established a toll collection system that saves data
about motorists' travel in order to bill them. Those operating the
system would argue that this is permitted because the system "needs"
to hold on to that data in order to collect the tolls. Given the
choice of that particular system of billing, retaining the data that
long would appear necessary.
If the law accepts such a weak standard of "the minimum necessary", it
won't protect privacy. A real standard of respect for privacy would
prohibit that system of billing. We know that it is possible to
collect tolls without recording who pays them. That being so, collecting
the identity of those who pass the toll station should be forbidden.
A Colorado thug has been sentenced to jail for killing Elijah McClain.
Israel's assassination (we assume Israel arranged it) of a HAMAS
leader-in-exile may provoke Hezbollah to escalate war with Israel.
I expect that Netanyahu's officials foresaw that result, and may have
sought it. The more enemies are actively fighting Israel, the more
Biden will find it hard to put any pressure on Israel to be less
bellicose.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Americans living in their cars are finding refuge in "safe parking lots".*
It is better than nothing, but shamefully inadequate.
Next year's main climate conference will again be run by an oil
industry executive.
* The attempted US coup of 6 January 2021, never ended, according to a
watchdog report, since the same [allies of the wrecker] behind that
insurrection are now leading a sham impeachment effort against
[President] Biden.*
There are people in the UK that hate and revile people who wear masks
on trains and therefore help protect others from getting sick.
These people are doing the Putin's work. In the US, they are
helping Putin, and helping the wrecker too, by making Americans sicker
and weaker, increasing medical debt, and basically making society's
existing problems somewhat worse.
I always wear a good mask when indoors with other people, outside of
very special situations. When I am in a train or bus and someone else
is also wearing a mask, I often tell per I appreciate this: "Thank you
for wearing a mask." It is an easy and friendly way to encourage the
practice.
A carefully designed PR campaign would surely lead more people to wear
masks and thus help protect the public. I suggested this to the mayor
of Boston, when mask requirements were dropped, but I got no reply.
*Hotter, drier air in Europe "causing poor crops and greater wildfire
risk."*
This means irrigation is needed in places that didn't need it before.
But do they have the water available to do this?
Starmer reinforced his commitment to let the environment die rather
than borrow money to save it.
He is attacking a straw man, which is the idea of getting those funds
by borrowing. The real alternative, to get it by taxing the rich, he
does not even mention.
The only way to make Starmer Labour prioritize anyone but the rich
is to have a Green or Socialist party to keep mentioning it every day.
Investigating ways to collect PFAS from waste water (or drinking water) and
eventually destroy them.
*US Department of Justice sues Texas over new state immigration law
… allowing police to [arrest] people
suspected of crossing the US border without authorization.*
Musk is retaliating against the National Labor Relations Board (for
enforcing labor laws) by suing to abolish the National Labor Relations
Board.
I wish this were an exaggeration, but it's not. With our partisan
Supreme Court it might actually succeed.
Jimmy Lai's lawyers have accused China of torturing a former democracy
activist to make him confess to a so-called crime, and have asked the
UN special rapporteur on torture to take some sort of action.
I can easily believe that China did this, but I don't understand why
the article describes this as an "appeal" to the rapporteur. As far
as I know, neither that rapporteur nor the UN as a whole has any power
to overturn a Chinese court ruling. Chinese courts take their orders
from the Chinese state.
*[Putin] "attacked Ukraine with North Korea-supplied ballistic missiles."*
Russia makes its own ballistic missiles, and in principle doesn't need
to use North Korea's, but its production rate is insufficient. I suspect that
Putin's reason for using some now is only to show that he won't hesitate
to use them.
All CNN coverage of issues relating to Israel, including the war in Gaza,
requires approval of Israeli state censorship.
Naturally that censorship infuses articles with bias in favor of
Israel or its interests.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Here's the disclaimer that an "AI" bullshit generator ought to give
for every answer.
(Please don't call these bullshit generators "AI".
That leads people to suppose that they understand what they say.)
Terrorists set off bombs in Iran at a memorial for General Suleimani,
who was assassinated by the US at the wrecker's orders.
That assassination was meant to ensure the US and Iran would not
reestablish the non-nuclear deal.
the deal has not been reestablished, and the world is worse off for
that.
I am no admirer of General Suleimani, or the oppressive regime he
served,
and I would not have gone to a memorial for him. Nonetheless,
there is no justification for murdering people for attending a
memorial; to do so is terrorism.
I hope that the guilt for that act of terrorism does not belong to the
US or Israel. It is a relief to learn that Iran suspects PISSI.
Israel appears to have assassinated a HAMAS leader who lives in exile
in Lebanon, and has hinted at the intention to do a lot more such.
I don't see anything wrong with this. HAMAS is a murderous terrorist
group, so killing its leaders (or its footsoldiers) is simply war.
I am skeptical that Israel could defeat HAMAS this way, but there is
nothing particularly evil about trying.
The moral issue about Israel's war against HAMAS is that it is killing
thousands of civilians in Gaza, and putting all the survivors in grave
danger. That's what Israel must stop.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The NLRB accused SpaceX of firing workers for criticizing Musk.
Statistical evidence of traffic stops in California shows evidence of
racial bias.
In effect, thugs expect disprivileged groups to be committing crimes
more often, but in fact that is not true.
This bias is a serious injustice. I wish the article did not display
its own bias by the 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.
The wearing of body cameras by thugs in the US has mostly failed to
make them accountable for their violence, partly because thug
departments often edit the videos or conceal them entirely.
US medical insurance companies typically have official lists of the
clinics and doctors in their "network". These are often padded with
lots of fake entries, which give the false impression that they give
patients lots of choice.
Arguing that several coups in Africa are a real revolution against
neocolonialism.
I don't have enough knowledge of those countries to come to a
conclusion about this issue. However, it raises questions that the
article does not address.
For instance, all three of those countries are menaced by Islamist
rebels, some of which are basically predatory kidnappers. France was
supposedly going to help the governments suppress them, but that did
not succeed. How do the coup governments plan to deal with this?
What is their attitude towards Russian influence? Is this a
replacement of one foreign sponsor with another -- geopolitics still
at work?
Canada's forest fires this year burned 170.000 square miles, and
released as much additional CO2 as three years of Canada's normal rate
of emissions.
That is about 10% of the total boreal forest, which is around 1.8
million square miles. Worse, in coming years there will be less forest
to capture some CO2.
1/3 of Canada's forests have burned in the past 40 years, but until
recently the amount per year was small enough that they could grow
back. The accelerated rate of loss could make the loss permanent.
I think it is plausible that roughly all of Canada's forests will burn
in the next decade or two. The increase in the world's CO2 could be
impossible to overcome.
Morgan Trowland, sentenced to years in prison for a nonviolent Just
Stop Oil protest, used his time in prison to read philosophy and deepen
his understanding of the moral issues that led him to protest.
Israel's supreme court ruled that Netanyahu's law subordinating it to
parliament is invalid.
This blocked, for the moment, the fascist move of eliminating
judicial independence and judicial review.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
*Israel and its allies must face facts: peace talks are the only way
forward, and they will have to include Hamas.*
I agree more or less with the views of this article.
However, I find in it a practice that is foolish and unilluminating:
that of labeling countries, by their international relations, as
"global south" and "global north." This makes a real physical
geographical distinction of little importance into a misleading
metaphor that tries to equate geography with politics. That
association would be profound if it were true, but being false, it
becomes an excuse for prejudice.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe says that
Serbia's recent election was rigged by the party in power.
*Bernie Sanders calls on Congress to block funding to Israel. "While
we recognize that Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we
must also recognize that Israel’s military response has been grossly
disproportionate, immoral and in violation of international law,”
Sanders said.*
I agree fully. Israel's right to defend itself against HAMAS does not
justify a series of atrocities against Palestinian civilians.
This situation is sadly ironic, since Sanders, when he was young,
supported Israel to the point of going there to live in a kibbutz.
That was before Israel conquered the West Bank.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Billionaires hounded President Gay of Harvard into resigning.
In England, most complaints about the violence of thugs are
investigated by the thug department itself. Those investigations
generally conclude that the accused thug did no wrong. However, for
cases that are reinvestigated independently, 40% of them lead to
rejecting that conclusion and finding some degree of wrongdoing.
It seems to be that this calls for moving all such investigations outside
of the thug department.
We see a similar problem in the US.
*Why Voting Rights Act faces new wave of dire threats in 2024.*
People who worked as aides for the insurrectionist when he was president
warn that if re-elected he could "end US democracy as we know it."
Western Australia has banned commercial logging of native forests.
This will protect many threatened species, as well as the forests.
US citizens: call on Biden to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza,
protect human rights, and stop giving U.S. bombs for use in war
crimes.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the WIC supplemental
nutrition program.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep making the ultra-wealthy pay
their taxes -- by fully funding the IRS.
This is a crucial first step towards making the rich "pay their fair
share", but to achieve that requires much more than making them obey
existing tax law. We need to increase taxes for the rich: to reduce
their ability to shelter wealth from taxes, and higher tax brackets
for very high incomes. The highest bracket should be over 90%, as it
was in the 40s and 50s.
Since they have accumulated wealth to the point of distorting our
justice and democracy, we also need to tax great wealth.
"Journalism" in India has been reduced to constant support for Modi's
right-wing party. Channels that don't go along are driven down.
Analyzing Nikki Haley's careful refusal to say "slavery" in New
Hampshire. She was trying to bridge a political contradiction that is
too far to be bridged.
Former prison thug: *If you think jails are too soft and full of
hardened criminals, read this and think again.*
EPIC reports on how little we know about the "commercially available
information" about Americans that US government agencies buy.
The root of this problem is not that the US government buys the
commercially available information but that sensitive information
about people can be collected at all. The fourth amendment was
meant to limit investigation of people's things and activities, and
such limits are meaningful only if it can't be bypassed by asking a
business to pressure you to consent.
Recent autos offer a feature by which the driver can connect per
snoop-phone to the car. That feature snoops on the calls and texts and
give the data to the car manufacturer, and to the state.
A good privacy law would prohibit cars recording this data about the
users activities. But not just this data -- lots of other data too.
Israel will reduce its troops in Gaza and demobilize some who are
reservists. But this does not mean the mass murder will end any time soon.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Robert Reich: Biden needs to start visibly fighting the main enemies of
American working families: the billionaires and plutocratists.
There is a cancellation campaign against famous Chinese dissident
artist Ai Wei Wei, for a political tweet that criticize Zionist
influence on the US.
His response has been to defend freedom of speech, including the right
to express "incorrect" thoughts.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
War over access to water is increasing globally, and so is use of denial
of water as a weapon. How can the world reduce this?
Our system for preventing atrocities, mostly set up after World War
II, is defied constantly, and the most powerful governments are unable
to make other countries obey. In some cases, Russia being just one
one, they are among the most guilty. That encourages the increase of
all kinds of atrocities.
So the real question is how to reshape international power competition
so that it is not advantageous to disregard that system, let alone
fight against it as Putin and Netanyahu are doing now.
Global heating is on track to cause various medical problems for
hundreds of millions more people in the next few decades.
Standing Together holds Arab-Jewish peace rallies in cities in Israel.
I think my wishes of benevolence
fit together with that campaign.
*World [is going far too slowly] on almost every policy required to
cut carbon emissions, research finds.*
A Cuban who fled to the US compares the insurrectionist with Castro.
The insurrectionist is far worse than Castro. Castro established
education and provided medical care for all, while eliminating hunger;
however, he also abolished vital human rights. Dissidents such as
Oswaldo Payá admired the good side of what Castro did, while standing
up to repression to change the bad side.
The insurrectionist, by contrast, has no wish to make life better
for Americans unless that serves him. He and his minions work against
education, against medicine, and for starvation.
*The 10 Worst Free-Range Parenting Stories of 2023.*
*Many hostages released by Hamas still being treated for trauma.
Head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv medical centre says hostages have
undergone worst abuse she has witnessed.* It sounds horrible.
HAMAS is a terrorist organization and some of its kidnappers vented all
their hatred against hostages. But that is not an excuse to hate all
Palestinians in Gaza and torture them,
Some of these kinds of torture have been practiced by other counties
such as China
and the US.
US citizens: call on Congress to save lives by insisting on a
ceasefire in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The UK plans to exile Dmitry Lima to Portugal, on account of a
sentence for nonviolent crimes. This despite the fact that he was
born in the UK and has never been outside the UK.
I wonder whether Portugal would admit him. Has it got legal grounds
to block the deportation?
Since his parents were/are Portuguese, I suppose he is or at least was
entitled to apply for Portuguese citizenship — but does he actually
have that citizenship? Would it be granted under these circumstances,
if he does apply? What if he (rationally) declines to apply for this
help in deporting him?
Perhaps this is simply yet another example of the UK state's lack of
capacity to implement its own rules reliably.
Online tracking dis-services, and tethered appliances, are trying to teach
customers to love Big Brother — by sending them summaries of what they did
during the year.
If you'd like a list summarizing the music, movies, food products or
humidifier hours you have used during the year, the free software you use
for this should be able to keep such lists — for your eyes only.
Meanwhile, join me in saying "Out, out, damned Spotify!" and never let
them know anything about you again.
A leader of the Hong Kong democracy movement accuses the UK of bending over
backwards to reject requests for asylum from refugees for Hong Kong.
The UK made a trade agreement with China recently. Since China is
rich and the UK is poor by comparison, it makes sense that the Tories
would suck up to China in this way.
However, it could simply be the an instance of the general
incompetence of UK bureaucracy in government and business.
Or a general lack of sense of proportion.
Nikki Haley, in a public meeting, persistently refused to recognize
slavery among the causes of the US Civil War.
Dissembling about this is a traditional part of defending the
Confederate side and deflecting criticism of its system of slavery
(and, later, segregation and discrimination).
Argentina's repressive new president has proposed a law of gross
repression: any protest rally of more than three people in a public
place would require applying for a permit in advance.
Some kinds of protests would be harshly punished, as in Hong Kong
Britain.
Some Israelis are horrified by what the army does, and refuse to be
drafted. One explains his decision here.
The last bank branch in the Peak District, an important English
tourism area, is closing.
Since it is a rural area and many people don't have cars, going to a
branch elsewhere will be difficult for them. It will be difficult for
businesses, too, to deposit cash and withdraw cash.
The UK has made hundreds of refugees live in a disused rural airbase
from which it is hard to get anywhere. One village is close enough
that they can walk to it. The people there worry that so many
refugees will cause problems for them.
Wethersfield's population is under 1,300. The number of refugees may
be half that. Their club is not designed for hundreds of guests at
once.
If the UK had placed the refugees in a less isolated and more urban
area, where hundreds of thousands live, they would hardly be
noticeable.
(satire) *Fisher-Price Smartphone Toy Teaches Children To Screen All
Calls Assuming It’s Debt Collectors.*
Too bad it doesn't teach that the snoop-phone could be listening all
the time.
Political decisions in the UK leave millions of inhabitants too poor
to afford healthful food -- and sometimes, too poor to afford any food
-- and this
is causing
an increase in obesity from eating mainly the cheap junk food.
These political decisions are part of what is known as "austerity" and
are taken by parties such as
the Tories
and Labour that refuse to increase taxes on the rich so as to help the
poor.
The US
is making
similar decisions under the control of Republicans in Congress.
Inheritance taxes
are paid
by the rich. or by those who are about to become rich. This makes
them one of the fairest kinds of tax, in a society that has let the
rich grab too much.
Strange that non-rich voters think they will someday have to pay it.
*We are witnessing a pandemic of inhumanity: to halt the spread, we
must cling to the law.* The laws of war and war crimes, that refers to.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Antarctica's climate is teetering on the edge of disaster:
*Study after study showed the breakdown of climate systems taking place
[decades] earlier than foreseen, with potentially catastrophic results.*
It's not just penguins that will be wiped out. It's the geography, too.
Rotifers eat microplastics, then cannot digest them, but split them up
into enormous numbers of much smaller nanoplastic particles.
The nanoplastic particles can get into smaller organisms, further down
the food chain, which means they go through more levels of
concentration before they reach the sea animals that we eat. If they are
harmful, which no one knows, that would make them more harmful.
It's a world-wide experiment being carried out on all humans and most other
animals, all at once.
*Complaints against
NYPD hit
11-year high under pro-police mayor Adams.* I expected something
like this, since he is an ex-thug and will tend to take the side of
thugs in a dispute.
The proponents of repressive
"broken
windows" policies for the thug department, which were applied in
the 90s in some US cities, took credit for a decrease in crime that
turned out to happen nationwide at that time, regardless of use of
those policies. It was caused by other factors, such as eliminating
lead from gasoline and other parts of the environment.
*A quarter of [Gaza's] population
could die
within a year due to outbreaks of disease caused by [the
bombardment and siege].*
That would be enough to convince me that the term "genocide" fits.
So would poisoning the groundwater with salt.
Israeli bombardment, and even direct gunfire, threaten those trying to
distribute food and water in Gaza.
The quantity that is getting through is nowhere near enough.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
Tall waves hitting the California coast have overtopped sea walls and
cliffs, causing damage and injury.
To this effect of global heating (stronger storms) will be added another
expected effect, sea-level ruse.
Due to the expensive and inferior US medical system, life expectancy
for non-college-graduates has decreased every year since 2010.
That's because their income has decreased. As often happens, lower
life expectancy measures poverty. It is understandable that they are
dissatisfied and want a change.
Those who think of addressing this by voting for the Republican Party,
which wants to make the medical system even worse and block's Biden's
efforts to improve it, are being self-destructively foolish.
*New York college students who support
Palestine fear
post-9/11-style retaliation.* Except that now they also scan
through social media posts.
The difference between condemning HAMAS's actions and hating
Palestinians generally is conceptually clear enough, but if you forget
to pay attention to it you can easily drift across the line without
noticing. Likewise with the difference between Israel's actions and
hating Jews generally.
Even if you carefully keep these differences in mind, and carefully
represent them in your words, your enemies can unconsciously
misunderstand and accuse you of hatred. They can
even dishonestly
and intentionally make false accusations, blaming you for what your
associates have done, or
for things
that didn't happen at all.
Let's not lose sight of
where we want to end up.
A new form of romanticism is leading young people to reject
rationalism and science, as well as technology.
The specific forms of technology that the article mentions are
oppressive forms: online dis-services and nonfree software. There are
valid rational reasons to reject them -- but if you ignore those
reasons, and give way to a thoughtless reject, that will not lead you
to make good choices.
The person who told us to "listen to the scientists" was Greta
Thunberg, and she was talking specifically about climate scientists
and their modeling of coming global climate catastrophe. We know full
well who wants us not to listen to them, and spends millions of
dollars
to distract
us from them.
Science is not perfect, and individual scientific conclusions can be
wrong, But science, when practiced properly and honestly, is our best
tool for collectively finding and correcting each other's errors and
our own. To reject scientific thinking is not only foolish, it is
asking for trouble, even gigadeaths. It can amount to genocide
against the human race, and millions of other species too.
I'm Susan. China fears me enough to try sabotage against me.
It seems China did not attack my opponent, who has opposed
bills to support Taiwan.
They believe this wastes money which could be better spent on making billionaires richer.
[/ironic truth]
It is for this reason that I have long been a critic of the concept of
“Islamophobia”; not because bigotry or discrimination against Muslims
does not exist, but because the term conflates disapproval of ideas and
disparagement of people, making it more difficult to challenge the
latter. It is, in my view, more useful to frame such intolerance as
"anti-Muslim prejudice" or "bigotry". The issue, though, is not one of
wording; what matters is less the term employed than the meaning
attributed to it.
The term I coined is "antimuslimism".
I reject it because of a category error: bigotry is not a phobia. A phobia is a mental
disorder; we cannot blame people for having a phobia. We can and should blame people
(including ourselves) for bigotry. Thus, paradoxically, calling bigotry "phobia" lets the
bigots off the moral hook.
Anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitic; but it can be, and too
often is. The answer is not to label all expressions of anti-Zionism as
antisemitic but to call out the latter, while acknowledging the
legitimacy of the former.
I should comment that criticism (however strong) of actions of Israel
is not necessarily anti-Zionism.
I'll love you until the rivers run still.
I was struck by despair, because that is now. The rivers are running still already!
The page misuses the word "monetizing", which properly means "using something
as currency." I refuse to imitate that bad change in the English language, but I agree in
substance with the petition so I signed it.
Fossil fuel corporations are most responsible for the climate crisis,
and we will continue to hold them to account no matter what the state
throws at us. We have to, because nothing is worse than losing
everything.
The charge against her was later dropped on a technicality,
but the threat to repress future protests remains active.
We must put an end to tracking and collection of people's sensitive
activity data except based on specific warrants to authorize such
collection.
Each note starts with a date and a brief topic in parentheses. That
text is also a link to that note.
For instance, if the note
starts with "31 July 2022 (Inflation)" then you can link to it with
"https://www.stallman.org/notes/2022-may-aug.html#31_July_2022_(Inflation)".
Return to Richard Stallman's home page.
Please send comments on these web pages to rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2024 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire page are permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
