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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Boeing made a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution for causing two fatal crashes. Then it did not carry out the agreement.
As global heating reduces the rainfall in Algeria, the government is building desalination plants, but not fast enough.
George Monbiot: *Things are not going to get better as long as oligarchs rule the roost in our democracies.*
That is true to first order, but not exactly 100% true. The dominion of the billionaires is not an all-or-nothing thing, and there are issues important to us which are not particularly important to them.
Bolivia put down a right-wing coup by army generals. Right-wingers, including followers of Bolsonaro, applauded the attempt, demonstrating their opposition to democracy.
An arrested coup leader said that the president ordered him to carry out a phony coup, as political theater.
I don't know enough about Bolivia to have any basis for trying to judge whether this is true.
In the debate, the bullshitter pummeled Biden with high speed lies, making him seem old and weak.
Each candidate has had time to show us who [perse is], and one is a felon trying to destroy democracy.
If you have to choose between a weak and tottering friend and a vigorous, greedy, hostile cheater, which should you choose? I'd choose the friend, because the cheater is sure to do more harm.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Republican tax breaks for big corporations.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Cheap talk about expensive nuclear reactors.
Smotrich, a right-wing extremist in Netanyahu's cabinet, stated his aim to annex the West Bank. I suppose that would lead to making it araberrein, as Uri Avnery foretold.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject KOSA, so-called "protection" for children that would compel users of all ages to prove their identity.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Vanguard's new CEO to protect retirement savers from climate-related financial risks.
Those risks would be just a part of the colossal damage that climate disaster causes to everyone. But it is useful as a basis to raise the issue here. An investment company can easily shrug off damage it will do to the whole world, but damage specifically to its clients is hard to disregard.
Robert Reich: *[The wrecker] has convinced many Americans that stridency is a sign of strength while truth and humility signal weakness.*
The US judge in Julian Assange's case approved his plea bargain, but warned that future journalists were indeed in danger from the US.
*The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Russian officials over alleged Ukraine war crimes,* such as firing missiles at civilian targets.
Fedja Stukan, a Bosnian, recently wrote a book about his experiences in the civil war in the 90s. It criticized Serbia for that; he has also accused Serbia's current government of running nonfree elections.
Recently he tried to go to a book festival in Serbia, but was denied entry.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Republican efforts to cancel climate defense measures.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a wealth tax on billionaires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to ban bump stocks. They effectively convert rifles into machine guns.
Right-wing judges recently ruled against an executive order to treat them as machine guns. So a new law is needed.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Rising sea levels will disrupt millions of Americans’ lives by 2050, study finds.*
The same is true in various other countries. I've seen places in France, Italy and Turkey that are likely to be inundated in a few decades. Some of them have millennia of history. Some of them are very important to excavate for archeology.
The UK's right-wing extremist leader, Farage, said that Ukraine should give Putin some of its territory.
Many right-wing leaders seem to be allied with Putin -- starting with the wrecker. The ones in the US blocked arms for Ukraine to help Putin conquer some more territory, while Farage cites that as a reason to accept defeat.
It may prove impossible to defeat the Putin forces completely, It may be unavoidable for Ukraine to cede some territory to him, but that would be a very sad victory for tyrannical conquest. We should not let a tyrant conquer without a hard fight.
The Great Barrier Reef has suffered 97% bleaching in some areas.
A coral reef typically has many species of coral. I have a suspicion that different species have different rates of survival. If the overall rate of survival is 10%, some species may have 20% survival and some 5% survival, and some 0% survival. If some species have become locally extinct, that region's coral reef may be changed permanently.
A substantial fraction Israelis are recognizing that letting the extreme right wing and the fanatical colonists lead Israel is harmful to Israel. Now Israelis are recognizing that they act like tyrants and lead the state into repression.
For decades there have always been Israelis who wanted to make peace with Palestinians, but their numbers have dwindled since the 90s. Maybe now they will increase.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Protecting just 1.2% of Earth’s land could save most-threatened species.*
*Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise.* Small increase in temperature of intruding water could lead to very big increase in loss of ice, scientists say.
*Sea level rise is the greatest long-term impact of the climate crisis and is set to redraw the world map in coming centuries. It has the potential to put scores of major cities, from New York City to Shanghai, below sea level and to affect billions of people.*
*EU-regulated "sustainable" funds invest [around 20 billion dollars] in biggest polluters.*
Israel's army has defined journalists working for organizations linked with HAMAS as enemy combatants, to be killed.
This is a bogus excuse for killing civilians, and a war crime.
*The Day Israeli Tanks Fired Directly at AFP's Gaza Bureau.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Julian Assange may be on his way to freedom but this is not a clear victory for freedom of the press.*
US citizens: call on CNN to ask the candidates, at the first presidential debate, "How will you work to reduce nuclear tensions as President?"
US citizens: call on Biden to declare a climate emergency now.
US citizens: call on Congress to defend the CFPB's new rule limiting credit card late fees. These hit mainly Americans who are poor.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to stop the $18 billion sale of bombs and fighter jets to Israel.
The expensive US pier, meant to provide a way to land aid from ships, has been mostly a failure. As of June 23, it had been physically functional for 12 days out of the 37 days it had been in place. This is because the waves on the Gaza coast have been higher than normal, and the designers did not allow enough safety margin for it.
On most of those 12 days when the pier itself was usable, there was no transport to take the aid to the starving civilians.
The rules of war say that attacking a military target with some civilians nearby must satisfy the criterion of "proportionality". If there are a few HAMAS cops near an aid convoy, who are there to keep security for the convoy, attacking them and endangering the more numerous] civilians handling the aid (and this ought to count those whose lives depend on its arrival) cannot satisfy that criterion. To attack the convoy would be a war crime.
If Israel did attack the convoy, that would be interference with delivery of US humanitarian aid. Under US law the US would have to suspend weapons deliveries to Israel.
The US thus has plenty of leverage to make Israel stop blocking this aid, but does not use it.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Biden pardons thousands of US veterans convicted under law banning gay sex.*
This should have been done years ago, but better late than never.
Julian Assange has accepted a plea bargain according to which he will be sentenced to the time he has already spent in Belmarch prison. (One charge has been filed already by the US for him to plead guilty to.) He is now supposed to go to the Mariana Islands (near Guam) to plead guilty and be sentenced to "time served", and then leave for Australia.
Reportedly Australia's support for Assange played a major part in convincing the US to agree to this deal.
I am very glad for Assange for being out of prison, but I am alarmed that the danger of being treated similarly will face other journalists and publishers in the future. If the US had prosecuted the perpetrators of the actions in the "collateral murder" video, none of this would have been necessary.
The plea deal requires approval from the judge. I wonder what will happen to Assange if the judge declines to accept the deal. Could he be sent to a US prison to await trial?
*One in five households in Gaza go whole days without food, draft UN report says.*
Documents show Israeli-influence funds target US college campuses and push to redefine antisemitism in US law.
The redefinition they push for is to adopt the distorted IHRA criterion for judging antisemitism.
I think it would be justified for Biden to take an action to block or punish this influence attempt — something sharp enough that Netanyahu will conclude he is going too far and must stop.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Southern China hit by floods as north suffers from drought.*
Last I heard, China was rapidly increasing its burning of coal, so its own actions are partly responsible for these twin disasters.
Netanyahu rejected the idea of a lasting cease fire in Gaza. He spoke of "pauses" but it is not clear that those would allow in enough aid to save Palestinians from dying from shortages.
I think that whatever Netanyahu says about what he will or might do in the future is bullshit, just as if it came from the wrecker. Furthermore, since Netanyahu wants the wrecker to win the election, he will say whatever will cause trouble for Biden now. As long as Biden doesn't dare to do defy Netanyahu in something with consequences, Netanyahu will drag Biden around on a chain and he may indeed lose.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
A young right-wing American, a supporter of the wrecker, told Robert Reich, "Think of Putin, Xi, Kim, Ali Khamenei, Netanyahu — they’re all odious thugs," he said. "We need our own odious thug to stand up to them."
That thinking has a blatant flaw. The other "odious thugs" (his words) he listed, aside from Netanyahu, made their own peoples the first and principal target of their oppression, though they hurt some minorities worse. I think the wrecker would be similar. An American would need to be very lucky to benefit from being under the wrecker's heel.
Sweden's foolish campaign to push everyone into using tracked digital payments instead of anonymous cash is unjust to everyone who uses the digital system. Ironically, it has also boosted fraud.
A digital payment systems fraud can steal far more money than a small store would ever have on hand as cash. Thus, leaving cash has magnified the danger from crime.
If they were using GNU Taler for digital payments, instead of BankID, that would fix both problems. A Taler payment never reveals the payer's identity, and does not enable fraud against merchants.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to prosecute Big Oil.
Apple's narrow and restricted provisions for alternate app stores have been found to violate the EU's Digital Markets Act.
If the EU stands by this, it may eventually compel Apple to allow something comparable to F-droid.
Posting a religious text in a public school classroom isn't harmless, let alone neutral.
It would be difficult to write it in English and be neutral between monotheism and polytheism, and including atheism in the range of views respected would be even harder.
*Over half of US women on probation or parole need permission to travel for abortion.*
*Toys, spices, sewing machines [and many other things]: the items Israel banned from entering Gaza.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*The climate crisis is driving an exponential rise in the most extreme wildfires in key regions around the world.*
Extreme fires are a small fraction of total wildfires, but they release more greenhouse gases because they burn whole trees. The gases accelerate global heating.
Whether the effect of this feedback loop is truly exponential remains to be observed, but if it is, reducing greenhouse emissions may become impossible. We should not wait for those observations before we act vigorously to reduce greenhouse emissions while we still can do so.
Photojournalist Linda Tirado was covering a protest about the murder of George Floyd when a uniformed thug shot her in the eye, perhaps with a tear gas canister. She is now dying from the damage that did to her brain.
Thugs know from their training that firing a gas canister at someone's face is likely to kill. That one should be charged with murder.
Colorado's new law will regulate sale of products that contain PFAS.
US citizens: call on CNN to ask candidates how they would reduce nuclear tensions.
*Elected officials in sweltering US states prioritizing fossil fuel cash over people.*
This includes the Republican governors of Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Nevada.
One right-wing billionaire has given $75 million to the wrecker's campaign and $25 to the confuser's campaign (RFK Jr).
Labour is considering plans for a wealth tax in the UK. At last it is looking for a way to make a substantial improvement in all the problems caused by Tory spending cuts.
The UN seeks to hold an international meeting about Afghanistan and have the government of Afghanistan participate. That government demands the total exclusion of Afghan women from the event. (I can't tell from the article whether the UN has accepted it or not.)
Should the UN accept that demand?
I can understand the desire for the Afghan government's participation, but if the UN decides to help the people of Afghanistan via non-state channels, the government will have only two choices: to permit the aid, or to block it. By blocking it, it would help no one in Afghanistan and would incur condemnation. Either way, it would look bad, and the UN would be seen to be helpful and dutiful.
Mozilla has deactivated the blockage that it had placed on downloading certain anti-censorship add-ons from computers in Russia.
China threatens to execute Taiwanese for advocating Taiwan's independence, if it gets its hands on them.
I expect that some day, perhaps a few years from now, China will arrest Taiwanese tourists and sentence them to death on the basis of social media postings from the past. After a Chinese-style bogus trial, of course.
It would be appropriate for Taiwan to criminalize advocacy of war against Taiwan. This way, if China seizes Taiwanese hostages to threaten, Taiwan could seize some Chinese hostages in return.
Yanis Varoufakis: establishing a state of Palestine should not aim for symmetrical two-way apartheid; the proper goal is to bring the two groups closer together.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Israel tried to assassinate a HAMAS commander, disregarding the presence of numerous civilian bystanders nearby and the evident likelihood of many civilian casualties. Not surprisingly, many civilians were killed by the attack.
This was a war crime according to the Geneva conventions, if I understand this point correctly. The presence of a valid military target, even an important one, does not excuse predictably killing many civilians.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The Australian right wing plan for new nuclear power plants has been revealed as a bogus business boondoggle to make a poisonous pile of pollution.
I expect them to show as much respect for truth as the bullshitter does in the US, by continuing to champion the debunked claims.
*EU Council has withdrawn the vote on Chat Control, because the plan no longer has majority support.
Chatcontrol is the plan to impose massive censorship on internet communications, and its defeat is a great victory. Of course, it is not guaranteed to be a permanent victory.
*[New York Thug Department] complaints surge under [night-mayor] Adams to reach highest level since 2012.*
You have to expect an ex-cop in a powerful office to encourage cruelty and brutality by cops — simply by tending to take their side in disputes. And even if the ex-cop is black, encouraging cops' cruelty will promote white supremacism, because the two go together.
A British court ruled that planning agencies must consider the climate damage that will result from the fossil fuel to be extracted when they consider whether to approve fossil fuel development.
This is exactly the needed policy, but the planet roasters will try anything to get it reversed or undermined. If they fail, it will set an example for the world.
*Deluge of fake news websites threatens to drown out truth during US election.*
*Most people in petrostates want a quick switch to clean energy, UN poll finds.*
In the US, 54% want a quick switch. Alas, democracy in the US is not running very smoothly.
*Fossil fuel use reaches global record despite clean energy growth.*
No amount of renewable generation will save us unless we use it to contrive a drastic reduction in greenhouse emissions.
Vanuatu has cleaned up its lagoons by prohibiting several common kinds of disposable plastic items — including artificial flowers.
An account of how Ethiopia and the west fell for Abiy Ahmed as a messiah and how his government collapsed into war and chaos.
The article is too long for me to read it all carefully. I would like to have done so.
A psychotherapist writes about the error of trying to help someone by rushing or pressuring per to "cheer up" after a real loss.
Years ago, I had no "feelings police". If something made me despair, I cried.
Five years of cancellation have helped me develop a "feelings police" of a sort. It does not blank out feelings of danger, loss and suffering, but enables me to set them aside in order to deal with the situation in a calm and steady way.
McDonald's tried to replace human workers with a bullshit generator, but even in the narrow domain of ordering food from a menu it worked badly.
Netanyahu complained that Biden is carrying out his announced intention to delay delivery of heavy bombs to Israel.
AIPAC, the Israeli Hawks' (and extremists') lobby, has been putting lots of effort into defeating Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a primary this Tuesday.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Nuclear engineer dismisses [Australian right wing's] claim that small modular reactors could be commercially viable soon.*
This confirms what I said recently.
I am not an expert like him, but I know what experts have concluded for years about nuclear power's lack of practical use for electric power on Earth. For the public it is a waste of money; for business it is an opportunity to get paid lots of money and achieve no good.
*Police have used the "very legitimate grievance" the public has with large tech companies like Meta about data collection and surveillance as a pretext to undermine user privacy*.
The first step in protecting our privacy from snooping dis-services is to reject nonfree (non-libre) clients and apps. Nearly all apps are nonfree, and most organizations' web sites run nonfree software in the users' browser. Once they send private data to the server, there is hardly any limit in practice to where it will go. (There are some dis-services that explicit demand users enter sensitive private data — those pose various more complex problems.)
I've considered using Signal, since the client program (what I would need to run) is free software. However, it requires having a portable phone, and that requirement conclusively excludes me.
*U.S. Intelligence Helped Israel [plan the operation to] Rescue Four Hostages in Gaza*.
Since the plans were designed to minimize civilian casualties, I don't see anything wrong in that part of the operation. Many civilians were killed and wounded after something went wrong during the getaway phase. At that point they started to improvise as the plan was no longer usable.
The obligation to safeguard civilians does not end when a plan goes awry.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The US insists that Israel did not use the US aid pier for the deadly hostage rescue operation. What Israel did use was the area of land near the pier.
This makes sense to me. I don't think that area of land is or was under US control. But I have seen it described as a "safe area", which I think implies some sort of agreement to do no fighting there.
If that agreement included Israel and HAMAS, then using it for a combat operation (such as the hostage rescue operation) was a violation of that agreement by Israel;
I've read that the World Food Program stopped transporting aid from the pier because of this. This makes sense. No humanitarian organization will be allowed to continue operations in Gaza unless it satisfies all parties that it is militarily neutral.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
New pun: My argument with guaifenesin
The Ukrainian journalists of Texty refute the arguments of Putin's disinformation.
Ukrainian data-journalists studied published statements and made a list of prominent people in the US who were publicly opposing support for Ukraine's defense.
The summary of their conclusions.
*The Biden administration is protecting old-growth forests.*
Super-rich major league sports team owners continue to squeeze money out of the public by making one city or state bid against another to subsidize the team.
Many years ago I condemned this and proposed a federal law to regulate such backwards competition. The idea was that if a company makes location A compete against location B, any subsidy from A must get B's approval and vice versa.
For the specific case of sports teams, a law outright prohibiting all governmental subsidy to them might do the job well, but the proposal above would help also in situations which are not cartels and which do work that is more important than artificial contests.
*Study finds same-sex sexual behaviour in primates and other mammals widely observed but seldom published.*
*Democrats move to repeal anti-obscenity and anti-abortion act from 1873.*
I expect Republicans will fight to keep the Comstock Act, hoping to use it for repression. But maybe that will convince some people not to vote for them.
The Supreme Court approved a tax that the corrupter put on moving money to the US, and thus left the legal door open to wealth taxes on big business.
Israel gave fanatical "settlers" control over expansion of its colonies in the West Bank. They can authorize their own construction of new colonies.
*Peruvian soldiers found guilty of rapes committed during civil war in historic verdict.*
Most or all armies have a tendency to overlook crimes against committed against enemy soldiers, and even against civilians. Progress in establishing a tradition of prosecuting soldiers for these crimes makes the statement, "We are not like Putin."
*Activists tell UK arms makers they may face criminal liability over sales to Israel.*
They include companies building parts of the American F-35 fighter.
Comparing the insurrectionist's attack on US democracy with three previous attacks, by Presidents John Adams, President Andrew Jackson and President Richard Nixon.
The challenge for Americans today is to recognize the threat of the insurrectionist, and be permitted to vote against him.
Ten US states have state holidays that celebrate the Confederacy. They include nearly all the states that formed the Confederacy in 1861 and fought to perpetuate slavery, plus one (Kentucky) in which the unionists triumphed then and prevented secession.
It is a mistake to take one negative moral judgment of a person as erasing all good that perse did. We should judge a person by the magnitudes of the good and the bad.
Any individual who owned slaves or supported the Confederacy did wrong that way, but each such individual did other things too. In most cases those other things were of no special importance, so they don't change our conclusions. But there are exceptions. In rare cases, a person's other activities have been such great contributions to humanity as to justify our admiring that person despite per involvement with slavery (though we should criticize that anyway).
A holiday that explicitly celebrates the Confederacy or its leaders is a much simpler moral subject than a real human being's life. Such a holiday stands only for the Confederacy and what that stood for: slavery and bigotry, with disloyalty as sauce. Those holidays deserve pure and simple condemnation.
A few states celebrate a conjoined holiday, "Martin Luther King / Robert E Lee Day". They juxtapose commemoration of racism with commemoration of the movement against racism. I am not sure what to think of them, but I think they are too soft on slavery.
It is ironic that the article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and usually I will not link to articles that practice it, but I make some exceptions. I think the article linked to above is interesting enough to justify an exception. But when I make a such exception, I rebuke the symbolic bigotry also.
The head of NATO argued for making more nuclear weapons.
More nuclear weapons than the US has cannot improve deterrence. With a sane enemy, the use of 100 nuclear weapons, producing a nuclear winter that would cause starvation around the world, is enough deterrent. With an insane enemy, 10,000 nuclear weapons would not be enough.
This provoked a lot of opposition, but I am sure that the businesses that would profit from making and deploying them will come up with lots of flimsy reasons in favor.
*The normalisation of dehumanisation in the Israel-Palestine conflict.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Stock traders are trying to beat the market — by copying lawmakers [stock trades].*
There seems to be far too little attention to coming climate disaster in the UK general election.
However, the lunatic right-wing party proposes to replace climate defense with climate surrender.
Measures to limit overcrowding and avoid dangers in climbing Mount Fuji have the unjust side effect of requiring each climbers to (1) identify perself and (2) carry a snoop-phone.
If I ever go to Japan again, that is one thing I certainly won't do.
The Pentagon is thinking about using large numbers of more-or-less autonomous drones for fighting China.
This raises concerns that the drones will chose targets autonomously, and kill lots of civilians — something I expect Ukraine's drone controllers avoid, although Israel's drone controllers may not care.
Putting that issue aside, it seems like a good plan, but I don't see how the US can expect to be better at this than China.
Congress is about to dilute the safety mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with toxic fallout — a second mission to keep nuclear industry profitable.
Everyone: Call on Canada to enforce its environmental laws against logging to export wood chips for burning.
US citizens: call on Biden to fund the transition to renewables and stop funding fossil fuels.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
*‘I have seen the decline’: pesticides linked to falling UK insect numbers.*
Decreases in overall insect populations will cause repercussions through each ecosystem. Many animals (including humans) eat insects. Many plants depend on insects to pollinate them and disperse their seeds.
Louisiana Republicans passed a law to require every public school classroom to display a copy of the Ten Commandments.
This sectarian requirement obviously contradicts the First Amendment (combined with the subsequent amendment which says states can't do those things either). It prohibits establishment of religion. But we can't count on those Republican wreckers on the Supreme Court to honor that.
China is erasing the Uyghur past in the region they have lived in.
Politicians bought by fossil fuel companies are working on laws to make protesting near pipelines a crime.
In Japan, many restaurants have required customers to order using the restaurants' tablets, or even with their own snoop-phones. This makes it impossible for blind customers. The restaurants have cut staff drastically, so blind customers find no one who can help them. They are effectively excluded.
If the restaurant requires customers to bring a snoop-phone, or to pay using a digital system that identifies the user, that would exclude me, too. Even the task of reading the menu can exclude me — if I would need to have a snoop-phone to see it, or if it is so high up that I can't make out the letters. (My eyes are not as good as they were a couple of years ago.)
US citizens: call on Democratic leaders to rescind their support for Netanyahu's speech to Congress, and all Democrats to boycott the speech.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
At a signing ceremony in Australia's Parliament building, Chinese embassy personnel tried to hide views of formerly imprisoned journalist Cheng Lei from Chinese cameras. Australian personnel had to physically stand in their way.
The Chinese government made itself ridiculous by doing this, but think about the process that must have led to it. The least powerful of those given the duty of going to Australia's Parliament were surely not of the lowest rank, and some higher official must have ordered them to do this. That displays the rigidity of a self-important dictatorship, and the dangerous hostility latent in its arrogance sense of entitlement to power.
Enormous amounts of plastic debris wash ashore on Easter Island. They have to clean the beaches repeatedly.
Over 5 million pieces of rubbish wash ashore there each year. They have no way to dispose of it all.
A horrible idea: New York Governor Hochul is thinking of banning masks in the New York City subways.
Everyone in the subway (or buses) should wear a mouth and nose mask! Policy should encourage everyone to do so. To ban or discourage masks will cause real infections and real deaths — merely so people will feel less worried.
US citizens and residents: phone your state governor to say to veto any attempt to restrict or criminalize mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs used to cause abortions and for various other purposes.
If you phone, please spread the word! Your state governor's phone number is at USA.gov (Thanks to those who told me.)
The US murder rate today is less than in the 70s, 80s and 90s, but parents are more terrified than ever.
We know that the high crime rates of the 60s to 90s were due to lead in the gasoline; eliminating leaded gas was followed, after under 20 years, by decreases in crime.
UNRWA says that 50000 minors in Gaza are on the edge of starvation. UNICEF describes the constant obstruction applied by Israel to transport of aid into and within Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens and residents: call for parole for Leonard Pelletier.
This is an actionnetwork.org "send a letter" campaigns with a single, fixed destination. It normally runs nonfree JavaScript code. Here's how you can sign it while using LibreJS to block nonfree JavaScript code from running.
The first step, I have done for you. I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign's URL. That parameter directs the server not to add unnecessary material that depends on JavaScript.
Following that link should show you a page that starts with the message, `Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!' But that message mostly refers to material that `?nowrapper=true' has suppressed.
In that page, fill in the personal information in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. You will get a page that does not work at all, but by editing its URL in the browser's address bar, you can finish sending your letter.
First, if `&redirect' appears in the address bar, delete that and everything after it, until the end of the URL you see. Then, unconditionally, add `&nowrapper=true'. Then type ENTER to make the browser access the modified URL.
This will give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. In that page you can edit the text of your letter, and send it.
That step, editing the URL and visiting it, is the only additional work needed to sign with nonfree JavaScript code blocked. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort to stop some unjust, and potentially malicious, software from running on your computer.
This method works for letter campaigns that send letters to a fixed destinee, the same destinee for all senders. I have posted this campaign, and these instructions, because it is of that kind.
Alas, there is no workaround for the letter campaigns that send to "your elected representatives." That problem is caused by something outside actionnetwork's control. The nonfree JavaScript for those campaigns comes from the officials' own web sites in the official web sites of Congress, not from actionnetwork.org, and I know of no way to bypass it, and no way to reach them digitally. All I can do is phone them.
It's sad and ironic that our elected representatives require their constituents to run nonfree software to communicate digitally with them. I do not hold them personally responsible for this wrong, because they are surely not aware of the issue. But I can't close my eyes to its presence and let it run on my computer.
The US has greatly increased its spending on nuclear weapons, and other countries have followed suit.
A proposed nuclear power plant for Kenya's coast is sure to be an enormous waste of money at best, contributing to global heating because renewable generation would have been cheaper and finished many years sooner.
At worst, a tsunami will destroy he reactor. As global heading raises sea level, the size of tsunami sufficient to cause a disaster will decrease. Meanwhile, they surely don't know what they will do with the nuclear waste.
Nuclear generation is so expensive that it cannot be worth that cost anywhere in the world. Simply for this reason, I have to suspect corruption is behind it somehow.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand an investigation into corruption in the Supreme Court.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S. Government Vulnerable to Russian [crackers], Whistleblower Says.*
This shows the error of assuming that a proprietary program is going to be more secure than free software, and why you should not systematically expect programs under the control of a company to maintain your security. Even if it never seeks to attack you, it can have a motive to let you down.
Side issues about terminology: the article uses misleading propaganda terms such as "intellectual property" and "cloud", and says "hackers" when it ought to say "crackers".
US citizens: call on Justices Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves from cases about the Jan 6 insurrection.
India will prosecute Arundhati Roy for her political opinions, under a law passed by Modi's party for that purpose. Other human rights defenders in India have been persecuted too.
India promised Kashmir a referendum on whether to be part of India, then never held the referendum. There has been unrest in Kashmir ever since. A few years ago, Modi imposed martial law and an internet shutdown on the whole state (which India asserts is no longer a state).
*Former White House staffer says [she heard the wrecker] call for leaker to be executed.*
*Labour and Tories would both leave NHS worse off than under [previous] austerity, says thinktank.*
*Tories and Labour on course for lowest [combined] share of the vote since 1945.*
It looks like a lot of people don't want to vote for plutocratists.
Sweden ransomed Johan Floderus, who had been imprisoned in Iran based on political accusations, by releasing Iranian convict Hamid Noury, who was convicted of participating in the killing of over a hundred political prisoners of Iran.
One must suspect that the accusations against Floderus were fabricated specifically to use him for this trade. Governments should tell their officials to refuse to visit countries that might be seeking pawns to capture and trade.
US citizens: call on Biden not to imitate the bully's asylum restrictions.
*Republicans want to make it harder to get a divorce in the US.*
That fits into the general plan to impose their religion, and its sexual prudery, on everyone. We must defeat them.
*Amy Pritchard is the first person to be jailed for a campaign in which climate protesters targeted banks across London.* She explains her decision to break windows at the office of JP Morgan.
Adobe corrected some misconceptions that were suggested by loose wording in its newly imposed requirement that users give Adobe permission to snoop on their work. Adobe agreed not to publish their work (Please don't call anyone's artwork "content"!), and won't train machine learning models with it. (Please don't call them "artificial intelligence"!)
But it does indeed intend to snoop, having effectively forced users to give permission for that.
This is a big step towards a society of total surveillance, in which privacy and the US fourth amendment are reduced to fragmentary relics.
Cheng Lei, formerly a political prisoner in China, has used her prison experience as the basis for stand-up comedy in Australia.
Cheng Lei is an Australian citizen who was working in China as a journalist for an Australian organization. China allowed her to return to Australia. Chinese who have been political prisoners in China are often not allowed to leave China.
Using Eventbrite for access to an event is always bad because signing up using Eventbrite requires running nonfree software. Also, it requires identifying yourself. Those are two injustices to the attendee; I would not attend a performance if it required me to give my name to get a ticket.
In this specific situation, the injustices put some attendees in danger, too. It would not surprise me if Chinese crackers broke into the Eventbrite data base to find out who attended this performance. The performers were aware that China would try to identify the attendees; they should have protected their audience from digital identification as well as from cameras.
And did they insist on making it possible to pay cash? As China demonstrates every day, making people identify themselves to buy things is the foundation of repression.
Analyzing the Labour platform: parts sound good, but crucial parts are missing.
*[The wrecker]'s [planned] mass purge of state department likely to sow chaos, US diplomats say.*
*[UNRWA] says [Israeli] authorities are hampering [aid delivery] operations by failing to grant requests for access permits.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Cocaine traffickers have put two-thirds of Central America's key habitats for threatened birds under threat, study finds.*
New York State is about to prohibit communication platforms from offering user's-history-dependent feeds to users under age 18.
I think this policy is very wise, but limiting it to only some users, based on their age, is misguided. Millions of adults have been sucked into conspiracy theories and even plots for insurrections by such systems. This policy also threatens to lead to requiring a user to show ID so as to prove per age.
So the policy should apply to all users regardless of age.
Instead of basing suggestions on what you have previously looked at, a platform should make available for download that list , as URLs one per line. Given that list, you could process it any way you like to get suggestions, then ask to look at those.
Please do not use the word "children" or "child" to refer to anyone under age 18. A 17-year-old is not a child. A 13-year-old is a teenager.
Singer who joined the Four Tops in 2019 was involuntarily hospitalized for claiming to be a member of the Four Tops.
A US court convicted Chiquita (the banana company) of paying a terrorist group (paramilitaries) to kill some of its workers.
*Washington teen returning replica gun to store shot dead by security guard.*
Robert Reich: for most US voters, the most important issue is the high prices that are caused by greedy corporations without much competition to restrain them, and most voters think that the wrecker will push prices down.
I don't think the wrecker will even try to reduce prices. He seeks to bamboozle the public, not to serve it. Promises from a bullshitter are meaningless. Lately more billionaires have been giving their support to the wrecker, so they must not think he will reduce their unparalleled profits.
So why does anyone believe that the wrecker will drive prices down?
Some plutocratist Democrats in Congress are pushing to fund new export terminals for fossil gas, provided it is "certified" as emitting somewhat less greenhouse gas than other fossil gas.
This is a swindle — replacing a small but real contribution to climate defense with mere lip service.
Some teenagers can recover from antisocial media addiction if they simply don't have a user-manipulating device to be used by.
Remember that part of what enables them to manipulate the users so much is that the client programs of the antisocial media platforms are nonfree software. Companies design them to be addictive, and users cannot modify them to be less so.
Republican state attorneys general are working with Big Oil to block lawsuits over harm to people caused by oil combustion.
*US imposes sanctions on "extremist Israeli group" for blocking Gaza aid.*
So far, so good, but what about when the Israeli government blocks aid by not permitting it to be brought to Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on the Senate to oppose fake abortion clinics.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Schumer and Jeffries to withdraw their invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress.
*Tory party CEO is director at cancer care firm benefiting from NHS waiting lists.*
The Labour candidate running against Jeremy Corbyn is an owner of a company that profits from the NHS's failings.
I'd want to support a party in which such people would feel out of step with the party's goals.
US citizens: call on Congress to overturn the "Citizens" United decision.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to support legislation banning political contributions from utilities, monopoly corporations, and corporations seeking government contracts.
US citizens: call on Congress to undo the corrupter's tax cuts for the rich.
*The Christian right[-wing] is coming for divorce next.*
Stanford University is shutting down the elections research of the Stanford Internet Observatory because defending against Republican lawfare was too expensive.
(satire) *Tesla Announces Plan To Add Up-Skirt Cameras On All Vehicles.*
US citizens: call on judges to uphold the Voting Rights Act.
*Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War.* It was paid for by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and used fake social media accounts urging U.S. lawmakers to fund Israel’s military.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*The Libertarian [sic] Party's controversial plan is to "stop Biden" and extract promises from [the insurrectionist] along the way.*
This plan demonstrates a total lack of value for civil liberties, which the insurrectionist has announced his intention to crush. But this plan makes the party cynical as well, which previously it was not.
It is also utterly foolish to think that a promise from the insurrectionist (who is also the bullshitter) will be kept. Once democracy is crushed, if you're not a billionaire he won't hesitate to break his promise to you.
I have contended for years that that party, and its political stance, did not merit the name "libertarian", because its supporters valued reduction of their taxes, and termination of programs to help the poor and disadvantaged, more highly than they valued liberty. So I called them "antisocialist".
Some of the party's supporters may still be antisocialists, but the party itself deserves for a harsher name than that.
*The [US Supreme Court] unanimously rejected the mifepristone case on technical grounds. Their ruling is not the victory it may seem.*
Alito's wife vowed revenge on the people who criticized Alito for displaying an upside-down flag, after Jan 6 when that was a symbol of claiming falsely that the corrupter had won the election.
Note the typical right-wing thinking, which regards a truthful criticism of a false claim as a vicious attack that deserves revenge. If those critics made false claims of their own, revenge in kind (refuting the false claims) would be possible and legitimate. But Ms Alito does not claim that they did so.
Perhaps, for her, opposing militant Christianitism, and defending the separation of church and state, is enough grounds to label someone as evil.
Putin announced that he won't make peace with Ukraine unless it gives him more territory along with what he has captured.
This indicates a combination of thinking he can win the war, and some amount of bluster (present in everything he says).
The only sensible response is to teach him he must expect to lose.
Robert Reich: *Don't be fooled by the myth that people are paid what they're "worth" — that the rich deserve their ever-increasing incomes and wealth because they're worth far more to the economy now than years ago […]*
*The distribution of income and wealth increasingly depends on who has the power to set the rules of the game.*
It is a context of clout, not a contest of productivity.
*A braver Labour would call an end to the focus on growth.*
Starmer has made up his mind to seek the votes of former Tories. The only way to make Labour pay attention to this issue is to elect Greens or Lib Dems, or the independents such as Corbyn who agree with this.
*Phoenix [thugs] have pattern of violating civil rights and using excessive force, Justice Department says.*
*Ex-prosecutors and historians warn that Republicans' parroting of ex-president's wild allegations of political bias could erode trust and lead to violence.*
Eroding trust in anything that he considers a rival is his purpose. And while the claim is not true now, he intends, if he wins or steals the election, to make it so. He plans to pervert the US justice system to imprison his political enemies, as part of Project 2025.
The US justice system is in fact untrustworthy for defendants who belong to disprivileged groups, and for poor people since they can't afford good lawyers. But the corrupter is not at risk for this: he is a white male, and even if he may theoretically be bankrupt due to court judgments, still has good lawyers.
Some varieties of bamboo spread almost irresistibly and can destroy houses from underground.
Could we wipe them out, in the countries they don't belong in, by releasing a sufficient number of pandas? China only leases them, but it might be possible to buy unrestricted pandas from Taiwan.
In Mexico, growing avocados is so lucrative that cartels fight over land to grow them, as they cut down forests.
It amazes me that this happens for a product that is not illegal.
I don't think this would happen for any of the widely used illegal drugs, though. The sheer volume consumed would not be enough.
Alito admitted at an organization dinner that his vote to overturn Roe v Wade was part of an overall campaign to impose his religion on the US.
The rescue of hostages from Gaza started out clean, but developed into a street battle. That is when the civilians were killed.
This suggests that most of those killed were civilians.
Testimony of witnesses to the attack on Nuseirat refugee camp, in which the Israeli army killed at least 274 Palestinians to rescue four hostages.
The number of killed that were civilians was almost certainly over 100, and likely considerably more. But I think I can make a better estimate.
I think that "children" means minors. Most minors there were probably civilians, thought some of the older ones may have been HAMAS fighters. I would expect that HAMAS, being Islamist, would not recruit women as fighters (can anyone tell me whether that is true?), so it would follow that the 57 women killed were all civilians.
I expect roughly equal numbers of men and women among the civilians, since they were in and around their homes. That would suggest there were around 160-170 civilians killed, and maybe 100 HAMAS fighters.
It is therefore likely that most of the Palestinians in the area were civilians.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Fanatical supporters of the corrupter regularly get heat stroke at his rallies, because of increasing global heating, but it doesn't occur to them that we should stop drilling for all and making it hotter.
*Investment in clean energy likely to be double figure for fossil fuels in 2024, IEA says [; however,] oil and gas spending still too high to meet climate goals.*
New pun: What do you need Tylenol for?
*Russia accused of "deliberate" starvation tactics in Mariupol in submission to ICC.*
Biden should put up a fight as John Deere Inc. moves US factory jobs to Mexico.
John Deere also mistreats the purchasers of its tractors: it designs them with nonfree software that the farmers cannot change or replace, and which snoops on them.
George Monbiot: Britons should respond to Labour's "anticipatory betrayal" by turning to the Green Party.
Biden's dignified acceptance of the jury's conviction of his son may help show the corrupter for what he is.
US citizens: call on Biden to cut off arms deliveries to Israel unless it accepts a permanent cease fire 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 end the "Citizens" United era by passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the DISCLOSE Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on state legislatures not to allow teachers to carry guns in school.
The myth that a "good guy with a gun" will protect people from a murderer with a gun is true often on Have Gun Will Travel, but that is fiction. In real life it is rarely effective.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to sign the discharge petition for the Right to Contraception Act.
*Supreme court ruling delays climate litigation big oil has sought to thwart.*
*Millions of US voters lack access to documents to prove citizenship.*
Workers at one of the Kroger supermarket chains are planning to strike.
South Australia will ban donations to political campaigns and parties. It will provide campaign funds to all the candidates and parties.
UK Green Party calls for *wealth levy, rent controls, house-building, and water and energy firm nationalisation.*
Their plans for increasing taxes will fall *mainly on wealthy people*.
*Israel and Hamas have both committed war crimes since 7 October, says [the UN Human Rights Council].*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Mozilla has blocked users in Russia from loading several censorship-bypassing add-ons into Firefox.
I am somewhat puzzled by this. Why would Mozilla want to do this?
Also, why would it be effective? I understand it, you can load an add-on into Firefox if you can access a page where it is distributed. I also don't see what threat Russia could make against Firefox that could make Mozilla comply with this demand.
An Israeli shepherd was killed in the West Bank. In revenge, Israeli "settlers" set cars and houses on fire as well as shooting many Palestinians one by one.
Both attacks were acts of terrorism, but the "settlers" cannot justify their terrorism by pointing to the Palestinians' terrorism.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Violent crime in the US dropped by 15% in the first three months of the year, new figures have shown, the latest evidence in a broader decline of crime across the country that has occurred over the past year.*
Murders, and reported rapes, decreased by 25%. Robberies decreased by 17%.
I expect this is due to improvement in the economy for most Americans.
*UN security council endorses US-backed hostages-for-ceasefire Gaza deal.*
Why young American adults see America's social and economic systems as carrying them into disaster, despite favorable short-term economic trends.
If your Facebook account gets suspended for bogus reasons, Facebook will delete it after 30 days, and gives you no way to ask the company for help with the problem in the mean time.
If you decide to be used by Facebook, at the very least assume that everything in that account could disappear any day. To be safe, you should back up everything important from the account on your own computer. (Does Facebook make that possible? I am happy to say I have never been a used of Facebook.)
Bullshit generators have been hooked up to Facebook and Instagram. In some cases they post bullshit in discussion groups, pretending to be humans.
*Air in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" likely more toxic than previously thought.*
*World's top banks "greenwashing their role in destruction of the Amazon".*
The Columbia Law Review editors (students) prevailed in their confrontation with the board of directors (not students) who shut down the magazine's web site in order to censor Rabea Eghbariah's article. The site is back up and the article remains on it.
I salute this victory for academic freedom.
Vice President Harris told the public how bad the corrupter really is: "Cheaters don’t like getting caught."
Microsoft bowed to public criticism and said that the new "take a screenshot of all output" feature would be disabled by default.
That's nice, but since Windows is proprietary software, Microsoft could secretly insert any sort of snooping feature at any time without informing users. Basically, a nonfree program cannot be trusted.
Robert Reich talks about the inseparability of economics and morality.
(satire) *… wealthy patient Duncan Barrow reportedly ordered three of each procedure upon his admittance to the facility Friday.*
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.
*As climate change increases the likelihood of deadly landslides, cities like Juneau are stuck between a rock and a hard place.*
Or, rather, between a rock and a muddy place.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Election Worker and Polling Place Protection Act.
An Israeli military operation rescued four hostages at the cost of killing 109 Palestinians.
It is not easy to tell how many of the 109 Palestinians killed were HAMAS fighters and how many were civilians, but at least dozens were civilians.
If HAMAS set up a military base in the middle of civilians, that violated the rules of war -- in effect, using those civilians as human shields.
Or it could be that the place was not full of civilians until they moved there fleeing Israel's bombing elsewhere in Gaza. In that case, Israel would be responsible for driving them into harm's way.
In either case, their lives do not become worthless because of their situation.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to Require Modern Energy Efficiency Standards for All New Homes with FHFA-backed Mortgages.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education E and local school boards to reject face recognition in schools.
US citizens: call on Judge Aileen Cannon to recuse herself from the corrupter's secret documents case.
Everyone: Oppose the right-wing campaign to disregard global heating.
Arguing that Putin won't stop with Ukraine; his ambitions will lead towards bigger conflict. The article compares Russia and China today with the Germany and Japan of 1938 -- and Ukraine today with the Czechoslovakia of 1938.
Romania asks Louis Vuitton to give credit to the Romanian design that inspired one of his latest fashion products.
The campaign to condemn and eliminate "cultural appropriation" is unjust and wrong, because learning from other people and imitating them is what culture is all about, and this is how culture develops.
However, asking the imitator to give credit is no obstacle to cultural development, and I think it is a reasonable request.
*A Federal Judge Visited Israel on a Junket Designed to Sway Public Opinion. Now He's Hearing a Gaza Case.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to require Justices Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves from cases about the insurrectionist.
US citizens: call on the Edison Electric Institute to stop suing the EPA to keep coal polluting.
*The EU is braced for a rise in the hard right [wing]. But will the centre normalise it?*
Putin, a repeated supporter of the corrupter, claims that the felony conviction of the corrupter proves that the US is failing as a democracy.
That is backwards, of course. The corrupter's conviction shows that the US is trying to defend its democracy from a campaign to corrupt it. Putin supports that campaign and lies much as its members do.
Jeremy Corbyn argues for aiming for nuclear disarmament rather than nuclear weapon buildup.
US citizens: call on Congress and the Biden administration to stop shielding Israel from accountability for 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.
*US state abortion ban exemptions aren’t vague by accident. Uncertainty is the point.*
Minneapolis made Uber and Lyft agree to pay workers more and improve some other working conditions.
However, this does nothing to reduce those companies power over drivers, nor to reduce their unjust treatment of passengers (identifying them and requiring them to run nonfree software).
If I am me, I will continue to refuse to do business with Uber and Lyft.
*The fascist leader plots capture of DoJ in renewed assault on US justice system.*
Deepfakes displaying politicians and other public figures, clothed normally, have been used on Facebook to promote scams.
I think the crucial issue raised by deepfakes is not nudity. It is fraud. False nudity in the deepfake is one kind of fraud, but the other kinds of fraud are just as bad. I've called unauthorized deepfakes the moral equivalent of perjury.
Thus, rather than criminalizing making nude deepfakes only, I suggest we criminalize making and showing any sort of deepfake without the subject's permission.
If you want to show a fictional or satirical picture of a hypothetical action, you can express the idea just as well with an evidently non-evidential cartoon.
*[Corrupter's] ally Kari Lake gave speech in front of Confederate flag.*
Fascists, Nazis, Confederates — it seems that the corrupter and his followers endorse all of them almost indiscriminately. Why so nonselective about it? All they have in common is their rejection of the ideals of the United States.
I think that's exactly the point: that the corrupter seeks to ridicule those ideals by encouraging any and all sorts of disloyalty to them.
Loyal Americans should warn Kari Lake that they will drive her out to Texas, as their predecessors did to the last band of Confederate supporters to invade Arizona.
*[Boeing employee] Roy Irvin alleges he was reprimanded as "insubordinate" for flagging issues on 787 Dreamliner planes.*
A Briton has been charged with "criminal damage" for throwing a milkshake at right-wing extremist politician Nigel Farage.
I am surprised that superficial contact with a milkshake is considered to cause damage. {-; Perhaps McDonald's milkshakes contain toxic substances that are absorbed through the skin. Good for him that he did not consume it! ;-}
Everyone: call on Amazon to implement zero-waste delivery.
Of course, we shouldn't buy from Amazon either way, and I don't; but that is no reason not to sign.
Various drugs, some legal and some illegal, used in large quantities by humans get into waterways and alter wildlife.
*More intense, frequent tropical cyclones may devastate seabird colonies.*
Tornadoes in Maryland??? That has not been normal, but the pattern is shifting.
Reading Netanyahu, a former Israeli official says that he killed a peace plan that Israel had privately agreed to, because he is determined not to have peace in Gaza.
I think the only way Biden can make progress from here is with pressure that Netanyahu cannot defy -- such as, to cut off arms supplies to Israel. As people in Gaza are suffering death and permanent damage from the lack of food, Biden must not dither.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Incoming ministers "will face UK public services on brink of collapse."*
It may be necessary to raise taxes to prevent the collapse.
Musk increasingly imitates the bully/corrupter's behavior as well as supporting his politics.
US citizens: call on Biden to end support for the Israeli military's atrocities.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect public servants' retirement.
US citizens: call on Congress to get rid of the wrecker's tax cuts and end tax loopholes for big corporations.
*One young child in [every four in the world] at risk of ‘irreversible’ harm due to restricted diet, UN report says.* These children rarely get vegetables, let alone meat.
Local shortages of food are one of the main causes, but heavy marketing of non-nutritious foods to parents who don't know what is bad about them is also a cause. In Gaza, the Israeli siege is the main cause.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Starvation already causing mass death and lasting harm in Gaza, agencies say.*
Children that live through this may suffer lifelong damage from their current malnutrition.
Secretary General Guterres calls for a global ban on fossil-fuel advertising.
I support the idea. The challenge is to overcome the domination of the planet roasters and their PR funds.
Perhaps this suggests a new idea for climate defense protests: covering or tearing off the advertisements for fossil fuels and the products that use them, and the companies involved with those.
That should include greenwashing, whose message is, "Forget about our enormous fossil fuel business, please associate us with our comparatively small renewable electricity business."
*Fast food chains are successfully influencing news outlets [in Australia] to produce "covert marketing" for their brands, a new study has found.*
*French military instructors in Ukraine would be "legitimate target",* according to the Putin forces.
They should bring anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses with them so they can protect themselves if attacked. These defenses will not escalate the war, since they could not engage any of the Putin forces except when said Putin forces are attacking them.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich.
Many of America's problems can be corrected by this, both those that call for spending money and those that involve weakness of democracy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on COP29 to remove the head of Azerbaijan's state oil company from the position of its organizer.
US citizens: call on the IRS to make a libre site for filing tax returns.
US citizens: call on The Department of Justice to sue big fossil fuel for denying global heating.
Georgia Republicans are arranging systematically to challenge the voting credentials of large numbers of black voters, just as the KKK did in 1946.
Robert Reich: Billionaires including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Michael Milken and Steven Mnuchin are working together to make the corrupter president again. Reich contends that their aim is to roll back democracy itself.
Musk has x-terminated the truth on Ex-Twitter by repeatedly endorsing the corrupter's lies about the 2020 election. That makes him systematically and fundamentally dishonest, like the corrupter himself.
US citizens: call on Congress to side with working people, not billionaires and Big Business.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your senators to support the FOREST Act, which would ban imports made with products of illegally deforested land.
See the detailed, general issue.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to protect abortion and birth control by repealing the Comstock Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Modi's domination of India has suffered a setback: the Hinduismist party did not win a majority of the legislature itself. However, it can still form a government with the support of other parties.
Can the opposition coalition, not in government, alter Modi's repression? If it lacks the strength to do that now, will its supporters be patient until the next election and not give up?
Faiza Shaheen, a previous Labour candidate for Parliament who was just canceled, is running as an independent.
The issues over which she was canceled seem like quibbles to me, and some were statements she made ten years ago. I probably don't agree with her 100% regarding Israel and Palestine, but I think I could vote for her.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
New York-Mayor Adams wants to cut the city's budget for useful services such as public libraries, and put the money into a sort of Cop City training center for uniformed thugs.
(satire) *Study Finds Only 1 In 3 Americans Can Name Their Representatives' Corporate Donors.*
*Columbia Law Review Refused to Take Down Article on [how Israeli law is applied to] Palestine, So Its Board of Directors Nuked the Whole Website.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*World will miss target of tripling renewable electricity generation by 2030.*
US citizens: call on ISO-New England to stop funding fossil fuel "peaker" plants.
The European CO2 emissions trading system proved to be an excellent vehicle for VAT fraud.
I did not know about this wrinkle until today, but I realized when I read about emissions trading that it would provide opportunities for fraud at the expense of Earth's climate.
The proponents of a "carbon market" tend to assume that such a market would effectively give the same results as a carbon tax. They disregard that every trade of emissions quota from A to B is an opportunity for sleight of hand to hide some emissions somewhere between A and B.
Bernie Sanders explains why he will not attend Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress.
He describes the enormous atrocities of Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza, which have killed or wounded 5% of the whole population.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Biden plans to "close" the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers entirely, imitating what the wrecker tried to do as president.
Meanwhile, the Democratic leaders of the Senate negotiated a deal for restricting immigration based on right-wing Republican policies, whereupon the Republicans rejected the deal, calling it insufficiently harsh. Trying to make a compromise with Republicans who are obeying the wrecker is a fool's errand.
The right to request asylum, and be considered for it according to the facts of your case, is one of the triumphs of the movement for international human rights law that followed World War II. I fear that we are witnessing the effective abolition of that right.
Republicans are creating irrational outrage over Washington DC's policy of allowing non-citizen residents to vote in local elections.
The outrage is irrational because those targeted for outrage mostly don't live there and therefore are not affected by the practice.
Many places in Europe allow non-citizen residents of a city to vote in local elections. The idea shocked me at first, but on further thought I concluded it made sense. Non-citizen residents have the same relationship to the city that citizen residents have: they benefit from local services and support them with taxes.
Republicans would have us conflate the act of lawfully voting as a non-citizen, when and where that is authorized, with the act of voting fraudulently. But the two are completely different. The latter is extremely unlikely, because what one can personally gain by voting is not enough to motivate people to break a law. In fact, individual voter fraud is very rare.
*Anthony Fauci says Marjorie Taylor Greene drove death threats against him.*
*Wisconsin attorney general charges three former [insurrectionist's] associates in plot to overturn 2020 election.*
*Oceans face "triple threat" of extreme heat, oxygen loss and acidification.*
Mexico's new president is a climate scientist.
That ought to be a hopeful sign. But I am worried about the plan to increase fossil fuel extraction as an "investment" and use the profits to switch to renewable energy later. Fossil fuel "investment" has a tendency to carry society along into more and more of the same — then, before you expected it, you're out of time and it's too late for civilization to survive.
In the UK, systematic shoplifting has become the supplier for fences who act as a discount store chain for the many whose income is too low to get by.
This is not a good solution for the problem. I suspect that some criminals are enriching themselves from it. It may also lead some stores to close. But it is better than no solution at all.
*Biden: "every reason" to believe Netanyahu is prolonging Gaza war for political gain.*
I agree — so Biden, when will you put your foot down and stop this?
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The use by parents of music-streaming dis-services is cutting children off from playing music on their own.
This is an example of the injustice that results inevitably from locking up music (or any kind of recording) behind a web site or app that works only for someone who has an account, and which blocks and forbids distributing copies.
As tends to happen, the author does not carry the criticism down to the root of the problem. Perse suggests superficial workarounds that leave the system's injustice uncriticized.
The solution is to get DRM-free copies of music, and copy them into a player made with free software that a child can use.
(satire) *Biden Signs Executive Order To Deport All 340 Million Americans And Start From Scratch.*
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve to support curbing global heating.
*Socialism isn't a dirty word. It's simply about wanting to make a fairer society.*
US citizens: call on Congress to stop insurance companies from vetoing treatments ordered by doctors.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Western culture nowadays is fascinated by the word "kafkaesque".
US citizens: call on Biden to close the gun-show loophole and ban sale of assault-like rifles.
*Big Food, Big Profits, Big Lies.*
US food companies have raised prices by 25% since 2020. Much of this was to increase profits or increase stock prices, rather than because of increased costs.
*Hamas still strong in areas "cleared" by Israel in northern Gaza, say experts.*
I forecast in October that Israel would not be able to wipe out HAMAS. In general, an underground guerrilla uprising cannot be wiped out as long as it can recruit new supporters. It follows that when Netanyahu says he will continue the war in Gaza until HAMAS is wiped out, this means in practice that he intends to continue it as long as there are Palestinian in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Biden to send no more weapons to Israel until it ceases atrocities in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Ocasio-Cortez Says Biden Must Suspend Israeli Aid After "Indefensible Atrocity" in Rafah.*
I deplore the article's use of the name "X" to refer to Ex-Twitter.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Biden to end the broad sanctions against Venezuela.
Maduro has no respect for democracy, but the sanctions against Venezuela harm the people rather than the rulers.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to extend the "pause" on new fossil gas export facilities into a permanent ban.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to end all fossil fuel subsidies.
Another nasty thing men do to dump women who have immigrated so as to be with them: "exit trafficking".
Another instance of hairtrigger violence by a uniformed thug against a black man has led to the resignation of the thug.
Is this enough to teach other thugs not to do this in the future?
*[The insurrectionist] has spent years complaining that American police and the criminal legal system should be "very much tougher," arguing that some criminals should not be protected by civil liberties, police should rough up suspects, and that a much wider range of people should face the death penalty for breaking the law.*
How about you, Mr Felon?
He should not be executed, though, because the death penalty is inherently unjust regardless of what the crime.
The University of Chicago, like several other US universities, withheld the degrees of some student protesters pending possible worse punishment.
"We must shut down your protest for the sake of safety" is a veiled way of saying, "If you keep up this protest, right-wing provocateurs or our security forces may do you violence, so we must do you violence now to protect you."
Biden's cease-fire deal failed because he thought to gain Netanyahu's agreement using influence alone. Netanyahu told him, contemptuously, to buzz off.
Biden could succeed if he dares to use real pressure, not merely influence.
Starmer tried to purge Diane Abbott MP along with the rest of the Labour left, but he had to retract this after it blew up in his face.
This purge accompanies many plutocratist policy commitments, such as not to raise taxes on the rich. But the purge is worse, because it threatens to convert Labour forever into a less radical version of the Tory Party.
Resisting purges is the only way I can envision to enable Labour to be once again the "moral crusade" it was meant to be. Corbyn is resisting his purge by running as an independent, against a Labour candidate who is so right-wing that he epitomizes what's wrong with Starmer Labour. (He has a business which competes against the NHS — just the sort of person you do not want in Parliament.) Abbott convinced the party to un-purge her. Both count as successes.
But there have been several other purges that have not been resisted yet, including Faiza Shaheen.
*Neighbors say Alito's used security detail car to threaten them after dispute.*
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to recuses himself in Trump's immunity case.
Britain's post office, privatized by Tories a decade ago, is now threatened with a leveraged buyout by a foreign billionaire.
*Samsung Requires Independent Repair Shops to [report] Customer Data, and Snitch on People Who Use Aftermarket Parts — Leaked Contract Shows.* Furthermore, the nominally independent repair shop is then required to "disassemble" the phone which was repaired with truly independent parts.
All of those practices ought to be forbidden by law.
It is perverse to refer to systematic surveillance as "sharing" of the data that is collected. Please join me in reserving the word "sharing" to refer to voluntary cooperation.
Cory Doctorow conjectures why Biden doesn't talk much about the good things he has done — it is to avoid alienating his plutocratist supporters.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Biden's budget for the IRS.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax to limit the political power of America's richest families.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: support the Resolution Recognizing the Human Right to Utilities.
Coca Cola publicity usually shows the old-style reusable glass bottles that in reality it uses for only 10% of sales.
*Israeli journalist describes threats [by Israeli officials] over reporting on spy chief and ICC.*
Military censorship of news reporting is standard practice in Israel. In Israel's first three decades, it feared invasion at any time by Arab armies, and was always partly on a war footing. But that has changed. In the 21st century, the threat of political embarrassment became the focus of press censorship.
In 2011, Israel's leading investigative journalist was prosecuted and silenced.
Guantanamo prosecutors are trying to use one prisoner's confession under torture as evidence against another prisoner. They failed to inform the defendant's lawyers about the torture, in effect passing it off as a sincere confession.
Netanyahu obdurately rejects Biden's cease-fire plan and insists on fighting HAMAS until it is totally destroyed.
Destroying an underground resistance movement, even one without tunnels, is generally nearly impossible as long as it can recruit from the population. So this decision implies an intention to keep killing Palestinians until there is hardly anyone left in Gaza to recruit.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Everyone: call on Universities to divest from the war industry.
The UK Liberal Democrats call for abolishing the right-wing voter-ID law. I wonder whether Starmer will support this.
*Kansas supreme court rules state constitution does not provide the right to vote.*
US citizens: call on Discussion and comment platforms to protect election integrity.
The petition misuses the term "AI".
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Ted Cruz for apparent campaign finance violations
*The corrupter has been found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.*
This means his efforts to bully and intimidate the court did not succeed.
US citizens: call on Congress to rename the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago as the "Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution."
Let's look forward to seeing him as an inmate there.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Maj Leader Schumer not to give Netanyahu a platform in front of Congress.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Vermont becomes first state to require big oil to pay for climate damages.*
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve to support curbing global heating.
The world has enough fossil fuel resources in existence and in development to last until 2050, without licensing any more.
After 2050, if civilization is to survive, it will have reduced consumption to the point where no more will be needed.
The report provides *“a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossil fuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraging investment in clean energy alternatives.*
Spotify sold a product to make cars listen to Spotify's dis-service. Now Spotify plans to make them all stop working.
The customers who ask Spotify to release free software to power those devices are on the right track, but as long as they call it "open source" instead of "free software", they will undermine their own efforts.
US citizens: call on the major media to make sure voters know the stakes for Social Security in this year's election.
Columbia University has abruptly changed its hearing rules to make it harder for students accused of protesting to defend themselves.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the State-Based Universal Health Care Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: support Biden's latest effort for student debt relief.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
*Republican activist with ties to DeSantis and Rubio indicted over January 6.*
Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch: *The ICC spying revelations show the Israeli government to be a lawless regime.*
Israel's army now controls the whole border of Gaza, including the whole border with Egypt.
If the flow of humanitarian aid is insufficient for the people of Gaza, Israel will be completely and directly responsible. (Aside from the meager quantities delivered by air and sea, but they are not enough to change who survives.) Other governments must hold Israel responsible for any shortfall.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The UK has jailed asylum seekers from some very dangerous countries as preparation for sending them to Rwanda. These include Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan. A refugee from one of those countries has a good chance of qualifying for asylum.
The UK has become incompetent at all sorts of ordinary government transactions. I don't know why, but I suspect (1) budget cuts have left insufficient staff to do the job and (2) a desire to punish asylum seekers and drive them away. Perhaps also bureaucratic rigidity and unwillingness to give those staff any responsibility.
The result of this is that judging an asylum case takes years, so the number of asylum seekers grows and grows.
US citizens: call on Biden to do all he can to avoid devastation in Rafah.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
The US is considering a law to bail out farmers whose land was contaminated by PFAS in sewage sludge.
I sympathize with those farmers, and bailing them out is fair, since they were not themselves to blame for the problem. But what happens to those farmers is a secondary issue. If it turns out that those PFAS make food unhealthful, the main problem will be how and where to grow safe food.
Meanwhile, the most urgent measure to take, in this domain, is to prevent ruining any more farmland this way.
Ships switched to cleaner fuel in 2020. The resulting decrease in air pollution resulted in a jump in global heating.
US citizens: call on Facebook to preserve the CrowdTangle analysis tool.
I refuse to let Facebook use me, and I hope you do likewise; but since Facebook exists, we should preserve methods to analyze how it uses people.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass clean energy transmission legislation — to speed the connection of new renewable energy generators to the power grid.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the bill to improve prenatal and maternity support for women who are poor or disprivileged.
The bill's name is misleading, but its substance is good.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on states not to divert public school funds to private schools.
Experimenters passed 517 questions from Stack Overflow to ChatGPT to see what output it would respond with. Around half the answers, when interpreted semantically by humans, turned out to be incorrect.
This is to be expected, because ChatGPT is not intelligent and does not understand the meaning of text that it operates on. It can do more sophisticated text manipulation than Query Replace, but it has no more knowledge or understanding than Query Replace.
How Google decided to make its search work worse so as to make more profit.
If I had experienced the recent enshittification of Google Search with so-called "AI", it might have moved me to stop using it. However, I had stopped using Google Search many years ago because LibreJS could determine that Google Search wouldn't function without running nonfree JavaScript code.
US citizens: call on university administrators and boards to end the repressive tactics used against Gaza solidarity encampments.
US citizens: call on Congress to do everything it can to fight voter suppression.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Putin's propaganda and news blackout are effectively teaching thousands of young Russians to want to fight for Putin.
This is a sad change. It used to be that many soldiers in the Putin forces looked for an opportunity to surrender, and some eagerly joined Ukraine's army.
*Increasing use of renewable energy in US [yielded around 250 billion] dollars of benefits [over 4 years].*
Policies proposed by Sanders for the Democratic Party to to protect jobs from businesses' predation.
*Why is Nikki Haley scrawling genocidal messages on Israeli bombs?*
My conjecture is, she is trying to out-hate the fascist leader so as to be chosen as his running mate.
Whether or not Israel's atrocities in Gaza add up to enough to be qualify as "genocide", there is no doubt that what Haley advocates would be genocide.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Public Housing for the 21st Century Act. It will set up information-sharing to help the many cities that want to build more public housing.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to oppose use of the national guard to crush protests.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on news networks not to give election deniers a platform.
US citizens: state your disgust for the fascist's Project 2025.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on state attorneys general to investigate the antiabortion mills (self-called "crisis pregnancy centers") for mistreating clients and abusing their personal data.
US citizens: Call on Congress to let parts of the corrupter's 2017 tax cuts expire.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the USPS Inspector General and Board of Governors to protect vote-by-mail from DeJoy.
An Israeli air strike on refugee tents in Rafah killed around 45 civilians at once.
If the Israeli air force really tries not to kill civilians, it was not trying very hard that day. The pilot could not have failed to see that the area was full of tents, if perse considered the question.
Israel should obey the International Court of Justice, and the US should insist that it do so.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Some of the biggest [Australian] waste companies broke rules meant to keep contamination [such as asbestos] out of landscaping products.*
*"Crippling" drought in Zambia threatens hunger for millions, says minister.*
This is climate mayhem. We may be able to slow it and stop it, but first we need to adopt a plan adequate to fully do the job.
*Spying, [cracking] and intimidation: Israel's nine-year "war" on the ICC exposed.*
There was no shooting between Israel and the ICC, but Israeli officials described the fight as "war". I wish that Israel had refrained from war crimes against Palestine and Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Regularly feeding babies peanuts at the age of 4 months prevents 2/3 of the cases of allergy to peanuts.
This suggests that the cause of the great increase in allergy rate in recent decades is due to a risk-averse behavior pattern.
Each time E Jean Carroll sues the bully for defamation and wins, the bully responds by conspicuously doing it again,
He expects that this wins support from his followers, who imagine themselves joining in his arrogance towards people weaker than he. And he figures that if he wins or steals the election, he will never have to pay those judgments.
Can the court hit him with something more unpleasant than another damage award that he assumes he will never pay?
Georgia has adopted a law to label NGOs with foreign support, such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, as "serving the interests of a foreign power".
There are suggestions that the adoption of this law represents an act of adherence to Putin — but is that adherence manifest in any other way? I have not seen any described.
Meanwhile, Georgia and Russia have been hostile for decades, and sometimes even at war. If that has changed, how did it change and when?
*Rwanda's top UK diplomat oversaw use of Interpol to target regime opponents.*
To deport people to an undesired third country violates the right to ask for asylum. When that country has a repressive government, as Rwanda has, that makes it even worse.
Today's bullshit generators are already adequate for generating political propaganda.
Google Search's bullshit generator, described misleadingly by Google as "AI", encourages users to run with scissors and to eat rocks.
If only users were not told repeatedly that this is "artificial intelligence" they would call it a bullshit generator.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel Boeing's nuclear weapons testing contract.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate Mercedes's union busting.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the DOJ to break up UnitedHealth's medical monopoly.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to reject AIPAC, which supports enemies of US democracy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to declare a climate emergency.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
The taboo about reevaluating departure from the EU makes it impossible to honestly confront the issues raised by its consequences.
*The ICC arrest request is a fire alarm for Israel. Will it take heed?*
*In dismissing calls for Netanyahu’s arrest, the west is undermining its own world order.*
*I run a university — people like me should be backing students' right to protest over Gaza.*
*[A former White House lawyer] says [the corrupter's secret documents case] could have easily gotten to trial and that Aileen Cannon has delayed on issues most judges would have handled.*
This is more reason to suspect that that judge is trying to serve the corrupter.
The abortion rate in the US has increased since the Supreme Court was taken over by the right-wing. So has the sterilization rate for women, who are taking precautions to ensure they can't need an abortion.
I hope to see Congress swing Democratic this year because of grass-roots support for abortion rights.
Greenpeace won a court victory in the Philippines blocking commercial cultivation of rice that has been genetically modified to produce Vitamin A. Deficiency of vitamin A kills around 100,000 people each year, world wide.
Any given genetically modified crop may be harmful, or not, depending on its practical effects, which include whether it is restricts sharing among farmers by means of an imposed legal monopoly (which could be a patent, or a plant variety monopoly).
The pesticide-resistant crops that campaigners denounce are harmful in practice, both because of their restriction of farmers' rights and because the pesticides used on them are harmful to wildlife and perhaps to humans too.
Vitamin-A-producing rice do neither of these kinds of harm, so they should be authorized.
See also my article, "Biopiracy or Bioprivateering?"
The Labour shadow energy secretary agrees that climate defense is an emergency but says the tactics of Just Stop Oil are counterproductive because they alienate people.
That might be true, but since they see that the climate emergency will kill them in a few decades, what does he suggest that they do instead? Should they join Just Trust the Government instead? Or Just Give Up?
It is the government's responsibility to be the climate leaders inspiring the people to more action. If they demonstrate that following them is more effective than following Just Give Up, millions will rejoice and follow them.
French activists have chosen a different tactic: picketing the energy company TotalEnergies and a big fund that invests in it.
I saw ads for TotalEnergies in Europe recently. It wants the public to associate it with "all kinds of energy", especially renewable electric generation, and forget the inconvenient fact that it is still increasing fossil fuel extraction.
One way to make use of bullshit generators on web sites safer would be for a court, or a law, to insist that their operators are legally responsible for the advice given by that they generate.
This would entail changing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to distinguish between publishing other people's writing (for which the site is not liable) and publishing material generated by software that the site's owner generates (or contracts to generate) using software. If generative systems participate in writing the text, the site would be liable for that text.
An identified (even if pseudonymous) human author could use a generative system, but would then take responsibility for its output.
ChatGPT was asked programming questions based on items in StackOverflow. More than half of the generated answers were incorrect.
Take care against admitting a bullshit generator into the sources of what purport to be knowledge.
The UK's former chief scientific adviser warns that the world is not ready for the next pandemic.
US citizens: verify that your voter registration has not been purged. Republicans are doing their usual voter deregistration drive and you may have been targeted.
US citizens: call on Biden to respect the International Criminal Court and reject sanctions against it.
US citizens: call on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth ahead of the G20 summit.
US citizens: call on The Senate to investigate Justice Alito's public support for insurrection.
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 pass the BAIL and TERM acts to regulate membership of the Supreme Court,
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to take the steps necessary to replace Postmaster DeJoy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on US intelligence agencies: no national security briefings for the corrupter.
Whatever information he gets, he is likely to send to his friend, Putin.
*Electoral laws flouted, opposition MPs arrested — this is what it's like to stand against Modi's BJP.*
NYU demands student protesters write confessions for the crime of breaking rules with a protest.
This reminds the author of the imposed self-criticism sessions in China. It reminds me of the "apologies" that are demanded of people who are canceled.
I think it should be possible, by careful use of irony, to cast doubt on university's proclaimed ethical conclusions while nominally "confessing".
As for using episodes of The Simpsons to pose ethical questions, I think they are as good as any other story for the purpose of starting a conversation about ethics. What makes the Simpsons so much fun is that it includes irony and doubts its presuppositions. But watching The Simpsons may raise real moral issues.
Can anyone tell me whether the contracts students must agree to in order to access the materials for this exercise includes a promise not to redistribute copies of the materials? For instance, episodes of The Simpsons?
Does carrying out the exercise require running nonfree software — perhaps an app, or nonfree JavaScript code from that site?
If so, I think the kind of ethics being taught here is, "Obey the powerful and the laws they have imposed."
The article uses the term "hacking" to refer to cracking — please keep this distinction in mind when you write about either of them.
*Alarm as German climate activists charged with "forming a criminal organisation".*
This seems to refer to a German equivalent of the US "RICO" law,
Ever since I first read about the RICO law, I have worried that it could be used against democratic protest activities. The criteria for applying the RICO law are vague and general. They were written to facilitate using it against secret criminal gangs, but make it hard to guarantee that annoying protests are not targeted as well.
Starmer has copied Obama's slogan, "Change". This invites voters to think of the changes they would like to see, and fantasize that Labour would make those changes. However, Starmer makes it quite clear that the real change is that Labour now prioritizes wealthier voters. I was unimpressed when Obama used vague "hope" and "change" as slogans, and I am unimpressed now.
The fascist leader was repeatedly booed at the "Libertarian" convention when he asked that party to nominate him for president.
He was surprised by this powerful rejection, but it does not surprise me.
Their primary goal is to reduce taxes (which mostly benefits the rich), so I call them "antisocialists". They are libertarians also, but that goal is secondary for them. They advocate for laissez-faire, laissez-mourir capitalism, not dictatorship. Of course they scorned the wrecker.
We true libertarians support that same human rights goal, by supporting progressive candidates — who likewise defend human rights but also seek to tax the rich to fund crucial missions of the state.
As for the antisocialists, if they want to have any sort of human rights in the US as of 2025, they should vote tactically for Biden and other non-Republicans. Those alone can defeat the attempt to impose dictatorship.
Russia says that the corrupter is lying about having influence with Russia.
Since he and Putin both lie so much that we can't trust anything they say, the only thing we can be sure of is that having the corrupter as president is far too high a price to pay for the possible release of some of Putin's prisoners.
*Call to prosecute Netanyahu for war crimes exposes the west's moral doublethink.*
*The Media Still [Don't] Grasp the Danger of [the fascist].
*Israel appears to be forging ahead with its offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite a new ruling from the UN’s top court to halt the assault, which it said is worsening an already “disastrous” humanitarian crisis.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US citizens: Thank members of Congress who supported ending Israel's use of US-supplied weapons in Gaza.
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: Thank reps that voted against unconditional military aid to Israel.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Your senators to reject S. 4136, which would authorize officials to eliminate any nonprofit organization by accusing it of vague "support for terrorism".
For instance, any organization that protests against Israel's atrocities in Gaza could find that people show up and chant, "HAMAS we love you", and it could be wiped out of existence for that.
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 on Congress to defeat the GOP bill to restart weapons shipments to Israel.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to use every possible means of influence to get Israel to accept a ceasefire 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 Biden to give no arms to Israel that it could use to attack Rafah.
Stop denying obvious implications!
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to stop trying to protect Israeli war criminals from the International Criminal Court.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
The prospects of selling a nuclear reactor to Australia have been undermined by a report on how much time and money it would cost.
The Republican who arranged to make deepfake robocalls pretending to be Biden's voice faces criminal charges for that.
*Don't Be Fooled: Voucher Programs Are Coming to Destroy Public Education.*
*Companies in the oil, hotel, meat and other sectors are price-gouging the US public. They’re not hiding it, either.*
This has to be a consequence of too little competition. With more competition, companies would have to reduce prices and increase production. In most cases, that would mean no gouging.
But the fossil fuel sector is an exception. Expanding production of fossil fuels until demand is satisfied is the road to gigadeaths, If our government were effective for terrible long-term problems, it would be organizing long-term contraction of that market.
*[The WWF] is suing the Norwegian government for opening up its seabed for deep-sea mining, claiming that Norway has failed to properly investigate the consequences of this move.*
Corporations are weaponizing "Free Speech" to eliminate safety notices regulations.
This is a consequence of the Corporations United decision which ruled that human rights apply to corporations, even though those are not in fact human.
*Why police killings like [that of] George Floyd get labeled "accidents", according to a forensic pathologist.*
(satire) *God Testing Out Potential New Commandment On Mice.*
In Denmark it is normal for people to trust strangers, and they have good reason to do so.
Accusing the United Arab Emirates of intentionally fueling the civil war in Sudan.
I don't have enough knowledge about the situation in Sudan to judge these accusations. In general, I have posted little about this civil war for lack of background knowledge with which to make sense of the situation.
*After vowing to oppose any Israeli offensive in Rafah, Washington and London now see nothing fitting their definition [of "Israeli offensive in Rafah"].*
* [Whistleblowers] describe Palestinian [prisoners] being beaten, kept shackled to hospital beds or made to stand for hours.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Israel has disappeared hundreds of Palestinian medical doctors.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Texas Governor Abbott pardoned the man convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester, for motives of racism.
In effect, Abbott has endorsed political murder.
Does he endorse political murder of anyone by anyone? Or only political murder of progressives by right-wing lunatics?
Barcelona's new city government, which is right-wing, illegally rented out the Parc Guell, and harassed residents of the neighborhood. When citizens organized a protest against this, thugs charged them, carrying sticks.
If a bus route is overloaded because of the number of tourists, the solution is to run more frequent buses on that route.
The International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its attack on Rafah, reiterating that it leads in a direction that heads towards genocide.
The "any other actions" that Israel is ordered to cease would seem to include its blockage of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Jeremy Corbyn is running for parliament as an independent.
*[The insurrectionist]'s "unified Reich" video was a message not a mistake.*
It was a deniable dog whistle to get the Nazi storm troopers excited.
*Louisiana expected to classify abortion pills as controlled and dangerous substances.*
This is an effort to ban drug-based abortions, but it could also endanger the lives of pregnant women with various medical conditions.
*Summer of natural disasters may be ahead in US with "above normal" hurricane season.* Caused by global heating, of course.
Damage from medium-size thunderstorms is increasing every year in the US, and the result is to make home insurance too expensive in large parts of the US.
In this way, global heating is causing real problems for tens of millions of Americans already.
*The head of the UK Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is "embarrassing".*
Salman Rushdie: *Although he has “argued for a Palestinian state for most of my life — since the 1980s, probably &mdash right now, if there was a Palestinian state, it would be run by HAMAS, and that would make it a Taliban-like state, and it would be a client state of Iran."* He finds it strange that some progressive students support such a thing.
To me, it is disappointing but understandable — they are yielding to the tendency to oversimplify situations into "side A vs side B". If you think about the Gaza war in terms of "pro-Israel" vs "pro-Palestine", then your condemnation of Israel's bombardment and tends to lead you into supporting Israel's enemy, HAMAS.
Therefore I am firmly pro-Israel and firmly pro-Palestine.
*Can the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement rebuild after 7 October?*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
SCROTUS are proposing a law to promote increased gouging by military contractors.
DeJoy told senators he will not make drastic changes to mail delivery this year.
If that means what it sounds like, it could mean he will not undermine the effectiveness of vote by mail. I would not trust his word, though.
*Migratory fish populations have crashed by more than 80% since 1970.* Various human activities seem to be the cause.
This book review is a resume of a book about the ideological intolerance of the American left in recent years, by a reporter who formerly participated in that but eventually stopped complying.
I have not read the book itself — only the review.
A UK court ruled that a minister illegally ordered a broad interpretation of criteria for illegal protests, which was supposed to be a court's job.
The government has also passed unjust laws to restrict protest.
*Ministers are intent on restricting protest, and will flout the law to do it. Don’t rely on them to do the right thing.*
Right-wing UK politicians propose many new laws to restrict protests and punish protesters.
*A criminal case has been filed against the CEO and directors of the French oil company TotalEnergies, alleging its fossil fuel exploitation has contributed to the deaths of victims of climate-fueled extreme weather disasters.*
In northern Scotland, towns are being gradually washed away by storms exacerbated by global heating and sea level rise. Some towns are clearly going to be gone in a few years.
Similar things are happening elsewhere. Land in North America at the edge of the Arctic Ocean has been eroding even faster.
Oil Change International says, *Top oil firms' climate pledges failing on almost every metric.*
The pledges of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies are basically greenwashing.
Those companies uses these pledges to stave off laws that would try to make them really reduce greenhouse emissions. At the same time, they lobby to weaken the application of the existing laws that could limit the destruction of civilization.
I expect that they help stir up farmers' protests against increases in the price of fossil fuels.
*Warming climate is turning rivers rusty with toxic metals.*
Australia plans to develop a test for being actually impaired as a driver by marijuana.
This is to avoid punishing drivers that are impaired, from those that have lawfully used marijuana but too little to be impaired as drivers by it.
*Biden is dramatically out of touch with voters on Gaza. He may lose because of it.*
*Conditioning Aid to Israel Would Boost Support for Biden in Key States, New Poll Finds.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
One of disinformationists' tools: the "thought-terminating cliche" that offers an excuse to give up really thinking about what the truth is.
Professor Appy of the University of Massachusetts rebukes the chancellor for calling in state thugs to arrest and torture students who had made an encampment, and reports the false claim that these arrests contributed to "safety" on campus. He mainly focuses on what inspired him to decide to be arrested.
*Investigate fossil fuel industry [for disinformation], top Democrats urge justice department.*
Google has moved the surveillance of fitbits to Google servers. It used to be done using fitbit-specific servers.
Both kinds of surveillance are morally intolerable, and I don't see why one is more or less bad than the other. The crucial point is that this sort of surveillance is gratuitous, because it can easily be avoided. The morally legitimate way to design such products is to let users communicate directly with them from their own computers, running free software. That way, no company would get to surveil users through the devices they supposedly own.
*The pretext of counter-terrorism as a reason to investigate Americans started with "red squads", HUAC and J Edgar Hoover.*
*Newsmax accused of deleting evidence that it was spreading 2020 election lies.
*Young Alaskans sue state over fossil fuel project they claim violates their rights.*
It would *roughly triple the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades*, the lawsuit claims.
Google is enbullshitifying Google Search to the max, converting it into presenting the ramblings of bullshit generators (described by Google as "artificial intelligence").
I reproach the article for swallowing that conceptual error, and also for referring to services as "products" (thus blurring an important distinction).
I have had no access to Google Search for many years, aside from a period of time when I could access it via a LibreX proxy. That is because it depends on nonfree JavaScript code, which I won't trust.
I recommend people ditch Google Search and switch to other engines such as duckduckgo.com.
The US released a Guantanamo prisoner to Algeria, which supposedly promised to allow him to live in freedom, but instead it jailed him.
*Green activists push Biden to freeze ‘disastrous’ deepwater oil export [facilities].*
Amazon warehouse workers claim Amazon has programmed the computers that give them orders so as to disrupt union organizing.
Global heating effects are damaging rail lines in Britain. The rate of damage is increasing rapidly, and some lines may eventually have to be abandoned, long before sea-level rise inundated them permanently.
*The Black Lives Matter era is over. It taught us the limits of diversity for diversity’s sake.*
I hope the Black Lives Matter campaign is not truly over. It is a campaign to put a stop to the hairtrigger racist violence of uniformed thugs. That campaign is as justified and necessary now as it ever was. It deserves our support.
Diversity is a different issue. Efforts for diversity are desirable when they operate at the long term -- aiding the members of disprivileged groups to overcome the unfair obstacles that bigotry puts in their way. But we should not be carried away in pursuit of diversity.
*Norman Finkelstein on Gaza, "from the river to the sea" and political messaging: "We need to bring unity to this struggle."*
Israel competes with HAMAS in regard to cruelty and violence towards prisoners. In effect, Israel is now using its political prisoners as hostages for revenge.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Republicans are campaigning to keep appliances inefficient and more expensive to run.
North Carolina's senate has attacked the right to protest by prohibiting wearing a mask for anonymity. Immunocompromised people like me are also endangered.
Union busting by Merecedes defeated a campaign to unionize its plant in Alabama. However, the company made significant concessions to workers to obtain this result.
*Sex education in English schools set to be banned before children are nine.* These guidelines cover education of teenagers as well as that of children, and some topics won't be allowed until age 15.
A fraction of teenagers find themselves (willingly or unwillingly) in sexual situations before that age. They would be better off knowing some crucial points about birth control and preventing disease, and how to say no firmly but without rejecting the person, before they need to know it.
Here is criticism of that rule.
*Members of security forces giving settlers who intercept vital supplies information on location of convoys, group says.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
* It’s not possible for the US to prosecute Assange while claiming to be a friend of press freedom. Biden should end this now.*
*Ebrahim Raisi was no moderate, but his death may mean Iran becomes even more hardline.*
I don't see any way that Iran could become less repressive, other than via a revolution which seems rather unlikely.
New York City thugs went to town beating up the protesters they had already arrested.
Even if those protesters deserved to be arrested — a question on which I won't presume to trust the judgment of thugs was valid — it could not justify that violence.
The fascist energizes supporters by saying "fuck you" to Liberals, Democrats, truth, justice, and human decency.
When they start their coup, will we be organized to fight them and defeat them?
Ilan Pappé: *I'm an Israeli critic of Zionism. Why did border agents detain me at a US airport?*
It seems that US government "security" agencies are meddling politically, which they have no business doing. Fortunately they did not bar his entry to the US this time.
I don't know Pappé's views in detail and I probably would disagree with part of them — but I am incensed at the US government for meddling in this way.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The US faces a wave of McCarthyism, this time using "antisemitism" rather than "communism" as the target for repression. Congress is working on a bill to "combat antisemitism" which is based on the IHRA criterion for antisemitism, which is a way of arbitrarily declaring some views on political questions to be "antisemitism".
Jewish civil libertarians, including the author of the IHRA definition, are campaigning against this bill.
Americans, if you love our freedoms, now is the time to defend them.
*Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war.* (Unless he pushes harder and actually changes Israel's actions.)
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Microsoft will make Windows save all the screen output so as to look through it later; but don't worry about snooping, it says.
What Microsoft says about privacy seems impressive until you think about the consequences of the universal back door that enables Microsoft to forcibly install any change in the installed software. If Microsoft wants to see some of the files in your computer, it can look at them at any time.
Indeed, can you be sure it isn't looking already?
Cops too could seize your computer and look at those records, perhaps to see whether you had an abortion.
Google has announced a new Android "feature" of analyzing the audio of phone calls and informing when it hears something resembling a deepfake scam.
That feature could potentially be useful, if it were implemented in a trustworthy way (with free software, for instance). But given that it is implemented using nonfree software, there is the danger it could be extended to scan for other things, perhaps conversations about "subversive" topics such as defending human rights or rejecting nonfree software. The notification when these are detected may go to the FBI instead of the user.
California has levied an excise tax on sales of guns.
*The VA Is Quietly Fast-Tracking MDMA Therapy for Veterans.*
The wrecker's campaign posted a video that uses Nazi terminology.
When challenged, the campaign said it was posted by someone who hadn't taken the trouble to check the wording in it. That level of carelessness strikes me as implausible.
Given how often the wrecker goes in for promoting fascism and Nazism, I think it is more plausible that this was intentional and the falsehood is intentional too.
*Israeli officials seize camera from [Associated Press] news agency, cutting live feed of Gaza.*
Israel's pretext for this action is not even worth discussing, since such pretexts cannot justify cutting off press coverage for the public.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
UNRWA says that it has no supplies to distribute in Rafah, and that no aid is actually arriving through the US's much-hyped pier for aid supplies.
Governor Dementis and the Florida Republicans have passed a range of laws that can only be described as "Do anything possible to roast our planet."
The US may use the ICC's possible prosecution of Israeli officials as an excuse to attack its existence.
Refuting US, UK and German criticism of the ICC's proposed war crime charges against Israeli leaders.
Julian Assange will be allowed to appeal against his extradition after the US failed to satisfy the court's demands.
*The case against Julian Assange has been a cruel folly. His right to appeal is a small step towards justice.*
The extradition treaty under which the US asked for his extradition is asymmetric because the US never ratified it; but the UK chooses to obey it anyway.
Iranians are celebrating the death of President Raisi.
A new president will have no effect on Iran's foreign policy.
*ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Israeli PM and HAMAS officials for war crimes.*
Here is discussion about how the ICC would decide whether to issue the warrants.
I hope it does so.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Academic workers at UC Santa Cruz strike over crackdown on Gaza protests.*
HAMAS does not allow the ICRC to visit the hostages it took on October 7. So Israel has retaliated by barring the ICRC from visiting Palestinian prisoners — in effect turning them into hostages.
HAMAS does not care much about Israel's Palestinian political prisoners. It is impossible to pressure HAMAS by being cruel to them. But Israel can gain something by treating its prisoners decently and showing the world that it is better than HAMAS in this and other ways.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Rwanda denies entry to senior human rights researcher.*
There have been credible accusations against President Kagame, and his interference with efforts to investigate them lends them credibility.
Unprecedented rain has flooded the city of Porto Alegre. Global heating is causing this sort of disaster in many parts of the world.
*OpenAI researcher resigns, claiming safety has taken "a backseat to shiny products."*
As far as I know, "Open"AI does not develop any products — only (dis-)services based on unreleased software that users can't even have as executables.
This news confirms my point that it is absurd to trust a company to prevent use of its dis-services for harmful or unjust purposes.
*A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product, researchers have found.*
The German group "Last Generation" blocked the operation of Munich Airport to call attention to the danger of global heating disaster. The group's name refers to the fact that future generations' lives are likely to be cut short by climate chaos.
I agree that this tactic seems to be ineffective, but we can't blame them for taking drastic actions when confronted by a problem that can expect to kill them, while the public, like most governments, ignores it.
*Three climate activists have been convicted of "interference with key national infrastructure" by marching in the road in West London for 20 minutes,*
The new system of repression of protests has functioned. Whether it will crush efforts to save humanity remains to be seen.
*Putin is seeking to weaponize threat of mass migration, says Estonian PM.*
Governor DeMentis has given Florida a law to unleash Florida's contribution to flooding the state's territory.
Justice Alito put up an upside-down flag outside his home in January 2021, when that gesture was a symbol of support for the corrupter's lie that the election had been stolen.
The US-built pier in Gaza has begun operating, but it lacks the capacity to replace the land crossings that Israel has now blocked.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Biden proposes end to new leases in US's largest coal-producing region.*
US employers are required to protect workers from falls, which can be done with standard methods. They are also required to report such incidents to workers' compensation. But often they don't do either one, and it is hard to make them.
The US legal system is generally inadequate for enforcing workers' rights of whatever kind. That includes union-related rights, the right to get paid one's wages, as well as the right to proper safety measures. If the US enforced workers' rights against their employers the way it enforces the laws that mainly benefit the rich, American workers would, practically speaking, have far more rights.
There is a new political article: Fight Modern Slavery, but Leave Astronomy Alone.
*[Life] insurance companies in Australia are fighting for access to these test results.* The tests show how likely a person is to die from some cancers.
It is obvious why insurance companies want these data: to charge more to people who have the harmful gene variants. The reason that practice is harmful is not so obvious but it is important: life insurance is presumed as part of the state social safety net. If you have dependents, you need life insurance.
Life insurance was developed back in the day when states hardly had a social safety net. In a country with a good enough state system, life insurance becomes unnecessary. That is the real fix.
The Putin forces torture Ukrainian prisoners of war, but they especially torture the musicians of military bands.
*Banks have given almost $7tn to fossil fuel firms since Paris deal, report reveals.*
Almost all of those trillions has been invested in plunging headfirst into making climate disaster worse.
The US left has largely come to define "Zionism" as the political philosophy of the apartheid system that Israel applies to occupied Palestine.
The danger is that valid condemnation of Israel's actual policies and behavior may lead to a sort of anti-Zionism, the opposite or reversal of each aspect of Zionism. This tends to transform the conflict into one which admits of no resolution other than the destruction of one of the two sides. That would be a horrible mistake.
I support the existence of Israel, which has the obligation (like every country) to respect human rights and democracy, alongside a state of Palestine which would (like every country) have the same obligation.
It is sad to see how little respect people get when they complain after companies charged them for mere access to a remote copy of something, and then put limits even on that access.
The author of this article bends over backwards to excuse companies for doing something that is inherently abusive. He grants moral authority to the laws companies have obtained so that they have power over people. He presupposes that companies deserve whatever power they can get governments to impose.
When you get a copy of anything that has been published, no one is entitled to the power to control whether, when or how you can use it. No one is entitled to the power to make it disappear. Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is an injustice and ought to be a felony.
When people defy that through forbidden sharing, don't call that "piracy".
Australian border thugs stretched the lax Australian law to demand the passwords to unlock travelers' phones. That they do this arbitrarily, without court orders, is an offense against the rule of law. That they pretend it is "random", which clearly it is not, is a lie that shames the entire Australian government.
Of course, Australia is not the only semi-free country that does this, and non-free countries such as China do far worse. That is no excuse for Australia.
It is amusing, though, to see the complaining passenger complain that it is unthinkable to travel without a device that will snoop on him.
A Maga Maggot joked about giving homeless people counterfeit money to get them arrested. "How broken must you be to do this and think it's funny?", someone commented.
In the UK before Tory budget cuts, medicine for pregnancy and birth was adequate, except for some disprivileged groups. Budget cuts have made it generally horrible, leading to injuries.
*Israeli public opinion is shifting on the Gaza war — but this may make Netanyahu even more reckless.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Hospital surgical teams that include more female doctors improve patient outcomes, lower the risk of serious complications and could in turn reduce healthcare costs, according to the world’s largest study of its kind.*
The Philippines found a clever nonviolent way to respond to China's naval provocations in the disputed sea between them, which China is trying to seize.
*The 2024 Class of Gaza: The Students Have Done Their Part.*
Night-Mayor Adams argued for allowing unauthorized immigrants to work in the US by saying that they could fill New York City's lifeguard shortage.
I see no racism in that statement. (By the way, Adams is black; for most political issues that makes no difference, but in regard to whether his statements express racism it might be pertinent.)
It is true that only a small fraction of unauthorized immigrants reach the US by swimming, or by water at all. His words may have suggested otherwise; if so, that was inaccurate. But perhaps he did not intend that implication. His words say that many of them say they can swim.
Anyway, if he was serious rather than sarcastic about the political suggestion of allowing them to work, I think we can pardon that inaccurate possible point.
The corrupter's criminal trial is a tour through a world of pervasive corruption and immorality — the world he imposes on those around him.
Global heating is making seasons unpredictable. Some birds starve because after migration the things they would eat are not available; in some years the food has not appeared, and in other years it has already disappeared or changed form.
The target of limiting global heating to no more than 1.5°C was proposed as an ambitious plan. The evident failure to reach it does not mean all is lost.
Not yet.
The aid convoy attacked by Israeli nationalist fanatics was escorted by Israeli soldiers. They did nothing to stop the attack.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*The Nationwide Right-Wing Attack on Reform Prosecutors Is Now an Attack on Abortion Rights [as well].*
The American Communist Party "attracted egalitarian idealists, and it bred authoritarian zealots."
Nowadays what breeds authoritarian zealots is the right-wing MAGA movement. I wonder if it is possible to identify which common points are responsible for that result.
The author regrets American Communists' "willingness to subvert their own best instincts in their devotion to a flawed and irrelevant historical model." The American right-wing today can be described with similar words — their model includes laissez faire / laissez mourir, balanced budgets, minimizing taxes on the rich, and scapegoating minorities and immigrants.
(satire) *[The ganglord] reflexively asks Michael Cohen to silence Michael Cohen.*
*As Uber's Profit Margins Grow, Workers Make Less and Less.*
This is a valid social reason to boycott Guber — because it pays workers peanuts. But that company's operations directly mistreat its customers, as well as its drivers.
Human Rights Watch reports at least eight Israeli airstrikes on Gaza aid groups since October, with no warnings given.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Now that corporations have bought many single-family homes, they feel free to maintain them badly, because if tenants withhold rent to demand their rights, the corporation evicts them.
These corporations lobby hard against laws to protect tenants from being cheated. I think Republican-controlled states may not have codified rent strikes.
Several Jewish students, at least fairly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, state praise and criticism for views they encountered in recent encampments.
The Jewish population of Israel did not come from Europe, so cannot even theoretically go "back" there.
I support an independent state of Palestine, but abolishing Israel would be worse (because it's bigger) than abolishing Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*FBI warns [gay] Pride month celebrations could be targeted by terrorists.*
*As Europe's power shrinks, its fear is growing — and the result is huge mistakes.*
I have strongly criticized the EU for giving power to banksters instead of to the people.
A right-wing-extremist German candidate has been convicted of using a slogan used by Nazi paramilitaries in the 1930s.
I don't think that was a accident. Right-wing extremists are very clever about their dog whistles. Apparently that candidate chose to invoke the Nazi for per own success.
Which is worse: Nazis successfully recruiting with hate, or censorship of Nazi views? For me, either one is likely to destroy democracy.
Looking for a model of progress that does not depend on unending economic growth.
The US needs to spend a trillion dollars over the next 20 years in order to upgrade and repair water infrastructure.
That is presuming we do what is needed to curb global heating. If we don't do that, we are on the path to a world of disasters — so what difference does one disaster more or less make?
*[It seems that] Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.*
Venezuela bears a fraction of the responsibility for this event through its export of oil. But it is just a small fraction.
Renewable generation provided 30% of the world's electricity in 2023. This is expected to continue growing rapidly.
Various restrictions imposed on abortion by some US states correlated with higher rates of domestic homicide.
It is too early to determine how the recent bans on abortion have affected this correlation, but one must suspect that bans correlate with even higher increases.
Laying out DeJoy's plans to make US mail less reliable and frequently but unpredictably slower.
The anticipated slowdowns will interfere with postal voting. Many ballots will arrive late due to USPS delays and then will not be counted.
Governments are noticing the terrible danger that business-supremacy treaties pose to prospects of reducing fossil fuel use.
Given the millions of people that those companies' use of business-supremacy treaties is likely to kill, in my view war is justified to defeat them. However, it is not obvious to me what strategy could be successful.
A deadly heat wave across Asia in April was impossible before humans caused global heating. Now we can expect one like it every few years.
Alternative jet fuel is not feasible in the time frame necessary to avert climate disaster.
Northern Canada is again beset by dangerous wildfires, including near Ft McMurray, a main center of tar sand oil extraction.
There is poetic justice in greenhouse-fueled wildfires burning Ft McMurray. I hope the people there reflect on what they have done to cause wildfires like these.
Wildfires in Canada damaged fiber optic cables and cut off communication with large areas. Without land lines and cash, everyone was screwed.
This is not one of my reasons for having cash on hand and always paying cash — I don't think fire damage to Boston's underground cables is likely. But in many places it is another good reason to make a habit of using cash. You can make sure that the stores you buy from are accustomed to cash payments and realize that they will lose business if they don't let you pay that way.
UNWRA has run out of food in southern 2/3 of Gaza, so it can't distribute any more. Israel is not letting in any more food, having captured and closed the Rafah crossing.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Israel closed the Rafah aid crossing from Egypt into Gaza, and is claiming that Egypt closed it. It says that reopening it is up to Egypt. But this is not true and Egypt vociferously denies it.
Who is this supposed to fool?
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Israeli tanks have entered Rafah's residential zones. This could result in killing thousands soon enough.
A UN vehicle was attacked, with casualties. I wish we could identify who attacked it.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
A split in Israel's cabinet about what to aim for after this war ends could lead to a shift of some sort.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Here is the cease-fire deal that HAMAS agreed to, two weeks ago. It includes releasing all the hostages. Israel did not accept it.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Fanatics of the Israeli violent "settler" movement attacked an aid convoy, which was traveling from Jordan to Gaza; its route passed through occupied Palestinian territory and then Israel.
The attack took place at a checkpoint where it was going to cross from Palestinian territory into Israel. These checkpoints are run by Israeli forces, who evidently chose not to defend the convoy from the fanatics. Such noninterference with mob violence against Arabs is quite usual for them.
Some Israelis openly demand to starve Gaza until HAMAS frees all the hostages. I don't think that has any chance of success; HAMAS will not yield so that Israel will forbear to kill thousands of Palestinian hostages. But if Israel wants to be judged as morally superior to HAMAS, it must save them.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Australia's government has surrendered to fossil gas.
The previous right-wing government was embarrassingly subservient, and it looked like the Labor government would be better. But no, it's the same track that leads to gigadeaths.
Australia plans to invest $23bn in a future industrial policy.
I am not one of those who claims that it is foolish to have an industrial policy, but there is always the risk that is used to hide a giveaway to big business. This one includes an investment in hydrogen production, and it sounds like renewable production is only the second step.
What is the first step of hydrogen production? Is it production from fossil fuels? That's the way that already works, but investing in boosting the amount of that is only going to make the climate crisis worse.
Students at Emery University in Atlanta have linked the violent repression of rallies for the Palestinians of Gaza with violent repression of protests against Cop City.
I think the relationship between the bombardment and siege of Gaza and Cop City is rather tenuous, but the two instances of repression have a considerable relationship as described by the article linked above.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Congress is investigating the corrupter for reportedly asking executives for bribes to abolish Biden's environmental rules.
Modi's party is accused of bullying opposition candidates to drop out of the race.
Modi has not gone as far to making democracy an empty shell as Putin went 17 years ago, but it's basically the same story. India is no democracy and we should not treat it as one.
*Political activist [Netiporn Sanae-sangkhom], held in Thai jail, dies after 65 days on hunger strike.*
She faced prosecution for allegedly insulting the king. It seems that the Thai monarchy's definition of "insulting the king" is far broader than the normal definition of "insult" in English.
*Labour and unions reach agreement on workers’ rights proposals. Labour commits to deal agreed last year, following weeks of tension.*
Starmer has specifically excluded local Labour members from choosing Labour's candidate in the district of Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn was kicked out of the Labour Party by weaponizing accusations of antisemitism, much as protesters for peace in Gaza are now being. Alleged antisemitism by employees of the Labour Party was blamed on him.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
The defection of a right-wing Tory to the Labour Party demonstrates that Starmer views the party as a mere faction, united only by the idea that by working together they can win power.
*UK is failing to put climate crisis at centre of national security measures, MPs told.*
I'm sure many governments are being lobbied to get this wrong ;-{.
40% of the world's laundered money is estimated to flow through the UK and some former colonies. The UK has failed to insist that those former colonies reveal the true owners of the dummy corporations they set up, often for money laundering.
If the UK cuts them off entirely, they could continue supporting business deceit as they do now, but without being able to relate to other countries through the UK, they might find their scheme ineffective.
Zhang Zhan, who reported on the early days of Covid-19 in China, was jailed for doing so. Now she has supposedly been released, but it seems she is being held incommunicado outside of formal prison.
This is common in China. The government's statements are meant to tell you what to think, not to describe reality.
An AT&T executive is charged with bribing an Illinois legislator to get two major pieces of legislation passed.
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has fled to Europe to escape persecution for his films.
This is a message about Julian Assange, from Susan McLucas and Paula Iasella.
“Julian is just one decision away from extradition” -- Stella Assange
On May 20th two UK High Court judges will rule on Assange’s appeal hearing after considering the U.S. assurances submitted mid-April.
We have sent 5,000 postcards, many personal and handwritten, to 100 senators, President Joe Biden, AG Merrick Garland and CIA director, William Burns. Now is the time to amplify those messages.
In the senate focus on these 5 representatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Jim Jordan (OH-4), Andy Biggs (AZ-5), and Mark Pocan (WI-2). Plus your own rep: 202-224-3121. They all can be written at US House of Reps, Washington, DC 20515. The Senate has so far done nothing to help Assange.
In the House push members to cosponsor H.Res.934. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, supportive of dropping the charges against Assange, has yet to add her name to this important bi-partisan legislation.
Please reach out to President Biden to encourage him to follow through on what he said on April 10 that he is "considering" dropping the charges on Julian Assange. Fill out the form at WhiteHouse.gov/contact. Call him (only Tues-Thur 11 to 3) at (202) 456-1111 or write him at The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Wash DC 20500.
*Ukraine facing ‘difficult’ situation in Kharkiv region, military chief says.*
Asylum seekers in Britain are asking themselves in terror, "Must I run now before they grab me for Rwanda?"
Except that a large fraction get little information and don't even know about the danger they may be put in deportation prison to be sent later to Rwanda.
*In the past year, in virtually every region, journalists and independent media outlets faced increasing repression, according to RSF.*
This includes Gaza, where Israeli forces have repeatedly killed reporters.
It also includes the US, where uniformed thugs have arrested reporters covering rallies against the killing of civilians there.
*Bayer Seeks Reapproval of Pesticide That Federal Courts Have Twice Banned for Causing Widespread Damage to Crops and Communities.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
(satire) *Bored Riot Cops Break Up Calculus Class.*
Rumor said that Starmer plans to yield to business by weakening the the "Labour" Party's commitment to improve workers' rights and pay.
Unions threatened to remove their support, and made Starmer firm up at least one pledge.
Utah made it a crime to use the "wrong" bathroom in schools and government buildings, and set up a way to report violations. Defenders of trans rights have filed 10,000 bogus reports so that any serious reports will be impossible to find among all those.
It looks like the UK will weaken is greenhouse gas targets to "make them easier to meet."
That is absurd — like reducing the treatment for cancer to make it easier to take. That's what you get in a hospice. Is this hospice care for Planet Earth?
A review of the danger of antibiotic resistance.
I've posted over the years about the need to stop farmers from giving antibiotics to entire herds in bulk. We must restrict them to giving antibiotics specifically to animals that are sick.
As for the lack of new antibiotics, we should take this entirely out of the hands of drug companies and create an international organization for the job. We should give it funds to develop last-ditch antibiotics, and to make doses for the whole world — prohibit the use of those antibiotics except in animals that are entitled to human rights.
*[The corrupter]’s scattershot attacks on justice system are causing real damage.*
US citizens: call on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth ahead of the G20 summit.
The UK has granted a license for a new nuclear power plant, Sizewell C.
It probably will never be finished, because at some point the government will have a crisis which will prevent it from continuing to pay for it. But the unfinished reactor will play a part in bringing the country to that disaster.
In the mean time, it will do plenty of harm to non-rich Britons.
Right-wing Senator Britt proposed a bill to set up a honey trap to lure pregnant Americans to giving their personal details to the US government. It would then send them right-wing-biased advice.
The AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has been withdrawn; it was effectively obsolete since it had not been updated.
A very rare side effect killed one person who took the vaccine. We should not forget that it saved millions of lives in 2021-2022.
I saw an article that crowed about the end of this vaccine as a victory. Over what, I must ask? Vaccination, it seems. To an anti-vaxxer, one death from being vaccinated counts more than hundreds of thousands of likely deaths that vaccination prevented.
Starmer has been surprised by the strength of criticism from within the Labour Party for allowing a right-wing Tory to join the Labour ranks.
Some of them still remember the moral crusade that Labour used to be.
She condemned firemen for going on strike. Unions reminded Starmer that that contradicts a Labour Party commitment to restore the right to strike
If the government considers some public employees so essential that they must not go on strike, the right way to avoid that is by paying the workers better without waiting for a strike. Rather than singling them out, it could pay all working people better.
*Righteous fury over Gaza must allow empathy for fearful Jewish students.*
Jewish students ought to be able to feel safe (and be safe) on campus. Likewise, students rallying to end an avoidable deadly war ought to be able to feel safe (and be safe) on campus. Safe, especially, from uniformed thugs.
We can do the right thing for both groups at once, if we think about it. Many of the Gaza protest rallies in the US are thinking about that.
*Faith groups want more say in secular Britain. Labour should tell them to go to hell.*
The principle of religious freedom says that that is the right way to treat any group of citizens' rituals: regardless of details, they have no right on push those on other people. Now, how to convince Starmer Labour to have principles other than "We must win"?
*National sovereignty is little defense against the global hunt for profits. Capitalism seems to enable companies to see staff as expendable units, not humans [or people].*
Expanding US financial sanctions on certain named Israeli participants in occupation violence could eventually cause big difficulties for continued colonization of Palestine.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US courts have given cops immunity for any destruction of property that they cause in the course of their activity.
I agree that the government should compensate those whose property government agents destroy except pursuant to a court order to do so.
As I see it, this conclusion does not require calling the damage "taking of property." It's enough that it is damage. If you or I destroyed a house, even if it were in the course of some activity that was not wrong in itself, you or I would be liable. So should the city.
Robert Reich says that his conversations with US student protesters showed him that their protests are meant as a rebuke to Israel's deadly violence in Gaza. He reports that Biden said he has cut off supply of artillery shells for Israel to use in attacking Rafah, and credits this as an achievement for the protesters.
His article does not report the fine print of Biden's decision. Israel surely has lots of artillery shells already. Is this decision going to actually hamper Israel's current attack?
Even if it doesn't do that, it must help convince some of the Israeli government that Israel cannot continue down this path. Maybe that will suffice to change the government and end the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Israel is fighting resurgent HAMAS in northern Gaza again.
As I've noted many times, it is impossible to defeat an underground guerrilla movement that has the popular support to recruit new members. HAMAS has that support.
Israel should recognize this and end the useless and deadly attempt to do the impossible. HAMAS is an evil group of terrorists, but there is no use in futile efforts to eradicate it, and the effort is no excuse for killing thousands of civilians.
Israel has also announced plans to attack central Rafah.
The "tens of thousands" reported fleeing sound like a small fraction of the people who have fled to Rafah. It seems that many must have decided not to leave.
I can see various reasons a Palestinian might conclude that per chances of survival are not much better there than in Rafah itself. So I think only a fraction will go there. A substantial fraction will stay in Rafah, where Israel has invented an excuse to define their lives as forfeit.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Reporters Without Borders accuses Italy's government of repressing journalists who criticize the government.
*H5N1 has been found in commercially available milk – but gaps in testing of cattle and humans are hampering effort to stop virus.*
It is crucial for public health to find out how many of the people working with infected cattle are catching the virus from them. Without that, we don't know whether one human can catch it from another. We need a law authorizing public health authorities to test cows and dairy workers for this virus.
The article does not say much about what we might do to slow the spread, if we find it is happening. I'm in favor of compensating farmers for cattle that have to be slaughtered, if that's the solution, but is it?
*Rise in Chinese espionage arrests alarms Europe. Increase in cases reflects changing mood across continent towards Chinese threats, say experts.*
An ex-thug known for harassment has been welcomed into Governor DeMentis's politicizable militia.
People like that are public dangers. He should not be in the National Guard either, nor any thug department.
* The former director of [UK] public prosecutions for England and Wales has warned against the risk of creating “thought crimes” amid the recent clampdown on protesters and demonization of demonstrators by politicians.*
*The Guardian view on Israel's far right: occupation of Palestinian territory feeds its extremism.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*The State Department lays out numerous suspected international humanitarian violations by Israel in its war on Gaza, yet suggests no changes in policy or consequences.*
This is a peculiar sort of mental blindness, the blindness of he who will not see.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism — but they're part of a rightwing plan.*
*US campus protests give [the fascist leader] a target for his violent rhetoric of vengeance.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
A concrete Russian plot to assassinate President Zelenskiy has been exposed.
The Israeli army seized the Rafah crossing, the main path for the insufficient aid that still enters Gaza, and closed it. If any US aid travels to Gaza that way, US law (as I understand it) requires cutting off military assistance to Israel. Promised new routes for aid to enter Gaza are not possible replacements for the Rafah crossing because they are not actually ready for use.
I interpret this as Netanyahu's defiance to Biden: "You weakling, I dare you to obey that law." Since then, Biden has suspended delivery of one kind of weapon to Israel. Maybe that was a response telling Netanyahu, "Just you watch!" Has he found the courage to go further than that one suspension?
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
What the corrupter told an interviewer he would do if he wins or steals the election.
*To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country … he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.*
*[Sacramento State University] will pursue an investment strategy divested from “corporations & funds that profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”*
Several other US universities have made agreements with student protesters along roughly similar lines, including two that had first tried violence against the students.
This is a significant achievement for the student protesters, all the more so because it is general, not aimed only at Israel.
In and of itself, that is a good goal, but as a means for ending the bombardment and siege of Gaza, I fear it is too indirect and too slow.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Georgia (Sakartvelo)'s government is pushing a repressive law modeled after Putin's repression of NGOs. Georgians, especially young ones, are protesting this.
A prominent Iranian film director faces 8 years in prison for making a movie that has attracted international attention. The idea that the festival would drop the showing of the movie if the government flogs him into saying "Don't show my film!" is offensive. Film festivals should disregard whatever the director and other participants are forced to say, and they should make sure in advance that torturers know that approach is futile.
*Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna reveal bill aimed at eliminating medical debt.*
Northern Ireland thugs spied on journalists that were investigating them.
Starmer welcomed a defecting Tory MP whose views are very right wing.
It shows his goal is victory, and never mind for what cause.
*Natalie Elphicke's queasy welcome shows Labour will turn no one away.*
Contrast this flexibility about admitting right-wing politicians with the tenuous reasons used to oust long-term Labour members such as Corbyn, an incumbent mayor, and Shuguftah Quddoos in Nottingham Council.
*US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism.*
A Republican on the committee accused the officials of lying, based on no grounds, and then threatened them with wrecking their careers. That's a Republican bully for you.
*What a 1968 Columbia University protester makes of today’s pro-Palestinian encampment.*
*Israeli airstrike that killed seven health workers in Lebanon used US munition.*
What conclusion follows from this depends on conclusions that would depend on an investigation. If Israeli forces knew it was targeting medical personnel, that was a war crime.
If it did not know, it may not have been a war crime. but it should be scandalous anyway. Why did they not know? Did they try hard enough to identify the target? Israel seems to be ready to kill lots of civilians in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Biden has blocked a large shipment to Israel of large dumb bombs, demanding that Israel start avoiding harm to Palestinian civilians.
Thank you, Biden. You should have done this a few months ago, but better late than never.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*600,000 Palestinian [minors] in Rafah Can't "Evacuate" Safely, UNICEF Official Says.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Almost a quarter of Australia's cases of depression, anxiety and are caused by childhood maltreatment and could in principle be prevented.
*The climate crisis is making the farming business unsustainable — and without support for us, food security will suffer too.*
The article claims that a 30% increase in money what farmers receive would make up for a 30% decrease in crop yields. In financial terms, it would do that, but it would not at all fill the 30% shortage in food. What needs to be subsidized is curbing global heating, to make farming somewhat reliable again.
*Climate chaos [in Latin America] is threatening food production, trade and lives.*
*World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5°C target.* They expect a 2.5°C rise, which implies disaster.
David Boyd, until recently UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, says that government plans to curb global heating are succumbing to the pressure to profit by exploiting people and nature.
Journalists at Italy's public broadcaster plan to strike in protest against censorship by the right-wing government.
A nonfree and secret program is being consulted by courts about how to treat individuals accused of crimes. That should be forbidden; every method used to evaluate and partially judge suspects must be entirely disclosed, and courts must be free to change it so as to follow court rulings about the rights of the accused. Basically, courts must use only free software for such purposes.
The developer claims that the program does "artificial intelligence", but that term is usually bullshit in general.
Wales considers making it a crime for politicians to lie to the public.
* Two powerful politicians and Rio de Janeiro’s former chief of police have been arrested* in connection with the 2018 murder of city councilor Marielle Franco.*
At the University of Mississippi, a provocateur who harassed a protest on behalf of Palestine is being investigated over violence.
*Noem book contains threat against Biden dog: "Commander, say hello to Cricket."*
This is a hint at a threat of violence — a standard right wing tactic, popularized by the wrecker. It is designed to fill his opponents with helpless rage, because it is too vague for any legal action. Meanwhile it sends right-wing supporters on a power trip imagining violence against whoever does not support them.
All in all, it demonstrates the vicious hate right-wingers display towards their chosen targets and scapegoats. But this is mild compared with what they usually do and threaten. Usually they target human beings.
Palestinians who have left east Rafah and tried to go to the "safe area" Israel recommended say it is difficult to get there, it is not a good place for inhabitance, and it is already filled with people who fled there first.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
NYPD thugs beat up and injured some of the students they arrested. They put several in solitary for hours, and they denied water (and food) to one for 16 hours. This while fabricating accusations to smear the protesters.
*[Uniformed thugs] let violent mobs attack UCLA students. This is what lawlessness looks like.* A large mob attacked the protesters with firecrackers and sprayed gas, then attacked with fists and poles. 25 of the protester/victims were hospitalized. The thugs did nothing to protect them. The next day, thugs arrested 200 of the protesters.
Major news media disregarded the facts and pretended that the protesters and the mob were equally to blame.
A generation of American students is learning the old lessons: that cops are cruel, violent liars when they deal with members of groups they despise, and that the mainstream media work hard to create false justifications.
Biden endorsed that same injustice of blaming the protesters for the violence that was done to them.
I will vote for Biden anyway, because the corrupter hatefully proclaims that he will be even worse.
Meanwhile, the UCLA administration condemned the thugs failure to protect the protesters and said they will investigate what happened.
If this is sincere, if that investigation is honest and unbiased, it could be an important step forward. But I am skeptical of that. If the UCLA administration really feels this way about the attack on the protesters, why did it tell LA thugs to arrest them?
Two Columbia graduates who are journalists went back to campus to cover the student protest, and their mother, Nahla Al-Arian, came along for an hour. Night-Mayor Adams cited her as an example of an "outside agitator", fictitiously responsible for organizing the protest.
Their father, Professor Sami Al-Arian, was smeared as a terrorist by Dubya's men. The jury found him innocent on most of the charges, but there were some minor charges that the jury could not decide on. He was pressured into a plea bargain which is now being used by New York's thug department as an excuse to smear Nahla Al-Arian as an "outside organizer" of the protests, as if that would justify their violence.
*Venomous snakes likely to [move substantial distances to new habitats] en masse amid global heating, says study. Researchers find many countries unprepared for influx of new species and will be vulnerable to bites*
In medieval England, leprosy was transmitted between humans and red squirrels. It may have reached England on squirrels' furs.
Richard Stallman will give a talk, in French, Free Software and Freedom in a Digital Society at Centrale Supelec in Saclay, on May 15.
Israel has attacked part of Rafah, after calling on civilians there to move to another zone.
Has Israel come up with a way to attack HAMAS while not endangering civilians by the hundreds or thousands? I hope so, but I won't take that for granted. Israel has repeatedly failed to care about killing thousands of civilians.
The text suggests that the new "safe" zone is close to Rafah, but does not clearly say so, or how far one has to walk to get there.
For civilians weakened by hunger, and by untreated sickness and wounds, to carry their own bodies plus meager remaining belongings there may be beyond them. They also have reasons to distrust Israel's promise that it won't attack that zone. It has falsified such commitments before.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
A court ruled that the Tories "climate action plan" is illegal because it would be more properly called the "climate inaction plan".
Breakthroughs in reading text in ancient scrolls that were toasted by an eruption of Mt Vesuvius are giving us a way to read copies of books believed lost.
How great that would be — many mysteries of history could be understood.
* Job losses [in US journalism], declining circulations and local newspaper closures could mean spread of misinformation in pivotal election year.*
The drug diclofenac is poisonous to vultures. They eat dead cattle that were given diclofenac, and eventually they die from it. This has mostly wiped out vultures in India. As a result, Parsis cannot practice any more their religious duty to give corpses to the vultures.
I know a computing professor who told me he was a Parsi. I asked him, "Did you have a bad interaction with a Parser?" He collapsed in irresistible laughter — it was a delight.
Global heating leads to temperatures that exceed the capacity of bumblebees to cool their hive.
When Fawlty Towers was made, it was possible to have a character use a racial insult as a way of presenting that character as racist. John Cleese reports that this has become impossible, and *said some people "don't understand metaphor, irony or comedy exaggeration."*
I suggest that their deficiency is in "theory of mind": the faculty of distinguishing between what you think, what your interlocutor thinks, and what some other persons think.
Surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta volunteered to work in Gaza, and has testified about Israeli attacks he has seen. French senators invited him to speak to them, but Germany has banned him from entering anywhere in the Schengen zone.
Did Germany present any basis claimed to justify this, or is it purely arbitrary?
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*The US universities that allow protest encampments — and even negotiate.*
A university president who rushes to call the thug department is not fit for the office.
The Columbia College Student Council accuses the university administration of imposing a policy of arbitrary repression ever since October, and become ever more cruel, arbitrary and unjust in the past weeks.
The university directed violent uniformed thugs at students it was falsely accusing of violence, all the while interfering with video recording of their violence. While claiming it was striving to "keep all members of our community physically safe", it opened the door to physical danger to them. This is part of a broad pattern of thugs committing violence against nonviolent protesters.
Some protesters were not entirely nonviolent — throwing things at thugs is aggressive, as well as self-defeating since it gives thugs an excuse to commit violence against those protesters and others too. It may also provoke them to the point that they lose self-control. That is not an excuse for their violence, but it is a reason not to provoke them.
The protest movement needs to develop nonviolence discipline, and marshals to enforce it, just as the civil rights movement and Vietnam peace movement did.
A general heat wave in south-east Asia, stretching from Bangladesh to the Philippines, is killing people and destroying crops.
It is clear that our global heating activities are part of the cause. Even worse, they are sure to make it hotter in the future. People can't survive if farming does not work.
*[A group of prestigious] Australian universities reject calls for police to break up Gaza protests.*
That bespeaks thoughtful attention to their various responsibilities.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill which would judge cases of alleged antisemitism in education based on the criterion promulgated by the IHRA. This criterion mistakes some criticism of Israel for antisemitism and even one of its authors has condemned it.
I have no confidence that Senate Democrats will reject this for the sake of getting the distinction right.
The UK's right-wing extremist party, which I will call Deform UK, is running disinformationist candidates reminiscent of supporters of today's US Republicans.
Australia has ordered Ex-Twitter to delete some images on the grounds that they are somehow disgusting.
I think Musk is right on this issue. If one country has the power to order Ex-Twitter to delete something, then any other country could do likewise. That would lead to deletion of anything that any country wants to censor. For instance, China would demand deletion of photos of events to remember the Tian An Men Square massacre, and even photos of the protest and massacre themselves.
*Big oil spent decades sowing doubt about fossil fuel dangers, experts testify.*
Some independent journalists in Ukraine have encountered harassment through state agencies.
Israel claimed that the al-Shifa hospital was deeply integrated with HAMAS tunnels and that they were used for combat operations. The Washington Post found a tunnel and an entrance, but no evidence it was used for combat, or that it was designed to be of use for combat.
The US government asked people to take that on faith, but past experience says we cannot give the US or Israel the total and implicit trust they ask for.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Humans that come near chimpanzees transmit viruses that in humans cause only "colds" but can kill chimps.
Queensland, a part of Australia, has legalized sex work, but the right-wing opposition wants to criminalize it again if they win the next election.
*UK transgender actors appeal to be cast in non-trans roles.* Discrimination is in general a bad thing. If in general it gives good results to cast actors without discriminating between cis and trans, it is better not to discriminate.
The hard part is judging whether a trans actor can do a good job of playing a cis role, and likewise whether a cis actor can do a good job of playing a trans role. Whether actor A plays role R well is a question that is inherently subjective -- so how can you tell if you are giving way to discrimination?
Night-Mayor Adams asserted that the Gaza protest in Columbia was booted by "outside agitators". Reporters are skeptical, and Adams won't say who those were.
*Rebuilding homes in Gaza will cost $40bn and take 16 years, UN finds.*
The union of student workers at UCLA will strike against the school administration for using city thugs to crush a Gaza protest.
Rutgers and University of Minnesota reached compromises with protesting students, granting some of their demands, and students picked up their encampments.
If the students want to have an actual influence for peace in Gaza, and more rights for Palestine, they need to keep people thinking about the issue but not as a bitter knock-down confrontation.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Uniformed thugs let loose on protesters at Emory university went on a violent rampage against students and faculty — a gas-them-beat-them-and-frame-them operation.
The thugs that mauled protesters ought to go to jail. The university presidents that invited them to do that should resign.
(satire) *Columbia University Gives Students Option To Finish Classes From Prison.*
*We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society.*
In 2019, I found that the Tech Model Railroad Club (famously associated with early computer hackers) was almost dead. A few years before members had been vigorously developing it. I told Professor Sussman, and he told me that several years before, most incoming MIT freshmen had lost interest in physical hobbies and activities (model railroading being one). We both speculated that widespread use of snoop-phones and antisocial media platforms, which were addictive to social groups, helped to bring that change about.
A decrease in Americans' use of those systems might perhaps expand the space for civil society.
Some of the protesters on behalf of Palestine in Columbia called for burning Tel Aviv and for eliminating Israel.
The references for this are on Ex-Twitter and therefore inaccessible to me. What they said advocated mass killing and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel.
This is the same sort of wrong that right-wing Israelis are advocating and doing to Palestinians. But having this on both sides is not a step towards peace. It is not on the path to having both sides treat each other with respect.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Biden is the most progressive, most liberal president the US has had since 1980. (I don't recall enough to judge how he compares with Jimmy Carter.) We should show our appreciation for that. On some important issues, he is doing great.
At the same time, on some other important issues he falls far short of what the US and the world needs and what we demand. We get frustrated and infuriated that he doesn't change for the better. One of these issues is ending the bombing and siege of Gaza.
How should we deal with this half-full, half-empty glass? I think we should make sure to keep showing both sides of what we feel.
We need to keep saying, "Yes, more of that," for the issues where Biden does the right thing, and "Stop this nonsense!" where he does not. To continue pressure on Biden, we need both sides. Sometimes we need both at once: "This is a big advance, but without more, we are still headed for disaster. Tackle the whole problem, fast!"
There are times for saying, "Yes, this measure is something to be proud of, for today." And there are times to say, "Don't make us laugh — that change is inadequate."
The student protests against Biden's inadequate efforts to protect the civilians of Gaza are running into increasing repression. Although not violent, they are calculated to provoke the schools to violence. This tends to make compromise impossible and leave no chance of agreeing on an outcome we would really want: It seems designed to lead to going down fighting, followed by years of hatred, rather than to a change for the better that leads to opportunities to demand further change.
British Columbia has modified its experimental system of decriminalizing some recreational drugs, limiting lawful use to private places.
I oppose prohibition of drugs, but requiring drug use to be in private places is not prohibition. I don't think it will cause the same great harm that prohibition has caused.
*US finds Israeli units committed human rights abuses before Gaza war.*
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Because LLMs are not real intelligence, using them as a basis for web search is likely to lead to various bad results.
The article presumes that searching means "Google search", but for me it is just the opposite: I can't access Google search at all. For me, bizarre or inconvenient things that Google does to its search engine are things I won't notice.
So let's not forget that people can use other search engines if they get burned by Google's.
Recent advances against business-supremacy treaties, around the world.
More about business-supremacy treaties.
New Orleans thugs crushed a Gaza protest in a city park, using horrifying violence against participants and against bystanders.
*So the next time you hear Republicans complain about the federal debt and our swelling interest payments on it, remember that: (1) the debt has grown mainly because of Republican tax cuts, (2) those cuts have mostly benefited the rich, (3) the rich are now the major recipients of interest payments on that debt, (4) and those interest payments are crowding out spending on childcare, elder care, affordable housing, better schools, paid family leave, and everything Americans need.*
*Developed countries accused of bowing to lobbyists at plastic pollution talks[:] Campaigners say last-minute compromise plays into the hands of petrostates and industry influences.*
*Big oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, Senate report finds.*
*Great Barrier Reef's worst bleaching [ever] leaves giant coral graveyard: "It looks as if it has been carpet bombed."*
*G7 agree to end use of unabated coal power plants by 2035.* However, they are failing to take action to reduce oil and gas use fast enough to avoid disaster.
Human activity is increasing the concentration of one PFAS in drinking water by a substantial amount each year. Finding out whether this is causing major damage to humans is a question that will take difficult research, so it will be many years before we know whether we are causing a disaster this way.
*Everyone laughed at Hitler in the 1920s. A century on, are we making the same mistake?*
If we Americans don't make sure the wrecker loses, and then block his supporters from stealing the next election, we will never have another real election.
It is possible that some large companies are so inefficient that staff working 32 hours per week could get as much done as they now get done in 40 hours. But that can't work for small businesses.
What could work is to offer employees the flexibility to work four 10-hour days in a week.
US citizens: call on Congress to side with working people, not billionaires and big business, by raising taxes on the latter.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Biden plans to put marijuana into a less strict category of prohibition instead of legalizing it.
This is simply not adequate.
Students at Columbia University occupied a building, and the president brought in cops to arrest them.
Was the occupation really organized by outside agitators unrelated to Columbia? I am skeptical of the claim, given that at least 50 students have been suspended. That sort of convenient accusation is easy to claim, whether it is true or not, because it is hard to disprove. I can't be sure it is false, but I would not trust Night-Mayor Adams' word for it, or President Shafik's.
Likewise for the claim that students destroyed doors and so on. I wonder what the protest organizers have to say about this claim.
What is unfortunate is that the confrontation has gone in a direction which is likely to lead university administrations to give priority to "showing who's boss" over all else. Which means that the protest movement can vent a lot of anger but it can't advance the cause of peace in Gaza. It can only create festering hostility.
It also plays into the hands of the right-wingers in Congress who bullied the university presidents, and the fascist leader they serve.
To make effective pressure for peace in Gaza, or more precisely to pressure the US to pressure Israel to allow peace in Gaza, would require different kind of protests.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
*Junk science is cited in abortion ban cases. Researchers are [calling for retraction of] the "fatally flawed" work*. They object on the grounds of scientific methodology, not based on the conclusions as such.
An archeologist describes the enormous weight of evidence that shows there was never a lost ancient civilization. The archeological evidence shows hunter gatherers all around the inhabited worlds.
New Spanish pun:
La ninfa de roble
At a Gaza solidarity encampment in Northeastern University, "pro-Israel" counterprotesters shouted "Kill the Jews! Anybody onboard?", acting as 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."*
That extra money will enable states to do far more of the vital jobs we need them for.
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 imagine myself in the place of a prostitute's customer (where it is unlikely I would ever actually be, since I'm not interested in sex without affection and wouldn't feel safe without closeness and trust), 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.
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does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank
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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.
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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 to 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].*
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.
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)".
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