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.
The wrecker plans to screw everyone in the US who does not speak English well enough to deal with government bureaucracy, by eliminating support for interpreters to help.
*More than 160 Gazan medics held in Israeli prisons amid reports of torture.*
*Gaza's doctors say they were tortured, beaten and humiliated in Israeli [prison].*
A meeting between Zelenskyy and Tr-ance in the White House broke up in acrimony.
They tried to bully him into selling Ukraine's mineral resources without getting military support in return, by attacking him and Ukraine. He responded civilly to the points they made, while sticking to his negotiating position. They searched for and found ways to interpret his words as attacks so they could counterattack to bully more.
A journalist called this an "ambush", and maybe it was.
I think that they set up the meeting so they could bully him very harshly, and even planned ending the meeting with insults if he did not give them what they wanted.
Including Vance in the meeting looks to me like a tactic to make the argument two-against-one and thus be nastier.
US citizens: call on Congress not to support the bully's idea for a war with Mexico. The "war on drugs" is stupid as a metaphor, and even stupider as a shooting war.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress not to cut Medicaid. The proposed cuts would bring about the death of non-rich Americans that get sick.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Ukraine "gambling with world war three", Trump tells Zelenskyy in fiery meeting.*
The bully is echoing Putin's repeated propaganda line: "Give in to my demands or I might use nuclear weapons." I have called this his "I'm a madman with a nuke" routine.
This is more reason to think that the wrecker is in cahoots with Putin or else under Putin's control.
When the bully insists that what he wants peace (at any price), I think of a line from an old Reggae song: "I don't want peace, I want equal rights." It is easy for a bully with an army to shake victims down by starting a war and offering to end it in exchange for some valuable prize. But if you give in, you lose.
*3M told customers its firefighting foams were harmless and biodegradable, when it knew they contained toxic substances so persistent they are now known as "forever chemicals" and banned in many countries.*
(satire) *Jeff Bezos Sends Note To Whole Foods Staff Forbidding Criticism Of Grapes.*
*[DoorDash] claimed that 100% of tips went to [the delivery people] but instead used them to subsidize workers' base salary.*
As far as I know, only that one food delivery company has cheated in that particular way. But others cheat various parties
in various ways. We should not trust or reward any of them.
*Colorado woman charged with vandalizing Tesla dealership.*
If cars are made by a Nazi sympathizer, does that justify calling the cars "Nazi cars"? We don't know that the cars share the views of the owner of the company. Perhaps the cars were traumatized by the attitude inside the factory to the point that they are ready to blow the whistle on the owner's right-wing subversion.
*Thailand deports dozens of Uyghurs to China despite torture fears. Rights experts say group who have been detained for more than 10 years face high risk of torture and imprisonment.*
Not deporting people to countries likely to persecute them is a basic principle of the international system of asylum, but many countries are visibly treating that system with contempt, including Australia, the US, the UK and various EU countries.
George Monbiot: *So much of [UK] intelligence and military systems are shared [with] or reliant on the US — if it becomes the enemy, it is already inside the gates.*
The idea of NATO, like that of "five-eyes" intelligence sharing, was predicated on the idea of an alliance that would never end, as well as on the idea of shared principles of democracy and human rights that would certainly continue (albeit occasionally deniably betrayed by the various governments).
Nowadays, for the US in a Tr-ance, "cooperation with" other countries is a euphemism for making them submit and obey, or recruiting them into the gang. It is trying to recruit Putin, Europe's main existing enemy.
Will the wrecker share the UK's intelligence with Putin? I don't think any principles or loyalties would hold him back.
Musk claimed that his abrupt firing of thousands of federal workers is just like Clinton's job cuts in the 1990s. Robert Reich, who carried out part of those cuts, lays out the fundamental differences.
*When you hear Musk say his effort is similar to what I and others did in the 1990s, know he’s lying. When you see him call people who benefit from public programs "parasites," know he’s a hypocrite.*
To avoid painting an exaggeratedly favorable picture of Bill Clinton as a champion of the people, let it be known also that he did many things that transferred wealth from the poor to the rich. This included his "welfare reform" that reduced government aid to the poor.
The wrecker ordered the US military to find and discharge all transgender servicemembers.
The supposed justification for this is a bald assertion that being trans is incompatible with military service. Saying so does not make it true.
Some Democrats running for state governor receive campaign support from cryptocurrency schemes. They earn that money by saying they will put pension fund money into those schemes.
Pension funds should choose investments that are pretty low in risk. The only way "investment" in cryptocurrency can have low enough risk not to be considered speculation is if corruption ensures its value can't decrease much.
It follows that any candidate who suggests putting some state pension funds into a cryptocurrency is either incompetent or bent.
*Judge temporarily blocks Trump’s mass firings at federal agencies. US Office of Personnel Management lacks power to order firings, including those of probationary employees.*
Robert Reich asserts that the saboteur-in-chief is aiming to establish personal control over all parts of the US government that can employ force. He is doing this by *putting into power people who are more loyal to him than they are to the United States.*
Once this has gone far enough, he will be able to threaten all opposition leaders with imprisonment or death -- by asking those bent officials to bend the law for his sake.
*Taiwan detains Chinese-crewed cargo ship after undersea cable damaged.*
Since the polite words of states attacked this way were treated as a sign of weakness, it's necessary that they show their strength.
Germany's neo-Nazi party temporarily tried to give the impression, for the election, that it was a little less Nazi. Turns out that was just a sham.
HP came up with a clever way to boost use of bullshit generators: when customers called the phone line for customer disservice, HP would make each one wait 15 minutes listening to would-be brainwashing to use the chatbot instead, before allowing the connection.
The rage of customers must have been powerful, because HP soon retreated from this nastiness.
But it still carries out many forms of nastiness.
I have often had to wait over an hour for a business to respond. So I have learned how to handle my email while hearing these "use our convenient but unjust web site" torture session. Having email to distract me from the torture so it doesn't hurt.
The tyrant-lover has enrolled the US in the hall of shame for countries that refuse to condemn Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
*Judge blocks Musk agency access to millions of Americans' personal data.*
*Major military operation causes largest displacement of Palestinians in West Bank since Israel seized it in 1967.*
*Eight Gaza doctors on their Israeli prison ordeal.*
It is a war crime to torture prisoners like that. It is also a war crime to attack hospitals.
A summary of attacks against non-allied media by the wrecker and his henchmen.
Google Maps is blocking users from posting reviews about the Gulf of Mexico, because many users had left negative reviews to rebuke the bully's attempt to rename it,
The Washington Post newspaper sold an ad saying "Fire Elon Musk", then canceled the sale instead of running the ad.
The National Gallery of Australia covered up Palestinian flags in a piece of art on display as part of an exhibit, saying this was for "security".
It did not try to explain why the goal of "security" justified, or even suggested, such censorship.
Facebook told the EU that the corrupter will punish the EU if he disapproves of how much it fines Facebook for violating EU laws.
An Australian commission has determined that the conquest of Australia by British colonists involved violently killing around 10.000 aboriginals.
That massive violence was just a part of it. I learned how this operated from a book called The Other Side of the Frontier, by Henry Reynolds. Colonists moving into an area occupied the river valleys to farm them. The local indigenous people still held most of the land, but they had lost most of the food resources. They could not survive that way.
I reject the term "first nations" because it is designed to impose an attitude of reverence which no ethnic group is entitled to. We can criticize colonialism without ritual bowing to the people who were colonized.
An article considers various ways the UK could fund the necessary military buildup. The most obvious method, which would also correct the increasing concentration of wealth — to tax the rich more — is mysteriously missing from the list.
*Long-term effects of Gaza war could quadruple Palestinian death toll, warn UK doctors.*
*Mass firings hamstring federal land agencies and wildfire response.*
The whole country will suffer from the Depredations of Government Evisceration..
US progressives have been criticized in recent years for "virtue-signaling" terminology that they pressure everyone to adopt,
Now magats have formulated subservience-signaling terminology; "Gulf of America" is one example. Those who don't adopt this terminology are threatened with discrimination by the government or by billionaires.
This term, though of little inherent importance, is the thin edge of an axe blade that the wrecker is swinging to cripple the free press.
*What is happening in Los Angeles is our future.*
The Tr-ance tells everyone to forget this; recognizing it insistently is one way to resist, and struggle for the survival of civilization.
A federal judge ruled that the wrecker exceeded valid presidential authority when he ordered refugee resettlement suspended.
Britain could have guns and donate butters, but Starmer is adamantly against taxing the rich.
*Trump pits immigrants against other working people. But we have a common enemy.*
Many staff of the US Digital Service, which was taken over by the muskrat who uses it as a wrecking ball for attacking other agencies, have resigned to refuse to help with those attacks.
*[Bolivians] battle food shortages and health issues after [40,000 square miles] of forest and farmland burned last year.*
By comparison, the notorious and destructive "camp" fire in northern California burned 240 square miles, and the Eaton fire in Altadena burned around 22 square miles.
George Monbiot: *Here are three of the consistent features of authoritarian states: the extreme persecution of dissent, the use of para judicial measures to shut down opposition movements, and the selective application of the law. All three are already widely deployed in the UK.*
Kenneth Roth: *How do we defend free speech — without falling prey to extremism?*
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security from funding cuts and and DOGE attacks.
US citizens: call on Congress not to fund the persecutor's Guantanamo Bay deportation prison. US citizens: call on Congress to stop Trump's information takeover and attacks on the press.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Dr Oz as head of Central Medicare & Medicaid Services.
US citizens: Call on Congress to stop Trump's information takeover and attacks on the press.
Resistance to the Tr-ance is manifesting in the US in many ways. Meanwhile, the muskrat is subject to increasing public condemnation.
The reductions in fossil fuel use proposed in the name of "net zero" will not only slow global heating, they will also reduce deaths by reducing toxic pollution from fossil fuels.
I criticize the term "net zero" because it stands for over-counting the reductions, and therefore accepting less reduction in greenhouse emissions than we really need. If we reduce fossil fuel use as much as needed to avoid disaster, it would save even more lives.
US agencies are cutting off funding for research projects because they use the word "climate".
Climate scientists, as we know, have a nearly total consensus that global heating has happened already occurred, and is continuing and accelerating. And that the results will be increasing disasters (that have already begun).
They can form this conclusion because (1) they do measurements in many ways, (2) they use large computers for climate models, (3) they can reach conclusions freely, and (4) they can talk about those conclusions.
This policy is meant to interfere with all of those crucial things. The wrecker seeks to hamper the research itself, hamper the modeling, and above all hamper the formation of consensus from the conclusions. This is intended to ensure that no one knows whether there is a consensus of scientists about the coming global catastrophe.
At the same time, the wrecker and his billionaires are doing everything to increase the catastrophe.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security from funding cuts and and DOGE attacks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Expect [Right-wing extremists] to Tighten Control Over School Curriculum.*
*Critics say [the saboteur-in-chief]'s executive orders to reshape the NIH "will kill" Americans.*
A large majority of Palestinians in Gaza have stopped supporting HAMAS. Alas, there is no visible alternative they could try to replace it with.
For a government to lose public support does not necessary lead to replacing it. Look at Israel, where most are disgusted with Netanyahu but they have been unable to dislodge his government.
Many government agencies in the US use a software system to evaluate whether individuals are entitled to certain government aid. Many of these systems make horrible decisions.
In the case described at the start of the article, the program was developed by a contractor which is not known for developing free software. We must suspect that the program is nonfree and that the staff of the agency have no way of understanding why people get rejected. Indeed, the agency staff seem to have no way to respond to horrible decisions except to say, "Fill in the form again".
Some of these programs may use machine learning. (I doubt many of them make use of bullshit generators.) Machine learning can learn to predict outcomes by recognizing patterns, but when there is no objective information about what the right answer was in training cases, they can't learn to predict the right answer.
When it comes to the question of whether a person deserves state aid, this approach is simply wrong. It should be illegal to use a software system to make such decisions about people unless the decision-making criteria that the system implements is precisely documented so that specific wrong decisions can be traced to a specific cause.
For bureaucrats whose priority is reducing expenses, a mysterious program that erroneously and inexplicably rejects 27 percent of applicants is a welcome excuse to respond, "Computer says no." The kind of Christian that practices systematic non-charity might call it a "godsend".
Many years ago I posted about a nonfree program that courts used to decide whether an accused person can be given bail.
There is a campaign to restrict the use of software for making decisions about how to treat specific people.
Robert Reich: *In the global clash between democracy and oligarchy, the US is switching sides … making the world safe for oligarchy.*
The reckless firings that the muskrat is organizing will endanger safety in many daily activities — not just flying and visiting national parks, but eating food as well.
*[The wrecker]'s dismantling of USAid raises risk of mpox global emergency, experts warn.*
An associate of Bernie Sanders discusses what is required for a legitimate negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.
If you think of the corrupter as trying to get something from a deal with Putin, it would follow that he has made a fool of himself.
But if you think of him as trying to strengthen Putin as his future ally, what he did is not so absurd.
Apple disabled end-to-end encryption on iThings of users in the UK in response to a UK law that requires a backdoor in any end-to-end encryption in communication products.
Although Apple often treats its customers with contempt, it is not the culprit in this instance. The choices it was given by the UK were to add a snooping back door and make the feature dishonest, or to eliminate the feature.
The wrecker made a remark that hinted at an intention to declare some of US debts "fraudulent". This almost made it necessary for the US to pay a higher interest rate when it borrows money.
His babbling is not very intelligent and it may mean nothing. But since he has contempt for rules, laws, and treaties, as well as customary habits of dealing with others, no one can be sure of that.
Contractors have learned that he may refuse to pay them for work done and they may have to sue to get paid.
He has already broken many deals that the US had made, through USAID, NOAA, NIH, and other agencies. So it is not surprising he does the same thing with deals that the US has made. Other countries will learn not to make deals with the US, while a magat is president.
How Common Cause is fighting against the corrupting influence of billionaires, starting with (but not limited to) the muskrat.
In Michigan: call on Governor Whitmer of Michigan to veto bill SB 8 that would continue the low minimum age for tipped workers.
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on oil companies to refuse to bid to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Rejecting the superstition that if we refuse to call it "fascism" that will somehow restrain the regime from going all the way there. [Corrected URL]
The Hindu-nationalist government of India has created a state-sponsored religious revival, pushing to make India a Hindu-nationalist country. It would then be committed to the principles of various orders of Hindu ascetics, as well as to the principle of repression of people that do not agree.
*Extreme weather is our new reality. We must accept it and begin planning.* Careful plans can protect people from temporary disasters such as storms and fires.
There is, however, no feasible way to protect coastal cities from sea-level rise when it reaches several meters. And no way to protect the people who live on sea food from ocean acidification caused by our emissions of CO2.
Stiglitz warns that the wrecker's economic policies are likely to discourage investment in the US, and thus to drive the US into stagflation — rising prices but little growth.
His arguments that businesses would decide to invest elsewhere would perhaps not affect businesses owned by billionaires who have paid for special treatment from the corrupter.
Leaked British government internal emails seem to show that Bogus Johnson personally intervened to override the priorities of evacuation to enable an airplane to evacuate carrying dogs instead of one carrying human beings.
Servants of the saboteur-in-chief were going to destroy Covid tests rather than send them to needy Americans, but the Washington Post published the news of that plan, and the saboteurs decided to hand them out in accord with previous policies.
One small piece of the sabotage plans was thus overcome.
The author reports on children starting school who are unable to sit up and hold a pencil, and unable to relate in personal presence to children or teachers. Perse concludes that this is due to being shaped wrong by snoop-phones.
Arguing that Britain can take advantage of the end of the myth of the "special relationship" with the US by discarding old policies that are now manifestly useless — if it has the courage to do it. Here a Labour MP who doesn't adore Starmer proposes how to combine this.
Much as the Communist parties of 100 years ago were agents of Stalin, intended to soften up their countries to strengthen the Soviet Union, so too far-right parties of today are henceforth the agents of trumpery. As Tr-usk do ever nastier things, spitting on honesty and justice, European governments can validly tie those far-right parties to the intent to behave likewise.
The Food and Drug Administration purged some of the staff studying brain-computer interfaces for possible future approval.
I am sure the muskrat will make sure the FDA is aware that it has no real choice but to approve the muskrat's "Neuralink" product.
I don't expect the circuitry of the product to have specifically malicious hardware features. But it will be easy to design the surrounding system within which it is used so as to push patients into ex-Twitter and other far-right platforms. The package could include gratis ("free") accounts on ex-Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Faux News.
The system could also make the personal data collected by the use of the product available for personalized propaganda and disinformation. This is nominally illegal, but I don't think Attorney General Bondi would allow prosecution of it.
*The chemical compounds [in sunscreens] that block UV rays may lead to bleaching of coral and a decrease in fish fertility.*
Spain made its economy grow by welcoming immigrants.
The wrecker has effectively abolished regulations that require all federal agencies to take care to obey environmental protection laws.
The laws still exist, but I think this order invites all agencies to disregard environmental laws and do what they like, unless and until people sue them for violating those laws. If a government action poisons a river, the people who live their might sue, but the damage might be irreversible by then.
If the government causes extinction of a species, would anyone have standing to sue?
Support for Germany's Nazi-ish party from US right-wing extremists has boosted the Left Party ("Links" in German) which calls for taxing billionaires to the point that they won't be billionaires any more.
As of 2025, Apple advertises on ex-Twitter, evidently showing fealty to the would-be emperor Elon I.
The bully decided that Zelenskyy was not subservient enough, so decided it was time to insult him. However, he only succeeded in showing the world how vicious he is.
It is true that Ukraine has not held a election since Putin invaded. Its constitution does not allow elections while martial law is in place, and an election could not be fair while part of the country is occupied by an invader.
The bully is condemning Zelenskyy for what the bully's hero Putin has done to Ukraine.
The president of South Korea that tried to declare martial law, now in jail, will be tried for insurrection.
*In Brazil coup-mongers go to jail. In the US they get back into the White House.*
US citizens: call on schools to reject the bully's demand to use the ridiculous name "Gulf of America".
This demand is of no importance in itself, but he uses such demands to put people and institutions on the path of subservience.
Panama's agreement to receive non-Panamanians deported by the US seems to include a plan to imprison them for the US, perhaps indefinitely, until perhaps someday it can deport them elsewhere.
Panama is blocking them from talking with journalists, and even with their lawyers.
This could easily become a Nauru-like scheme of isolated permanent imprisonment.
Some of them want to apply for asylum in Panama. Panama has the same obligation as the US, to offer asylum to people who qualify. Will it heed that obligation?
France rejects the distracting terms "global south" and "global north", and says that what matters is how countries treat each other, wherever they be located.
I reject those terms too, because they attempt to squeeze various forms of exploitation into a fictitious fight between one fictitious region and another. Perhaps some activists think that it will be easier to get people to identify with one geographical side against another, but that's a false understanding.
I don't entirely agree with the French minister's article. It focuses on one especially grave form of injustice, the violent kind which violates international law, and ignores the wrong of economic colonization and extractivism, which is also important even if it won't get you tried at the Hague.
The US private prison company Akima, which now runs Guantanamo deportation prison, has been accused of violating prisoners' human rights in other prisons it runs.
*[The persecutor] called for subjecting some convicts in federal prisons to "monstrous" conditions specifically so that they will suffer more.
That is unconstitutional, as well as perverse.
US citizens: call on Republicans not to cut Medicaid.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The IRS is reportedly considering giving the muskrat's agents access to tax returns. We can hardly take for granted that his or their sense of duty would restrain them from using this data for illegal purposes such as revenge or extortion.
*Ukraine and Europe made to sit outside as US and Russia sharpen their carving knives.*
Zelenskyy says that the corrupter is "appeasing" Putin, which compares Putin to Hitler and the corrupter to Neville Chamberlain. I think that is putting a nice face on something far worse. A better comparison would be with Hitler and Stalin in 1939, when they made an agreement to attack Poland and carve it up.
Before the election I thought the two might get into cahoots like this.
Debunking the bullshitter's disinformation about President Zelenskyy.
The Senate approved allowing Kash Patel to corrupt the FBI. Seeing what the wrecker's crew have done in other agencies, I expect that the FBI will henceforth focus on persecuting the wrecker's enemies list.
The wrecker is denying deportees due process of law by deporting them before their lawyers can even get in touch with them. This is done using Guantanamo to hold them during the deportation process in a place which lawyers cannot get through to.
Many immigrants in the US who do not have permanent residency did have various forms of temporary official permission to stay and work in the US. They were authorized immigrants, of a kind. But the wrecker abruptly canceled these permissions for hundreds of thousands.
Postmaster DeJoy has resigned, after so many years of clinging to power.
It is surely not a coincidence that he has done this less than a month after the saboteur-in-chief became president again. I think he was told to wait until Republicans would choose his successor.
George Monbiot: as the wrecker tears up various measures that protect the governments and economies from various sorts of collapse. Collapse (even global collapse) will become increasingly likely. He recommends making local connections so we can help each other in that case.
The corrupter expressed contempt for Congress, law and police at once, by appointing as the head prosecutor of Washington DC the ideological lawyer who defended Jan 6 attackers when they were prosecuted.
He has expressed that he believes prosecutors work for the president rather than for the country. Given how the president is the enemy of the country, it is clear that this prosecutor is not on the country's side.
Senator Fetterman is a Democrat that supports the corrupter.
He claims to wish to be the senator for all Pennsylvanians, those that support the Constitution and rule of law, and those that support the corrupter.
*Ambitious UK project aims to forecast climate catastrophes using fleets of drones, cosmic ray detection, patterns of plankton blooms and more.*
It is ambitious, but what is most significant is that it is aimed at trying to survive the many local disasters that global heating has started to cause. If the world's governments were serious about preventing these tippings, they already know what must be done.
It seems that the wrecker has ordered the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to stop its efforts to help secure state election systems and countering mis- and dis-information.
It should not surprise us, now that the foxes have taken control of the electoral hen house, that they choose to reduce security of it.
Facebook says that blocking posts about Linux or "Linux" was an unintentional error.
US citizens: call on New York governor Hochul to remove NYC night-mayor Adams for his deal to escape federal corruption charges.
The National Campaign for Justice mailed out this:
It's a corrupt quid pro quo, and New Yorkers are the bargaining chip. This isn't speculation. [The corrupter]'s ICE henchman Tom Homan basically admitted it on FOX News, practically waving the deal in our faces:
"If he doesn’t come through ... I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’"
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers 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. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript before going there.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The wrecker's agents fired some of the workers that maintain security for US nuclear weapons. Then it realized that this was stupid, but it can't figure out how to reach them to offer them their jobs back.
If you do things without careful thought, you are likely to make mistakes. I am sure the wrecker's destruction workers have made many mistakes in its haste. But usually they don't care, and say nothing.
What is newsworthy this time is that they care enough to try to undo it.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the CFPB from sabotage by the muskrat's dog(e)s.
For decades the US has been systematically trying to curb global corruption, but the corrupter has eliminated many of the programs that contributed to the campaign. It looks like the US government has flipped to the pro-corruption side.
Alan Singer describes the history over time of his relationship with Israel, developing from intense support to moral reproach.
*In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy.*
The Department of Education used to be responsible for enforcing accessibility requirements for US schools, as to ensure disabled students could attend school. Now it has more or less stopped doing this.
The wrecker wants to eliminate the Department of Education, so we must expect the US government will abandon the goal as well as the means.
I made the above link to an article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected -- hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
*By voting in favor of nominees they knew should never be approved, Republican senators became [the corrupter's] subjects.*
The US government plans to scan the internet for postings that express hostility to the deportation thugs, then search high and low for all information it can get about the person who posted them.
We cannot at this point expect that this search will confine itself to legal methods.
The right-wing-controlled Pentagon is imposing right-wing censorship on the libraries of the schools for military personnel.
Vance distorted edge-cases of European laws to attack crucial human rights, and to promote his allies in Europe — European far-right extremists-Nazis — and encourage them to seize repressive power there as the Trusk regime is doing in the US.
European anti-Nazis need to be bold, not hesitate and rely on measures that aim only to oppose them.
Since the US appreciates Putin more than Europe, and is as likely to behave like Europe's enemy than like Europe's friend, Europe urgently needs to re-arm.
The lesson from this is that European governments must ensure their weapons production does not depend significantly on US industry. They could be cut off by sanctions at any time. Europe must cease buying US weapons systems that depend on US spare parts, US maintenance, or software that Europe cannot maintain and change.
NATO no longer makes sense with the US as a member, so perhaps the other members of NATO should construct a new alliance without the US. That could be a framework to facilitate joint defense of Greenland, for instance. With luck, that would deter the wrecker from actually invading Greenland.
(satire) *[The saboteur-in-chief] Unsure What Department He Has To Cut To Make JD Vance Go Away.*
Fremont, California, has made it a crime to be homeless there.
I wonder what Fremont will do to people found to be homeless there. Jail them? That would be expensive. Forcibly transport them to out of the city? The city which does that would be shirking its share of the burden of housing people, and dumping it on other cities.
Perhaps it will transport them by helicopter to a wilderness area, where no one will notice if they can't make it out. That fits the cruel spirit of the repression of the homeless.
Right-wing Israelis are proceeding parcel by parcel with driving Palestinians off their land and seizing the land.
*World’s largely unprotected peat-lands are ticking "carbon bomb", warns study.*
The wrecker is eliminating a broad range of protections for nature, to allow more fossil fuel extraction.
Put that together with the additional global heating caused by burning those fossil fuels, and the result is a double danger.
The idea of an "energy emergency" that could be addressed by rapidly burning up the Earth's remaining fossil fuels is doubly nonsense. Keeping fossil fuel inexpensive for a couple of decades would be followed by rapid price increases, and in the mean time we would suffer from the air pollution and the heat.
*White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued … dispute* the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
The wrecker is hoping to teach all news organizations that he will damage them if they don't completely obey. The AP is carrying out heroic resistance to that threat.
I too have declines to do interviews with people if they did not commitments about whet names to use. But my declining to give someone an interview is not a threat to per freedom to work, because I am not so important or influential that anyone would imagine perse could not do without it.
European countries are starting to address the need to organize a strong defense, without (and perhaps from) the United States.
*The US president's bullying of allies and partners is short-termist and will boost Beijing's power, not Washington's.*
I think Tr-usk are too focused on breaking and subjugating the American people, especially nonwhites and women, to be concerned about anything as remote as a future contest with China.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would not recognize any peace deal negotiated by the Putin regime with the Tr-usk regime.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to protect the CFPB so it can continue to protect Americans from gouging by banks and other financial dis-services.
Here is what the wrecker has been doing to the CFPB.
The senators in the Senate Banking Committee are well paid by banksters and want to get it out of the way so they can gouge using junk fees.
Another way US banks gouge the public is by pushing credit card interest rates up to loan shark levels. This happens because the Supreme Court eliminated states' ability to regulate the interest rates they can charge.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to defeat HR 899, which would abolish the Department of Education. This would be a big blow to the children in non-rich US families. The children of poor people would have even less chance of getting good jobs, and they might have to go without some meals.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: demand no oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
US citizens: call on Congress to block funding for the wrecker's deportation machine.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The British lawyers working in Britain to defend Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai have been hit by a campaign of threats of violence and cracking attacks on their bank accounts as well as other forms of cracking and physical harassment.
We have to presume that what the wrecker and the muskrat are aiming to do with the US is something like this.
The duumvirs are defying some of the court orders that told them to restart some of the government activities and agencies they have shut or wrecked. They are pushing for absolute power.
They openly say that laws and judges are supposed to serve them, never limit them. This fully justifies the terms "fascist" and "coup".
The Guantanamo prison was a previous Republican president's excuse for disregarding human rights and the laws that protect some of them, even for people accused of grave crimes. Because it was outside the US, he could argue that it was a zone in which human rights did not apply.
So it is natural that the persecutor would seek to put those he aims to persecute into Guantanamo prison as another way to evade the rule of law.
Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers are being thrown to the dog…s. *Some were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices.*
The muskrat is treating them with special vindictiveness, not for anything that they did, but because he can (due to a gap in civil service protection).
Why would he do this? It could be that he simply revels in the chance to be cruel to someone, anyone. But I don't think he has let his emotions run away with them completely. I think this is a calculated maneuver meant to make other federal employees scared and weak.
Federal employees, at any moment you may be told you can't see that office ever again, so be ready for it — remove immediately from your offices everything you would be sad to lose. And remain ostentatiously ready for that, for as long as the haters remain in power.
It will be a way of saying, "Yes, I know you could fire me in a vindictive way, but I'm prepared for that and you don't scare me!"
The muskrat is determined to cut government spending, except when it is buying from his own company.
Richard Stallman will give a talk on Feb 24 in Bolzano, Italy. Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society, in English, 18:00–20:00, at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
Registration and program: fuss.bz.it
The muskrat is directly spreading political disinformation to attack foreign politicians. It includes weaponizing antisemitism through false accusations.
This is on top of his other efforts to support European neo-Nazis.
I disagree with Robert Reich on one pertinent question. I think it is an injustice to prohibit expression of certain views and attitudes — even those that I condemn, such as antisemitism, racism and sexism — and even to prohibit insulting a person. This is one of the aspects of European countries that make me uncomfortable.
Another similar injustice in European countries is prohibition of blasphemy — or its secular, ecumenical version, prohibition against expression that would hurt the feelings of believers in some religion or other.
I suggest that countries instead pass laws forbidding the operation of a social network that is owned by hateful foreigners. In other words, treat ex-Twitter and Facebook the way the US for a while treated TikTok. Also, to prohibit operating a social network so as to drive people to use a specific recommendation engine.
This would not censor any kind of views, but it would prevent managing a social network so as to boost particular kinds of views.
A month ago, the US fascists were systematically planning to suppress four main areas of resistance to their power: universities, nonprofits, the media, and unions.
The UK regularly sentences women to prison supposedly "for their own protection".
That is obviously an injustice, and it often has the opposite effect.
(Humor) The manipulation paradox of personality-training systems.
*Missouri sues Starbucks, claiming "systemic discrimination" via DEI. [In it's suit] claiming — without evidence — coffee chain's hiring policies cause higher prices.*
This is an example of a widely repeated harassment tactic: sue until the victim can't stand more lawsuits.
A British court canceled licenses for new oilfields on the ground that the decision disregarded the effects of greenhouse emissions from burning the products that would be pumped out.
*USAID Workers Reportedly Believe They Were Recorded by Google's Gemini [chatbot].*
The wrecker is shutting off funding at the NIH for research on infectious diseases. RFK is ideologically opposed to research in that area.
I don't know for certain, but I expect that Congress decided how much funding to put into that area, which would imply that these cuts are illegal,
A judge orders the wrecker to resume USAID's foreign aid payments.
It is not clear whether this order will compel USAID to rehire the staff necessary to make the payments. I expect that the wrecker will respond by making a monkey out of the judge and the law.
The wrecker has two contradictory goals: to reduce the federal government's office space, and to make every employee work in the office five days a week. When they all come in, they can't get work done because there aren't enough desks — or parking lots.
Soon many of them will be out sick from Covid-19 or flu.
Missouri's voters voted to legalize abortion on the state constitution, but Republicans in the legislature enacted impossible requirements to ensure no abortion clinic could open. But a court has struck them down.
Climate models predict that the *record-high ocean temperatures observed in 2023 could become the norm* with 3°C of global heating.
The UK assisted suicide bill will employ a panel of a judge, a psychiatrist and a social worker to make sure that the person requesting this is doing so voluntarily.
I think that is reasonable. However, the part of the bill I still criticize is that it is limited to people who are going to die anyway in a few months. What about the people whose lives have become useless due to diseases that prevent them from doing anything useful? Lacking terminal illnesses, they might have to suffer this for years.
*Elon Musk owning OpenAI would be a terrible idea. That doesn't mean it won't happen.*
*Musk-linked group offered $5m reward for proof of voter fraud — and came up with nothing.*
No matter, the noise that Republicans made by claiming there was a lot of election fraud gave them the excuse to make it harder for Americans to vote.
Right-wing extremists have designed a playbook for canceling academics whose views oppose theirs. They set up an echo chamber and introduce accusations based on Republican DEI: distortion, exaggeration, and insinuation.
*Far-right populist [politicians] much more likely than the left [or centrist politicians] to spread fake news — study.* The study examined every tweet made by any politician in 26 countries.
Norway plans to attack wildlife systematically by allowing large hydroelectric generator dams in supposedly "protected" rivers.
These dams would endanger salmon and other wildlife.
(satire) *New Evidence Suggests Humans Developed Written Language To Avoid Breaking Up In Person.*
* Scientists say more-frequent hotter temperatures in west African region are part of reason for reduced [chocolate] harvests and price rises.*
Antivaxxer RFK Jr. has been confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Millions of Americans will be at risk if he undermines vaccination. Will vaccines for the latest flu and Covid-19 variants be prepared at all?
By now we have seen that the Senate's Republicans are too intimidated to reject any nominee, no matter how outrageously unfit.
The wrecker's Gaza plan is provoking condemnation from jihadis and from right-wing white nationalists.
*"No to ethnic cleansing": over 350 rabbis sign US ad assailing [the persecuter]'s Gaza plan.*
Harvard adopted the misguided IHRA definition of antisemitism, and based on that definition punished protesters who campaigned against the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
It is possible some of them actually endorsed antisemitism, but with that bad definition it is quite likely that some of them were falsely labeled as "antisemitic".
Republicans use "DEI" as a racist dogwhistle — to presume, based on nothing at all, that every black is unqualified for per job.
I linked above to that article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think making a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected -- hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
The wrecker's actions toward NASA might endanger flight safety, as staff was insufficient and some are already leaving in disgust.
Labour is imitating the wrecker by undermining crucial agencies that regulate businesses. Details in the article.
Perhaps that's their idea of how to promote economic growth of business: by letting them disregard regulations intended to prevent them from doing various sorts of harm.
*Texas judge fines New York doctor for mailing abortion pills to patient in Texas.*
The closure of USAID will spread confusion and cause independent media outlets to shut down. That will leave the field clear for propaganda and disinformation published by states.
I suppose the wrecker's advisors will be pleased by this.
The wrecker showed how he plans to make a deal over Ukraine. He simply told Putin, "You can have everything you want."
The bullshitter has a history of being a follower of Putin. In the past year, he has talked tough about how he would deal with Putin, but we now see that that was just bullshit, like his claim not to have anything to do with Project 2025.
Will Putin conquer Ukraine with the wrecker's help?
*Union leader calls mass firings "reckless" and will fight for all impacted employees.*
Arguing that unions can be effective for deploying power against the wrecker.
New Yorkers resisting the deportation thugs.
Mayor Adams of NYC is the beneficiary of some sort of deal with the corrupter, who has ordered the Department of Justice to drop charges against Adams.
It looks like what Adams did for the corrupter in return was to aid deportation raids in NYC.
I got mail from a campaign to call on New York Governor Hochul to remove Adams as mayor. I did not sign it because I expect that signatures of people who don't live in that state won't count, but I hope she does so.
Several officials involved with the prosecution have resigned in outrage. I share their outrage, but I think it would have been better in this situation not to quit. Now they will be replaced will loyal henchmen. If they had stayed in position until fired, they might have had the chance to do something for justice and get away with it, at least for a while.
In the old days, officials resigning in outrage would have been a scandal and had an influence on the next election. But today's magats are so isolated from the truth that they will hardly care about it.
Only the biggest of big businesses are likely to benefit from the wrecker's coup. Those are the ones that can expect the corrupter to appreciate their support, and reward them. The others will suffer from the tariffs, if the tariffs don't get negotiated away.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit members of Congress from owning stocks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to block the wrecker's attack on renewable electricity.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to defeat the SAVE Act.
"This baseless voter suppression bill would create unnecessary barriers to voting for [nonwhites], young people, disabled people, transgender people, people with low incomes, tribal voters, rural voters, survivors of natural and climate disasters, and military families, not to mention the tens of millions of married women who have changed their names."
It would also block remote registration and registration by mail.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*US park service erases references to trans people from Stonewall Inn website.*
Removing mentions of trans people from government web sites is not just deletion of attitudes and opinions, or even advice — it covers historical fact as well.
I admire the people who fought the thugs at Stonewall. No matter that it wasn't my own fight; it was a fight for the freedom not to conform to rigidity, and that is something to cheer for.
I am considering a trip to Europe for late April, and perhaps half of May. If you would like to invite me to speak in Europe, please send me email now at rms on the site gnu dot org, with the subject line "Europe in the spring". You'll have to fund the extra costs of my travel there.
Please repost this elsewhere to spread the word.
Robert Reich: the mainstream media are failing America by refusing to call this a coup.
US citizens: phone your senators (especially Republicans) and say not to vote to confirm Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
The wrecker is disrupting the federal agencies that have the responsibility to protect the country against bird flu.
*The Kyoto protocol was the first really clear example of how politicians can say all the right words on the world stage about tackling [global heating], but then fail miserably to deliver real action at home.*
Users report that Facebook blocks posting about "Linux". That implicitly also blocks posting about GNU, when people erroneously treat GNU as part of "Linux".
I would like to see first-hand and journalistic reporting about this. I can't test it myself since I absolutely refuse to be used by Facebook in any fashion.
*Intense heatwave in southern Brazil [Rio Grande do Sul] forces schools to suspend return.*
*Nearly $500m of food aid at risk of spoilage after [the wrecker's] USAid cuts.*
The NSA is now blinding itself to concerns of justice and/or rational thought, by ordering the deletion of web pages that use the terms "injustice" or "confirmation bias" — as well as many others.
This policy threatens to wipe discussions of whether policies are just or unjust, and discussions of whether certain arguments are valid or not.
The deletion campaign is intended to wipe anything that relates to the diversity movement, and recognizes that some occurrences of words on the target list may be legitimate even to the magat mind. But judging each of the occurrences individually is an enormous job, so there will be blanket deletion at least at first.
Imagine pages discussing the inclusion of certain words on the deletion list. Those discussions might get deleted because of the word "inclusion".
US citizens: phone each of your senators and say this (in your own words).
Stop the attacks on government agencies that Congress has established and the gutting of crucial programs that Congress has already funded.Congress sets the budget — not the president and not the hateful rich. I urge you to treat this like the constitutional crisis it is by stopping business as usual in the Senate until Trump and Musk back down.
If no one picks up, please leave a message — it'll count!
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A few days ago, HAMAS accused Israel of violating the cease fire terms, and said it would delay the next release of hostages until Israel started complying.
The alleged violations are numerous and of many kinds. The details are described in this article, and some are independently confirmed.
A report attributed to HAMAS appears as two images in the article. If they do not appear, each image's space has a link to visit it,
The corrupter has done nothing to pressure Israel to keep its side of the agreement, but instead threatens HAMAS, demanding it disregard Israel's violations.
You can't expect a corrupt man to serve as an honest broker in making a deal, because he will not honestly insist that both sides keep the deal.
As we look at the horrible events of the war in Gaza, let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
How the Iron Man film of 2008 was designed as propaganda for the US military.
*Major Donors [for the scapegoater] who complained of immigrant "invasion" used Mexican workers illegally, sources allege.*
It would not surprise me if they were hypocritical. Why wouldn't they be?
*Oil and gas firms operating in Colorado falsified environmental impact reports.*
Is anyone threatened with prison for this?
I expect not — and that weakness of enforcement is why it happens so much. Millions of lives will depend in the future on how we enforce environmental regulations. Inadequate enforcement is as dangerous as inadequate rules.
The wrecker and the muskrat use two different naive misunderstandings of genetics to advocate eugenics.
*Keir Starmer is one of Labour's most rightwing members of parliament, according to a study of the political positions of the MPs from every major party.*
This gives some hope that a defeat could make the party replace him.
Various political camps weaponize the term "antisemitism" misleadingly, and that obstructs campaigning against the real wrong of bigotry against Jews.
Historian Timothy Snyder argues that Putin invaded Ukraine as a way to use his influence with the wrecker, supposing the latter became president of the US.
He also explains the importance of refusing to "obey in advance". Even if bigger and richer people are bowing down and obeying, we must continue to refuse.
"It's particularly distressing that it's the billionaires who have the media outlets, so who are in some sense the most powerful. Like, what do you have to be afraid of? Why don’t you do something interesting that the historians will remember you for instead? But I also want to say it’s not surprising. The reason we have Lesson One of On Tyranny is because we can’t count on the non-regime-proximate oligarchs to do the right thing. Like the regime-proximate oligarchs, like Elon Musk, they're doing the wrong thing."
*Infrastructure neglect and poverty lead to [infection by] parasites in the Mississippi Delta.*
The frozen potato market in the US is dominated by just four companies, and the result (whether explicitly planned or not) is price fixing.
Protesters in London opposed plans to allow China to build a large embassy, warning that it would be used for espionage and for punishing Chinese expats in the UK. It could even be used to imprison Chinese expats when they come in for an appointment, and perhaps even refugee dissidents.
Chinese embassies in various countries threaten residents Chinese people living in those countries, to stop them from criticizing China.
*China tops list of countries trying to silence exiled dissidents over past decade, study shows. Russia, Turkey and Egypt also among worst perpetrators of transnational repression around the globe.*
The LLM-excused copyright grab is advancing with a lawsuit against the sale of art generated using a generative video model.
Using generative systems to generate text that does not appear to be fiction has the problem that people believe it is truthful. Likewise using them to generate art that appears to be a photo.
That problem does not arise for text or visual art that is presented as, or appears to be, fiction or art.
*An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff's access to federal payments systems "the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced."*
A federal judge temporarily blocked the muskrat's men from accessing personal data held by the US Treasury.
The permanent decision will be made later.
*Federal judge blocks [the muskrat's men from] access to critical Treasury payment system.*
*[Engineer] Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.*
His "ties" with the muskrat are clearly active, because The only way he could have got this power is because the muskrat gave the command.
Elez resigned from the muskrat's employ after he was linked to flaming racist posting, but the muskrat now says he will rehire Elez.
After all, why would a Nazi sympathizer like the muskrat object to racism?
A US neo-Nazi leader has been convicted of planning to attack power grid facilities with a bomb.
It's a shame that the FBI won't be willing to investigate possible ties to the wrecker's followers.
HAMAS says it will postpone the next prisoner swap on the grounds that Israel is violating the cease fire.
Meanwhile, Israel's minister of hatred, Smotrich, says he will not permit the cease fire to be extended past this first phase — he would rather bring the government down.
Since the corrupter does not have real moral commitments, I don't think he will care whether this cease fire continues as long as he can make the situation be about him.
Freedom of the press is threatened in Israel. Thugs in Jerusalem arrested the Palestinian owners of a bookstore.
The thugs seized many books, including each book that showed a Palestinian flag. This included books by Noam Chomsky and Israeli writer Ilan Pappé.
They also seized a copy of the newspaper Haaretz.
This is part of a wave of arrests of Palestinian political intellectuals in Israel and Palestine.
Side point:
I used to make links to articles in Haaretz before it sprouted a
paywall. To pass the paywall is impossible without running nonfree
JavaScript software on my own computer, so I cannot see that
newspaper's articles, nor recommend them to others.
The payment of money, as such, I would on some occasions accept, if I could pay it anonymously without running nonfree software. But I never accept running nonfree software, and I never urge the public to do so.
The National Institutes of Health have cut the ratio of "overhead" payments that they add to research grants.
The NIH offers these overhead payments knowing that the things that they fund are necessary for the research organizations to function so they can do the contracted research. Reducing them will make it hard for the research organizations to do the research.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and call on them to protect FEMA from plans to abolish it or greatly cut its funding. Climatic disasters are increasing, and will continue to increase as long as we keep increasing greenhouse gases in the air. FEMA will need more funding than it needs now.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress.*
*Members of Congress say they are being flooded with calls from angry constituents about President Donald Trump's Director of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, and what he is doing inside the federal government.*
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the corrupter's inauguration fund.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The trasher thinks of the environment as an enemy and yearn to trash it at every opportunity, even in small ways, to demonstrate his hate for it. He decided to encourage plastic pollution by canceling Biden's decision to gradually end use of plastic straws in the US government.
The trasher's campaign for plastic straws may seem to be a pointless frivolity, but the attitude he seeks to instill is broader and potentially deadly. The attitude consist of prioritizing short-term desires over long-term needs. People who approach questions this way can be manipulated into wasting their money.
That campaign turns the World War II slogan, "Use it up, wear it out, do without," on its head, applying it to the environment rather than to products such as straws.
If we use up and wear out the environment, humanity can't survive very long.
The reason so little plastic is recycled is only a few kinds of plastic are practically feasible to recycle. Several other kinds are recyclable in principle, but it is too expensive so so that never happens. Plastic industry PR fooled the public about this by getting the "recycle" symbol put on those other kinds, so people imagine they will be recycled.
*In Waning Senate Days, Kyrsten Sinema Screwed Workers and Spent Campaign Cash on Stay at French Castle.*
*Performer in Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl show [questioned by "security"] on field after holding up Sudan-and-Gaza combined flag.
Google(‡) has adopted the motto, "Be evil in every possible way," by its decision to use artificial intelligence for weapons.
I write "artificial intelligence" because I presume this would use the adaptive pattern matching that really is artificial intelligence, not the bullshit generators which aren't.
‡ I don't distinguish between the different corporate entities of Google because I see those distinctions as insignificant details that cloud the overall picture.
Phoenix, Arizona, tried to prohibit construction in areas where there is no sustainable groundwater available. Rich real estate interests are trying to invalidate the ban in court.
I guess they hope to make money selling houses to people who will eventually find that it is impossible to live in them for lack of water.
A collision between an airliner and a military helicopter near Reagan National Airport happened in 1949. Ever since pilots and people involved in air safety have warned of the danger that the difficult situation would lead to another collision.
So don't believe the fabricator when he puts the blame on his usual suspects.
Facts concerning the FAA's DEI hiring program, compared with presidential bullshit.
The Guardian suggests that the wrecker's attack on the International Criminal Court bespeaks his preference for the law of the jungle.
Flies in hospitals can carry drug-resistant bacteria from patient to patient.
The wrecker's destruction of USAID and cutoff of most nonmilitary foreign aid has probably increased China's global influence.
I don't think the wrecker cares about this as much as he cares about his own power.
*Kurdish officials fear [PISSI will revive] as US aid cuts loom.*
*Democrats [in Congress] join protest against [the muskrat's] "hostile takeover" of federal payment systems.*
Legally, their presence in a protest may not change anything. But it will contribute to the spirit of resistance, and that is vital.
Right-wing extremist groups in the US now express their scorn for people protesting on behalf of Palestinians by threatening to get them deported by claiming (arbitrarily) that they support terrorism.
Arrogant right-wing attacks are often based on some false presupposition. In this case, it the presupposition is, "Everyone that stands up Palestinians' human rights is a jihadi Islamist terrorist." The goal of these campaigns is to lead the public to believe the false presupposition.
Analyzing the proposed No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, and its likely consequences for cities that practice community policing.
*Trudeau says that [the bully] is serious about wanting to annex Canada.*
For the moment, the bully has made Canadians feel more committed and loyal to Canada.
James Hanson says that global heating is going faster than predicted, showing that human-caused greenhouse gases have a bigger effect than was assumed in modeling. (Other climate scientists disagree.)
He concludes that it is impossible now to avoid 2°C of heating, an amount which scientists expect to cause massive worldwide disaster.
Thousands of Jor-Els, with detailed predictions, and still they cannot convince the political leaders to take the necessary action to avoid climate catastrophe.
*Scientists brace "for the worst" as [the bullshitter] purges climate mentions from websites … [P]ulling references online "won’t make crisis stop" [impacting] Americans’ lives, say experts.*
Several of the inspectors general that the wrecker fired worked at agencies that were, or had been, investigating the muskrat's government contracts.
US citizens: phone our senators and call on them to stop Elon Musk's Coup. Call 202-688-0628.
Free Press Action posted his campaign but did not include a URL for it, so I a copying the text here.
Members of Free Press Action took part in protests across the nation’s capital this week as Elon Musk and his squad of sycophantic tech bros abruptly shuttered federal agencies.The richest man on the planet — and what we can only describe as the Elon Youth — invaded the Treasury Department’s Social Security and Medicare database and will exploit that access for the next step in their horrific autocratic scheme.
Via his unconstrained "Department of Government Efficiency", Musk is blitzing major agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Treasury, and the Departments of Education and Labor. He's forcing out civil servants with actual expertise to make room for his handpicked legion, literally reshaping our government to fit his deranged and dangerous plans.
Free Press Action has sounded the alarm on Elon Musk for years: From reinstating thousands of neo-Nazis and other extremists on Twitter to gutting the platform’s content moderation rules to helping repressive regimes silence dissidents, Musk has a pattern of spreading hate and harassing critics. But now that he’s spent nearly $300 million to elect Trump — successfully buying his way into the highest echelon of the federal government — he is more dangerous than ever.
This is a clear authoritarian power grab from a man who twice gave an apparent Nazi salute to cheers from an adoring inaugural crowd. No one elected this man. And yet he won’t take no for an answer.
Elon is conducting a coup before our eyes and members of the Senate have an obligation to do everything in their power to stop him. Please call your senators at 202-688-0628 before it's too late.
Here’s a sample script to get you started:
-------------------
Hello! My name is [First Name]. I'm a constituent and am calling to ask Sen. [Senator] to stop Elon Musk’s unelected takeover of the federal government.
I urge you to vote "no" on all nominees and halt the Senate’s business while this power grab is underway, until the separation of powers is restored and you have answers.
Stop Elon Musk’s coup immediately.
-------------------Elon and his loyalists are running roughshod over the Constitution and our public servants — and everyday people like you will be the ones who pay the price. He's stealing your most sensitive data while threatening basic social services. It's far past time for our elected officials to protect us from this monstrous coup.
In solidarity,
All of us at Free Press Action
*[Musk rats] sought to use critical Treasury payment system to shut down USAID spending, emails show.
*FBI turns over details of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to [corrupted] Justice Department, as agents sue* to stop the wrecker from having them fired.
We have seen at least one judge refuse to let the wrecking crew make a monkey out of him, by rejecting the claim that although a payment shutdown order had been "rescinded", the shutdown was still in effect.
This will eventually come to the Supreme Court, dominated by right-wing extremists. Will they choose between loyalty to their country and its freedom? Or obedience to their master?
*Judge temporarily blocks Trump from placing 2,200 USAid workers on leave
Forced leaves had already begun when ruling came through, as workers tried to halt dismantling of agency.*
*Thousands of [old] press releases about decade-old enforcement actions topped search results on [Google], all updated with a timestamp from after [Jan 20].*
The bullshitter must have told his fanatical followers to aim to wipe the possibility of making national decisions based on the truth. This ranges from barring publication of the truth in some areas, shutting agencies' eyes to the facts in others, and publishing a flood of distraction in this instance.
A few days after firing the commander of the US Coast Guard, magats abruptly ordered her to leave her official residence with three hours notice and leave the door unlocked. This meant, in effect, exposing her to the risk that her own property (which she had been given no chance to remove) remaining in the residence would be stolen.
This is a sign of the bully's vindictiveness, but it is part of a system with a dangerous practical purpose: to scare everyone in US employment, whether civil or military, into eager compliance with the ruling party's ideology.
*In this … era of shakedown diplomacy, everything has a price.*
The article describes how bullying as diplomacy can backfire. Alas, he equates "countries making and keeping agreements" with "acting in ways that help everyone", but they are sometimes in conflict, as in the example of the Trance Pacific Partnership
The article presumes that the US remained a moral force until the start of this year, On some issues it was, while on others it was not.
*The wrecker's Gaza plan could amount to war crime, say experts.*
*Call on Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare from the muskrat.*
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations.*
If the goal is to spread panic and discouragement, a false impression of facts is as good as real facts.
In a small part of Kansas, tuberculosis has increased to a level that US public health would never have allowed. Republican attacks on public health organizations, both state and federal, are interfering with the normal response when tuberculosis starts to increase.
An experiment found that bilingual children tend to have better executive function.
Parts of Australia had over 2 feet of rain in 24 hours, and over 7 feet in the past week.
People are cut off, without potable water and electricity and out of food.
Where and when such things happen is largely random, but the fact that they get much worse nowadays is part of global heating. So we can expect it to get much worse over coming decades.
Ukraine's military intends to make armed robotic vehicles to deploy at the front.
*"Our goal is to create a military where innovative technologies help perform the most dangerous tasks, saving the lives of our defenders," he said.*
That goal is fine, but is this an autonomous killer robot? I can't tell from the brief notice in that article, but It sounds like one. No one should be the first to introduce autonomous killer robots into the world. The west should not allow Ukraine to do it.
Israel did something like it, by using a machine learning system to choose targets for human-controlled weapons. The expectation that human control over weapons will avoid some atrocities presumes that human soldiers are fighting a war to defeat another army, not a campaign of hatred.
*Air pollution reduces people’s ability to focus on everyday tasks, study finds. Even brief exposure to particulate matter found to impede selective attention and emotional recognition.*
Amazingly, the wrecker wants to negotiate a new non-nuclear agreement with Iran, which would replace the one he canceled in 2019.
It remains to be seen whether these two parties could actually make a deal. Both tend to be very hard to negotiate with.
If they do, I will say that is good. However, let's keep a sense of proportion. This success, if it happens, would not come near to compensating for the harm he has done to the US in the past 3 weeks, or the wrong of the rigged election of 2024.
*Who will show [the wrecker] and Netanyahu that they're not above the law? It has to be Europe.*
The wrecker proposes to allow fossil fuel extraction in national monuments. That could poison the wildlife in the short term, but in the long term the world's fossil fuel policy is to let the billionaires make civilization collapse.
*US election commission chair says the corrupter tried to fire her illegally.*
*Defector [from Assad's army] who exposed Assad’s brutality calls for Syria sanctions to be lifted.*
*[The underminer]'s pick for key national security position linked to far-right figures.*
We can expect him, if approved, to develop a blind spot against crimes planned by right-wing extremists. That would be quite convenient for anyone who in the future commits crimes at the behest of a right-wing extremist official.
*Aspiring autocrats … are always more dangerous the second time in office.
Google used its bullshit generator to make an ad for its bullshit generator, and the ad had a glaring factual error, which Google had to use human editing to fix.
*[US] government report says private equity [purchases of] nursing homes led to 11% increase in patient deaths.*
The amended headline called these purchases "investments", but I think that word is as false as perfume on a turd.
The wrecker sabotaged California farmers by opening dams and releasing water that was being saved to give to them in the summer, when they will need it.
He pretended that this was a way to help fight fires in Los Angeles, but (1) LA does not have a shortage of water overall, and (2) the water will not flow to Los Angeles.
What LA is short of is capacity to pump water up to the hilly areas where the fires have been out of control.
More generally, the problem is caused by global heating, and as long as we keep pushing global heating that problem is likely to spread.
Amazon and UnitedHellth have asked the corrupter for favors, which we can presume are in exchange for their million dollar inaugural "donations".
The first court rebuke to the muskrat's rampage through government departments has come, denying the muskrat and his followers access to data from the US Treasury.
The muskrat's rampage can be compared to an ongoing security breach.
A right-wing extremist organization is compiling lists of government employees that it labels as "woke".
That organization has no real power to hurt them, but it surely believes it is providing guidance for right-wing extremist political appointees who would be glad to punish or fire those employees without bothering to offer justification.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to sign a letter calling on the saboteur-in-chief to reinstate Gwynne Wilcox in the NLRB.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*The Central Intelligence Agency offered [its staff "buyouts"], citing aim to bring agency in line with [new regime's] priorities, US media report.*
Making the whole staff hostile seems like a really foolish thing for an intelligence agency to do. Driving many agents to leave seems dumb too, since some will be angry enough to sell secrets to foreign countries.
Especially now that their country won't be the United States of constitutional rights that they used to be loyal to. Disobeying your country's rulers is not betrayal if they have betrayed your country already.
The corrupter said the US should take over Gaza and move all the inhabitants permanently to other countries. Implicitly, this would mean transferring them by force, although he claimed (implausibly) that they would be glad to move.
His proposal continues that the US would take over Gaza and rebuild it. It doesn't say who would own it after that. It would not surprise me if he arranged for this to be his property and exempted himself from paying taxes on it.
It has been suggested that this proposal is meant to distract attention from his attack on the US system of government.
*Democratic [New York] governor Kathy Hochul signs law permitting doctors to leave names off prescriptions for abortion pills.*
This is good, but if the organization that employs per is not limited to New York State, fanatics might be able to subpoena that name from that organization outside New York State. It would be enough to determine who that patient had an appointment with on the date the prescription was issued.
(satire) *Elon Musk Offers Self $10 Billion Federal Buyout.*
*Meta accused of "bowing" to [the corrupter] by making abortion [information] harder to find.*
Please join me in refusing to use the word "content" to mean "publications, treated as a commodity".
The wrecker's press secretary claims that he has already sent prisoners to Guantanamo, unauthorized immigrants who were in the US.
The wrecker, or someone working for him, has a cunning awareness of the US's sores, and picks at them to exacerbate the soreness. This spreads the feeling that the US will be so massively cruel and evil that it threatens to demoralize Americans who want their country to be good rather than cruel.
*The oldest bullying technique is to threaten little guys who don’t have nearly the power you have — say, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, and Greenland (Greenland!) — and then, when they appear to cave, announce that your bullying has worked. And then move on to larger targets.*
This is what the bully is doing now. But he has an additional advantage that so many treat anything he says as truth. He didn't get a surrender from Mexico or Canada, but when he boasts about one, his magats are thrilled that the USA is (in their minds) a powerful overlord.
But it is not guaranteed to stay that way. He could start doing to other countries the real damage he has done in USAID, the OPM, the US treasury, NOAA, and the CDC.
Another bullying tactic he uses is acting unpredictably and showing he can do drastic things (that less vicious leaders would be wise enough to avoid) and get away with them. The message is, "I am so powerful no one can restrain me — so be afraid and bow down."
Putin tried the same thing in his "I'm a madman with a nuke, so give me whatever I demand" act. Putin's disinformationists and supporters told us we should be terrified and meek. Biden and other western leaders realized it was an act, so they ignored it and dealt with Putin as someone evil and vicious but nonetheless sane.
The persecutor "paused" the CFPB's regulatory work, including the regulation not to include medical debt in people's credit reports.
This was a weak response to the problem that medical costs were ruining Americans, but it had the advantage that the executive branch could do it without support from Congress. The stronger measures were blocked by Republicans.
*FBI agents sue the … DoJ over effort to target January 6 investigation workers.*
Amerindians born before 1970 did not get birth certificates.
With the law to limit voter registration that Republicans are proposing now, in practice those Amerindians would be disenfranchised.
Arizona is making it easier for them to get birth certificates belatedly. But I would not be surprised if red states did the opposite, as a form of voter suppression.
*Grassroots & Progressive Democrats Call for Total Blockade of Trump Nominees.*
The problem of how ti rouse "mainstream" plutocratist Democrats to fight for a New Deal has been with us for decades.
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Torino, Italy, February 12th at 17:00.
The talk will be at the Sala Ciminiera of the Department of Computer Engineering.
The Department of Transportation has imposed the irrelevant requirement on cities and states not to make mask or vaccine requirements. Also the irrelevant preference for places that have higher marriage and birth rates.
The magats who have seized the US government are looking for every way to impose their religion and their superstition on all Americans.
*Why the wrecker's tariffs will be "very bad for America and for the world".*
I think the bully intends these tariffs as a threats and expects other countries to pay a big ransom — going beyond money — to avoid them.
If they do, the world economic harm of the tariffs themselves will not occur, or not for long. But that would introduce a global empire of the billionaires, who will steadily impoverish everyone else and eventually wipe out most of humanity through global heating.
The wrecker has got rid of many of the staff of USAID and sent the muskrat's dogs to destroy it.
The persecutor has canceled the temporary permission of 300,000 Venezuelans to stay in the US, and has threatened 300,000 more.
They fled Venezuela due to economic collapse caused by US sanctions against Maduro's government, rejecting it as the US encouraged them to do.
Maduro is a tyrant, and action against his rule can be justified in principle. And the US claimed to be acting for the sake of Venezuelans who were suffering from it. It was proper for the US to act on concern for Venezuelans that suffered as a result, especially if they wanted to cease their allegiance to Maduro.
However, with the persecutor it is "all hatred, all the time".
Just remember, if you support him and you are not a billionaire, your turn to be his victim will come.
Marco Rubio has gone to Panama, perhaps to play the role of "good cop" in contrast to the bully as "bad cop".
It would be dangerous for a repressive, expansionist great power, led by a megalomaniac liar, to take control of the Panama Canal or systems it depends on.
*Georgian police have arrested two opposition leaders during a street protest against the ruling party, which has been accused of democratic backsliding and of moving Tbilisi closer to Russia.*
Magats in Wyoming propose to prohibit many kinds of medical procedures in order to prohibit abortion as well.
It seems their prohibition on causing harm *to the heart, lungs, brain and other organs* is meant to refer to the organs of a fetus, but would also cover those that harm to the patient's own organs, and that is an unavoidable cost of many important treatments. For instance cancer treatments often damage some organs, but patients accept that because it is preferable to dying.
*Billionaires and corporations leading TV networks and newspapers seem to have caved to the [wrecker]'s pressure.* *"He's become America’s assignment editor."*
You can't expect to get real journalism from them any more.
Scientists can now predict some aspects of a person's appearance from genes, but not reliably or completely enough that anyone should be convicted of a crime on that basis.
Robert Reich: will the cruelty of the wrecker awaken Americans to recognize that he and his backers are our enemies?
El Salvador's autocratic president is putting environmental defenders on trial a second time, after their first trial found there was no evidence of any crime.
The second trial has been carefully prepared so that the result will be different.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Bondi as attorney general.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The wreckers deportation tsar complains that non-citizens (and occasionally citizens too when the deportation thugs threaten to deport them) protect themselves from deportation prison by citing their constitutional rights.
The article also describe the lies that deportation thugs use to invade without a warrant.
*US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time.*
Canadians propose to cut off crucial exports to the US as well as replying with tariffs.
One of the unsolved questions of artificial intelligence is how to tell whether an apparently intelligent system really has thoughts and feeling. Is it conscious, or is it only mimicking. Some academics are proposing moral rules for treatment of any artificial conscious systems.
The case of today's bullshit generators has nothing to do with this. We know how they work, and we know they are not conscious. There is no need to worry that a chatbot will feel hurt by your cursing at being compelled to talk to it.
With Syrian Kurds in Kobane, under constant attack by the Turkish army.
The article has some information about Rojava.
Robert Reich: "winning" an election (*) and becoming president didn't give the wrecker enough power, so he and the muskrat are carrying out a coup, overthrowing constitutional government at various government agencies that make payments required by law.
We can call this unusual event a step-by-step slow coup. It depends on the subornation of the actual legal authorities so that they obey the duumvirate rather than upholding the checks and balances of the Republic.
The most accurate name for the Gulf of Mexico is "Gulf of Non-Natural Disasters".
The US and Mexico have made a deal to postpone tariffs. It may be impossible to carry out — I don't think any country has ever succeeded in stopping smuggling of drugs, or guns — but at least there is nothing barbaric and cruel in it, and nothing fascist.
*Greenland ice sheet cracking more rapidly than ever, study shows.*
An odd hero for antifascists: "Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy," wrote James E Dennehy, who has led the New York field office since last September.
He may be able to sue to stop this purge.
Cops, mostly Republicans, used to stand for "law and order" targeted at the weak, poor and downtrodden. Here is one who stands for law and order against marauding billionaires.
The corrupter is planning for the US government to buy TikTok.
That way, instead of spying for authoritarian China it will spy for the authoritarian US. Instead of authoritarian Chinese censorship, users will encounter authoritarian US censorship.
*The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s power grab: a coup veiled by chaos.*
Republicans' latest sacred cause is to keep lead poisoning alive.
US citizens: call on the acting IRS Commissioner: Continue to use your authority to crack down on wealthy tax cheats while you still can.
US citizens: call on schools to reject [the bully]'s Gulf of America imperialist fantasy.
In countries where Starbucks operates: Pledge to refuse to buy from Starbucks in solidarity with striking workers.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold the wrecker accountable for his illegal purge of Inspectors General.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to save Net Neutrality.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The EPA was already, under Biden, quietly speeding approval of industrial use of new PFA chemicals, after hardly any experiments to find out whether they are dangerous.
(I write just "PFA" because that expands to an adjectival phrase.)
This illustrates a general point. Biden gave only partial support to many progressive causes, and was far from the president we needed at the same time, the wrecker is far, far worse.
The wrecker's sabotage to the government employee email system left it wide open for anyone to blast emails with.
Presumably the intended result was to enable the muskrat's men to send bullying emails to the staff. I suspect it was implemented by non-experts.
*People with insufficient home insurance more likely to risk their lives [trying to save them from] bushfires, experts say.*
Israeli soldiers whose mission was to watch carefully specific nearby parts of Gaza repeatedly reported on dangerous Hamas preparations for the Oct, 2023, attack. Some who were taken hostage and recently released demand a thorough investigation of why the government ignored this.
I heard reports in 2024 about suspicion of government responsibility for leaving the border open — and blocking an investigation of how that came to happen. Given how bloodthirsty and unprincipled Netanyahu has been, some Israeli suspect he decided to let HAMAS attack since that would give him an excuse for killing or expelling all Palestinians.
It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that that is what happened, based on the little evidence we have. It is not proof, but it is reasonable grounds for suspicion. The US and Palestinians, as well as Israelis, should demand this investigation.
New York City's methods of protecting immigrant students from being grabbed via the schools by deportation thugs, and why this is important for the rest of the students as well as for them.
*[The wrecker's] disregard for US constitution "a blitzkrieg on the law", legal experts say.* The wrecker is crashing ship into the foundation of checks and balances which is supposed to keep the US government democratic.
*[His] deliberate deluge of policies overwhelms resistance as he aims to weaken the legislature, analysts say.*
The persecutor's servitors in the Justice Department want to fire as many as thousands of FBI agents, nominally as an irrational act of retaliation because the agents worked on investigations they were told to work on — of the persecutor himself and of the fanatical supporters whom he whipped up to attack the Capitol.
It was not even their choice to work on those investigations, but they were lawful and were part of their job, so they did it. For the persecutor, justice as we understand the term is not part of any question.
I think that he wants Americans to be terrified of finding themselves obliged to disappoint or inconvenience him in any way, much as Russians would be if by luck they found themselves in Putin's way.
However, the ultimate aim of this may be to make it possible to recruit thousands of new agents who are slavishly loyal to the wrecker.
*[The wrecker] orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis.*
This is going to hurt farmers both in the short term and the long term. I hope they figure this out fast and start raging.
*Freed Gaza hostage told Starmer that HAMAS held her in UNRWA premises, her mother says.*
We have only indirect report of this, but it could be true. If it is true, what follows from that? To militarize a hospital is wrong; so HAMAS did wrong when it did that. Of course, HAMAS committed much worse crimes than that.
However, we cannot condemn UNRWA for "allowing" this, because given he circumstances UNRWA, which had no soldiers, could not have prevented it and maybe could not even have found out it was happening.
On the probable underlying causes of decreased air safety around National Airport in Washington DC.
*[The cheater] has refused to pay £290,000 in legal fees after [a lawsuit of his was] dismissed in UK, court told.
He has a history of stiffing people he as hired for the work they have done.
It is unwise to agree to work for him unless you have something on him to make him pay you.
Will the UK government have the guts not to allow him to enter the UK until he pays these legal fees?
The US Office of Personnel Management has been filled with people linked to the muskrat's companies, and to Palantir.
In effect, he can now control the entire US government personnel management, which in practice means he can get rid of anyone who remains loyal to the country instead of to the empire.
Ironically, Tulsi Gabbard may be rejected as the nominated director of national intelligence for steadfastly defending principles of liberty that I support too: defending Edward Snowden and condemning the twisting of the law so as to surveil Americans without a warrant.
See How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?
US citizens: call on state governors to pass climate defense laws.
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov If you phone, please spread the word!
The UK minister who decided in favor of expanding Heathrow airport cited a report for "evidence". The report was commissioned by Heathrow airport.
Citing lobbying material without saying that's what it is is a typical technique of politicians in bed with business. Doing this on an issue so important for curbing global heating, and that has attracted so much public concern already, shows how much the Labour Party is now under the thumb of business.
It caused this by choosing "growth" rather than "tax the rich".
Perhaps the party should change its name to "Tory Lite".
*The Democratic National Committee Is Undemocratic. That's by Design.*
The 448 members of the committee are supposed to act as its board of directors, but they are not given enough information about the organization's spending make informed judgments about it. And until recently the organization wouldn't tell them how to get in touch with each other.
Of the four candidates for chairman, only one (Shakir) would give The Intercept an interview. He was headed the Sanders campaign in 2020. The DNC strongly opposed Sanders, and changed the schedule of primaries for 2024 in a way that gave the Sanders campaign little chance to catch on.
*Environmentalists urge [UK Chancellor] Reeves to rethink plans for airports and roads.*
This is more of the inevitable consequences of surrendering to the rich instead of taxing them more.
Some distinguished physicists say that some teams have made cold fusion reliably generate useful energy, at a small scale but steadily.
*Make no mistake: Israel’s far right is planning for a Gaza without Palestinians.*
The coastal inlets of Galicia are a prized source of mollusks — except that many species' populations have collapsed.
Even in some pristine forests in Ecuador and Panama, bird life is declining steadily. Most species have lost more than half of their 1980 population density.
No concrete cause has been found, but scientist suspect it is due to ecological disruption due to climate.
New Zealand has surrendered to blatant irrationality by recognizing a mountain as legally a "person". This is almost as absurd as recognizing a corporation as a "person".
Here comes the explicit targeted political repression we have expected fro the persecutor — aimed at those opposing the bombardment and siege of Gaza, and calling them "antisemitic".
*Order asks agencies to explore ways to deport activists, including students with visas, who engaged in protests.*
This repression started occurring while Biden was president, but this makes it more painful and explicit.
Jewish Voice for Peace is fighting the repression.
Instagram is obscuring or hiding the groups that help Americans find abortion pills.
We are entitled to hold Zuckerberg responsible for this. It is understandable given his decision to become a vassal of the corrupter, but that is no excuse for it.
An Iraqi exile in Sweden was murdered while on trial for burning a copy of the Qur'an.
I don't express my disapproval of movements or views by burning their symbols. As a form of criticism, it is a rather inarticulate.
However, doing that merely offending people, and offending anyone is part of human rights. To punish people for defying terrorist threats is to legitimize those threats.
UK thug departments were punished by a court for illegal surveillance and unjustified arrest of two journalists, who published leaked information that accused thugs of colluding with the Protestant terrorists in Northern Ireland.
The newest big-time bullshit generator, competing with the famous US bullshit generators, is made in China.
All of them are generally called "artificial intelligence" by their developers, but none of them qualifies as "intelligence", because they are unable to know or understand anything.
The Chinese system is subject to strict Chinese censorship; there are many sensitive topics it will not say anything about. I've heard that Google's bullshit generator is subject to US right-wing censorship.
*Support letter for RFK Jr’s confirmation includes signatures of [medical] doctors with suspended or revoked licenses.*
Just the sort of person to be involved with the medical disinformation that fascinates Republicans.
The wrecker told voters, before the election, that he would reduce the price of groceries.
His subsequent comments suggest that he did not understand the meaning of "groceries".
*With 47% approval rating [the wrecker] is only president to have sub-50% reading at start of term, Gallup poll indicates.*
This makes sense given that, according to Greg Palast's investigation, less than half of the votes that US voters tried to cast were for the wrecker.
The wrecker's plans for Greenland would allow his business barons to trash the environment there, and privatize the land.
By his brazen demands to seize (he says "buy") Greenland, the bully has put European leaders in an emotional vice. It is less frightening to ignore the threats than to confront them.
Global heating seems to be helping rats breed in cities.
The wrecker's shutdown of all foreign aid is causing disasters around the world. Here's news about one crucial system whose absence could cause disasters in various countries.
The shutdown is nominally for 90 days only, but there is no telling how much aid will actually resume.
Louisiana has pressed charges against a New York doctor who by telephone wrote a prescription for abortion medicine for a woman in Louisiana.
I expect this case will come down to a question of which state has jurisdiction over the doctor's actions: the state where the woman was, or the state where the doctor was.
But I fear that the persecutor will direct the FBI to intervene to aid Louisiana cops in grabbing the doctor from New York and taking her to Louisiana. That is just the sort of bullying that he would love.
*Young women turn to sterilization as [the persecutor] intensifies war on reproductive rights.*
Robert Reich conjectures how the wrecker's strategy and goal.
The goal *is to concentrate ever more power in [his] hands, so he can concentrate ever more wealth in the oligarchy's hands.*
The wrecker has, it seems, crushed the principle that government employees owe their first loyalty to their country and their mission, rather than to the president.
Without that principle, no government can be honest, and it is unlikely that any employees hired after this will want to try.
Some of these derelictions of duty could perhaps still be overcome by judges. Not all judges appointed by the corrupter in his first term will reject this principle now. If those prosecutors sue to get their jobs back, they may win. And that would help, for the long term, to preserve that principle.
But it won't make a big difference right away, because if they win and get their jobs back, I expect they will be given no work to do. I suppose they expect that too. I hope they sue anyway.
Little talk of resistance from Democrats: *Why people are warning about "Vichy" America.*
The wrecker arbitrarily blamed the Washington DC plane-helicopter collision on government diversity polices. Simply using it as a way to attack them.
In fact, the cause seems to have been the opposite: an insufficiency of a kind diversity of staff at that moment. *An initial Federal Aviation Administration report obtained by US media organisations said staffing levels were "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic."*
*Crash called "avoidable", with lawmakers and residents previously sounding alarm about region's crowded skies.*
The Australian government lobbied UNESCO and other countries to prevent listing the Great Barrier Reef as "in danger".
This represents a decision to cover up the danger from global heating and increased CO2, rather than protect the reef itself.
This list of suggested nonviolent ways of sabotaging an organization from within.
was published by the US government during World War II. People are suggesting it may be useful against the fascists who took over the US government by attacking its election system.
Gig payment hiring for nurses makes them work for less pay (and thus pressures them to accept overload as a normal state of affairs).
Google is forcing its bullshit generator, Gemini, on many users of Gmail without asking them, and not even offering the users a way to deactivate it.
Workplace IT managers, whose employees are forced to use Gmail, can get it turned off after a laborious procedure, followed by waiting — the darkest of dark patterns.
The persecutor can't prosecute General Milley (for blocking him from illegally sending soldiers to attack peaceful protesters), so he is trying various underhanded means that he does not have to justify.
Removing his security guard detail is a way of deniability facilitating his murder. The persecutor is aware that his violent fanatical followers try to murder anyone he labels as an enemy, and they will now expect him to pardon them. But I don't that would be grounds to convict him of participating in the murder.
The president can't pardon people for state crimes. If Milley goes to live in a strong blue state, that will help thwart plans to kill him.
Robert Reich warns that the "buyout" scheme for federal employees is intended to help the corrupter install right-wing extremists as replacements.
It is probably a swindle, too. If you accept the deal, you may get stiffed, left with no job and no buyout. Both the cheater and the muskrat have done this before.
The wrecker's new Secretary of Transportation has canceled a coming strengthening of fuel efficiency standards. That will lead to transfer of more money to fossil fuel billionaires, but a shorter time for civilization to survive.
*[The persecutor] Hit With New Lawsuit for Funneling Sensitive Info [about federal employees] to [the muskrat].*
DeMentis is wiping out a second Florida state university that is liberal-leaning.
The first one still exists in name, but the old facility and students left and what remains is an ideological right-wing propaganda mill.
Other right-wing states may imitate this.
Israel is planning to shut down all UN aid to Palestinians, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.
A cease-fire condition that allows aid to be delivered to Palestinians would be pure bullshit if Israel can get away with disregarding it. I suppose the cease-fire would collapse at that point and Israel would start killing thousands more Palestinians.
*Experts suggest that replicating the conditions that saw neighborhoods burn to the ground may not be the best policy.*
Helping the people who have been rendered homeless is one issue and rebuilding in a similar way in the same place is another. It would be reasonable to change building codes; anyone building in fire-prone zones, whether perse lived there before, would thus be required to build a home that won't burn.
*"It's a death sentence": US health insurance system is failing, say doctors. Firms including United [Hellthcare] have denied basic scans and taken months to reconsider, physicians say.*
The wrecker announced 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada.
I suggest that those countries respond by declaring sanctions on the muskrat and his companies. That could provoke friction between the wrecker and the muskrat.
The maladministration stated it was withdrawing the memo that blocked nearly all US government payments in programs to help non-rich people.
Then it "clarified" that only the memo was rescinded, not the policy.
A judge thereupon ruled that this was meaningless bullshit, and that the policy was indeed canceled.
*The Deadly Consequences Of [UnitedHellth]’s Unchecked Growth*, and the company's influence over judges.
Richard Stallman will give a talk at
National Institute of Technology, Surathkal
Hall Complex - C (LHC-C)
Western Campus, NITK Surathkal
Surathkal is near Mangalore.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Mike Huckabee, the extremist nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
The wrecker illegally fired a member of the NLRB, leaving it with no quorum and therefore deactivated.
By hook or by crook, he will support the billionaires against American workers.
As part of the War on Human Rights, the wrecker has given permission for state and local book-banning in schools.
Greg Palast: *Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.*
*Harris cheated out of 3,650,000 votes by these Jim Crow tricks. 4.7 million voters purged. 3.2 million registrations rejected. 2.1 million mail-in ballots tossed.*
*Europe "must not be bullied" by Trump and Musk on tech laws, NGOs say.*
I think the EU should resist the bullshitter on every demand that would strengthen his power.
Bullies generally exaggerate their strength and pretend to be invincible. But they always have weak points too. The first surrender makes the bully stronger — so almost always you should resist the first demand/threat.
The only exception that occurs to me is when you are rapidly building your strength and have real reasons to think you will have a better chance of winning if you wait for that.
A prominent CNN critic of the wrecker quit after the network moved his show to midnight.
We have to conclude that this was an attempt to win the wrecker's forgiveness for showing criticism of him to so many people.
Oklahoma plans to demand proof of citizenship (or legal immigration status) from children who should go to school. In addition to denying to unauthorized immigrants' children, many US citizens would have trouble proving they are citizens.
Worse, the US House of Representatives is about to vote on such a voter-id bill.
Massachusetts voters: call on your state representative and state senator to pass the Location Shield Act (HD2965/SD501) and the Dignity Not Deportations Act (HD3596/SD1107).
Each of these bills does far less than what is needed, but each is a step forward nonetheless.
*Fighters [who belonged to PISSI] in Syria could escape from prison with help from the wrecker's stoppage of US aid to the forces keeping them in prison.
*The year the rainforest dried up: how the climate crisis beached Brazil’s floating communities.*
Not long ago, scientists warned that global heating and deforestation were going to eliminate the rainfall that keeps the Amazon rainforest in existence. The death of so many trees will cause a big shot of greenhouse gases that will hasten climate disaster world-wide.
The wrecker fired 17 inspectors general, apparently illegally.
A new computer program heuristically detects medical insurance's automated denials of coverage.
This implies an arms race. I tend to suspect the insurance companies will win, that it will be easier to fool whatever the detection program looks at than to overcome its disguises. What is really needed is to change the laws or structure of the insurance system.
*[International Criminal Court] chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women.*
I did not know the ICC had the ability to prosecute crimes like this. Bravo!
I imagine that this step will make the election-riggers in the US hate the ICC even more, but since they already hate it as hard as they can, I doubt they can escalate their hostilities.
Islamic law is cruelty and injustice to women (and also sometimes to men).
*Big oil spent $445m in last election cycle to [politicians] report says.*
A lot of this spending was on helping to influence (or fool) the public to vote for them.
Yet again, Labour retreats from a planned tax increase on the rich in response to their threats of pushing back.
The right way to respond is with a counter threat. One idea is a special tax on income from British business that goes to non-taxed stockholders?
Bernie Sanders: *The simple truth is that [the wrecker] ignored almost every major issue facing this country’s working families in his first speech.*
A crazed young man with no specific political goal or views murdered several children. The government wants to label such people as "terrorist" although that stretches the definition of "terrorist" to the point of meaninglessness.
Terrorism means violence (or threats of violence) against noncombatants for some cause (regardless of which cause). That is a coherent concept, so terrorists thus labeled on the basis of that definition have something important and clear in common.
But once you include people who engage in violence for no specific reason, the set becomes so broad that it ceases to be coherent.
Some cops want those murders to be declared terrorism because it would allowed them to question the suspect for longer.
They advocate stretching the word "terrorism" to be arbitrarily stretchable. That would make the word entirely meaningless.
Should they have been allowed to question that suspect for longer? I have no opinion on that; I am not sure what the possibilities are. But if the UK would like to give cops more time to investigate certain kinds of suspects, it should do this in a way that avoids causing collateral damage to the word "terrorism".
*Serbian students block Belgrade road junction to demand that the government do its job.
In Britain such protesters would be sentenced to years in prison for that. Curbing global heating is necessary for the survival of civilization, so it is part of the government's job.
*Water companies in England "use greenwashing playbook to hide environmental harm."*
Privatizing water services was a terrible idea which has had only bad effects. It is very disappointing that Labour is not getting rid of them.
*"[The corruptor's] grifting tendencies": how [his] crypto ties could spur corruption.*
UK agencies that support the public were supposed to use chatbots to talk with people seeking help, but they canceled several because they don't work reliably.
It is a nice thing that they had the decency to cancel these, rather than forcing them on people.
Bulgarian border thugs are accused of blocking rescuers from reaching migrants who were freezing to death at the border with Turkey.
That constitutes murder, it seems to me.
A new UK plan for digital government identification via a snoop-phone app could lead to a de-facto mandatory national ID card.
The wrecker's sudden halt to payments for humanitarian aid is causing danger and suffering around the world.
US citizens: call on Congress not to let the Muskrat destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An irrational zealot like RFK Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services would have many methods available to wreck public health in the US, and as a follower of the bully, he would threaten them.
RFK Jr. is now trying to pretend he was never anti-vax.
This shows that his views on issues are calculated opportunistically, which means he might do anything whatsoever if it seems profitable. He is not fit to be in charge of anything.
Phone your senators and tell them this.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Deportation thugs raided Newark and arrested over 500 people, including US citizens as well as unauthorized immigrants.
They questioned a US citizen veteran and doubted the validity of his discharge papers. I wonder if he was, perhaps, Hispanic — could they have disbelieved him because of his race?
Will we find people put in deportation prison for days, or longer, because they did not have their papers at the time of the raid?
(Later): Indeed, they checked only people who looked Hispanic.
US citizens: call on the Big Banks to divest from fossil fuels.
Republicans want to give state officials power to veto specific peoples immigration into the US.
The saboteur in chief has purported to shut down government-funded activities that we all depend on. Americans have a chance to stop him through the courts. If that fails, many of us could suffer losses, sometimes even illness or death.
US citizens: call on Congress to provide immediate disaster relief for LA fires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Dr Oz.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Kalispell, Montana, is persecuting homeless people in every way it can find. It has made buses impossible for them to use by requiring passengers to identify themselves with credit cards — a vicious offense against all riders' privacy, even those who have homes.
The planned next step is to force a homeless shelter to close.
*[The persecutor] Halts Sanctions on Israeli Settlers, Threatens to Seize Assets of War Crimes Investigators.*
Robert Reich: *In effect, [the corrupter] is writing the rules for a [cryptocurrency] business venture from which he and his family are personally profiting. It could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars.*
All regulations that might get in the way are being changed or will be ignored.
I expect the direct victims to include the magats that will put money into them because they trust the corrupter. But we can all lose a lot if banks' holding those crypto-coins and it causes them to get in some kind of trouble.
It is also a great opportunity for indirect bribes. *Any wealthy person, corporation, or foreign leader wishing to curry favor with Trump now has a particularly easy means — just buy $TRUMP and $MELANIA cryptocurrency tokens.*
Greg Palast reports the details: if not for aggressive Republican voter-suppression, Harris would have won the popular vote and the electoral college.
The current US government is fraudulent and illegitimate at multiple levels.
*North Korea preparing to send more troops to Ukraine war, says South Korea.*
If Ukraine can use naval drones to attack the transports taking those troops from North Korea to Russia, it could destroy nearly all of those troops before they can fire a shot. Dictator Kim might abandon the idea after a defeat like that.
Canadian columnist Andrew Coyne: *[the corrupter's] Election is a Crisis like No Other, Not Only for the U.S. But For the World.*
*Bombs buried in Gaza rubble put at risk thousands returning to homes, say experts.*
Why would they move that rubble? Perhaps to look for corpses of their relatives.
As more and more plant species become endangered, botanical gardens are running out of capacity to handle many more species.
The US, under the Biden administration, has been keeping Russian dissidents who fled and asked for asylum at the US border in prison, calling them "threats to national security".
According to the article this was an automatic consequence of labeling people from certain countries, Russia, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, for "expedited removal". Why would Biden have done this? My guess is that they were suspected of being spies for Putin. But it is horrible that enemies of Putin got this treatment.
When Germany invaded Poland, Britain jailed all Germans as potential enemy agents, never mind if they had fled to Britain fleeing Hitler's persecution. It took Britain a year or more to realize that they were in fact allies, but once that was recognized they were treated as the allies they were, and welcomed into the war effort.
We can't predict what the persecutor will do to them. He may consider Putin's agents as his friends, but most of these people are not Putin's agents, and he surely regards anyone committed to human rights and resistance to tyranny as his natural enemy. So I expect him to try to expel them, or crush them.
*Just Stop Oil protester, 78, has jail term extended after no suitable [tracking] tag found.*
When people are fighting in the streets over food, these functionaries' children will at least have the satisfaction of saying, "I am proud of my parent for making sure the people who tried to save us from this were jailed for precisely the full time of their sentences."
Louise Lancaster, sentenced to four years in prison for a nonviolent climate defense protest, publishes her prison diary.
She mainly describes the injustice of the court and prison systems and how they treat many other prisoners unjustly.
*Mississippi police department hires officer fired over racist slurs to Latino man.*
In general, freedom of speech must include unfounded insults, because prosecuting people for that would lead to repression. However, a police officer must not make such insults, because an officer's job is to treat everyone with respect (even while arresting per). Someone who fails to do that is not fit for the job.
*Through the blizzard of edicts, see [the wrecker] for what he is: an autocrat reaching for limitless power.*
Deportation thugs raided Newark and arrested over 500 people, including US citizens as well as unauthorized immigrants.
They questioned a US citizen veteran and doubted the validity of his discharge papers. I wonder if he was, perhaps, Hispanic — could they have disbelieved him because of his race?
Will we find people put in deportation prison for days, or longer, because they did not have their papers at the time of the raid?
The UK canceled its Tories' special exception to permit use of a neonicotinoid pesticide.
Republicans in several states are pushing laws to criminalize having an abortion as murder, or prosecute people for helping anyone travel for an abortion.
CBS TV station fired its meteorologist for posting, on her personal channel, condemnation of the muskrat for his two slightly modified Nazi salutes.
I expect we will see many businesses join in trying to repress Americans for calling a Nazi a Nazi.
*Poland Is Warned: Welcoming Netanyahu to Auschwitz Memorial Would Be a "Grave Mistake".*
Poland, as a member of the ICC, ought to tell him it will hold him for the ICC if he comes.
Pamela Hemphill, convicted for the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, has rejected the pardon that the wrecker gave her for that act she has come to recognize as a wrong to her country.
New pun: Stallman-Org says we ought not do this and that.
The wrecker is now out to eliminate FEMA assistance, based on reasons that are false. FEMA has done a bad job under Republican presidents Dubya and the wrecker, but that is not a reason to eliminate it, but a reason to have a Democratic president.
Eliminating FEMA would especially hurt poor people and marginalized people, and those are the people that the wrecker wants to hurt.
US activities for dealing with bird flu are gravely handicapped by the wrecker's ban on travel by federal employees of everything related to public health, including research.
The ban also covers reviewing and publishing research. I forecast that it will eventually be replaced with censorship of research based on whether disinformationists like the results or not.
Americans, this stance will block research that can save your lives. American farmers, this will prevent efforts to save your cattle from bird flu.
The wrecker has stopped the CDC from publishing anything at all, including news about the spread of bird flu.
Is he aiming to cause panic, is his goal to make Americans sitting ducks?
US citizens: call on Congress to provide immediate disaster relief for LA fires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Extreme weather failing to encourage political climate action, says activist Luisa Neubauer.* Right-wing disinformationist billionaires have convinced extremists that the real danger is from climate activists.
Why do the billionaires do that? My speculation is that they want to wipe out all of humanity except for a fraction that they convert into their serfs. I consider that plausible because of the meeting that Douglas Rushkoff reported.
Richard Stallman will give a speech in Bengaluru, India, Jan 27 11am–1pm
The speech will be at Jain University, as part of the Technology Future Summit.
Bengaluru is also known as the Silicon Valley of India, and as the IT Capital of India.
The West must stand by Ukraine now or fight Putin later.
It is better to fight him now with Ukraine's help, than later without it.
Congress is working on a bill that would call for deportation of any unauthorized immigrant who is accused of couple-violence — without a trial.
Another bill was recently passed would do the same thing for various accusations of crime, including theft. In both cases, a false accusation would dispose of whoever you don't like.
I would not be surprised if deportation thugs start inventing false accusations to get an excuse to deport someone fast.
Pete Hegseth, the wrecker's middle-finger nominee for Secretary of Defense, was confirmed by the Senate despite three Republicans who voted against him.
Senators who criticized him focused their objections on personal failings: drunkenness and "sexual assault", but I think what really disqualified him is support for Christianitist extremism. He might take steps to exclude Americans other than Christianist extremists from the armed services.
If it were a matter of excluding everyone but Islamist extremists, the danger of this would be obvious — but Christianist extremists are far more numerous in the US than Islamist extremists, so the threat of the former is far greater.
However, the accused personal shortcomings helped the wrecker demonstrate that he can get any candidate through the Senate, no matter how hostile to American political, constitutional, legal or diplomatic traditions.
"Sexual assault" is such a stretchable term that it is incoherent to form a judgment of a person's conduct or character or fitness for office based on that. What was perse actually accused of? Was it a grave crime, such as attempted rape, or was it merely annoying, such as a stolen kiss? Or something in between? If you accuse an act that is grave, call it by a name that reflects the gravity of the act, and I will consider the accusation with the appropriate gravity. If it might be just a stolen kiss, I will treat it as a minor social faux pas.
The persecutor has cancelled the government bodyguards for Anthony Fauci. This means he will be in danger of assassination by terrorists stirred up by the persecutor's own rhetoric. I expect the persecutor to crow if Fauci is murdered.
Likewise for officials who authorized in 2020 the US's assassination of an Iranian general on orders from the wrecker himself.
If the wrecker controlled "the force", he would be using it to kill his underlings, like Darth Vader.
Robert Reich calls this his "vengeance machine".
In Slovakia 2% of he population rallied to demand that the Putin-loving prime minister resign. That is comparable to a rally of 6 million Americans.
He responded by claiming that only new elections can result in a change in the government. Well, have new elections.
*With both Israel and Hezbollah having violated the [ceasefire] agreement [between them], people in Metula fear the fighting will resume.*
*Indiana bill seeks to end tax breaks for non-profit hospitals that overcharge patients.*
This is a clever tactic, and I can imagine it might work.
One of Iran's vice presidents has stated his wish for a new non-nuclear agreement with the US,
saying he hopes the divider will be willing to make one.
The persecutor's acting Attorney General threatens to prosecute officials who do not cooperate with the persecutor's mass deportations.
The reason I don't call the persecutor by name is that he seems to be a narcissist, getting pleasure from people's saying his name. We can avoid giving him that pleasure — please join me in depriving him of it.
The persecutor has reinvigorated the Ku Klux Klan, which is now directing hatred at immigrants rather than at blacks.
MIT critics of Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza, condemning punishment of student protesters, have reported on years of funding of MIT projects by Israel.
The persecutor has ordered the Justice Department to investigate "weaponization of the federal government", which is ironic because that's exactly what this investigation is meant to do.
*New Report Shows That Work Requirements for Safety Net Programs Fail to Boost Employment*.
To simplify the matter few people make a choice to forego working if they are poor enough to be eligible for these aid programs.
The wrecker banned US support to foreign medical organizations that do abortions.
This rule goes far beyond removing US support for abortions in other countries. It also refuses support to organizations that perform a broad range of medical treatment unless they agree to stop doing abortions. Most of them refuse to be bullied, but the result is that the US boycotts their other medical activities.
It appears that Labour in the UK has chosen short-termism (prioritizing economic growth) over long tern survival (reducing greenhouse gas emissions).
The basic decision to reject taxing the rich tends to lead to a bouquet of short-term optimizations that dump the costs on climate disaster over the next few decades.
California required large "fast food" chains to pay a $20 minimum wage, disregarding executives who predicted that would cause job losses. Indeed, no such result occurred.
It is indeed possible for raising the minimum wage to reduce employment. But executives have an interest in stretching the truth about this, so politicians should get their advice from someone who isn't biased against workers.
About a book on the "reactionary nihilism" of the right-wing extremists that have seized control of the USA.
Billionaires even in Australia (and I presume everywhere else) are sucking up to him, asking for what will make the US a better "investment opportunity."
I urge Australians to elect politicians who will thwart those billionaires' desires, and make Australia a good place for all Australians to live in.
A billionaire whose loyalty the corrupter has bought is disloyal to per country.
Meanwhile, *toadying Brits finally come to realize [the corrupter] has no need of them.*
The persecutor wrecker lifted the US sanctions on violent Israeli extremists who carry out pogroms against Palestinians, and revived sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
When he said that he wanted to be a "peacemaker", maybe it means that he wants to make deserts and call them "peace".
The wrecker took the US out of WHO again. This was not only foolish, it was based on false "facts".
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Kochi, India, Jan 27 at 11:30, at Jain University, as part of the Technology Future Summit.
(See link for address information.)
*All the artifice about corporate responsibility, echoed year after year at Davos and by the Business Roundtable and in business schools, gave lawmakers who wanted one an excuse to sit on their hands, because, they’d say, big global corporations can be trusted to do what’s right.*
But now that US megacorporations and the US government have conclusively rejected those goals, Davos no longer claims to be interested either.
The economic shifts that replaced good quality furniture in the US with lousy stuff that won't last correlated with outsourcing.
Israel agreed in the ceasefire deal to allow more aid to reach Gaza. In effect, this proves that Israel was besieging Gaza all this time, limiting the flow of aid.
Of course, we who condemned this had no doubt that that was true.
[The wrecker's] refugee ban "strands Afghans endangered by US withdrawal." *More than 1,600 people eligible to resettle in the United States are waiting to flee Afghanistan and Pakistan, say advocates.*
This is a betrayal of faith, but the wrecker has committed much bigger betrayals and plans to betray the most basic principles of the US.
*Palestinians begin search for Gaza's missing as they return to ruined homes.*
Many people know that relatives were inside a certain building when it was bombed and then collapsed. Those relatives are listed as missing but they are almost surely dead.
The city of Beit Lahia has been turned entirely into rubble. I think that is true of a lot more.
*South Korean democracy was nearly toppled by its president. It was saved by its people.* Imagine Koreans, years from now, celebrating Impeachment Day as the day that Koreans saved democracy. Since we are imagining, we can imagine a future in which they celebrate all across Korea.
*Eighteen Democratic-led states sue over Trump birthright citizenship order.*
The UK Labour government is going soft on monopolies, or at least proclaims that it will.
This is an example of the sort of harmful consequences that follow from deciding not to tax the rich. The UK need money to fix all the things that the Tory government broke and the only way to get enough is to tax the rich.
Since it won't do that, it has to claim that it will stimulate growth so as to collect more taxes. That effectively requires letting businesses get away with various sorts of unfairness: they threaten that they won't grow unless they are given privileges, such as unfair competition.
British thugs arrested two members of parliament, along with other people, for breaching rigid customized restrictions on where they could go while protesting Israel's attacks on Gaza. One was Jeremy Corbyn.
The thugs are treating protests in support of Gaza as antisemitism, which they are not.
The stories of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel display a pattern of arbitrary and exaggerated grounds that resemble those of supporters of Palestinians safety and rights arrested in the US.
*A third of the Arctic's vast carbon sink [tundra] now a source of emissions, study reveals.*
Personal contact in the context of work helps knit society together and helps both the workers and the clients.
The muskrat made Nazi salutes, but fudged them enough to make them just barely deniable. I expect that he planned them, both the salutes and the deniability. The deniability is a way to make a monkey of people who condemn support for Nazis, saying "I can get away with doing this and then lying about it."
Right-wing extremists have no difficulty in recognizing the muskrat's variation of a Nazi salute as endorsement of them. We should not let him off the hook for his quibbles.
*[The corrupter] reclassifies thousands of federal employees, making them easier to fire.*
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to reject Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
In an incremental act of cruelty, the cruel bastard ordered the deportation police to arrest people at churches and schools. Perhaps medical clinics too.
Note how he uses "criminals" as if everyone being deported were guilty of a crime. He claims they will use "common sense", but we know that we can't trust them to do that.
I think this will create backlash from parents whose children were traumatized by arrests in their classes.
The hater has eliminated all possibility of requesting asylum at the US-Mexico border.
The establishment of the right to request asylum was a great advance in international respect for those who flee oppression. Not everyone who comes to or crosses the border is eligible for asylum, so it is necessary to evaluate each case. But those who are qualified should be given asylum.
The bullshitter claims to have signed executive orders to reduce inflation and reduce energy costs, but did not say just what they do.
I have a hunch that they consist of encouraging more fossil fuel extraction, and more pipelines to transport them, and ceasing to require more electric cars. That could reduce the price of those fuels, for some years, while making global heating worse in the medium term. In a decade or two, staying alive would become more expensive, and also less likely.
Some in the UK think that incapacitated people suffering from anorexia who are incapacitated to the point that they cannot commit suicide on their own should not be allowed help in doing so.
I am not an expert, but I tend to disagree. If a person's life is suffering and perse persistently asks for death, we should not forcibly prolong per torture.
*Austria's "firewall" against the far right collapsed. Could the unthinkable happen in Germany too?*
How can one reconcile the bullshitter's stated wish to be a peacemaker with his demand to seize foreign territory?
It is silly to try. They are both bullshit, meant primarily to energize his supporters or spread anxiety among everyone else. Neither one necessarily has any seriousness in it.
In the US: write to the CEO of John Deere to tell the company to stop closing factories and moving production to low-wage companies.
I included text to support the right to repair tractors:
Turning America farmers into digital serfs with the restrictive systems in your tractors is even worse. Farmers deserve the right to fix and change the hardware and software of their tractors.At this rate, John Deere is making more detractors than tractors.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers 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. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code by editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Useds of Facebook or Instagram: call on Zuckerberg to restore fact-checking in Facebook and Instagram.
US citizens: call on Congress to rein in political spending — pass the Democracy for All amendment.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Robert Reich: *How we get rid of the American oligarchy.*
*From the US to Uganda, how climate activism has been criminalized in 2024.*
After the Democrats have joined up for repression of climate defense while somewhat in power, we can't expect them to do much to defend against what the billionaires' vassals will try to do.
"Wanted" posters about medical insurance executives are great HHOS.
Drone-manufacturer DJI has decided to put an end to including software to forcibly prevent the drone from flying into prohibited areas.
That proprietary software was the spacial equivalent of DRM, and that made it unjust. I have nothing against the rule to keep one's drone out of prohibited areas, and except in purely theoretical special cases I would willingly comply with it. But the idea that someone could take control of my drone, perhaps by remotely altering its geofence, is repugnant.
I suspect that all the rest of the software in those products is nonfree also. My conscience would rebel at having one of those drones, either before or after the recent change.
Fortunately I have never felt any particular wish to have a drone.
Iranian popular singer sentenced to death for "blasphemy".
*Palestinian prisoners’ families say their houses were raided by Israeli forces.
[Also] Israel says it will prevent "public displays of joy" by families when Palestinians are released as part of Gaza ceasefire.*
Given the reports of released Palestinian prisoners who had been crushed by months of physical or psychological torture, these prisoners' families may hardly feel any job on seeing what has been don't to them.
(satire) Will Israel create a new Department of Palestinian Misery?
George Monbiot: The empire of the billionaires is likely to destroy the lives of millions of Americans, starting very soon, and no institutions seem to be ready to resist this. We can see in Argentina what it will do.
Special counsel Jack Smith believes that the corrupter would have been convicted of various crimes related to trying to steal the 2020 election, if his grabbing the presidency had not got him off the hook.
Greg Palast claims that the corrupter would have lost in 2024 if not for new efforts at voter suppression.
Will we get our democracy back?
Someone else is now saying that we must put an end to big tech's use of recommendation algorithms to get users addicted
(and, along the way, to push right-wing disinformation on them).
Religious fanatics in Texas are proposing many schemes to attack or block those who send, prescribe or help fund abortion pills for pregnant Texans.
I fear that the new saboteur in chief will encourage federal laws to support the fanatics.
The poor and meek do not escape If they conspire the law to break. This must be so, but they endure, Those who conspire to make the law.
Women might consider saying to their boyfriends, "If you want to go to bed with me, first give me a set of abortion pills just in case." But there is no obvious way for a man to obtain these prescription medicines and be sure they are not fake.
The Liberal Democrats, a UK political party, will advocate making a new customs union with the EU.
This is what Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party said he was in favor of.
The Liberal Democrats will explicitly say that the wrecker is a "threat to peace and prosperity" so *relations with him must be transactional*,
not breed mutual trust. That is simple rationality. However, accepting a plan to have a meeting with someone (Zelenskyy or anyone else) as substantial concession is self-delusion. The wrecker would be happy to have a meeting with Zelenskyy and say he will give half of Ukraine's territory to Putin.
* Britain’s crackdown on climate protest is setting "a dangerous precedent" around the world and undermining democratic rights, the UK director of Human Rights Watch has said.*
* The past year has marked the “absolute failure” of western democracies as champions of human rights around the world, the head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.*
* Ex-workers say [Zuckerberg's] declaring relocation of moderation and safety teams from California just a play for [the bullshitter's] approval.*
Bullshitting in support of him is another expression of support. It announces that henceforth Zuckerberg will say what pleases the bullshitter, regardless of the facts.
US citizens: phone your representatives and senators and call on them to protect funding for NPR and PBS.
They are far from perfect. They feel obliged to take a "balanced" view even in an unbalanced situation. But they will help resist fascism.
Older Britons are moving back to cash payment, but most young people can't summon up the will to escape from tracked digital payments. the first step is to make sure you carry a reasonable amount of cash. You can decide to have cash on hand, then each time you leave the house take a reasonable amount with you. After a week or two it will become a habit.
When you don't have enough cash to make a purchase, don't make a tracked digital payment. Instead, get cash out of an ATM and pay with that. The surveillance system will get less data about you from the ATM!
Don't just take out the amount needed for that one purchase. Withdraw enough money to last you for a few days. That way, for your next few payments you will have enough cash.
The UK sentenced activist Stuart Bretherton to a few months in prison for a forbidden protest that was entirely nonviolence and did no damage to anything. It is clear that his "crime" was nothing other than the act of criticizing the government.
I continue to believe that it is an error to be "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine".
We should be anti-atrocity, condemning the heinous atrocities of Israel and Palestine but not hating either people. I agree with Bretherton's conclusions, condemning the British government for its repressive imprisonment of nonviolent protesters.
* Julie Su, acting labor secretary, fears many of Biden’s pro-worker policies will be undone by the new administration.*
These policies are among those that led me to describe Biden as 1/3 progressive.
Which is a lot better than not progressive at all.
* Global heating means atmosphere can drive both extreme droughts and floods with rapid switches.
…The research found that almost everywhere on the planet has experienced between 31% and 66% more whiplash events since the mid-20th century, as emissions from fossil fuel burning heated the atmosphere.*
Scientific experiments show that most people in Britain underestimate the amount of racism that is actually present in society and underestimate how racist each one individually is.
According to the New York Times, RFK Jr wrote to the FDA in 2021 calling for cancellation of the approval of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Suggesting to Australians how to express their dissatisfaction with both of the major parties' weak attitude towards the advance of global heating disaster.
One of the Project 2025 fanatics told people that the "age verification" requirements are a sneaky way of moving to ban porn.
Reportedly the thought of disobeying the fascist leader made Netanyahu realize he had to accept Biden's ceasefire plan.
The plan involves a temporary truce and exchanging 33 female hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
*Bangladeshi and British politics collided to bring down Tulip Siddiq.*
(satire) *LAPD Arrests Everyone Who Lost Home In Fire.*
*People in Maga hats at meal last week [in Greenland] did not know [the grifter's] son and were invited off the street, hotel boss says.*
With those bullshitters, we should never assume any appearance of anything is not phony.
*[The bullshitter] Decried [sneaky FISA law surveillance on Americans] as a Deep State Spy Weapon. His Nominees Sure Seem to Love It.*
For more information about this, see
It is useless to point out the inconsistencies between the bullshitter's proclaimed "views" or "positions" and his specific actions to put pressure on him. He doesn't really believe those "positions". But showing these examples may help convince Americans not to trust his "positions".
*Scott Bessent Set to Serve Billionaires, Big Banks, and Big Oil as Treasury Secretary.*
Hegseth, the middle-finger nominee for Secretary of Defense, wants to bring back the base names that honor traitors who fought for the Confederacy. In addition he is accused of various sorts of personal misconduct.
It seems he objects to allowing honesty and patriotism to infiltrate the US military.
What Senator Ernst did shows that any time a Republican shows a sign of concern for proper governance, we cannot expert per to stand up to the Republican base who are fanatically loyal to the wrecker. As the article explains at the end, in the past Republicans could do so.
Rats display many signs of joy when given the chance to drive a rat-sized car.
Rats that have grown up with toys show mental flexibility: when given the chance to drive rat-sized cars, the rats with interesting environments learn faster.
*Joe Biden warns ‘oligarchy is taking shape in America’ in farewell address.*
I wish he had campaigned about this.
*Israel Agrees to the Ceasefire [deal that] It Rejected Months Ago, [since which time] Thousands More Died.*
However, there are reports Netanyahu is reneging on the deal already. (Sorry, I don't have a link for this.)
I have a suspicion that the wrecker asked him to delay the deal to give the wrecker a chance to claim the credit. But it could also be a matter of appeasing his extreme right-wing supporters who demand "total victory" and object to anything less.
The possible end of the war in Gaza sees Iran's Islamist allies greatly weakened, and the legitimacy of Israel's cause cast into deep doubt.
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Montpellier, France Jan 20 at 18:30
Location: Salle du Conseil de l'Hotel de la Métropole, à Montpellier.
Language: En français
Streaming: https://live0.emacsconf.org/rms-20jan25.webm
US citizens: call on Attorney General Garland to release the report of the investigation into alleged crimes by the corrupter.
*With few exceptions, the news has shied away from showing how the unfolding climate crisis plays a large role in the [LA fire] disaster.*
The US media have taken this approach ever since the effects of global heating became visible, and I pointed it out years ago.
*Israel admits soldiers used ambulance in raid on refugee camp.*
Disguising soldiers as medical personnel is a heinous crime because it risks raising suspicion against real medical personnel. Remember when the US disguised agents as polio vaccinators to search for Osama bin Laden? The backlash against that spurred rejection of polio vaccination in part of Pakistan. Twenty years later, that part of Pakistan is the only region where the vaccination campaign has not been completed.
Experts warn that [the fascist leader] could direct DoJ officials to scale back enforcement of Voting Rights Act.
United Hellth pursues denial of coverage so assiduously that its agent phoned a surgeon to argue an operation was not necessary, just as she was in the process of performing it.
The saboteur-in-chief's supporters are trying to give the right-wing global heating denialists power over the National Climate Assessment, hitherto directed and made by climate scientists.
*To resist the climate crisis, we must resist the billionaire class.*
The recent UN human rights ruling affirms the principle that Australia bears full responsibility for the offshore immigration prison it established with the help of Nauru, and for the harm that it does to the prisoners.
The magats seek to crush America's spirit of civil solidarity, and uses disasters as an opportunity.
Here's an example.
The muskrat seeks to drown out serious discussion of policy issues by screaming distraction so loud that most journalists won't disregard it.
*[The fascist leaders] crave your attention. Don’t give it to them.* Denounce them once in a while for this, then go back to concentrating on the issues that really matter.
What science concludes about making protests more or less effective.
The UK's "internet safety" law makes operating a specialized noncontroversial nonsexual conversation forum dangerously unsafe. One site that supports hundreds of them is closing them all.
The way the word "content" is used in that article, as if it were a kind of substance or commodity, fills me with disgust every time I see it. If the issue were not pressing, I would feel like not linking to that article.
Iran's arrest of visiting Italian journalist Cecilia Sala seems to have been a response to Italy's arrest of an Iranian accused of making a drone attack on a US base in Jordan.
It seems that Italy made a deal with Iran to release both of them in order to rescue Ms Sala.
Iran seems to be using China's method for getting its agents out of jail: arrest hostages to exchange for them.
*Meta never cared about fact-checking. What it wants is friction-free oligarchy.*
You can do your part to punish Facebook and its other disservices by not letting them use you.
Zuckerberg once apologized for feeding Americans Russian disinformation. Now, kneeling to the corrupter, he calls that part of Facebook's mission.
The major tech CEOs are eager to become vassals of the man who would be king of the United States.
Like Russian oligarchs, they may make billions with his approval, but they will be required to uphold his dominion over us.
*LA officials warn of price gouging as those displaced by fire seek housing.*
As fire losses gradually accelerate, they will gradually increase the national shortage of housing.
Tulip Siddiq, the UK treasury minister, has resigned because of criticism that her aunt was until recently the president/dictator of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.
Atrocities in her name are reported continuing until the very day she fled the country.
For an official who makes important decisions to have a close relationship of any kind with an important foreign official is not necessary actual corruption, but the temptation it creates should be considered disqualifying as a conflict of interest.
A close relationship of any kind with a decision-maker in a major company should likewise be disqualifying.
South Korea's impeached president was arrested, with a big operation that met with only desultory resistance.
Perhaps his guards realized that their primary loyalty was owed to the country rather than to him.
Everyone: call on Meta to resume fact-checking, because facts are not decided by what more people think or whether one view's supporters can intimidate the other views' supporters.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers 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. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to choose the people over Big Telecom — to save Net Neutrality
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The Democratic National Committee does not publish its list of members. It identifies some members but not others.
Now the full list has been published with the help of leakers.
The states that ban abortion tend to have harsh policies towards single mothers and their children. Per year, around 150,000 more households move out of these states than move in.
Reportedly Sudan has fallen into a race war, with lighter-skinned "Arabs" killing darker skinned "blacks" — though people may also be killed or spared based on specific ethnic groups.
*Venezuelan opposition candidate accuses Nicolás Maduro of coup.*
Curbing global heating would make life healthier and more comfortable, as well as limiting climate disaster.
Talk in Lausanne, Switzerland Jan 17 at 18:00
Free software, and freedom in all your computing. Also, how I push the line in my own life. rue de Lausanne 64, Renens (School 42)
Language: The talk will be in English but I will accept questions in French or English.
US citizens: call on Biden to give clemency to Leonard Peltier.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers 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. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The Israeli army has made a rule that interviews with soldiers can't show their faces or their names. This is to protect them from possible prosecution for any war crimes or atrocities they may be found to have committed.
(satire) *Jealous Trump Throws Own State Funeral To Upstage Carter's.*
*Elon Musk is a monster bully on the loose, but he can only get his way if we let him.*
Some of the houses destroyed by fire in Los Angeles belong to media celebrities.
The loss of a celebrity's home is not a worse blow than the loss of someone else's home. On the contrary, the celebrity may be wealthy enough to have another home elsewhere already, and perhaps can afford to rebuild what was lost, except for some valuable art.
But these celebrities may be in a position to make the public aware that "This can happen to you, and probably will happen some day if we don't curb global heating."
Former British soldiers who were in Afghanistan testified in a government inquiry. At least one testified there was a policy of killing any Afghan men who were encountered in the field.
A Japanese gangster is charged with trying to sell fissionable materials. (Also drugs, but that is not what's noteworthy.)
It seems to me that the crucial question is where it came from. What country that can make large quantities of fissionable material is selling them or losing them?
*Six [biggest] US banks quit net zero alliance before [the wrecker's] inauguration.*
There was always a chance that it would be hard to make the banks keep their commitments — that they were giving only lip service to avoiding global disaster. That chance has now become certainty.
I recommend moving your money out of those banks and into smaller ones. Those banks were also among those directly to blame for the 2008 fiscal crisis. I moved my money out of one of them around then.
They are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs. JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo
*The "winners" of the annual Shkreli Awards — named after notorious "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli and given to the 10 "worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare" — include a Texas medical school that sold body parts of deceased people without relatives' consent, an alleged multi billion-dollar catheter scam, an oncologist who subjected patients to unnecessary cancer treatments, and a "monster monopoly" insurer.*
21st-century fires are more dangerous because of several different effects of global heating, working together.
Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes in the LA fires. This will cause a regional housing shortage and make thousands homeless.
The corrupter has been sentenced, for 34 felony convictions, to … no punishment at all.
The Department of Justice has released a report on a new investigation of the Tulsa race massacre.
This report presents concretely the cruelty and hatred that racism inspires. It was not the only such racist mob attack in US history, but it was perhaps the largest. There are right-wing extremists today who would like to commit more.
Ironically, 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 which report on worse cases of bigotry, and the massacre surely is worse.
Robert Reich forecasts that the wrecker will use the LA climate disaster as an opportunity to attack California, which he hates because it votes Democratic.
The impeached president of South Korea lives in a fortress guarded by his personal guard corps, who won't allow cops in. The parliament wonders how to arrest him.
I suggest passing a law to cut off the salaries of his guards. Then they could allow only adequate but boring food in.
The Lancet estimates that Israel's bombardment of Gaza had killed around 65,000 people as of last June.
They estimate that over 60% of the dead were noncombatants.
This figure does not try to include deaths causes by the siege, or people buried under rubble. Palestinians have reported thousands of specific people they believed to be buried in the rubble of specific buildings.
*2024 was hottest year on record for world’s land and oceans, US scientists confirm.*
How building houses in areas of frequent fire within LA built up the conditions for worse fires.
It could be that leaving some areas vacant would help protect the rest of the city from fire. But not necessarily.
The end to fire suppression in certain areas would cause more frequent fire in those areas. Those would not directly harm anyone if the areas were uninhabited — but these fires have been spread by burning embers which can travel a long way. It could be that the frequent fires in those areas would spread each time to inhabited parts of the city.
I can see the question, but I don't know enough to propose an answer.
Building all buildings so that they have nothing flammable on the outside would make them safe. Eliminating all trees would help too.
Is anyone working on a fire-extinguishing robot? To have 10,000 of those in the LA area would be expensive, but it might be worth the cost.
US citizens: call on the FDIC to release findings from probes into executives of failed banks.
The United Nations human rights committee decided that Australia violated the human rights of refugees by sending them to Nauru, essentially for life.
This decision was published almost 24 years after Australia started sending refugees there. The committee warned other countries that they too would be violators if they shirked their responsibility to asylum seekers by outsourcing the handling of them.
A fire destroyed 5,000 buildings in Pacific Palisades, part of Los Angeles. 5,000 more buildings have been destroyed in other parts of LA.
Global heating is affecting the US to the point where Americans even in major urban areas are in danger. And the world overall, too.
The only way to stop this from getting steadily worse is to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Biden tried to make a start at that in the Inflation Reduction Act, but after 2021 Republican opposition solidified and he could not do more.
I expect the bullshitter to scapegoat Biden for not doing enough (never mind who prevented him from doing more), while pushing useless measures that won't reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
How heating-caused climate changes, and others, helped to trigger the Arab Spring in 2011, as an example of what global heating does to political situations.
It is illegal in the UK for thugs to retain photos of people who were arrested if they were not charged with a crime. But it seems that thugs regularly do this and use it for facial recognition.
Spain is considering a law requiring whoever posts fake news to publish a correction.
A law like this is good if it is not misused. The danger is that a repressive government is surely going to try to misuse it. The bullshitter often calls reports of truth that criticizes him "fake news". If the US had that law he would surely try to use it to censor truthful criticism of him.
Roman mining activities put a substantial amount of lead into the air, which shows up in Arctic ice cores. This could have reduced the average IQ by up to 3 points.
That decrease could have had an effect on society overall.
If this atmospheric lead arrived in the Arctic, it may have arrived in Asia and North America too. So the effect could have reached there too. However, it is also possible that the level of lead in the Arctic was less than in Europe.
Maybe it would have reached parts of Africa and South America too. I don't know enough to say whether this was likely to result.
An article calls on the Labour Party to further de-prioritize poor people in general to focus narrowly on voters who graduated university but couldn't get a decent job afterward.
It might be a good strategy for getting reelected, if we take for granted that Labour won't do what Britain really needs: to tax the rich and enable all non-rich Britons to have a better life.
An instigator of the racist riots in the UK some months ago has been sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.
The US government needs to make sure to do this reliably in response to efforts to intimidate voters or lawful election campaigners. If it had responded vigorously in 2020 when a mob of magats besieged a Democratic campaign bus, perhaps magats would not have been so ready to attack the Capitol on Jan 6.
Predicting that the wrecker will feel "second album pressure" to commit outrages that top what he did in the past.
Predicting that the corrupter will systematically undermine and weaken efforts to enforce US laws against corporations that break them.
*EPA to require municipal waste incinerators monitor for toxic emissions.*
This is a very good idea, and should have been adopted many years ago. I speculate that it was delayed by opposition by business.
*The Los Angeles wildfires are climate disasters compounded.*
Remember the insane rigidity of UK punishment of climate-defense protests, which is bent on repressing climate protesters and will punish them even for unintentional failure to comply. The root of this cruelty is a fundamental wrong decision not to recognize the magnitude of the crime that fossil fuel companies are committing.
*Kurdish general urges [the fascist] to leave US troops in north-east Syria.*
If Russia were still contending for power in Syria, Putin would have told him not to do this. But Putin may have little influence now over decisions about Syria.
The European court of human rights found Greece guilty of secretly carrying out deportations of refugees seeking asylum, in violation of European human rights treaties.
In January 2025, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram will replace fact-checking with a system of not-really-checking similar to what ex-Twitter does.
The announcement was made in ways that signaled the intent to become a loyal part of the corrupter's tame media organizations.
That article also argues that "social media" fact checking was never very effective. (I have no experience with it so I don't know whether that was true.) It further argues that result was inevitable, but I don't see that that claim is sustained there, so I am skeptical that anyone can know whether this is true.
See Facebook.html for many other reasons to refuse to be used by Facebook.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to reject H.R.9495, the bill that would make it easy to strip a nonprofit organization of tax-exempt status administratively, bypassing trial.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Climate crisis "wreaking havoc" on Earth’s water cycle, report finds.*
Most kinds of physical crime have decreased steadily in Britain (and likewise the US) since the start of this century. So why do most people think crime is going up?
A few kinds of crime, such as theft of portable phones and shoplifting, have increased, but the total has decreased enormously.
New pun: The swarm of gnats
Can the bully silence the US mainstream media? It looks like he is already succeeding.
*Firms that donated to Republican party avoided tariffs in [the corrupter]'s first term.*
Republicans don't miss a chance to extract the moral equivalent of a bribe.
Labour has retreated from another plan to accelerate decarbonization with a deadline date.
I can understand the pressure to do this. Such changes always cost money. They may reduce the income of some businesses, which generally oppose the change by cherry-picking and exaggeration. Once a government decides to keep the country poor by allowing some individuals to be giga-rich, it keeps encountering a "need" to abandon the attempt.
Pushing for requiring new hybrid cars to have chargers.
A Washington Post editorial cartoonist quit because, for the first time, she was told that a political topic was off limits.
The topic that was forbidden was that of billionaire executives going to Mar-a-lago to swear fealty to the corrupter.
More examples: Amazon, and "Open" "AI", have joined the parade of big companies that are donating to the glorification of the corrupter -- what the cartoonist was going to criticize. These donations are not, strictly speaking, bribes, since they don't go to the corrupter personally. But they are the moral equivalent of bribes. They demonstrates how the corrupter has made corruption normal.
*Burning waste is not the way to move the UK towards a circular economy.*
The Taliban are inviting foreign tourists, and there is no sign that they refuse in revulsion against the total oppression and segregation of women.
Jan 6 is a date that will live in infamy, unless the wrecker intimidates commemoration of it.
We need a name to help each other remember it by. The only one I can think of is "Coup defeat day". Watch out: the wrecker and the muskrat will try to celebrate the coup as heroism in a perverted idea of patriotism.
There are crucial differences between hardware and software, This will not come as a surprise to you, but based on them I conclude that it makes no sense under present circumstances to talk about "free hardware". What does make sense as a concept is "free hardware designs".
That article addresses many issues about freedom raised by digital hardware.
13 of the world's principal oil export ports will be put out of action by 1 meter of sea level rise, which could happen as soon as 2070.
However, if it gets as far as 1 meter of sea level rise, lots of other things will be going very wrong too. And the rise won't stop then. Even worse, oil companies could make replacement ports and go on flooding the world's coastal cities.
Ohio, ruled by Republicans, will charge a fee to look at thugs' body camera footage. That will interfere with checking whether the thugs were honest.
Two tourists from London went to Dubai with their families, and had a holiday romance. Then one was arrested because the other was not legally "old enough".
This is one of many reasons to stay away from Dubai.
When building "new towns", design them to be easy to live in without a car.
Reminder: don't assume everyone can ride a bike.
South Korea's recently impeached president is wanted for arrest for insurrection, but the question of how to arrest him has raised a constitutional crisis.
The UK government proposes to burn more garbage instead of some of the fossil fuels.
That produces as much CO2, as well as random mixture of toxic pollutants. So I think it is more harmful even than coal. As far as I can see, the only advantage is that the garbage is cheaper than fossil fuels. That suggests this is an example of short-term thinking by the government, instead of the long-term planning that is crucial for survival
Aside from the materials that can be put to better use immediately if separated, a landfill may be the best alternative. Not perfect: harmful substances (some toxic, some planet-roasting) do seep out. But they emerge over a much longer period, and a substantial fraction may not get out.
I wonder if the UK has a searchable national register of all proposed projects that would need planning permission. I think every country should have one.
The UK has authorized a cooperative to operate trains on the national train tracks alongside money-extraction corporations. But it won't operate until 2026.
This may prove to be a good solution. It will certainly treat its workers better. However, a worker-owned cooperative does not automatically treat passengers better, and there is no assurance that it will respect travelers' privacy more than any other train operator.
*10m trees to be planted in US to replace ones destroyed by hurricanes.*
If the hurricanes were a freak one-off event, this would correct the damage. But since they represent a new normal, there will be more hurricanes and many of these new trees won't live very long.
Generally, repairing damage from local climate disasters cannot substitute for curbing the global heating that regularly causes worse disasters.
Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas confronted Erdoğan, and now has advice for Americans about how to confront the corrupter.
The US deportation thugs hastily arrested and deported a US citizen's wife for missing an immigration appointment. She missed the appointment because she suddenly started to give birth to US citizen children.
Anyone who is so heartless and rigid as to make a decision like that should not be in a position to make such consequential decisions. Doing so merits punishment.
The punishment for the first such offense should be publicly begging for forgiveness. For the second offense, dismissal.
Thug departments in the UK were found to have surveilled journalists in recent years for investigating accusations of misconduct by thugs. How much more have they done this?
Unmarried foreign domestic workers in Salafi Arabia that have babies cannot ever bring their children home with them because Salafi Arabia punishes them for their parents' "sin" by forbidding them to leave. It also denies those children all normal rights, including schooling.
Many of these women are effectively trapped there too, because they will not abandon their children.
This shows the vicious nature of religious condemnation of sex and pleasure.
It seems incomprehensible that Salafi Arabia despises these children while forcing them to remain there. But perhaps the practical result is that they are compelled to spend their lives working underground at low-pay menial jobs. That must be convenient for powerful people in Salafi Arabia.
On filling the gap that makes for "existential boredom" with finding out what really matters to you.
One kind of thing that you might find really matters to you is making a free and just society. There are many ways of working for that goal, one of them being the free software movement. Maybe one of them will give meaning to your life.
Bringing Americans back, once again, to condemning the rich for impoverishing the rest of us.
The New Orleans terrorist murder endorsed fanatical Muslim views condemning music and lewdness, as well as alcohol.
Islam prohibits drinking alcohol in even small quantities. Mainstream Islam does not condemn music, but there is a long history in the Muslim world of extremist movements that prohibit all music. The Almurabitun and Almohad empires which conquered Morocco, and most of what is now Spain in the 11th century and 12th century, prohibited music. ISTR that the Taliban did so before 2001, and maybe they do that again today.
Most Muslims think that is crazy.
*6th Circuit Wrongly Rejects Federal Jurisdiction Over Essential Broadband Internet Access Services.*
This wipes out federal network neutrality regulations, unless the extreme court resurrects them. Those regulations are inadequate to really protect internet users' freedom, but it was better than nothing. Now there is nothing to limit how ISPs in the US restrict users for their profit.
When the corrupter was president before, he launched an investigation into congresscritters and staff, and some journalists, and the Department of Justice disregarded its rules for such investigations.
Suggesting that we are in an "anti-politics" age which leans towards irrational rage as the way to express resentment with politics.
Here is more about the murderer that the article refers to.
A magat got out of his car to violently attack a TV reporter working on the street in Colorado, saying he was attacking on behalf of the fascist leader.
It appears the attacker knew nothing specific about that reporter except his appearance, which indicated non-European ancestry.
Due to crush-the-poor economics, millions of Britons are suffering from serious vitamin deficiencies. Due to policies crested by Tories but not yet fixed by Labour, many cannot afford a balanced diet.
Awards for companies for especially cruel and nasty customer disservice.
I suspect that this behavior results from having too few human staff in charge of correcting such errors, so that they are under pressure to insist that whatever the computer did must be correct.
Robert Reich describes being squeezed between the contemptuous service of United Airlines and the contemptuous service of Hilton Hotels.
That is no coincidence. this is the natural result of the use of lots of computers that impose unpredictable decisions and complex rules and shaft the customer for any failure to satisfy them.
I think this is natural, though not self-evidence, consequence of digitalization — which means we should oppose it on general principles.
When Israeli soldiers attacked and wrecked the Kamal Adnan hospital, they arrested Dr. Abu Safiya (and other medical personnel).
If he is not freed soon, he could emerge mentally and physically damaged by torture. This has happened to another hospital director that Israel imprisoned.
Bernie Sanders: tasks that must be part of fixing the dysfunctional US medical system.
The list includes fixing other parts of society which tend to cause bodily or mental illness.
Activists are apologizing to Jimmy Carter for condemning him as "antisemitic" in 2006, when he described the occupation of Palestine as operating a system of "apartheid".
I did not read Carter's book, but when I saw that Desmond Tutu said the same, I trusted him, an expert on confronting apartheid, to judge the question right.
Israeli peace leader Uri Avnery went further: he compared Israel's efforts to make the West Bank empty of Palestinians to Hitler's efforts to make Germany and its conquests empty of Jews. I trusted him, one who had seen Hitler's repression of Jews close up as a youth in Germany, to judge the question right.
Remembering Jimmy Carter's work for peace and democracy after his term as president.
The reason he was not reelected seems to be that Republicans made a deal with Iran so that they would refuse to make a deal with the US government to free the US embassy hostages until after the 1980 election.
Carter was not a pacifist. He sent US troops to rescue the hostages. It was not his fault that some of the aircraft collided while on the way.
The muskrat published an article supporting Germany's extreme right-wing party, that has semi-underground Nazi sympathizers.
Hundreds of thousands of electric cars made by Volkswagen (including its subsidiaries, Audi, SEAT and Skoda) were reporting the car's movements to the company. Sometimes security breaches in the cloudy servers Volkswagen uses allow others to get the data too.
Bizarrely, the author is not outraged at Volkswagen's snooping, not that itself. Perse seems to think that would be ok, if only Volkswagen had taken care not to let others, even others unknown to Volkswagen, access the data too over the net.
And Volkswagen reassures the owners that where they went is not very sensitive information.
Of course, the most dangerous thing the car company can do with that data is give or sell it to the state, if the state is repressive (as many are).
If you own a "connected" car, be sure to engage a mechanic to deactivate the antennas that enable it to (1) receive GPS (and therefore remember the location for the next servicing) and (2) make radio transmissions (whose location of origin are tracked).
Owners of connected cars should organize to demand that manufacturers let the owners deactivate these malfeatures. If the manufacturer makes it necessary for you to trust them not to tell others where you went, it is already mistreating you.
It won't take long for the voters who voted for he bullshitter to see that what Republicans are doing is harming them terribly. At that point, they will organize to thwart and defeat Republicans. Therefore we can expect the Republicans to act forcefully to suppress dissent and protest.
It occurs to me that the law-twisting repression of protests on behalf of Palestinians will turn out to have been great preparation for repressing protests on behalf of non-rich Americans, non-white Americans, and unwillingly pregnant Americans.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the muskrat from attacking Social Security.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An anchor-drag trace on the seabed shows that the electricity cable from Finland to Estonia was intentionally attacked.
If the only ship that was in a position to do it at that time and place was the Eagle S, it must have been that ship. Other ships must have been crossing the cable, but if they crossed it at other points they could not have been responsible for the sabotage.
It seems to me that countries must armor their undersea cables to make sabotage physically more difficult. The method needs to be cheap compared with the cable. Not being an expert, I can only speculate. Putting a meter or two of boulders over the cable might work, or maybe concrete blocks with holes to lift them by.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Russ Vought as head of the Office of Management and Budget.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the next DNC chair to rebuild the Democratic Party for the working class.
*One of the few doctors still working in northern Gaza has been taken to an Israeli prison and his hospital shut down, his family believe.*
Destroying and shutting Gaza's hospitals is an atrocity by itself. It has to be deliberate, because otherwise the result would not be the same for all the hospitals.
Warning that companies that collect personal data might draw conclusions about what you might do in the future, and sell those predictions.
US citizens: call on postal officials to protect the Green Trucks project.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers 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. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Iran has intensified its persecution of "indecency" to the utmost degree. People who show themselves on recordings in a way the regime calls "indecent" can be executed. Anyone who fails to join in repression faces persecution.
Iran's regime has been weakened in international power rivalry by the fall of Assad, but that doesn't mean its repression is in danger of tottering. I can't foresee that it will fall, but I will cheer when it falls.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass protections for journalists before the wrecker takes office.
Was it just to conclude that Ibrahima Bah was guilty of killing the other refugees who were passengers in the overloaded rubber raft that he piloted?
I think it depends purely and simply on whether it is true that the smuggler gang threatened to kill him if he refused. If that did that, we can't blame him for obeying, given that his other choice was to say, "No, kill me and choose someone else." But if that was a lie and they did not force him, then he is responsible for joining in the crime.
That conclusion may be disappointing if there is no way to find out whether his claim is true or not. But that's not a justification for choosing a different conclusion.
I find his claim plausible -- I've read that (at least some) smugglers regularly force one of the customers to pilot the boat.
Palau established a large and effective marine protection zone, but population pressure is leading to pressure to reduce the size of it.
That is a short-termist "solution" which doesn't solve anything in the long term. Perhaps Palau needs to limit the numbers of people (inhabitants and visitors both).
The US accuses Iran of arresting Italian journalist Cecilia Sala as a hostage to procure the release of an Iranian accused by the US of violating sanctions on drone components.
I will not join in pressuring Italy or the US to trade that prisoner for Sala.
Apple Stupidity "summarized" BBC news with a grossly false statement.
Perhaps all publications partly written by bullshit generators should be required to display prominent warnings saying, "This was generated by a bullshit generator. Parts may be true; parts may be false."
Israel is forcing all Palestinians out of northern Gaza, piece by piece
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