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.
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.
Protest on Labor Day (Monday, Sept. 1). Protest again on Sept. 20 (Saturday). These are nation-wide protests to demand we make billionaires pay for the damage and harm they are doing with help from the repressive government.
US citizens: call for stopping fast-tracked mining projects that threaten wildlife.
US citizens: Become a grassroots co-sponsor of the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act.
US citizens: Stop the wrecker's plan to burn up NASA's climate watchdogs.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the persecutor's military takeover of Washington D.C.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on HUD to continue offering translation services to people in their official requests and transactions.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 may be planning to send soldiers into US cities on election day in 2026, to ensure that his urban supporters find it hard to vote.
This would go with his order for states to eliminate voting by mail. Eliminating that would make it harder for many marginalized citizens to vote. Democratic states will cite the Constitution to reject the order, but I can imagine that Republican-controlled states will eagerly take up this opportunity for additional voter suppression.
National guard troops sent to Washington DC are being used for cruelty against US citizens (homeless ones) as well as non-citizens.
Right-wing movements in parts of Canada are imposing restrictions on schools and libraries to keep children ignorant about many aspects of sex. Among the books to be banned is 1984.
Greg Palast writes about helping to rescue people from the wreckage caused by Hurricane Katrina. FEMA was debilitated at the time because Dubya and the Republicans did not treat it as a priority. FEMA employees recently published an open letter warning Americans that the saboteur in chief has weakened FEMA, and this could turn the next disaster into a super-disaster.
The bully demands states delete mention of trans people from their sex education curricula, or he will deny them the funds for sex education. Republican-ruled states will rush to obey, and I see no way of stopping them. But what about state governments that disagree?
It is foolish to yield to such bullying, because the extortionist will still have the threat in hand and will demand more, more and more.
A better response is a counter-threat. For instance, how about adding the case of E Jean Carroll and Trump to the sex education syllabus?
That example could be used to clarify various aspects of the issue of varieties of forced sexual acts and how they might be prosecuted.
Breed beavers intelligent enough to understand why they should not mess with a dike?
Australia is trying to abolish it's counterpart of the US concept of "due process of law", as regards deportation. Australia has a long history of flat-out cruelty to people who are looking for asylum.
The deportation thugs arrested firemen for deportation from the site where they were fighting the largest wildfire in Washington State.
The CDC is in chaos after being attacked by crazed, corrupt Republican officials. They tried to fire the newly confirmed head of the CDC, Susan Monarez, but she says they lack the authority to do so — that only the saboteur in chief can do it. Apparently she believes that the magat officials who fired her are at odds with the leader they serve. I can't see how to make sense of this situation. There is no one in it that I can presume to be loyal to Americans and to rationality.
*How Student Protesters and Immigrants Became Targets of Trump’s Surveillance Tech.*
* A new generation of Democrats is deeply unhappy with the entrenched political establishment. So they’re going to try to take it over.*
I support this movement. Instead of the DCCC, which supports plutocratist Democrats, I donate to the Progressive Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps progressive Democrats get elected to replace plutocratist Democrats.
* Research tracking about 200 women found those who had at least two miscarriages had higher levels of [PFAS] in their blood.*
I have mixed feelings about this effect. On the one hand, I don't wish a miscarriage on anyone. On the other, this is a bad time to be born and it is almost certainly going to get worse.
On the 19th century poor but capable English boy whose childhood memoir inspired Oliver Twist.
*Heatwave that fueled deadly wildfires was Spain's "most intense on record."*
The flunky that the bully put in charge of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is using his power to threaten opposition officials with charges of crimes.
It is not absolutely impossible that the charges are valid. But when someone makes false accusations habitually, as the bully does, an accusation from him or his henchman is not worth taking seriously.
If he has a valid case to make, I suppose we will see it eventually. Unless and until proved, we should dismiss it.
*Egyptian Officials in New York Beat Two Gaza Protesters on Video. The NYPD Arrested the Protesters.*
I suppose the Egyptian thugs have diplomatic immunity, so the NYC thugs could not have arrested them. The way the system is supposed to work is that the US government would expel those thugs, or threaten to, and thus keep their violent tendency within bounds.
Alas, the bully won't permit that — he prefers the tyrannical government of Egypt in which thugs can beat or kill anyone who criticizes the state.
Nick Clegg, British former "centrist" politician, afterward worked for Facebook. He reports a general attitude of self-pity among the rich executives. "It is a cultural thing, through from Elon Musk's chainsaw-wielding stuff to any Silicon Valley podcast. If you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
Global heating effects are starting to interfere with mass international tourism, which is a substantial contributor to global heating.
The bully had to backtrack from freezing billions in education funding to various states that responded by suing.
Some parents in Washington DC are scared to bring their children to school, scared that the deportation thugs will use it as an opportunity to seize them to deport them.
Teachers say the school department has given them no help or guidance.
I walked to school when I was 6 years old, in a much bigger city with a higher crime rate, and crime did not come near me. The schoolchildren of DC could walk to school on their own just as I did, if our society permitted parents to permit them to do so — if it had not started persecuting parents who let their children do anything without supervision.
*[The bully] needs to understand what the war in Ukraine is really about. It's not about NATO or the Soviet Union. It’s about democracy.*
I think the bully already understands that, but he wants to do away with democracy.
US citizens: tell Costco’s Board of Directors and CEO Ron Vachris: Don’t cave to extremists. Allow your pharmacies to carry mifepristone nationwide now.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins to protect access to abortion care for all veterans.
US citizens: call on politicians to stop taking AIPAC money: demand your representatives reject AIPAC's right-wing billionaire brand of politics.
*Danish zoo asks pet owners to donate rabbits and horses (that need to be euthanized) to feed its predators.* Many predators can't eat much of anything except meat. Normally they eat the meat of animals that were raised only for that.
It is less wasteful if they eat animals that lived for some other purpose and had to be euthanized for other reasons.
The ACLU accuses the US of keeping reported Mario Guevara in jail to silence him.
The US is tracking financial payments to find people to deport. The deportation thugs could do this with bank card payments, too. (The bully's henchmen can disregard and flatten privacy laws.) The targets do not have to be limited to people who entered the US without authorization. They could apply it also to people like Mahmoud Khalil, who are in the US lawfully but committed the "crime" of criticizing Israel's war crimes, or El Supremo himself.
It was first predicted in the 1970s that a widely used trackable digital payment system would be a tool for repression and tyranny. Nowadays we can see this in practice in China. The bully's order for all federal government departments to give all their personal data to the DOPE, and to Palantir, is preparing to use data mining to find anything the bully disapproves of, even if lawful or constitutionally protected, to generate an excuse to persecute.
The basic grass-roots way to resist this is to pay cash.
Proposing solar power satellites again. In the 1980s, I was part of the L-5 Society, which campaigned for solar power satellites. It is too bad they were not built.
27 countries, including UK, Germany and Australia, demanded that Israel open Gaza to foreign journalists. That is a start, but to make Israel do that, they will need to put pressure on.
*Marjorie Taylor Greene joins Bernie Sanders in urging US to end Gaza famine.* This is an amazing surprise. If Greene pushes for this alongside Sanders, it could make a big difference to the chance of convincing the persecutor.
Alas, on the even more important issue of whether the US will have arbitrary rule or rule by democratic laws, Greene is still on the wrong side.
Gangs of violent racists in Belfast have switched from violent harassment of women to violent harassment of nonwhites. Racists are also ganging up to harass and threaten asylum seekers in London.
Ecuadorian asylum seekers, rejected, were deported — after being held incommunicado in a secret location until the flight.
*Light pollution causes urban birds to stay awake for a longer part of each day, study finds.*
*UK Lawyers for Israel accused of sending "vexatious and legally baseless" letters to silence support for Palestine.*
*Far-right anger over asylum hotels is destroying the very idea of refuge — and that's probably the goal.*
US citizens: call on your state attorney general to keep the military off America's streets.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the bully's nominee to take charge of wrecking the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
US citizens: Stand with scientists against the new denialist US climate report.
Sánchez, prime minister of Spain, is connecting the current wave of fires with global heating. That is better than most governments dare do, but it is not sufficient.
Fires, floods, diseases and crop failures are symptoms of global heating. To focus on the symptoms rather than their motor is asking to lose! To cope with global heating will keep getting harder as long as we keep making the problem worse,
Sánchez should talk about the core of the job, not solely its edges.
(satire) *Trump Rushed To Walter Reed To Watch Breast Exam.*
At a conference on so-called "artificial intelligence", the wrecker's Secretary of the Interior denounced renewable energy and lauded "incredibly clean" coal-fired electric generators. The president of Google responded by cheering.
Privatized prisons' subcontracted medical subcontractors make extra money by not doing actual medical treatment — It's cheaper to make excuses. But some of them were sued and lost.
Whoever runs the prison should be 100% responsible for the quality of medicines provided to prisoners there. And that should be a government agency, not a business.
The end-Permian great extinction wiped out nearly all life on Earth, after 300,000 years of super volcanoes had caused great but lesser disaster, when hot magma set huge underground fossil fuel deposits on fire. The resulting CO2 is what caused almost total extinction.
We are emitting CO2 much faster than the Earth can recycle it. By continuing that for a long enough time, we might cause another almost total extinction.
To cause an event at the usual level of mass extinction, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, pterosaurs and trilobites, is much easier. Some mammals might survive after that.
*US health agency workers accuse RFK Jr of fueling violence against them.*
Rhetoric of violent hatred tends to encourage a fraction of the public to hate the target. A fraction of them will go to the point of harassment. A fraction of them will commit battery. A fraction of them will inflict grave wounds or even kill.
I am sure the persecutor knows he is fomenting deadly violence against all his favorite groups to hate.
*Federal Court Blocks Texas Law Requiring Ten Commandments in Every Public School Classroom.*
A few years ago, this would have been so predictable as to attract little news coverage. That it merits news reports is a measure of how far Christian fanaticism has dragged the US away from basic human rights and its constitution.
*Wildfire smoke [is 14 times] more dangerous to health than [was] thought.*
US citizens: call on the FCC to preserve the limits on how many broadcast channels one owner can own.
US citizens: Protect access to abortion and contraception.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate and shut down abusive deportation prisons.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
In one band of capuchin monkeys, some males seize baby howler monkeys and carry them around, almost as pets. Alas, they have not come up with a way to keep the howler babies alive — for instance, food that can replace their mothers' milk.
This leads me to wonder how (and whether) male capuchin monkeys normally interact with baby capuchin monkeys. Do they have a paternal instinct?
Google Search output now starts with summaries produced by a bullshit generator. Sometimes that directs people to a scammer instead of the business the user is searching for.
*Press Lawsuit Against DHS Reveals Pattern of Excessive Force Against Journalists.* Especially by the deportation thugs.
Greg Palast: Dubya fed the disaster of Hurricane Katrina by privatizing the development of emergency evacuation plans. As often happens, the contractors increased their profit by skimping on the job.
The saboteur in chief is simply following the standard privatize-and-screw-the-public, in a more blatantly contemptuous way.
Judge Lawrence Vilardo: *Mata Velasquez followed all the rules. On the other hand, the government changed the rules by fiat, applied them retroactively, and pulled the rug out from under Mata Velasquez and many like him who tried to do things the right way.*
It is a joy to see a judge stand up for justice and explain that duty in a way that does bury the importance of the point at stake.
*Now, the New York Civil Liberties Union and other organizations have sued [the bully's henchmen], seeking to end the practice of courthouse arrests nationwide.*
The wrecker's assault on democracy is moving, step by step, to establish the US army as a system for brutal political repression of the whole population. He has already prepared the highest ranks for this.
I think it follows that Americans should refuse to join the armed forces.
The other possible strategy would be to join and hope to "change the system from within". I expect that many young Americans will feel attracted to that. But it has little chance of success, because only a tiny fraction of soldiers will ever become generals, and only the highest of generals influence decisions like these. As long as an authoritarian regime carefully makes sure all of them are loyal and obedient to the emperor, no one rising through the ranks of generals will be invited to join them.
However, because some young Americans will join the military, it is important to develop study methods for them to build the strength to reject illegal orders, and to recognize their highest commanders as their country's worst enemies.
Gabbard has purged the US intelligence officials who investigated Russian interference with the 2016 election. They are being punished for the offense of being loyal to their country rather to the bullshitter.
This wrong serves two practical purpose. First, one way to keep the magats believing the bullshit is by consistently behaving as if it were true. Second, punishing officials for loyalty to their country pressures and trains those who remain to discard any shred of that patriotic loyalty.
The acting US attorney for the Northern District of New York listed an apparently false residence address so as to appear eligible for the position. A newspaper reported on this, and he retaliated against that newspaper.
This is not just a one-off. Such bullying is the watchword of the US government when and where it is deformed by the saboteur in chief. This is one of the basic reasons he is unfit for any public office.
Q: What do you call a famous person's brief appearance which is so quick and disguised that nobody notices it?
Q: What do you call deleting a star's appearances from a recording?
See cameos in puns.
What's the nastiest thing in the church?
US citizens: call on the DNC to get dark money out of Democratic primaries.
A human writes about how conversing with a chatbot was useful therapy for him, partly because he knew it did not have emotions. Remembering that was helped by the fact that it never made statements which seemed to claim it had real emotions.
It is not clear that he recognized that the chatbot didn't have real understanding either.
We have known since the Eliza program that even a very skimpy imitation of a human psychotherapist can elicit the reactions people are accustomed to giving to a human therapist.
Prohibition of abortion facilitates and protects rape, coercive sexual relationships, and abusive relationships. And this may be exactly what fanatical Christians want.
Tony Aguilar, Lt. Colonel (ret), signed up to work for the Israeli "humanitarian" food distribution in Gaza. He testifies to the inhumanity of the system, and the killings of individual Palestinians, both of which he witnessed personally.
During the weeks he worked there, on all the many occasions the ex-soldiers fired shots, he never once observed Palestinians seeking food to be armed or to pose a threat. There was never any justification for firing at or near Palestinians, but that happened regularly,
Surgeons in Gaza keep removing from wounded patients the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers, which matches their testimony.
Protester Mylene Vialard was convicted of resisting the Line 3 pipeline. The Minnesota appeals court has now overturned that verdict based on pervasive prosecutorial misconduct.
This means Vialard might get a new trial. Or the state can drop the charges.
AMLO, while president of Mexico, lifted 10% of the population out of poverty with a big raise in the minimum wage.
The bully is doing several things that can dissuade or prevent foreign students from attending US universities.
This is not just a way of hurting foreigners and reducing their numbers. It is also a way of damaging universities — by reducing their income.
This illustrates how the persecutor has this time lined up clever and unscrupulous advisers who don't feel limited by any kind of justice to people.
Having cops respond to crimes is necessary, but doubling the cops is not the effective way to reduce crime.
The corrupter has established a list of "loyal" companies to make the selling of influence more systematic.
I hope they publish the list, so that we can use it to find the full list of toadies.
(satire) *DHS Offers $1,000 Stipend To Migrants Who Voluntarily Self-Destruct.*
(satire) *Starbase Named Best City to Start Family with Boss*
The wrecker's cuts to the US Forest Service budget are interfering with its response to this summer's fires. The damage done by the Muskrat's poisonous DOSE are hurting too.
(satire) *JD Vance Booed By Own Reflection In Mirror.*
A clear example of the right-wing method to manipulate idiots: to firm up their rejection of the facts, blatantly deny those facts.
Musk had ex-Twitter censor, and then ban, a journalist who published embarrassing leaked material about Vance.
The British National Health Service is about to start using a so-called "AI tool" to fill out paperwork about patients, reporting whether they are well enough to leave the hospital. The aim is to save the time of doctors and speed the discharge of patients who are ready to be discharged.
If the program's task is to draw straightforward conclusions from boxes checked, a program could do that reliably. But if it calls for human-like understanding, and the program is a sort of LLM, it will often make ridiculous mistakes. Having the medical system depend on it would be a grave error. The mistakes may seem ridiculous but people won't laugh at their consequences.
General Haliva, former head of Israel's military intelligence, said that HAMAS's killing of 1200 Israelis on Oct 7 justifies killing 50 times that number of Palestinian noncombatants, simply as retribution.
The idea of punishing a war crime by committing another crime is exactly the idea that HAMAS followed. It is vicious and unacceptable for anyone anywhere, and that includes Israel.
Israel is about to start yet another war crime: forcing a million people out of Gaza City.
To expel that many people, many suffering from starvation, wounds and disease, is sure to kill a substantial fraction. Just to move those people safely would require careful attention to treating them gently. The Israeli army is likely to choose methods that weakened people can't cope with, and cause mass manslaughter.
The magat head of the NIH justifies cutting research funds for RNA vaccines based on a lack of "public trust" in them.
There is a lack of public trust, which antivaxxers have labored for years to create. However, he presumes it is due to a supposed shortcoming of the vaccines themselves.
*The careers of Sturgeon, Merkel and Ardern show how foolish it is to idealize leaders just for being women.*
I don't even think of judging a candidate by per gender. What difference would that make? The mold I want politicians to break is the one that forbids disappointing the rich.
Scientists are categorizing the species of fungi that link the trees in various surviving forests with a view to helping to reestablish long-lost forests.
I hope the UK does not prosecute the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks for "supporting terrorism".
The current president of Indonesia, son of the murderous, authoritarian former ruler General Suharto, is running a secret government plan to rewrite the history of Indonesia.
Will the bullshitter try to do this to US history?
A new method of tracking people with video cameras could make a database of photos unnecessary. With enough cameras, it could track people everywhere all the time.
We need to regulate this, lest it usher in pervasive repression such as found in China.
A special unit in Israel's military intelligence looks for anything it can use to cast some Palestinian journalist or other as a HAMAS soldier, as a prepared excuse for killing him.
US schools are rapidly pushing students to interact with bullshit generators. Here are some kinds of harm it does.
Please don't call them "AI" — that is a marketing hype campaign.
If you fall in love with an online service, you may find that a change in the software running the service makes your lover less appealing.
Teenage Hong Kong dissident Chloe Cheung, now age 20 and living in the UK, faces life with a Chinese bounty on her and pressure on any other country she might visit.
The only rational response to such a situation is to cause as much trouble as you can get away with, to the dictators of China, Russia, and perhaps soon the US.
How Israel has calculated Gaza's food quota — first to make people somewhat hungry, and nowadays to starve them.
RFK Jr told the Annals of Internal Medicine to retract a research paper which found that there was no sign that aluminum in vaccines caused any harm to children who were vaccinated. The journal refused, saying that the paper is valid and RFK jr provided no evidence it was mistaken.
I wonder whether the bully will attack the journal's funding in hope of forcing it to blackwhite this criticism. That seems to be his attitude towards academia, and this journal is part of academia.
Hegseth is trying to force Christian extremism on the US military, perhaps preparing it to support the Giliad coup.
*UK special forces veterans accuse colleagues of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Former personnel describe soldiers exhibiting "psychopathic traits" and executions of handcuffed prisoners.* Also murdering civilians in their sleep, and planting weapons on them to disguise what they did to them.
This does not surprise me. Soldiers can build up great hatred against whoever they define as "the enemy". It is easy for this hatred to lead to torturing or murdering prisoners and civilians.
It's the commanders' responsibility to take a strong stand against this. That won't reduce the rate of war crimes to 0, but can keep it pretty low.
Fanatical right-wing churches break the law constantly by political campaigning, and the corrupter is encouraging them. Courts are considering this practice, and it will surely reach the right-wing Supreme Court.
Black Rock is starting to buy electric utilities in the US. If this happens in your city, it is bad news for you.
*Hello, Child! I’m Your New Best Friend, A.I. Barbie.*
Most people don't realize that calling itself "AI" is as manipulative as the rest of what it says. The first step to avoid supporting he manipulation is to refuse to call it that.
*[The persecutor] Is Trying to Make It Easier to Evict People From Public Housing.*
Put this together with his persecution of homeless people, and it looks like he seeks to scatter millions of Americans into a dispersal in which they could die a few at a time from hunger, cold, or lack of medical treatment.
Perhaps government agencies would then omit to record their deaths, so he could say that they disappeared without a trace.
*US universities’ settlements with Trump "will only fuel his authoritarian appetite." Experts say settlements worth hundreds of millions will further embolden US president’s use of "coercive tactics".*
Snow and ice normally contain microbes and even small animals. They feed on substances including methane, and which darken ice and thus cause the polar ice to melt faster. But they also reduce global heating by consuming methane.
I think scientists cannot yet estimate how this will affect the development of global heating.
US citizens: don't let the cheater and Congress rig the 2026 elections.
Ohio's Republican legislature, full of fanatical Christians, requires public school districts to pay for private school students' travel to their schools, giving them priority over public school students. Most of those schools are Christian schools.
As a result, many public school students must pay their own travel to school, which can mean suffering unjust (and expensive) methods such as Guber.
The US State Department has slanted its reports on human rights in other countries to accord with whether they serve the would-be emperor.
This goes with what he has done to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has also begun trying to alter its reporting to please him.
We will need to keep a list of corrupted US agencies and seek alternate sources for the information they were supposed to report.
Internet users are organizing to condemn YouTube's surveillance, which reportedly demands either a video of the user's face or per government ID.
Either one would identify the user, and identifying whoever looks at a page on web site is an injustice.
I access YouTube only through Tor, and only without running the site's nonfree Javascript (since that too can be used to identify and surveil). I did not encounter an identity check today, but the Serbian folk dance I looked at is presumably something even teenagers are allowed to watch.
(Please don't call 15-year-olds children! They are teenagers!)
The article talks about a petition on a site that requires running nonfree software. As a matter of principle I cannot sign that or promote it, even though I surely agree with most of it.
Is anyone reading this who can put such a petition on a site that allows signing without running nonfree software?
*Trump defense official led thinktank that spread [false accusations against] Tren de Aragua.* Specifically, false accusations about crimes in the US that did not happen at all.
Tren de Aragua may be a real gang, for all I know, and it may commit real crimes. The point is that it is being used by the persecutor's henchmen as an excuse for persecuting people who had no real connection with it, and committed no real crimes.
*Lula says [the wrecker] would be put on trial in Brazil if January 6 riots took place there.*
Bravo! He should have been tried for that here.
The saboteur in chief continues to promote anticompetitive actions that are bad for everyone but the monopolists.
*"Severe" staff shortages at US veterans’ hospitals, watchdog finds.*
*For nearly two years, Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid provided by the United Nations and other international organizations. The government has used that claim as its main rationale for restricting food from entering Gaza.
But the Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war, according to two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis involved in the matter.*
Israel's bombing of Evin political prison in Iran killed at least 80 people. That included political prisoners, visitors, and prison guards.
Israel had no military reason to attack the prison, so it seems to be a war crime.
After the bombing, the surviving guards took revenge on the surviving prisoners.
Spain's wealth tax is effective, and the threatened desperate exodus of rich people has not happened. Here is how it works.
US citizens: Message the White House Faith Office to condemn Trump’s treatment of migrants Trump’s Internment Camps are a moral stain on our nation.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 Secretary Burgum to revive the Lava Ridge Wind 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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 bully made a deal with the Mayor of DC, by which the mayor mostly regains control of the DC cops, but the bully's personal representative can order them to help in deportations.
It is not clear to me whether a victory by the DC government, in its lawsuit against the bully's takeover of the police, would end this agreement. If not, this agreement represents a surrender.
The Mayor of London reports that a 20 mph speed limit in large parts of London greatly reduced harm to pedestrians and reduced toxic emissions, without actually making car travel slower.
The article gives the explanation for that paradoxical result.
*The UK’s Online Safety Act is a license for censorship [and surveillance] – and the rest of the world is following suit.*
I should point out that surveillance and inaccessibility result from other causes.
For instance, some of the factual references in that article point to ex-Twitter, which the musk-rat made completely inaccessible to people who people who don't (1) run nonfree JavaScript code and (2) sign up. If you can find the specifics of these reports in a place that is accessible to all, please tell me the URL so I can post it.
If you want to make a link as a factual reference, and the only place to use is on ex-Twitter (or another site inaccessible in the Free World), please summarize the point enough so that we who can't follow the link can see the crucial points. That will normally take a few lines of text. The summaries in that article are nowhere near enough.
The bullshitter reports arranging a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
We can't assume what the bullshitter says is true, but it might be. Even if it is partly true, the deal may fall apart next week or next year.
If peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan lasts, that will be a change for the better. But these can hardly make up for the harm he has done and keeps doing.
There are also bad effects (though not enormous). Facilitating increased oil extraction and combustion, if that does follow, will harm the world. Further enriching the dictator of Azerbaijan is bad too.
Nonetheless, if this lasts, I will have to agree that once in a while the bullshitter does something good. However, it would be negligible compared with destroying democracy and the rule of law in the US and ensuring global heating disaster for the whole world.
*how a Brazilian newspaper has turned a city's [homeless people] into journalists.
Boston has a homeless people's paper, too, though I don't know whether it is entirely operated by such people. I generally buy a copy of each issue, if I pass a seller during that month.
I do that because I can pay cash. Whether it offers subscriptions, I don't know, but since paying for that requires identifying oneself and running nonfree JavaScript code on my computer, that I refuse on principle. I have no online subscriptions that require subscribers to identify themselves.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are spreading in Gaza.
If they are evolving more antibiotic resistance, they could spread around the world and put everyone in more danger. How ironic.
After firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for bearing bad news, he now wants to appoint someone who has displayed contempt for that agency.
If he gets to run it, he will make its figures deserve contempt.
The underminer is planning to impose ideological requirements in strict detail on the Smithsonian museums. Everything will be required to sustain his official political line.
This will create an opportunity to sell museum guides to explain what the museums will have distorted, falsified or covered up,
*Israel intensifies bombing of Gaza killing 89 within 24 hours.*
*Prominent Al Jazeera correspondent among five journalists killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza* which Israel admits was intentional.
Israel's killing of so many Palestinian journalists in Gaza, and its exclusion of all foreign journalists, amounts to a policy of hiding whatever the Israeli Army does in Gaza from he eyes of the world.
*Palestinian reporters killed and foreigners barred in Israel's battle for Gaza narrative.*
*Myanmar army [jailing] two-year-olds as proxies for parents, witnesses tell UN.*
The US has done something like this.
*Microsoft investigates Israeli military’s use of Azure cloud storage.*
This topic is full of irony. It wouldn't surprise me if the Israeli army uses these rented facilities to carry out atrocities, and Microsoft should not knowingly assist that. At the same time, the people who operate your servers have no business knowing what you are doing with them, and the aim of homomorphic encryption is to ensure that they can't know.
The moral onus of these atrocities is on Israel.
Netanyahu wants to send the Israeli army to occupy all of Gaza. The army commanders are opposed to this.
*"The universities are the enemy": why the right[-wing] detests the American campus.*
The persecutor's henchmen have demonstrated their hatred toward trans people by firing them with no pension.
The wrecker's head of the Energy Department plans to "update" past US government reports on global heating. We can presume this will make them fit the bully's fossil fuel agenda rather than with reality.
*FBI report disproves the bullshitter's claim of a Biden-era out-of-control crime wave.*
When the bullshitter or his henchmen say something, we should not presume it is honest until refuted. He lies so much that we should give it no credibility from the outset.
Some of the refugees that the persecutor deported to Panama (without even telling them that plan) are forced to choose between unofficial jail in Panama and return to countries where they would be killed.
Many who could safely return to their home countries have done so. Those how can't continue to face a "hostile environment" designed to make them break down and go home to die.
*Rising food prices driven by climate crisis threaten world’s poorest, report finds.
Climate change-induced food price shocks are on the rise and could lead to more malnutrition, political upheaval and social unrest as the world’s poorest are hit by shortages of food staples.*
I expect right-wing plutocratist extremists will respond to this problem with lies and distraction, backed up by voter suppression.
*“These effects are going to continue to become worse in the future. Until we get to net zero emissions extreme weather will only get worse, but it’s already damaging crops and pushing up the price of food all over the world.*
The UK has new rules to restrict partnerships between UK universities and a foreign government if they give the foreign government an unofficial propaganda arm.
An Australian minister arbitrarily blocked several invited participants from attending a specialized international research conference about bats, and refuses to tell anyone why.
This obtuseness is supposedly for the sake of the privacy of the participants who were blocked. What contemptuous bullshit!
I think the US did things like this in the 2010s.
(satire) *RFK Jr. Recommends Eating Good Cancer To Kill The Bad Cancer.*
Lula has vetoed the worst parts of the "environmental devastation" bill but will need the public to mobilize to sustain those vetoes.
The persecutor ordered the State Department to stop its annual reports on respect for human rights around the world.
Perhaps he doesn't wish to encourage the idea that there is something wrong with trampling human rights.
The usual figures for people killed in Gaza by the bombardment and siege are lower bounds, based on lists of names of people known to have been killed. The lower bound is now 60,000, but the actual number could be tens of thousands more. It is a mistake to present 60,000 as the actual number killed.
We could have better estimates if Israel stopped blocking foreign journalists from Gaza. Excluding them is a crime against the truth.
Since the only journalists in Gaza are Palestinians who live in Gaza, Israel can call their reports "lies", and they can never prove otherwise. But there is no way to disguise the fact that Israel intentionally keeps the world in the dark.
US citizens: call on the Departments of Labor, Treasury, and Commerce: Keep your data honest. Don't cave to the bully's fear tactics.
US citizens: call on New York & tell coastal state leaders: don't let the bully derail offshore wind.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject anti-science Dr. Casey Means as surgeon general.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress and state legislatures to prohibit deportation thugs from wearing masks in arrests and to show their identification.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Oppose the saboteur in chief's efforts to slash and destroy Social Security.
US citizens: call on colleges not to hand over admissions data to the persecutor.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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.
Putin said he will try to bribe the corrupter to hand him Ukraine.
I was chagrined by the idea that this might work. But it didn't.
*Chair of state’s house Democratic caucus said they will return once California submits new congressional map to offset losses in Texas.*
I read an article that claimed that if every state's ruling party does the maximum gerrymander, the Republicans will have an enormous advantage. I don't know whether that is true, or whether it is feasible for every state to do that. If all that is true, then we may be doomed to tyranny. It may not all be true — perhaps there are limits to what they can gerrymander.
In any case, one conclusion that does not follow is the conclusion that Democrats should give up this battle rather than fight it.
I think it would be best for the Texas Democrats to hold out as long as it takes. Texas cops can't arrest them in another state.
A crucial clue begins to explain how PFAS cause biological effects, including medical problems.
In the US: Tell Trader Joe's to provide medical insurance for all its staff.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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.
Everyone: call on Harvard to stand firm for academic freedom and human rights.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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: phone your congresscritter and urge per to sign the discharge petition for the bill to restore the right of federal workers to negotiate as a union.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*More than 470 Canadian fires classified as "out of control" as scientists say [global heating] exacerbating the burning.* The fires have burned 28,000 sq mi so far.
The burning in turn fuels global heating.
*Spain wildfires are ‘clear warning’ of climate emergency, minister says.*
So many institutions have worked to distract people from this that most people who learn about a big wildfire fail to think immediately that "This is global heating!"
An Australian report on dangers of growing climate disaster, probably to be released in September, warns that *under some scenarios major systems — including electricity networks, transport routes, food production and supply, and the financial sector — could struggle to cope with rising temperatures and escalating extreme events.*
This is not surprising, but for a major government to acknowledge it will be a step towards recognizing reality.
US citizens jailed by deportation thugs describe their arrest, and the false charges placed against them.
Quite a few Spanish officials have recently resigned from office after admitting they had falsified some of their academic credentials.
A large fraction of those seem to be in right-wing parties, but not all.
The magats consider anyone trying to overthrow democracy in any country to be their ally. The US government is trying to put pressure on the judges in Bolsonaro's trial for launching a coup, in the hope that this will encourage right-wing Brazilians in Brazil's congress to give him an amnesty so that he can try again.
Dr Lee Mordechai and Prof Liat Kozma of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: *Israel's assault on humanitarian norms.*
Censorship thugs in London arrested 522 protesters for "supporting Palestine Action" by nonviolently holding signs to that effect.
I don't know precisely what Palestine Action stands for, so I can't judge that I do or don't support that organization. But I absolutely support people's right to hold such signs in public, and I condemn the British government's attempt to criminalize such protest arbitrarily.
British prisons made ready last week for the arrests.
Researchers are making great progress on the development of inverse vaccines: chemicals that can train the immune system not to respond to a specific antigen. It will take some years to get them ready for widespread use, but a study has already shown success in turning off allergy to wheat gluten.
The applications could include curing auto-immune diseases.
Do you have an allergy, or an auto-immune disease? Does someone you love have one?
The magats' research budget cuts are likely to delay the cure for years! (As well as many other potential advances.)
So phone your congresscritter and call on per to restore the research budget.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congresscritters to sign the discharge petition for the vote on releasing the Epstein files.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A US judge's son was murdered by a lawyer who was angry at the judge. It is becoming a fad to threaten judges by mentioning that lawyer's name. This includes judges who have put brakes on tyranny.
*The week the [saboteur in chief]'s vendetta against renewables went global.*
The road he wants to push the world down is likely to lead to an early death for billions of people, so giving in to the planet roasters doesn't lead to safety.
*If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free?*
It isn't a dichotomy — we are clearly already less free than we were last year. The saboteur in chief is indeed sabotaging the US Constitution and tradition of freedom, even though much of what he says is bombast, because there is no clear dividing line.
Proposing a simple way to describe the wrong in Republicans' hearts: "Republicans protect elites."
However, that's only one sign of the wrong. Republicans are on the side of elites all the time, not only when the elites are under criticism or pressure. So I would broaden that phrase a little, into "Republicans serve and protect elites."
So who does the opposite? Progressives do.
As for "centrist, mainstream" Democrats, they are sort of in the middle. They serve and protect elites often but not always.
*Labour focused on appeasing Reform [the extreme rightwing party], not beating them, says Jeremy Corbyn.*
Systematic cruelty towards prisoners is rife in US deportation prisons. It seems to have no general causes: overcrowding (sometimes prisoners don't have room to sit down) and sadistic hatred by the thugs that run the prison.
District court injunctions forbidding a specific practice nationwide were rare before 2000, because over-the-top policy outrages were rare.
Harvard biologist Kseniia Petrova, a Russian exile, brought frog embryo samples from a lab in France, and obtained a proper license to bring them into the US. She forgot to mention them also on the customs declaration form, and US border thugs made this an excuse to cancel her visa. That gave them an excuse to try to deport her to Russia where Putin would persecute her.
If she had a trial for "falsifying" the customs form, I think she would have a good case to win. But there will be no trial, because border thugs can cancel visas almost at whim. Her visa simply no longer exists.
This is a major flaw in US immigration law. Border thugs should not be able to cancel visas arbitrarily without a trial to weigh whether there was a valid reason to do so.
An incorrect customs form is normally a minor matter, so why did they make a big fuss about it this time? I suspect it is because she works at Harvard.
The persecutor is trying to intimidate all US universities into abject Columbia-style submission , and he is using Harvard as the example to terrorize them. I suspect he has ordered agents to seize every opportunity to make some minor matter into a federal case, if it will ruin the life or work of someone associated with Harvard.
The law provides room for judgment calls about errors in a customs form to enable officials to avoid harshness when there was no criminal intent. It was not made for officials under the orders of the wrecker, who tells them that a dirty trick is a valid reason and a non-billionaire is a pawn.
Zia S worked as a translator for the US Army in Afghanistan. The US gave him asylum so that the Taliban would not kill him. Now the persecutor's agents arrested him and threaten to deport him.
They say they are investigating him over a "serious criminal allegation". When devotees of deception say that, it could mean anything — or nothing at all. I suspect that their motive for this vagueness is that, if we knew what it refers to, we should sneer at them for making a fuss about it.
If there is valid criminal case against Zia S, it is legitimate to prosecute him in a fair trial, and conviction might lead to punishing him. But even if he is convicted, he should certainly not be deported to Afghanistan. Even grave crimes cannot justify that sort of betrayal.
Australia's subsidy for installing household storage batteries has led to an astounding boom.
If other countries do likewise, it could lead to a big decrease in fossil fuel combustion.
Florida thugs stopped a driver, reportedly accusing him of driving with headlights off, and attacked him, causing grievous injuries.
Naturally, Governor DeMentis tried to excuse the violence while refusing to look at the evidence. The fact that the driver was black may explain the thugs' hatred and unjust violence.
If indeed the driver's lights were off, and if Florida law requires headlights on in the daytime, he would deserve some sort of punishment. But he can't possibly deserve the violence that the thugs committed. The thugs deserve to be fired and then serve a prison term.
Ironically, an Israeli hostage in Gaza is starving much like the Palestinians in Gaza.
*If Britain recognizes a Palestinian state, it will be a gesture. That doesn’t mean it is pointless.
A two-state solution is the only solution. Starmer should be honest about this, and get on with the hard work it will require.*
Israelis admired (at least formerly) in Israel have called for international sanctions on Israel to end the crimes against Palestinians. I support that call.
Exposing that biased assumptions that led a Labour minister to estimate an enormous sum as the price of nationalizing the water companies.
I've suggested that the proper price for nationalizing a privatized former state utility is the investment the current owners put in, minus all that the executives and stockholders took out.
Clearly that minister is working for the wrong side. It would good to ask Corbyn what he thinks should be the environment minister's position on this question.
Italy has seized some of the ships that were sent by charities to rescue refugees being smuggled across the Mediterranean, packed into unseaworthy small boats from which they were likely to drown.
(satire) *Australia Admits All Those Animals Made Up.*
The anti-American has ordered re-erection of the controversially removed statue of a Confederate general,
He is honored as a leader of Freemasons rather than as a solder. I am not sure that makes this any less disloyal to the United States, though, especially since he has already renamed US military bases after Confederate generals.
The wrecker is deploying the National Guard in Washington, DC, supposedly to "help fight crime". That must be intended to refer to street crime, but that's pasé in Washington. The truly dangerous crime in DC is the corruption involving the wrecker and his henchmen. And this is part of it.
Robert Reich *It’s important to see [Mr. Un-American]'s occupation of Washington, D.C., as a trial run for a possible military occupation of the United States…"
Measuring the damage that Thatcher's "right to buy" policy for public housing has done to Britain. It took away most of the existing public housing apartments, and discouraged building new ones to replace them.
In the past, I've said that privatizing a public service can be good if the privatized service will sell in a competitive market. (that criterion is meant to prevent the new private owners from gouging their customers.) This is a counterexample: the housing market is competitive, but right-to-buy did tremendous harm nonetheless.
I think the explanation is that housing units are generally used one per family. Selling one public housing unit means that public housing can provide a home for one family less. Privatization of services such as water supply, letter delivery and mass transit does not have that characteristic.
The US government owns about 10 million dollars worth of medical contraceptives, and is planning to burn them and condemn African women to unwanted pregnancy. This is, of course, perverse.
The motive for this has to be religious fanaticism. The consequences can include thousands of deaths from giving birth.
France should pass a law allowing it to seize any thing of use, the owner of which plans to destroy it and render it useless.
Studies have found that wildfires cause far more casualties indirectly than directly.
The indirect causes include inhalation of smoke, even at a distance, poor function of the medical system due to disruption, and depression.
Parts of the article are unclear; when it says that the fire "left one in five people with lung damage", what group of people is that? Maybe I could find and access the paper, though I suspect a paywall will make that impossible. I am curious enough to want to know, but no curious enough to do that much work to find out.
*Israel closes 88% of cases of alleged war crimes or abuse without charges.* according to Action on Armed Violence.
*The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza.
Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza. It has calculated how many calories Palestinians need to stay alive. Its data shows only a fraction has been allowed in.*
*Mass rape, forced pregnancy and sexual torture in Tigray amount to crimes against humanity – report.*
Chinese agents sent letters to the neighbors of some exiled Hong Kong dissidents who live in the UK, offering a reward for help in arresting them,
One of them, Carmen Lau, reports that UK cops responded by asking her to sign a promise to avoid attracting public notice and especially protests. Police departments have a tendency to prohibit protests in the name of "public safety". This sounds like wise policy until one realizes that is a way of assisting those who wish to cancel those protests and are willing to threaten violence to engage the cops to help them.
For instance, *Pro-Palestine fundraising gig in Newcastle cancelled after police said "credible threat" made against venue.*
One of the persecutor's deportation tools was last used during World War II to imprison over 100,000 Japanese immigrants.
You will hear a lot of talk about needing fossil fuel electric generators to stabilize a power grid. That is one way of doing it, but the Waratah battery in Australia shows that large storage batteries can do the same job. These batteries can be charged up from renewable generators when not all their output is needed, and discharged later.
When planet roasters claim we need more fossil fuel generators, you can cite this show that is only the latest excuse to keep burning more fossil fuel.
Covid-19 has not evolved to be just another kind of cold. It remains dangerous, and deadly for some people.
This Friday, August 15th, there is an organized, petition-based, protest of Wells Fargo in major cities across the US. It is a National Day of Action.
People in Gaza are wasting away under the enforced starvation regime.
Over 100,000 protesters (perhaps as many as 300,000) marched in Sydney to demand an end to imposed starvation in Gaza.
I can't see state forces shut down a protest in the name of "public safety" without wondering whether that is just a fabricated excuse to suppress dissent. It may have been honest, and it may have been bogus, but we cannot blindly trust that thugs in any country make such decisions honestly and properly. They should explain the reasons so people can judge.
New pun: A family of climbing guides
*Welcome to the era of "hostage politics", where Labour is apparently your only hope* against something more right-wing.
The way to change this is to adopt ranked choice voting or else proportional representation.
A court ruled to reinstate the ban on fishing in parts of the Pacific Islands monument, overriding the saboteur in chief's plan to put the sea life in danger.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop supplying weapons for Israel's atrocities in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the EPA from officially denying the threat of climate disaster.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Staff at the Centers for Disease Control blame the wrecker and his vaccine disinformationists for encouraging the gunman who tried to get info the CDC offices to shoot people.
He was blocked from entering the CDC offices, so he fired at the building from across the street.
Crime in Washington DC has decreased greatly in recent years, but the bullshitter pretends it is increasing so he can cite that to justify repression. Including repression of homeless people.
When he says that he will give them places to live, there is no reason to suppose he really means to try. He might simply lie and say he did it. Or he might offer them a place in a prison where prisoners are forced to do hard labor.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the wrecker's VA abortion ban.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Thugs in Los Angeles shot protesters in the head with rubber-coated metal bullets last year. The protesters are suing, accusing the thugs of conspiring in advance to do this even though there was no justification to make such violence legitimate.
In many countries, including the US, climate defense protesters are often persecuted. Sign to support the right to protest in favor of keeping the climate stable.
*Rhino horns made radioactive to foil traffickers in South African project Isotopes can be detected at airports and borders even in large containers and are harmless to the animals.*
*[Mercenary] firms employing U.S. military veterans for the [Gaza "Humanitarian" Foundation] in Gaza have exposed them to the risk of criminal charges under U.S. laws against war crimes, torture, and forced deportation, four Democrats in Congress said Thursday.*
They will feel safe for now, with the Justice Department thoroughly corrupted by the persecutor. They just assume it will protect them regardless of what crimes they commit for him.
Professor Rashid Khalidi, who has taught the history of Israel and Palestine at Columbia University for many years, has resigned, saying that Columbia's surrender to the magat enforcement of the IHRA criterion for antisemitism makes it impossible to teach that subject (and many others) honestly.
His letter of resignation explains in detail the depths of Columbia's surrender. For instance, Columbia will compel students and faculty to attend "trainings" in the distorted IRHA criterion, so they can learn where the official line runs, and will bring censorship contractors to monitor classes so as to punish students and faculty who deviate from the official magat party line.
Professor Khalidi says:
Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of
free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an-anti
university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a
place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on
high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions.
I contend that Columbia would serve the United States better by shutting down entirely than by allowing itself to be corrupted.
US border thugs set up a trap by pretending to seek day laborers and arresting whoever showed up. This violated a court order that US agents needed specific grounds about a person to arrest per for deportation.
The persecutor has adopted a clever suggestion for how to strew confusion in the records about people in deportation prison: by having National Guard soldiers handle the processing of jailing them.
Since those soldiers have no experience in doing this, they are sure to make lots of random mistakes, which will prevent the prisoners from contacting their families, contacting their lawyers, or getting medical attention.
[This text was posted with the wrong link. We have deleted that note and posted it now with the correct link.]
US citizens: call on officials in some states to boycott Avelo Air, which runs deportation flights.
Even though some deportations are legitimate, we cannot expect that to be true most of the time, not with the persecutor in charge.
US permanent resident Hernan Castro faces deportation because he applied for citizenship and did not mention a decades-ago drug arrest.
It is reasonable to deport people for serious and dangerous crimes, but doing so for minor crimes long ago bespeaks a desire to cause suffering rather than a responsibility to protect the public.
*Ghislaine Maxwell is not a victim. And if she is pardoned, it won't be for the sake of justice.*
When the corrupter is involved in events, the a priori probability of corruption in them is fairly high. I suspect he wants to pardon her so that she won't inculpate him somehow.
Two of the four large consolidated US railroads want to merge. Lina Khan would never have allowed this, but the wrecker sees them as a way to reward big business for its support.
[A Russian prison for political Ukrainian prisoners]: *beatings, electrocution and starvation at prison where Ukrainians were tortured.*
Some Jews in Scottish universities are campaigning for them to reject the IHRA criterion for antisemitism.
That criterion lends itself to falsely construing condemnation of Israel's actions as antisemitism.
Watch out for nonfree software from companies that operate in the UK! It may contain a secret back door ordered by the UK government.
With a nonfree program, it is very difficult for the users to check the software for a back door.
The US stands up globally for tyranny by putting sanctions on the judge presiding over the trial of Bolsonaro for his coup in Brazil.
These are accompanies by heavy punitive tariffs.
Describing a few of the many protesters who have been arrested in the UK for allegedly supporting the protest group which was arbitrarily banned.
*Countries [are generally] failing to act on UN climate pledge to triple [renewable electric generation], thinktank finds.*
It seems that various other real dangers (such as right-wing parties that attack poor and marginalized people and their human rights) and imaginary dangers (such as immigrants and queer people) have distracted public attention from the biggest danger of all, that of global heating disaster.
Lobbyists took advantage of this distracted state of mind to cancel the plans to save civilization.
Propaganda videos, made to teach that hostility to Israel implies antisemitism, are now mandatory viewing for students in various US colleges.
Some Jewish groups are campaigning against this. Good on them!
Deportation prisons continue denying members of Congress their legal right to inspect the prisons at any time.
The government of Victoria (an Australian state) is passing a law to give the government the authority to build electric cables across private land, paying a fee for the cables' presence. It seems to do no particular wrong, and more power cables are necessary for moving to renewable generation.
But there is a peculiarly strong opposition movement, I wonder why.
When the leader criticized the "push for renewables", that gave it away. This opposition movement is linked to the right-wing parties want to boost fossil fuel extraction. So I suspect that rich planet roasters are funding this protest campaign. The building of cables across rural land can't bother enough people to bring about strong opposition without some selfishly-motivated financial motive.
Meanwhile, those rich planet roasters continue to spread absurd claims with no shame.
As medically ignorant US officials appointed by the saboteur in chief alter or delete official vaccination recommendations, professional organizations of doctors are drawing up their own lists of recommendations.
Taner Akçam, Marianne Hirsch and Michael Rothberg: *As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel’s atrocities.*
*‘Cemetery of the living dead’: Venezuelans recall 125 days in notorious El Salvador prison.*
There are two ways for the reasoning to proceed from here. One leads to the conclusion that the president of El Salvador is a sadist and a monster. The other leads to the conclusion that the president of the US is a sadist and a monster.
Suarez, the musician prisoner, says he has forgiven the bullies who boasted of making life hell. I think it is a mistake to forgive them until they learn how horrible were the crimes they have committed.
Robert Reich: *From the Washington Post to CBS, [media] companies are caving to [the dangerous despot]. This is how democracy dies.*
"The dangerous despot" is Reich's words, but I copied them to that sentence.
Earthly bacteria have evolved to live in outer space. They were found on the outside of China's space station.
*A small cartel of billionaires and conglomerates dominates the U.S. media landscape. Through a history of mergers and acquisitions, they’ve concentrated their control over much of what Americans see, read and hear. Free Press rates the independence of each of these giants and analyzes their ability to defend democracy at a time of domestic and international authoritarianism.*
One UK government agency is trying to discourage un-privatizing water companies by proposing that this would require enormous expenses.
Why even consider "temporary" nationalization? Water companies should not have been privatized and the British government should permanently reverse that mistake.
Smoke from forest fires up north, caused by global heating, is making hazy air in much of the US.
This is dangerous to the people who breathe the smoke, even when it is diluted so it is just a haze. But the worst thing about it is that the burning trees are releasing more CO2, threatening a runaway heating that could kill most of humanity and much of nature.
Israel's citizenry: punish our nation! *We, Israelis dedicated to a peaceful future for our country and our Palestinian neighbors, write this with grave shame, in rage and in agony. Our country is starving the people of Gaza to death and contemplating the forced removal of millions of Palestinians from the Strip. The international community must impose crippling sanctions on Israel until it ends this brutal campaign and implements a permanent ceasefire.*
The signatories are prominent and admired Israelis; each one's claim to fame is listed.
Here is more about the letter.
I admire their courage and support their call.
It should be noted that Israelis carry out sadistic oppression in the West Bank too
An Israeli expat explains why sanctions can overcome Netanyahu's political power.
*Advocates of a two-state solution realize time to act is now.* Israel is setting out on to expel Palestinians and colonize, in Gaza and the West Bank. If this isn't stopped now, it will be too late.
Why airdropping food in Gaza causes casualties on the ground and will not function as a way to keep the people supplied with food.
It would be easy to bring in enough food by truck, if only Israel did not block the trucks.
*In Act of "Brutal Sadism," Israel Bans Gazans From Entering Sea Under Pain of Death.*
In the past, though Israel did not forbid people in Gaza from going into the sea or on a boat, sometimes it killed the people who did.
The saboteur in chief wants LLMs to draw a blank when they encounter "woke" concepts such as transgender and systemic racism.
This would finally give validity to the acronym "AI", standing for "Artificial Ignorance".
The persecutor is reopening various old prisons.
Some were known for illegal cruelty towards the prisoners.
Many of them would be operated by private prison profiteers, make more money if they give prisoners inadequate food and clothing, and cut them off from families.
It is useless to try to "boost the economy" by expanding an airport unless you arrange for lots more flights to result.
Since lots more flights will advance global disaster, perhaps that amounts to another reason not to expand the airport. The last ones a government should listen to about this question are the airline companies.
Indonesian fishermen are suing Bumble Bee for buying tuna from boats whose crews are forced workers, effectively enslaved.
Satellite examination found 90,000 oil slicks from ships over the 5-year period, 2014 to 2019. Only around 500 were reported to authorities.
Most of these oil slicks were released intentionally, not caused by damage to the ship.
A visiting American nurse tried to save Awdah Hathaleen's life after he was shot by one of the Israelis carrying out a pogrom. Once he was in an ambulance she worked on helping an unconscious Palestinian. This was her duty as a medic.
The Israeli government considered her practice of medicine on Palestinians so vicious that it arrested her, and soon after deported her.
While in jail, she says, she saw other jailed Palestinian prisoners bound and blindfolded, while Yinon Levi (suspected of killing Awdah) was walking almost freely and the prison guards were joking with him.
Blocking medical workers from reaching wounded Palestinians is a frequent murder tactic in Palestinian territories.
*[The corrupter's] Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was a Corporate Lobbyist. Now, Her Former Clients are Lobbying the White House.*
Australia's surveillance system for age verification is as oppressive as Britain's. Every option enables the state to identify the user.
This includes the option of asking a bank to verify your age, giving the platform some sort of account number known to the bank. The bank might refuse to tell the platform your name and your state ID, but it will be forced to tell the state.
*Monarch butterflies’ mass die off in 2024 caused by pesticide exposure — study.*
Bukele is preparing to be president-for-life of El Salvador.
I have a feeling that associating with the would-be dictator of the US encouraged Bukele to push for this, and maybe explicitly urged him to.
Scientists slam [the magats'] climate report as a ‘farce’ full of misinformation.
*Israeli author David Grossman says his country is committing genocide in Gaza.*
The truth-hater made the National Museum of American History delete mention of the times he was impeached.
US citizens: Tell Governors not to rig our voting maps.
US citizens: Say NO to deportation raids in community spaces.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*FEMA director defends Texas flood response as "model" for disasters.*
I think he means that FEMA should adopt an inadequate response as its model.
Ukrainians protested the law that ended the independence of the anticorruption institutions.
I wonder if that move was something that the corrupter demanded of Ukraine. Could it be that this is about prosecuting Hunter Biden?
People comprehend better the significance of global heating when the facts are presented in terms of qualitative changes, X happens but previously it didn't, rather than gradual increase in temperatures.
The International Court of Justice ruled that all nations must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to keep global heating under 1.5°C. Those that don't may be ordered by the court to pay damages to countries harmed by global heating. In the near future, those sums may be small enough that it is possible to pay them, which would make it harder to laugh them off.
Paying them would be fair, and would pressure to reduce emissions. But the saboteur in chief will spit in the court's face, with all the big fossil fuel companies burying the decision under a chorus of contempt. Can anything defeat them?
An Australian court prohibited the extension of a coal mine, because of the harm to be expected from the greenhouse emissions from burning the coal.
This decisions may block all such expansions in New South Wales, because they would only be approved if judged based on incorrect criteria.
When will the Australian government choose survival rather than destruction?
Meanwhile, reality deniers in the US are planning to officially cancel official recognition that greenhouse gases threaten public health.
Antiabortionists have a new tactic to stop the mailing of abortion pills: by suing doctors that mail them to extremely strict states such as Texas.
Hong Kong put out arrest warrants for 19 freedom defenders living in exile. That shows how the Hong Kong branch of Chinese repression thinks about democracy and protests.
The British government's condemnation of this repression would resonate more strongly if that same government were not punishing dissidents as as "terrorists". Both of these governments are doing wrong, in similar ways. Each of them must stop.
*I don't identify with my country's values anymore.* Some Americans are looking to move to a country which still aspires to be what the US aspired to be.
I share their feeling but I don't see that there is one.
*White House rescinds $20m for clean water in pesticide-contaminated rural California.
*EPA said grant to provide clean water was a "wasteful DEI program" as pesticide leaches into residents’ wells.* That is, evidently, a logical confusion. Making drinking water clean and safe everywhere is not DEI, only fairness. This dirty water program is a DIE policy.
A judge ruled that Kilmar Ábrego can be released from prison, because there are no valid grounds to jail him. But he will stay in jail to protect him from snatchers who might ship him to a prison in some other country. His lawyers are trying to find a way to keep him safe from that.
UK thugs arrested two elderly protesters as those were carrying signs in a protest against mass expulsion from Gaza, and accused them of supporting "terrorism". While holding them in jail, thugs forced their way into one's home and searched it meticulously for possible dangerous substances. They even brought a Geiger counter in case the "suspect" had radioactive materials.
This may seem like rigid attachment to rules, to the point of absurdity, but don't laugh just yet. I suspect it is something much more dangerous: doubling down on their bullshit to make it pass for truth.
The British government asserted an absurd exaggeration when labeling a protest organization as "terrorist." It is aware that the public recognizes the absurdity. How to convince the public to treat the exaggeration as serious? One way is by acting on the state's lies as if they were true.
This means doing what they would rationally do if Palestine Action were really a terrorist organization and those protesters were likely to be terrorists. Later the thugs will cite that as "proof" that the the arrested protesters are real terrorists.
Just for the hell of it, they denied one of the prisoners prescribed antibiotics in jail (this is dangerous!) and imposed bail conditions that will cost her perhaps thousands of pounds.
*We do not comply: how do we disrupt the momentum of [the wrecker]'s cruelty?*
Robert Reich suggests to Americans ways to help resist despotism in your community.
*Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe found guilty of witness tampering. [He was] convicted over efforts to sway testimony [when he sued a left-wing senator who accused him of having connections with Colombia's worst terrorist group — the right-wing paramilitaries.
It was for supporting them that I referred to him as "el Presidente Horrible".
The FDA has an artificial "intelligence" system that is supposed to make its work go faster. However, staff have noticed the same disastrous flaw discovered by everyone who tried to use a chatbot for serous work: it can't distinguish statements that are true from statements that are false. Or even between academic papers that really exist and imaginary papers.
Please join me in telling the public that this emperor never had any clothes. The way to do that is to stop calling it "intelligence".
When Israeli soldiers seized the ship Mavi Marmara, as the crew were trying to bring food aid to starving Gaza, the soldiers choked and kicked Chris Smalls, one of the activists.
I can't tell from this article whether Smalls is still in jail. Nor the others who were on the ship. Does anyone know?
Note: Chris Smalls was later released.
The persecutor is eager to deport people to countries they have no connection with. He has had them sent to at least 13 countries. of which 12 have been rebuked by the US State Department for disrespecting human rights. Freedom House is a little less picky — it rates 4 of the 13 as "free countries".
We can see this form of deportation as an indirect substitute for what he really wants to do: persecute them directly and permanently.
The persecutor does this even to people whose countries of origin would accept them, such as Mexico. Though it is possible that the specific Mexicans in question faced an individual danger of persecution there.
The bullshitter has undermined the Bureau of Labor & Statistics by firing its head, in response to disappointing economic developments that the agency reported. He prefers to have a Bureau of Lying Statistics.
"Killing the messenger" is an ancient practice, but in modern times rulers usually try to avoid letting it be seen that they want their officials to lie about facts.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the bully's attacks on Wikipedia and other nonprofits he wants to destroy.
The project to eliminate feral cats on Kangaroo Island (South Australia) is making steady progress and advancing its technology to catch the remaining cats.
Part of the program is strict requirements on domestic cats.
*We still debate whether Trump-ism is a substantial ideology or not; what we are missing is that Trump-ism, for sure, is a set of tactics for exploiting weaknesses in the US political, legal and media systems.*
*An administration that faces one or two big scandals in a four-year period may well be damaged beyond repair; one that produces three very big scandals a day seems to have nothing to worry about since no one can keep up. It is difficult to stick with one story, as the newest outrage already appears so much bigger (the Qatar plane scandal can feel like it happened years ago).*
The saboteur in chief arbitrarily fired a federal prosecutor. He stated no cause for this, but it may be to punish her for prosecuting Epstein's criminal helper, Maxwell. Or it may be to punish her for her father's suspicion of the saboteur in chief a few years ago. Either way, it is unjustified and wrong.
The documentary No Other Land shows the series of pogroms carried out by murderous Israeli "settlers" in Masafer Yatta to drive out the Palestinians who live and farm there.
Now Awdah Hathaleen, one of the film makers, has been murdered in another such pogrom.
The violence started with undisguised sabotage: driving a bulldozer through trees (probably olive trees).
Many Americans are delaying buying a house and/or having children because of the increasing economic hardship. Of course, the saboteur in chief with his squeeze-wealth-up redistribution program is making this worse.
The one good aspect of this is that it's a bad and dangerous time to be born, and it is likely to get worse and worse until it settles down as utterly horrible. Having fewer children can reduce the coming disaster.
The wrecker ordered an end to fishing regulations in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine national monument, a remote pristine area of around 500,000 sq miles with its own rare species.
Several states are pushing to lock people up for the "mental illness" of having difficulty earning enough money for expensive US cities. This must be a handy way of dealing with the inconvenience of other people's homelessness.
RFK Jr is proposing to force obese people into "wellness farms", likewise a form of imprisonment.
This is part of a broader push to replace expensive medical treatment for non-wealthy Americans with work-till-you-drop prisons.
*UK to recognize state of Palestine in September unless Israel holds to a ceasefire.*
Robert Reich: *How do we lead moral lives in an age of bullies?*
New pun: How can you communicate with an intern?
US citizens: support the call for Congress to investigate the deadly Gaza "Humanitarian" Foundation before it gets any more US money.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Deportation thugs decided to arrest two undocumented immigrant workers, along with US citizen Kenny Laynez Ambrosio who was traveling with them. The thugs responded to imaginary "resistance" (solely in their own minds) by preemptively attacking each one, including taser attacks, mostly starting before they had a chance to get out of the car.
Laynez made a video recording of the thugs' attack. So they charged him with bogus crimes (making a recording) so they could offer to drop the charges if he deleted the recording. But he had the courage to refuse.
Thugs who act like that ought to be fired in the name of public safety, and blacklisted for all police work until they demonstrate that they have the requisite self control to act like police officers.
The bully wants to declare someone guilty and have the trial after the verdict — if at all. His first prestigious target is Obama.
US border thugs jailed Fabian Schmidt, US permanent resident, as he returned from a visit to Germany, because of an old charge of possession of marijuana which California had wiped out when it legalized marijuana.
Eventually he was released from jail, but the thugs did not give him his green card back, or his passport (German, I suppose). So I expect he is still threatened with deportation. Maybe the thugs will arrest him some day when they have arrested only 2,999 people and need to fill the quota.
Filling in the story of Fabian Schmidt. His horrendous ordeal lasted months, but upon judicial review his conviction was dismissed within minutes. For instance, getting out of immigration prison, and being gouged on food and phone calls for 2 months, cost him $65,000, while of course he was unable to work.
Every element of the immigration prison seems to be as inhumane as the government can make it. In effect, it is punishment before trial.
The policy of jailing people for any minor offense from many years ago is a form of "zero tolerance". Repressive states like to adopt zero tolerance when it provides an excuse to punish harmless, powerless people.
Where zero-tolerance is called for is with continuing patterns of crime, such as theft of wages by employers, or (for thugs) unjustified violence against the public. Filing charges against someone for making a recording should be punished without fail. Not having per body camera recording at such times, likewise (though systems could activate them automatically at such times).
The saboteur in chief's fervent pressure to burn more fossil fuel has world-wide baneful repercussions in cancellation of projects to advance renewable generation.
The saboteur in chief plans to cancel the US government's authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
This could be the biggest act of global sabotage in all history — past and future.
You could move to a place nowhere near forests, rivers or seas, but the failure of agriculture and fishing will still get you.
*Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana agree to launch leftwing [British] party.*
(satire) *HHS Advises Low-Income Seniors To Wallow In Mud To Stay Cool.*
It's incredible, the sort of things people consider cool. As for myself, I've never tried to be cool.
*Assessing the Trump Idiocracy*: a summary of the blows he has struck at the United States of America.
Even broader and deeper than the blows cited in that list is the blow struck at the idea of objective truth. His supporters simply believe what he tells them to believe, with the inexplicable exception of Epstein.
The saboteur in chief has proposed a plan to promote artificial stupidity (AS) which would take water supplies away from many Americans, poison the air for millions, and speed global heating. No one would support it except for the marketing hype of calling it "artificial intelligence". What a shame that all the articles that criticize it endorse the hype.
If enough of us react that marketing hype term, we can change this.
*Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Associated Press, BBC News and Reuters said they were “desperately concerned” about the journalists in Gaza after widespread warnings of mass starvation.*
They should broadcast and publish this point regularly in their most visible journalism.
Israel has jailed 28 Gaza doctors. along with hundreds of other medical workers. Most of the doctors have been in jail for over a year, and none have specific charges that purport to justify jailing them.
No imaginable actual conditions could justify such actions.
Many of the prisoners in Israeli jails are tortured.
Some are broken when they emerge.
*Israel's food points are not just death traps – they're an alibi for the starvation of Gaza*
That's what "humanitarian" means nowadays for the persecutor and Netanyahu.
The report of the deportation of Luis Leon was reportedly a hoax.
Here's an incomplete list of the personal data that the DOSE knows about most persons in the US.
Palantir may now have all of this data too.
UK thugs arrested a protester and accused him of "terrorism" for holding up a copy of a cartoon from a satirical magazine that mocks the arrest of protesters as "terrorists" if they support the banned so-called "terrorist" organization, Palestine Action.
Even in regard to a real terrorist organization, this extremist enforcement of a ban on supporting it would be absurd, and dangerous. Indeed, it is as dangerous as terrorism itself.
Plastics companies (which include the big oil companies) filled global plastics treaty negotiations with their agents, and bullied those who were there to support an effective treaty.
*Eswatini opposition attacks US [deportation] deal as "human trafficking disguised as deportation".*
I think that metaphor is the wrong one. In human trafficking, usually the people being trafficked are desperate to go, and are taken advantage of on the way. What Eswatini, Sudan and El Salvador have done is more like operating a private prison business.
Senator Murkowski made an informal deal with the bullshitter, and now complains that he has already broken it.
The deal was that he would spare renewable electricity projects in Maine from the planned cuts specified in the Big Bad Bill. Somehow the senator imagined that preserving renewable energy solely in her state was enough to excuse her voting for the bill. Even more foolish, she imagined that he would keep a verbal deal even though it was not stated explicitly in the bill.
If you have not made provision for suing him if he breaks a deal, you ought to know he will break it.
The boarding schools that taught well-off British families' children were crushingly cruel and a large fraction of students were traumatized.
The Harvard Educational Review planned a special issue about education in Palestine, but it was arbitrarily canceled shortly before it was supposed to be published.
The details of this act of censorship were complex, but it clearly comes down to a political assault on academic freedom.
The news that Harvard has adopted the unsuitable IHRA criterion for antisemitism is sad.
The UK government is thinking of weakening banking regulations that are crucial to prevent banks from making the foolhardy bets that can cause a crash.
The UK is considering using artificial intelligence to determine refugees' ages from their photos.
I presume that what they have in mind is true artificial intelligence, not bullshit generators such as ChatGPT. These machine learning systems can be quite accurate, but quite accurate does not mean inerrant. Even with a system that is highly accurate, there will be some errors. The question is, what are the consequences of an error?
North Korea's participation in the Putin forces is, in effect, practice for another Korean war.
(satire) *Study Finds Plants Increasingly Reliant On Gig Workers For Pollination.*
New Zealand has adopted a law that insists on the absurdity that a river is a "living whole" and "indivisible". Of course, a river normally contains living organisms of various kinds, that interact as ecosystems. That is not the same thing as what the law says.
The aim of this law is to protect the river's ecosystems. I support that goal. But legislating a false equation is irrational-ism, in effect establishing a sort of animist religion. and sure to lead to avoidable harm, one way or another.
Some day we may be able to communicate with river dolphins, and ask one, "Are you part of a single indivisible life-form that contains also that fish over there?" It might answer, "That will be so after I finish digesting it."
Keeping our grip on reality is fundamentally importance. We would write legislate to protect rivers from damage from humans' actions in ways that resist establishing an irrationalist religion.
*UK watchdog investigates eight years of Deloitte audits of mining firm Glencore.* There is a suspicion that Deloitte may have subtly collaborated with some sort of corruption.
I have no knowledge of the facts about this, but it would not surprise me if the large accounting companies have slid into making their accounting less neutral.
*A fifth of California homes are investor-owned as state’s affordability crisis deepens.*
The obvious approach to correcting this is to increase taxes on houses owned by large investment companies.
*Israel and the [persecutor] are carrying out their final solution in Gaza.*
The author asserts that the frequent shooting of unarmed Palestinians being forced to run to secure a box of food is not only an expression of hatred, but part of a policy to make the Palestinians of Gaza desperate enough that they will accept any offer of refuge, anywhere in the world. Supposing Netanyahu and the persecutor can create a facsimile of one.
What it's like to make the harrowing journey to a Gaza "Humanitarian" Foundation aid site, while ducking "humanitarian" bullets fired by "humanitarian" rifles wielded by "humanitarian" mercenary sharpshooters.
Robert Reich: Don't let "Epsteingate", a question of the persecutor's possible past participation in crimes, distract you from the enormous crimes that the persecutor is committing now!
As for whether the persecutor ever raped anyone, that has already been established by a New York State court. He was convicted around a year ago of a forced sexual act that Americans generally include in the word "rape".
The bully's men are prosecuting people for acts which are not crimes, including distribution of protective face masks and publishing information about thugs.
This is as they go against a court order by planning to arrest people who have a connection with someone they have arrested.
Jewish Voice for Peace rebukes Columbia University for legitimizing the bully's systematic false accusations of antisemitism.
*[Right-wingers] fighting "antisemitism" are actively targeting US Jews. Why?*
The US government struck a big blow against human rights by declaring that deportation thugs can grab anyone without a warrant and deport per without a hearing. All they have to do is assert that perse is a member of the Tren de Aragua gang.
The government claims it has no obligation to prove that that claim is true, before deporting you.
Literally, no one in the US is safe from this. Not even US citizens.
US citizens: call on the IRS to keep churches and state separate.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate links between CBS's ransom for spurious threats and the approval of the CBS-Paramount merger by the weaponized FCC.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: call on CBS not to cancel Colbert.
US citizens: call for environmental reviews of the muskrat's rocket launches. Rocket fuel and its combustion products can do a lot of damage to the environment.
US citizens: call on Secretary Burgum of the US Forest Service to hire people now to fully staff the agency so that it can put out fires sooner and save Americans' homes. He must not heed the arsonist in chief.
Of course, in the long term, our response to the increasing danger of wildfires is to stop them before they happen. Curb greenhouse gas emissions; build renewable generators and large batteries. But that is mostly outside the mission of the Forest Service.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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.
An Australian man with a US work visa was working in the US and living there with his sweetheart. He made a short visit home for a funeral ceremony, and border thugs sent him back to Australia, saying nothing coherent that pretended to be a reason.
I speculate that this was part of the push to meet the quota for deportations. I think that each airport has a daily quota for deportations, and agents are supposed to fake reasons when they don't have any real ones.
Now he has been separated from his work, his apartment, his possessions, and his sweetheart — exiled from home with no way to appeal.
Does anyone know of further developments in this case?
US citizens: call on the deportation thugs to resume holding bond hearings for people they arrest, as they used to.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to sign the discharge petition to force a vote on whether to release the Epstein files.
Concealing them is far from the worst thing magats are doing to our country, and we should not forget about the greatest dangers. But that doesn't mean we should disregard this.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Hegseth to cancel the $200-million contract for the use of Musk's artificial stupidity system.
I edited the message not to use the term "artificial intelligence" or "AI", and not to cite the corrupter as an authority on what to do.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 Jeffries and the Democratic leadership to back Mamdani.
Don't let the Democratic establishment side with AIPAC and billionaire interests over democracy and equality.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax billionaire wealth gains.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to ban stock trading by members of Congress.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Wells Fargo to stop various nasty practices that cheat the public.
Two UK organisations that aim to support Palestinians have had their bank accounts frozen. They have lost access to their money, without any sort of trial, and without any clear path for recourse.
Facebook build a data center in rural Georgia, near some houses, and once it started sucking lots of ground water, those houses' wells dried up.
The company could easily afford to compensate them for this damage, but the law seems to be biased in favor of the data center owner.
The article describes what the data center is doing as "AI", but that is a misleading hype campaign. Probably what it mostly does is run bullshit generators. To call things like chatbots "AI" is to boost that marketing campaign.
Please do as I do and make a distinction between true (albeit narrow) artificial intelligence and bullshit generators.
A controlled experiment found that people who repeatedly used ChatGPT to do a task (writing essays) manifested less brain engagement, and didn't do the task as well as people who focused their own minds on it.
*Hungary opposition figures urge Democrats to organize against autocratic takeover by [the saboteur in chief],* saying that his actions now resemble what Orbán did at the start.
The most lunatic possible plan for income for the future State of Palestine: from exporting fossil gas!
Since Palestine is a hot and arid land, I doubt it will survive till 2100 even if it gets started, unless the world curbs global heating. And neither will the rest of us! Proposing to solve a problem through more fossil fuel extraction is madness.
President Correa of Ecuador famously invited the wealthy to pay Ecuador not to develop a fossil gas deposit — but rather to leave the gas in the ground. The wealthy were not interested in helping to prevent global disaster, so they didn't accept. It shows that the death of billions of non-rich is no skin off their backs.
Kenya has imitated Britain by accusing a protest leader of "terrorism".
Syphilis has been increasing in the US for years, a sign of a generally poor medical system. This includes congenital syphilis, which is easy to prevent if pregnant women receive medical attention — so the increase shows a failure to give them any.
Naturally, the saboteur in chief has wiped out federal programs to help in the measurement, detection and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
A teacher and parent reproaches schools and the digital systems they imposes on teachers, students, and parents of students.
She complains that using them is a pain. She is not aware that they are also unjust (since they are nonfree client programs, and often talking to surveillance servers).
The thug who shot Breonna Taylor (by firing blindly into the house) was convicted for that. The corrupter's "Justice department" recommended sentencing him to supervised release, but the judge disregarded this and sentenced him to three years in prison.
I am glad the judge disregarded the slanted advice, but I have a hunch that the corrupter will pardon that ex-thug. He has pardoned many people for violent crimes committed in causes that he supports.
Ukraine passed a law weakening the independence of anticorruption prosecutors.
That is an unfortunate action, but it has no effect on the moral issues about Putin's invasion and Ukraine's independence. I expect Putin will try to use it to prove that he should rule Ukraine, but that would be as irrational as the rest of his propaganda.
Reporter Mario Guevara, lawful US resident, was covering a No Kings protest when he was arrested on bogus minor charges. An official dismissed the charges, but the deportation thugs insist on keeping him in prison.
The bully is getting exercised about biases in LLM output, when they don't align with his biases, so he seeks the power to punish their developers for it.
He also objected to the term "artificial intelligence" on the grounds that "artificial" has negative connotation. However, no one can deny that these systems are artificial — they were designed and made by humans. It's "intelligence" that misrepresents them.
Let's call them "bullshit generators"; that avoids both of those words and is more accurate as a description.
British thugs violently arrested protester Susan White, 74 years old and fragile, for holding some sort of sign. I have not seen a concrete description of what the sign said, but thugs interpreted it as support for Palestine Action. The act of blackwhiting that has declared Palestine Action to be "terrorist", thus provided an excuse for additional, similar blackwhiting.
Terrorism is a crime. It is fundamentally unjust to label a group (or individual) as "terrorist" without a fair trial.
Ms White has been placed under house arrest, not officially but in a disguised, dishonest fashion: she is forbidden to go to Liverpool Center, but outside her door is Liverpool Center, so she can't leave.
The authorities didn't provide her with a jetpack with which to fly to a point outside Liverpool Center. But I have a feeling she could not use it. She says she has injuries from the attack; I presume she needs to visit clinics and pharmacies. Is that forbidden too?
CBS gave the bully the power to censor 60 Minutes; the producer resigned in protest.
The FDA has discontinued some tests for milk and dairy products, as well as testing for bird flu in cows, due to the reductions in staff that the DOSE inflicted.
Venezuelans that the bully deported to El Salvador to be imprisoned for months in the special prison for alleged gangsters report on the special cruelty and violence carried out there. They made this report after being sent to Venezuela.
It is unjust to subject anyone to that, no matter how heinous per crimes. Even the corrupter and his officials do not deserve it.
France will recognize Palestine as a state.
Right-wing politicians in various countries are proposing to cancel citizenship of dual nationals if they are convicted of crimes.
This says to all dual nationals, "You don't really belong here, so we will exile you if you do anything wrong." It is an effective way of drumming up hatred of immigrants, which right-wing haters can take advantage of.
France already has legislated this for terrorism.
*The US supreme court let Donald Trump on Wednesday remove three Democratic members of the government’s top consumer product safety watchdog, boosting his power over federal agencies set up by Congress to be independent from presidential control.*
This decision strikes directly at a part of the system of checks and balances, explicitly set up by Congress and the then president.
Chilean Luis León received asylum in the US; but recently he lost the physical green card that represented his right to live in the US. He visited the INS to get a replacement. The deportation thugs were waiting; they jailed him and deported him to Guatemala, failed to make any record of doing so, and told the family that León was dead.
I don't think such a chain of nonstandard events could happen by mistake. Some official must have decided to break rules in order to cause suffering. A variety of such incidents have happened this year, all different. The only explanation I can think of is that magats have encouraged the deportation thugs to use their imagination to invent new ways to make immigrants suffer.
Every official who participated in choosing this treatment of Mr. León ought to be fired, at least. Their mission is to do their work justly, not cruelly, and they neglected that completely.
I have a theory that might explain part of it. it is standard practice nowadays to arrange for an authorized immigrant to come to an appointment as w way to arrest per. When León made that appointment, officials could have seen some irregularity and chosen to respond in the most horrible way.
I wonder why Guatemala accepted a Chilean deported by the US, and why they didn't send him to Chile, now that that country respects human rights and is no longer the murderous dictatorship he fled in 1987.
If the UK wants to discourage refugees from crossing the Channel in small overloaded boats, it needs to convince them long before they reach the French shore. By that time, they have put themselves in great debt for the channel crossing and can't afford to change plans.
Those refugees generally do not come from Europe. I wonder if they had to put themselves in unbearable debt just for the first stage, getting into the EU.
The bully has weaponized the FCC, and uses it as an instrument of arbitrary power, according to a former head of the FCC.
The underminer's henchmen have a practice of creating uncertainty to use as an excuse to defy court orders.
Thugs in Britain have taken a further step into repression, beyond prosecuting people for stating support for the prohibited organization Palestine Action. Now they assert that it is a crime to endorse any of the positions that it stood for, such as "free Gaza" or talking about "genocide".
The leap that the thug made is irrational, and not logically valid. We can easily see that the decision to ban that organization, unjust though it was, does not imply what the thug asserted.
That does not guarantee that his error will not become government policy. Repression often advances by leaps of illogical like this one.
*DNC threatens to sue North Carolina elections board over [Republican] plan to purge 100,000 voters.*
Republican candidates occasionally win legitimately, but usually they win by rigging the election. Voter suppression is a big part, and Greg Palast presents evidence that that's how the bully "won" in 2024, but they have other methods too, such as gerrymandering.
The magat bill to fund environmental agencies undermines or weakens various specific means of protecting the environment and wildlife.
A US court extended Afghan refugees' temporary protested status. A final ruling is coming later.
Restoring the threatened mangrove forests that grow in shallow sea water at the edge of the land -- in this case, in the Solomons.
Around 100,000 children died from measles in 2023. That's a consequence of having 10 million who did not get vaccinated.
*Israel bombs WHO facilities in Gaza as global outcry grows.*
I cannot believe that the Israeli army did not know exactly where to find the WHO facilities. Whether it sought to bomb WHO or neglected to take care to avoid that, it is culpable.
Israel has attacked the UN in another way, by expelling an envoy of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
* The UK has joined 30 other nations in condemning Israel for depriving Palestinians of "human dignity" as they issued a call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza.*
I am glad to see them ramp up the confrontation with Netanyahu's massive war crimes, but I think it will take more than this to make Israel stop them.
There are the various injustices of the siege of Gaza, and the distribution of food supplies under the control of the same occupying army that causes the shortage.
*The Supreme Court is giving a lawless president the green light.*
The persecutor plans to expel mixed families (one citizen parent and one non-citizen) out of public housing support.
He will not care whether they end up homeless on the street, or are forced to separate, as long as it causes them plenty suffering and encourages whoever despises others for suffering despise them. Every time he succeeds in causing suffering to people among his designated hate targets, he strengthens his hold over his supporters.
The prisoners in Alligator Alcatraz are *denied medical [treatment] and living in "cages flooded with feces".*
The president of Mexico says she is trying to get the Mexican citizens in that prison returned to Mexico, because of the inhuman conditions in that prison.
San Francisco will kick out the people living RVs and offer to perhaps provide subsidized housing to 400 of them. As for the rest, they are welcome to drop dead.
Scientists say that the wrecker has wrecked the capacity of the US to research and respond to global heating.
So much destruction is coming, and apparently the only reason is to boost the profits of planet roasters.
Google has made a large deal to buy the electricity produced by existing hydroelectric facilities.
I don't see that this promotes renewable generation or reduces greenhouse emissions at all. The electricity those generators will make would certainly have been used. This deal won't fund development of more.
It will shift the the money around, as Google buys current from those generators and the rest of us are compelled to buy current from other generators — perhaps at a higher price.
New pun: Interns in the Soviet Union
US citizens: phone your Congresscritter at 844-994-4554 and urge her to sign the discharge petition so the House can vote on the Protect America's Workforce Act.
The history of American superheroes — fighting injustice including bigotry, and expressing respect for immigrants, from the 1930s to today.
Inventing a character named "Superman" in 1938 who is an immigrant can be seen as a way of giving Nazis the finger.
An experiment asks real developers to fix real bugs in real software, each day randomly asked to use a bullshit generator (LLM) or not to use it. They generally expected that their work would go faster using the LLM, but instead it slowed them down.
Side issue:
I am disappointed that this article promotes the amoral "open source" philosophy instead of the moral philosophy of the free software movement. But that doesn't invalidate the experiment itself.
In parts of the UK, privately-funded criminal prosecutions are a tool for rich companies' repression.
The saboteur in chief is reconsidering his policy towards crippling FEMA, now that it has had the predicted failure in coping with an actual disaster.
His agents seem to be vacillating between (1) not cutting quite so much, (2) claiming that poor performance was the "best response in years", and (3) claiming to have plans to "remake it better".
There is no reason to suppose they have an actual, plausible plan to try to do that. It could be pure self-promotion.
*Extreme heatwaves may cause global decline in dairy production, scientists warn.*
Many agricultural systems will struggle to continue when animals or plants are subject to conditions they did not evolve to handle.
Some European countries have declared Syria a safe country to deport people to.
Most of Syria is indeed much safer now than it was before the fall of Assad. Maybe this decision is valid, at least for some groups and some areas.
But Afghanistan is not a safe place for any female. I hope that no countries will deport females there.
In the UK, employers are starting to regard a degree as useless.
I've thought for many years that the stated requirement for a college degree for a job was usually just an easy way of eliminating most applicants, albeit expensive for the students who need to get the degree. Now it seems businesses are just hiring people they know.
*Climate groups call for UK wealth tax to make super-rich fund sustainable economy.*
The wealth tax needs to be global, but starting on one country is a big step towards that.
An Irish visitor in the US, visiting his sweetheart, had an injury and his doctor told him it wasn't safe for him to travel. He filed for an extension of his stay, but the government ignored him, and he was marked as overstaying his visa. Then deportation thugs got him.
He said, "Please just deport me to Ireland," but they kept him in various privatized prisons for 100 days before doing that. The conditions in prison were cruel, and bring shame on the US. It's too bad they are so widespread that it is hard to argue that they are "unusual" punishment.
He is fortunate that his sweetheart has decided to move to join him in Ireland. Otherwise he would lose her.
*Republicans complain to Canada over wildfire smoke despite supporting planet-heating bill.*
I prefer the term "planet-roasting", but I'm glad to see any such term appearing in a major newspaper.
US greenhouse gas emissions, constantly promoted by Republicans (and by plutocratist Democrats) directly bear a substantial fraction of the responsibility for the wildfires in Canada that made the smoke.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per to shut down the especially cruel "Alligator Alcatraz" prison in Florida, and investigate the corrupt pay-to-play practices of private prison profiteers.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Thank the senators that voted to stop the wrecker from attacking Iran. Although the measure was defeated, it was good that they tried.
US citizens: call on T-Mobile to stop funding right-wing militias and the muskrat.
US citizens: call on establishment Democrats to support Zohran Mamdani for mayor of NYC.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate Stephen Miller.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to preserve FEMA and fully fund it.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the bully and Noem to reverse reckless cuts to emergency services.
A Chinese government web censor becomes a secret dissident and knows how to avoid what the censorship filters are looking for.
*Why do [the bully's] voters have no regrets? Because the people they hate are getting hurt more.*
*Accelerated glacial melt and monsoon rains trigger deadly floods in Pakistan.
Record temperatures and seasonal downpours raise fears of a repeat of the devastating flooding in 2022.*
*EU Should Act Against El Salvador's Dismantling of Democracy.*
This recently extended beyond arbitrary punishment of accused members of gangs to include arbitrary arrest of human rights defenders.
*El Salvador’s top human rights organisation, Cristosal, announced on Thursday it is leaving the country because of [government threats].*
*Far-right conspiracy theories spread online in aftermath of the Texas floods.
Some social media users falsely claimed that the extreme weather was being controlled by the US government.*
No one knows how to control the weather, but governments in general do control climate in the long term, with policies that affect greenhouse emissions
(and other policies), and that makes them responsible for the increase in unnatural disasters.
The deportation thugs lease lots of private prisons and private thugs, and is using ever more of them now.
Privatized prisons are inherently unjust because they profit by giving prisoners spoiled food, ruined clothing, barely working toilets and too few of those, and grudging medical treatment. Some prisoners die from that; a larger number are mentally scarred.
Privatized prisons should be prohibited entirely.
*Migrants deported by the US to Eswatini [to which they had no connection] are being held there in solitary confinement.*
Solitary confinement is a crushing form of brutality.
Senate Republicans demonstrated their support for allowing the saboteur in chief to order his henchmen to violate court orders, by trying to make it unnecessary, by appointing a judge that has said that court orders issued by him would not have to be obeyed.
*DeMentis under fire for using disaster funds to build [Alligator Alcatraz deportation jail].*
And some of the contracts went go his cronies.
One might speculate that skimping on humane treatment of the prisoners saved the public money. But I doubt that is true. I expect that the money saved by this cruelty went to the cronies.
Google wants to keep the UK government's personal data on Google servers located in the US.
Both of those aspects of this deal are foolish. The government should not generally trust any company, or any other government, with that data. Any requested exceptions ought to be judged carefully.
The Supreme Court granted the would-be emperor the power to effectively eliminate any federal agency by firing all its staff.
*Texas Republicans poised to redraw state congressional map on the wrecker's orders.*
This is in response to a statement by the injustice department that accuses Texas (perhaps incorrectly) of violating a newly distorted version of the Voting Rights Act (that forbids coalition-defined districts).
*Newsom threatens to redraw California House maps in protest at Texas plan.*
Considering that the Republicans hold a one-seat majority in the House, these plans could make a difference. But that depends on how much additional voter-suppression Republicans succeed in doing.
What's best for democracy in the long term is to draw districts by the algorithm that produces lines that optimize the overall representivity of all the groups of people that might tend to have their own statistical leaning. It generates a large number of possible district maps for the state, and for each, invents many different preferences, each of which conjectures how each demographic group could lean; figures out based on those leanings who would win each district; computes the discrepancy between the hypothetical percentages of the leanings and the resulting percentages in the legislature elected; then averages that discrepancy over all the preference maps. The smaller the average discrepancy for a certain district map, the fairer that district map.
The Republican attack on abortion rights is increasing the support for abortion rights across the US.
State, Republican legislators are now proposing to make it a crime to have an abortion.
They are also prosecuting women for having miscarriages and for discarding miscarried fetuses.
The prohibition of abortion causes some women to die from failed underground abortions, or from being denied an abortion when that is the way to avoid death.
Those who wish to prohibit abortion are generally Republicans and magats. My message to them is to move to Russia. There they will find the sort of repressive state that they advocate.
(satire) *Rising Cost Of Living Forcing More Buddhists To Continue Working Years Into Reincarnation.*
A town in Sweden is using "donut economics" to recognize its priorities in town planning.
The wit and wisdom of Kash Patel, and what makes him fit to be the head of the FBI.
University heads (and others) summoned by a Congressional committee to face weaponized false accusations of antisemitism came out swinging this time.
A Democrat on the committee said this:
“If the majority wanted to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish students, they should condemn antisemitism in their own party and at the highest level of government,” said Democratic representative Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon. “They have failed to do so. Multiple White House officials have ties to antisemitic extremists.”
CUNY dismissed four professors, despite the fact that their departments want them to continue in their positions, and persistently refuses to explain why. The university has given no justification for this, not to them and not to their union. The professors theorize that it was because of their political activity — defending Palestinians' rights. That is the only thing they have in common.
The chancellor of CUNY stood up for academic freedom in the congressional committee hearing; he should investigate what happened to these four professors and ensure they get valid justifications for their firing
*DHS is urging [thugs] to treat even skateboarding and livestreaming as signs of violent intent during a protest, turning everyday behavior into a pretext for [violent repression].*
This reflects an un-American hatred of traditional American civil liberties and people who try to practice them.
Attorney General Bondi fired the justice department's chief ethics advisor. She did not tell him the reason, but I suspect it was because he raised issues about ethics.
Perhaps he dared to utter something about her own conflicts of interest.
One of the two sides in Sudan's civil war recently massacred 300 civilians in their villages.
Call for shutting down the Alligator Hellhole deportation prison.
How cruel and dangerous is this prison?
Scientists have discovered bacteria that, in the human gut, can absorb a substantial amount of some PFAS, and carry them along when excreted.
It remains to be seen what a patient would need to do for this to reduce the level of PFAS in per body for the long term. Would these bacteria reproduce in per gut and maintain a population? Would these bacteria reduce the rate of bodily absorption of PFAS from the gut?
If the patient already has PFAS in per body, would these bacteria help eliminate them?
Wildfire near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon destroyed various buildings of tourism infrastructure, as well as burning 80 square miles of wild land.
*Democrats and climate groups "too polite" in fight against "malevolent" fossil fuel giants, says key senator [Sheldon Whitehouse].*
A judge ordered the deportation thugs not to arrest anyone without specific grounds about that person. Mere racial profiling is not enough grounds.
Here's how Angelenos have learned to respond to the daily raids.
Israeli Extremist "settlers" murdered a Palestinian-American who was visiting his family in the West Bank. After injuring him, they blocked medics from reaching him until he died.
They killed another Palestinian by shooting him.
The Australian government has jailed the Gazan grandmother of a family in Australia. The government says it did this because she is a security threat, but refuses to explain how that could be so. Two other people from Gaza were likewise jailed.
The government said it won't send them back to Gaza. Maybe that means it will send them to some remote prison island such as Manus Island.
*Gaza's healthcare system is being destroyed by targeted attacks.* Israel has killed 1400 medical personnel in Gaza, with persistent attacks against medical clinics and hospitals.
600 Israeli medical practitioners have signed a letter condemning Israel for the war crime of killing medical personnel in war.
The Australian government has named a "special envoy to combat antisemitism", choosing someone known for fervent support for Israel.
Usually a special envoy is appointed for Australia to influence other countries, but in this case it seems to be the reverse: a way for the Australian government to tell Australians to pay more attention to heed her repetition of Israeli policies that confound criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
[This plan] is the latest push to weaponize antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off.
*Labor Friends of Palestine concerned by [the "envoy"'s] recommendation government adopt IHRA’s contested [criterion for] antisemitism.*
The main author of that criterion said that it is not suitable for this purpose.
Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, says that the supposed "humanitarian city" on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp.
He also condemned Israel's government for supporting the organized campaign of pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank rejecting its denials of that support), and for committing war crimes in Gaza.
*US man arrested while filming Home Depot Ice raid sues government for $1m.*
Uniformed thugs have gone around brutalizing innocent people for decades, if not millennia. The US government used to impose rules on violent thug departments to keep their violence in check.
Now, by contrast, the bully encourages thugs to let their cruelest appetites run away with them.
(satire) WASHINGTON— *In a stunning security breach that reportedly left many top-ranking administration officials vulnerable to attack, the White House was evacuated Tuesday after the building’s trans alarm went off.*
*Family of US citizen beaten to death by Israeli ["settlers"] calls on [US government] to prosecute killers.*
I don't believe the persecutor would try to do that, or that he would care much about the murder of an American who wasn't his loyal supporter.
The DOPE's accusations of unemployment fraud are themselves a fraud. Many are records of claims that were denied years ago because they were found to be invalid.
Gazans who survived an attack while they were trying to collect food packages report that other nearby civilians were shot with targeted fire.
The deportation thugs told eight prisoners they were being transported to another deportation prison in Louisiana. This was a lie: they were being tricked into being deported to violent and dangerous South Sudan.
Such trickery should be punished as a crime. It is bad enough to be deported with some notice. Even people awaiting deportation have some rights, and deserve human decency. This lie denied them both.
US citizens: call on the Department of Veterans Affairs to pledge not to discriminate, for patients or for staff, based on political affiliation, marital status, or national origin.
Does anyone think the persecutor is so virtuous that we need not worry about this danger?
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per to reject all the efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
The wrecker has clever advisors who can write modifications that seem minor but will indirectly make a big change for the worse.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*"Tremendous uncertainty" for cancer research as US officials target mRNA vaccines.*
A substantial fraction of people get cancer. You could be one of them. The research they are canceling could have saved your life.
The 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs branch of the Justice Department have the job of arguing the legality of what the wrecker wants to do. Almost 2/3 of them have quit, apparently because they believe their job is defending the indefensible.
Heavy rain in New York City flooded highways and subway lines.
We knew that global heating would eventually cause New York City to be inundated, but now it seems that the city may become unlivable long before that.
Join a Good Trouble Lives On protest tomorrow, July 17th, to protest the ongoing, full-scale attacks on the civil and human rights of our country.
The protests are scheduled with the memorial of civil-rights champion John Lewis.
Millions of Americans are already protesting every weekend in virtually every city. This sends a strong message to our representatives. This is what democracy looks like.
The wrecker is quietly striking blows against rule of law in the US and other countries. He bullied Israel into pulling back from putting Netanyahu on trial. Now he seeks to order Brazil to letting coup-leading ex-president Bolsonaro go free. Lula refused to do that.
This is leading towards a personal alliance of right-wing despots against their countries. The democratic world needs to recognize that as the enemy of all.
*[The cheater's] Great American Heist You’re Paying For.*
Lula: *With the world in crisis, many say end globalization. I say that would be a mistake.*
I more or less agree. We need to reorganize global trade so that it doesn't put plutocrats in a dominant position, not abolish it.
*Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats How Not to Take the Bait [of a false choice on a hot-button issue].*
Vienna presents an example of policies that don't crush people who rent housing.
This is to remind people that the term "IP" is poisonous propaganda. It was coined to lead people to lump various laws together and assume they are basically similar. That is false! Please reject that term so as to avoid spreading that confusion.
People sometimes respond to ask which term they should use instead, to refer collectively to all those laws. That is a misguided question! Because the laws are so different, it is a mistake to generalize about them at all. So don't do that! Talk about one law at a time, and don't lump other unrelated laws with it.
US citizens: call on the bully and Bondi to stop threatening NYC's mayoral election.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop pervasive surveillance through Palantir.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Why is Mr Unamerican in such a hurry to attack human rights and democracy?
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Block the Bombs Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Democrats should condemn the wrecker's wild and destructive use of tariffs but must refuse to support the demand from business to make international trade completely easy.
Tariffs can be effective for promoting specific industries in a country, but the tariff plans the US has adopted in recent years have been foolishly designed.
I object to the way the author uses the word "liberal", meaning "in favor of letting businesses do whatever they like". That is not what liberals stand for when we had political influence, and it is not what Liberals stand for now. Liberal policies adopted in the 1960s and 70s included Medicare, Medicaid, prohibiting racial discrimination, protecting voting rights, protecting the air and the water, protecting endangered species, and protecting workers from injurious working conditions. You can tell from the way the right-wing Supreme Court has attacked these that they do not bow to business.
Wildflowers growing on contaminated soil can absorb arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead from it, and pass them on to bees. It damages the bees' memory, which can wipe out the hive.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge each one to protect the funding for public media.
Here's a suggested script that I am passing along with changes. Of course, you can say what you wish to say.
Hello! My name is [First Name]. I'm a constituent and am calling to
ask Sen. [Name] to oppose any action that cuts funding
to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Public media are among our nation’s most important media, with
overwhelming support among people from all 50 states and all political
leanings.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: write to Palantir's board of directors and call on them to explain what they are doing with personal data from the US government.
In my letter I called on Palantir never to process that data together with any personal data obtained in any other way. That would include, for example, location data.
I used the following Subject field:
You must tell us what Palantir is doing with personal data from the US
government and NEVER process it together with any other data you have.
I used the following message body:
Others are demanding that Palantir be transparent about what it does
with personal data from the US government. I join in that demand, but
that does not go far enough.
Palantir must never combine, or process together, any of that
government data with any other data it has or obtains about people.
To do so would establish a China-like system of total repression.
I want to be able to continue to love my country. I want it to remain
"the land of the free and the home of the brave." I hope you don't
want Palantir to be responsible for converting the US into a place
that people must flee for their freedom's sake.
Sincerely,
It is most effective if you write your message in your own words. If you are in a demographic that tends to support the bully, it is good to mention that.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 is deporting 4 million Afghan refugees in a hurry. Many are single women, who under Afghanistan's repressive laws can't even leave the border post.
With their prospects, death is an escape. Why, I wonder, do they obligingly walk to the border post, when they could instead drop on the ground and say, defiantly, "You can carry me or you can kill me"?
There may be other opportunities to fight their guards, for those who would rather die fast than be driven to death or slavery.
Australia wants some of its oldest rock art to be listed as a World Heritage site.
Advisors say Australia should first end industrial development and damaging air pollution, and then it could be listed. I agree Australia should end those, but I wonder if the committee could issue conditional approval.
Charges against Mario Guevara have been dropped. When brought to court, they proved to be garbage.
*Bangladesh's ousted leader Sheikh Hasina has been formally charged [in Bangladesh] with crimes against humanity after being accused of ordering a deadly crackdown against anti-government protests last year that left more than 1,400 people dead.*
Greg Palast: Tesla stays afloat as a seller of greenhouse gas offsets.
*So, my dear green friends, when you buy a Tesla, you're not reducing your carbon footprint by a quarter inch, because Musk is selling your good intentions to General Motors so they can pollute more.*
*The corrupter's inaugural fund got $19m from fossil fuel industry, analysis shows.*
The corrupter used the electoral fund as an opportunity to pressure the rich for bribes.
If we ever win back democracy, we should make it illegal for any elected or appointed official to raise funds for anything similar in spirit to an inaugural fund. If its purpose is per glorification, perse must have no direct relationship with its operations, with its fund-raising, or its money.
The US saboteur in chief deleted the web site that published national climate assessments, including the most recent one which is from 2023. A copy of that is available here.
Much worse, he has shut down the preparation of the next edition, due in 2027. This will surely please his sponsors, the fossil fuel companies.
Scotland is in drought, due to global heating, and the government has asked people to limit water usage.
That is the right first step, but to avoid making things worse they must use less fossil fuel.
People in part of Texas have suffered a disaster that they partly brought on themselves. That includes the flood itself — many years of voting for climate denialists have permitted more global heating and that enabled the flood. And it includes the wrecker's efforts to weaken and abolish FEMA.
How should we express our disgust for those political policies in relation to the resulting non-natural disasters?
A doctor in Texas wished for Republican voters in the flood region to suffer the bad consequences of their votes. That is not the right ethical position.
Many Kerr County voters are getting the consequences most of them voted for — but we should be sad for that, not wish for that. Their votes were foolish because of their bad consequences; we should regret both those foolish votes and their bad consequences.
People get the government their behavior deserves, but people always deserve good government.
We can say that people brought disaster themselves without wishing for disaster to harm them. We can wish that they learn to make wise decisions without wishing for a disaster so "to teach them" that lesson.
Moreover, disasters don't always get people to be compassionate towards each other.
Meanwhile, while she was being fired for wishing that right-wingers suffer the harm they have caused, a group of right-wing fanatics seek to impose that harm on non-right-wing Texans.
*The Private Prison Industry Looks Forward to Soaring Profits Thanks to [the persecutor]'s Budget.
Senator Whitehouse accused *Democrats and climate groups [of being] "too polite" in fight against "malevolent" fossil fuel giants.*
I agree. The planet-roasters have grounds to know that they are risking destroying civilization and most living humans for their own profit. We don't owe them the benefit of the doubt.
Asian friends of the US are aiming to increase their trade with China as a replacement for the US.
This is a natural consequence of the bully's tariff threats.
Cory Doctorow: Instead of retaliating towards US tariffs with its own Tariffs, it should retaliate by repealing the Canadian equivalent of the DMCA. And it should follow up by publishing jailbreaks for various US companies that are jails.
Doctorow argues that that would do far more harm to oppressive US companies that sell people jails, including Apple, Google, John Deere and car companies, and would avoid raising prices for Canadians.
I criticize the article's choice of terminology. When talking about copyright laws such as the DMCA, it refers to them by the over-general and vague term "IP". That term is always an overgeneralization and we should never use it.
It also refers to digital handcuffs as "digital locks". The most important thing about DRM and other digital handcuffs is that they are fundamentally unlike locks.
Locks, in general, are not nasty or unjust in that way. The lock on your door doesn't oppress you — because you have the key. Your password is a lock on your computer that does not oppress you because you choose and you have the key (password) to open it.
Protecting your control over your home or your computer is not an injustice.
The systems that companies use to restrict what you can do with your computer are handcuffs, not locks. The handcuffs are unjust towards you because the companies put them on you.
Digital handcuffs are an injustice because they give a company control. If we call them "locks", that tends to legitimize them — so let's not!
Some of America's best academic researchers are being chosen for the chance to move to a French university.
300 researchers have applied, but there are only 38 finalists. I don't know how many will actually be chosen, but I would estimate not more than 10. What will the others do?
140 EPA employees who signed an open letter criticizing the management *dismantling the EPA office of research and development, canceling environmental justice programs and grants, making employees fearful, undermining the trust of the public, and "ignoring scientific consensus to protect polluters."*
In other words, of acting against its official mission.
Those administrators suspended those employees and said, "The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration's agenda…"
And when the "administration's agenda" is to make the EPA fail totally, who then ought to be suspended?
Journalist Mario Guevara was arrested covering a protest, and handed to the deportation thugs. A judge ruled to release him on bail, but the thugs are playing silly games to keep him in jail.
Project 2025 seems to have planned a general campaign to probe the law at every possible weak-point, seeking ways to negate people's legal rights. Among those, the authority of judges to order officials to correct their abuses.
Amazingly, US immigration persecutors were able to see the case for mercy for Mandonna Kashanian, an Iranian student who was stranded in the US when the Islamic revolution took power. Her family mobilized people in her community to convince their congresscritter, who had influence with the deportation thugs.
Her name leads me to speculate that she may be of Armenian ethnicity and not Muslim. That would be a reason why returning to Iran would have implied oppression.
The fact that it is possible gives reason to hope they might feel the stirrings of human decency more often.
Salafi Arabia executed over 100 people in 2024, and over 100 people in the first half of this year, for nonviolent drug offenses.
According to Amnesty International, the trials are inadequate as proof that the accused even committed those crimes (though perhaps some did so).
The Big Bad Bill will kill many renewable energy projects, which will make electricity substantially more expensive a few years from now. To compensate for this, the saboteur in chief plans to subsidize existing fossil-fuel generating plants.
*Democratic senators introduce bill to prohibit [deportation thugs] from wearing masks.*
I don't think many Republicans will vote for this, but their opposition could show people how slavish and cruel they are.
The use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer produces crops that contain small amounts of many different chemicals, some of which are toxic.
What is not known is whether the amounts of various chemicals present in actual food is a significant danger to people who mostly will die anyway before reaching the age of 100 years. Each chemical poses a separate question.
One lesson of this, which I've stated before, is that we must absolutely reject the idea that a company has a right to conceal data about its processes and outputs that is pertinent to public health. A government of the people, by the people, for the people tells companies, "Document what we need to know, or shut down."
Lawyers are trying to prove in court that the deportation thugs are using wanton violence against whoever they encounter, citizens or not.
The US measles epidemic is slowing down, after around 1270 known cases. There may have been hundreds of thousands more cases not reported.
This is what used to happen every year when I was a child. Every year, 400-500 people died from measles in the US. The article does not say how many developed a weakened immune system or lasting disability, but I'd expect it was in the thousands.
All of that could be coming back — but we could avoid that by kicking out the trumpets.
*Governments are not powerless in the face of deep sea miners colluding with [the wrecker].*
The US travel warning for South Sudan says "Do not travel" and warns people to make a will first if they do go there. But the persecutor had 8 people deported there, a country they did not know, after lying to them about where they were being taken.
The US deportation thugs feel no obligation of decency or proportionality. Now that they have got away with deporting people to South Sudan who don't know that country or its culture, can't speak the language, and mostly don't adhere to the dominant religion there, and cannot make a living there, they will try to expand the practice to include people who had no criminal records, are entering with apparent permission, and get refused incomprehensibly at the arrival airport.
Joseph Stiglitz: *[The bully] bullied Canada over "digital taxes" — and Ottawa submitted.*
It's too bad, because these would have meant more taxing of companies that are dangerously powerful.
*Palestinians fear razing of villages in West Bank, as [colonizers] circle their homes.*
(satire) *Insecure Woman Doesn't Like Eating In Front Of Surveillance State.*
The land under the Alaskan village of Kipnuk is slowly eroding and buildings are falling into the ocean. The sadist's men have just canceled the climate adaptation grant that was going to pay for a retaining wall to protect it.
Many such grants have been canceled. The victims are suing.
Robert Reich explains why the wrecker is trying to crush universities and make them submissive agents of his control over thinking.
All the parties in Britain believe that the people don't care about climate defense, so they can abandon the effort. This article argues that they are mistaken.
If you recognize that the survival of civilization depends on curbing global heating, so failure is likely to kill billions, you will realize that you must do that even people fail to demand it.
The US put sanctions on Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories. The report inculpates Alphabet/Google, Facebook/Meta, and Microsoft, plus others in various countries.
US citizens: call on all Democratic candidates to pledge not to accept oligarch money.
*UN Gaza investigator Francesca Albanese says US sanctions against her a sign of "guilt".*
I don't think what the persecutor feels is guilt, as such. He seems to be impervious to the moral self-criticism that is essential for avoiding wrongdoing. I think he realizes that the condemnation will carry weight with the public, and lead some to despise him, so he seeks to silence or discredit those critics.
A billionaire who switched from supporting the Tories to supporting Labour evidently thought he was joining Tory Lite. Now he is worried that Starmer might get the idea he is head of the Labour party.
George Monbiot: Attacking the poor creates a power base for right-wing fanatics when "centrist" plutocratists are in power, they do this; when the fanatics get into power, they can continue doing it.
In Europe, as in the US, governments have encouraged and fed the corporate takeover of housing. This is the root cause of unlivable prices.
Europe spent the "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War mostly on tax cuts and mostly for the rich. It can rearm and protect the non-rich now by returning tax levels to previous levels.
I suggest putting a withholding tax on business's payments to stockholders and creditors, which for EU taxpayers would count as withholding towards their personal tax payments. Non-EU taxpayers would not be able to get it back.
*Tesla asks NHTSA to hide its response to Robotaxi questions.*
Businesses employ people but they are not people. They are not entitled to keep secrets from the public in matters that rightly concern the public's well being.
*UK bosses to be banned from using NDAs to cover up misconduct at work.*
This is a step forward, but it should go further. Businesses should not be allowed to compel employees to cover up harm to the public either.
The UK is considering abolishing jury trial for some subset of criminal charges.
If the system is "collapsing" it is probably traceable one way or another to budget cuts, made "necessary" by tax cuts for the rich.
Economic forecasting predicts that the changes that the Labour Left forced on Starmer will convert a predicted increase in poverty into an predicted decrease.
That's good, but will it last? Some other change that hurts the non-rich could convert the positive forecast into negative again.
The US suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine, claiming that its stockpiles of weapons were running low. However, there is no evidence that such a thing is happening — that justification seems to be just bullshit.
A Canadian woman has been living in the US since childhood, with her husband and their children, without official authorization. Her husband voted for the persecutor, and now that his wife has been targeted for persecution, he says he regrets his vote.
*The UN is our best defense against a third world war. As [the wrecker] wields the axe, who will fight to save it?*
Adapting to dangerously hotter summers can fit in with reducing greenhouse emissions, funded by taxes.
The author speaks of taxing the worst polluters, but drivers in aggregate are among the worst and the less wealthy of them can't afford to pay more tax. However, subsidizing fossil fuel for them undermines decarbonization. A solution which avoids undermining it is to give poor people a payment they can use as they wish. They can all use it, and it preserve for each of the incentive to switch away from fossil fuels.
Why are the British so concerned about fly-tipping? Does an upside-down fly have difficulty getting back on its feet? Are flies now delivering food to diners' tables?
20 years ago, the economic powers started working together to "make poverty history" around the world.
Since then, governments have abandoned that goal. Now they are adopting policies to increase poverty in their own countries.
Rebecca Solnit: *Did National Weather Service cuts lead to the Texas flood disaster? We don’t know.*
It is clear that the wrecker's cuts to science, and in particular NOAA including the NWS, will do harm again and again. But we can't take it as certain that they was responsible for how bad the damage was this time.
On the other hand, we know that the planet roasters' resistance to decarbonization caused this flood to be worse.
We also know that their current resistance will lead to more and worse floods, as well as to more and worse fires, and to inundation of many coastal cities, large and small, around the world.
Israel's Orwellian language for many aspects of the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Israel has openly announced a plan to force all Palestinians out of Gaza, confirming the intention that many have suspected.
The first step in the plan is to concentrate the population of Gaza in one camp on the ruins of the border city of Rafah. Even worse, it is explicit that this is part of a plan whose goal is to expel them.
If the world does not quash this plan, it will be rip up the restraints that still partly discourage crimes against humanity around the world. Other states are likely to follow this example, expelling populations much bigger than Gaza's, perhaps into deserts where they will die. In the probable age of hunger, a few decades from now, tens or hundreds of millions may be eliminated in bulk by a single command.
Israel labels each act or tool of cruelty with the word "humanitarian". This appears to be a campaign to inure people to hypocrisy, aiming to poison that word and make it hard to describe actual humanitarian actions.
A heat wave in central Europe is hindering shipping on the Rhine and Danube.
This has happened before. Sometimes shipping nearly came to a halt. The problem is a consequence of global heating and it is getting generally worse.
Zohran Mamdani attacked with a dishonest political hatchet job.
Zohran Mamdani was born in Uganda. His parents are of Indian ancestry, and his father was a Ugandan of Indian ancestry. So when he applied to Columbia University, he checked the boxes for Indian and African.
So far, so reasonable, but various political enemies (starting with the New York Times) are trying to spin this as a serious scandal. What they are actually proving is how untrustworthy they are.
The government of India demands the handover of ancient jewels excavated from a stupa along with (reportedly) some of the ashes from the cremation of the Buddha.
We know what the Buddha would say about this, if he were alive today.
Such attachment to material objects, such as jewels, or what remains of a person's dead body, will only cause suffering. I advise you to stop venerating me, and focus the wisdom I passed on to you: meditate on the impermanence of human life.According to my nonreligious ideas of right and wrong, I think that the Government of India made a reasonable and ethical deal with Pappé: to keep the bulk of the jewels, demonstrating the range they span, in a museum as it should be, and letting Pappé have 1/5 that were not special. There are no grounds to reopen that deal.
Stupas, like other ancient sites, are heritage of humanity for the knowledge that can be learned from them, and should only be excavated by skilled archeologists who can learn from them the most possible knowledge about ancient times. But that was not an option in the 1870s.
Can an intern do multiple tasks?
Melting ice encourages volcanoes underneath to erupt. Oops!
60% of Honeybees in the US died last winter, killed by he varroa mites which spread various diseases among the bees.
*ICC issues warrant for Taliban's supreme leader for persecution of women.*
Hooray! Even though it isn't likely that he will be arrested and brought to the court for trial, this will still have good effects on the world.
The security detail for the prime minister of Sweden ran and rode their bikes to and from work shifts, and allowed a personal surveillance app to track them. This allowed the public to track the prime minister's movements.
I gather that publishing where users run or ride is a documented feature, not a bug or a documented malfeature. If humans were infallible, the fault would be entirely on the guards who used it. But since humans are fallible, the system is at fault also.
Don't be a sap,
Avoid the app!
Just as the bully's followers are attacking anyone that they can describe as antisemitic, the bully himself uttered an indisputably antisemitic slur. Can he be deported for that?
Britain's repression of protest becomes more vicious, as we might expect. 20 protesters face prosecution and perhaps 14 years in prison for carrying signs stating support for the banned "terrorist" organization, Palestine Action.
The declaration that Palestine Action is a terrorist organization declares an absurd (and false) exaggeration to be true. The prosecution of the sign-carriers, if that goes ahead, will use that false "truth" for tyranny, and threaten even more tyranny.
I expect that the judge will forbid any discussion, in the trial, of whether Palestine Action really is terrorist -- to insist that the declaration replaces the truth.
Advice to protesters on how to overcome the magats' usual attacks and build a movement that goes beyond protest.
Although I am not an expert, it seems rational to me.
US citizen and Israeli citizen Eran Zelnik: *I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By [the fascist leader's] logic, I’m a terror supporter.*
He compares the current US regime in detail to the Nazi regime that his grandparents fled, and then asks Kash Patel (head of the FBI), "Do you want to arrest me?"
NYC's Democratic primary demonstrated the superiority of ranked choice voting.
The EU is investigating whether Google Search's "AI" Overviews are anticompetitive.
* A former FBI agent who allegedly shouted "kill ’em!" at law enforcement during the January 6 insurrection is now advising a "weaponization working group" in the "justice department".
Genetic evidence that air pollution provokes development of lung cancer — and faster aging of telomeres.
Canada is considering a cruel and dangerous immigration and surveillance bill.
The immigration part would permit officials to cancel visas arbitrarily and ban arbitrarily any pathway for people to reach Canada to ask for admission. No appeal is allowed.
Furthermore, people arriving across the border where there is no crossing point would have just two weeks to apply for asylum. What does such harshness serve?
The immigration minister has admitted that all this is a surrender to pressure from the bully.
The surveillance part would make it easier for cops and prosecutors to get access to people's communication metadata without a warrant. It includes an almost unlimited exceptions for emergencies; perhaps it would be acceptable if it stated more concrete limits, or if it prohibited the state from retaining such surveillance data more than 2 weeks if it has not by then obtained a warrant covering that same data.
The EU seems to be abandoning its leadership in curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Bhutan expelled 100,000 members of an ancestrally Nepali minority group into India, They went to refugee camps in Nepal. Many were later allowed to move to other countries including the US. Some have been deported from the US for various alleged crimes, but the US doesn't check that Bhutan will allow them entry (it does not). So they go to Nepal, but the refugee camp won't let them return, and Nepal does not believe, or does not care, that they formerly lived there.
Now Nepal insists on deporting them to Bhutan, and officials seem unwilling to face the fact that Bhutan won't allow them in.
A court ordered that Ward Sakeik not be deported, and deportation thugs tried to deport her anyway.
*Droughts worldwide pushing [around 100 million people] towards starvation, says report.*
This looks like the beginning of what we know global heating will produce: a permanent inability for some regions to sustain their current populations. To stabilize the population of endangered regions with birth control and abortion is urgent, if we want to prevent megadeaths from doing so.
The article's actual title said "tens of millions", but those words are misleading since the article's text says "more than 90 million". In the absence of a basis to know it is closer to 90 than to 100, the best rough approximation is 100 million.
Many BBC journalists rebuke the BBC for refusing to present the facts that would shed a critical light on Israel's war crimes. For instance, its refusal to show the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which it had commissioned, apparently because of the truth that that documentary would demonstrate.
Another pertinent issue:
I am obliged to point out that authorized distribution of BBC video
programs on the internet is wrapped in DRM, which is
an
injustice in
itself.
The article talks about other channels that distributed the documentary in the UK, after the BBC finally rejected it. I suppose that their internet distribution is afflicted with DRM too, meaning no less subjugatory.
I hope you will join me in refusing to use anything that imposes DRM on published works. Let's make DRM a felony!
However, you can find textual explanation of the same facts in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0xp969n69o and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/24/new-details-on-killing-of-paramedics-in-gaza-appear-to-contradict-idf-account
*How Mamdani connects climate policy to his affordability agenda as he runs for New York mayor.*
Daily Kos, the organization, has been notified that the US government is investigating it for un-magat activities, but with no specifics about why.
Here it explores what the alleged grounds might be.
*Key climate change reports removed from US government websites.*
The wrecker is not merely uncooperative with efforts to curb fossil fuel; he seems to be doing everything possible to ensure global gigadeaths.
UK universities are getting advice from a specialist law firm on how to obtain year-long protest bans.
Cardiff University obtained a ban his way. Other universities that registered for the webinar include Reading, Exeter, Northumbria, Hertfordshire, Birkbeck, Bath Spa and Liverpool John Moores
If you are or were a student at one of them, you might want to inform the university that this or other opposition to traditional political freedom puts you off any will to donate to that university.
*New York lawmakers [including Zohran Mamdani] relaunch bill to stop charities funding Israeli settlers.* The bill would also prohibit donations to Israeli military units operating in Gaza.
About the "donations" in question.
Mamdani is currently a member of the state assembly, and is the Democratic nominee for mayor of NYC.
Mackerel in the Northeast Atlantic are overfished, and numbers are shrinking.
*Big tech's new datacenters will take water from the world’s driest areas.*
A government that considers people important will prohibit the operation of a datacenter if there is a shortage of water in the region when it is operating.
Greenpeace is suing the pipeline company Energy Transfer under the EU's anti-SLAPP directive
The lawsuit against Greenpeace clearly is a SLAPP. It was meant to distract attention from the danger of river-polluting pipeline leaks, the broader danger of deadly floods and fires, and the longer-term danger of collapse of civilization from global heating.
i wonder how an EU court has jurisdiction over it, though. The protests were in he US, the SLAPP lawsuit is in the US, and Energy Transfer is in the US.
Some US states have anti-SLAPP laws, but North Dakota is rather right-wing so it probably does not have one.
The US deportation thugs have rules and procedures that systematically result, occasionally, in jailing US citizens and even deporting US citizens. Part of the cause is racial profiling, but fixing the operational rules would prevent most of these.
The UK has been pressuring various mostly autonomous colonies which are tax havens for decades to keep track of corporate profits that flow through them to anonymous owners, but it isn't pressing hard enough to make them change anything.
Ralph Nader presents the wrecker's three overall goals — riches, vengeance, and permanent plutocracy — and relates them to his specific acts of destruction.
I think that the word "vengeance" is not adequate for the second of these goals. Its targets are not limited to personal rivals or enemies; he aims to crush everyone who was on the other side, politically, and support those who were on his side.
The Social Security Administration sent (some) recipients a letter whose only purpose was propaganda to praise the Big Bad Bill.
Part of the claimed benefits were false, of course. Never suppose that magats are telling the truth.
US citizens: call on state legislators to reject any calls for an Article V convention.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on California Attorney General Rob Bonta to protect journalists covering the LA protests.
*[Deportation thug] raids leave crops unharvested at California farms: "We need the labor."*
Beyond the obvious irony of this, I note that the wrecker hates California and seems to look for any way to cause harm there. This may part of the purpose of the raids, rather than collateral damage.
Mamdani's margin of victory over Cuomo was 12% — Cuomo was not even close.
The persecutor has ordered a sweeping campaign to try to cancel the citizenship of naturalized citizens. One of the possible grounds, lack of "good moral character", could be stretched out of all recognition by partisan judges. Even when the victim has a good chance of winning, perse may lack the funds for a lawyer.
Magats plan to try to strip Mamdani of US citizenship to stop him from winning the mayoral election. This would take a lot of stretching plus a double standard.
Is it required that the mayor of NYC be a US citizen?
Israel confiscates supplies from doctors visiting Gaza. When volunteer doctors try to visit Gaza, Israel confiscates items such as baby food and surgical equipment. It is also very fussy about whether a doctor is allowed in.
In particular, doctors who talk to the media after they leave Gaza are blocked from visiting Gaza again — blocked at nearly the last minute, so there is no chance to find replacements for them.
This reduces the number of doctors in Gaza, and interferes with main remaining channel for news reporting coming from people who don't live in Gaza.
The EU needs to act to thwart Orbán's suppression of human rights in Hungary. He targeted the queer minority first, to prove that no one's rights are safe in Hungary; soon he will extend that suppression to all dissent.
The abolition of USAID is estimated to be likely to kill 14 million people by 2030.
The saboteur in chief's cuts to the weather bureau forced it to shut down at night, and reduced the available data to compute forecasts from. This interfered with forecasting tornadoes and flash floods.
*Tracking sea ice is "early warning system" for global heating — but US halt to data sharing will make it harder, scientists warn.*
While the bullshitter is the enemy of trust, the muskrat is the enemy of empathy.
*Here’s what the Democrats can learn from Zohran Mamdani.* An active supporter reports on what she heard from voters as she canvassed for him.
Arguing that the enormous level of lead air pollution in Tacoma, Washington, was responsible for the cluster of several killers who grew up there.
The UK government is considering more facial recognition in public places.
Also robot prison guards, and implanting tracking devices in people's bodies.
Idea: name big storms after fossil fuel companies and manufacturers of SUVs.
The article focuses on Britain, but the idea makes sense globally.
After a long delay, people in a small part of France received an official order for certain vulnerable people should avoid drinking tap water, due to presence of PFAS in the water supply.
The warning focused on babies, pregnant women and the immunocompromised. That decision is based on caution, which has some rational basis. But actually, no one knows how much harm various PFAS are likely to do to those people, or to other people. We have reasons to think they might do harm, but we don't know. There are hundreds of different PFAS, and no one knows what effects each one might have.
Collecting statistics on exposure to each one, and on the medical problems that develop at various exposure levels, is likely to take decades.
When Israel bombed Evin prison, used by Iran for political prisoners, some of them were killed. Afterward, Iran moved many others to other prisons where conditions are more painful.
Iran's government is not necessarily doing that to punish the prisoners. It seems to be working to improve some.
But Iran's government it entirely and solely to blame for imprisoning people for demanding human rights. Just as the US government is when, it jails people for protests.
Mamdani's proposal for city-run grocery stores will provide a place to buy groceries, including fresh produce, in the parts of New York City which now have none.
Kilmar Ábrego's lawyers have published descriptions of how he was tortured in El Salvador's prison for alleged "terrorists". It is horrible.
The guards recognized that he was not a gang member, that his tattoos had nothing to do with gangs. So why did they subsequently start to torture him? I think they must have got orders from higher up — perhaps from the persecutor, via Bukele.
Ex-Twitter will use bullshit generators (LLMs) to write the "community notes" that substitute for fact checking.
Oxfam supports the initiative of Spain. Brazil and South Africa to tax the super-rich globally.
Europeans seem to recognize that heat waves indicate a slow-moving disaster, but they have given up on the idea of convincing governments to resist the planet roasters.
In effect, they are giving up civilization for dead.
How sad — because they could make governments safe if they determined not to give up.
Jeremy Corbyn's party is reanimating the Labour Left
Israel was compelled to admit it had shot a convoy of Palestinian medics, but still has recourse to false facts and irrelevancies to defend it.
Whether some or all of the medics in a team are related to an enemy force is irrelevant as long as they act as medics are supposed to act, and these did so.
The army's own investigation has contradicted its public excuses.
*We are witnessing the destruction of science in America.*
With years more research, we would have been likely to find treatments or preventatives for many diseases that plague millions of people.
I suppose research will still be done in Europe and Asia. But the US contribution has been important.
The largest oil company in Italy is suing those who have denounced it for its greenhouse emissions, and even arranged for one to be prosecuted.
Dutch schools' prohibited the use of snoop-phones in class, and that has improved education and social interaction.
*Family of Dr Marwan al-Sultan says the Israeli airstrike "precisely" hit the apartment block the cardiologist and his relatives occupied.*
*Palestine Action isn’t a danger to British democracy — but this repressive government is.*
Any government that tries to stretch the definition of "terrorism" as an excuse to punish someone declares itself an enemy of freedom.
(As is any government that tries to stretch the definition of "antisemitism" as an excuse to punish someone.)
The bully has jailed over 130 immigrants from Iran since the brief war, accusing them of being "sleeper cells" for sabotage.
Many of them came to the US because they opposed the Iranian regime, defending there the human rights that the US used to stand for. If they were deported to Iran, they could be put in
Evin prison or another prison even worse.
Now the US could deport them to some other place such as Djibouti.
Will courts ensure that the deportation thugs prove a case against these accused spies before deporting them? Or will it allow the bully's hate-spreaders men to spread terror among all refugees and naturalized citizens in the US?
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the Big Bad Bill, which Congress just passed. Here's an AFL-CIO list of how it harms low-income Americans:
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Right-wing methods of dealing with the inconvenience of homeless people living in public areas sooner or later take a cruel and vicious form. Here is an example from Australia.
I've often linked to examples from California,
Some places choose rather to give each homeless person a place to live in.
The magats' big brutal bill is designed to keep refugees out of the US unless they have some money. They will have to pay to request asylum, and pay for the years that they wait for a final hearing. All this is to make people persecuted in other countries give up unless they are wealthy.
It also makes sure they have to wait a long time, by limiting the number of immigration judges.
The idea of the global system of asylum was meant to ensure that people forced out of their own countries by persecution can find welcome somewhere. This scheme is designed to drive them away. Australia and the UK have been doing their best to drive away refugees for years now.
*Palestine Action is part of Britain's proud history of protest. Proscribing it is an assault on democracy.*
A nationwide British food co-op has decided to boycott exports from a list of countries, on account of their widespread human rights abuses: Afghanistan, Belarus, Central African Republic, North Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Arguing that Netanyahu is likely to break the Iran-Israel cease fire because he stands to gain from unending war.
(satire) *Entitled Child Expects To Eat Lunch Every Day.*
(satire) *Congress Passes Blank Bill For Trump To Write Whatever Law He Wants.*
(satire) *Christian Faith An Important Part Of Who Senator Pretends To Be.*
The wrecker's campaign to repress journalism is intimidating many students who write or wrote for school newspapers. They are asking the newspapers to delete their articles.
The USA's tree of liberty was always flawed, but now it may be poisoned entirely. The wrecker's axe is cutting into the heart of the trunk.
China has set up a national government system for internet accounts, enabling uniform ID checks on all platforms.
Every unified national system of internet accounts is a scheme ready-made for repression. Whatever its purpose is — even if it is only to verify a person's age — it will enable the government to track all of everyone's internet use, on all servers that the state chooses to impose this on. Combine that with a would-be autocrat and it is disaster.
The US government is building a database to list all citizens. This will be dangerous, because it won't list all citizens, only those whom the federal government has verified.
The article says that it *could provide local and state governments a powerful method to check the citizenship of almost all Americans without additional documentation requirements.* But that must be confusion. Even if the data base has a record about you, you will still have to authenticate yourself as that person. What papers will that require?
The "voter ID" method of voter suppression demands that voters show up-to-date government ID. That disenfranchises many citizens who had to move to a different address and have not had the time to update their driver's licenses since. Republicans adopt this method because it tends to stop poor people, students, and old people from voting.
What will happen to people with such driver's licenses if a state checks this citizenship data base? Will it suppress their votes?
A court ruled that Kristi Gnome cannot prematurely end the temporary protected status of Haitians.
The publication in Turkey of a cartoon which appears to show Muhammad and Moses shaking hands inspired Erdoğan's tyranny to revile and imprison the cartoonists.
Apparently the idea of peace between religious groups is "against [the] sacred values" of religious fanatics.
Condemnation of depicting Muhammad has not been a universal principle of Islam, and anyway, no religious group has the right to impose censorship on the public. Not Muslims in Turkey, not Christians in the US, and not Jews either.
Ticks of a certain species, from the southeast US, cause a painful and lasting allergy to mammal meat and dairy, in humans they bite. Due to global heating, the ticks are spreading north and have been seen in New York and Maine, close to the northern border of the US.
One could imagine that the spread of this allergy could reduce consumption of red meat and dairy thus curb global heating, but I don't think it would be enough to save civilization.
Robert Reich: *Last night I couldn’t get out of my head that [the would-be emperor] is intent on abolishing the two branches of the government with the constitutional duty to constrain him.*
The Big Brutal Bill was going to strip federal courts of the power to issue injunctions to block specific unconstitutional or illegal practices no matter who the victim was. The decision on that bill has not yet been made, as far as I know. But the Supreme Court just did the deed.
The Supreme Court's devastating decision effectively allows the bully to disregard the constitution, except against the specific plaintiffs that have sued about it.
The same 9 justices upheld that power as legitimate when it was used against Biden's policies, and for a long time before that under other presidents.
I've read that some lawyers are using a class-action suit to try to get around this change.
US citizens: call on the CDC to restore funding for vaccine development.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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 the USPS board of governors to retract its nomination of a Fedex board member as head of the USPS.
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 for why that issue matters.)
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 by visiting that page.) 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.
*Israeli officers and soldiers said that they were ordered to deliberately fire at unarmed civilians waiting for humanitarian aid.*
I find the accusation credible, given how the aid-bait sites were designed to make killing easy.
* The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.*
We can't take for granted that the investigation will seriously consider punishing guilty killers, but at least it has taken the first step towards possibly doing so.
If Israel fails to carry out a proper investigation and prosecution, I think the International Criminal Court could do it.
Andrew Cuomo lost the Democratic primary for mayor of NYC, but he may run for night-mayor as an independent in the general election — against both Mamdani and Eric Adams.
It would be fun to see them split the opposition. Or, who knows, one of them might run as a Republican.
*Colombia gangs lure children to join ranks via TikTok [and Facebook], UN warns.*
* As many as 35,000 Ukrainian children are still missing and thought to be held in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to an American team of experts, with families saying they are being forced to take desperate and risky measures to try to rescue them.*
A study concluded that air pollution costs Americans, on the average, around $2500 per person per year as of 2014 in damage from illness or death, and killing around 100,000 people per year in the US. These harms are mostly due to PM2.5 particulates pollution, and the US has greatly reduced them by reducing the burning of coal.
We should reject the demands of the plutocratist politicians that want to preserve coal burning.
A deportation thug grabbed US citizen Andrea Velez and carried her off to a deportation prison, uninterested in seeing her identification.
Her relatives hired lawyers, and it took hours for them to get any information about what happened to her. The deportation thugs said that she was arrested for assaulting a deportation thug.
I am skeptical about that claim, because she would have had no motive to bother him unless he did something wrong to her first.
Orcas cut off strands of kelp to use as a tool to mutually scratch with.
It requires two orcas to use the tool together, by rolling it or rubbing it between their bodies.
*The saboteur in chief is making US intelligence parrot his line on [war with] Iran,* much as Dubya did on war with Iraq.
*[His] intervention on the issue of the damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities is also crucially important. By setting out the narrative that the spy agencies are [expected to loyally] adhere to, [he] is slamming shut a door on actual investigation and intelligence-gathering.
The saboteur-in-chief has distrusted US intelligence agencies every since they took note of signs that he was under Putin's control or influence.
Israel has been allowing some aid through the Gaza border wall into the north of Gaza, but closed that gate last Thursday.
Perhaps this is why the lack of any hunger games food sites in northern Gaza had not caused a total starvation there … yet.
An example of magats' performative cruelty: the deportation of US army veteran Sae Joon Park. There were excuses to deport him, and reasons for mercy. Previous administrations chose mercy; the bully chose cruelty.
The pattern of acting this way, by deporting some people, denying other people abortions and depriving yet others of medical care, is one of the basic general characteristics of the persecutor.
*US state department told to terminate nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs.*
No surprise this, given his visible stance on democracy in the US itself.
The propagandist is seeking to eliminate any information that is negative about the US from national parks, monuments and historic sites. If anyone mentions that the US did something bad there, the public is asked to report it so that it can be gagged.
At the camps where Japanese Americans were jailed during World War II. this policy creates an irreconcilable contradiction. it won't be easy to explain what events those sites commemorate.
This reflects the persecutor's general priorities: loyalty over truth.
A US court ruled that using a copyrighted work to train some sort of pattern recognizer is not copyright infringement. That means that we will not lose the right to do digital style analysis.
The recognition program that was being trained was an LLM, and it has the ability to generate output imitating the sty;e of existing works. Copyright does not cover generalities such as writing style, so it is correct that the possibility of imitating styles does not make for infringement.
Attempts to broaden copyright are typically organized by publishers with the support of famous best-selling authors, who label non-infringing uses as "theft" to convince us to surrender more of our freedom. Usually these campaigns advocate changes that we should reject.
For my view on copyright law, and how to support authors better while respecting readers' freedom more, see my speech, Copyright vs Community.
A new invention will capture CO2 emissions from cargo ships by passing the exhaust through a shipping container filled with lime.
Shipping generates 3% of all emissions, so this step is more than tokenism, but won't delay disaster long by itself. We need to demand reductions in greenhouse emissions from ground transport and agriculture.
*Ukrainians who fled to UK being refused asylum on grounds it is "safe to return" [to Ukraine].*
*Rising poverty in conflict zones "causes a billion people to go hungry."*
Erdoğan banned the Queer Pride march in Istanbul, and arrested activists who tried to hold it anyway.
When you wish to refer to bigotry against queer people, please don't use the multiply misleading term "homophobia". Bigotry and phobia are different things. A phobia is an anxiety disorder, and we cannot blame a person for suffering from one. By contrast, bigotry is a moral fault, and anyone who is bigoted ought to learn not to be.
Israel announced the intention to attack the east side of Gaza City, and warned all civilians to leave. This suggests a plan to disregard the safety of civilians there.
Warning civilians to "evacuate" — supposing they can find an intact house somewhere else — will not excuse indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The bullshitter admitted for a time that his Big Beautiful Bomb probably didn't destroy Iran's uranium enrichment factory, but since then reverted to his wishful pretense. And now he has threatened to imprison journalists who published the leaked intelligence report unless they reveal their source.
We do not know whether the journalists know the identity of the leaker(s). We can hope they do not know. But what if they do?
Their duty is to go prison rather than help the authoritarian regime lie in the future. But that takes special courage, that few people have.
A leaker could protect the journalists by fleeing and then announcing perse was the leaker. But where could perse be safe? Is there a country on Earth that would protect the leakers?
Some enemies of the US might protect the leaker, out of hatred for the US rather than out of love of human rights; but they are ruled by tyrants even worse than what the bully seeks to become. Accepting shelter from such a tyrant would not be a defense of freedom and truth.
(Remember that Snowden did not choose to live in Russia. He bought tickets for a connection in Moscow, but while he was in the air, the US cancelled his passport, so he could not board his flight out of Moscow.)
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