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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
US citizens: phone your senators and tell them to reject Billy Long for head of the IRS. When in Congress he proposed to eliminate income tax so as to tax low-income people more with a national sales tax.
Every sales tax falls unfairly hard on low-income people. We ought to replace them with taxes that fall mainly on those who can afford to pay them.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate: No Recess Appointments! Don't Abdicate Your Duty to Vet Trump's Nominees.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to prevent any cuts to Social Security. Stop any efforts to privatize this critical government program.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
It is fashionable to adopt policies whereby a computer system judges how a certain person deserves to be treated, but they "put a human in the loop" by giving per the job of looking at the computer's recommendations and authorizing them or not.
Experiment shows that such systems systematically fail. The article explains why they fail. What it comes down to is that "putting a human in the loop" is ineffective at correcting the computer system's errors, but instead has the practical effect of serving to excuse those errors.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I label them like this.
The experience with Israel's machine learning target selector system tends to confirm this conclusion.
*Bernie Sanders Says Defeating Oligarchy Now Most Urgent Issue.*
*I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-international law.* Well said!
* Experts express fear — and resilience — as they prepare for [the wrecker]'s potential attacks on climate research.*
Climate science depends on measurements and records of measurements. Sometimes the same measurements are made in the same way for decades so that they will be fully comparable, So planet-roasters have canceled series of measurements, presumably in order to hamper climate science and thus interfere with reaching conclusions that will show the extent of the coming crisis.
They have even tossed out data from past measurements. Scientists had to rescue the precious records from dumpsters.
If they were saboteurs working for alien enemies, sent to weaken Earth's civilization, their actions would make sense. Why Earthlings would do it is beyond me.
*Spain's culture ministry has returned the first of more than 5,000 items taken by the dictator [Franco] 84 years ago.* That was shortly after the end of the civil war, in which most of the army joined the fascist rebellion, and the Spanish Republic was defended by the volunteers it could raise.
My friends in Spain told me, earlier in this century, that the right-wing party was still permeated by he influence of people who supported Franco's dictatorship, who blocked efforts to end the state's support for Franco. In the past decade, those efforts are going faster.
The US, EU and Turkey endorsed a statement calling for *A Syrian-led transition to "produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process", with respect for human rights.*
That doesn't mean it will be easy, or successful, but at east they endorse a good goal.
Some major practical threats that the wrecker's fascist machine could wreak.
The page does not include some most profound threats which are longer term:
Coca-Cola made a highly publicized pledge to move to 25% reusable packaging by 2030. But now it seems to have quietly stopped talking about all that.
*Ohio Satanic Temple to offer religious program for elementary school students.* It serves as an alternative to a protestant religious program.
Society depends on agencies that appoint experts to make carefully studied decisions. Right-wing extremists are working on destroying the ability to do this.
I will not claim that these agencies are always right. Business lobbies often persuade them to go against the interests of society and non-wealthy people. But the right-wing extremists are not trying to restrain that power — on the contrary, they seek to open the floodgates.
New Zealand's right-wing government hollowed out environmental protections by allowing some of them to be "fast-tracked" — that is, evaluated without taking due care.
There may be occasions when this is necessary, but mere profit can never be enough to justify it. Only something desperately needed can justify this.
A study by the US department of Energy reports that, as we would expect, authorizing extracting (and exporting) a lot more natural gas would speed up global heating.
This would increase the risk of deadly damage from "natural" disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding, fires, heat waves, and crop failures, as well as collapse of technological civilization, and these could lead to the death of tens or millions of people in the US. In the shorter term, more natural gas exports could cause difficulties in Americans' lives by making fossil gas more expensive.
This has been criticized as a weak criticism.
*More than three-quarters of UK universities join fossil fuel pledge, say activists.*
Governments must do much more to restrain "investment" in causing global disaster, at whatever levels they can.
In parts of Britain, children of age 10-11 are likely to still believe in Santa Claus. And parents demand that other adults maintain the falsehood.
I'm amused by the irony of a cleric's puncturing one myth while upholding another. But I find it shocking and disturbing that anyone as old as 10 would still believe in Santa Clause.
Parents who hoax that children are liable to try to conscript other people into supporting the lie. This has happened to me, and it puts me in a moral conflict. I don't want to overturn their family arrangements, but joining in the hoax would be doing wrong to the children. I resent the attempt to rope me into doing wrong.
I'm looking for speaking invitations for a trip in January and February that will include some part of Europe, then India, then some other part of Europe.
The first visit to Europe will be roughly Jan 16 to 22. The visit to India will start Jan 22 and can continue into February. The second visit to Europe will be after that. Those dates are flexible.
One advantage of this period for you is that the intercontinental flights are already covered, so you won't need to pay for that.
If you are interested in inviting me, and you have a venue to use and a public to invite, please email me soon with "speaking invitation" in the Subject field, using the name rms and the host gnu dot org.
US citizens: call on Lula and Brazil to be the world's climate leaders in COP 30 next year.
US citizens: call on the Senate: don't allow the wrecker to make recess appointments. Don't abdicate your duty to vet the wrecker's nominees.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose any cuts to, and any efforts to privatize, Social Security and Medicare.
US citizens: call on Biden to Pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Mangione's political views are a mixture of right-wing and left-wing, and he has crystallized hatred of US medical deinsurance companies among both sides. Right-wing leaders are trying to attach that to "wokism", but it doesn't stick.
In fact, most Deinsurance in Congress and most Republicans in Congress are plutocratists, and that goes double for the wrecker. If you want to find an official, or candidate who seeks to put an end to medical deinsurance, you'll find that progressive Democrats stand for this.
I've said that Biden is 1/3 progressive. He has a history of trying to reduce medical deinsurance, but he did not push to go all the way by instituting a universal medical system.
* Rainfall patterns are changing, crops are ripening earlier, and the normal rhythms of farming have fallen off — exactly as climate scientists warned.*
We are already encountering the next step, which is shortages of some foods. That can lead, some years later, to mass hunger and eventually to mass death and breakdown of society. My addition to this forecast is the end of globalized manufacturing and the loss of all high technology. You and the hundred people in your fortified farming village won't be able to make ICs or solar cells, thus soon no computers and no electricity.
You won't even be able to keep the local all-devouring weeb from taking the land away from you. Sure, you could cut it and uproot it in any particular small area. However, doing that in a large area will take too much work, especially when the only power available is muscle power.
* A strain now circulating in dairy cows appears to carry little risk for humans at present, but we need to develop an effective strategy before it mutates*
In particular, we will need vaccine for whatever strain becomes a threat. Now the US faces the danger that crazy politicians might forbid this.
The Signal client's own code is free/libre, but it farms out some activities to Google services. Depending on what Signal uses each of those services to do, using it might be SaaSS, which is as subjugating to the user as locally running a nonfree program.
I don't use Signal, because it is almost impossible to make a Signal account without having a cellular phone, so I can't. Since I can't use Signal, I don't try to learn anything else about it. I know almost as little about the specific Google services named in the article — I don't have a Google account, and most of its services require the user to run nonfree client software.
As a result, I don't know whether it is possible to get some real use out of Signal without using the Google services listed in the article, or whether the job each one does constitutes SaaSS.
I can correct two errors made in comments in that page: (1) free software is a matter of freedom, not price and (2) Android is contains nonfree components, and has contained them since almost the beginning.
(satire) *Wrongly Convicted Death Row Inmate Exonerated Mere Hours After Execution.*
The bully is trying to bully the judge who refused to dismiss civil claims against him.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare from the cuts that the wrecker, the musk-ox, and that wiseacre of Oz want to make.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Iran has threatened to finish building nuclear weapons if the West resumes trade sanctions against Iran.
It looks like the West and Iran agree that the better choice is no sanctions and no Iranian nuclear weapons. Obama negotiated an agreement to bring that about, and the wrecker broke it. Biden tried to negotiate resumption, but this failed. I never found out why it failed.
Studying the ecology of places that humans have abandoned.
Sometimes human presence enables many species to make a complex ecosystem, where otherwise a suffocating monoculture of one dominant species could take over and exclude all else.
Australia's Labor Party said it was going to prioritize environmental protection — but dropped the proposed law at the last minute.
This decision, shocking to Labor supporters, strikes me as entirely consistent with the policy of allowing major expansion of fossil fuel extraction. After all, if the new federal Environmental Protection Agency were going to be effective, it would need to brake that expansion.
Here's more about the complex political dispute.
If "not giving the Greens a victory" is enough to motivate Labor to leave the environment in danger, I have a feeling its priorities are weak.
Workers at a Whole Foods store have filed to unionize. The next step will be for the company to harass them to change their minds before the actual vote.
How Epic medical records systems help hospitals cheat medical insurance companies by finding opportunities to exaggerate what treatments were done, so as to charge more.
This requires doctors to spend more time entering additional data that are useful for such "upcoding". Here is more information.
Epic also makes the nonfree Javascript code and apps that hospitals pressure patients to use to access these servers. If I used them, Epic would control the computing on my computer. I refuse to give the control of the computing on my computer to Epic (or anyone else), so I refuse to use those web sites and apps.
Maybe, as a result of my noncooperation, EPIC misses some opportunities for "upcoding".
It is a terrible mistake to let a company analyze your genetic data. If that company goes bankrupt, as 23 And Me has done, it will be forced to see that data to people who will use it against you.
To enable Syria to recover, the US should cancel sanctions on Syria. Those sanctions were meant to defeat Assad. Now that Assad's enemies have defeated him, the sanctions don't make sense any more.
I can imagine the US negotiating an agreement with the Syrian rebels and Rojava, using the dropping of the sanctions as an incentive for them to come to a peaceful accommodation.
One of RFK Jr's close associates filed to revoke approval of polio vaccine. Loss of the polio vaccine would produce an epidemic after a few years.
I wonder how billionaires' families would respond to this. Get vaccinated in other countries, while most Americans have to go without?
*The musk-rat's six major conflicts of interest with the federal government.*
Texas is suing a New York doctor for mailing abortion pills to a woman in Texas. Texas has passed a law prohibiting mailing abortion pills into the state; meanwhile, New York State has passed a law meant to protect against any such lawsuits from Texas.
I've read that there are networks of women who send each other these pills. I have a feeling that women in Texas can best keep their helpers safe by arranging for anonymous mailing of these pills.
*BBC says it has complained to Apple over fake news [output from a bullshit generator] attributed to [BBC].*
Joseph Stiglitz: *The message to Democrats is clear: you must dump neoliberal economics [and become progressive].*
Syrians backed by Turkey are having border clashes with Rojava,
Which is distracting Rojava from keeping PISSI
under control.
Thomas Piketty refutes the claims that governments cannot tax billionaires, offering methods to overcome supposed obstacles.
Various big oil companies are suing Greenpeace in an attempt to wipe it out
We should not have to depend on organizations such as Greenpeace to protect civilization from environmental disaster (including global heating and more). This is governments' mission.
Amazon has donated a million dollars to the wrecker's inauguration fund, as a token of loyal greed.
When a bully is powerful enough, rich people (and those who want to be rich) all fawn on per, hoping perse will pave their way to more riches. That is what the executives of big companies are doing now for the wrecker.
* For all its supposed "populism", the new administration will probably target offices that protect consumers* and workers.
*President Biden: stand up to Chevron and pardon Steven Donziger.*
Amazon warehouse in Staten Island workers are on strike.
If Americans had elected Kamala Harris, these workers would have a good chance of making Amazon give them better wages and working conditions. But Bezos just had Amazon pay a million dollars to the corrupter's inaugural ceremony, and we must expect him to do what he was paid to do.
*Debunking Every Myth You Hear Against Universal [Medical]care.*
Facebook donated a million dollars to the corrupter's inauguration.
I suppose this is not a crime, but it is in effect a bribe.
A woman who was rejected for renting an apartment on the strength of some computation's result sued for racial discrimination.
People have proposed laws to prohibit using the output of an program to evaluate individuals and decide how to treat them. Those laws were aimed at decisions made by government bodies, meaning that the government would be the user of that program.
This example shows that judging people to make advice for private entities to judge people by can be likewise devastating.
If we wanted to address this problem with a law, what might that law require? Perhaps it should require the advice-giver to show everyone concerned what recorded facts the evaluation is based on.
The article assumes that when SafeRent describes the software a "AI", that has some substantial meaning. We have no reason to think it does. That could be nothing more than hype for SafeRent's marketing. Or it could be an excuse for refusing to tell a court how the score is calculated.
*Ex-FBI officials worry that Kash Patel as director may wield unlimited power.*
That could include *opening investigations unilaterally*.
Some past FBI directors have done such things, and their power threatened freedom in the US. The fascist might relish that.
*White US neighborhoods have more EPA air quality monitors, study finds.*
This despite the fact that white US neighborhoods tend on the average to have more pollution than black neighborhoods — so the EPA is not doing that part of its job fairly.
This systematic racial unfairness is one of many kinds, which add up to what is called structural racism.
I have a hunch that the system involved, in this particular case, is a simpler system than in many other cases. Perhaps studying how this system functions, and how it produces unfair results, could shed like on how structural racism more generally, and on how to prevent it.
A US army officer was convicted of sexual harassment after pressuring a junior officer under his command to have sex with him.
I gather that this sort of thing happens often but is rarely punished. So this is an improvement. But this was worse than most cases of sexual harassment, so the sentence he received seems too weak to me.
Man Americans are jumping on a bandwagon for raw milk based on choosing a political side
— rather than based on medical facts.
Some of the arguments are evidently irrational. For instance, one proponent argues that more dangers is virtuous because that requires producers to be more careful: if raw milk increases the danger caused by "cutting corners".that will make everyone more careful.
Experience says, however, that increasing the danger that can result from any sort of slip-up will mean more people harmed by slip-ups. Safety engineering is based on recognizing that everyone makes mistakes, so we should design a system in which mistakes don't cause bad consequences.
US citizens: fight back against the corrupter's proposed Big Money cabinet.
US citizens: oppose the muskrat's plan to slash spending for nonrich Amercans.
In the US: support striking IKEA workers.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the string &redirect=... and delete everything from there to the end of that URL. Then insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter 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 compared with the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and tell them to extend the ACA Advance Premium Tax Credits, to avoid a large increase in the cost of medical insurance.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Oppose the creation of Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" (or, better described, Department of Government Evisceration").
The UK is considering limiting donations to political campaigns and parties to stop Musk from trying to buy triumph for the more-or-less fascist party.
US citizens: call on House Democrats to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Ranking [Democratic] Member of Oversight and Accountability Committee.
US citizens: call on Biden to cut off military support for Israel's atrocities in Gaza.
US citizens: call on the Senate to oppose Dr. Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
In the 1980s, the Broward County Sheriff's department made and sold drugs as a sting. That sting was illegal, so the current state attorney plans to vacate all those convictions.
*Global food production at increased risk from excess salt in soil, UN report warns.* *Scientists say climate crisis and poor agricultural practices to blame.* It affects 10% of global land. The article describes ways in which excess salt damages soil.
Many of the causes reflect overpopulation in one way or another. If we allow continued population growth, we won't be able to grow as much food later as we do today.
The congestion tax for driving in much of Manhattan operates by identifying all cars heading into the congestion charge area.
Charging a tax for causing congestion is legitimate in my view, but it does not excuse tracking people's movements in the absence of legitimate grounds.
It would not be terribly hard to sell a temporary sticker that you could attach inside your windshield to indicate you paid the congestion tax for today, for this month, or whatever period you chose. The system could be designed not to record which car has passed if it shows proof of payment.
To accept the excuse that "identifying people is the usual method" or "the easy way to implement" as sufficient justification for identifying people is, in effect, to accept total tracking sooner or later. We must insist that Freedom and privacy for everyone are worth what they cost.
*Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street's Internet of Shit slumlords.*
Iran's rulers, feeling more threatened, have increased their capacity to enrich uranium. To avoid nuclear proliferation and possible nuclear war, this writer recommends reassuring Iran that it is not threatened, and steer away from that. However, the wrecker is likely to do the exact opposite.
Billionaire Polluters is planning to "focus on fossil fuels" (and on the megadeaths they are likely to cause) instead of renewable energy.
If civilization is to survive, it should stop Billionaire Polluters (and other planet-roaster companies) from developing any fossil fuel systems.
The Mexico-US water sharing agreement is running aground because there isn't enough rain in the Rio Grande watershed. This seems to due to global heating, which means it will only get worse.
I can imagine that the wrecker will use it as an excuse to start a war (He has threatened to start a war with Mexico.).
UK thugs have the power to arbitrarily punish accused sex workers, without any trial.
The UK is deporting a man to Pakistan although he is likely to be murdered if he is there.
His wife is likely to be deported some time later, and she too faces the threat of murder.
Israel seized a small demilitarized zone on the Syrian border.
I think that the importance of that border zone is minimal. Precisely because of that, Israel's seizure of it was a stupid and vicious act, likely to provoke various sorts of conflict just as Syria had encountered possibilities of peace.
The corrupter reaffirmed his intention to pardon everyone convicted for participating in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol that the corrupter launched to overthrow the US government.
*Liz Cheney calls Trump threat to jail her an "assault on the rule of law".* The supposed grounds for this investigation would be that she participated in investigating the attack on the Capitol.
*RFK Jr to research unsupported link between vaccines and autism, [the truth-hater] says.*
In effect, the corrupter has declared war on truth, justice, and honesty. In place of the United States of America, he would have the Utter Subserviece to the Autocrat — a state in which patriots are imprisoned if they obstruct him and criminals freed if they serve him.
Like Putin, he hopes to leave no visible path to find the truth except to believe whatever he says.
*Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Still at Risk from Oil Drilling.*
Brain rot caused by recommendation engines is not just a metaphor. It has been demonstrated by many experiments, both psychological an physiological.
* Investigation uncovers how chemicals like diquat, banned in the UK but legal to export, are causing [medical] problems in [other countries].*
The issue is worth posting about, but I reject the term "global south" and I took this opportunity to campaign against it.
I also took the opportunity to highlight my disagreement with the marketing campaign to replace the word "medical" with "health". I don't know whether that author (or The Guardian) supports that as a marketing campaign—it may be a matter of following a fashion. But I see it as a marketing campaign, and as such I reject it.
This came from A Word A Day. It fits the right-wing servants of dooH niboR who whip up poor fools to vote to cut their income to help the rich.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe for the axe was
clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was
one of them. -Turkish proverb
Some European Countries have decided to pause decision on asylum for Syrian refugees, to wait and see if Syria now becomes a safe country from which people have no need to flee.
Let us hope that Syria now becomes safe for peaceful civilians, but if that happens for most of them, that does not imply it will be safe for all of them. For instance, will it be safe for secularist people that want an end to religious persecution? Will it be safe for non-Arabs, such as Kurds? Will be safe for freethinkers? Will it be safe for queer people? We cannot assume all that.
Thus, even if Syria ceases to persecute millions of its civilians, there may still be some Syrians who are entitled to asylum for specific reasons.
Boston City Council reaffirms prohibition on Boston cops' helping to deport anyone who doesn't have an arrest warrant.
The doctrine, that corporation executives are obligated to make "more wealth for stockholders" the highest priority, sounds simple — but it obtains that simplicity by disregarding all factors that weren't trivial to quantify.
Events have shown that it doesn't lead to clear consequences on any question.
Robert Kennedy Jr said he will "give infectious diseases a break". That would be a dangerous error, given that the more people they have infected, the more starting points they have to infect others.
Th FTC's order to block the merger of the Kroger and Albertsons supermarket chains was upheld in court.
However, it appears that Lina Khan, responsible for several years of militancy by the FTC, will not be reappointed. That means it will become weaker, and additional damaging mergers of large companies will proceed.
I would like to know more about how this happened. If you can point me at an article about this, please email me the text as well as the URL.
Monarch butterflies are now listed as threatened in he US, which puts limits on actions that could further harm the species. The limits, not very strict, are described in the article.
It looks like the part of the US State Department that tries to combat foreign disinformation will be defunded.
Who in the US government might want to do that? Perhaps those who are in league with Putin, such as the corrupter, and those who spread foreign disinformation, such as Musk.
*Arctic tundra is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs, US agency says.* This is a consequence of the higher temperature in the Arctic, and consequences such as wildfires.
US citizens: call on Amazon and Whole Foods not to oppose unionization at Whole Foods.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Kash Patel as head of the FBI. The petition lists several reasons.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to urge them to maintain the IRS funding. It is using that funding to chase rich tax dodgers, and this reduces overall government expenses.
Commenting on the military situation in Syria, as the rebels keep advancing.
Assad is a murderous military dictator. In the past, his enemies were murderous Islamists, so it was hard to say that either one was less vicious than the other. The only part of Syria deserved support was Rojava.
Will the Islamist rebels be willing to coexist with Rojava? If not, can Rojava hold out with no foreign power to support it?
*President’s staff look into possibility of protecting public officials named by Trump in vows to seek retribution.*
I would like to state my support for this.
The UK may allow research on embryos until 28 days.
There is no reason to truncate this research to less than 90 days.
*Romanian court annuls first round of presidential election* because of interference by Putin's digital troll army.
Americans overwhelmingly call for dangerous drugs to be treated as a medical issue rather than prosecuted.
Some parts of the UK have privatized the issuing of fines for minor nuisances. They have creatively stretched the definitions of these minor nuisances so as to make life a mode of harassment.
Chicago gave a company the contract to run street parking and to profit as much as it can contrive to do. After that, the streets were run so as to suit that company, not the city and residents of Chicago.
It just goes to show, never privatize a function of government.
*Biden extended contracts to private immigration jails despite reports of "horrific" conditions.*
It is unjust to let businesses run prisons, because that is a luring temptation for the business to profit by mistreating the prisoners. Privatization eliminates their accountability.
Private prisons should not be allowed under any circumstances.
*Hunting [the] bigger, more experienced animals [of a given species] eradicates memories and knowledge crucial to group survival, research suggests.*
Major physical disasters tend to kill many people, more in poor countries than in wealthy ones. Scientists are discovering that a much larger number of people subsequently die prematurely as a result of the indirect consequences.
For instance, if a storm kills no one in your family immediately, but does destroy your house and you can't afford to replace it, this could contribute to your early death through many chains of events, including *stress, financial hardship, pollution [and] long-term disease*. For instance, floods often dissolve buried toxic chemicals and spread them in places where many people can encounter them.
There are indications that some of the subsequent deaths could be prevented by a good social safety net.
RFK Jr is considering appointing an advisor on raw milk whose raw milk products have been recalled repeatedly for contamination with bird flu.
A wiser official would learn from his results rather than heed his advice.
The thugs of Sao Paulo, Brazil, kill people shamelessly under the leadership of one of Bolsonaro's supporters.
With nearly everyone in Europe in favor of action to reduce greenhouse emissions, what is difficult is to design policies that will win enough support to overcome the inevitable resistance.
According to the article, the keys to winning support for concrete measures are (1) winning people's trust in the political leaders and (2) compensating non-rich people for the short-term costs of the solution.
(1) is a point I have made here.
*Disbelief turns to jubilation in Damascus* as Assad's departure inspired the soldiers in his army to pull off their uniforms.
*Joe Biden should pardon Reality Winner for her actions as a whistleblower.*
The UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders reproached the US for harsh punishment of peaceful (but inconvenient) climate protesters.
The annoyance these protests cause is as nothing compared with the annoyance (and, eventually, mass death) that they are trying to avert.
*Ohio Satanic Temple to offer religious program for elementary school students.*
Ralph Nader describes how US medical insurance companies deny coverage for needed medical treatment, and in other ways undermine medicine to increase profits, resulting in thousands of deaths per week.
The companies deny coverage for various medical services so often that we could call it a denial-of-service attack on patients' health.
One man seems to have taken violent revenge for this, murdering the CEO UnitedHealthCare and leaving signs that accused the company of killing patients. Detectives could perhaps try to find the murderer by checking the relatives of people who have been killed by denial of service — except that they could never check so many suspects.
Violence against a CEO can call attention to the evil but is not going to end the companies' deadly denial of service. The company will soon have a new CEO and continue the same practices. To end the killing of patients can only be done by new laws. But will we ever have enough effective democracy to try?
I have recently encountered the denial of service personally. For a couple of years I have been taking febuxostat to control gout. I tried the cheaper allopurinol first, many years ago, but that made me so drowsy and forgetful that I could not function. I had to stop using it.
A few weeks ago, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts told me that it would no longer cover febuxostat. I asked why, but instead of an explanation I received an autospeculation: "Maybe we wanted to make people use the cheaper allopurinol."
I too had made that speculation in my mind, but that company owes me a reason, not merely an autospeculation.
I will try allopurinol again, on the off chance that it doesn't incapacitate me now. It is reasonable to ask patients to try the cheaper medicine and see. It is not reasonable to say, "We will abandon you if that cheaper medicine won't work for you.
In civilized countries, the national medical system negotiates with the manufacturers for a good bulk price. Biden tried to introduce this into the US medical system, but was mostly blocked.
* A $200bn wave of new gas projects could lead to a “climate bomb” equivalent to releasing the annual emissions of all the world’s operating coal power plants.*
The corrupter said he plans conniving pardons for crimes his henchmen will commit for him. And he has already tried this.
But now that Biden has pardoned his own son, the corruptor will pretend that he is following Biden's example, even though that gets the time order wrong.
If he claims that pardoning his henchmen is no different from what Biden did when, don't fall for that.
One by one, the billionaires work out deals with the corrupter.
It's easy for a billionaire to make a deal with the corruptor: agree to support him politically while he agrees to let you screw the public.
But it does not work with me. I have never bought anything from Amazon and I am resolved never to do so.
It is now certain that 2024 will have been the hottest year in recorded history, breaking the previous record set in 2023.
The planet roasters have become so powerful that they are now building enormous amounts of additional fossil fuel facilities. That amounts to mass murder.
Assad abandoned Syria and fled to the refuge offered by every tyrant's friend, Putin.
The Guardian accuses Israel of committing a war crime by attacking a group of 6 journalists in the house where they were staying.
There was no fighting in the area at the time and no Hezbollah forces were nearby.
*Regardless of their political affiliation, killing journalists is illegal under international humanitarian law unless they are actively participating in military activities.*
*Israel attacks hospital in northern Gaza …, director says.*
Attacking a hospital is an atrocity; expelling doctors is an indirect atrocity.
But I think we should not get distracted by minor details such as what happened to the corpses of people who were killed in the attack. Morally, what's important is the injustice of killing.
The main Spanish right-wing party is demonstrating that it still defends the dictator Franco and his crimes.
The Taliban have banned women from studying medicine.
Since women in much of Afghanistan are not allowed to be seen by a male doctor, this will in effect mean no medical treatment for them.
I have a suspicion that the corrupter's middle-finger nominations for executive branch offices are meant as throwaways. He has chosen people who represent his contempt for even the minimal public responsibility, and I suspect he did this expecting some to be rejected before their official confirmation processes start.
Robert Reich calls them "groveling, subservient yes-men".
I suspect the plan is that they will establish limits of tolerable outrage at the point where some right-wing senators would reject them. Then the corrupter will nominate other people, just as radical and equally cruel in substance, but not superficially outrageous.
The right-wing senators, having established that they do have some standards, will no longer need to prove that, so the second-round appointees will sail through.
There is a political battle in New York City about whether the city thugs will be told to help the US deportation thugs.
Legislators who oppose that are concerned that it might discourage *non citizens from interacting with the police when they themselves need help or could assist in reporting crimes or carrying out investigations.*
*Activists slam Biden for pardoning turkeys, not those on federal death row.*
US citizens: call on the US Postal Service to offer mail carriers a good contract.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without trying to run the site's nonfree JavaScript code on your browser.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The island of Qikiqtaruk is falling apart piece by piece due to global heating as the permafrost breaks up.
*HAMAS and Fatah agree to create committee [of technocrats] to run postwar Gaza Strip.*
This combination would be a step forward compared with HAMAS alone, but Israel won't accept it. Perhaps it wants a committee of Israeli technocrats to govern Gaza.
*Experts create controllable gastric balloon to aid weight loss.*
A controllable balloon must be the ultimate gas trick.
After UK thugs arrested Leona Kamio for various alleged crimes in a protest against Elbit, the Israeli arms manufacturer, they next arrested her mother, Emma Kamio, who was not involved in the protest.
They labeled her as a terrorist, kept her incommunicado in a filthy cell with the lights on for five days, and denied her access to a lawyer.
The thugs eventually released her with no charges, but have not returned her clothing, her jewelry, or her computers.
Emma recognizes that the injustice she suffered threatens everyone. "My story can happen to anyone due to the over policing and the repression that is happening right now in the UK."
I know nothing of the facts about Leona Kamio, but there is a general tendency to stretch facts and exaggerate when accusing or punishing protesters against Israel's violence. It is possible that she really committed some crimes, but if she did, I'd expect they are less grave than they have been painted.
The US Justice Department concluded that the Memphis thugs "regularly violate" the rights of black people.
Billy Long, nominated by the wrecker to head the IRS, once asked the IRS to revoke the tax exemption of the Humane Society. This as after it urged Missouri voters to approve a referendum on a law about proper treatment of dogs.
My recollection is that it is lawful for a tax exempt organization to fund grass-roots campaigns for or against referendums. Grass-roots campaigning about an issue is not considered "lobbying", which is regulated.
*Guess Who Profits From [the wrecker's] Deportation Plan? Private Equity Firms.*
*CFPB Proposes Crackdown on Data Brokers That Sell Sensitive Personal Information.*
That would be a step forward, but it tackles only the secondary aspects of digital surveillance. Surveillance starts with the collection of people's personal data. That is where we need to stop it.
Zuckerberg has found a way to make a deal with the corrupter, by reducing moderation on his platforms.
That means more of the things that many useds actively dislike about Facebook — those useds who don't recognize its fundamental wrongs which may not always be evident.
George Monbiot explains more reasons why "carbon offsets" are self-delusional excuses to continue global heating.
*We need to talk about capitalism.*
*The freedom to be ripped off is at the heart of liberal capitalism. Yet caveat emptor is a defense that relies on a degree of equality between the buyer and seller and what they know about the product in question.*
As should be clear already, I advocate forbidding the business practices that systematically tend to take advantage of segments of the public. Businesses are not entitled to "freedom" in the same way that each person is in per own life.
Hong Kong's streets are now full of facial-recognition cameras, and its conversations are full of fear.
South Korea's president declared martial law and tried to use the army to exclude the lawmakers from parliament so they could not override the declaration. But they got in anyway, and voted to end martial law. Hooray for brave South Korea!
It appears that all the major parties have condemned that martial law declaration, including the president's own party. Three cheers, South Korea.
The president's own party does not have a majority in parliament. Perhaps the president aimed to push the legislators aside.
The US and China have launched into economic warfare over chip manufacturing.
The chips that are at issue are mostly backdoored (Intel and AMD) or chained by a secret instruction set (Nvidia).
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries called on Biden to pardon the working-class Americans imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.
I mostly agree, but I think that fraud should be excluded for the most part.
The transition team officials signed papers to permit government investigation of people the corrupter appoints to official positions. This means the corrupter will find it more difficult to thumb his nose at the country by nominating people who show total contempt for honesty and human decency.
Suspicions that Harris chose not to defend Lina Khan from an attack because she had had the FTC investigate Uber, which employs Harris's brother.
*How noise pollution threatens the return of Norway's whales.*
Radical Islamists out of Idlib suddenly captured the major Syrian city of Aleppo. (Assad's forces are much weaker since Putin pulled out most of his military support to put it towards conquering Ukraine.)
The next question is whether these Islamists will oppress people from other Muslim sects, Christians, Jews, Atheists, other non-Muslims, women who dress western, and so on. Will they make peace with Rojava?
Meanwhile, this defeat is a defeat for Putin's prestige. I wonder if he might think of settling with Ukraine so he can recover prestige in other world influence competitions.
Degradation of land is proceeding rapidly; a million km^2 per year are becoming degraded. This will surely contribute substantially to the food shortage of coming decades.
How the wrecker plans to put the US Constitution to a stress test and see its checks and balances break. He aims to force the Senate to adjourn so he can impose his mockery nominations through without consideration by the Senate.
Israel is demolishing neighborhoods in Gaza to build permanent military bases.
This would, under international law, make Israel officially responsible for food, water, medical care and so on for the civilians in Gaza. It does not follow that Israel will actually provide them. It might prefer to exterminate tens of thousands more. But if Israel does provide humanitarian needs in full, it could cease the wrongs that have gone on for years.
Israel denies that it is deliberately planning to permanently displace civilians, but planned construction of a large strip of Israeli military bases in land where people live is undeniably a deliberate plan to permanently displace civilians.
I fear we are witnessing the complete abandonment of the idea of internationally punishing war crimes. That would be a terrible setback for justice in the world.
Of course, that system never functioned entirely. But many governments endorsed it and tried to make it function. Despite its gaps, it remained an advance over the world as it was before World War II. Now we are falling back towards barbarism, and the wrecker is likely to do it to death.
*We need to talk about plastic: five everyday items choking the planet.*
The Taliban have imprisoned tens of thousands women for begging (which other vicious laws compel them to do).
*Iran and Europe seek to break nuclear impasse before return of [the wrecker],* who was the one who sabotaged Obama's non-nuclear deal to begin with.
China has convicted a major journalist of spying simply for talking with Japanese diplomats.
There is speculation that the government wants to intimidate people against having contacts with diplomats.
An Israeli member of Parliament has been "suspended" for condemning Israel's war crimes. He describes how the space for democracy in Israel is being squeezed down to nothing.
Greeks tried to hold a general strike, but they were in such penury that they could not afford to miss a day of work.
Racist harassers are shutting down antiracist events in London by threatening violence.
They ought to organize to defeat any violence, rather than giving up at the first threat.
*‘Catastrophic’ marine heatwaves are killing sealife and causing mass disruption to UK fisheries.*
If it is that bad around Britain, you can imagine what a disaster the heatwaves in tropical areas such as Florida have been.
*Huge election year worldwide sees weakening commitment to act on climate crisis.*
I suspect that many billionaires are supporting right-wing candidates who will allow them to wipe out civilization (and most humans) unhindered.
*World will be "unable to cope" with volume of plastic waste in 10 years, warns expert.*
It looks like the US military is developing autonomous weapons. Its vague non answers provoke suspicions but make it hard to know for certain.
Higher levels of PFAS in the blood correlate with (1) lack of access to fresh food and (2) proximity of toxic waste sites. All three tend to correlate with poverty.
As a result, when we see correlation between those factors and medical problems, it is not trivial to determine which of them cause medical problems, and which simply correlate with things that cause medical problems.
The talks for a treaty to curb plastic production have failed with broad disagreements.
Everyone: call on Walmart, the NFL and the Wash Post to stop advertising on ex-Twitter.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Biden to to pardon people imprisoned for drug offenses.
US citizens: call on senators to reject Pam Bondi as attorney general.
US citizens: call on officials at all levels of government to block Project 2025.
US citizens: call on the corrupter to sign the standard transition ethics pledge.
It might be effective for Biden to order refusal to cooperate with the corrupter's transition team until he formally agrees to this ethics pledge.
* It should be possible to campaign for Palestinian freedom, condemn racist Israeli football fans and still show unequivocal solidarity with European Jews.*
Reaction to the wrecker's nomination of a Russian asset to head the CIA.
Think about what this would mean. Every person secretly working for the CIA would be reported to Putin's (renamed) KGB, and available to its assassins.
Wales changed most roads to have a 20mph speed limit. It reduced deaths and injuries on the roads, but a right-wing grass-roots campaign was launched to fight it.
It turns out that the organizing was done by people who just happened to be Tory politicians.
Biden has brought about a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel.
Israel has achieved its war aims in Lebanon, which were simple: an end to attacks by Hezbollah in support of HAMAS. In effect, Hezbollah has accepted a substantial decrease in its power and territory, but has not lost anything really crucial. The Lebanese army is supposed to maintain control in southern Lebanon.
The previous agreement, which Hezbollah broke in Oct 2023, likewise said that the Lebanese army was to maintain control in southern Lebanon and keep Hezbollah from dominating that territory. The Lebanese army unable to do that, as Hezbollah was stronger. Hezbollah is now weaker, so perhaps the agreement can establish peace. Or it might fall apart.
This Lebanon agreement does nothing to prevent the killing of additional tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza.
Why would Musk care if the CFPB continues to protect Americans?
He surely owns shares in some large US banks, and if the CFPB were eliminated, those banks would squeeze some additional billions out of their non-rich customers. Musk would get some of that.
But I doubt that is enough money to move Musk to have an opinion about the question. I think he must have some other kind of motive, more emotional than financial.
I conjecture that he has come to hate people who advocate regulating businesses. That he wants to eliminate anything that could limit his power to make people obey.
*Pakistan army and police accused of firing on Imran Khan supporters.*
I don't know enough about this situation to draw any conclusion about which side — if any — supports human rights and democracy. Both sides are using force, but the army is shooting and seems to be covering up the casualties.
Drought and sea level rise are bringing salt water into the Delaware river, threatening to spoil the drinking water of millions.
The drought may be due to global heating. The sea level rise certainly is.
(satire) *Most Americans Have Enough Saved For Absolutely Incredible Single Day Of Retirement.*
*[The wrecker's] promise to loosen crypto regulations may be boon for extremist groups* (such as his own).
*Climate denial a unifying theme of [the world-wrecker's] cabinet picks, experts say.*
*ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrant for Myanmar military leader… for crimes against humanity over deportation and persecution of Rohingya minority.*
The University of Sydney is considering a rule requiring speakers to "make the meaning of contested words and phrases clear to the audience."
I can see a lot of vagueness in that rule. Does this apply to any word or phrase whose meaning someone contests at that moment? Or would there be a specific published list of words and phrases that must be made clear if and when used?
The big tech companies have proved they are no friends of progressives, democracy, or civil liberties.
Banks are finding ways to trade highly leveraged assets that cause a risk of global financial crash.
The laws passed around 2009 to try to prevent this were not as strong as the depression-era Glass-Steagall law that was partly repealed in 1999. When bankers get powerful enough to repeal the protections meant to stop them from crashing society, it shows their corrupting influence has prevailed.
Putin continues his nuclear panic campaign by firing an experimental hypersonic missile at Kyiv without a warhead. We are supposed to be terrified because, as Putin reminded us repeatedly, that model of missile could have been launched with a nuclear warhead (though it wasn't).
The message Putin communicates this way is, "Be afraid! If I really were crazy, I might fire a nuclear weapon at you. Hey, aren't you afraid yet?"
Hypersonic missiles have a practical advantage: that they are hard to intercept. Aside from that, they are not much different from an ordinary ballistic missile.
Hundreds of climate protesters have been arrested in Australia recently for disruptive but nonviolent protests against the fossil fuel juggernaut of death.
*Megachurch founder TD Jakes suffers health incident during sermon in Texas.*
Does he ever claim that material harm is a punishment "sent by god"? If so, that can be used against him now.
The special counsel who was investigating the corrupter's 2020 crimes decided to end the investigation because it is impossible to indict the president.
Robert Reich says he should have put the charges on hold instead.
It may not matter. Maybe the corrupter will pardon himself. Maybe he will corrupt the US government so thoroughly that no trial of him or his friends could ever convict. Those are possibilities, and if they occur, it could have become futile to keep the indictment alive.
But they are not inevitable. They might not have happened.
Meta invited the US military to use LLAMA to choose places to bomb. (So far, only for exercises.) Marketing materials show it gives a nonsensical answer to a foolish question that it ought to have rejected.
I conjecture that those marketing materials were written to convince politicians to spend billions on the system, rather that the commanders who might in theory someday actually use it. But that doesn't necessarily imply it would work better in real life.
*PFAS and microplastics become more toxic when combined* — for water fleas, at least.
To measure how they affect humans is a very difficult study, since it would take many years and there is no way to create a control group of humans who have not been exposed.
The corrupter's choice to head the Department of Defense openly advocates committing war crimes.
*Turkish woman convicted under anti-terror laws for sharing Guardian article* about a British volunteer fighting in Kurdish forces in Syria. (For Rojava, I suppose.)
One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. The Guardian may well have glorified the volunteers who went to Rojava to fight for human rights, but surely that article did not promote terrorism. However, to Erdoğan any army that opposes Turkey might be called "terrorist".
*We must defend elective abortions, not just the most politically palatable cases* (in which a woman might die because doctors obeyed anti-abortion laws).
Robert Reich: 10 million fewer Americans voted in 2024 than in 2020. This is why Harris lost.
Reich puts it down to the Democratic Party's visible abandonment of poor and working-class Americans.
*‘Who benefits from this?’ Soul-searching after the Amsterdam violence.* This includes a detailed history of various waves of violence, coming from different groups and directed at various groups, starting at a football game in Amsterdam. Thugs shut down peaceful rallies against massacres in Gaza, conflating them with part of the violence.
*With these outrageous appointments, [the corrupter] is showing us exactly how he intends to rule.*
In my view, these nominations are a way of giving the middle finger to the public and the law. He is declaring his intent to let billionaires trash anything and crush anyone, by appointing officials ready to ignore any laws that ought to restrain them.
The corrupter's nominee to head the Department of the Interior has a history of giving in to fossil fuel companies.
*RFK Jr could have disastrous global impact on public health, experts fear.*
*Big Banks Trying to Sabotage CFPB's Open Banking Rule.*
*Malcolm X's family sues FBI, CIA and NYPD for $100m,* accusing them of knowing in advance about the plan to murder him and allowing it to happen.
It would be good to expose this, but I have a feeling that a decades-delayed fine against governments will not in itself do much to deter future crimes of this sort.
In the negotiations for a treaty to limit plastic pollution, the biggest contingent of participants are the plastic lobbyists.
How did this happen, I wonder? What determines how many lobbyists can participate in the conference? Are the companies allowed register however many they can afford to pay fees for?
What enables these lobbyists to get in the way of a good treaty? Are the governments which want unlimited plastic production using their votes to support the lobbyists? If so, if the real opposition is from those governments, are the lobbyists a red herring?
But if that is not the case, why don't the governments and other parties that want the talks to succeed quash the activities of those lobbyists, or limit how many are allowed?
If Microsoft gets its way, your next computer will be nothing but a terminal for a cloudy Microsoft server.
As we know, there is no cloud — only other entities' computers. In this case, it would be Microsoft's computers, that would do your computing in whatever way Microsoft wants.
With Microsoft, the future of computing is controlled totally by Microsoft. All local software is remotely changed by Microsoft, so there is nothing you can choose.
Microsoft claims it is completely secure because it can't do anything locally — it can only be a terminal. File storage, account management, and even configuration are possible only in Microsoft's servers. Whatever this may mean for security against Cap'n Cracker, it implies total insecurity if you are attacked by Microsoft, or by any entity Microsoft chooses to aid.
You might even be compelled, some day, to converse with a piece of "artificial intelligence" (properly known as a bullshit generator) to ask Microsoft for whatever it might be.
About the military coup plot which Bolsonaro is accused of helping to organize.
Reportedly the coup did not occur because some of the high commanders refused to join it.
US citizens: call on President Biden to publish the Equal Rights Amendment as having been adopted.
US citizens: call for no cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject attacks on transgender rights.
The Israeli government is trying to destroy Israel's left-wing newspaper, Haaretz, by boycotting it for being left-wing. No alleged crimes or wrongs are needed as justification — merely not supporting the dictator is enough.
Ironically, I have boycotted Haaretz for years for a different kind of reason — for having a paywall.
Haaretz had a substantial importance for the world even after Israel became mostly right-wing. I used to make links to Haaretz articles recommended by Israeli peace activists.
But then it set up a solid paywall, so I had to stop. By my principles it is wrong to make a link to anything that requires readers to (1) identify themselves or (2) run a nonfree program. The paywall requires both, so I could no longer post links to Haaretz articles (or read them myself, usually).
Haaretz still has a potential value to the world, if only it would let down the paywall at least for some important articles.
The UK government is using algorithms in deciding who to deport.
The deportation department says that a human makes the final decision, but if that is true it does not imply that an algorithm takes most of the decision.
Algorithms should never play a significant role in decisions about how a person will be treated by the law. Inevitably that leads to gross injustices that a robot does not understand. Even when a human gets involved, perse may ape the rigidity of a robot. When there is a mistake or omission in the data, robots typically are hard to convince of this.
It is ironic that the article insists that a bullshit generator is "artificial intelligence" but a system that represents knowledge and makes deductions is not.
Cop29 has agreed on new rules for carbon offsets. The rules are meant to assure that a carbon offset really will result in a reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions. But will these rules really achieve that goal?
Given that some experts already have doubts, I would expect they have valid grounds for those doubts.
One specific reason to doubt is that whether any particular offset plan really does reduce emissions depends on future developments of global heating, which we can't reliably anticipate. For instance, if we plant many square miles of trees, even supposing we have chosen good trees for the local climate and situation, we cannot be sure whether global heating will kill them all.
Arguing that "consultants" who control (or represent) funding sources directed the Democratic Party down to defeat.
My mother belonged to a local Democratic Party club when I was young and lived in NYC with her. It was quite active.
RFK Jr went to Samoa to participate in a campaign that cast doubt on measles vaccination. At least 83 people died from this outbreak which followed.
*Crypto Sweep Puts Congress on Notice: Vote With Us or We’ll Come After You With Millions.*
While Brittany Patterson brought one child to a medical appointment, her 10-year-old went out for a walk. Lunatic officials are prosecuting her for not tracking him during that time.
As it happens, she had no way to do that except to cancel her child's appointment. That would have been far more likely to cause harm to her kids than what she is being prosecuted for doing.
If you want to live in a country where everyone is tracked and monitored all the time, go live in China. Don't bring China here!
*New York City plan to charge $9 fee for driving in Manhattan approved.*
I support this plan to charge for driving in downtown and midtown Manhattan provided it does not have the byproduct of tracking who goes there, and in particular it is possible to pay without being subject to injustice such as identifying yourself or running nonfree software.
But the article fails to say whether the fee system has those unjust aspects. Like so much journalism these days, it focuses on monetary cost while disregarding cost that may (or may not) accrue to our freedom.
Five suggestions for Biden to act, while still president, to impede some of the destruction that the wrecker plans to do.
Some of the wrecker's choices for official positions have direct links to Project 2025, which tends to confirm the suspicion (which I mentioned then) that he was lying when he said that Project 2025 had nothing to do with him.
*The Democratic Party Is Toast If It Doesn't Earn Back the Trust of the Working Class.*
*The Democrats need to recruit more working-class candidates. Here's how.*
A former official under the wrecker expects the wrecker to make non-wealthy Americans' medical insurance weaker and more expensive.
The article makes the mistake of seeing a contradiction between this and what the bullshitter said to the public to win votes, but there is no reason to suppose he wasn't bullshitting then.
California limits on PFAS in products are having a real effect.
Robert Reich: Enormously profitable GM says that it "must cut costs" by firing workers, and most Democrats don't show outrage.
The fascist wants to appoint a secretary of defense who anticipates a civil war — perhaps anticipating that the fascist's oppression will cause one.
*EPA staff fear Trump will destroy how it protects Americans from pollution.*
*First came the bots, then came the bosses — we're entering Musk and Zuck's new era of disinformation.*
Sebastian Stan, who stars in The Apprentice, a biopic of [the bullshitter] focusing on his association in the 1970s with lawyer Roy Cohn, has said that other actors in Hollywood are too “afraid” of the president-elect to participate in press with him.
A successful author, whose other nonfiction books have been successful, wrote a book about Musk. No company dares to publish it in the US.
I assume that this book is not actually libelous, because he surely knows by now how to have a lawyer check that, and how rewrite to avoid libel. It would follow that this is a new form of intimidation: people so powerful that no one dares publish even truthfully about them.
I suggest posting the book on a web site under a Creative Commons license — that way, at least people could read it.
*Saudi Arabia accused of modifying official Cop29 negotiating text.*
All participating nations are supposed to have the same access. Favoritism towards one of them is allowing it to cheat. In this case it would seem to be favoritism from Azerbaijan (a planet-roaster state) towards Salafi Arabia (another planet-roaster state).
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to close the Data Broker Loophole, that allows agencies like ICE, CBP, and the FBI bypass the 4th Amendment and spy on everyday people's location and online activity without a warrant.
In my view, that change would be a change for the better, but would not be adequate. We are entitled to use devices controlled by us, not be companies. We should be able to make sure they do not tell anyone where we go.
But closing the Data Broker Loophole is at least a change for the better.
US citizens: call on Biden to revoke Musk's security clearance.
*Analyses are stark evidence of how global heating is already supercharging deadly weather beyond anything ever experienced by humanity.*
Brandon Durham called 911 because people broke into his home. While he was struggling to take a knife away from one of them, a thug arrived and shot him dead.
His relatives want the thug to be tried for this hasty killing which predictably invited a deadly mistake.
*The Republicans were always the party of big business, but [the corrupter] is turning them into a playpen for oligarchs.*
*Harris ran from the Biden policies that were actually popular with voters* and adopted more plutocratist policies instead.
*[The wrecker's] cabinet picks are agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance.*
*An economic populism for the majority — irrespective of gender, race, religion, [and sexual] or gender [identity] — is the way forward.*
The International Criminal Court has ordered the arrest of Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Galant.
I hope they are convicted, but it won't be easy to arrest them.
Bolsonaro is now formally charged with plotting a coup after the election that brought back Lula.
What the US anti-trust case against Google is asking the judge to impose. Most of these proposed measures I see no specific flaw in. But I do see two specific flaws:
However, its variant, Chromium, is of some benefit to the free world. You would not run it if you are wise, since it contains some nonfree code for doing web DRM. But free software supporters use it as the basis to make Ungoogled Chromium, which is much closer to being usable in freedom. (I don't know precisely how close.)
Spinning Chrome off to another company might lead to the elimination of support for Chromium. That company might make Chrome purely proprietary, and that would indeed be a loss.
Call on the FBI to reopen the investigation of Kavanaugh's various sexual attacks on various women.
*Call on countries around the world to exclude biomass energy from their national climate plans at COP29.*
US citizens:Support Bernie Sanders: urge Democrats in Congress to resist Republicans.
*New Tracker Keeps Tabs on [the fascist's] Appointees' Conflicts of Interest.*
A British surgeon who has worked as a volunteer in Gaza reports on what he saw there, including an apparent campaign by Israeli snipers to render men permanently disabled.
UC San Francisco is punishing employees for showing support for Gaza under attack.
I think it is legitimate for an organization that provides crucial service to the public to insist that employees in work activities stay neutral on political issues — provide this policy is general and unbiased.
However, to punish employees for advocating political views outside of work activities, as UCSF did to Marya, is a violation of their human rights.
*China and India should not be called developing countries, several Cop29 delegates say.*
I agree. China and India are economic powers. They are now among the countries that exploit others, rather than among the countries that get exploited.
The wrecker seems to be serious about ordering the US military to participate in deporting millions of non-citizens from the US.
I have never advocated "open borders". However, the US has a duty to give asylum to those who those who ask for it and meet the international criteria for deserving it. It must not create artificial obstacles, such as the wrecker set up when he was president before, and Biden more or less continued. Instead, the US must speed up making the correct decisions about asylum cases, so that immigrants entitled to asylum are not subject to cruel treatment during years of waiting.
And there is no excuse for gratuitous acts of cruelty, such as separating families and deporting people who came to the US and could not fit in in the countries they supposedly "came from".
*Brazilian police arrest five [military and police] over plot to assassinate Lula after 2022 election win.*
Bernie Sanders's resolution to block the new arms deal to Israel was defeated.
I agree with what Sanders is quoted in this article as saying.
One of the Jan 6 rioters has been convicted of subsequently conspiring with others to kill federal government employees.
I wonder if the wrecker will pardon him for this. The article does not say whether he was convicted of anything on Jan 6, 2021.
The US vetoed a Security Council resolution that demanded "an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in the war between Israel and [HAMAS], along with "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages".
All the other members of the Security Council voted for the resolution.
Private equity parasites did their usual trick of threatening to move to a different country, to bully Labour into dropping its plan to tax them more.
I suggest that countries impose the higher taxes private equity deserves to pay is to impose them, not on the fund organizers or fund "investors", but on the companies they own — so that the "investors" and "funds" can't get out of it by relocating to a tax haven.
This would go well with another reform I have proposed, which is to require private equity funds to obey the rules that exist for public corporations. This makes sense, because private equity investing is effectively a subterfuge to evade those rules. To be airtight, this requirement should be imposed by a country, not on the private equity funds set up in that country, but rather on those that own part of businesses in that country.
Private equity funds are often company-wreckers. They buy a company, then sell it off so loaded with debt that will will go broke and shut down. If the result of justified regulation and taxation on private equity funds is to make them sell off all assets in your country, your country will be better off.
It is not clear whether Ukraine's use of long-range US missiles will make a big difference to the outcome of the war.
Biden has authorized them only in relation to the Kursk salient. It would make sense to use them in whatever ways would most impair Putin's war effort.
Teenage boys in the US are now venting misogyny in school. Girls in one school have noticed this and are wondering what can be done about it.
An idea occurs to me: the girls in a school could set up a web site where they anonymously rate the boys on how misogynist they are in everyday interactions in school. (It would not be focused on dating or anything like dating.) They could tell the boys were to look at the ratings, but not give them accounts to alter anything in the site.
*From Campus to the Courts, the "Palestine Exception" Rules University Crackdowns.*
I looked at the article for which Dahlia Saba and Vignesh Ramachandran were accused and threatened with punishment. It is democratic participation, pure and simple, and trying to punish people for that is vicious opposition to democracy. For a university administration even to consider such intimidation shows a lack of respect for democracy and academic freedom.
I expect this repression to get far worse when America's highest officials are overt enemies of democracy, acting on administrators who have no sense of loyalty to freedom of speech. Others expect it too.
*Canada reportedly foils Iranian plot to kill former justice minister Irwin Cotler,* who was campaigning to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps designated as "terrorist".
I can well believe that it merits that determination, but such decisions should be made by trial, not by administrative fiat.
* By relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and peat lands to offset emissions, governments can appear closer to greenhouse gas goals than they actually are.*
*Gaetz pick raises fears that [the bully] will seek "retribution" on political foes.*
*World's 1.5°C climate target "deader than a doornail", experts say.*
Indeed, the world's governments have talked for years about curbing global heating, but have chiefly promoted excuses rather than solutions.
* The jailing of 45 pro-democracy activists testifies to the ruthless suppression of [Hong Kong's] once-vibrant civil society.*
*Information about some of those activists.**Starmer twice declines to directly condemn jailing of Hong Kong pro-democracy figures.*
The UK economy, as that is normally understood surely benefits from trade with China. Whether poor Britons participate in that benefit, I am not sure. But if the price of that trade is to legitimize repression, in the long run he world loses.
The US may be next. Those who don't dare to criticize Chairman Xi won't dare to criticize the wrecker either.
*El Salvador ex-president among 11 to face trial for 1989 murder of Jesuits.*
That murder was an international scandal for the right-wing government of the time, and boosted support by Americans for the resistance.
US citizens: call on world leaders to reduce deforestation and environmental degradation, so as to preserve biodiversity.
Amazon, DoorDash and CVS donate *to group backing hardline anti-abortion Republican.*
(satire) *New Indiana Law Requires Women Voters To Show Husband’s ID.*
*Abu Ghraib Torture Trial Against Virginia-Based Defense Contractor [CACI] Begins Again.*
Putin's obedient servants have fined Google more money than exists in the world, as a punishment for not allowing Putin's PR.
This won't make Google change anything, but I expect that Putin's friend in the White House will do so by February.
*China and Russia team up to undermine krill fishing restrictions in Antarctica.*
These restrictions are designed to protect whales, penguins and seals.
*Israel's ban on UNRWA will annihilate healthcare for Palestinians.*
Argentina is working to extradite Brazilian extremists, supporters of Bolsonaro, who participated in the attack on government ministries just after Bolsonaro lost the last presidential election.
Rebecca Solnit describes the real life zombie apocalypse: people trained slowly by automatic systems to withdraw their attention from all other people.
Since I refuse to carry a portable tracking and listening device, I sometimes need to ask people passing by, "Would you please make a phone call for me?" Nowadays, the hardest part of this is to get the attention of people in phone trance, who don't seem to notice a live person speaking. People seem to be willing to help, provided they see you are there.
*Over 1,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29, says report.*
*Almost 500 carbon capture lobbyists granted access to Cop29 climate summit.*
Their numbers show the amount of money that seeks to direct the world away from the path that we can be confident would actually save civilization, which is that of diminishing greenhouse emissions. That illustrates how these conferences are corrupt at the core.
*Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts .*
*ACLU files lawsuit to gain information about Trump mass deportation plans.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Bernie Sanders's resolution to block the coming arms sale to Israel.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to hasten confirmation of Biden's nominated judges and regulatory officials.
US citizens: phone Biden and urge him to do everything he can to publish the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment. Call (202)456-1111 to reach the White House.
What the fascist leader's choices for major government positions have in common is obedience to him.
This is a big change from 2017.
The Supreme Leader wants officials that will serve him, not their country or human rights.
Amsterdam is arresting people for participating in peaceful and harmless protests for Palestinians' safety and human rights.
This is due to an "emergency order" that was a response, according to the article, to violence started by Israeli soccer fans against protesters peacefully condemning Israel's violence.
Maybe an emergency order was needed, but in order to serve its purpose honestly it should have been enforced only against those who engaged in violence, not against all protesters.
Not surprisingly, the cops vented violence on the protesters supporting the rights of Palestinians.
*Soaring grocery prices helped the wrecker to victory. The climate crisis is only going to make this worse.*
The wrecker is steadfastly determined to exacerbate the climate crisis. To keep America under the Tr…ance as the early stages of agricultural failure grow and spread will require intensified disinformation and repression.
Robert Reich describes the damage that RFK Jr would be likely to do if he becomes Secretary of Health.
*Global plastic production must be cut to curb pollution, study says.*
Palestinians in Jabaliya in northern Gaza have run out of food and water due to Israel's siege, so many of them are now forced to leave, despite the danger and hardship of that.
I suppose those who are not capable of leaving will all die.
This is ethnic cleansing, a grave crime.
*Spain's deadly floods and droughts are two faces of the climate crisis coin. Scientists say violent weather battering Mediterranean is a harbinger of what the rest of Europe can soon expect.*
*Texas woman died after being denied miscarriage care due to abortion ban, report finds.*
Australian aboriginals set fires to control the amount of shrubs, but only in some regions. In some other regions, they almost never set any fires.
Controlling large fires by setting small ones worked pretty well, but one new complicating factor is that nowadays there are is a scattering of man-made things that must not be burned — such as buildings and fields of crops.
See https://gnu.org/education/how-i-fought-to-graduate-without-using-non-free-software.html gives more ideas, from a student who resisted very cleverly.
Advice for journalists, organizations and individuals about surviving under fascism while dragging your heels against its evil plans.
In particular, don't obey demands by anticipation. For instance, Anthony Albanese, the PM of Australia, is resisting pressure from Australians who want to do that.
I would add one more suggestion: if you can't refuse to obey when power demands you do evil, at least refuse to disguise it. Show explicitly that you are obeying orders, not making a decision of your own.
RFK Jr. promotes anti-vaccine disinformation, touts raw milk as a supposed cure (never mind that it can give you an infection), and supports conspiracy theories that demonize medicine.
Modhi's demonizaion of non-Hindus has extended to Canada, influencing some of the Hindus there to attack Sikhs there.
*Australia accused of "exporting climate destruction" on tiny Pacific neighbours with massive gas expansion plans.*
Australia is not alone in doing this, but every country doing this deserves condemnation in these clear terms.
Biden has authorized Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to attack places in Russia.
He should have done this months ago. Nuclear weapons aside, Putin attacks using every weapon he has available, in whatever ways will cause harm to someone. Even including war crimes.
Ukraine should not commit war crimes, and should not attack nuclear weapons and facilities, but aside from that it should not hold back.
For his enemies to restrain themselves in the hope that Putin will restrain himself is foolish ince Putin doesn't do that.
Vaccination substantially decreases the probability that an acute Covid infection leads to long Covid that lasts for a year.
A large fraction of people suffering from long Covid are incapable of working full time, or incapable of working at all. Thus, long Covid harms the national economy as well as the individuals who have it.
Norway and Sweden have recognized that cash payment is necessary for national security reasons. Sweden plans to urge all residents to keep cash at home and use it regularly.
Hooray!
This is a response to the threat of sabotage and war from Putin. That aggression in waiting is the world's misfortune, and preparing to meet the threat is necessary. We can rejoice that the preparation will provide at least one real benefit to society even if war is avoided.
*[The wrecker's threatened mass deportation] of migrant workers would trigger productivity losses and a new round of inflationary pricing pressure.*
If he admits a comparable number of authorized migrant workers, that would not have macroeconomic consequences, but he may find it hard to reconcile that decision with the way he has demonized migrants.
If he tries to replace them with US citizen workers who will demand better wages, he is likely to cause inflation, which will make his supporters recognize one of the ways that he duped them.
I am in favor of giving farm workers a better standard of living, but doing this without causing inflation would require taxing the rich to subsidize that raise.
Measures to shift Americans' eating habits toward more healthful food in more healthful quantities could reduce the amount of food we actually need to grow. But they must not be rushed, or imposed harshly.
The US has recently charged two intelligence agents with crimes for separately leaking secret intelligence information to the public.
One of them, Asif Rahman, leaked information about Israel's plans for attacking Iran. That attack was to be retaliation for Iran's latest attack, which was retaliation for Israel's previous attack, which was retaliation for Iran's previous attack, and so on.
Human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, imprisoned since 2020, is now on hunger strike, protesting mistreatment in prison and isolation from his family.
If the wrecker achieves his goals, there are likely to be imprisoned American human rights lawyers on hunger strike too.
The wrecker nominated Matt Gaetz, a fanatical supporter for whom legal rights count for nothing, to be attorney general. There is talk that Republicans in the Senate will reject him.
If they do so, it would indicate a degree of loyalty to values other than obedience to the wrecker himself. That would be a positive change, if it happens. But I am not confident they can do so, since the wrecker will attack them for it.
The wrecker has shown a pattern of demanding outrageous things from his supporters, and mobilizing the more extreme to bully the rest into endorsing these things. (One of many examples is claiming that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats.) I think he expects to do the same thing to them over Matt Gaetz.
Robert Reich says this nomination is a test of how loyal Republican senators are to the wrecker personally. "If [the wrecker] can get 51 votes for Gaetz, he can get a Senate majority for anything [he] wants to do."
*Is there any red line that Israel will be held to? Biden has just confirmed the answer is no.*
No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. The hater plans to support Israel 200%. Instead of discouraging atrocities ineffectively, he will encourage them.
The Guardian said it will no longer post on ex-Twitter. That sets a good example for everyone who ever posted on Twitter.
*"Go to hell": Project 2025 chief kicks Guardian reporter out of book event.*
The author who spewed that hatred may soon have a chance to join the wrecker in spewing hatred on everyone in the US who is not subservient to the latter.
Democrats in Congress rallied to defeat the bill that would have allowed canceling the tax exemptions of organizations based on accusations with no specifics.
The injustice of that plan is fundamental. Even with a non-fascist president, it would be an intolerable attack in freedom and justice, because it would amount to "guilty of unspecified crimes unless proven innocent."
*Despite nations’ pledges at Cop28 a year ago, the burning of coal, oil and gas continued to rise in 2024.*
In other words, the planet roasters have defeated the campaign to save civilization (and your lives) from destruction.
(satire) *Oklahoma Law Requires Ten Commandments To Be Displayed In Every Womb.*
*The Air Pollution Foundation, which was primarily funded by the lobbying organization Western States Petroleum Association, publicly claimed to want to help solve the smog crisis, but was set up in large part to counter efforts at regulation.*
It was informed in 1955 of the future danger of global heating.
* Australia has amended or lapsed at least 16 defence-related export permits to Israel in recent weeks.*
This alone won't make Israel stop committing atrocities, but it can blaze the trail for other countries to do so.
*Why the Trump administration will be bad for [most] Americans' health.*
The exceptions will be the millionaires.
US citizens: call on World Leaders to agree on a strong treaty to reduce plastic production.
Women in several countries are responding to arrogant right-wing misogynous men by rejecting all men, for sex or for love.
In a place where abortion and birth control are restricted, it is obviously rational for women to reject penis-in-vagina sex with men (except when they seek to get pregnant). This doesn't require rejecting all lovemaking, but that is what these women are doing.
The misogynists will deserve such rejection, but what will happen to the young men who yearn for kind and tender love with a woman? They will well know that life makes that as unlikely as winning the lottery. They may join the misogynists only because no other path proclaims itself as offering any hope.
Sensitive men will see that misogyny is a path to a dead end of twisted hatred, not a path to happiness. But when they reject that path, where could they go instead? They won't see any good path -- only despair.
With women hating them sight unseen, trying to be kind and considerate won't be enough to give men an opportunity for love. Even to learn what constitutes "kind and considerate" requires feedback from someone prepared to appreciate you when you make progress, and misandrists will form a solid wall against that.
I am so sad for the men and for the women.
*Cattle, crops and ancient olive groves: Lebanon’s farmers "lose everything" to Israeli bombs.*
Republicans will try to attack abortion rights nationwide, despite their half-hearted pretense before the election.
The Democrats gave up on the votes of most men. An advisor argues that that was a terrible mistake.
*Cop29 CEO filmed agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at climate summit.*
I see little hope for efforts to preserve civilization and technology fro the danger of global heating, but if it is to happen, the COP conferences as they are are useless window dressing. They mainly serve the planet roasters as greenwashing.
They do provide funds for some useful conservation activities — useful, that is, supposing we do save civilization by preventing global disaster — but they won't help prevent global disaster.
Papua New Guinea has denounced the conferences as a worthless waste of time. Bravo!
If there is to be any chance of replacing this broken process with one that will work, it has to start with an ct of defiance like this one. Then other countries have to follow that lead lead.
The complaints from rich people and businesses, that Labour's tax increases and regulations will be have some deleterious effects, show that it would fix problems that vested interests don't want fixed.
In a market-based economy, any change in one variable affects many others. Pulling on one string reshapes the rest of the network a little. Some of those secondary effects are good and some are bad.
The fallacy in those arguments is that they exaggerate the significance of the bad secondary effect, inviting the reader to assume that it will outweigh the primary benefit of the action. Sometimes that does happen, but you can't take the word of the complainers for that.
Fear of the wrecker is leading foreign political leaders to try to alter their past statements.
(satire) *Neuralink Patient Unable To Stop Hand From Voting For Trump.*
Republicans are trying to create the power to strip the tax exemption from any organization that officials accuse of "supporting terrorists", with no requirement to present any reason or evidence for that accusation.
The group thus attacked would get a hearing, but it is hard to refute an accusation that offers no specifics. Even worse, there may be no limits on what sort of action would constitute "support". Would "End the siege of Gaza" be construed as "support" for terrorists? I wouldn't be surprised if the bully's followers said so,
This attack on the freedom of political association in the US, this attempt to subvert the rule of law by injecting arbitrary power, illustrates the commitment of right-wing extremists to the elimination of the basic principles of human rights, such as "innocent until proven guilty."
I expect the Senate to block this bill, for the rest of this year.
Tuition fees in UK universities are going up, and some students will need bigger loans to pay for that,
The UK student loan system is fundamentally better than the US system, because in the UK system the ex-student who has a low income does not have to repay the loan.
*No it's not your money: why taxation isn't theft.* Refuting the claim that however much you can extract from the market is a measure of what you deserve.
The wrecker has emboldened misogynists to provocatively shout their contempt for women and demand for power over them.
Some of them will act this out violently. We must expect to see an increase in rape.
Many "protected" nature reserves are not protected very effectively; biodiversity is declining within them, due to causes such as drilling for oil.
Global heating could also be contributing to that decline. Protecting a specific area of land won't preventing from getting hotter, and getting much wetter, much drier, getting burned to the ground, or getting flooded.
On criminalization of hostile public posting and speech in the UK.
* Moscow is using ties with neighboring countries to deport and arrest anti-war Russians who fled after invasion of Ukraine.*
Soon the fascist may help Putin do likewise to expat Russians in the US.
*[Harris's] Fruitless Pursuit of the Mythical Moderate.* The article attributes her defeat to her failure to take an overall political position that would help struggling majority of Americans.
I emended the article title because it would be presumptuous to refer to a person I don't know by per first name.
Rep. Jayapal: *We've got to pick some big fights where people can't be in denial or question whether or not we are standing up for them or whether we're standing up to the big corporate interests," the Washington congresswoman said, adding: "It's a difficult message to send when you're trying to court money from that community."
In other words, Democrats need to become what they once were: sincere populists, defending the vital interests of the poor majority of the US, to overcome the Republican phony populists who pretend to stand for that majority by scapegoating smaller and poorer groups.
*[The wrecker] will give Israel ‘blank check’ which may mean all-out war with Iran, says ex-CIA chief.*
If that happens, it could become a nuclear war if one side starts to lose.
When the bullshitter said Project 2025 had nothing to do with him or his plans, we suspected he was lying as usual. Now there is evidence of this.
*Analysis of 19m flights between 2019 and 2023 reveals 50% rise in emissions, condemned as "gratuitous waste".*
Any country can regulate private jet flights that begin in, end in, or cross that country.
Arguing that the main reason for right-wing victory is the highly funded right-wing media that dominate "news" (including pseudo-news) in the US nowadays.
* More than half the world's food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly accelerating water crisis grips the planet, unless urgent action is taken to conserve water resources and end the destruction of the ecosystems on which our fresh water depends, experts have warned in a landmark review.*
*US judge bars Alabama from purging thousands of voters before election.*
Evidence that PFAS cause changes in intestinal bacteria.
An Australian developer of encrypted messaging software has moved to Switzerland to escape the hostility of Australian laws, including the law that allows the state to order employees to install backdoors in servers and in released software.
Netanyahu announced the ethnic cleansing of North Gaza.
I must suspect that South Gaza will follow, but this is itself an enormous war crime.
Biden can redeem himself morally by voting for a Security Council resolution to order Israel to take this back, and calling for sanctions otherwise.
*Heads of Amazon, Meta and Apple swift to congratulate Trump as Musk celebrates and declares victory for himself.*
I boycott all of those companies, as well as Musk's companies. You can join in!
(satire) *America defeated America at the ballot box.*
People expect that the wrecker will give his pal Putin a gift by ending military support for Ukraine.
If Ukraine is weakened that way, it might be sensible for Ukraine to seek a compromise peace that would be less disastrous than fighting and losing.
However, Putin has the attitude of a cheap gangster: when a victim starts to talk about making a deal, that means perse is weak, so it is time to demand more. Putin would increase his demands to the maximum, figuring that he will get all he demands, sooner or later, whenever Ukraine can't hold a front line any more.
But what if we imagine bizarre ideas with the sort of audacity that Putin has got away with? I have a few wild ideas.
* Ukraine can attack Belarus and perhaps trigger a rebellion to overthrow the dictator, Lukashenko, who is a client of Putin. There is a chance this would free Belaris. At least, Putin might have to send a large army there, enough to interfere with the attack on Ukraine.
* Ukraine can attack Hungary and remove Orban, who is a client of Putin. Maybe Hungary's government would flip.
* The Biden can send several regiments to Ukraine, at Ukraine's invitation, then station them the way of Putin forces' advance, ordering them not to fight unless attacked. Putin will face the choice of attacking the US troops and bringing NATO into the war, or ceasing to pursue those lines of attack.
If Putin does attack them, it would be hard for the wrecker subsequently to pull the US out of the fight. He would look like a coward and a traitor if he did. He does not want to look that way.
If this does not save Ukraine, it will at least help ensure that Ukrainians can take refuge in NATO countries if their country is conquered.
What do you do when democracy is in the intensive care unit?
"Living in Beit Iksa is like living in prison." The only way in or out of that Palestinian village is through an Israeli checkpoint, and if the guards see fit, they can block an ambulance from coming for you while you die.
*Vaccination centre and aid official's car bombarded in Gaza, says UN.*
Right wing extremists aimed to sow so much chaos that the election would fail, and they could start an uprising to make the election irrelevant.
They failed this time, it seems, but perhaps since the wrecker won they decided it was time to relax.
Robert Reich describes the misguided "lessons" that plutocratists want the Democrats to learn from Harris's defeat.
California has already prepared to resist some forms of attack and reprisal that the bully could apply arbitrarily.
Netanyahu dismissed his war minister, Yoav Gallant, who then said there is no "security reason" to continue the fighting in Gaza.
He accuses Netanyahu for rejecting a deal of hostages for peace for invalid reasons.
Ways that the wrecker could preside over the effective elimination of the free press in the US.
One of many ways would be to follow Biden's beginning by prosecuting publishers of leaks.
A couple of years from now, serious journalism about what the US government is doing may have been forced into exile, much as serious journalism about what the Russian government, Chinese government. and many other repressive governments.
Sending letters to blind people who cannot read them is one of many forms of idiotic careless contempt that the UK government shows to the handicapped.
I think this attitude was instilled by the Tory government's attitude.
but Labour has a responsibility is to correct it, rather than disclaim responsibility.
*[The wrecker's] voters want a revolution. It’s time for progressives to offer their own.*
*Democrats must offer more than just hope.*
If you ignore politics, your life may be easier for a while — until nasty policies, that you failed to fight, ruin thousands or millions of lives,
and by chance yours is one of them.
*Why Democrats Lose Even When Republicans Are So Endlessly Terrible*
*Harris Ran to [The wrecker's] Right on Immigration — and Gained Absolutely Nothing For It.*
*[Plastic] pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, ocean acidification and human health, according to analysis.*
The wrecker says he will deport all unauthorized immigrants and threatens to punish states that resist.
This must be part of the reason California is allocating funds to cope with that punishment.
If the wrecker goes ahead with this plan, then he will have to replace them with authorized immigrants, or convince millions of Americans to do the job. For that, he would have to give those workers a big raise.
*Incoming Trump presidency threatens millions of Americans’ [medical insurance].*
The wrecker's threat to freedom of speech and journalism in the US.
Rebecca Solnit: *Authoritarians like Trump love fear, defeatism, surrender. Do not give them what they want.*
One important point is distinguishing hope from optimism.
* [Ohio sheriff's lieutenant] received written reprimand for posting: "If you support the Democrat Party I will not help you."
This illustrates the attitude of hostility that convinces Republicans to act as if Democrats (the majority of Americans) were enemies to be fought bitterly.
This is the bully's fault, and his strategy too. Before 2020 it would have been almost unthinkable. The bully's strategy is an attack on the unity of the United States, and his use of it makes him an enemy of the United States.
*Texas House candidate campaigning in churches, in potential legal violation.*
Christian churches have long tried to disregard the law against supporting political candidates. Punishment by a slap on the wrist encourages the defiance. Since that is a systematic campaign, I think the US needs to punish this enough to make churches think twice.
I would suggest revoking the tax exemption of any church caught doing this. That will make executives of churches take care, while not making any person a martyr.
* Representatives at the Cop16 summit in Colombia negotiated against a backdrop of extreme weather and ecosystem collapse.*
* A dozen black canvassers were tricked, threatened, and driven in seatless U-Haul vans [by Musk]. They were fired after WIRED reported on their plight — some without full pay or a way back home.*
[A political activist in Singapore] faces punishment after refusing to "correct" online posts criticizing Singapore’s death penalty and drug laws.
Singapore strictly represses criticism of the government.
*How Moldovans bravely fought off Russian election meddling — and stood up for democracy.*
If only we could say the same about the United States.
The truth seemed to be Haydn for a while.
China wants to make its embassy to the UK much bigger. Why would it want this? One reason could be to keep Uygur and Tibetan protesters, whose protests we should support, further away. But if this allows China to have more diplomats in the UK, China would use them for nefarious purposes, including espionage and intimidation of oversees Chinese. An inconvenient old embassy in Beijing is a price worth paying to hamper that.
*"People do not want to believe it is true": the photographer capturing the vanishing of glaciers.*
Migrant workers in the Persian Gulf countries are compelled to work in temperatures of up to 45°C for as much as 14 hours a day.
*Increasingly violent siege of north [Gaza] raises suspicions about Netanyahu’s war aims.*
The concern is that he may aim to annex part or all of Gaza, and expel any living Palestinians. Before that,the fighting could kill most of the people in North Gaza. That would indisputably be genocide.
The Tory Party released a snoopphone app (nonfree, like nearly all of them) which sends back data about its users.
I wonder what Tory supporters think about these nasty business practices when used by that party against them.
*Can democracy survive now the world’s richest man has it in his sights?*
It is clear that some of the dirty things the muskrat is doing ought to be crimes punished by imprisonment.
The EU's Common Agricultural Policy was supposed to protect biodiversity and the environment, but has failed to achieve that goal. Things are getting rapidly worse.
*Columbia pays $395,000 to student suspended over protest "fart spray".*
I think Columbia went too far in punishing the student for expressing perself in a way that was annoying but not actually harmful to anyone. It is proper that the university was punished for this.
However, we must not forget that most of the punishment is being directed mainly at critics of Israel's massacres, not at supporters of them, and much of that punishment is also unjust.
*Republicans preparing to reject US election result if Trump loses, warn strategists.*
*PFAS mixtures more toxic than single compounds, [which would tend to be the danger worse than previous estimates.]*
The UK deported a man based on administrative technicalities caused by delays due to the pandemic, without the hearing he was entitled to, and then gave him just three days to leave.
This demonstrates that humans can be as rigid as robots if they are taught to do so.
A survey of people in eight countries found that most want to make Big Oil pay for the damage done by climate disaster.
That would be fair, but will it be possible? That depends how much the damages add up to. Eventually they will equal the total value of all human wealth and all of nature. Long before that, they will far exceed the market value of the oil companies.
The point is, the idea of getting compensated for the destruction of nature and human works is inherently foolish — an excuse for not focusing on preventing that destruction.
*Israel formally tells UN of intent to sever all ties with Unrwa relief agency.*
I don't know whether this will make a difference to Palestinians in Gaza, since Israel is already choking off food, water and medicine for them. But it could overwhelm the West Bank with suffering.
*Swing-State Voters Disillusioned With Kamala Harris Can Swap for Two Non-Swing-State Votes.*
A similar idea was used by supporters of Ralph Nader's presidential campaign on at least one occasion. It sends the desired message without risking putting the worst candidate into office.
I voted for Nader at least once, I am proud to say.
If we had ranked choice voting, it would be easy to send such messages without ever risking putting the worst candidate into office. It is a defect of our system that it compels people to vote for the so-so candidate rather than the one they really support.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep private equity out of the child care business.
US citizens: call on Big Tech to stop amplifying election lies.
US citizens: call on lawmakers to ban surveillance pricing.
They should go further than that and ban collecting personal data about the purchaser.
The Putin forces are using specialized drones that drop grenades on civilians. The drone controllers do not target a specific person; rather, they generally attack anyone they come across.
As we increase the number of artificial satellites in Earth orbit, the danger of the Kessler Syndrome (a chain reaction of collisions) increases too. Humanity could bar itself from space entirely.
The movie Gravity showed an extremely fast chain reaction. It might actually take years, but be unstoppable nonetheless.
*Mozambique opposition figures killed as protest grows over election results.*
*"Crunch time for real": UN says time for climate delays has run out.*
*Time to act: UNEP paints bleak climate picture without rapid emissions cut.*
Today's US college students have no memory of a Republican Party that wasn't extremist. To those whose families were Republicans, the way they find it now is normal.
*Corporations using "ineffectual" carbon offsets are slowing path to "real zero", more than 60 climate scientists say.*
It is obvious that use of bogus "offsets" as an excuse not to do real decarbonization keeps the greenhouse emissions high.
Putin is supporting the propaganda of a US neo-Nazi group.
Putin and the corrupter support each other, too.
*Spain's apocalyptic floods [following others in countries around the world] show two undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us.*
The annual COP conferences that was created to get the world o the road to safety has been captured by planet roasters, and it is hard to see how the US and Russia could negotiate any sort of agreement about fossil fuels.
Some large countries could set up a carbon tax system on their own, using the tax money to help the poor not to subsidize specifically fossil fuel for poor people. Maybe then other countries would join.
* A high school in California has decided not to invest in coal, oil or [fossil] gas, instead pledging to put money into clean energy..*
This was a demand made my the students. Bravo! But what we really need is to stop anyone from "investing" in fossil fuels.
*…Working-class white people were actually the dispensable pawns of white supremacy. Or as Lyndon B Johnson put it: "If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best coloured man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you."
I made a link to that article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any menton of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected — hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
*Five ways [that the wrecker as president] would be disastrous for the climate.*
The billionaire owner of the LA Times blocked it at the last minute from publishing an already-written endorsement of Harris for president. Some editors resigned in protest, and many subscribers have quit.
Bezos blocked at the last minute an already written endorsement of Harris for president, according to staff. Some editors, staff and subscribers are quitting.
Since Bezos is not an ideological right-wing extremist, there are suspicions that he was afraid the bully would punish his other companies if he allowed an endorsement of Harris and then the bully somehow became president.
People have asked what Musk hopes to get if he can make the bully president.
I think Musk wants to be emperor.
The danger that billionaires pose to the American republic somewhat resembles the way concentration of wealth destroyed the Roman Republic (1). Eventually the richest Roman of all, Julius Caesar, became so powerful that no few in Rome could go against his wishes, not enough to succeed in denying him anything. He aimed for total power.
Later his nephew, Octavian, actually got that total power, so that no one could safely oppose him at all. This he obtained the official position that we nowadays call "emperor".
If we defeat the bully this time, he may go away and leave us alone, but Vance won't refuse the "support" of Musk, and they are not old enough to be likely to disappear soon. To be safe, we will have to take away most of Musk's wealth. And likewise for other billionaires.
1. There are many differences, of course. The Roman Republic never had goals such as democracy or equal rights. The vote of a rich citizen counted for more than that of a poor citizen, and a sufficiently rich citizen was automatically a senator. Wives had little more rights than slaves. Notwithstanding the revolt of Spartacus, few ever said that slavery was wrong in general.
Nonetheless, there are similarities in the evolution of the system into instability as the richest fortunes became greater.
*Israeli prison staff accused of assaulting Marwan Barghouti [in his cell],*
causing several wounds.
He is kept in solitary confinement, which is effective a form of torture,
and rarely allowed visits, even from lawyers. So the attack could hardly have been done by anyone but the prison guards.
Some famous writers have supported a campaign to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, except those that have taken a stand against the occupation or atrocities.
The reason I call Isreal's massacres of Palestinians "atrocities" but not "genocide" is that the meaning of the latter word is a matter of magnitude of the acts in question, not just the kinds of acts.
Killing 20 people in cold blood is clearly an atrocity, but it is not genocide. Killing 40,000 people out of 2.3 million, by violence or starvation, is a series of atrocities, but is it genocide? I think that is still stretching the word. Killing 10% of the population of Gaza might be genocide. Enough additional killing (which I hope will not occur) would surely make it genocide. But I don't think there is a precise line.
Why argue about that question of the meaning of the word? Killing tens of thousands of people is a grave and vicious act, and calling it a series of atrocities expresses the gravity of the crime in a way that is totally clear.
Russia has more or less taken unofficial control of Georgia (the country in the Caucasus), though the opposition is still fighting and claim that the election was rigged.
* The working class saw Clinton’s support of Nafta, which cut most tariffs between US, Mexico and Canada, as "a betrayal".* They continue to blame Democrats for it. It was a betrayal and it was promoted by Democrats (though not as many Democrats as Republicans).
But what counts in the election is what they would do next year. Overall, Democrats are inclined to resist the demands of rich people and the businesses they own somewhat more than Republicans would,
though not as much as Bernie Sanders would.
The wrecker is threatening to upend the Veterans Administration, which is likely to kill many US veterans.
It appears that he despises living veterans as much as he despises veterans who are dead.
He also expressed his support for the Confederacy, and thu sin directly for slavery, by saying he would rename Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg.
Soldiers, would you want your base to be named after an enemy general that fought against the United States?
Soldiers, would you want your base to be named after an incompetent general whose decisions helped the US so much that US generals said it was unfortunate to have killed him?
*Philadelphia DA sues Elon Musk and America Pac over $1m voter giveaway,* calling it *running an illegal lottery.*
I am surprised that it is not a crime that can be prosecuted. Prosecution might make Musk stop, but I think he will disregard have his lawyers just let the process proceed, and resolve the suit next Wednesday Nov 6 by paying whatever penalty is imposed, The amount he would lose is probably insignificant to him.
(satire) *Pros And Cons Of Prosecuting School Shooters' Parents.*
*Where do [the corrupter] and Harris stand on housing, taxes and other policies?*
*[The bully] accuses Harris of "campaign of hate" one day after his racism-filled rally.*
It is a standard right-wing disinformation tactic to accuse opponents of doing the bad things that the right-wing does. That way, when people find out that the right wing is doing these things, they may suppose that "everybody does them".
Companies in the fossil fuel business are spending millions per year to convince Democrats that fossil gas is a "clean" energy source.
There are subtle points in which the corrupter differs from what 20th century fascist leaders did to take power.
I'll take the author's word for this, but does it mean the corrupter is not a fascist? How important are those details? Are they big enough to imply that he is not a fascist, or do they only make him a somewhat different kind of fascist?
I'd say it is the latter.
Margaret Reid explains how she felt it was her duty to join in a climate protest, because preserving art is futile when we don't preserve civilization.
Wajahat Ali: *Yes, I think Democrats are complicit in genocide. But Trump would be far worse.*
He directly tackles the view, held by many, that "both sides are the same evil."
To give the victory to someone who is a monster on many issues, in order to punish a party that is a monster on one issue, is an instance of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Climate disaster killed around 40,000 people in Europe in 2022 through heat waves.
The corrupter hinted tantalizingly that Mike Johnson, the by-hook-or-by-crook Speaker of the House, is somehow going to steal the election.
He could do this by arbitrarily rejecting the elections of some states. So it is not a mere vague suspicion. It looks like he and the corrupter are trying to suggest that he will do that.
*The Saturday following Hurricane Helene, soldiers warned Whitney Anderson about the [chemicals in the mud that could cause burns].
Attackers set fires that burned some early voting ballots.
I have to suspect that this is part of the violence that Team Tr…ance stirs up. The wrecker has repeatedly suggested that mail-in ballots somehow put the election in danger and that the 2020 election was "stolen", and many of his followers are inclined to violence.
US citizens: call on The FEC to investigate and prosecute Elon Musk's illegal campaign events now.
*Mitch McConnell Funneled Cash to a PAC Pitting Arab and Jewish Voters Against Harris.*
Another article said that the stir up hostility between those Arab and Jewish voters while using them all.
This is one of the problems with political ads funded by anonymous rich people — they can easily pat to say one thing to group A and the opposite to group B, while keeping it secret from the public.
Targeted advertising makes it easier to do this. It also fuels a motor for pervasive tracking and surveillance — "surveillance capitalism". I think we should abolish it.
The US is building battery backup for the power grid so fast that it makes all talk of needing nuclear power for that purpose absurd. Nuclear power is simply inferior to these batteries, in cost and in time to construct.
US professors at various universities have been fired, or are being "investigated", based on activism against Israel's atrocities against Palestinians.
Columbia university Katherine Franke criticized Israeli ex-soldiers in the Columbia campus for harassing Palestinians there. Other professors then accused her of creating a hostile environment for Israeli ex-soldiers.
This shows the absurdity of this system, in which any statement alleging harassment can be taken seriously as harassment. This can be twisted to target anyone who is not a nebbish.
I do not approve of Kanazi's poem, which aims to polarize society and turn the political disagreement over Israel and Palestine into an uncrossable rift between two camps. I don't shun individuals for developing nonfree software, and I certainly won't shun anyone for disagreeing with me about this.
However, freedom of speech about political issues includes the right to make statements such as that poem, and people should not be punished for redistributing it. People deserve the freedom to share copies of any published work.
*Israel is not "saving western civilisation". Nor is Hamas leading "the resistance". *Both sides believe they have right on their side and use it as an excuse to perpetuate bloodshed.*
* The sudden collapse [last year] of carbon sinks [of forests and land] was not factored into climate models — and could rapidly accelerate global heating.*
This seems to be caused by changes in the climate big enough to disrupt natural processes on a large scale.
Bob Woodward: Trump kept backchannel open to Putin after leaving office.
Greg Palast reports on the views of attendees at the fascist's rally: they are convinced that they will rebel if he loses.
I think they are nerving themselves to start shooting.
I hope that, if they start actually pointing guns at people, US troops will not hesitate to use guns to vanquish them. In their way of thinking, they are entitled to shoot people who won't support them, and if you aren't ready for a gunfight, that implies they should bully you. They will bully the US army if commanders seem hesitant to order "Fire!"
But if they see that the Army is prepared to return fire if they shoot, they may still hesitate to start actual shooting.
Interesting views on the idea of reparations for slavery from Britain to descendants of slaves.
Although the individuals who participated were responsible for their own actions, the state was responsible for maintaining the system of slavery for denying equal rights to those who were slaves. The state does properly owe these reparations — and that British state still exists.
To get the reparations from those who are wealthy today because ancestors invested in slavery would be very just, but figuring out who should owe how much may be very difficult — and may not be necessary.
In the case of Britain, I have the impression that nearly everyone who was rich from the 1600s to the 1800s got much of that wealth from slavery. Those whose business had nothing directly to do with slavery nonetheless did profit from the greater wealth of the country that was due to slavery.
So I think it would be sufficiently just, and much simpler, to get the money for the reparations by increasing taxes on income and wealth today,
I've reached a similar conclusion for reparations in the US, through a similar system.
An "amorous couple" have been accused of flooding parts of train station by setting off the sprinkler systems. They must have been very hot lovers to have that effect.
The article does not suggest that they did this intentionally, but if it was not intentional, it makes no sense to punish them.
* Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's book overturns Elon Musk's claim that we could live on the red planet within years while stressing the good reasons to pursue space settlement.*
*We need a dash of hope, but is too much diverting our gaze from the perils of the climate crisis?*
I don't think sugar-coating the situation is likely to help us start taking real action.
Several important US business leaders privately oppose the fascist but refuse to say so in public.
That means, to be blunt about it, that they are too scared to oppose his threats of retaliation if they do. They are giving up a free society without a fight.
*We, Israelis, are calling for global pressure on Israel to force an immediate ceasefire.*
Urgent note to US citizens
It is vitally important that we elect Harris and Walz. And that we elect Democrats to the House and Senate. Please vote, and vote for them.
Since Bernie Sanders and Franklin D Roosevelt are not running for president this year, we can't get the sort of president we really need. But we can elect a president who is good on many issues and won't make things worse on the others.
Winning Congress is crucial because we must not allow right-wing extremist Mike Johnson to remain Speaker of the House. In that position he could sabotage the election, and has made it clear he wants to. If we elect just a few more Democrats, he won't be speaker any more.
If you're thinking of sending Democrats a message for next time, I understand why. I too would like to send them more or less the same message. But if the United States falls into a Trance now, they will never allow an election to be fair enough for them to lose. The message will be useless.
The US and other powers said that the killing of Yahya Sinwar would be an opportunity to end the fighting in Gaza.
However, Netanyahu is not ready to stop killing Palestinians.
I suppose that is because he will be out of the governing coalition and on trial for corruption if he ever stops.
Iran's religious terror agency has arrested the mother of a teenage protester who in 2022 was disappeared during a protest and later found dead.
Americans, if you don't want such state terrorism in the US, help defeat the Christian fanatics that are trying now to impose it.
If you are not an expert on how to so that, here is a way to try. Tell people you know, and strangers too: "Trump has no heart, but he does need a de-fib-relator." You can tell them verbally and textually.
If you say it verbally, I suggest learning to say "de-fib-relator" with emphasis on the first three syllables and small pauses between them.
*[Corrupter's] "roundtable" in Miami packed with pre-screened ultra-loyalist Latinos.*
Lies Within Lies — that is his motto.
*Meta's Israel Policy Chief Tried to Suppress Pro-Palestinian Instagram Posts.* That manager was formerly a government official in Israel.
(satire) *Report Finds Americans Need To Cut Emissions By 3% In Order To Tell Themselves They Did Their Best.*
(satire) *[The wrecker] Vows To Outlaw Electricity To Secure Powerful Amish Vote.*
(satire) *Both Campaigns Release Ads Showcasing Trump’s Most Racist Comments.*
The FAA is starting a general review of Boeing's safety culture.
If the wrecker were president, his government would have let the big corporation's executives judge for themselves what constitutes "safe enough".
As it is, they have to do what the FAA demands. But I expect they will contribute to industry groups that lobby to "cut red tape".
(satire) *Bret Baier Admits He Made Mistake Letting Kamala Harris Speak.*
(That refers to her interview on Faux News.)
*Halloween [in the UK] isn’t some frightful US import — its origins are Celtic.*
However, in most other countries it is indeed a frightful US import, part of the "spend all your money on celebrating now!" industry.
Swarthmore College is accusing students of "assaulting" people in campus by using megaphones to shout protest slogans, and threatens to expel them as a punishment.
The college administrators who allow such attacks to be made against freedom of speech have demonstrated their unfitness for the job, and ought to resign. Or, either than resigning, cancel the proceedings and join the side of freedom of speech.
Bayer did not remove glyphosate from its weedkillers as promised, but it did release new ones that are very toxic.
Global heating threatens to kill billions of people in this century. But the short-term-thinking people of Aberdeen look with terror measures to reduce the use of fossil fuels and see that 200,000 jobs in that field might disappear.
Then they exaggerate and say, "They are killing us", but it is only certain world-destroying jobs that would disappear. This wouldn't actually kill anyone.
If Britain makes its welfare system adequate, the disappearance of some jobs won't be a disaster for anyone. And it will help avoid a much bigger disaster for everyone.
If the wrecker takes the presidency and appoints Musk to a federal office, Musk would get an enormous tax break.
But that would be tiny compared to the profit he could get by bullying people into giving him almost anything he wants. He would not be president, but he would be emperor, having more power than any president ever had.
Lebanese fear Israel will now bomb their hospitals.
A Venezuelan opposition figure who was seized by state suppression forces on Wednesday turned up dead on Friday.
Sign in support of Harris's plan to have Medicare cover the cost of at-home help for people who medically need such help.
Claiming that the civil war in Sudan continues because each side is propped up by rich or powerful Arab countries.
Many Republicans have been downplaying the abortion issue while some states prepare a court case that could restrict distribution of mifepristone in the whole US.
It seems that the Putin forces recruit 20,000 soldiers per month, while suffering casualties at about the same rate.
They mostly recruit convicts and people from poor regions who join for the money. As a result, Russians in general don't feel upset about the high casualties. Russian generals don't care either.
Helen O’Sullivan was with Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in an olive grove away from everyone else, when the latter was killed by a sniper's bullet.
Some of the people who know the bully best are calling him "fascist".
More "lifelong Republican" former aides [of the bully] denounce ex-president in letter.
*"Fascist", "conman", "predator", "cheat": what 11 former staffers of [the corrupter] say about him now.*
One of the "staffers" was not exactly a staffer. He was an elected official: Vice President Pence, who refused to betray the Constitution when the corrupter demanded it.
Ralph Nader advises the US Chamber of Commerce that the wrecker will be bad for its members. "Be careful what you wish for!"
Netflix abruptly disappeared nearly all the films in its "Palestinian Stories" collection.
This demonstrates a political aspect of the basic injustice of streaming as a way of distributing works of art and opinion: nobody is allowed to have a copy that is copyable, so the company can make the work nonexistent.
The streaming dis-services take DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) to the next level of injustice. Please join me in refusing to use them (I have never done so, not even once).
When the only copies that respect people's rights are unauthorized copies, insist on unauthorized copies!
*Israel's plan to ban Unrwa from accessing Gaza marks new low in its relations with UN
US only nation likely to be able to persuade Netanyahu to drop plan condemned by 123 member states.*
Republicans are *doing a really wonderful job of faking relationships* with individual supporters.
It always bothers me when an organization pretends that my support for it is a personal relationship Rather than a political position. I don't make a fuss about it because that doesn't affect my support for the cause (whichever cause that might be). But since it feels manipulative, I would rather the organization didn't do that.
Musk is trying to destroy the Center for Countering Digital Hate for sharply criticizing the slant of ex-Twitter towards right-wing hate. His methods so far include (1) exaggeration and (2) trying to stretch the law (but failing so far).
Overall I think his aim is to intimidate people into surrendering to his encroachment on election law, as they would if he were emperor.
I am of two minds about on-line hate. On the one hand, that hate can whip up right-wing hate campaigns that undermine human rights generally. On the other hand, laws against expressing hatred as such are a form of censorship, and the laws can easily be redirected to suppress protests that the state does not like.
*Nobel prize winners endorse Harris and warn [the corrupter] would endanger future of science. … letter by 82 laureates … calls [the corrupter] a potential threat to progress on climate crisis.*
US citizens: Tell lawmakers, "I oppose all bills that weaken end-to-end encryption, infringe upon teenagers’ constitutional right to free speech on the internet, and enable censorship of valuable online resources for abortion seekers and LGBTQ+ communities."
The editor of the LA Times has resigned after the paper's owner forbade endorsing Harris for president.
Calling for US sanctions against the political sponsors of the Israelis who organize pogroms against Palestinians.
British "centrists" find excuse after excuse to weaken the measures that are supposed to move the UK away from fossil fuels.
Look in the article for where they leap from "We may need to move away from the gas tax someday" to "Let's ditch it now!"
A carbon tax ought to be programmed in advance to increase gradually year by year. That will encourage people to plan to reduce their consumption, even with plans that take years.
We don't know how much more global heating the system of circulation can stand before it changes drastically. By the time we know, it will be too late.
*Cop29 host Azerbaijan set for major fossil gas expansion (around 30%), report says.*
A pitifully weak attempt to solve a real problem: asking for a federal law that would permit victims of domestic abuse and stalking to demand that data brokers delete information about them.
Data, once collected, will be abused. The way to prevent that abuse is to facilitate refusing to hand it over in the first place.
Here is my proposal for protecting the specific people known to be in particular danger, and everyone else who could be harmed if individuals, businesses or governments use their personal data against them without a search warrant: require services to be available anonymously.
World progress on reducing poverty until 2019 was concentrated in China. Since that year, we have made little progress anywhere, and little more progress is expected with the current system,
The corruptor has repeatedly expressed his contempt for workers.
I expected this. The corrupter and Putin are working together somehow, and this is a natural part of their mutual assistance.
*This Is Exactly How an Elon Musk-Funded PAC Is Microtargeting Muslims and Jews With Opposing Messages* — trying to stir up hatred between them.
That is typical right-wing tactics, to stir up spurious hostility so as to weaken people's resistance.
The president of the Philippines (a Marcos) and the vice president (a Duterete) were elected as a slate, but are now enemies, venting wild rage at each other.
"Health" department officials in Florida ordered TV stations not to show an advertisement to vote yes for the abortion access ballot question. A judge rebuked them, saying "It's the first amendment, stupid."
It ought to be shocking that people have elected as officials the sort of fanatics that would disregard the basis of our system of freedom and democracy
Americans, it is up to us to stop them as they try to destroy it.
*[Palestinian] West Bank olive harvest met with rising Israeli violence, says UN.*
Haitians in Springfield have called for charges against the bullshitter for fomenting violence against them by telling lies.
Ralph Nader's statement about Israel's invasion of Lebanon.
US citizens: call on Google to remove the facial recognition feature from its doorbell cameras.
While at it, the company should eliminate unlimited network access to the images in the camera. Access to them should be limited to images from the past minute.
In Finland, global heating effects are damaging forests so much that they are no longer carbon sinks.
The wrecker threatened to "send the military" after "some very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics."
He won't be able to do that this year, but if he captures the presidency he or Vance will do it in 2028.
This is a wise idea, but why limit this protection to "young" teens? These "algorithms", more precisely described as recommendation engines, draw millions of people into disinformation which aids right-wing demagogues, plutocratist servants of big business and business associations, and enemies of your country (whichever country that is). We should protect everyone from these.
Another bomb, another atrocity: Israel's air force bombed a residential building in Gaza and killed at least 73 people in it.
South Korean intelligence reports that North Korean soldiers are training for combat in Russia, and that Russian ships transported them from North Korea to Russia.
The US should help Ukraine operated forces there to sink future transports. That will be far more efficient than fighting them on a front on land.
I'm looking for some basic information about Sam's Club. If you have ever bought anything there, you probably know the answers. If you'd like to have a brief email conversation, please send me email, at the gnu web site with address rms.
[Posting again with the correct link his time]
In China, there seems to be only one way to criticize the government which is not forbidden: by stock trading.
Bail funds are charities that raise bail for people accused of crimes who are offered bail but can't afford it. Bail bond companies and the insurance companies that serve them are trying to outlaw those funds, not overtly but Bail funds are charities that raise bail for people accused of crimes who are offered bail but can't afford it. Bail bond companies and the insurance companies that serve them are trying to outlaw those funds, not overtly but sneakily by imposing regulations that would be nearly impossible to satisfy.
The regulation of toxic chemicals in the US is hamstrung by laws that enable companies to keep their use and their presence in any place secret.
The selfish interest of those who keep trade secrets is rational but antisocial. In many cases the only harm it does is to hold back the general advance of technology. But sometimes it does really nasty things. For digital hardware and software, it often gives companies a way to subjugate their users. Regarding use of toxic chemicals, it endangers public health.
Why would legislators pass laws to "protect" companies instead of protecting the people they harm? I suspect it is partly because these companies are influential and the legislators seek their support, and partly because the legislators ask them for campaign funds.
But it is also partly the result of the mindset of "trickle down", which assumes that the only way to get more funds for the state is to let increase the size of the economy by letting companies have what they want. Unfortunately, what they want is often to be allowed to harm the public.
Most Democrats in Congress got corrupted this way in the 80s and 90s. (The exceptions are the progressive Democrats.) Now in the UK Starmer is guiding Labour into that sort of corruption.
Clearly our laws should say that any public need to know about the presence of toxic substances in a business facility overrides the desire to keep them secret.
Labour is pandering to business owners and to China by canceling the plan to push for formal condemnation of China's repression of Uighurs.
The Israeli army has killed HAMAS leader Yahya Sinwar.
I forecast that his death will not change the military situation in Gaza. Normally the killing of leaders of underground military campaigns does not eliminate the campaigns, not if they have the popular support needed to recruit new fighters. They will appoint someone else as leader.
Killing Sinwar, personally, was completely justified given that he was at large and fighting. He launched the terrorist attacks of 7 Oct 2023. However, his personal deserts are a secondary issue, given what else was at stake.
The 42,000 (and perhaps tens of thousands more) killed in Gaza were mostly civilians and Israel's little-discriminate killing of them could not be excused by fighting HAMAS.
US cabinet ministers sent Netanyahu a letter demanding Israel reach specific targets in allowing more aid into Gaza, with a deadline, and suggesting that the US will enforce the Leahy law.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to insist that the US cannot help Israel attack Iran unless Congress votes to authorize it. And then to argue and vote against authorizing it.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
New York State prosecutors propose to charge big oil companies with reckless endangerment for knowingly taking a big risk of fueling devastating hurricanes, rains and fires.
I wonder what the penalty would be if they are convicted. What sort of penalty could be imposed that would help end global heating?
Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates more than 100,000 have died already in Gaza as a consequence of Israel's bombardment and siege.
The bully plans to stretch use the old Alien Enemies Act to deport non-citizens immediately based on fabricated vague accusations.
Starmer Labour has pledged a "green revolution" based on spending 22 billion UKP on carbon capture plants, which have never worked effectively. This was the response to fossil fuel industry lobbying. Carbon capture may not be effective, but fossil fuel lobbying is quite effective with Labour.
It is certainly possible to spend that much money on building them, if you don't mind that they many not do much to reduce emissions.
Tesla's new driverless taxi
has the essential injustices of Uber
and Lyft,
because it surely will be tracked everywhere,Like all Tesla cars, and won't allow people to pay cash anonymously.
It will have one other drawback for society: little or none of the passenger's fare will go to provide support for workers without technical skills.
We should prohibit driverless taxis, and prohibit cars from reporting or recording where they have been. In addition, we should require all taxis to accept payment in cash with no penalty.
Starmer Labour is buying in fully to trickle-down.
* [Palestinian lawyer] Raji Sourani says west is "jeopardising something precious" by shielding Israel from legal consequences.*
That is a valid point. International humanitarian law reduces the world's barbarism, to the extent that it is followed. When countries such as the US enable their best friends to violate these laws, they debase the future conduct of countries in general.
A British court found that condemning Zionism is not antisemitic, and that it was culpable to fire a professor for such condemnation.
Ralph Nader suggests how the Democrats can win the election by miles — by defying the orders from business and doing things the non-rich want.
I voted for Nader for president. I wish he were running now.
*Retired US army general [Mark Milley] fears unusual action of being recalled to uniform for retribution, [Bob Woodward] writes*
General Milley tried to restrain the fascist from repressive actions.
Other retired generals who were loyal to their country instead of the fascist are likewise in danger.
I wonder where they can go to be safe. Most countries that are strongly hostile to the US are repressive themselves. A person who supports the freedom that the US stands for would not be comfortable in them.
If the US becomes as repressive as its main adversaries, there will be little safety for dissidents anywhere.
The corrupter often changes his stance dramatically from one day to the next. But he is consistent about his support for Putin.
Either Putin is giving him crucial support for his efforts to take over the US, or have such dirt on him that he wouldn't risk disappointing Putin.
But if the corrupter gets to suppress dissent in the US as he is aiming to, perhaps Putin's kompromat won't be effectively usable any more. Totally loyal trumpets just won't believe it.
*Biden administration proposes rules to ban Chinese-made cars over spying fears. *
They surely do spy, and we should not tolerate that. But this threat is not limited to cars made by Chinese companies. What about all the non-Chinese-made cars that are known to snoop on their users? Shouldn't they be banned, too?
Instead of banning those cars, we could require them to give users some control. We could enable users to get rid of the snooping by requiring cars to ask for the driver's permission before recording and/or transmitting any information about their drivers and passengers, including their identifies and their actions.
Or we could require all software delivered in cars to be free software so that users could change it. If you're allowed to work on your car's brakes, why not its software too?
Michael Kovrig, held hostage by China for the release of accused criminal Meng Wanzhou, was kept in solitary confinement for 6 months in a cell where the light was always on. And interrogated for up to 9 hours a day, every day. This is a form of torture.
I have no opinion about whether the accusations against Meng Wanzhou were true, nor whether they were morally legitimate in principle. I don't know enough about that issue to have an opinion. But I am confident that the Chinese government did not care about those questions. It wanted hostages that Canada would feel a need to bring home.
I makes me sad to know that the United States holds some prisoners in similar conditions of torture. Julian Assange could expect to be held that way, if he had been sent to the US for trial. Indeed, his imprisonment in Britain was in conditions almost as bad as that, It is wrong no matter which country does it.
Violent crime in the US decreased substantially in 2023, including an 11% decrease in murders. Republicans pretend the rate is increasing. The real flaws of Democrats are due to being too right-wing, but the Republicans have trouble repeating those criticisms. So they have to make some up.
The muskrat is promoting global right-wing extremism and has appointed Italy's right-wing leader Meloni as the muskette.
I wonder how long before Putin is invited to join.
California is suing Exx-on for fraudulently telling the public that plastic was in general recyclable.
(Former administration officials say [the saboteur-in-chief] deliberately denied funds to states he deemed politically hostile.*
I recall reading about this at the time.
*Columbia Law School Told Professors to Call Campus Police on Student Protesters.*
The article identifies
The article suggests fertilizing plankton by dropping lots of dust in the ocean as a way to remove CO2. Would this really work? Would it be safe? I don't know.
Turkey is acting bizarrely to block an aid convoy that wants to sail for Gaza.
*US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane [conspiracy ideation] surges. Storms Helene and Milton have triggered rise of misinformation stoked by Trump and fellow Republicans.*
Israeli soldiers killed some of the journalists covering the forced migration of Palestinians from northern Gaza. Other journalists who witnessed this say the soldiers specifically targeted those they killed.
Israel has killed so many Palestinian journalists that it is hard to imagine that this was not systematically intentional.
The world hardly pays attention to the civil war in Sudan. I know why I say little about it.
In my political notes, I do not set out to report news, but rather to comment on the issues (political and moral) raised by the news. If there is a problem, what might be solutions.
The coverage of the civil war in Sudan, that I see, describes only the tactical developments. I can't draw any significant conclusions from that. Are these two sides merely factions fighting for power? Does either side stand for something — anything at all? Why is the fighting continuing? I don't know anything about that, so I have nothing to say, and I have no idea what might be a good outcome to help attain it.
The wrecker started one ebusiness after another, and drove most of them to failure. He damaged the US when he was president, but this time he has prepared to damage it a lot more.
A play about Ukrainian children seized and imprisoned by the Putin forces was written by a journalist based on interviews with some of them.
Putin's excuse for imprisoning Ukrainian children is to protect them from the danger of the war that Putin started by choice. This is a standard right-wing behavior pattern: creating a problem and insisting on prolonging it, and citing that as an excuse for repression.
China is punishing people for reading books about China that they had acquired outside China.
Xi does not want people to be exposed to other points of view at all.
Politicians that don't want to actually address society's big problems can make excuses by saying they are "complex", and negotiating with business about how to do it, and the businesses will ensure no progress in reducing greenhouse emissions is made.
How the Georgia rule of hand-counting ballots can introduce delays and possible confusion.
Delays in the counting from any county are likely to spark imaginary right-wing conspiracy theories. In fact, there is a conspiracy — the right-wing conspiracy that led to adopting this rule.
Pakistan's government arrested the leaders (and many other members) of the main political party, which was protesting the imprisonment of the former president, Imran Khan.
*The bully's supporters have threatened Deloitte with the loss of lucrative government contracts … because one of its employees leaked critical comments about his presidential performance made by his running mate JD Vance.
I don't care at all what happens to Deloitte, but the use of this sort of bullying to spread repression throughout society is repression.
*World Energy Outlook Exposes Governments’ Climate Action Shortfall.*
Every new oil or gas well, every new or enlarged coal mine, and every new fossil gas export terminal, increases the danger.
Israel is attacking the town of Jabalia in northern Gaza, full of civilians with nowhere else to go.
Israel claims to have killed 50 HAMAS fighters or more, while counting corpses found it had killed at least 350 people, of whom most are surely civilians. Israel claims that killing these civilians is excused by (1) intending that HAMAS fighters be the ones to die and (2) telling the civilians to evacuate and never mind whether they can.
Explaining the context and significance of Israeli army attacks on UN peacekeeping forces in the south of Lebanon.
*Canadian police accuse India of working with criminal network to kill dissidents.* Indian dissidents living in exile, that means.
The damage from disasters such as modern hurricanes cause financial repercussions through many areas of the economy. They can ruin insurance companies, banks, cities governments and states, as well as individuals and families.
If we don't organize managed retreat from places that it isn't sustainable to live in, we are likely to have an unmanaged retreat which will be even more painful.
Can the presidents of Brazil and Colombia, cooperating, succeed in saving the Amazon rain forest?
Rebecca Solnit: *Tech barons are forever predicting some amazing new technology to fix the climate crisis. Yet fixes already exist.*
The difficulties with the known solutions are mainly that some businesses and billionaires are lobbying tooth and nail to stop us from using them. *Proposing we go for some false or nonexistent solution has become an excuse constantly deployed as an excuse for not supporting the solutions we have.*
Exploring a sunken slave ship in which the slaves tried to revolt. They were defeated, locked in the hold, and later all died when the ship sank in a storm.
I don't think those slaves regretted their revolt just because it failed. Better to fight than go meekly to subjugation.
The International Energy tells us that sufficient progress in moving to renewable energy could make fossil fuels cheaper.
That is true, but the IEA does not seen to realize that that would be a deadly trap for society. The lower price would threaten to entice people to move back to, or continue using, fossil fuels and continue driving the world into climate mayhem.
The disadvantage of fossil fuels is not expense or scarcity. It is the harm they do by producing CO2. A suitable carbon tax could make sure these fuels continue becoming more expensive, so that humanity would continue to reduce its use of them.
Some Australian schools try to counter the influence of right-wing misogyny and male supremacist campaigns.
Right-wing politics is all about winning some groups' support by teaching them to scapegoat other groups. It looks like right wingers have concluded that women will oppose them regardless, so they will use women as scapegoats.
They don't really care about anyone who isn't rich. Whether you're a scapegoat, or being manipulated by teaching you to despise someone, either way you're being used.
Richard Stallman's talks in Peru, in Spanish, in October 2024.
Conferencias de Richard Stallman en el Perú, en español,
en el mes de octubre 2024.
Musk made ex-Twitter censor and then ban a journalist who published embarrassing leaked material that made Vance look bad.
Now we see what the muskrat means by "freedom of speech".
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, which will prevent some abuses by private equity corporations.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*U.S. Journalist Jeremy Loffredo Released After Four Days in Israeli [Jail].*
He had been accused of "aiding the enemy" by republishing (or was it merely downloading) photos of sensitive places that had been published by news outlets already.
*If Israel’s theory is that reporters illegally share information with the enemy whenever the enemy reads the news, that could criminalize a whole lot of journalism. If Israel has proof that Loffredo did something more nefarious than that, it should say so, and be specific.*
Rich UK citizens threaten to fully move away from the UK if the UK requires them to pay taxes. Experience shows that few actually follow through on such threats.
I have an idea for how make it even less likely they will resist taxation: require them to renounce their UK citizenship in order to avoid being liable for UK taxes. Then make it a crime for a non-citizen to fund or support political campaigns in any fashion. With this policy, the UK won't necessarily get those millionaire jerks' taxes, but it will at least block them from buying elections.
Israeli military officers report that their commanders and elected officials had a negligently complacent attitude regarding the possibility of an attack by HAMAS in the year before HAMAS did attack.
US citizens: call on Federal Agencies: the fight against global heating should include strong consumer protections and access to fair and affordable green loans.
The petition fails to mention that online resource hubs must not require people to run JS code.
US citizens: call on Biden to secure a ceasefire and de-escalate the threat of regional war.
If you buy at Sam's Club, push back against plans to require all customers to be tracked trough snoop-phones.
I suggest several ways to push back:
That program deleted all your files.
How can people continue to live in fire-prone areas?
The US government responds to right-wing irrational attacks by taking special care to give no cash aid to victims who don't have papers to prove citizenship.
What does it actually take to evacuate during a weather crisis? For many Americans, it is far beyond their means.
Everyone: call on airlines to desist from surge pricing.
As average [wildlife] population falls reach 95% in some regions, experts call for urgent action but insist "nature can recover."*
A right-wing conspiracy theory claims that Hurricane Helene was brought about by a business plot, intended to eliminate obstacles for a lithium mine.
The inventors of that myth are, it seems, trying to demonize building batteries to facilitate decarbonization.
It is surprising how close the myth is to the truth. There was no conspiracy to cause Hurricane Helene -- nobody would know how to do that intentionally. But there is a conspiracy of fossil fuel interests to maximize global heating, and that did cause this hurricane to be so powerful and damaging. The existence of this conspiracy is well documented.
The difference between the truth and the myth is just enough for the latter to put the blame on the wrong side.
*Study confirms Hurricane Helene fueled by Big Oil’s emissions: Greenpeace calls for climate polluters to pay.*
A British official wants to abolish privacy in the UK just to make each motorist pay tax exactly in proportion to per driving.
The short-term solution for the shortfall in tax funds is simple: increase the tax rate on gasoline and diesel fuel. until the total revenue reaches the former level. That will speed the elimination of all fossil fuel vehicles.
In a few years, when those are mostly gone, that method will no longer solve the problem. At that point Britain could tax all electricity usage to get the money to pay for road maintenance. Or tax the rich in one way or another.
Armitt seems to treat as sacred the goal of measuring everyone's use of roads so as to compute precisely how much value each person gets from them. Such exactitude is an improvement in theory, but it is not crucial. We should not accept Orwellian surveillance just to make the tax perfectly fit the usage.
*MI5 chief: UK facing growing threat from Islamic State, Russia and Iran.*
The threat includes assassinations and terror attacks.
*Two of the [Philippines'] most powerful political families, the Dutertes and the Marcoses, are set for an epic struggle for power.*
I expect that one of them will seek support from China. It is the obvious thing to do, for anyone that would sacrifice his country to gain power over it.
* Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, … rising from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022.*
There should never be foreign aid to spend on increased planet roasting. No matter what pain is caused by a local scarcity of fossil fuel, it is not as bad as death for nearly everyone.
The UK will have a new agency whose staff will actively enforce penalties for violating workers' rights.
I've called for the US to do this. Stealing N dollars from your employee should be as serious a crime as stealing N dollars from a business, and enforced similarly.
*Croatian police accused of burning asylum seekers' phones and passports.*
Non-rich Americans who want to stop the elite from impoverishing them see little to support in "centrist" Democrats. Meanwhile, the wrecker falsely claims to oppose the elites even as he appears on stage with them.
Republicans want to make Social Security payments decrease in real value every year. They would do this by eliminating the cost of living adjustment Thus they would drive old people into penury.
Israel ordered the only children's hospital in North Gaza to evacuate, but there is no way to evacuate the children in intensive care, and no place to bring them to.
To attack that hospital would be an atrocity, but such atrocities have become normal for Israel.
To attack a hospital is generally a war crime. Th attack the one and only hospital is even worse.
*On Thursday, UN investigators accused Israel of deliberately targeting health facilities and killing and torturing medical personnel in Gaza.*
The mainstream media double standard: criticizing Harris any time she does not reply to a point, while letting the bullshitter duck all real issues all the time.
The US says that North Korean military engineers are deployed in Putin's war against Ukraine.
The ex-CEO of a company that sells carbon offsets has been charged with fraud for systematically exaggeration how much greenhouse emissions a project would avoid.
The idea of emissions offsets is full of loopholes. Most of the exaggeration is a matter of making high estimates; since there are no facts to compare with, it can't quite be called "fraud". But it does undermine the intended result.
*Fema chief warns ‘dangerous’ Trump falsehoods hampering Helene response.*
*Trump is falsely blaming Harris for high prices. His plans will cause huge inflation.*
I wonder if that is why Republicans are pushing to remove the cost-of-living adjustment from Social Security.
With that, and high inflation, US retirees will be squeezed between the two.
Walz stated support for eliminating the electoral college.
I am in favor of that, but what Harris and Walz most importantly need to call for is directing more of the nation's wealth generation to the non-rich, as it did in the 1950s.
Republicans seek to bully US colleges with threats unless they repress students' freedom of speech.
Whatever your position on the war in Gaza, if you love civil liberties you should fight those dangerous religious fanatics here in the US. Nov 5th is your opportunity.
*Record emissions, temperatures and population mean more scientists are looking into possibility of societal collapse, report says.*
I used to say that the best picture we have now of future climate disaster is the Hunger Games, but I am having doubts about that. In the Hunger Games, there is an organized society with a state. It can still make some high-tech products. It surely has a population in the hundreds of thousands.
A high tech society needs global reasource, and that requires communications and shipping that will no longer exist. No one will be able to make an IC, let alone a computer.
Coal mines and gas wells in Australia seem to be underestimating their rate of methane leaks by as much as a factor of two.
The US government is considering breaking Google up into separate companies.
Would that do anything about the injustices of Google? Let's look at them:
I don't see how splitting up Google would correct these. Perhaps Google itself would not use the collected data as a base for advertising. Perhaps instead Google would sell the use of that data to various advertising companies. I don't think that would make that use of personal data acceptable and it would not help with the others.
*Endorsements from Republicans and CEOs won’t help Kamala Harris win.*
People who were Republicans in 2015, before the corrupter became that party's nominee, and who have not been sucked into his fantasy land, can be persuaded by these endorsements. It may cost the corrupter some votes. But they are not so numerous as as the Democrats who gave up on the party because Obama protected the rich from the 2009 financial crisis that was generated by those Republicans, rather than saving the poor and middle-class.
Some Indian states have passed laws to make it easy to boycott restaurants that employ any Muslims.
Clearly this is the work of Hinduismist party.
A museum in Britain that is supposed to be about science will present "stories" about the "afterlife" of dead animals on display.
The "stories" are constructed by bullshit generators,
and they teach religion and superstition under the rubric of science.
Starmer has surrendered to big business, and promises to "slash the red tape" that is meant to protect the public from a wide range of dangers.
A previous period of "slashing red tape" weakened the building code enforcement and permitted use of flammable materials in building tall buildings. It was not actually lawful, but builders knew they could get away with it, because the red tape as no longer there to stop them. Some of the buildings had fatal fires.
This shows what happens when a government says it will get the funds to solve pressing problems by encouraging "economic growth".
The bullshitter condemns trade with China, but he had his special bibles printed there.
(Those are the very expensive bibles he is going to sell to the state of Oklahoma.)
This in its own right is a minor issue, but it epitomizes his dishonesty.
Relatives call on the Dutch government to rehabilitate the conscientious objectors who refused to fight against the independence of Indonesia.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban carrying guns at polling places.
US universities are confused and conflicted about how to deal with strongly opinionated students and their disagreeing views.
Since Iran's missiles have shown they can hit Israel and do damage, further escalation by Israel could result in a long war of attrition
Oklahoma Republicans have found a clever way to corrupt the election: by buying bibles from the corrupter's campaign. The price will be over 3 million dollars.
They don't openly admit that the purchase has to be from his campaign, but they make that inevitable by specifying details that other printed bibles don't fit.
Government purchases coming directly or indirectly from electoral campaigns ought to be illegal.
Accusing the wrecker of restraining the FBI from thoroughly investigating the rape accusation against Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated for the Supreme Court.
The head of the UK "energy industry" has been chosen as the new head of the "Climate Change Committee.
I know nothing more about her besides that point about her previous experience, but that one point is enough to make me suspect that the fox is now in charge of keeping us chickens safe.
*Project 2025 would "unequivocally" lead to more hurricane deaths, experts warn.*
An Australian official is moving to revoke the visa of a visiting Palestinian who said, speaking in an event this Oct 7, that it was the occasion for “considerable celebration” as the anniversary of HAMAS's hostage taking and killings. Now the Australian is considering revoking his visa on grounds that he advocated terrorism.
The official said, "But he did prove the point that many of us are making in the lead up to the rallies on Monday, which is that the only reason you would organize a pro-Palestinian protest on Monday, is if you thought it was worthy of celebration." This seems to be valid.
Both HAMAS and subsequently Israel were responding to terror attacks. Both had grounds for belligerence if it were in accord with international humanitarian law. Both entities' retaliations instead violated that law, committing atrocities.
I defend freedom of speech in a very firm way. I don't think anyone, whether citizen or visitor, should be prohibited to express those views, even though I strongly disagree with those views.
A Republican official, extreme right-wing by the standards of 2022, is now organizing the fight to defend some basic idea of truth and justice against the wave of trumpery.
The corrupter ordered the US to adopt a nearly no-op rule about poisonous lead and copper pipes. Now it has been replaced with a plan to eliminate nearly all lead in American's faucet water.
*Harris announces plan for Medicare to cover long-term care at home.*
This would be a big help for partially or completely disabled Americans, and not just those 65 years old or older.
*Utilities Only Planning Enough Clean Energy to Replace Half of Fossil Fuel Generation by 2035, New Sierra Club Report Finds.*
They still plan to build lots of gas-fired power plants. Using fossil gas causes more global heating than coal.
This demonstrates that existing laws, plus existing pressure from well-informed public opinion, are not sufficient to decarbonize rapidly.
A government can be far better than blatant plutocracy and still be weak in resisting plutocracy's destruction of the eco-sphere. Australia's Labor Party seems to be an example.
*NSW [(a state in Australia)] premier says police should be able to ban pro-Palestine protests because they are too expensive.*
This has been met with opposition.
Bravo for resisting this.
I agree that we should avoid the terms "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine" because those terms tend to push society into a dichotomous choice.
My wish is well-being, peace and freedom for both peoples.
Decades ago, large demonstrations were run by organizations, and the organizations appointed and trained Marshalls to keep the protest on the track of nonviolence. I am sure that practice greatly reduced the cost of policing, as well as the probability that the official thugs would go on a rampage against protesters.
That isn't 100% effective at preventing rampages,
but it surely helps.
*Demand for beef, soy, palm oil and nickel hindering efforts to halt demolition by 2030, global report finds.*
Robert Reich described how Bridgestone defeated the US government legal effort to compel Bridgestone keep its factory workers safe. Bridgestone responded by saying it would shut the factory rather than install the safety measures.
It announced that threat by making a false assertion: that it would be "uneconomical" to run the plant if it had safety measures. With the usual meaning of those words, that was not true: Bridgestone would have made a profit even with the safety measures installed. But it might have made less from that plant than from a hypothetical replacement plant somewhere else, without the safety measure.
To put an end to this sort of practice, we need laws that will prevent businesses from winning disputes in that way. Reich explains other changes that would have strengthened his hand.
Australia and East Timor were formerly very hostile, but now they are making joint plans to collaborate in planet roasting by extracting undersea fossil gas.
The world must hope that they can't come to agreement on the details.
Narges Mohammadi has been imprisoned in Iran since 3 years ago. A year ago she received Nobel peace prize, and the screws made her imprisonment harsher.
*An Oil Giant Railroads Its SCOTUS Connection To Gut Environmental Law.*
Engineers are proposing a system for every car to communicate constantly with every other nearby car, as well as with nearby pedestrians (does that mean, their snoop-phones?) and local non-mobile surveillance systems.
The result would be total surveillance of everyone.
It may be possible to design such a system such that it doesn't identify any car or any person. That could be safe as well as beneficial. But we cannot expect the manufacturers of today's "connected cars" to value their customers' privacy.
If I were going to buy a "connected" car such as are made today, I would choose a model that people know how to disconnect. I expect that each antenna needs to be either removed or covered with a Faraday cage such that it cannot receive or transmit.
The contract for holding the COP29 conference in Azerbaijan does not protect the human rights of the participants from Azerbaijan's repressive state.
It also does not protect the conference's goal from Azerbaijan's planet-roasting state. Planet-roasters, including fossil fuel companies, dominate this series of conferences so completely that they are not fit for the purpose any more.
*UN peacekeepers in Lebanon say Israel has fired on their bases deliberately.*
It did this in two different places at around the same time. In one, a drone reconnaissance seems to have been preparation for the attack. Meanwhile, a number of Israeli tanks drove up to a UN peacekeepers' position, apparently to threaten the peacekeepers into pulling out.
President Macron of France is seriously trying to press the US to cut off arms for Israel to use in Gaza.
I disagree with Macron on many issues, but it is good to see the president of a significant country taking this stand.
Fake testimonials on TikTok, purporting to be from unauthorized immigrants and made in their own languages, are designed to fool people back home to think they would be welcomed if they were smuggled into the US.
So it's not just minors that TikTok is likely to harm, and it isn't mainly a matter of being owned by a Chinese company.
Google is using artificial stupidity to generate false and misleading "images" for recognizing particular species of mushrooms.
I once had a friend who was learning to collect mushrooms, and I looked at his very long study book. For distinguishing species of mushrooms, including distinguishing edible ones from deadly ones, one needed to recognize subtle traits, and sometimes perform physical tests.
*US sues Visa for monopoly on debit-card use affecting "price of nearly everything".*
It may be true that this affects the price that most purchasers pay for most products. More generally, monopolistic behavior does great harm to society by giving big business too much power. Prosecuting is crucial and we need to make these laws stricter. But it may not affect the price of things I buy for cash — which is almost every product I buy.
The exceptions are when I ask a friend to order something for me, and later reimburse person. Person will normally use a payment card to order it, and the card's fee will be part of the amount I reimburse. But that does not happen often.
The reason I avoid paying with a card is not about that small fee. It is a negligible part of my spending, and not worth worrying about. The reason is privacy. I don't want the store to collect any personal data for their data bases.
If the employee who receives my money gets interested in free software or surveillance resistance, I don't mind telling person my name. I will even give her my pleasure card if that is useful. It is unlikely the employee would enter that data in the company's data base.
The demographic triumph in Israel of extreme right-wing Jews and religious fanatic Jews has made secularist and peace-minded Jews seek to move to other countries.
for years, some have been moving away, but now it has become a stream.
I suggested that secularist, non fanatical Jews should make common cause with Palestinians so as to outvote the fanatics.
I knew, of course, that that would be be difficult and unlikely, but it seemed at least thinkable. I am not sure it is even thinkable now.
Some of the cities devastated by Hurricane Helene will take years to rebuild. Some are too wrecked to even try.
Those who can try may face devastating storms every year, so they will never finish the job.
Perhaps it is necessary to adopt new construction methods, such as concrete supported on pillars talk enough to keep the building dry.
Saied, dictator of Tunisia, seems likely to "win" an unfair election with his critics and main opposing candidate in prison.
He was elected when the voters were unhappy with the Islamist ruling party and found in Saied the opposition that seemed to have a chance of winning. Some Americans voted for the corrupter in 2016 following similar reasoning. In both cases that was a disastrous mistake.
The lesson: never help elect an anti-democracy candidate or party, no matter what the flaws of the incumbent government.
Iran's big missile attack did little harm to civilians because it was carefully aimed at Israel's military facilities — and it did damage to them.
This might turn into a war of attrition.
* Tests show adding just 10% of waste to a wood burner indoors can double its particle pollution.*
Burning wood inside a house is quite dangerous even without this increment.
*More than £494bn subsidies a year are harmful to the climate, says report.*
I think that is the total of subsidies paid by many different countries.
Proposing a tax on visits by private jets and super yachts.
It could be a good idea, but there's no reason to limit it to private jets. Some years ago the EU decided to tax commercial flights as a kind of carbon tax. It was a good idea, but other countries did not join in and instead applied diplomatic pressure to make the EU cancel it.
Taxing solely the private jets could be a first step towards taxing them all.
California has apologized for its role in the system of slavery, and has adopted a new system to give black students better education.
I was surprised to learn, from the article above, that California before the Civil War had a law that supported slavery. That was a concrete reason for the apology.
Where laws discriminated against blacks, the governments that once enacted and enforced them ought to pay reparations to the descendants of those who were the victims of them. But we should reject the line of thought which imposes a sort of original sin on all whites.
A leader of a Yemeni faction that opposes the Houthis says that the US/UK attacks on the Houthis are totally ineffective at stopping the Houthis from attacking shipping — and instead give the Houthis an opportunity to boast that the US can't stop them from attacking shipping.
I wonder why the US can't stop them from attacking shipping. What kinds of targets has the US been attacking in Yemen? Is it trying to deny the Houthis the means to attack shipping, or is it only trying to cause "damage" that it supposed might make the Houthis stop attacking? If the latter, of course that was ineffective. If you think you're on a mission from "god", damage won't make you abandon a fight.
And how is it that ships can come and go in Houthi ports without being stopped and inspected for missiles and drones?
Has the US considered seizing the Houthi ports?
Elected sheriffs in the US tend to be right-wing white men, and tend to impose right-wing political views using the power of their office.
*Activists say they have proof [Tory] ministers tried to influence police over [protests against] Israeli arms firm [Elbit].*
Leaked documents show that Blinken lied when he stated, in an official report, that "we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
Veterans for Peace calls for him to be prosecuted. I'd be satisfied if the US government officially reversed that false statement and began applying the law to arms shipments to Israel.
Island countries in the Pacific are denouncing Australia for authorizing expansion of some existing coal mines. One leader accuses Australia of proceeding to drown them.
This is true in the deepest sense, but superficially an exaggeration.
Humanity is indeed carrying out the inundation of the atolls. Of their habitable land, nothing atoll will remain. Later, after global heating and ocean acidification have caused the extinction of coral (along with most mollusks and crustaceans), there will never be atolls again.
The exaggeration is that this is not specifically the fault of coal, nor specifically the fault of Australia. All fossil fuels contribute. and so does deforestation. Australia participates in bringing global disaster, but so do the US, China, Brazil, and many other countries.
It's inaccurate to put the blame on Australia alone. Every country that opens new mines or wells for fossil fuel is more or less to blame for this crime-in-progress. However, since Australia is one of the major perpetrators, and located in the Pacific, it is entirely legitimate for those victims-to-be to focus their ire there.
* Labour used “economically illiterate” analysis paid for by water companies in order to argue against the nationalisation [of the water companies] in England.*
I am not surprised by this — it is the sort of thing that Tory Lite would do.
*[The corrupters' former] advisers help to grow pro-Russia website that spreads misinformation.*
Julian Assange spoke to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
about how the US actions against him and others related to Wikileaks put freedom of the press globally in danger.
The Council of Europe
predates the European Union and has more countries as members.
Kenan Malik: *Too white? Too black? Too woke? Politics by labeling is a disease of our times.*
*There is, in fact, a long history of hate speech laws being used to criminalize minorities.*
The Madeira river basin, in the Amazon, is beset by wildfires — promoted by global heating and lit for the sake of deforestation.
The Israeli air raid that killed Nasrallah killed 90 other members of Hezbollah — probably many of them leaders.
It will not be easy to replace them with experienced new commanders.
There must still be hundreds of commanders who can order their units to keep firing missiles. That doesn't require cleverness, great authority, or special cleverness. For Hezbollah to change its course of action will be far more difficult. Especially difficult would be any reduction in the level of conflict. In effect, Hezbollah may now be too weak to be flexible.
*Scientists criticize UN agency’s failure to withdraw livestock emissions report,* which they criticized for understating the importance of reducing these emissions for avoiding climate disaster.
Robert Reich: *[The bullshitter] is gaining on Kamala Harris in the polls. I have some theories why.*
Basically, he theorizes that the bullshitter is attracting the major media from the issues of substance where Harris would have an advantage.
It would be true.
Arthur Schubarth of Montana was convicted of using tissue from large Asian Marco Polo sheep to make a clone and then a "giant" hybrid.
The judge seems to have said that the real crime was modifying breeds of animals, but that is done all the time. The article does not say that the project involved any genetic engineering (as distinct from ordinary breeding), but that is not a crime either.
Was this operation alleged to be harmful? If so, how? Are these sheep dangerous to people? Could they become feral and overgraze areas? I expect it would be easy to control their numbers by hunting, or wipe them out if necessary.
Maybe all that is irrelevant to the accusation — it could be simply that he did not have the required permits.
*Overcharged for substandard housing: untold story of Haitians in Springfield [Ohio].*
Putin's men poisoned the Seym river, which flows into Ukraine and merges into the Desna river. This has killed all the animals in the Desna as far as it has reached. Humans cannot drink the water or even swim in it. This is chemical warfare, banned by a treaty that Putin has visibly violated.
This may resolve an ancient philosophical quandary. It must be possible to step into the Seym river twice, but it may not be safe.
The UK may be planning to use massive surveillance on people who receive government support, then use artificial intelligence to heuristically raise suspicion of fraud or errors.
If this task is done "correctly" it will identify many cases that might involve fraud or error. To separate the real fraud or error from the misidentified cases would require further investigation by human beings. Then the whole system might work correctly.
But there will be a tendency to skip the expensive second step and presume that the computer's results are correct. When they are not, you may face a horrible runaround that could leave you homeless.
*US farms are forcing workers to buy inedible, expensive meals.*
Note that the workers described in the article are US-government-authorized migrants. Farms need workers, so US law arranges for Mexicans to come and work. The same law tries to protect them from exploitation, but the greedy bastards that own the farms never stop looking for loopholes in that protection.
Data analysis shows that a hurricane hitting the US generally causes 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths in the damaged regions over the following 15 years. This makes it an important cause of death in those regions.
The study looked at statistics for the US, but I see no reason this would not happen similarly in the rest of the world.
This method of analysis does not give information about the chains of events that lead to these subsequent deaths. The researchers speculate that the causes might include "fallout from resulting economic and job losses after storms, suddenly overstretched local government budgets that under fund [medical] providers, the release of environmental toxins as storms hit industrialized areas and the unhealthy impact of stress upon those who have to endure hurricanes."
These effects happen even where there is no hurricane, but a hurricane makes them happen to more people. If we organize better social responses to these problems after a hurricane, and they prevent some of the delayed deaths, the same responses could help the people who suffer these problems due to non-hurricane causes.
It looks like poverty plays a role in causing these deaths; it makes people more vulnerable to whatever goes wrong. Indeed, poverty generally correlates with lower life expectancy.
If the US economic system were not based on dooH niboR, hurricane-caused delayed deaths would be fewer. However, even as global heating has been making hurricanes more powerful, and thus likely to kill more, plutocratist economic policies and laws have been increasing poverty, which likewise tends to kill more.
Why lawsuits for defamation are not adequate to protect society from harmful disinformation.
Biden adopted the bully's policy to block people from asking the US for asylum at the border with Mexico. In practice, almost no one can do that any more, but Biden wants to look even "tougher", so he has announced a stricter theoretical criterion for maybe someday allowing asylum requests to be taken again.
People who have been oppressed at home are entitled to political asylum. The US is unable to respond promptly to all the requests because its capacity to judge them is insufficient. The remedy for this is to train and hire more judges so it can respond reasonably fast with "yes" or "no". Then it could allow applicants to stay in the US for the short time it will take to judge their requests.
Asheville, North Carolina, is far away from the coast, and people called it a refuge from the danger of climate disaster.
Alas, Hurricane Helene was so powerful that it reached Asheville and its rain flooded parts of the city. I suppose that the flooding had to do with the major rivers that meet there.
Fast, heavy rain can cause flooding in all sorts of places, and it takes an engineering study to determine where that will happen. The engineering works to prevent flooding generally are adequate up to some postulated level of rain a heavier rain than that would still cause floods.
Geography can make refuges for some global heating effects, but some are not so limited. For instance, global heating effects are messing up agriculture. If (or when) there is a national or global shortage of food because of ruined harvests, you won't be able to escape that just by choosing the right neighborhood to live in.
*U.S. Media's Doublespeak: Israelis Live in "Densely Populated Areas," Palestinians Are "Human Shields".*
Microsoft and a utility company want to make a deal to restart an old nuclear power plant, to power LLMs (bullshit generators, which it likes to call "artificial intelligence") which it will use to enshittify its search engine and other "services".
That plan includes a contingent gift from the US government. Worse, a nuclear power plant's cost tends to increase enormously. If that happens, they would ask the US government for more money and use the "sunk costs" fallacy to manipulate the government into granting that request,
The government should respond, "Ask Microsoft to guarantee this loan".
But since enshittification harms the public, the ideal course of action is to prevent it from happening.
Netanyahu is talking about how to "retaliate" for Iran's attack with many ballistic missiles that caused almost no damage.
It makes no sense to "retaliate" for an attack that did almost no damage. If you want peace, the useful strategy is to refrain from responding and hope that opens a path to de-escalation.
I therefore suspect that Netanyahu is seeking an excuse for more escalation.
A proposal to entirely disconnect assisted suicide from the medical system and medical practitioners.
I think it is a reasonable idea. The criterion of a terminal illness has always seemed arbitrary to me. Intractable pain clearly should be considered a valid reason.
However, that is not the only situation which is a good reason for suicide. If I were sliding into dementia, and the most I could hope ever to achieve by living was to have occasional moments when I could be aware of what was happening, I would want to give an order to dispense with my body's life when I myself (my mind) was fully dead.
*JD Vance's debate lines were so polished you could forget they made no sense.*
This is the most deeply dangerous thing about the wrecker/Rants team: they have developed s way of forming their public discourse out of pure bullshit, treating real issues with contempts.
This is what makes them enemies of democracy in the US.
The most significant real point Rants made was the one he made by refusing to acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election. They and their followers talk like gangsters (at least fictional ones), making statements to threaten us, veiled with a pretense that we're supposed to see through but gives them deniability.
Global heating is speeding plants in Antarctica.
Californians will vote on whether to abolish the practice of forcing prisoners to work.
That practice is bad for people outside prison, as the state collects a low wage for the prisoners' labor. If not for that, people would do those jobs by choice and get a fair wage.
The European Union's highest court ruled that any Afghan woman is entitled to asylum.
This seems valid to me — and I expect the same arguments apply for various other countries.
When societies become more distrustful in general, that can be exploited by politicians by promoting belligerence, and arms companies will fund them to do so.
*William Barber [co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign] Says Presidential Debates "Failing" the Poor.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I label them like this.
This article is important because the Poor People's Campaign deserves people's attention.
US citizens: call on CNN to apologize to Rep. Rashida Tlaib for falsely claiming she had attacked the Michigan Attorney General for bring Jewish.
In fact, Rep. Tlaib reproached her for arresting peaceful protesters.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass Sanders's resolution to block weapons sales to Israel.
When Sanders was young, he went to Israel and lived in a kibbutz. That he now advocates refusing to arm Israel is proof of how clear the case is for that policy.
US citizens: call on NYC Mayor Adams to stop trying to force retirees onto Medicare "Advantage" plans.
These insurance plans are convenient for people who are basically well, but can get incredibly expensive for people who are sicker. When that happens they are far more expensive than basic Medicare.
US citizens: call on Michigan Attorney General Nessel: Drop charges against campus protesters.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax Elon Musk before he becomes a trillionaire.
If the wrecker grabs the presidency, he will twist laws to help Musk become a multi-trillionaire by the end of the wrecker's fourth term in office.
US citizens: call on Georgia officials to sue to stop MAGA election interference.
US citizens: call for abolition of the death penalty.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster to restore reproductive rights.
US citizens: call on DoorDash, Google, Walmart, CVS, and other major corporations to stop funding Mark Robinson's Nazi-excusing and queer-hating campaign for governor of North Carolina.
US citizens: Support the USDA's proposed regulations to limit the amounts of added sugar in foods included in school meals.
US citizens: call on Comcast to stop funding anti-abortion campaigns.
US citizens: call on Networks, Media, and Press to stop "sane-washing" the corrupter.
In the US: call on CNN and Josh Kraushaar to issue a retraction to correct their false reporting on Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
US citizens: call on the Pentagon to stop funding Elon Musk's anti-democracy power grab.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Texas Republicans' voter purge.
*US public sector workers' retirement savings invested in [fossil fuel] projects that pump out a billion tonnes of emissions a year.*
Climate scientists called for cancellation of British plans for large-scale generation of hydrogen gas from fossil fuel, with hypothetical carbon capture to catch some of the CO2 that would produce. Even if the carbon capture works (it has never been made to work enough to be advantageous), this would still emit lots of greenhouse gas.
"Blue hydrogen" is supposed to sound similar to "green hydrogen", but in terms of carbon footprint the two are very different. "Green hydrogen" is hydrogen made by electrolysis of water, using electricity generated renew-ably. That would be a low-carbon fuel. But "blue hydrogen" is hydrogen made by burning fossil fuel, and its production emits CO2.
Alas, Labour just reaffirmed its decision "invest" around 30 billion dollars in carbon capture and continuing greenhouse gas emissions.
*[Louisiana] officials class mifepristone and misoprostol as "controlled substances" — which medics say could imperil women's lives if they have hemorrhage.
I think the aim is to confiscate supplies of these pills and perhaps arrest people for carrying them into Louisiana. People do this to help women have abortions, in states where that is prohibited.
The right-wing Swedish government is trying to make begging a crime.
i understand that it is unpleasant to be asked for money by a beggar. But that is no justification for taking out your displeasure on people who are in a much worse situation. That bespeaks a cruel and callous attitude.
I do dislike beggars who try to pressure me. For the first, I learned the firmness to say no. It is very important to have that firmness. I think it helped me develop the capacity to say no to worse things, such as pressure to use nonfree software.
As for beggars that lie about their situations. I found a way to offer help to those who are honest but not to those who are lying.
How Vienna's flood defenses effectively limited damage from a storm that caused disasters in other cities.
Animations show what floods predicted for the year 2100 would look like on towns of today.
(satire) *Vatican Dispatches Micro-Missionaries On First-Ever Trip To Convert Native Bacteria.*
Denouncing the concept of "resilience" as a public performance that people in misery owe to everyone else as inspiration.
This reminds me of what it felt like in my worst years of rejection, in the 1980s. I would go for months or years without any romantic possibility, without enough of a beginning that I could learn from it. Often I would cry, berating myself as unlovable. Then I would get out of bed and walk over to the terminal. If love was out of reach, I would at least get something useful done.
If you can get yourself out of bed and into doing some good, and it takes your mind off the pain, that's resilience, I guess.
The musk-rat has spent tens of millions of dollars on right-wing ads, including hate ads, and started by 2022.
*New Study Confirms LNG is Worse for Climate Than Coal.*
Coal is worse an another way: it produces a lot of local toxic pollution, as well as radioactive fallout (uranium).
So it is important to stop burning coal — but not by replacing it with other fossil fuels.
A number of "Libertarian" local government candidates have been elected in Australia. They have campaigned on opposition to two very different ideas: "smart cities" and 15-minute neighborhoods.
The idea that governments want to block people from traveling more than 15 minutes away from home is absurd. There is no possible rational motive for such a goal, and no one who wants it. In Britain the idea of "15-minute neighborhoods" is that the services and businesses people usually need should be available within 15 minutes travel from every home.
That is a convenience, not a restriction, and I am in favor of it. Some countries have implemented that policy and people like it.
That goal has nothing to do with "smart cities", but those really can be dangerous. They tend to involve systems that (if we don't compel states to design them for privacy) will track people's movements, communications, and activities. That is what China uses for its pervasive repression scheme, "social credit".
I don't think any western country would use snoop cities to stop people from traveling to places 20 minutes away from home. Why would they want that? But many western countries might use these snoop-city systems to punish dissidents — such as those who protest against fossil fuel plans that would eventually destroy civilization and kill most people.
Alas, such tracking systems are not just hypothetical. They are called "mobile phones" and "payment cards". That is why I refuse to have a mobile phone, and don't use payment cards except for emergencies. You can join me in resisting them.
Looking at a real painting activates the brain far more than looking at a poster of the same image.
One of the problems that tend to result from the policy that help for the non-rich can be funded only from "economic growth" is that it gives plutocrats an all-purpose argument against any measures that impede their exploitation of workers: "That will mean less growth!"
We should reject the trickle-down economy, by saying we believe in transfer some of the rich people's ever-increasing riches to the rest of society. They have been increasing their share for decades
It is high time to re-balance that.
Wildfires, a consequence of global heating. Are also accelerating global heating.
This is one example of the potential positive feedbacks that, it was clear long ago, might prevent us from escaping from disaster even if we started to really try.
The UK will hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This will allow the exiled Chagosians (many of whom live in Mauritius) to return to the Chagos Islands.
US citizens: call on Biden to de-escalate the Israel-Hezbollah war.
A study comparing psilocybin with a prescription antidepressant found that the psilocybin was equally or more effective. It even tended to lead to other improvements.
A study compared ten wealthy countries' medical systems. The US system provided the worst medical care and charged twice as much for it.
The other nine countries do better because they have national medical systems. The US needs one of those. The US private-centered system is likely to eventually kill you by pushing you into bankruptcy.
For the billionaires, the function of the lunatic right wing (the bullshitter/corrupter and his supporters) is to make it difficult to challenge plutocratist Democrats from the left. Biden has moved partly in the progressive directions, and Harris is likely to continue that path, but what we really need is a Sanders.
*Gaza publishes identities of 34,344 Palestinians killed in war with Israel.*
The usual count of deaths includes 7,613 more -- corpses which have not been identified.
Democratic senators and Bernie Sanders shamed big US corporations that pay their CEOs more than they pay in federal taxes.
They are AIG, Agilent Tech. Alliant Energy, Ameren, American Electrical Power, AmerisourceBergen, Atmos Energy, CMS Energy, DISH, DTE Energy, Darden, Dominion, Duke Energy, Entergy, Evergy, First Energy, Kinder Morgan, Match Group, MetLife, NRG Energy, NextEra, Oneok, PPL, Principal Financial, Salesforce, Sempra Energy, T-Mobile, Tesla, U.S. Steel, UGI, Voya Financial, Williams, and Xcel Energy.
Australia's government approved expansion of three existing coal mines.
It is not as much of a planet roaster as the right-wing government it replaced, but (like most countries) it fails to recognize the desperate urgency of decarbonization.
California is considering *the Responsible Textile Recovery Act, which would require producers of apparel, towels, bedding and upholstery to implement and fund a statewide reuse, repair and recycling program for their products.*
It may be difficult to design clothing to be recyclable -- and clothing that people have actually worn out (as I often do) are difficult to reuse or repair. But if this law is done right, it could pressure the companies that "produce" clothing to head in that direction.
I wonder how the bill deals with outsourcing of clothing production. To try to enforce this law on the companies in poor countries which really make the clothing would be ineffective.
One effect of global heating is that rapidly increasing costs of no-longer-natural disasters are undermining the foundations of the system of insurance for buildings and property. A single mega disaster can collapse all levels.
This will tend to expose everyone to unpredictable risk of being wiped out financially as well as physically.
Is it possible to develop building methods that are proof against the strongest hurricanes? The first step would be to cease building in coastal areas that could be inundated, but that won't be enough; even buildings at a sufficient altitude can be wrecked by floods, fire, wind and flying trees or bricks.
Building storm shutters over all windows might help with the unforeseen flying objects. Building on stilts could help with the floors. Could suitable choices of building materials and keeping large plants away help with the fires?
A report argues that *policymakers could tip the world into a series of "positive tipping points", accelerating the switch from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, by simply introducing mandates requiring key sectors to make the change.*
The report claims that taxing emissions is not a strong enough pressures, and directly requiring certain specific activities to decarbonize would be more effective.
*Harris calls for end to Senate filibuster to restore US abortion rights.*
When the wrecker was president, Republicans abolished the filibuster rule for appointing judges.
That enabled them to pack the courts with right-wing extremists, including the extreme court.
So it is no use for Democrats to keep the filibuster rule in place in the hope that Republicans will consider it too sacred to touch.
If the Democrats control Congress next year, any measure to fix the Supreme Court or undo damage they have done will surely be blocked by a Republican filibuster unless Democrats abolish it.
Global heating is causing fast heavy rainfall all around the world. The most recent instance was in eastern Europe.
The speed of the rainfall tends to cause local mini-disasters by flooding places that had never been flooded before.
*Experts Unsurprised at Intensity of Extreme Weather But Say Damage Wreaked Shows How Unprepared World Is.*
This flooding is one of several kinds of local disasters that global heating is increasing. Together they imperil the system of home insurance.
The problem shows up in the fact that many people can't get insurance again disasters that destroy Their homes, but insurance is not the fundamental cause of this problem. Rather, it is the seam at which the overstuffed bag splits open. If rebuilding our houses as fast as they are now being destroyed is unsustainable for society, insurance as such can't alter that. Either we make the rebuilding sustainable for society or we will end up without houses.
In the long term, curbing global heating needs to be part of making rebuilding sustainable in the future.
Marieha Hussain was charged with a crime for calling some Tory ministers "coconuts".
Ms Hussain is right that the thug department should make up for the harm it did to her with this evidently unjust charge. Criticizing politicians by calling them "coconuts" must not be a crime.
That criticism is, however, an example of a morally misguided assumption: that people of a certain demographic group have an obligation to hold certain political views, and are somehow betraying that group if they do not.
People are members of demographic groups, but thoughts are not. No one has an obligation to hold the views of the group perse was descended from.
The Tories Richi Sunak and Suella Braverman are very wrong to stand for plutocratist and repressive policies, and they are responsible for personally (as ministers of state) helping to impose those views on Britain. But that has nothing to do with their ethnicity. Those views are wrong no matter who holds them.
An additional reason to reject the "coconuts" approach of criticizing people's views as "betrayal of their demographic group" is that it tends to legitimize those views for people of other groups.
NYC's night-mayor Adams has been indicted for taking bribes and foreign campaign contributions.
Here is more of suspicions about him.
This reminds me of what Pseudolus said about being insensitive to physical pain. "I am going to crack down on crime … Not my own!"
*Mexico’s ‘anti-monuments’ force country to remember its [tens of thousands of people who are] missing.*
The world's countries pledged to reduce the death rate due to antibiotic resistance by 10% by 2030.
There is a way to slow the increase in antibiotic resistance: end the mass use of antibiotics in livestock.
What makes this difficult to do in practice is that massive use of antibiotics in livestock is what makes factory farms profitable, so their owners lobby hard against it. Will this pledge help overcome the lobbying?
Most people in wealthy countries endanger their health by eating too much meat. Discouraging that practice could help slow the increase in antibiotic resistance, but that too faces a powerful lobby.
To achieve more than that will require advances in medicine. But in order for them to do the good we would hope for, we must keep them safe from patents. If the US government subsidizes the research, it could keep them un-patented in the US.
Could it prevent US companies from patenting them in other countries? Maybe that requires in world patent treaties — which ought to be made anyway.
That research is a very important project to subsidize. Secondary to curbing global heating, because if climate disaster destroys civilization I expect humanity will completely lose 20th century technology including antibiotics.
7 to 15% of mothers regret that they had children.
*Pakistan says police orchestrated killing of doctor [Shah Nawaz] accused of blasphemy.*
This practice, which repeats frequently, shows how Pakistan is dominated by brutal, drooling religious fanaticism. This is of of the reasons to refuse to visit Pakistan, and why I have never gone there.
Typhoid fever is becoming a dangerous disease again as is bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics. People who catch it once again often die.
The same is in various stages of happening with other diseases.
*[Egyptian dissident] Alaa Abd el-Fattah is due to complete five-year sentence over social media post but family fear further charges.*
His relatives ask the British government to press Egypt to release him.
Harris has stated economic policies that focus on helping Americans become and remain middle class.
I am in favor of these plans, but I would put more emphasis on helping the poor, the people who have to survive on the lowest paid jobs or who are unable to work. To pay for this, we should tax the rich — not only to reverse the grab by rich they got so rich at the expense of everyone else, but to reduce the power that they get from their wealth.
Al Jazeeera: *By storming our Al Jazeera offices in Ramallah, Israel has stepped up its assault on press freedom.*
Delegates at Britain's Labour Party congress voted to call on the party to reverse what did in Parliament — cutting poor people's winter home heating subsidy.
Subsidizing fossil fuel use is, in general, a bad policy. But when it's a subsidy for poor people and is needed for them to stay alive and well, cutting it is dangerous and heartless. The safe way to reduce this subsidy is through helping the poor in other ways, not through harming them.
One way is to invest in insulating their homes so that they don't need as much artificial heating. Starmer keeps talking about "investment", so invest here.
The other way I know of is to increase welfare payments for the poor as a substitute for subsidizing their heating costs.
*Washington state to keep abortion pill stockpile in case [the wrecker grabs the presidency].*
A surveillance resister in India describes the gratuitous and purposeless ways in which Indians are pressured to submit to the national ID system Aadhar, and clever ways people are resisting.
His persistence in refusing to use Aadhar is inspiring, and he does win some victories.
Several countries are suing Afghanistan in the International Court of Justice for discrimination against women.
The case would seem to be so strong that the court must surely find against Afghanistan. But the Taliban will surely not obey any judgment, so why hold hearings to prove the obvious? It seems that the aim is to discourage other countries from recognizing the Taliban government.
The bully said that Ukraine should have surrendered immediately and let Putin seize part of Ukraine.
This is more evidence that the bully is a supporter of Putin.
If he seizes the US presidency, he may make the US an ally of Putin, or a vassal of Putin.
The wrecking crew want to deregulate medical insurance so that most Americans who are sick won't be able to afford it.
It is a mistake to think of medical care as "insurance" since that implies that each subscriber pays the amount perse is predicted probably to need spent on per. What we need is a national medical system that will be funded by taxing those with lots of money.
The company that publishes The Economist (magazine) has been secretly taking tobacco money to support events about medicine. When this became known, many organizations decided to refuse to participate.
This pressure has made the company commit to taking no further money from tobacco.
Side issue: the phrase "editorial content" causes me revulsion, like any use of "content" in that sense.
Some of the wrecker's campaign events are being wrecked by effects of global heating, and some of the attendees are becoming ill from them.
If Israel attacks Hezbollah on the ground, it is likely to have trouble seizing all the territory it seeks to occupy. Hezbollah succeeded in resisting Israel's invasion in 2006, and is likely to have even better fortifications now.
In Gaza, Israeli units can occupy any piece of ground but can't wipe out HAMAS in its tunnels. Hezbollah's tunnels are designed for fighting from, not only for hiding in, so Israel can't expect to have control of the surface as it does in Gaza.
I think this threat represents Netanyahu's scheme to stay in power by unceasing escalation.
It is impossible to negotiate with Netanyahu, because he does not negotiate in good faith. When he agrees to a deal in private, he then rejects it in public.
The US should punish him for this by cutting off important kinds of military support to Israel until it negotiates a cease fire for Lebanon and Gaza, and accepts it, and carries it out. Or until Netanyahu is no longer in charge there.
*More than 3,600 chemicals approved for food contact in packaging, kitchenware or food processing equipment have been found in humans.*
Some of them are already suspected of being damaging.
KIA cars were built with a back door so that the company's server can locate them and take control of them.
The car's owner had access to these controls through the KIA server. That in itself is not objectionable. However, that KIA itself has such control is Orwellian, and ought to be illegal.
The icing on the Orwellian cake is that the server had a security fault which allowed absolutely anyone to activate those controls for any KIA car.
Many people will be outraged at that security bug, but that was presumably an accident. The fact that KIA had such control over cars after selling them to customers is what outrages me, and that must have been intentional on KIA's part.
*Green roofs and solar chimneys are here — experts say it’s time to use them.*
Governments in the US and elsewhere must take the lead here, to change building codes so as to press for new buildings to use various technologies that have been found to work. We also need funds to retrofit millions of old buildings.
The Putin regime is prosecuting reporters for "illegal immigration" for going with Ukrainian forces into the Kursk region to cover the war.
Ironically, this is the only way reporters can cover news in Russia without submitting to Putinite censorship.
Awareness of the approaching danger of climate mayhem is causing anxiety and despair among young adults in the UK, who see that the planet roasters have barricaded every door through which to prevent disaster they profit from increasing.
*Gifts to politicians are all about buying influence,* but Starmer persists in denying that.
*Declaring potential conflicts of interest does not eradicate them as conflicts of interest. For example, studies done on the efficacy of psychiatric medications and many influential medical papers list the benefits the authors received; it is not unusual to see whole pages devoted to their financial connections to pharmaceutical firms. That must cast some doubt on the validity of the studies.*
Israel is accused of depriving Palestinian workers of pay they are owed for work they have already done in Israel.
US Department of Justice sues Alabama for purging people from voter rolls.*
*Officials say purge violates "quiet period provision" prohibiting name removals 90 days before federal election.*
*Force companies to report their food waste, say leading UK retailers.*
I am surprised that retailers are in favor of this, but it seems like a wise policy to me.
Microsoft's bullshit generator read many articles associating Martin Bernklau with criminal accusations, and output that he was a wanted criminal who had escaped from a mental hospital.
Bernklau's actual association was that he was a crime journalist and had written those articles. But you can't expect bullshit generators to understand that distinction — to do so requires intelligence, which is what they totally lack.
Several factors are simultaneously acting to wipe out monarch butterflies.
Federal prosecutors report on Putin's interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
They did not find grounds to charge the corrupter with a crime. I expect that some exist, but that is not proof.
*"Global Oligarchy" Reigns as Top 1% Controls More Wealth Than [least wealthy] 95% of Humanity.*
*Elon Musk has gained a concerning level of power over US national security.*
Muhlenberg College fired Professor Finkelstein, a tenured professor, for condemning Israeli atrocities in Gaza, by making the usual false equivalence between "Zionists" and "Jews".
The American Association of University Professors may sue on her behalf.
Fossil fuel lobbyists work with supportive legislators to criminalize nonviolent (but inconvenient) protest around the US.
I suspect that they collaborate with AIPAC to achieve their common goal, so that protesters calling for an end to Israel's bombing and siege can be imprisoned too. The measures seem similar in practical effect to those recently used by the UK to convict climate defense protesters.
The real antisemitic threat in the US is the corrupter.
Iwao Hakamata was convicted of murder in 1968 in Japan. Now a retrial judge has ruled that investigators falsified evidence and bullied him into a false confession. (His name was misreported as "Hakamada".)
Hakamata is 88 years old, and is mentally unwell as a result of spending years on death row. He was unable to attend the retrial because of that.
Six of England's privatized water companies appear to have fraudulently increased their charges to customers by misrepresenting the level of sewage pollution that they were releasing into waterways.
*Ocean acidification close to critical threshold, say scientists, posing threat to marine ecosystems and global livability.
This means Earth may have breached seven of nine boundaries.*
*Anura Kumara Dissanayake: who is Sri Lanka's new leftist president?*
California has banned distribution of plastic shopping bags at grocery stores. Only paper bags will be available.
I prefer thicker plastic bags to paper, but to avoid causing waste, I reuse each bag until it wears out. I set out the bags to reuse on he belt along with what I will purchase, and say to use these bags and not give me a new one. I get a new bag perhaps once a year.
But the things we buy include lots of plastic packaging. To reduce plastic waste we need to do something about that, too.
Labour says it will legally require all rental housing with poor air insulation to be repaired so as to need less heating.
If a private landlord says, "I can't afford to do the repairs that the law now requires," there is an easy response: "So sell that house." Most of them will then discover some money that they had temporarily forgotten possessing. As for the rest, it's no disaster if they do have to sell.
For housing owned by local governments, it is another matter. They are cutting all sorts of important public services because the Tories cut their budgets to the bone, and Labour refuses to raise them. Some are already going bankrupt. If Labour really wants those buildings repaired, it will have to provide money.
Some US states will report parents to the Parent Gestapo ("Child Welfare Services") for "neglect" if they don't pay the bill for their child's school lunch.
That isn't neglect of the children, it is neglect of the state. But I think it is the state's fault anyway, not the parent's that that parent is too poor to pay for the child's lunch. It ought to do that.
In reality, what is the usual cause of parents' neglecting children? I expect it is poverty — what a child needs costs a lot of money and many parents can't get that much money. Growing up in poverty may result in real neglect, but punishing the parent(s) won't help them get more money.
Taking the child away from the parent(s) and giving per to a foster parent might help per, by making more money available; but if the state is willing to provide that extra money, it can just as well give that to the child's parent(s).
Thus, the only case in which to consider taking a child away from per parent(s) is when the cause is something other than poverty.
Musk refuses to pay Brazil's fines on ex-Twitter and challenges the state to stop Brazilians from accessing that site. So the court imposed a bigger fine, around 1.5 billion dollars per year, for ex-Twitter's circumvention of the ban.
The court also ordered that Starlink, likewise owned by Musk, be required to pay the fines if ex-Twitter does not; Starlink is very widely used in Amazonia where there is not much communications infrastructure, and I think it makes a lot of profit in Brazil.
The muskrat has the support of Bolosonaro, the fascist-leaning ex president who, after losing the last election, launched an attack on the main government buildings in Brasilia.
As I recall, he faces trial for this. Can anyone tell me where that trial stands? Why isn't Bolsonaro in prison?
The Federal Election Commission decided to take no action to against fraudulent political deepfakes.
If there is any effective method to deter, prevent or delete them, the FEC should have done so. I don't know what methods might be effective.
Kamala Harris formerly campaigned for limiting hidden campaign donations from the rich, but she isn't advocating that this year.
Actor Reece Richards, performing in a play in London, says that four thugs pepper-sprayed him and held him down on the ground, They were chasing someone else who was in a vehicle.
Everyone makes mistakes, so I can't condemn those thugs for mistakenly thinking that Richards had something to do with the fleeing vehicle. But since that was just a suspicion, they should have realized that Richards might have been a bystander. And even if he were guilty, they had no grounds to be so violent to a person who was not fighting them. That is the typical dangerous excess of thugs.
*Britain’s limited Gaza action will do little to curb Israel’s wider territorial ambitions.*
*Chief justice Roberts pushed for quick immunity ruling in Trump’s favor.*
Two New York City transit thugs cornered an alleged fare evader who allegedly pulled a knife. At that point, they proceeded to make the subway substantially more dangerous by hitting two other innocent passengers and one other thug, as well as the alleged fare evader.
It is quite possible that the many really did try to evade the fare. That is no grounds for shooting him. It is possible that he pulled out a knife, which would be a much more serious crime. However, I won't take thugs' word that he did so. They might be "testilying", to use the term that thugs coined for this.
Adams, NYC's night-mayor, is a former thug himself, and no matter what harm thugs do in the city, he always claims it's not their fault.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria *"could kill 39m people by 2050" amid rising drug resistance.*
This problem is mostly avoidable. It is caused by various sorts of carelessness in the use of antibiotics.
Few new antibiotics are developed, because drug companies are no longer interested in them.
They are no longer led by people whose background was in medicine and thought that curing disease was a goal in itself. Now they want to develop "the next Viagra", something that millions of people will take when they are not sick.
For-profit drug development is corrupting in many ways.
One consequence is that our systems of medicine and drug development no longer encourage people to make curing disease their goal.
We should replace the system driven by lust for monopoly megaprofits with a system of government funding for finding new drugs that will not be covered by monopolies.
*Meta bans Russian state media outlets over "foreign interference activity".*
I am sure that they do that.
Iran's president calls for peace, and says Iran could negotiate a non-nuclear deal like the one that the wrecker canceled. He also accused Israel of trying to provoke a regional war, which I think is spot on.
I hope Biden is flexible enough to reach such an agreement. Iran's government oppresses women horribly, but that is no reason we can't work with Iran towards regional and nuclear disarmament.
Israel attacked Hezbollah with ordinary weapons — missiles, and perhaps bombs and shells too. Reportedly these hit 1300 targets and killed around 500 people. Since 90 of them were women or minors, we can roughly estimate that counting also the adult men, around 140 to 200 of those killed were civilians. That sort of outcome is comparable to what happens when Israel attacks in Gaza with the same weapons: lots of civilian casualties.
The Israeli attacks in Gaza are a series of atrocities, and these attacks in Lebanon were atrocities too. They were atrocities, and war crimes, because Israel violates the requirement that civilian casualties be "proportionate" — not excessive.
It's clear that Israel does not try very much to avoid excessive civilian casualties. Indeed, when army snipers shoot protesters and journalists, who are specially protected civilians, Israel hardly tries to punish them.
Ironically, one exception which contrasts with that habit of disregarding this principle is the pager attack of last weekend. Whether or not Israel actively sought on that occasion to follow the requirement of proportionality, in practice it did so. Some 3000 pagers were in use, and were likely to explode, and in the process only two children were killed.
It is bad when children are killed, or adult civilians are killed. It is bad when anyone is killed, even enemy soldiers, because nobody ever deserves to be killed. War normally requires trying to kill some enemy soldiers, but even those don't personally deserve death.
Thus we should try to avoid war, fighting only a last resort. And even when fighting is necessary, we should strive to keep civilian casualties down to a proportionate level.
This is why, rather than being especially outraged at the pager attack and denouncing it as egregious, I take the opposite view: the pager attack is the proportionate exception which highlights Israel's usual disregard for the lives of civilians.
HAMAS and Hezbollah also often disregard proportionality when they attack, but —another irony— their missile attacks typically do so little harm to anyone that the question of proportionality may be merely theoretical.
Netanyahu is threatening to escalate the war with Hezbollah. Supposedly this is to achieve demands which include peace. But that is not what escalation is likely to achieve.
SCROTUS gave up on the wrecker's demand for a new nationwide voter suppression requirement, and dropped the threat to shut down the US government otherwise. Indeed, they could not even pass that bill in the House of Representatives, despite having a small majority there.
The decision not to shut it down was embodied in a law that will keep the government operating for around three months. The article doesn't state the precise date of the next shutdown threat, but the words suggest it will be negotiated in December, before the newly elected Congress takes office.
Americans, we need to remove those hostage takers from our government, so that they can't take our government and our country hostage any more. For every level of government, vote to defeat Republicans!
The modern American way to lobby for an anti competitive merger is to hire lobbyists who are tied into networks of support for major politicians.
Each time these lobbyists go to work, their goal is harmful to the public interest. We should change our laws so that there are no such lobbyists — but how to do that? I tend to think that blocking large anonymous campaign donations, and blocking all campaign contributions from corporations, would tend to correct this problem as a side effect of correcting the problem of legalized bribery.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to hold an independent investigation of the killing of protester Ayşenur Eygi.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Support the proposed FDIC regulation that would limit how "asset manager" companies such as Blackrock use their deposits for political influence.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript 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 some of them.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Israel to comply with the UN General Assembly vote calling for Israel to withdraw its army from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Everyone: call on Coca-Cola to stop sponsoring neo-segregationist Chris Rufo.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to block voter intimidation in Florida.
US citizens: We have a right to safety, privacy, and protest. Say no to mask bans.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Bernie Sanders's resolution to end weapons sales to Israel.
Explain I might have proposed to adjust some details, of this, but I have confidence in Sanders and I trust him to know such matters better than I do.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on US agencies to shut down for-profit immigration prisons.
The petition calls them "detention centers", but I think that term is desensitizing.
* A new survey of eight vital swing states reveals that at least 239 election deniers who have signed up to Trump’s “election integrity” conspiracy theories are actively engaged in electoral battles this year.*
The saboteur's hate messages about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, inspired a bomb threat.
If the time bomb threat is accompanied by a real bomb, I expect he will leap for joy.
(satire) *Vatican City Police Unveil New Unit Of Sin-Sniffing Dogs.*
* Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Ohio want to scare off voters [of disprivileged racial groups] and naturalized citizens, activists say.*
Various religions in the US are ganging up to fight against sex education and equal rights for queer people.
At the debate. the bullshitter refused to say whether he wants Ukraine to defeat Putin. Why did someone who cares so little about truth hesitate to make up whatever would go over best?
The author does not know, but I have a conjecture: because Putin is watching, and Putin demands obedience. The bullshitter expects to get away with bullshitting Americans, but this is a matter of promoting Putin and he knows Putin won't stand for shenanigans.
"Just stop the fighting" has been the standard line of Putinite influencers ever since Putin launched the invasion. The reason is simple: that would leave Putin in possession of conquered territory, probably permanently. That would be victory for him, even if not total victory.
It is surely no coincidence that the Republicans in Congress have been willing to obstruct and threaten to interfere with US support for Ukraine. They are happy to increase the military budget unless it supports Ukraine. This has happened in parallel with their shift to endorse the bullshitter's claim that he really won the election.
This is not proof, but it's plenty of grounds to treat the corrupter as a suspect.
(satire) *Ohioan Disturbed by Reports of Haitians Eating Vegetables.*
Some of the cars that aren't driven by anyone in the car are operated by remote drivers.
These cars are neither "autonomous" nor "self-driving".
Are they safe for the passengers and others in the vicinity? The reply must be, "Safe from what?" If the question is about safety from collisions, I don't know but with time we will find out.
If the question is about safety from surveillance and snooping, the answer is clearly not.
* Suspected Russian propaganda operation prompts calls to force UK-registered news sites to reveal ownership.*
I can support that sort of rule without hesitation, because it is clearly not censorship.
Netanyahu seems to have succeeded in provoking Hezbollah into all-out war.
Greenpeace proposes to offer unlimited rail passes for Britain at a low flat fee per month (though trains passing anywhere near London will cost extra).
This scheme will cost money, but it could be money well spent on reducing CO2 emissions and boosting the economy of places away from London.
Crucial for civil liberties, this is also an opportunity to reduce surveillance — or to increase it. With a fee paid per month, the pass could serve as a ticket for anonymous travel. It would be easy to allow the holder to ride a train without collecting per identity.
But if the system does record who rode each train, as I fear the surveillance-mad UK will do, it would further discourage anonymous travel, because to do that you would have to pay cash for a ticket on a train that would otherwise have been gratis.
Britons, don't wait this out. Organize now to demand that train passes not track their users.
The UK already uses its massive surveillance of everyone for repression of dissent.
But the state can always increase the surveillance, or decrease it. We must fight to decrease surveillance, limit it, and defend anonymity. If this train pass idea is adopted, seize this opportunity.
Billionaire Larry Ellison called for a society of total surveillance in which everyone is constantly monitored by hypothetical future AI.
We could expect the AI to share the political bias and racial/religious/ethnic prejudices of the organizations that run them.
Thugs in Pakistan killed someone accused of "blasphemy" — rejecting and criticizing religion.
In Pakistan, being arrested and charged with "blasphemy" tends to lead to being killed, often before trial, except for those who are saved by international pressure to let them go into exile. The accused man must have realized that he was doomed if he allowed himself to be captured.
Side issue: I've seen several other articles about shooting dead people. I am surprised at how many dead bodies are being shot.
In the UK, people get fined for leaving usable items outside the door for passers-by to take away. Some are fined so much that it can ruin them.
Often the people responsible for this are the employees and the owners of companies which have won contracts to hand out these fines. Their business is cruelty. The owners deserve the term "vampires", but the employees may only be desperate.
Chicago sold off the income from street parking fees to a company along with the authority to decide the policies and prices.
Motorists have already been screwed, but the contract will run for many years so the city is screwed too.
It should be illegal to involve anyone in fining the public in such a way as to profit more from fining more.
Side issue: I wonder what they mean by "fly tipping". Is it anything like cow tipping? A cow that is lying down can get back on its feet, but can a fly do that?
UK tax cuts for corporations in 2023 resulted in a loss of 30 billion UKP in tax revenue but will *spur only up to £10.5bn investment.*
The rich will generally invest their money in the way they expect will be most profitable. When governments want to influence what ways they choose, instead of taxing certain ways less, how about taxing the other ways more?
Musk has yielded to the Brazilian government and has made ex-Twitter obey the court orders.
* Keir Starmer has suffered a precipitous fall in his personal ratings since winning the election, according to a new poll for the Observer that comes before his first Labour conference as prime minister.*
It seems lots of voters don't like his Toryish loyalty to rich people's wealth.
The wrecker and Vance eagerly acknowledge lying as a tactic to win support from people who they have taught to accept lying. They aim to create a post-truth America in which truth ceases to matter.
That is the ultimate form of sabotage. We must reject anything that comes from them, without taking it seriously, because they are liars.
No one can achieve 100% falsehood. Inevitably, some of the things they say will turn out to be true. But we should ignore the claim when it comes from them. If someone credible and honest makes the claim. then we should pay it the attention it merits — but we should not confuse matters by associating the issue with the Lie Party candidates.
* The court of justice of the EU ruled on Thursday that member states could keep vital details of their implementation of fishing rules under wraps, in a blow to environmental campaigners hoping to use the information to show whether the regulations are working.*
* The press is still pursuing the appearance of fairness [in covering the US election] by treating the true and the false, normal and outrageous, as equally valid.*
*Amazon is trying to trick me into signing up for Prime services.* And bully her, too.
A documentary is being criticized for presenting the Russian soldiers in the Putin forces as victims.
Those soldiers are victims … of Putin's tyranny, alongside the Ukrainians. And some of them used to know this — which is why some Russians fled and joined the Ukrainian army rather than fight for Putin.
But Putin's tight censorship is brainwashing many Russians, especially young ones that get drafted.
*Water bosses could be jailed if they cover up sewage dumping under new law.*
The government looked into the causes of a deadly fire in an apartment building and found that several companies were jointly dishonest and many government bodies failed to do their job of insisting on safe construction.
All sorts of regulations to protect the environment and people's health and safety, should carry criminal penalties for intentional conduct that significantly endangers people. The punishment for a serious violation should include prison, for individuals, and for corporations seizure and liquidation.
Anyone can make a mistake — even a CEO who has acted wrongly may have done it unknowingly — so everyone accused must have a fair trial to judge culpability. But intentional disregard for those regulations, when it occurs to a significant extent, should be grounds for severe punishment.
This should not be limited to cases where serious injury to specific actually persons occurred as a result. When that was avoided by sheer luck, the crime should be the same.
Merely banning a company from operating in a country may have no effect. Even shutting down the corporation directly involved may be insufficient. Many construction businesses do (or at least used to) start a new corporation each year as a scheme to shrug off subsequent fines or judgments. The law should refuse to be thwarted by such schemes.
If this helps drive the UK's formerly public but nowadays private water companies into bankruptcy, so much the better, since it will avoid the need to "compensate" their stockholders when renationalizing them.
We need capitalism so it can drive people's desire for profit into competing to do a good job for society. However, they will face constant temptation to cheat their customers, their workers and the general public. We must make sure they recognize those methods are too dangerous to try.
Florida is coming to recognize it must help people whose houses are going to be flooded by paying the cost of their moving to higher ground.
In the long run, that is cheaper than paying to build a new house in the same doomed place, where it in turn will be flooded.
That study covers the UK experience, but I expect the situation is similar in other countries. The planet roasters are callous but not stupid.
We need to do much more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but Republicans want to repeal these policies and turn the spigot wide open.
A great drop in the seabird populations in Norway is a sign of some big problem under the water, but we don't know what it is,
In American politics, and British politics, signaling an attitude or membership in a tribe tends to take precedence over choosing a policy that will have good results.
That is unfortunate because signaling is not a cogent reason for any policy. Thus, policies chosen based on signaling will tend to be bad ones.
* Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be [almost 8 times the] official tally.*
For the survival of civilization we must prevent the expansion of these data centers. A sufficiently large tax could do it.
* Landmark research finds 244m tons of organic carbon is stored in top 10cm of marine sediment in British waters.* And it will steadily capture more carbon if we prevent it from being disturbed.
* The vice-presidential candidate [Vance] seems to feel no remorse about spreading dangerous misinformation that has put lives at risk.*
*Amber Thurman was killed by Georgia’s abortion ban. There will be others.*
Banning abortion tends to cause various sorts of bad consequences. Being compelled to have a baby can ruin your life in many ways, and some of them (combined with poverty) could later cause your death.
*Faculty from seven University of California campuses took a stand against the repression of protest over Israel’s war on Gaza on Thursday, taking the historic step of filing a joint unfair labor practice charge against their employer.*
Climate defense protesters in the UK climbed the former prime minister's house as part of a protest, but did no harm. Charges against them were dropped by the judge.
The Commodity Futures and Exchange Commission proposed guidelines for trading of carbon offsets. Public Citizen says it should instead eliminate such trading entirely.
Ohio’s Republican governor condemns Trump and Vance for [bogus claims about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.]
The bullshitter claimed that the audience at the debate demonstrated great support for him. He imagined it all — there no audience was present.
A plague of fungus killed many bats across the US. Without the bats to eat the insect pests, farmers increased use of pesticides. The pesticides are estimated to have killed 1300 children since then.
*South Carolina to execute man despite bombshell admission from key witness* that his crucial testimony for the prosecution was a lie.
*Holocaust survivor marks 80th birthday with protest outside Israeli prison* about maltreatment of Palestinian prisoners in that prison. What Palestinians need to do, to get the Israeli army to insist they should be treated with some respect, is die.
My view is different. I think the living are the people who we should treat with some basic respect so as not to cause them gratuitous, avoidable suffering. For the dead, that issue does not arise.
Nassau County (just east of New York City) has arrested a protester for wearing a keffiyeh, and allegedly concealing his face with it.
To harass nonviolent protesters who are not menacing anyone for concealing their identity is an attack on human rights.
Shooting protesters who are not threatening anyone is a repeating pastime of Israeli snipers near the village of Beita. A report lists 15 other instances.
Typically the victims are not near any Israelis, and walking away from them.
The limit on tourists visiting Soain's Atlantic Islands National Park
Requires every visitor to give name and national ID number (or passport number). And the only way to apply is on a web form.
This is one more little brick in a wall of Orwellian surveillance, imposed gratuitously.
It would be very little work to sell permits at some physical stores and avoid the surveillance. But once a country gives everyone a national ID number, every activity's managers find it convenient to add another brick to the wall of Orwellian surveillance. It comes to seem "normal", so no one hesitates to impose this on everyone else.
Contrast Spain's park with the Boston Aquarium, which I visited recently. It sells entry tickets for specific times, and encourages people to buy them by internet — but you can go there and buy a ticket for whatever future slots are available. I did that anonymously, paying cash.
This shows the need to organize to demand the right to be anonymous.
*Labeling [the bullshitter]'s lies as "disputed" on [ex-Twitter] makes supporters believe them more, study finds.*
* The Republicans desperately need to distract voters away from abortion. They've now found the perfect new scapegoat.*
Specifically, authorized Haitian immigrants that they can lie about.
*[The bully's] escalating legal threats against [Democratic] lawyers, donors and others raise concern as Project 2025 seeks to curtail DoJ.*
Kenneth Roht: *The US and all nations must respect the UN resolution against Israeli occupation.*
* The general assembly confirmed the ICJ ruling that Israel’s prolonged occupation constitutes a de facto annexation and hence a violation of the “principle of the non-acquisition of territory by force”. In other words, although the term was not explicitly used, the endless occupation is an act of aggression — no different from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.*
Right-wing demagogues have long used hatred against scapegoat groups as a way to distract and madden the people. Today they are using antimuslimism for this purpose.
I reject the term "Islamophobia" because a phobia is an anxiety disorder, and we can't blame people for suffering from one. We can and should blame people for bigotry and hatred. So the word I use for that is "antimuslimism".
*Israeli military shuts down Al Jazeera bureau in West Bank raid.*
Al Jazeera reports are sometimes slander in favor of Palestinians, but no more slanted than is usual in journalism, That should no be a reason to shut it down. At least this time Israel did not do so using explosives, as it did in Gaza.
Vance insists on calling Haitians working in the US "illegal aliens"
Although he knows that their presence and employment in the US has been officially authorized with temporary protected status. Vance is claiming to be more powerful than reality.
Vance and the wrecker could honestly criticize the decision to give Haitians temporary protected status, if they wanted to. I would disagree with their position, but they would not be lying if they said that. They could also claim that Biden's decision to do that was somehow illegal. They might be mistaken, but it would not be a factual lie.
However, the ambiguity of calling them "illegal aliens" turns it into a dishonest claim.
Vladimir Kara-Murza studied and wrote about dissidents in the Soviet Union and the workings of the system of repression. When he became a dissident and Putin imprisoned him, he observed directly what he had learned in his studies.
An Australian city has ordered giving the thug department full access to watch all the town's surveillance cameras.
This is far too much surveillance to keep people safe from repression. However, protecting against repression calls for more than just maintaining the status quo.
Butterfly populations in Britain dropped by 50% this year — *probably the consequence of habitat loss and the use of pesticides, making the insects less resilient to extreme weather fluctuations: the scorching heat and wetter weather driven by global heating.*
*Back to School at Columbia: Two Students Arrested, New Guidelines on Protest.*
Columbia's administration is violating its own discipline procedures, in its rush to show 120% compliance to the demands of the right-wing fanatics that control the House of Representatives.
We can all help put a stop to this persecution by helping to defeat Republicans in Congress on Nov 5.
US citizens: call on Biden to investigate West Bank violence including the killing of Aysenur Eygi.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: support Biden's proposal for a "No One Is Above the Law" amendment.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to pass a bill to prevent a government shutdown with no sabotage riders to attack voting rights or any other rights of human beings.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to end utility shutoffs and treat these life-sustaining services as human rights.
I support this campaign against artificial cruelty, but success of this is not a substitute for curbing global heating and reducing human consumption to a sustainable level.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The exploding pagers used to attack Hezbollah leaders were bought as a special order. It was subcontracted to a Hungarian company whose owner supports Putin (and surely supports also the repressive ruler of Hungary, Orbán, who supports Putin.)
But that company subcontracted the order to someone else. We don't know known who actually built these pagers.
This demonstrates how subcontracting causes a potential risk to the national security of any country, and even organizations of other kinds, when combined with the opacity of their construction. It is one more reason why the world needs free hardware designs.
The rigged pagers have been compared to booby traps. With careful comparison, we see a crucial difference: the pagers were targeted specifically at important Hezbollah participants.
A booby trap is triggered by some ordinary, non-warlike action, such as opening a door, standing in a certain spot, or picking up an object. Soldiers do these things, and so do civilians. Such a trap can easily strike anyone.
The rigged pagers were carried by chosen members of Hezbollah — not solely the highest leaders, but surely important enough for special protection from tracking. They were sure to keep the pagers near them and under their personal control. Just playing with one would not set off the bomb; the plan arranged that almost always the owner would be holding it when it exploded.
Wikipedia estimates that Hezbollah in Lebanon has around 100,000 members. Clearly the 5,000 pagers were distributed to selected people with command or sensitive roles, not footsoldiers or fellow travelers.
Thus, the pager attack was not an atrocity or a crime — it was simply war.
That does not imply it was morally justifiable.
Netanyahu is aiming to escalate the war between Israel and Hezbollah. and exploding the pagers was one among many attacks in the campaign of escalation. That aim is what he deserves condemnation for.
How stock buybacks undermine the incentive that is supposed to motivate CEOs to add economic value to the companies they run.
Indoor firing ranges, including those run by the US military, are dangerous: they have residues generated by firing lots of bullets, that contain toxic lead and pose a hazard to anyone breathing inside.
The US is suing the owner of the ship that destroyed a bridge over Baltimore harbor.
This suit demands $100 million, solely for the cost of cleaning up the wreckage so the harbor could get back to full operation. It does not include the damages for the six workers killed by the damage, or the damages of the loss of use of the harbor, let alone what it will cost to build building a new bridge.
I have a hunch that the company will be bankrupted by this, and will not be able to pay the whole damages.
Can it pay even this part of the damages? I wonder how many other ships that corporation owns. Did the real owners make a separate corporation for each ship? If so, it may not be able to pay anything more than its legal fees.
Part of the cause of the collapse was the lack of buffer islands around the bridge's piers. The bridge was built not long before the US adopted a policy of requiring such buffers, and plans were being drawn up to add them — but it wasn't considered desperately urgent, and that sort of project normally takes many years.
Scientists are making some progress on breeding corals to tolerate greater heat.
But this seems futile to me, since (based on Wikipedia's article on Ocean Acidification) in a few more decades the increased CO2 in sea water will start to interfere with the making of coral shells.
Six prestigious US universities have, since 2003, accepted 100 million dollars in donations from fossil fuel companies.
These donations are officially gifts, but in practice there is a quid-pro-quo of not championing climate defense.
Queensland (a state in Australia) is holding an inquiry and investigation into how British colonists seized that territory from the previous inhabitants.
I read a book, The Other Side of the Frontier, which describes the damage that the process imposed.
Companies often use subcontracting as a way to get the good side of a business and dump the bad side on others.
Gold Apollo, the front company that sold exploding pagers but did not actually make them, is an extreme example, but everyday non-extreme examples are all around us.
Perhaps there should be a law saying that if you sell a product or service with signs implying it was your product, you become co-liable for any harm it may do, along with the company that made it "for" you.
That would encourage some transparency.
Even in the 1940s, the state of Queensland (Australia) systematically stole 2/3 of the wages owed to aboriginals.
US citizens: Oppose laws that require religious displays in public schools. Protect the separation of church and state.
US citizens: Support the Harris Opportunity Economy -- several tax increases on the rich.
US citizens: call on Democratic candidates to reconnect with the Democratic base, including by pushing for an arms embargo on Israel until it ends atrocities.
In the US: tell AT&T Southeast that you support striking workers.
* Extremist groups [including Nazis] are latching on to [the corrupter]'s xenophobic messages to recruit people and spread ideology.*
Calvijn College banned students from carrying of portable phones in school four years ago, and has observed an amazing positive change among the students.
The students and teachers in Calvijn College probably don't know about the injustice of the nonfree software running in their phones, or the surveillance and manipulation those are programmed to do to them, but they do benefit because that mistreatment is blocked for many hours every day. However, so-called "ed-tech" companies are busy developing replacements for the surveillance, and the school authorities probably do not imagine that this is wrong.
*State abortion bans are forcing doctors to provide substandard [medical treatment].*
*Almost 200 people killed last year trying to defend the environment, report finds.*
Those were mostly in Latin America. In Britain, they won't kill you for this but they will sentence you to years in prison.
*Rich countries silencing climate protest while preaching about rights elsewhere, says study.*
*The report's authors highlighted several examples of developed countries lauding the importance of the right to protest on the international stage at the same time as undertaking harsh and punitive crackdowns at home.*
Side issue: the term "global south" means "poor countries". but refers to them using a geographical metaphor which is not literally true, adds no actual understanding, and can mislead you if you're not careful. The poor countries are scattered around the Earth, have no common history, and what they have in common is the consequences of bring poor and frequently exploited.
This article takes a step into being misled by the metaphor: it refers to countries "in the global south", as if it were a region. That metaphor could stir up a sort of nationalism that takes the side of one imaginary region or the other.
That way of thinking obscures the real issue: rich people are exploiting most of humanity, but in the wealthy democracies a substantial fraction of people get a decent life out of this. (Just how big a fraction varies from country to country, and varies over time in any given country.)
The article's actual point is valid despite use of that metaphor. And they are planting to ramp up the repression.
*"We'll arrest people quicker at protests from now on -- London cops' deputy chief.*
The Guardian has published *The 10 best electric cars to buy if you want to avoid Tesla.*
Alas, the ratings fail to include how easy it is to painlessly turn off all radio transmission, and GPS reception, by the car's proprietary computer systems. That information is crucial for any car, whether electric or not.
The Department of Homeland Security warns that Republicans are likely to attack polling places to disrupt the election.
If they do, the chief truth-hater and his followers will claim that Democrats did it and use this as an excuse to sabotage the election in other ways. That is standard operating procedure for right-wing truth-haters.
Israel has killed 220 UNRWA staff in Gaza, but it is not satisfied; it wants to eliminate UNRWA itself.
Israel is working on laws that would stop UNRWA from operating, but this would not establish any replacement system. Israel would, I expect, simply never agree to one. Then it would have more "excuse" to stop humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza.
Israel condemns UNRWA because its work is done by local Palestinians, and some of them work for HAMAS.
I don't think that in practice there is any way to avoid this. It would not be feasible to get so many workers in Gaza in any other way.
If no substitute can get Israel's approval, that will cement the hunger in Gaza but enable Israel to pretend that it was due to a failing of the UN, rather than to Israel's obstruction.
Israel is already blocking the flow of US humanitarian aid, and would do so even more if it stops UNRWA from functioning. Under US law, the US is supposed to block military aid to Israel for this.
*Gaza children begin second school year without education.*
Vance explicitly defended lying for political advantage.
*Jeremy Corbyn addresses meeting on formation of new leftwing party.*
Turkey has accused writer Yavuz Ekinci of promoting terrorism for publishing a work of fiction.
Such repression is not unusual under Erdoğan's repressive rule.
*Florida officials investigate voters who signed abortion ballot initiative.*
This is standard harassment procedure for right-wing governments.
The two appear similar in spirit to my eyes. Can Biden direct the FBI to investigate Florida officials for this apparent political harassment of citizens for lawful political activity?
The US government is right to investigate Nvidia for alleged unfair practices. Too bad that its unjust practices are not the target.
My understanding is that Nvidia's processors have secret specifications, so no one but Nvidia can make tools to generate code that can actually be installed in them. This is an injustice to every user, because it blocks the use of them without nonfree software. Every nonfree program is unjust, so a processor that forces use of nonfree programs is unjust.
That's what we need governments to investigate.
Students protested military recruiting at the University of Michigan. The local sheriff labeled it a "hate crime against law enforcement" and the FBI labeled it as terrorism.
Although IANAL, I think the law about hate crimes is limited to certain demographic groups as targets, and "law enforcement" does not qualify. In addition, a "hate crime" in the US is defined to be more than just expression of views (thank the First Amendment!). It means a crime of violence, motivated by hatred for one of those groups. Expressing condemnation for all uniformed thugs cannot actually be a hate crime.
Nor does spraying ketchup as fake blood constitute terrorism.
Biden, will you make the FBI stick to reality-based action?
Republicans are running fake ads in areas in Michigan where there are many Muslims, emphasizing the fact that Harris's spouse is Jewish.
It is true that Harris insists on support for Israel — and Republicans do so even more strongly. But the ads don't show that about both major parties.
I hope American Muslims recognize the one-sidedness of these ads and refuse to be fooled into helping the more hateful party to win.
Afghan women went to Albania so they could have a public event, which they wanted to hold in a majority-Muslim country (though I don't see why that was crucial). Most of those supported the Taliban by refusing.
Most of the women who participated are living in exile,
but some came from Afghanistan and are facing a challenge to go home again.
They called on influential countries to insist that the Taliban include some women in diplomatic discussions. The Taliban, out of misogyny, refuse to do this. The discussions are about international aid to give people in Afghanistan a better life. If you call on the Taliban to include women in that better life, and in the discussion, they refuse. What is right to do in this situation?
The Taliban are hardened religious fanatics, and the world would be a better place if they were all gone. But the war with which we tried to defeat them failed.
Maybe an Afghan woman needs to be ready to kill the Taliban in her own family, while he sleeps at home.
Thugs attacked an anti-war protest outside a weapon sales exposition in Australia. They injured dozens of protesters and some required hospital treatment.
A legal support person says that thugs "were documented using force against people who were trying to run away, shielding themselves or were already on the ground."
Some protesters' actions may have called for a forcible response, but police offers are supposed to determine judiciously when and where that is necessary, not go wild and rampage against all.
Ex-Twitter's chatbot spread incorrect statements about the election: specifically, whether another candidate could replace Biden on ballots.
It took the intervention of several states' secretaries of state to get this corrected.
The Burmese military government is sending raids that kill journalists in their own homes.
*More than 80% of EU marine protected areas are ineffective, study shows.
Activities such as mining, dredging and bottom trawling in most MPAs mean conservation targets will be missed.*
*Global spending on subsidies that harm environment rises to $2.6tn.*
*Fossil fuel companies sponsor $5.6bn in global "sportswashing" deals.*
I think plane roasters should not be allowed to advertise or visibly sponsor anything. As for the sports that they sponsor, they are not important anyway.
*Losing the Whales: How the Anti-Whaling Narrative Has Failed.*
The article accuses the International Fund for Animal Welfare of secretly working against the cause of whale conservation while publicly stating it advocates that cause.
I don't have a way to judge the accusation against that organization, but the larger point seems to be valid.
Starmer-Labour seems leaning towards allowing airport expansion and thus more commercial flights in Britain.
This would be a step towards climate disaster, and one that would be easy to prevent. I think it reflects the basic Starmer error of choosing to get funds from trickle down from the rich, rather than by taxing the rich.
*[Unbridled consumption by the rich] and the climate crisis threaten equitable future for humanity, report says.*
A Republican sheriff in Ohio has launched political repression against Democrats.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounces a Russian disinformation fake "BBC" documentary that reported a fictitious RSF investigation.
*Israeli Soldiers Killed 15 Protesters in the Same Place They Shot Aysenur Eygi.*
Arizona's policy of requiring people to prove citizenship to vote in state and local elections led to a big confusion in the voting in Maricopa County (Phoenix).
There would have been no problem at all if not for that measure, which is a variation on a typical Republican voter suppression scheme.
According to an investigation by Microsoft, Russia's disinformation army made a video that pretends to be a news report about a fictitious 2011 car accident that supposedly involved Kamala Harris.
What was the motive for this? It makes sense if wrecker is Putin's man
or if they made a deal.
I don't have implicit trust in Microsoft, so I don't have full confidence in this report. But I trust Microsoft more than I trust Putin.
The "Leahy Law" requires denying US military aid to units that stand accused of violating human rights. The US makes this system function for donations to nearly all countries; but when it comes to arms for Israel, the US has a special system that fails to operate.
For more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leahy_Law.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass anti-corruption policies and campaign finance reform to limit the influence of Big Money in politics.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Republicans' last-minute voter suppression scheme.
It is called the "Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act", which is typical right-wing blackwhiting, since actually it makes US citizens ineligible to vote if they can't show up-to-date papers to prove they are citizens. An expired driver's license isn't good enough, even if you look just the same.
This bill was defeated in the House.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to reject Netanyahu, and end U.S. support for the war on Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to investigate West Bank violence including the killing of Aysenur Eygi.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Congress to establish a minimum wage people can live on.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate Texas Republicans' voter purge.
Fossil fuel companies convince governments to spend money on far-fetched "greenhouse gas reduction" programs that are unlikely to result in any real reduction.
They seem to be intended as distractions to relieve pressure for serious actions that could substantially reduce global heating.
Put that together with long sentences for the heroes that try to focus attention on the need to curb global heating for real, and the planet roasters have a clear shot to keep on roasting Earth until there's little left to burn.
In the US: Pledge to stand in solidarity with hotel workers.
US citizens: call on state legislators to protect the US constitution by rejecting any calls for an Article V constitutional convention.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Senator Warren's Price Gouging Prevention Act.
DeMentis's new law to eliminate homelessness allows any fanatical hater to sue a city if a homeless encampment exists. But it gives cities no help in giving housing to the homeless people who are looking for a place to sleep.
Republicans used to condemn "unfunded mandates". This seems to be an unfunded mandate for cities to make homeless people disappear.
UK thugs bullied Oliver Campbell into a false confession by interrogating him over and over until they wore down his insistence on telling the truth. Now, 30 years later, his conviction has been overturned.
The surprisingly high frequency of false confessions is well established. Correcting these injustices one by one, years later, is better than letting them stand, but it is not good enough. The thugs' systematic methods of extracting false confessions from weak and vulnerable people should be prohibited.
Special preschools in China allow groups of children to organize their group play together, including making complex setups with construction toys.
I worry that Chairman Xi will find them threatening.
The US Postal Service is already slowing down mail-in ballots to the point that they don't get counted.
*Australia to ban life insurance companies from discriminating based on genetic testing results.*
This is so that people will not hesitate to get tested early for genetic predispositions that could be overcome by treatment.
Human Rights Watch: *World Health Organization (WHO) member countries negotiating a new international agreement to address pandemics need to ensure that the agreement reflects their domestic and international obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill all human rights.*
*The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not [enable more snoopers to do it].*
*We don't [fix] the Google monopoly [problem] by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.*
Starmer is going ahead with plans to impose ever more poverty on Britons in the name of protecting rich people's riches.
Calling for medical warnings on food with an unhealthful level of salt, and a ban on their sponsoring sports events.
The importance that our society gives to these struggles over nothing is pure foolishness. I don't pay them any attention, and I would be glad to see less of a business built around them.
An analysis of Project 2025, by a journalist that read the whole thing.
US citizens: call on news networks to expose Project 2025's nightmare tax scheme.
Israel attacked a school in Gaza where thousands of refugees were staying. It killed six employees of UNRWA and 12 other people. Supposedly some of them were HAMAS fighters.
*[Australia's] foreign minister Penny Wong says she "welcomes" the British move [to cut off shipping some kinds of weapons to Israel], and Palestinian civilians "cannot pay the price" of defeating Hamas.*
*Harris doesn’t need to impose a full embargo on Israel — but she can pledge to enforce US laws restricting arms transfers to human rights violators.*
Germany's government has panicked and totally suspended the Schengen area freedom of movement in an attempt to pre-empt parties that demand less immigration.
This will only make the government look weak.
The fact-checking in the Harris-Trump debate was effective and clear. The bullshitter did not get away with bullshitting.
I wonder: does anyone do real-time fact-checking of the bullshitter's rallies? People watching streams of them, and even people attending them, could find it interesting to watch that fact-checking if it is available.
Europe's extreme right-wing parties pretend to care about workers' well-being, but don't really do so.
This conclusion comes from analysis of how they vote when elected.
Australia has chosen to protect freedom of speech rather than embark on the course of prohibiting harsh words.
*Scientists tied to chemical industry plan to derail PFAS rule on drinking water.*
PFAS are worrisome because they accumulate in the environment and in human bodies, but it is hard to get real evidence about how harmful they are. It might seem like a fine solution to wait a few decades until we know.
However, we have no feasible way to remove them from the environment. If after decades of waiting we find that they are harmful, we will have screwed ourselves. It behooves us to take action now to avoid exposing people to them.
The cuts made by Tories to the NHS made Britain especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
I've long been convinced that the Tory strategy was to gradually cut back the NHS as a means of gradually eliminating it.
The bullshitter is showing signs of mental failings, but the mainstream media don't see this as interesting the way they did with Biden.
*US lawmakers push to exclude lucrative chemicals from official PFAS definition.*
*Rapid intensification of Hurricane Francine is a sign of a hotter world.*
Sanders: If Harris wants to win, she should campaign for substantive progressive changes.
A mega-landslide in Greenland, caused by melting ice, caused a mountain to collapse into a fjord. This is a new kind of semi-natural disaster, previously unknown.
One state in Australia will include colonization of Australia and resistance in the standard curriculum.
Genetic analysis indicates that the population of Easter Island did not collapse until Europeans contacted them in the 1700s.
It also shows that they mated with South Americans before Columbus.
*Australian military officers to be stripped of honours after alleged war crimes under their command.*
This is the way an army teaches its soldiers to take the rules of war seriously.
A British city has imitated Finland's approach to ending homelessness: first give the person a place to live. The mayor said that this approach has the secondary benefit of saving public money.
The EU's highest appeals court has invalidated the arrangements Apple made to hide its profits from income tax.
Ford has scandalously applied for a patent on the malfeature of snooping on the conversations of people in the car and using that to decide what ads to play for them.
That a company has a patent on some vicious software malfeature does not imply that a company will actually implement that malfeature. Contrariwise, not having a patent on that malfeature (or abandoning a patent application for one) does not in general imply that the company won't implement that malfeature.
What could stop companies from implementing a malfeature is to pass a law against implementing it. That's what we should demand.
I think we should have laws to prohibit the sale, leasing or importation of cars that implement any of a wide range of malfeatures. One of many that ought to be prohibited is the malfeature of noticing, recording or transmitting any audio signal captured by the car's systems unless the driver or a passenger has explicitly activated the malfeature of listening to sound.
We should also pass a law so that software, or its use, is never limited by patent law. Because when a feature is good, no one should be forbidden to implement it in software. At least, not in free software.
Side issue: note how the response from Ford used the propaganda term "intellectual property". That term was and is promoted so as to inculcate the idea that companies deserve various unrelated kinds of monopoly, patents being just one.
In 2004 I recognized the harm that use of that term does to society, so I decided never to use it. And I mean never — I have not used that term since. You can help overcome that propaganda campaign by never using the term yourself.
Over 100 scientists called on the Biden administration to heed the climate danger caused by methane leaks and slow down the extraction and shipping of methane.
There is plenty of humanitarian aid trucks, waiting in Egypt for Israeli troops to let them into Gaza. But Israel allows too few to enter there.
Israel allows in enough aid that people don't immediately die of starvation. But that is not enough for them to remain healthy for long.
I would be delighted to see the US Army, with Egypt's cooperation, establish a bridgehead into Gaza, and allow aid in. I don't think the Israeli army or Netanyahu would dare to try to stop this.
Virgin Australia fired a flight cabin employee for using Grindr to arrange a sexual encounter when regulations said he needed to sleep. (He asserts that the sexual encounter enabled him to fall asleep.)
What shocks me is that the company was able to obtain the hotel's "security camera" recordings to track the employee's actions.
What laws or regulations are there to stop hotels from showing these recordings to all and sundry? Evidently they are not adequate to protect hotel guests' privacy.
But I suspect that the problem goes deeper than that. I suspect that the hotel has a surveillance video system (which stores videos in an easily accessible online system) rather than a classic security camera which stores them solely in a local recording device that requires a physical visit to look at them.
For explanation, see How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Endure.
The limit on number of daily visitors to the Ciés islands seems like a wise policy, but I suspect that the implementation is unjust. I suspect that getting a visit ticket requires identifying oneself and running nonfree software.
Is anyone from Galicia reading this? If so, would you like to find out if there is a way around that?
I don't intend to visit those islands myself -- rather, I am concerned about government requirements that impose fundamentally unjust technology.
G20 countries previously agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, but the pledges they are now writing omit that crucial point.
If we don't do this, and fast, the mayhem of the early stages of global heating disaster will create what is euphemistically called "unrest" all around the world. People who can't peacefully find safe places to live or safe food to eat are likely to turn to violence before they die, and climate mayhem will dump plenty of people into that situation -- and new ones every year.
Climate disaster is hitting Brazil sharply. Three of the six biomes of Brazil are suffering unprecedented droughts unprecedented and fires. Life-shortening wood smoke has covered more than half of the country.
This is an example of what many other countries will experience in a few decades. (The US has had a small taste.)
If we don't overcome the planet roasters now, their activity is likely to bring civilization to an end.
In 1971, plutocratist extremist Lewis Powell proposed that the American business community use political power "aggressively and with determination — without embarrassment and without the reluctance." Nixon started this plan, and it has been gradually corrupting the US government ever since.
A fanatical Christian group is recruiting poll workers ready to try to rig the election for Jesus.
If the wrecker doesn't actually win, they will dogmatically declare that "fraud" and try to declare him the winner despite the votes.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Debt Ceiling Reform Act, which would deny Republican extremists the power to hold most federal spending hostage to demand passage of harmful laws.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Greg Palast: Texas Republicans are threatening to jail Houston's election officials for facilitating voter registration.
They fear that the Democrats will win Texas if disprivileged groups find it easy to vote.
Israeli soldiers blocked a vaccination aid convoy in Gaza for 8 hours and questioned some of the people working in it. The convoy was unable to carry out its aid mission. Fortunately, nobody in it was killed or wounded.
Australia is considering requiring social media platforms to check the age of each user. This article describes the mechanisms that might be used. It seems that each one will either require you to identify yourself to some other service that could keep track of everything, or require some sort of unalterable unique number from your computer. I expect they will demand something that users can't alter, which implies rejection of free operating systems (on a free operating systems, you could always set it to whatever value you like).
So I think this represents a plan to require that users either identify themselves, or run nonfree software (which will probably snoop on them), or both.
But I can't be completely sure of that — I have to make guesses about what some of these things mean.
There is a system that can verify your age to a web site while refusing to identify you to that web site: GNU Taler can be adapted to let you get tokens that you can use to prove you are over N years old, but that would not enable the site to identify you, and that won't allow the Taler site to know which sites you gave them to.
But that is not in the list of what Australia is considering.
A discarded bag of Cheetos messed up the ecosystem in Carlsbad Caverns. The balance in a cave is so sensitive that a small amount of food that does not belong there is enough to endanger it.
*Conservatives think giving children [gratis] lunch at school is socialism, but vast, powerful private monopolies are freedom.*
The more power a person has, the more society needs to regulate the use of that power to protect everyone else in it. Most of you, like me, don't have much power — though we may be able to influence others by convincing them — so we should have a lot of freedom, outside of actions that directly endanger others.
By contrast, a billionaire's power is very dangerous, so dangerous that we should regulate many things they could do. Even better, we should tax high income and high wealth enough that nobody can become or remain a billionaire.
There are other interesting points in the article.
*Reducing night light exposure may be a simple way to cut [type 2] diabetes risk.*
I wish the article gave some idea of how much light it takes to have a big effect.
*Pride or shame? British history is too complex to be seen in such glib terms.*
American history is likewise too complex to deserve, as a whole, any one feeling. Rather than argue over a choice of one single feeling overall, we can do better by identifying the parts of history that deserve pride, condemnation, or whatever else.
I would recommend condemnation, rather than personal shame, for the actions that we think were wrong.
Hindu-nationalist ideology in India, in the 1930s, drew lessons from its contemporary, Nazism. Comparing the two can help us identify the fascist essence that they have in common.
This suggests the lesson that the specific choice of majority trait which serves as an excuse to marginalize and dehumanize others is just a detail. Any trait can be used for this, if its members can get their hands on power to oppress the rest.
The trait need not even be borne by a majority, except in a somewhat democratic state which impedes any minority from getting the power to oppress others.
*Vaping damages young people’s lungs as much as smoking, study suggests.*
*DeSantis' election police questioned people who signed abortion petitions.*
This seems to be an attempt at intimidation.
MIT canceled its contract for reading Elsevier journals several years ago and has suffered no great inconvenience as a result. This is great news, because it suggests that more universities can cancel their contracts too.
MIT saved a substantial amount of money by doing this, but that is a secondary issue. What's important is that if more universities cancel these contracts, the result could be to wipe out the journal publishers or make them desperate enough to agree to be bought out for an affordable sum. After buying them out, the new copyright holder could make all the online copies libre.
Please join me in shunning the term "open access" and using the term "free scientific publishing" instead. The article linked just above explains why that term is better.
Analyzing this situation as an instance of a "collective action problem."
I think that one of government's missions is to fix these problems for the people. To do that, we need to elect representatives and officials who won't hesitate to say that some profitable business is a parasite and advocate laws to nullify its business model.
Digital game publishers have tried to twist copyright law to prohibit tools for you to change data in your running copy of a program, and now web site publishers to construe ad-blocking as copyright infringement. That would magically make them illegal without consulting the people's thoughts on the matter. (A confusion was corrected here on Sep 26.)
The article linked to above makes the deep mistake of using the term "IP" to refer both to copyright and to other disparate laws. That usage might leads you to suppose you could generalize about those laws and reach one single conclusion that would apply to all of them.
That is a path to confusion, because these laws are dissimilar in almost every point. If you want to think clearly, treat copyright as one issue, patents as another unrelated issue, trade secrets as another issue unrelated to those, trademarks as yet another issue unrelated to the other three, and likewise for plant variety monopolies, IC mask monopolies, design patents and publicity rights.
If you assume that any one of them is similar to any other, you're headed for error. Instead, do as I do: I think about just one law, I call it by its distinguishing name, and I never imagine that what I learn or conclude about it applies to any other law.
The planet roasters of the North Sea have warned that the proposed increase in the windfall profits tax levied on them would result in decreased amounts of drilling, and decreased extraction rate, over the coming decade.
The author of that article seems not to understand that that is part of the overall goal, which is to move from civilization-endangering fossil fuels to renewable generation.
All the arguments that planet roasters make for letting them extract more and more are based on burying this point. One of the things that disappoints me about The Guardian is that it continues to publish articles with this slant.
The French president, Macron, who is on the plutocratist right-wing, appointed a plutocratist right-wing prime minister, Bernier. There have been massive protests.
Bernier and Starmer seem to get along very well.
Arwa Mahdawi argues that it is now demonstrated that no amount or gravity of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians will make Biden act to restrain those atrocities. Sad to say, it looks like that is true.
However, I can't understand the fuss about Israeli soldiers who put on the underwear of Gazan women. They meant that as mockery, which is not nice, but mockery is as nothing compared to the atrocities committed against those same women (and almost all of Gaza). Those women (and their families) have been driven from their homes. Some have been killed, and more are being killed. Those soldiers have probably participated in the real atrocities.
A person who would get more outraged about making fun of women's underwear than about these violent atrocities would seem to lack a sense of proportion.
South Australia is considering a bill to require social media platforms to check the ages of users, which would have the effect of requiring them to demand that each user identify perself.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the ETHICS act so that they can't profit by buying and selling stocks that their votes will affect
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The charges against Pavel Durov are about chat groups, not encrypted conversations. It is a relief that this is not an effort to ban end-to-end encryption. However, I am somewhat concerned about the announced changes. Those who will be affected by them will include political dissidents as well as criminals. The phrase "upload media" is very vague, but if it means "upload videos", I fear that blocking this will do more to hamper the fight against crime (and particularly crime by agents of the state) than to hamper crime.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, an American, went to Nablus to join nonviolent protests against a fairly new Israeli colony (nominally unauthorized) near the town of Beita. Israelis fired guns to crush the protest and she was killed.
Some witnesses say a sniper shot her in the head. If so, that was murder.
Many Americans have gone to Israel and Palestine to protest against the apartheid system and its cruel expressions, and some have been killed doing so. One I recall was Rachel Corrie, killed in 2003 as she refused to leave a Palestinian house that the Israeli army intended to demolish.
The inquiry into the London tall building fire found that the system of construction regulations had been thoroughly corrupted. Companies sold flammable building materials, contemptuously violating safety standards and ignoring objections, and regulatory bodies had been nullified by a government whose priority was "efficiency" through "cutting red tape".
What it shows is that the red tape is necessary because the regulations are necessary. (Similar lessons taught the need for these regulations in the first place.)
The corporations add employees culpable should be prosecuted, but only the people can democratically reject the politicians that propose to "cut red tape" that is necessary for public safety.
*Greens to push Labour for wealth tax to fund [Britain's] public services.*
Some Republicans are giving lip service to supporting the interests of workers. Alas, it can't be more than lip service as long as they are dependent on support from barons of business.
Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All, by Mark Green and Ralph Nader, show the bullshitter's delusions and how they add up to denial of reality.
For example:
Harris downplays identity politics — instead of asking us to vote for the "first female president", she calls for defending women's rights.
In other words, she is concerned with the substance of feminism, not the identity aspect. That is admirable.
I don't directly care whether the US president is male, female, both, or neither. Those things are per personal matter, and don't affect the public. I care whether the US president stands for justice, rights of real persons (not fictitious ones), and helping the disadvantaged (which in many societies tends to include women).
HR McMaster, the corrupter's national security adviser for over a year, says he thinks Putin developed a hold over the corrupter by flattering him.
Unlike McMaster, I know about these matters only what I read in the news. But I got the feeling before and during the corrupter's term as president that he was making decisions to help Putin.
On the day that that article was published, I ran into Phil Zimmerman (author of PGP) and in conversation with him referred to the corrupter as "the Manchurian candidate". Zimmermann said he believed the corrupter was indeed the Manchurian candidate, in league with Putin.
*The Biden administration has accused Russia of carrying out a sustained disinformation campaign targeted at American voters and meant to influence the outcome of November’s presidential elections.*
This includes paying Americans to spread Putin's message. Others then repeat the disinformation without knowing Putin's role in convincing them to do so.
Two North Korean athletes face punishment for allowing themselves to be photographed at the Olympic Games together with South Korean athletes, after both pairs had received medals.
If the North Korean pair do not show sufficient contrition, they may be chosen as targets for the next Two Minute Hate.
Major advances in battery technology promise to eliminate any practical limit on how much electrical energy the world can store. With enough renewable generation capacity, and these new kinds of batteries, we will not need any fossil fuel or nuclear power for activities that can run on electricity.
That by itself can't enable eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions, but it can eliminate most of them.
Explaining why nuclear power plants are not the solution.
*Europe’s food and farming lobbies have recognized the need to eat less meat after hammering out a shared vision for the future of agriculture with green groups and other stakeholders.*
I expect they are proposing less change than is really needed, but if they mean this sincerely, it will be a step forward towards survival.
*Israel lays siege to Jenin as it stops food and water, blocks ambulances.*
These are massacre tactics. Israel is extending its system of atrocities in Gaza to the West Bank.
Phoenix has suffered 100 consecutive days of temperatures above 100°F.
That's not as bad as it will be in coming decades.
US citizens: call on the Senate to keep MAGA bigotry out of the National Defense Authorization Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on T-Mobile, GM, CVS, and Elevance to stop funding Republican harassment using fake criminal accusations to attack voting rights.
*[Large language models (please don't call them "AI") are] worse than humans in every way at summarizing documents and might actually create additional work for people, [an Australian] government trial of the technology has found.*
Prisons are famous for refusing prisoners the medical care they need. The medics deny the problem and accused the prisoner of making it up. It happens over and over that the prisoner is telling the truth and that the problem is not recognized as real until perse dies.
This problem includes privatized medical non-care in US prisons.
*Kirstie Allsopp let her 15-year-old son go on a 3-week train trip around Europe with his 16-year-old buddy — and found herself under investigation by child protective services.* Here is Lenore Skenazy's response.
When I was 15, I was not ready for an adventure like that, and I would have been too terrified to try it. Even at 25 I would have found it too daunting — sharing a ride to a science fiction convention was as much as I could handle then.
However, most people learn to deal with the non-academic and non-computing aspects of life much younger than I did.
Kamala Harris used to advocate abolishing the death penalty for federal crimes, but she doesn't talk about it any more.
*Musk posts fake image of Harris in communist garb.*
It is the usual right-wing super-exaggeration which equates any progressive policy to "communism". Plutocratists said the same thing about the New Deal. It shows that Musk has broken off his relationship with reality.
*State Republican parties [are nominating] [presidential] electors who were on fake slate in 2020.*
I hope there is a way to bar them from having any role in the coming election.
Many Republicans are organizing to defeat the fascist, saying they'd rather have a democracy-supporting president that has policies they disagree with than someone who intends to set up a dictatorship.
The bullshitter tends to get everything backwards. Is this right wing tactics (whatever you are doing, accuse the other side of doing it) or mere failing memory?
*[The wrecker] and allies plant seeds for "chaos and discord" if he loses, experts warn.*
Maduro has ordered the imprisonment of opposition candidate González. There will no doubt be a trial first, but its outcome is not in doubt.
Jeremy Corbyn and four other independent MPs, all rejected by Labour, have formed an alliance.
US citizens: Show your support to Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter for fighting and blocking monopolies.
Imagine if we had a president and congress that supported all of FDR's New Deal, not just a few parts.
US citizens: call on University administrators and boards to end repressive tactics against protests in support of Palestinians' rights.
I agree with the recommendation that we should not label ourselves or others as "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine". We should campaign for peace between those two nations and the safety of all.
*How China's internet police went from targeting bloggers to their followers.*
*UK suspends 30 arms export licenses to Israel after review. Foreign Office says review found "clear risk" that UK arms may be used in violation of humanitarian law.*
This will increase pressure on the US to do likewise, as it ought to.
*Which countries have banned or restricted arms sales to Israel?*
The German neo-Nazi party won the election in one state. One writer argues, *There’s only one way to keep Germany’s far-right AfD at bay. Address the concerns it exploits.*
*Scottish government raids £460m green energy fund for public sector pay rises.*
When funds for curbing climate mayhem are are treated as available for any pressing short-term need, climate mayhem is likely to proceed uncurbed.
Everyone: call on news networks to expose Project 2025's nightmare tax scheme.
*Florida’s department of environmental protection has fired a whistleblower who exposed and sank governor [DeMentis]'s secretive plan to pave over environmentally sensitive state parks and build lucrative hotels, golf courses and pickleball courts.*
One must suspect the head of that department of placing per boss, DeMentis, above per department's mission. Is perse a Republican, by any chance?
*South Korea’s constitutional court has ruled that part of the country’s climate law does not conform with protecting the constitutional rights of future generations [from global heating].*
Thames Water, one of the privatized water companies that Tories created to extract money from the public water supply, is pressuring for permission to increase water bills, saying that otherwise it will fail.
Privatization schemes are generally a way to transfer public money to private profit, and water supply privatization is no exception. If the company is indeed moribund, that is great news, because it means that nationalization will cost the government very little in so-called "compensation". (Really, these companies' past and present owners should pay compensation for the wealth they have extracted from the public.)
Once nationalization ensures that any additional funds put in will not be frittered away on private investors' profits, the government can put in what is needed and really get publish benefit for it.
The UK is again considering taxing electric cars based on the distance they travel.
In the short term, the right thing to do is not to tax the EVs, but rather to increase the petrol tax — that will pressure more and more drivers to get rid of those. But eventually it will be necessary to tax the use of the EVs somehow.
I think that will be reasonable to do at that time, provided the system to collect the tax does not track where each car goes. For instance, it could be based on a secure odometer that will be checked from time to time.
In fact, the UK already tracks every car, and the potential oppression of this tracking system was already realized many years ago when protesters on the way to a nonviolent protest were preemptively stopped specifically to sabotage the protest.
Of course, the repression that the UK aim at nonviolent protesters has been greatly increased since then. I expect any new UK systems of transportation to be designed for increased surveillance — until climate mayhem makes those systems cease to function at all.
The bullshitter said he is in favor of legalizing marijuana. What should we think of that?
I have advocated legalization of marijuana for many years, so in general I am glad when others advocate it too. I hope the referendum to legalize marijuana in Florida wins. If the bullshitter influences some people to vote for it, that will be a good thing.
However. the bullshitter's statement that he supports that measure should not alter our disgust for him. We know that he will change his opinions from one day to the next, for no reason except political manipulation. That today he has a new opinion that agrees with us should not mislead us about what he is at heart.
The shantytown of Mudd, in the Bahamas, was flattened or washed away by the most powerful hurricane ever seen there. Five years later, the survivors can't even find land to build a permanent shantytown on.
They are like homeless people in the US, building encampments that get washed away by the cruelty of the state.
*In an unheroic age, Putin, Trump and Netanyahu are sick parodies of great men.*
The Indian invention of positional numeration, and zero, transformed mathematics world-wide, but in the west we have incorrectly attributed it to Arabs.
It should be noted that the ancient Maya used a similar system to write numbers, except with base 20, even earlier.
Governor DeMentis made a proposal to pave over large parts of Florida state parks, and it has provoked ridicule from prominent Republicans.
Tell Kroger's to stop trying to identify all its customers through facial recognition.
I edited my letter to say that trying to identify each customers is unjust even aside from the use of that information for precision gouging.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. I presume you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJS plugin.
I have done the first 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 some of them.
To start, in the personal information in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end. Then 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Everyone: call on ABC to expose the right-wing extremist's connection to Project 2025 in the coming presidential debate.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript's or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the first 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 some of them.
To start, in the personal information in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax.
You can be sure that billionaires are phoning those same elected officials on the other side.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Brazil has banned ex-Twitter for spreading propaganda in favor of the extreme right-wing ex-president Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro launched an attack against the main government buildings in Brazilia after Lula was elected president again.
I recognize people's right to advocate right-wing political views, even though (as you can see from years of postings in this site) I loathe those views. However, the state should not hold out its neck for an enormous business to cut, and businesses are not entitled to human rights.
Aside from the owner's vicious politics, ex-Twitter is unjust to each and every user by requiring per to run nonfree software to access it. The article says that many users have switched to Bluesky. Is it possible to use Bluesky without running any nonfree software?
Strictly speaking, the ban is because ex-Twitter tried to evade legal responsibility by ceasing to operate in Brazil and not appointing any legal representative. Each company doing business in Brazil is required to have a representative, whom I believe has the job of receiving summonses to the company. Must seems to have thought to make legal action against ex-Twitter impossible by not appointing one.
A tubal ligation does not guarantee you won't get pregnant.
Accusations that HAMAS physically harms its hostages seem to be false. *Freed Israeli captive Noa Argamani says she was wounded by Israel, not Hamas.*
Being held hostage is in itself a form of mistreatment, but we should not confuse that with physical mistreatment.
Vance talks a lot of adoration for unions, but his votes have been to weaken and undermine them.
The UK's railroad minister, in his previous job, threatened to deny contracts arbitrarily to an engineering company unless it bullied a worker into ceasing to raise safety concerns. In response, the company fired him.
I am not competent to judge the validity of those safety concerns. What is clear is that gagging a qualified person who reports safety concerns, rather than investigating them properly, is Boeing-like and is a failure of responsibility to passengers and others.
I think such conduct ought to be a crime.
The Australian fossil fuel companies claim that Australia has been too slow to build more renewable generation and therefore needs to develop new gas fields.
Why has Australia gone too slowly in building new renewable generation? Because the previous government was controlled by global heating denialists and adopted planet-roaster policies -- which included resisting building renewable generation.
If the government tolerates that as am excuse to allow more gas extraction development, it will lock the country into "solving" the problem of failure to curb global heating by boosting global heating.
Another way to delay curbing global heating is by spending billions on fantasy solutions that have never been shown to work. For instance, carbon capture and storage. If that reduces what's available for the cheap and effective solutions, it gives the fossil fuel barons what they want.
*How Exxon chases billions in US subsidies for a ‘climate solution’ that helps it drill more oil.*
A local man saved Lafourche Parish from Hurricane Ida by building a 18-foot levee instead of the wider 13-foot levee that the US government was going to build.
Each choice of design would have represented a bet about what future storms would be like. Hurricane Ida's waves were 17 feet tall. I expect that a broader 18-foot levee could have been built, if it was clear that would be needed, but it wasn't.
Maybe the federal government should prepare for stronger hurricanes, since that seems to be what is coming. That could help for some decades. But if we don't curb global heating, any levee will eventually fail, because sea-level rise will overcome it.
US air carriers lobbied quietly and secretly against an EU plan to require carriers to better measure the amounts of various pollution substances they emit into the air (and the amount of greenhouse effect of each one).
Measuring these better can't hurt, but using them to calibrate an emissions trading program is misguided. We have seen that emissions trading is ineffective for reducing emissions, because it is too easy to game the system or cheat. By going in that direction, the EU is caving into business at the outset.
By imposing a tax on emissions, a government offers no easy way to game the system, and cheating would constitute tax evasion -- punishable by imprisonment.
A multiply handicapped Briton gets so little support that he can't afford the cost of charging his wheelchair and running the lift to get in and out of his home.
The UK is moving towards canceling some recently issued oil licenses, based on questioning their validity.
Finally a step in the right direction.
The same factors that undermined the US response to Covid-19 are having the same effect on the US response to bird flu.
Bird flu is a pandemic for birds and could cause extinctions and damage agriculture. At present it is not a big direct danger to humans, but it has the potential to mutate and become so.
*UK MPs urged to give up freebies from tobacco, alcohol and junk food firms.*
It is illegal for a member of the US Congress to accept such gifts. The UK should have a comparable prohibition.
(satire) *Bemoaning the terrible course conditions he encountered while visiting the military burial site, Donald Trump called out Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday for its hazard-filled fairways.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
According to Americans for Financial Reform, the Health over Wealth bill would make these positive requirements:
I am in favor of each of them, but this approach is nibbling around the edges of a large problem which applies to many fields, including retail sales and home rentals. We should address the whole problem fully.
So I urge we either (1) prohibit private equity organizations from owning medical facilities or practices, or (2) subject private equity organizations to the same SEC rules as public equity corporations.
Any requirements of the Health above Wealth Act that do not currently exist for public corporations should be imposed on all of them.
The level of fluoride that people add to tap water is safe, but there are places where tap water naturally has a higher level, and that level is associated with neurological damage.
Petaluma, California, has introduced a municipal system of multi-use coffee cups. You drop the cup in a bin when you're done with it. It gets cleaned and delivered again to a coffee shop.
The UK has sentenced a bigot to almost three years in prison for shouting insults -- and nothing else.
He received the same sentence as another rioter who kicked and threw bottles. There is evidently injustice here. Worse than that, to convict people for insults -- even insults that are foolish and false right-wing nonsense -- tramples freedom of speech.
Some US employers are getting warnings in advance when an OSHA inspection is coming. Congress is investigating.
Israelis held massive protests and called a general strike demanding that Netanyahu make a deal with HAMAS to get the hostages back.
That is not what I would demand from him. I would demand, rather, that he respect and protect the lives of Palestinian civilians and cease to make war in ways that kill or oppress them.
The US has put sanctions on an organization that supports the violent "settlers"' colonial activity, and its leader.
They certainly deserve this punishment, but the US is moving far too slowly. If Biden want this to significantly restrain Israel's brutality before the election, he had better move faster.
Texas has established a parallel set of business courts, with judges that have no effective independence and have been chosen for partiality to oil companies.
*Why the Media Won't Report the Truth About [the bully/corrupter].*
Ralph Nader says that giving the bully a taste of his own medicine, in the form of nasty epithets, can be very effective.
Since 2016 I have refused to refer to the bully by his name, only by various epithets. I originally did this to deny that narcissist the pleasure he derives from others' use of his name. You can join in using my names for him, or do this your own way.
The EU has rejected Maduro's stolen election as illegitimate.
Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal and state elections in the US, but cities can authorize them to vote in municipal elections. A right-wing campaign aims to amend state constitutions to prevent that.
Some places in Europe permit non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. The idea shocked me at first, but after thinking further I decided it might be a good idea. In any case, there is no reason for state governments to intervene against it. We can leave it to each local government.
China is playing the many factions in Burma against each other in an effort to increase its power over all of them. It is not clear that the rest of the world has influence to aim for a stable peace, or what that peace should look like.
Canada's wildfires in 2023 released more CO2 than any country other than China, India and the United States.
A judge dismissed charges against the thugs that killed Breonna Taylor, by putting the blame for her death on her boyfriend. He shot at the thugs because they had not identified themselves as official thugs, so he thought they were criminals breaking into his house.
Since his actions were legitimate given his state of knowledge, they cannot make him culpable for consequences. And if the thugs falsified a warrant to give themselves an excuse, no circumstances can possibly justify that.
Everyone: call on media executives to follow standards of good journalism that will avoid spreading hate.
*Uber and Lyft drivers in Nashville vote to strike after forming a union.*
Those companies exploit workers so I hope they win some better treatment. If that increases the prices of rides from Uber and Lyft, that will be good as well, since it will improve the availability of real taxis that you can ride anonymously without carrying a snoop-phone.
But I don't expect that the drivers will demand anything for the freedom and anonymity of passengers, so I will continue to consider Uber and Lyft completely unacceptable. As far as I am concerned, this is a fight to the very end. See uber.html for why I refuse to enter an Uber car even if someone else orders it.
In the US: call on AT&T to negotiate in good faith with the union workers that are now striking.
An associate of the bully turned his bullying on the UK, threatening enormous punishment if it should decide to stop delivering arms to Israel.
It makes sense to try to pressure Biden and Harris to take a stand and pressure Israel to stop the killing in Gaza. But threatening to stand aside and maybe help the bully become president again is advocating self-mutilation.
Columbia University has bowed to threats from right-wing extremists in Congress by agreeing to rush to judgment of various students who were accused of participating in protests on campus.
The university administration is making a cowardly surrender to fanatics who do not believe in trials or justice — exactly the sort of enemies that a loyal American should resist.
US citizens: Elon Musk and other billionaire CEOs have too much power. Call on Congress to Tax the ultra-wealthy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the US military to make no more contracts with Musk's companies.
I don't know whether the executive branch to has the authority to make this decision arbitrarily. However, it is surely possible in principle to pass a law to impose a suitable morally valid criterion. If it excludes some companies in addition, for the same reason, that would not be a bad thing.
*WHO delivers 1.2m polio vaccine doses to Gaza as pauses in fighting agreed.*
The increasing frequency of passenger flights hit by severe turbulence might be a consequence of global heating effects. If so, it is likely to increase further. No one knows how bad it might get in a few decades. However, I suspect it will not be as big a problem as the likely food shortages, spreading tropical diseases, and deaths from heat.
*A Horrid History of Sugar.* For instance, Indian sugar farm workers today are effectively slaves, as they are permanently in debt.
US citizens: call on state governments to pass Tim Walz's Free Lunch For Kids Program in every state.
Please find your state governor's phone number at USA.gov
*Major publishers sue Florida over "unconstitutional" school book ban.*
The ban is disgusting, but the article does not explain how it violates the US or the Florida constitution. I think the extreme court will find an excuse to uphold it.
The federal government and 16 states have joined as friends of the court in suing Georgia for firing a teacher for reading a banned book aloud in class.
When the corrupter tried to use Arlington National Cemetery to film a political message, which is not allowed, it showed his contempt for the United States. His reaction when officials told him this was not allowed showed his contempt for anyone that gets in his way.
I do not worship the military as the article suggests we should. Armed force can be used for good or for bad. But the rule that the corrupter tried to break is a wise one.
*Almost half of all fish species and 10% of mammals rely on rivers and lakes for survival but a combination of [global heating effects] and pollution is threatening their existence.*
Salmon escaping from fish farms in Norway are overwhelming the wild salmon population and could wipe it out.
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