Urgent: Greyhound aiding deportation thugs
27 June 2018
In the US: tell Greyhound to stop aiding the US deportation thugs.
Fracking in Australia
27 June 2018
Fracking in northern Australia would immediately destroy Australia's Paris treaty greenhouse gas emissions. Even a single new gas field is too much.
Censoring poems and songs
27 June 2018
Since we do not prohibit movies from showing murders with guns and knives, what justification can there be for censoring poems and songs that do likewise?
Controls on communication
27 June 2018
"The clamour in the west is for more controls on those who use the internet for communications, but little control of governments that use it for surveillance."
Number of separated minors
27 June 2018
US cruelty officials sadists claim that they have kept track of all 2053 minors separated from their families.
If that is really true (who knows?), I hope it is all of them. The figure I have seen published is 2300 minors taken from their families.
In any case, these officials have the responsibility to reunite all of the families, and quickly.
News and political polemics
27 June 2018
Facebook finds it has trouble separating news from political polemics.
Charging extra for payment
27 June 2018
The UK forbade stores to charge extra for paying with a bank card. Since then, banks started charging stores more for the use of a card.
Does the UK allow stores to offer a discount for paying in cash?
Denying entry to refugee ship
27 June 2018
Italy is denying entry to another ship carrying refugees, and more refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean.
FBI questioning activists
27 June 2018
The FBI Is Using Unvetted, Right-Wing Blacklists to Question Activists About Their Support for Palestine.
Repression of Gypsies
27 June 2018
Gypsies have suffered repression and atrocities in Europe for 500 years.
Koch brothers campaign
27 June 2018
The Koch brothers are funding a campaign against investing in public transit in the US.
Injustice based on suspicions
26 June 2018
Immigrants in the US face injustice at every stage of deportation proceedings based on suspicions of gang membership that are often irrational and based on vague nothing.
Zimbabwe opposition
26 June 2018
Zimbabwe Opposition Fears Crackdown after Election Rally Bombing.
Protest in London for new referendum
26 June 2018
100,000 people marched in London to demand a new referendum about whether to continue leaving the EU.
It disappoints me greatly that most of the arguments for remaining in the EU or for leaving are based on trickle-down and "free trade".
Threat of prison for cartoonist's work
26 June 2018
Malaysian cartoonist Zunar feels nostalgia for Razak's repeated attempts to imprison him for his work.
US immigration prison
26 June 2018
Arnovis Guidos Portillo was deported to El Salvador without getting a chance to apply for asylum. Now he can't get his daughter out of US immigration prison.
Gangs in El Salvador are so menacing that inhabitants threatened have to flee, no matter what the US might do to them.
I wonder if there is any way to set up a safe refuge in a part of El Salvador.
Guerrilla war in South Sudan
26 June 2018
South Sudan has settled down into a state of permanent guerrilla war against many splintered guerrilla groups.
All these groups, including the state, fight for nothing but the advancement of their own leaders.
Coral reefs
26 June 2018
Rising sea level will kill coral reefs, because corals can't grow fast enough to stay near the surface.
Too much CO2 in the water will inevitably kill corals. The temperature can also kill them. So it seems that coral has little chance of surviving to the end of this century.
A billion people depend on marine resources for their food. In a few decades it could be a billion and a half. Thus, the loss of most of those resources could easily kill a billion people.
They won't all die directly from hunger. Many of them will die in wars over control of the dwindling marine resources. These wars will be futile, in that victory will at most delay the death of the victors.
If they start sooner, and fight fossil fuel extraction and use, they might avert much of the disaster. However, if they don't limit their populations, then barring some unforeseeable event they will reach the starvation point sooner or later.
Student loan debts
26 June 2018
A Movement Emerges to Free Former Students from Crushing Loan Debts.
Until Dubya was president, Americans could get rid of unpayable student loans through personal bankruptcy. We should make that possible again.
Puerto Rico serves creditors
26 June 2018
Puerto Rico's imposed nondemocratic unofficial government has responded to last summer's hurricane by planning to extract some of the recovery funds for the vampires (creditors) they serve.
The imposed unofficial government gives its members big salaries while cutting the wages of real workers.
White-supremacists
26 June 2018
An ex-conservative who lives with white-supremacist parents in a white-supremacist town says that what they want is to dominate others, and they don't think in terms of reasons.
The writer feels despair, feels that there is no chance of resisting these power-crazed bullies who intimidate others into surrender where they get a chance. I can't say that is impossible, but I think that the overall situation in the US is not as bad as it looks from where he sits.
Dishonesty of anti-abortion groups
26 June 2018
Anti-abortion groups including "Focus on the Family" exposed the dishonesty of their concern for families by refusing to criticize their point man for taking children and teenagers away from their parents.
They don't criticize the substitute policy, indefinite imprisonment of families, either.
Saboteur of commerce
26 June 2018
The saboteur of commerce faces an ethics complaint about insider trading, a crime.
Crushing social relationships
26 June 2018
The way to make pliant, craven people is to crush social relationships. Several decades of various US policies have led Americans quite a ways down that road (see the book Bowling Alone), but the bully is rushing us further along.
Oil train derails in Iowa
26 June 2018
An oil train derailed in Iowa because tracks were flooded. Oil leaked into the water and has flowed downstream to the state capital, Des Moines.
The oil may get into the wells that provide water for Des Moines and various river towns, or it may not. It may get into them after a long time. If it does, the wells could remain polluted for a long time.
Ethiopa unblocks access to news web sites
26 June 2018
Ethiopia has unblocked access to several news web sites that it blocked in the past.
USGS scientists gagged
26 June 2018
The saboteurs have forbidden scientists at the USGS from talking with the press.
Urgent: Immigration plans
26 June 2018
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress not to fund the bully's immigration plans.
Cell phone tracking
26 June 2018
The Supreme Court decision about cell phone location tracking was written in a very narrow way. It doesn't directly affect any other surveillance cases.
Elections in Turkey
26 June 2018
Opposition leader Selahattin Demirtaş, campaigning from jail, says that no fair election is possible in Turkey given its repression of opposition.
Jogging into the US
26 June 2018
A visitor to Canada was jogging along the beach and without any notification found herself in the US. The US border thugs jailed her for two weeks, supposedly to make doubly sure she was not an unauthorized visitor to Canada.
That "reason" is no reason at all, since it wasn't necessary to do. The US thugs could have handed her over to a Canadian border post, which could have checked this immediately.
I am sure the reason for this policy, at some level, is a desire to cause pain — rationalized somehow, of course.
Cedella, please don't ask to be "allowed" into the US. Insist instead on an apology!
Minors in military bases
26 June 2018
The torturer told US military bases to get ready to hold 20,000 minors as prisoners.
This would make it especially difficult for protesters to show those prisoners any sort of support. They would have to protest at the edge of the base, far away from anyone.
Another step in making protest useless and thus squishing democracy.
Unsurpassed power trip
26 June 2018
Ralph Nader: The Unsurpassed Power Trip by an Insuperable Control Freak.
Relatives as hostages
26 June 2018
Tories propose to put whole families on the street if one person in the family is a gang member.
This would be self-defeating, since the whole family would be forced to turn to some sort of crime, but it's worse than that: it is fundamentally unjust to use people as hostages for their relatives.
The US has already done things like this.
Methane leaks
26 June 2018
Measured methane leaks exceed the EPA's estimate of methane leaks by about 60%.
Since methane contributes heavily to global heating for the next few decades, this has a big effect.
Better EPA regulations could make fossil fuel companies greatly reduce leaks, but if they spent the money to do that they might not make a profit. So they tell the EPA not to bother them.
Reminder to journalists
26 June 2018
The Onion: Sarah Huckabee Sanders reminded journalists Friday that children under the age of 14 are unable to experience pain.
New UK exams
26 June 2018
The UK's new extremely difficult one-time exams for 16-year-olds made many of them sick with stress.
Perhaps they could help themselves cope with this stress by holding protests after and between exams. They could hang Mr Gove in effigy, for instance. If crowds of students did this all across the UK, it could have a political effect.
Students should not limit their condemnation to one single Tory minister. The whole Tory party deserves the blame.
The exhilaration of the protest could also help them feel less hurt by the stress.
Denying food stamps
26 June 2018
The SCROTUS farm bill would deny food stamps to 2 million people.
Republicans apparently hope that desperate poor people won't be able to struggle to vote.
Pruitt hiding communications
26 June 2018
Saboteur Pruitt appears to be illegally hiding his official communications from FOIA requests.
Refugees to the US
26 June 2018
The number of refugees moving to the US since the 1990s is partly due to the business-supremacy treaties that the US has pushed onto Mexico and Central America.
Those coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are also partly caused by US-imposed dictatorship and military coups.
Censorship in Hungary
25 June 2018
Censorship in repressive Hungary now aims to ban a theater production because it has a homosexual protagonist.
China making abortions harder to get
25 June 2018
China is making abortions harder to get, based on the misguided idea that a low birth rate is some sort of problem.
When the population is decreasing, the working adults have more to do to take care of old people, and less to do to take care of children. It works out. Robots can do part of the job. It will be ok.
Stopping the troll
25 June 2018
"Dear Europe, if you want stop Trump, sanction his companies."
Ruling on cell phone records
25 June 2018
The Supreme Court ruled that thugs must get a warrant to access people's cell phone records over an extended period of time.
I fear this means they are allowed to find where a person is located momentarily.
This is still a step forward, but does the ruling apply to the FBI? Snowden informed us that some phone companies were telling the FBI about every long distance phone call they made.
Officials hiding from asylum-seekers
25 June 2018
Asylum-seekers are compelled to cross the US border to find an official to present their case for asylum to, since the officials are hiding from them.
The article also says that the border thugs lie to parents, basically like gangsters, saying "your children will be back in a few days."
Imprisonment of border-crossers
25 June 2018
Democrats have proposed a bill to end the imprisonment of all border-crossers, as well as the separation of their families.
Cruelty of ICE
25 June 2018
ICE tends naturally to cruelty because it was created as part of the Department of Harshness and Sadism. We ought to abolish it.
Tesla suing whistleblower
25 June 2018
A whistleblower criticized Tesla for some sort of problems (I am not sure what), and Tesla is suing him.
It appears that Tesla falsely accused him of planning sabotage. In the conversation quoted, Musk tries to construe his statement as a threat, but that is clearly incorrect.
Thugs fire machine guns at city
25 June 2018
Brazilian thugs in a helicopter fired machine guns at a city and killed a teenager as well as perhaps others.
Canada secretly uses US blacklist
25 June 2018
Canada secretly denies people entry at its borders using a blacklist maintained by the US.
Discouraging blacks from voting
25 June 2018
Virginia legislators have a clever plan to discourage many blacks from voting.
Indifference to suffering and injustice
25 June 2018
If you let yourself become indifferent to suffering and injustice, the results are bad for you as well as for the world.
Cracking down on sexual harassment
25 June 2018
The Onion: Onion Social announced Wednesday that it intends to crack down on sexual harassment by banning women from the platform.
Microsoft to help US deportation thugs
25 June 2018
Microsoft is helping the US deportation thugs with face recognition.
Helping any government agency do face recognition ought to get any company on everyone's boycott list.
Business "security" automation
25 June 2018
When a company's business "security" automation spuriously believes that a worker is fired, the human staff can't override it.
I wonder what would happen if a cracker marked every worker (including the executives) as fired.
Puerto Rico public schools
25 June 2018
Puerto Rico is closing 25% of its public schools. It can't afford to run them while feeding the hungry banksters.
Child prisoners
25 June 2018
To "protect" child prisoners, the immigration thugs say visiting members of Congress are not allowed to photograph them or talk with them. Did they get this inspiration from the Guantanamo prison?
Furthermore, if they have to arrange a visit two weeks in advance, the thugs could move all the prisoners to some other prison camp in the mean time. Federal prisons often move prisoners around repeatedly for no evident reason, perhaps to interfere with their contact with their lawyers and relatives.
US ocean protection policy cancelled
25 June 2018
AT&T-sponsored California state rep
25 June 2018
An AT&T-sponsored California state representative has ruined the state's network neutrality bill.
Here's more detail of what he did.
Border-crossers' children
25 June 2018
The sadist changed his mind; he says future border-crossers' children will now be imprisoned with their families.
The actual executive order is unclear and somewhat indirect, so we can't be sure which parts will be enforced.
Lawyers 'Not Confident' Family Separations Will End.
Supposing the border thugs do stop taking children away from their parents, the US will no longer inflict this one extra fillip of cruelty. However, the hostage-taker's many other immigration cruelties continue: