Richard Stallman's Political Notes: Recent Episodes
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Israelitroopsshot 37 Palestinians who were trying to collect some food.
Similar incidents have been happening daily.
A bipartisan resolution in Congress aims toinvokethe War Powers Act to stop the bully from adding the US toIsrael's attacks on Iran.
Israel "ordered" people to"evacuate"a large part of Tehran, its capital city. It said that it wouldattack "military infrastructure", but in fact bombs and missiles arefalling on civilian markets.
[The bully]brushesoff US intel reports on Iran to align himself with Israel.
Millions of Iranians hate their government, but that doesn't mean theydon't love their country. The attacks by Israel are just the thing tomake them unite (at least for the while). Threats from the US willmake Iranians hate the US and look for more ways to support Russia.
Hmm, maybe the bully is still trying to serve Putin.
The UK government seems to havesoldits soul to nuclear power, andcites arguments based on assuming the habitual problems of nuclearpower will inexplicably not happen this time.
Explaining howthe UK could take over the incompetent and corruptwater companies without giving them to any other companies, andwithout paying a ransom to anyone.
About the campaignpressuring Target to bring back some of supportfor the minority groups that face unequal treatment by society.
An ecologically important protected wetland in Australia has beenattackedby a toxic algae bloom, brought about by human-caused globalheating and pollution. The bloom is likely to repeat whenever thehigh temperatures repeat.
Lawful protesters should be free to cover their faces, and in the US,the Supreme Court hasrecognizedtheir right to do so.
The article contrasts lawful protest with civil disobedience.However, it is an obvious error to categorized whistleblowing as akind of civil disobedience. Whistleblowing is not symbolicdisobedience, it is direct action.
Ukrainian soldier Maksym Butkevych, captured by thePutin forces andrecently exchanged,describedthe beatings, threats and lies dishedout by the Putin forcesguards during his two years of captivity.
The proposedMy Body, My Data Act would prohibit "collecting, using,retaining or disclosing information about someone’s reproductivehealth," except for a "specific request".Because of the words "collecting" and "retaining", this might dosome real good.Texascan't use a subpoena retroactively to make asystem collect or retain data that it did not collect or did notretain.
It would be crucial to make sure that offer the option of storingthe data solely on the device. If the only mode of operation that anapp offers is to store the data in some cloudy server, and the userasks the app to do anything with per data, that might create aloophole: asking the app to do anything might be construed as an"explicit request" for the app/server to collect the data and retainit.
Other dark patters or manipulative money saving offers might alsobe used to manipulate people into making the poisonous "request".
As the Texas example shows, reproductive health data is not the onlydata that can be used for faith-based repression of abortion, birth control andmedicine. Locationdata can serve the same unjust purpose. The requirementsfor collecting or retaining location records must be made bulletproofagainst fanatical officials willing to distort the truth or lie outright.
The fascist-in-waiting has prepared for years to create a test caseof usingthe military to crush peaceful protests.Defending democracy will require careful tactics to avoid giving hima bogus excuse which he can then distort.
Israeli governmentissuing"illegal" orders that must not be obeyed, say IDFintelligence officers.
Unlike the usual position of Israeli opposition to the war, based onthe wishto ransom the Israeli hostages soon,this opposition is basedon recognizing the right to life of Palestinians. The "illegalorders" are illegal because they are orders to kill innocentPalestinians, with no military justification — and that makes themwar crimes.
And they are being presented by prestigious army officers who back uptheir criticism with defiance — refusing to obey those illegalorders.
This resistance has the potential to shake the Netanyahu government.I hope so.
To ensure Americans get less help in coping with disasters,the wreckerplansto abolish FEMA and take direct White Housecontrol over the distribution of aid.
Giving the job to people he has personally appointedwill also cause confusion that will surely reduce what really gets done.
Orhan Pamuk: I've never seen such clampdowns in Istanbul. Turkey'sdemocracy is fightingfor its life.
The country's most popular politician has been jailed, to stophim from running for president and perhaps defeating Erdoğan.Other dirty tricks are being used to stop him from running.
Even metro stations, buses and car travel in İstanbul are restricted,as is entry to the city, to make protests difficult.
When we see the bully'sthugsbeating up members of Congress, we haveto wonder whether the federal courts will be able to protect democracyeffectively from the bullyif he does the sort of things Erdoğan does.
Heating homes and water is more efficient when done in Stockholm bymunicipalsystems serving neighborhoods.
Organized groups of Muslims in Australia are pressuring for aunifieddefinition of racism (or bigotry),so as to block the push for an unjust criterion for antisemitism.
Bravo! This is an important issue, and they have chosen the rightdirection for solving it.
Side issue:
The word "racism" means prejudice based on race. A prejudice based onreligion, sex, gender, national origin, or caste, is not racism. Itis a similar moral issue, and may be equally unjust, but it doesn'tfit into the word "racism".
Let's not adopt terminology that builds confusion into the moralfoundation of our views. When we want to reject bigotry whether basedon race or not, let's use the broader word "bigotry".
CDCofficial in charge of Covid data resigns ahead of vaccinemeeting. … She does not have confidence data will be use[d] tomake "evidence-based vaccine policy decisions."
Resigning from an official position makes no impression onmagats.They do not care about the capacity to judge carefully, based onevidence, a question they prefer to judge based on emotion alone, sothe government's loss of that capacity does not strike them assignificant.
It would be more effective to stay in the position and criticizevociferously whenever magatofficials. Eventually they will fire you,and your reproach will win more attention.
California billproposesmisdemeanor for officers who cover theirface on duty.
I would expect there to be an exception for undercover cops thatinfiltrate criminal activities. That activity is useful. But it willbe a challenge to draw up a rule to distinguish legitimate undercoverinvestigation from anonymous snatches.
- A [UK] scheme aiming to turn children arrested for violence awayfrom crime has claimedstaggering success, with up to nine out of10 diverted from further offending, according to a report.*
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Higher Wages forAmerican Workers Act, which would increase the federal minimum wageto $15 per hour.
If you phone, please spread the word!Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
John Maynard tells Guardian theUSmust consider new rules on bettingads as operators lobby against federal crackdown.
North Carolina parents allowed their children to walk to a store.One was killed in an unlikely accident; now they arethreatenedwith many years in jail.
[The wrecker]claims [foreign flags at LA protests] signify a"foreign invasion" but experts say they'reflownby US citizensproud of their heritage.
The mainstream media [have]enabled[the bully's] war on universities.For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic overleftists on campus while failing to report on the right [wing]'sassault.
RFK jr has firedeveryone on the CDC's Advisory Committee onImmunization Practices and appointed Antivaxxers to it.
Many medical and scientific organizations in the US make a practice ofrelying on the recommendations of such advisory panels. Now that thisone has been rendered incompetent, those organizations may find thatinstitutional inertia stands in the way of recognizing that they are nolonger fit for such trust. Those that are prepared to recognize thisencounter another problem: who else can they trust instead?
Deportation thugslurked next to an elementary school, apparently usingthe school children asbaitto arrest their parents.One of their cars collided with another vehicle whose driver was thentaken away in an ambulance.
Kenyan thugsappearto have arrested and then killed Albert Ojwang formaking accusations against one of the high officials of thethugs.Now that official and some otherthugsare being investigated for this.
Nine protesters in LA arebeingprosecuted for supposed fights withofficial thugs,which appears not to have occurred at all.
It is not unusual for officialthugsto bear false witness so as toget someone unjustly punished. Solidarity in lying is part of theirculture, so when one does it, the rest know they are expected to lieto support it.
I don't have a basis to be certain that all nine of those protestersare victims of lies and that all the accusations are false. What Iwill say is that we should not trust the word of officialthugs aboutsuch accusations.
A historicalsurvey concludes that 3.5% of the population, engaged steadilyin nonviolent activism to change the government, achieve that goal.
The survey also found that in general nonviolent activism isconsiderably more effective than armed resistance.
- Four years after the January 6 attack, the president is toying withinvokingthe Insurrection Act to respond to a conflict he provoked.*
Some Republicans Opposed Using Troops Against Protests in 2020. Now They’re Marching in Lockstep.
Brazil to auctionoil exploration rights months before hosting Cop30.
When Lula was president before, he was a strong champion of curbingglobal heating.Sad to say, this seems to have changed. Even worse,the change seems to be a world-wide pattern, that governments aredropping most of the efforts they did make to save civilization andnature from global heating.
Texas is tryingto enforce its law that treats a fetus or embryo as aperson, by murder charges against someone who gave a pregnant woman anabortion drug.
After surrenderingto political censorship and control, should Columbiabe called a university?
The wreckerclaimsto have abolished California's authorization to imposespecial stricter standards on new cars.
Australian Alistair Kitchen wassentback to Australia when he arrivedin the US. Agents told him the reason for interrogating him wasdue to his writings about protests against Israel's war crimes in Gaza, whichhe had witnessed shortly before his 2024 graduation from Columbia university.
Most of what the agents did would have been reasonable and not cruel,if they had done it for a real reason. What was wrong was that theydid it to someone based on per nonviolent exercise of constitutionalrights. That is totally offensive to the United States and itsConstitution.
Greenpeace lost — not because it did something wrong but because it wasdenieda fair trial.
US citizens: call on Congress to Stop[the wrecker]'sAuthoritarianTroop Deployment.
The line between military and civilian government is among thecritical protections for democracy.
(satire) Trump Orders All Children Born Under Biden To Be RenamedAfterConfederate Generals.
A man who said he was a deportationthugtied up a sales clerk andtook $1000 in cash.
The article asserts that he was an impostor and not a real deportationthug.Perhaps so — but can anyone verify that? Can we be sure hewasn't an authentic deportation thug?
Commercial "period tracker" apps, which connect to servers, collectusers personal data and then store them in the servers for others toobtain.
A bizarre alternative has been proposed:governmentswould run these appsand store the data in their own servers.
One might wish we could trust those governments not to use that dataagainst the users who entered them — but if the government is takenover by right-wing fanatics, it will use those data in all thenastiest ways — including punishing abortion.
The real solution to this problem is to keep the data encrypted on your owncomputer. But in order for users to rationally trust it, it needs to be freesoftware, so that no one is in a position to corrupt the program.
The deportation thugsare practicing deceit and cruelty — for instance,tricking people intosigningpapers that accept deportation.
A federal judge hastemporarilyblocked enforcementof the executive order to reject grant applications that talkabout DEI or mention the existence of trans people.
The wreckeris planning to labelUS greenhouse emissions from powerplants as "not significant", showing his usual disregard for facts,as an excuse to permit increasing them.
[The Big Bad Bill] isbuilton falsehoods about low-income families.
Poor people don't make bad decisions out of laziness. They do itout of high levels of stress in their lives.
- As the Earth heats up, theamountof algae in our waterways is rapidlyincreasing, transforming the colour of lakes and killing entireecosystems.*
Several massive human outputs combine to cause algae blooms,and human economic growth increases all of them.
What Chicagodoes to protect its residents from deportation.
I must rebuke the article's author for saying thatthe bullshitter hasworked to fulfill campaign pledges to carry out mass deportationsafter promising to remove "millions". Yes, he said that, but he hasno sense of obligation to carry out promises, whether campaignpromises or any other kind.
He sticks to this line of attack because he thinks it is an effectivestrategy for reducing the US to submission. Part of the reason forthat is that magatsare mad for it. That has a superficial partialresemblance to "carrying out a promise," but they are fundamentallydifferent.
Despite nations’ pledges at Cop28 a year ago, the burning of coal,oil andgas continued to rise in 2024.
In other words, the planet roasters have defeated the campaign to savecivilization (and your lives) from destruction.
The Air Pollution Foundation, which was primarily funded by thelobbying organization Western States Petroleum Association, publiclyclaimed to want to help solve the smog crisis, but was set up in largepartto counterefforts at regulation.
It was informed in 1955 of the future danger of global heating.
Women in several countries are responding to arrogant right-wingmisogynous menby rejectingall men, for sex or for love.
In a place where abortion and birth control are restricted, it isobviously rational for women to reject penis-in-vagina sex with men(except when they seek to get pregnant). This doesn't requirerejecting all lovemaking, but that is what these women are doing.
The misogynists will deserve such rejection, but what will happen tothe young men who yearn for kind and tender love with a woman? Theywill well know that life makes that as unlikely as winning thelottery. They may join the misogynists only because no other pathproclaims itself as offering any hope.
Sensitive men will see that misogyny is a path to a dead end oftwisted hatred, not a path to happiness. But when they reject thatpath, 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 consideratewon't be enough to give men an opportunity for love. Even to learnwhat constitutes "kind and considerate" requires feedback from someoneprepared to appreciate you when you make progress, and misandristswill form a solid wall against that.
I am so sad for the men and for the women.
Why the Trump administration willbe badfor [most] Americans' health.
The exceptions will be the millionaires.
US citizens: call on World Leadersto agreeon a strong treaty to reduce plastic production.
- Australia has amended orlapsed atleast 16 defence-related export permits to Israel in recentweeks.*
This alone won't make Israel stop committing atrocities, but it canblaze the trail for other countries to do so.
Cattle, crops and ancient olive groves: Lebanon’s farmers"loseeverything" to Israeli bombs.
Republicans will tryto attackabortion rights nationwide, despite their half-hearted pretensebefore 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 technologyfro the danger of global heating, but if it is to happen, the COPconferences as they are are useless window dressing. They mainlyserve the planet roasters as greenwashing.
They do provide funds for some useful conservation activities —useful, that is, supposing we do save civilization by preventingglobal 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 onethat 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 taxincreases and regulations will be have some deleterious effects, showthat it would fix problems that vested interests don't want fixed.
In a market-based economy, any change in one variable affects manyothers. Pulling on one string reshapes the rest of the network alittle. Some of those secondary effects are good and some are bad.
The fallacy in those arguments is that they exaggerate thesignificance of the bad secondary effect, inviting the reader toassume that it will outweigh the primary benefit of the action.Sometimes that does happen, but you can't take the word ofthe complainers for that.
Fear of the wrecker is leading foreign political leaders to try to alter their past statements.
Republicans are trying to create the power to strip the tax exemptionfrom any organization that officials accuse of "supportingterrorists", with no requirement to present any reason or evidence forthat accusation.
The group thus attacked would get a hearing, but it is hard to refutean accusation that offers no specifics. Even worse, there may be nolimits on what sort of action would constitute "support". Would "Endthe 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, thisattempt to subvert the rule of law by injecting arbitrary power,illustrates the commitment of right-wing extremists to the eliminationof the basic principles of human rights, such as "innocent untilproven 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 willneed 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 nothave to repay the loan.
The wrecker has emboldened misogynists to provocatively shout theircontempt for women and demand for power over them.
Some of them will act this out violently. We must expect to see anincrease in rape.
No it's not your money: why taxation isn't theft.Refuting the claim that however much you can extractfrom the market is a measure of what you deserve.
Many "protected" nature reserves are not protected very effectively;biodiversity is declining within them, due to causes such as drillingfor oil.
Global heating could also be contributing to that decline. Protectinga specific area of land won't preventing from getting hotter, andgetting much wetter, much drier, getting burned to the ground, orgetting flooded.
- 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 overallpolitical position that would help struggling majority of Americans.
I emended the article title because it would be presumptuous to refer toa person I don't know by per first name.
Rep. Jayapal: *We've got to pick some big fights where people can't bein denial or question whether or not we are standing up for them or whether we're standing up to the big corporate interests," theWashington congresswoman said, adding: "It's a difficult message tosend when you're trying to court money from that community."
In other words, Democrats need to become what they once were: sincerepopulists, defending the vital interests of the poor majority of theUS, to overcome the Republican phony populists who pretend to standfor that majority by scapegoating smaller and poorer groups.
[The wrecker] will give Israel ‘blank check’ which may mean all-outwar with Iran, says ex-CIA chief.
If that happens, it could become a nuclear war if one side starts tolose.
When the bullshitter said Project 2025 had nothing to do with him orhis 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, orcross that country.
The wrecker said he would wreak havoc by ordering that a child of twounauthorized immigrants no longer be considered a US citizen.
Even the Extreme Court might reject the validity of such an order; butif it were to be carried out, it would result in a vast increase indeportations of people who never knew any country but the US, toplaces where they don't speak the language and can never fit in.
Arguing that the main reason for right-wing victory is the highlyfunded 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.*
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 enormouswar crime.
Biden can redeem himself morally by voting for a Security Councilresolution to order Israel to take this back, and calling for sanctionsotherwise.
Heads of Amazon, Meta and Apple swift to congratulate Trump as Muskcelebrates and declares victory for himself.
I boycott all of those companies, as well as Musk's companies.You can join in!
People expect that the wrecker will give his pal Putin a gift byending military support for Ukraine.
If Ukraine is weakened that way, it might be sensible for Ukraine toseek a compromise peace that would be less disastrous than fightingand losing.
However, Putin has the attitude of a cheap gangster: when a victimstarts to talk about making a deal, that means perse is weak, so it istime to demand more. Putin would increase his demands to the maximum,figuring that he will get all he demands, sooner or later, wheneverUkraine can't hold a front line any more.
But what if we imagine bizarre ideas with the sort of audacity thatPutin has got away with? I have a few wild ideas.
-
Ukraine can attack Belarus and perhaps trigger a rebellion tooverthrow the dictator, Lukashenko, who is a client of Putin. Thereis a chance this would free Belaris. At least, Putin might have tosend a large army there, enough to interfere with the attack onUkraine.
-
Ukraine can attack Hungary and remove Orban, who is a client ofPutin. Maybe Hungary's government would flip.
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The Biden can send several regiments to Ukraine, at Ukraine'sinvitation, then station them the way of Putin forces' advance,ordering them not to fight unless attacked. Putin will face thechoice of attacking the US troops and bringing NATO into the war, orceasing to pursue those lines of attack.
If Putin does attack them, it would be hard for the wreckersubsequently to pull the US out of the fight. He would look like acoward 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 thatUkrainians can take refuge in NATO countries if their country isconquered.
"Living in Beit Iksa is like living in prison." The only way in orout of that Palestinian village is through an Israeli checkpoint, andif the guards see fit, they can block an ambulance from coming for youwhile you die.
Right wing extremists aimed to sow so much chaos that the election wouldfail, and they could start an uprising to make the election irrelevant.
They failed this time, it seems, but perhaps since the wrecker won they decidedit was time to relax.
Robert Reich describes the misguided "lessons" that plutocratists wantthe Democrats to learn from Harris's defeat.
California has already prepared to resist some forms of attack and reprisalthat the bully could apply arbitrarily.
Netanyahu dismissed his war minister, Yoav Gallant, who then said thereis no "security reason" to continue the fighting in Gaza.
He accuses Netanyahu for rejecting a deal of hostages for peace forinvalid reasons.
Ways that the wrecker could preside over the effective eliminationof the free press in the US.
One of many ways would be to follow Biden's beginning by prosecutingpublishers of leaks.
A couple of years from now, serious journalism about what the US governmentis doing may have been forced into exile, much as serious journalismabout what the Russian government, Chinese government. and many otherrepressive governments.
Sending letters to blind people who cannot read them is one of manyforms of idiotic careless contempt that the UK government shows tothe handicapped.
I think this attitude was instilled by the Tory government'sattitude.
but Labour has a responsibility is to correct it, rather than disclaimresponsibility.
[The wrecker's] voters want a revolution. It’s time for progressivesto offer their own.
Democrats must offer more than just hope.
If you ignore politics, your life may be easier for a while — untilnasty policies, that you failed to fight, ruin thousands or millionsof lives,
and by chance yours is one of them.
Why Democrats Lose Even When Republicans Are So Endlessly Terrible
[Plastic] pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, oceanacidification and human health, according to analysis.
Harris Ran to [The wrecker's] Right on Immigration — and Gained Absolutely Nothing For It.
The wrecker says he will deport all unauthorized immigrants and threatensto punish states that resist.
This must be part of the reason California is allocating funds tocope with that punishment.
If the wrecker goes ahead with this plan, then he will have to replacethem with authorized immigrants, or convince millions of Americans todo the job. For that, he would have to give those workers a bigraise.
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 yousupport the Democrat Party I will not help you."
This illustrates the attitude of hostility that convinces Republicansto act as if Democrats (the majority of Americans) were enemies to befought 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 againstsupporting political candidates. Punishment by a slap on the wristencourages the defiance. Since that is a systematic campaign, I thinkthe US needs to punish this enough to make churches think twice.
I would suggest revoking the tax exemption of any church caught doingthis. That will make executives of churches take care, while notmaking any person a martyr.
- Representatives at the Cop16 summit in Colombia negotiated against abackdrop 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 druglaws.
Singapore strictly represses criticism of the government.
How Moldovans bravely fought off Russian election meddling — and stood up fordemocracy.
If only we could say the same about the United States.
China wants to make its embassy to the UK much bigger. Why would it want this? One reason could be to keep Uygur andTibetan protesters, whose protests we should support, further away.But if this allows China to have more diplomats in the UK, China woulduse them for nefarious purposes, including espionage and intimidationof oversees Chinese. An inconvenient old embassy in Beijing is a priceworth paying to hamper that.
"People do not want to believe it is true": the photographer capturing thevanishing 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 expelany living Palestinians. Before that,the fighting could kill most ofthe 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 practiceswhen 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 tobe 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 expressingperself 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 beingdirected mainly at critics of Israel's massacres, not at supporters ofthem, and much of that punishment is also unjust.
PFAS mixtures more toxic than single compounds, [which wouldtend to be the danger worse than previous estimates.]
Republicans challenging voters
to challenge large numbers of voters, forcing each one to proveper eligibility to vote. They cite various stretched reasons, butthe real reason is often the person's ethnic background.
One of 900 voters challenged in Savannah had written her doctoral thesison this particular abusive system. She appealed this and won her voting rights back, but many othersreally lose their voting rights.
I think the Voting Rights Act used to prohibit this, before voter-suppressingRepublicans took control of the Extreme Court and neutralized most of it.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. says that the wrecker would put him in charge of everything related to public health.
Even worse, the wrecker is hinting at banning vaccines.
The UK deported a man based on administrative technicalities caused bydelays due to the pandemic, without the hearing he was entitled to, andthen gave him just three days to leave.
This demonstrates that humans can be as rigid as robots if they aretaught to do so.
A study comparing psilocybin with a prescription antidepressantfound that the psilocybin was equally or more effective. It even tendedto lead to other improvements.
A study compared ten wealthy countries' medical systems.The US system provided the worst medical care and chargedtwice as much for it.
The other nine countries do better because they have national medicalsystems. The US needs one of those. The US private-centered systemis likely to eventually kill you by pushing you into bankruptcy.
For the billionaires, the function of the lunatic right wing (thebullshitter/corrupter and his supporters) is to make it difficult tochallenge plutocratist Democrats from the left. Biden has movedpartly in the progressive directions, and Harris is likely to continuethat path, but what we really need is a Sanders.
Democratic senators and Bernie Sanders shamed big US corporationsthat pay their CEOs more than they pay in federal taxes.
They areAIG, Agilent Tech. Alliant Energy, Ameren, American ElectricalPower, AmerisourceBergen, Atmos Energy, CMS Energy, DISH, DTE Energy,Darden, Dominion, Duke Energy, Entergy, Evergy, First Energy, KinderMorgan, 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.
Gaza publishes identities of 34,344 Palestinians killed in war with Israel.
The usual count of deaths includes 7,613 more -- corpses which havenot been identified.
Australia's government approved expansion of three existing coalmines.
It is not as much of a planet roaster as the right-wing government itreplaced, but (like most countries) it fails to recognize the desperateurgency of decarbonization.
California is considering the Responsible Textile Recovery Act,which would require producers of apparel, towels, bedding and upholstery toimplement and fund a statewide reuse, repair and recycling programfor their products.
It may be difficult to design clothing to be recyclable -- andclothing that people have actually worn out (as I often do) aredifficult to reuse or repair. But if this law is done right, it couldpressure the companies that "produce" clothing to head in thatdirection
I wonder how the bill deals with outsourcing of clothing production.To try to enforce this law on the companies in poor countries whichreally make the clothing would be ineffective.
One effect of global heating is that rapidly increasing costs ofno-longer-natural disasters are undermining the foundations of thesystem of insurance for buildings and property. A single mega disastercan collapse all levels.
This will tend to expose everyone to unpredictable risk of being wipedout.
Is it possible to develop building methods that are proof against thestrongest hurricanes? The first step would be to cease building closein 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 theunforeseen flying objects. Building on stilts could help with thefloors. Could suitable choices of building materials and keepinglarge pants 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 enoughpressures, and directly requiring certain specific activities todecarbonize would be more effective.
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 byflooding places that had never been flooded before.
Experts Unsurpassed at Intensity of Extreme Weather But Say DamageWreaked Shows How Unprepared World Is.
This flooding is one of several kinds of local disasters that globalheating is increasing. Together they imperil the system of homeinsurance.
The problem shows up in the fact that many people can't get insuranceagain disasters that destroy They homes, but insurance is not thefundamental cause of this problem. Rather, it is the seam at whichthe overstuffed bag splits open. If rebuilding our House as fast asthey are now being destroyed is unsustainable for society, insuranceas such can't alter that. Either we make the rebuilding sustainablefor society or we will end up without houses.
In the long term, curbing global heating needs to be part of makingrebuilding sustainable in the future.
Harris calls for end to Senate filibuster to restore US abortion rights.
When the wrecker was president, Republicans abolished the filibusterrule for appointing judges.
That enabled them to pack the courts withright-wing extremists, including the extreme court
So it is no use for Democrats to keep the filibuster rule in placein the hope that Republicans will consider it too sacred to touch.
If the Democrats control Congress next year, any measure to fix theSupreme Court or undo damage they have done will surely be blocked bya Republican filibuster unless Democrats abolish it.
Marieha Hussain was charged with a crime for calling some Toryministers "coconuts".
Ms Hussain is right that the thug department should make up for theharm it did to her with this evidently unjust charge.Criticizing politicians by calling them "coconuts" must not be acrime.
That criticism is, however, an example of a morally misguidedassumption: that people of a certain demographic group have anobligation to hold certain political views, and are somehow betrayingthat group if they do not.
People are members of demographic groups, but thoughts are not. Noone has an obligation to hold the views of the group perse wasdescended from.
The Tories Richi Sunak and Suella Braverman are very wrong to standfor plutocratist and repressive policies, and they are responsible forpersonally (as ministers of state) helping to impose those views onBritain. But that has nothing to do with their ethnicity. Thoseviews are wrong no matter who holds them.
An additional reason to reject the "coconuts" approach of criticingpeople's views as "betrayal of their demographic group" is that ittends to legitimize those views for people of other groups.
NYC's night-mayor Adams has been indicted for taking bribes andforeign campaign contributions.
Here is more of suspicions about him.
This reminds me of what Pseudolus said about being insensitive tophysical pain. "I am going to crack down on crime … Not myown!"
Mexico’s ‘anti-monuments’ force country to remember its [tens ofthousands of people who are] missing.
The world's countries pledged to reduce the death rate due toantibiotic resistance by 10% by 2030.
there is a simple way to slow the increase in antibiotic resistance:simply end the mass use of antibiotics in livestock.
What makes this difficult to do in practice is that massive use of antibiotics inlivestock 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 toomuch meat. Discouraging that practice could help slow the increasein 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 mustkeep them safe from patents. If the US governmentsubsidizes 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 [pol note]curbing global heating,
because if climate disaster destroys civilization I expect humanitywill completely lose 20th century technology including antibiotics.
Pakistan says police orchestrated killing of doctor [Shah Nawaz] accused of blasphemy.
This practice, which repeats frequently, shows how Pakistan is dominatedby brutal, drooling religious fanaticism. This is of of the reasons to refuseto visit Pakistan, and why I have never gone there.
Typhoid fever is becoming a dangerous disease again as is bacteriahave become resistant to antibiotics. People who catch it once againoften 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.
California has legislated to make antisocial media less addictive.
The law forbids (1) showing the user posts chronologically ratherthan choosing them for manipulative purposes and (2) sending notificationsduring the usual sleep and work hours.
These limits on sites could be a big help for reducing the harmfuleffects of those sites' behavior, but the law has the flaw of limitingthese protections to users that are children. This causes twoproblems:
- Applying different rules for children may lead to requiring somesort of age verification for adults. The means to prove a user's ageare likely to prove per identity as well, and that is unjust. Theymay also require the user to run nonfree software, and may excludethose who cannot get official government identification, both of whichare unjust.
- To protect only children from addiction schemes leaves the missionunfinished. All users, including teenagers and adults, are vulnerableto artificial addictiveness, which helps push disinformation that canthreaten elections and social cohesion as well as individuals.Applying these rules to all users would protect society better andavoid unjust restrictions.
The problems that the law aims to prevent did not occur byhappenstance. The tech companies impose them on the user by requiringper to run nonfree client-side software to access the platform. Ifthat software were free/libre,
as by rights it ought to be,
users could enable these protections for themselves by choosing a suitablymodified version of the client-side software.
For instance, they could run modified versions which (1) reorder theposts to be shown or discard some of them, according to rules the usercould select, and/or (2) block or delay notifications in certainperiods of the day. Some users who know how to program would makethese and release them, and all users would then be able to use them.
Harris has stated economic policies that focus on helping Americansbecome and remain middle class.
I am in favor of these plans, but I would put more emphasis on helpingthe poor, the people who have to survive on the lowest paid jobs orwho 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 expenseof everyone else, but to reduce the power that they get from their wealth.
Al Jazeeera: By storming our Al Jazeera offices in Ramallah, Israelhas stepped up its assault on press freedom.
Delegates at Britain's Labour Party congress voted to call on theparty to reverse what did in Parliament — cutting poor people'swinter home heating subsidy.
Subsidizing fossil fuel use is, in general, a bad policy. But whenit's a subsidy for poor people and is needed for them to stay aliveand well, cutting it is dangerous and heartless. The safe way toreduce this subsidy is through helping the poor in other ways, notthrough harming them.
One way is to invest in insulating their homes so that they don't needas much artificial heating. Starmer keeps talking about "investment",so invest here.
The other way I know of is to increase welfare payments for the pooras 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 andpurposeless ways in which Indians are pressured to submit to thenational ID system Aadhar, and clever ways people are resisting.
His persistence in refusing to use Aadhar is inspiring, and he doeswin some victories.
Several countries are suing Afghanistan in the International Court ofJustice for discrimination against women.
The case would seem to be so strong that the court must surely findagainst Afghanistan. But the Taliban will surely not obey anyjudgment, so why hold hearings to prove the obvious? It seems thatthe aim is to discourage other countries from recognizing the Talibangovernment.
The bully said that Ukraine should have surrendered immediately andlet 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 mostAmericans who are sick won't be able to afford it.
It is a mistake to think of medical care as "insurance" since thatimplies that each subscriber pays the amount perse is predictedprobably to need spent on per. What we need is a national medicalsystem that will be funded by taxing those with lots of money.
The company that publishes The Economist (magazine) has been secretlytaking tobacco money to support events about medicine. When thisbecame known, many organizations decided to refuse to participate.
This pressure has made the company commit to taking no further moneyfrom 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 ofglobal heating, and some of the attendees are becoming ill from them.
If Israel attacks Hezbollah on the ground, it is likely to havetrouble seizing all the territory it seeks to occupy.
Hezbollah succeeded in resisting Israel's invasion in 2006, and islikely to have even better fortifications now.
In Gaza, Israeli units can occupy any piece of ground but can't wipeout HAMAS in its tunnels. Hezbollah's tunnels are designed forfighting from, not only for hiding in, so Israel can't expect tohave control of the surface as it does in Gaza.
I think this threat represents Netanyahu's scheme to stay in power byunceasing escalation.
It is impossible to negotiate with Netanyahu, because he does notnegotiate in good faith. When he agrees to a deal in private, he thenrejects it in public.
The US should punish him for this by cutting off important kinds ofmilitary support to Israel until it negotiates a cease fire for Lebanonand Gaza, and accepts it, and carries it out. Or until Netanyahuis 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 servercan 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 itselfhas such control is Orwellian, and ought to be illegal.
The icing on the Orwellian cake is that the server had a securityfault which allowed absolutely anyone to activate those controlsfor any KIA car.
Many people will be outraged at that security bug, but that waspresumably an accident. The fact that KIA had such control overcars after selling them to customers is what outrages me, and thatmust 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 changebuilding codes so as to press for new buildings to use varioustechnologies that have been found to work. We also need funds toretrofit 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 Russiawithout submitting to Putinite censorship.
Gifts to politicians are all about buying influence,but Starmer persists in denying that.
Declaring potential conflicts of interest does not eradicate them asconflicts of interest. For example, studies done on the efficacy ofpsychiatric medications and many influential medical papers list thebenefits the authors received; it is not unusual to see whole pagesdevoted to their financial connections to pharmaceutical firms. Thatmust cast some doubt on the validity of the studies.
Awareness of the approaching danger of climate mayhem is causinganxiety and despair among young adults in the UK, who see that theplanet roasters have barricaded every door through which to preventdisaster they profit from increasing.
Israel is accused of depriving Palestinian workers of paythey are owed for work they have already done in Israel.
Rural rivers and creeks can have high levels of various medicines thatpeople flush down the toilet in places whose sewage runs to them.
Since the drugs include antibiotics, this breeds antibiotic resistance.People swimming in rivers and lakes can catch resistant infections.But it is worse than that: bacteria pass genes around in various ways,so the resistance gene can end up far away in a different species.
Force companies to report their food waste, say leading UK retailers.
I am surprised that retailers are in favor of this, but it seemslike a wise policy to me.
US Department of Justice sues Alabama for purging people from voter rolls.*
Officials say purge violates "quiet period provision" prohibiting nameremovals 90 days before federal election.
Microsoft's bullshit generator read many articles associating Martin Bernklauwith criminal accusations, and output that he was a wanted criminal who hadescaped from a mental hospital.
Bernklau's actual association was that he was a crime journalist andhad written those articles. But you can't expect bullshit generatorsto understand that distinction — to do so requires intelligence, whichis what they totally lack.
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.
Iwao Hakamata was convicted of murder in 1968 in Japan. Now a retrialjudge has ruled that investigators falsified evidence and bullied him into a false confession.
Hakamada is 88 years old, and is mentally unwell as a resultof spending years on death row. He was unable to attend the retrialbecause of that.
Muhlenberg College fired Professor Finkelstein, a tenured professor,for condemning Israeli atrocities in Gaza, by making the usual falseequivalence between "Zionists" and "Jews".
The American Association of University Professors may sue on her behalf.
Fossil fuel lobbyists work with supportive legislators to criminalizenonviolent (but inconvenient) protest around the US.
I suspect that they collaborate with AIPAC to achieve their commongoal, so that protesters calling for an end to Israel's bombing andsiege can be imprisoned too. The measures seem similar in practicaleffect to those recently used by the UK to convict climate defenseprotesters.
Iwao Hakamada was convicted of murder in 1968 in Japan. Now a retrialjudge has ruled that investigators falsified evidence him and bulliedhim into a false confession.
Hakamada is 88 years old, and is mentally unwell as a resultof spending years on death row. He was unable to attend the retrialbecause of that.
Six of England's privatized water companies appear to havefraudulently increased their charges to customers by misrepresentingthe level of sewage pollution that they were releasing into waterways.
*Ocean acidification close to critical threshold, say scientists, posingthreat to marine ecosystems and global livability.
This means Earth may have breached seven of nine boundaries.*
California has banned distribution of plastic shopping bags at grocerystores. Only paper bags will be available.
I prefer thicker plastic bags to paper, but to avoid causing waste, Ireuse each bag until it wears out. I set out the bags to reuse on hebelt along with what I will purchase, and say to use these bags and notgive 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 plasticwaste we need to do something about that, too.
Labour says it will legally require all rental housing with poor airinsulation to be repaired so as to need less heating.
If a private landlord says, "I can't afford to do the repairs that thelaw now requires," there is an easy response: "So sell that house."Most of them will then discover some money that they had temporarilyforgotten possessing. As for the rest, it's no disaster if they dohave to sell.
For housing owned by local governments, it is another matter. Theyare cutting all sorts of important public services because the Toriescut their budgets to the bone, and Labour refuses to raise them. Someare already going bankrupt. If Labour really wants those buildingsrepaired, it will have to provide money.
Social media and online video firms are conducting "vast surveillance" onusers, FTC finds.
I am sure this is true, but the FTC has missed much of the problem bydefining "surveillance" too narrowly. They presume that collectingdata about people only becomes "surveillance" when the platform makesthe data available somehow to unrelated companies.
See
The FTC also made the typical pernicious assumption that unjusttreatment of adult users is not important.
I am not sure whether the report included allowing other companiesto target categories of users in the category of "surveillance".In that practice, the other companies do not actually receivedata about individual users, but do get to exploit them.
Musk refuses to pay Brazil's fines on ex-Twitter and challenges thestate to stop Brazilians from accessing that site. So the courtimposed a bigger fine, around 1.5 billion dollars per year, forex-Twitter's circumvention of the ban.
The court also ordered that Starlink, likewise owned by Musk, berequired to pay the fines if ex-Twitter does not; Starlink is verywidely used in Amazonia where there is not much communicationsinfrastructure, and I think it makes a lot of profit in Brazil.
The muskrat has the support of Bolosonaro, the fascist-leaning ex presidentwho, after losing the last election, launched an attack on the main governmentbuildings in Brasilia.
As I recall, he faces trial for this. Can anyone tell me where thattrial stands? Why isn't Bolsonaro in prison?
Some US states will report parents to the Parent Gestapo ("ChildWelfare Services") for "neglect" if they don't pay the bill for theirchild'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'sthat 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 andmany parents can't get that much money. Growing up in poverty mayresult in real neglect, but punishing the parent(s) won't helpthem get more money.
Taking the child away from the parent(s) and giving per to a fosterparent might help per, by making more money available; but if thestate is willing to provide that extra money, it can just as well givethat to the child's parent(s).
Thus, the only case in which to consider taking a child away from perparent(s) is when the cause is something other than poverty.
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 FECshould have done so. I don't know what methods might be effective.
Kamala Harris formerly campaigned for limiting hidden campaigndonations from the rich, but she isn't advocating that this year.
Actor Reece Richards, performing in a play in London, says that four thugspepper-sprayed him and held him down on the ground, They were chasing someoneelse who was in a vehicle.
Everyone makes mistakes, so I can't condemn those thugs for mistakenlythinking that Richards had something to do with the fleeing vehicle.But since that was just a suspicion, they should have realized thatRichards 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 fightingthem. That is the typical dangerous excess of thugs.
Britain’s limited Gaza action will do little to curb Israel’s widerterritorial ambitions.
Two New York City transit thugs cornered an alleged fare evader whoallegedly pulled a knife. At that point, they proceeded to make thesubway substantially more dangerous by hitting two other innocentpassengers 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 outa knife, which would be a much more serious crime. However, I won'ttake thugs' word that he did so. They might be "testilying", to usethe term that thugs coined for this.
Adams, NYC's night-mayor, is a former thug himself, and no matter whatharm thugs do in the city, he always claims it's not their fault.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria "could kill 39m people by 2050" amidrising drug resistance.
This problem is mostly avoidable. It is caused by various sorts ofcarelessness in the use of antibiotics.
Few new antibiotics are developed, because drug companies are nolonger interested in them.
They are no longer led by people whosebackground was in medicine and thought that curing disease was a goalin itself. Now they want to develop "the next Viagra", something thatmillions 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 developmentno longer encourage people to make curing disease their goal.
We should replace the system driven by lust for monopoly megaprofitswith a system of government funding for finding new drugs that willnot 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 saysIrancould negotiate a non-nuclear deal like the one that the wrecker canceled. He also accusedIsrael 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 reasonwe can't work with Iran towards regional and nuclear disarmament.
Israel attackedHezbollah with ordinary weapons — missiles, and perhaps bombs and shells too. Reportedlythese hit 1300 targets and killed around 500 people. Since 90 of them were women or minors, we canroughly 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 sameweapons: lots of civilian casualties.
The Israeli attacks in Gaza are a series of atrocities, and these attacks in Lebanon were atrocitiestoo. They were atrocities, and war crimes, because Israel violates the requirement that civiliancasualties be"proportionate"— not excessive.
It's clear that Israel does not try very much to avoid excessivecivilian casualties. Indeed, when army snipers shoot protesters andjournalists, who are specially protected civilians, Israel hardlytries to punish them.
Ironically, one exception which contrasts with that habit of disregarding this principle is thepager attack of last weekend. Whether or not Israel actively sought on that occasion to follow therequirement of proportionality, in practice it did so. Some 3000 pagers were in use, and werelikely to explode, and in the processonly twochildren 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 tokill 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 asegregious, I take the opposite view: the pager attack is the proportionate exception whichhighlights Israel's usual disregard for the lives of civilians.
HAMAS and Hezbollah also often disregard proportionality when theyattack, but —another irony— their missile attacks typically do solittleharm to anyone that the question of proportionality may be merely theoretical.
Netanyahuis threatening to escalate the war with Hezbollah. Supposedly this is to achieve demands whichinclude peace. But that is not what escalation is likely to achieve.
SCROTUS gave up onthe wrecker'sdemand for a new nationwide voter suppression requirement, and dropped the threat toshutdown the US government otherwise. Indeed, they could not even pass that bill in the House ofRepresentatives, despite having a small majority there.
The decision not to shut it down was embodied in a law that will keep the government operating foraround three months. The article doesn't state the precise date of the next shutdown threat, butthe 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 ourgovernment and our country hostage any more. For every level of government, vote to defeatRepublicans!
The modern American way to lobby for an anticompetitive mergeris to hire lobbyists who aretied intonetworks of support for major politicians.
Each time these lobbyists go to work, their goal is harmful to the public interest. We shouldchange our laws so that there are no such lobbyists — but how to do that? I tend to think thatblocking large anonymous campaign donations, and blocking all campaign contributions fromcorporations, would tend to correct this problem as a side effect of correcting the problem oflegalized bribery.
US citizens:callon the Biden administration to hold an independent investigation of the killing of protesterAyşenur Eygi.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Supportthe proposed FDIC regulation that would limit how "asset manager" companies such as Blackrockuse theirdepositsfor political influence.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running thesite'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 beforeposting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not workwithout JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate forsome of them.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That'show you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function withoutnonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfreecode, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code Byediting 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. Thisshould give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body ofyour 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 stepneeded to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort comparedwith the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentiallymalicious) software.
US citizens:callon Israel to comply with the UN General Assembly vote calling for Israel to withdraw its armyfrom the occupied Palestinian territories.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Greenpeace proposes to offer unlimited rail passes for Britain at alow flat fee per month (though trains passing anywhere near Londonwill cost extra).
This scheme will cost money, but it could be money well spent onreducing CO2 emissions and boosting the economy of places away fromLondon.
Crucial for civil liberties, this is also an opportunity to reducesurveillance — or to increase it. With a fee paid per month, the passcould serve as a ticket for anonymous travel. It would be easy toallow the holder to ride a train without collecting per identity.
But if the system does record who rode each train, as I fear thesurveillance-mad UK will do, it would further discourage anonymoustravel, because to do that you would have to pay cash for a ticket ona train that would otherwise have been gratis.
Britons, don't wait this out. Organize now to demand that train passesnot 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.
In the UK, people get fined for leaving usable items outside the doorfor passers-by to take away. Some are fined so much that it canruin them.
Often the people responsible for this are the employees and the ownersof companies which have won contracts to hand out these fines. Theirbusiness is cruelty. The owners deserve the term "vampires", but theemployees 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 runfor many years so the city is screwed too.
It should be illegal to involve anyone in fining the public in such away as to profit more from fining more.
Side issue: I wonder what they mean by "fly tipping". Is it anythinglike cow tipping? A cow that is lying down can get back on its feet,but can a fly do that?
US citizens:call onCongress 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 andI 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 downfor-profit immigrationprisons.
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 hewill leap for joy.
- Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and Ohio want to scare offvoters [of disprivileged racial groups] and naturalized citizens,activists say.*
Various religions in the US are ganging up to fight against sex educationand equal rights for queer people.
At the debate. the bullshitter refused to say whether he wants Ukraineto defeat Putin. Why did someone who cares so little about truthhesitate to make up whatever would go over best?
The author does not know, but I have a conjecture: because Putin iswatching, and Putin demands obedience. The bullshitter expects to getaway with bullshitting Americans, but this is a matter of promotingPutin and he knows Putin won't stand for shenanigans.
"Just stop the fighting" has been the standard line of Putiniteinfluencers ever since Putin launched the invasion. The reason issimple: that would leave Putin in possession of conquered territory,probably permanently. That would be victory for him, even if nottotal victory.
It is surely no coincidence that the Republicans in Congress have beenwilling to obstruct and threaten to interfere with US support forUkraine. They are happy to increase the military budget unless itsupports Ukraine. This has happened in parallel with their shift toendorse the bullshitter's claim that he really won the election.
This is not proof, but it's plenty of grounds to treat the corrupteras a suspect.
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? Thereply must be, "Safe from what?" If the question is about safety fromcollisions, I don't know but with time we will find out.
If the question is about safety from surveillance and snooping, theanswer is clearly not.
Billionaire Larry Ellison called for a society of total surveillance in whicheveryone is constantly monitored by hypothetical future AI.
We could expect the AI to share the political bias andracial/religious/ethnic prejudices of the organizations that run them.
- Suspected Russian propaganda operation prompts calls to forceUK-registered news sites to reveal ownership.*
I can support that sort of rule without hesitation,because it is clearly not censorship.
Thugs in Pakistan killed someone accused of "blasphemy" — rejectingand criticizing religion.
In Pakistan, being arrested and charged with "blasphemy" tends to leadto being killed, often before trial, except for those who are saved byinternational pressure to let them go into exile. The accused manmust have realized that he was doomed if he allowed himself to becaptured.
Side issue: I've seen several other articles about shooting deadpeople. I am surprised at how many dead bodies are being shot.
UK tax cuts for corporations in 2023 resulted in a loss of 30 billionUKP in tax revenue but will spur only up to £10.5bn investment.
The rich will generally invest their money in the way they expectwill be most profitable. When governments want to influence whatways they choose, instead of taxing certain ways less, how about taxingthe other ways more?
Musk has yielded to the Brazilian government and has made ex-Twitterobey 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 richpeople's wealth.
The wrecker and Vance eagerly acknowledge lying as a tactic to winsupport from people who they have taught to accept lying. They aim tocreate a post-truth America in which truth ceases to matter.
That is the ultimate form of sabotage. We must reject anything thatcomes from them, without taking it seriously, because they are liars.
No one can achieve 100% falsehood. Inevitably, some of the thingsthey say will turn out to be true. But we should ignore the claimwhen it comes from them. If someone credible and honest makes theclaim. then we should pay it the attention it merits — but we shouldnot confuse matters by associating the issue with the Lie Partycandidates.
- 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.*
A documentary is being criticized for presenting the Russian soldiers inthe Putin forces as victims.
Those soldiers are victims … of Putin's tyranny, alongsidethe Ukrainians. And some of them used to know this — which is whysome Russians fled and joined the Ukrainian armyrather than fight for Putin.
But Putin's tight censorship is brainwashing many Russians, especiallyyoung 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 andfound that several companies were jointly dishonest and many governmentbodies failed to do their job of insisting on safe construction.
All sorts of regulations to protect the environment and people'shealth and safety, should carry criminal penalties for intentionalconduct that significantly endangers people. The punishment for aserious violation should include prison, for individuals, and forcorporations seizure and liquidation.
Anyone can make a mistake — even a CEO who has acted wrongly may havedone it unknowingly — so everyone accused must have a fair trial tojudge culpability. But intentional disregard for those regulations,when it occurs to a significant extent, should be grounds for severepunishment.
This should not be limited to cases where serious injury to specificactually persons occurred as a result. When that was avoided by sheerluck, the crime should be the same.
Merely banning a company from operating in a country may have noeffect. Even shutting down the corporation directly involved may beinsufficient. Many construction businesses do (or at least used to)start a new corporation each year as a scheme to shrug off subsequentfines or judgments. The law should refuse to be thwarted by suchschemes.
If this helps drive the UK's formerly public but nowadays privatewater companies into bankruptcy, so much the better, since it willavoid the need to "compensate" their stockholders when renationalizingthem.
We need capitalism so it can drive people's desire for profit intocompeting to do a good job for society. However, they will faceconstant temptation to cheat their customers, their workers and thegeneral public. We must make sure they recognize those methods aretoo dangerous to try.
Fossil fuel companies' funding of universities’ climate-focused efforts is delaying the green transition, according to the most extensive peer-reviewed study to date of the industry’s influence on academia.
That study covers the UK experience, but I expect the situation issimilar in other countries. The planet roasters are callous but notstupid.
Florida is coming to recognize it must help people whose houses aregoing to be flooded by paying the cost of their moving to higherground.
In the long run, that is cheaper than paying to build a new house inthe same doomed place, where it in turn will be flooded.
Reports find [Biden's] policies will save Americans from pollution in coming decades and added nearly 150,000 jobs.
We need to do much more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, butRepublicans want to repeal these policies and turn the spigotwide open.
A great drop in the seabird populations in Norwayis a sign of some big problem under the water, but wedon't know what it is,
In American politics, and British politics, signaling an attitude ormembership in a tribe tends to take precedence over choosing a policythat 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.
- 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.
- Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta andApple may be [almost 8 times the] official tally.*
For the survival of civilization we must prevent the expansionof these data centers. A sufficiently large tax could do it.
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, andsome of them (combined with poverty) could later cause your death.
Faculty from seven University of California campuses took a standagainst the repression of protest over Israel’s war on Gaza onThursday, taking the historic step of filing a joint unfair laborpractice charge against their employer.
Climate defense protesters in the UK climbed the former primeminister's house as part of a protest, but did no harm. Chargesagainst them were dropped by the judge.
The Commodity Futures and Exchange Commission proposed guidelines fortrading of carbon offsets. Public Citizen says it should insteadeliminate such trading entirely.
I agree.
Ohio’s Republican governor condemns Trump and Vance for [bogus claimsabout immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.]
The bullshitter claimed that the audience at the debate demonstrated greatsupport for him. He imagined it all — there no audience was present.
A plague offunguskilled many bats across the US. Without the bats to eat the insect pests, farmers increased useof pesticides. The pesticides are estimated to have killed 1300 childrensincethen.
TellKroger'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 useof that information for precision gouging.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running thesite's nonfree JavaScript code. I presume you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJSplugin.
I have done the first step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL beforeposting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not workwithout JavaScript!" They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simplemethod 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 saywho's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function withoutnonfree 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 Byediting 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 bodyof 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 stepneeded to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort comparedwith the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentiallymalicious) software.
Everyone:call on ABCto expose the right-wing extremist's connection to Project 2025 in the comingpresidential debate.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running thesite'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 beforeposting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not workwithout JavaScript!" They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simplemethod 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 saywho's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function withoutnonfree 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 editingits 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. Thisshould give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body ofyour 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 stepneeded to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort comparedwith the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentiallymalicious) software.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support theBillionaireMinimum 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 spreadingpropagandain favor of the extreme right-wing ex-president Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro launched an attack against the main government buildings in Brazilia after Lula waselected president again.
I recognize people's right to advocate right-wing political views, even though (as you can see fromyears of postings in this site) I loathe those views. However, the state should not hold out itsneck 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 byrequiring per to run nonfree software to access it. The article says that many users have switchedto 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 byceasing to operate in Brazil and not appointing any legal representative. Each company doingbusiness in Brazil is required to have a representative, whom I believe has the job of receivingsummonses to the company. Must seems to have thought to make legal action against ex-Twitterimpossible by not appointing one.
Vance talks a lot of adoration for unions, but his votes have been toweaken and undermine them.
Accusations that HAMAS physically harms its hostages seem to be false.Freed Israeli captive Noa Argamani says she was wounded by Israel, notHamas.
Being held hostage is in itself a form of mistreatment, but we shouldnot confuse that with physical mistreatment.
The UK's railroad minister, in his previous job, threatened to denycontracts arbitrarily to an engineering company unless it bullied aworker into ceasing to raise safety concerns. In response, thecompany 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 safetyconcerns, rather than investigating them properly, is Boeing-like and is afailure 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 tooslow to build more renewable generation and therefore needs todevelop new gas fields.
Why has Australia gone too slowly in building new renewablegeneration? Because the previous government was controlled by globalheating denialists and adopted planet-roaster policies -- whichincluded resisting building renewable generation.
If the government tolerates that as am excuse to allow more gasextraction development, it will lock the country into "solving" theproblem of failure to curb global heating by boosting global heating.
Another way to delay curbing global heating is by spending billionson fantasy solutions that have never been shown to work. For instance, carbon capture and storage. If that reduces what's available for the cheap andeffective solutions, it gives the fossil fuel barons what they want.
How Exxon chases billions in US subsidies for a ‘climate solution’ that helpsit drill more oil.
A local man saved Lafourche Parish from Hurricane Ida by building a18-foot levee instead of the wider 13-foot levee that the USgovernment was going to build.
Each choice of design would have represented a bet about what futurestorms 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 wasclear 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 somedecades. But if we don't curb global heating, any levee willeventually fail, because sea-level rise will overcome it.
US air carriers lobbied quietly and secretly against an EU plan torequire carriers to better measure the amounts of various pollutionsubstances they emit into the air (and the amount of greenhouse effectof each one).
Measuring these better can't hurt, but using them to calibrate anemissions trading program is misguided. We have seen that emissionstrading is ineffective for reducing emissions, because it is too easyto game the system or cheat.By going in that direction, the EUis caving into business at the outset.
By imposing a tax on emissions, a government offers no easy way togame the system, and cheating would constitute tax evasion -- punishableby imprisonment.
A multiply handicapped Briton gets so little support that he can'tafford the cost of charging his wheelchair and running the lift to getin and out of his home.
The UK is moving towards cancelling 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 arehaving the same effect on the US response to bird flu.
Bird flu is a pandemic for birds and could cause extinctions anddamage 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 encounteredwhile visiting the military burial site, Donald Trump called outArlington National Cemetery on Thursday for its hazard-filledfairways.
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely ortelling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-clickand select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynxthat doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
According to Americans for Financial Reform, the Health over Wealth billwould make these positive requirements:
- Transparency: Required reporting will ensure the public is able toknow the status of healthcare entities owned by private equity firmswith regard to their debt, executive pay, political spending, patientcosts, and any reductions in patient services or staff wages andbenefits.
- Continuity of Care Protections: The bill would require private equityfirms to establish escrow accounts sufficient to cover five years ofoperation beyond any financial disruptions or facility closures andfund neighboring providers in case of closure.
- Public Accountability: The bill would require private equity firms toobtain a license in order to purchase healthcare entities in whole orpart. This license could be revoked in the event of understaffing,price-gouging, or reducing patients’ access to care.
- Community Protections: The bill would require the Department of Healthand Human Services (HHS) to review, and possibly block, any sales ofhospitals or facilities by private equity Real Estate InvestmentTrusts (REITs) if the sale would threaten the facility’s financialstatus or the public health.
- The Role of Private Equity: The bill would establish an HHS Task Forceto monitor and examine changes in the marketplace and any patterns ofprivate equity ownership that result in excessive consolidation orinequities in access or quality or services.
- Accessibility, Safety, and Quality: The bill would prevent thestripping of assets from healthcare facilities by private equity firmsnecessary for assuring the safety and quality of healthcare servicesand retain staff in any bankruptcy.
I am in favor of each of them, but this approach is nibbling aroundthe edges of a large problem which applies to many fields, includingretail sales and home rentals. We should address the whole problemfully.
So I urge we either (1) prohibit private equity organizations fromowning medical facilities or practices, or (2) subject private equityorganizations to the same SEC rules as public equity corporations.
Any requirements of the Health above Wealth Act that do not currentlyexist for public corporations should be imposed on all of them.
The level of fluoride that people add to tap water is safe, but thereare places where tap water naturally has a higher level, and thatlevel is associated with neurological damage.
Petaluma, California, has introduced a municipal system of multi-usecoffee cups.You drop the cup in a bin when you're done with it. It gets cleanedand delivered again to a coffee shop.
The UK has sentenced a bigot to almost three years in prison forshouting insults -- and nothing else.
He received the same sentence as another rioter who kicked and threwbottles. There ie evidently injustice here. Worse than that, toconvict people for insults -- even insults that are foolish and falseright-wing nonsense -- tramples freedom of speech.
Some US employers are getting warnings in advance when an OSHAinspection is coming. Congress is investigating.
The US hasputsanctions on an organization that supports the violent "settlers"' colonial activity, and itsleader.
They certainly deserve this punishment, but the US is moving far too slowly. If Biden want this tosignificantly restrain Israel's brutality before the election, he had better move faster.
Israelis heldmassiveprotests and called a general strike demanding that Netanyahu make a deal with HAMAS to get thehostages back.
That is not what I would demand from him. I would demand, rather, that he respect and protect thelives of Palestinian civilians and cease to make war in ways that kill or oppress them.
Texas has established a parallel set of business courts, with judges that have no effectiveindependence and have beenchosen for partiality tooil companies.
Ralph Nader says that giving the bully atasteof his own medicine, in the form of nasty epithets, can be very effective.
Since 2016 I have refused to refer to the bully byhis name, only by various epithets. I originally did this to deny that narcissist the pleasure hederives from others' use of his name. You can join in using my names for him, or do this your ownway.
Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in federal and state elections in the US, but cities canauthorize them to vote in municipal elections. A right-wingcampaignaims 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 mightbe a good idea. In any case, there is no reason for state governmentsto intervene against it. We can leave it to each local government.
China is playing the many factions in Burma against each other in aneffortto increase its power over all of them. It is not clear that the rest of the world hasinfluence to aim for a stable peace, or what that peace should look like.
Canada'swildfiresin 2023 released more CO2 than any country other than China, India and the United States.
A judgedismissedcharges against the thugs that killed Breonna Taylor, by putting the blame for her death on herboyfriend. He shot at the thugs because they hadnot identified themselves as official thugs, so he thought they were criminals breaking into hishouse.
Since his actions were legitimate given his state of knowledge, they cannotmake him culpable for consequences. And if the thugs falsified a warrantto give themselves an excuse, no circumstances can possibly justify that.
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 officialstold him this was not allowed showed hiscontempt for anyone that gets inhis way.
I do not worship the military as the article suggests we should. Armed force can be used for goodor for bad. But the rule that the corruptertried to break is a wise one.
Everyone:call on media executives tofollow standards of good journalism that will avoid spreading hate.
Uber and Lyft drivers inNashvillevote 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 willimprove 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 ofpassengers, so I will continue to consider Uber and Lyft completely unacceptable. As far as I amconcerned, this is a fight to the very end. See uber.html for why I refuseto enter an Uber car even if someone else orders it.
In the US:callon 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 ifit should decide tostopdelivering arms to Israel.
It makes sense to try to pressure Biden and Harris to take a stand and pressure Israel to stop thekilling in Gaza. But threatening to stand aside and maybe helpthe bully become president again isadvocating self-mutilation.
Columbia University has bowed tothreats fromright-wing extremists in Congress by agreeing to rush to judgment of various students who wereaccused of participating in protests on campus.
The university administration is making a cowardly surrender to fanatics who do not believe intrials 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 toTax the ultra-wealthy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon 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 validcriterion. If it excludes some companies in addition, for the same reason, that would not be a badthing.
The increasing frequency of passengerflightshit by severe turbulence might be a consequence of global heating effects. If so, it islikely to increase further. No one knows how bad it might get in a few decades. However, I suspectit will not be as big a problem as the likelyfood shortages,spreadingtropical diseases,anddeaths from heat.
A HorridHistory ofSugar. For instance, Indian sugar farm workers today are effectively slaves, as they arepermanently in debt.
US citizens:callon state governments to pass Tim Walz's Free Lunch For Kids Program in every state.
Please find your state governor's phone number atUSA.gov
Majorpublishers sue Florida over "unconstitutional" school book ban.
The ban is disgusting, but the article does not explain how it violates the US or the Floridaconstitution. 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 firinga teacher forreadinga banned book aloud in class.
Almost half of all fish species and 10% of mammals rely on rivers and lakes for survival but acombination of [global heating effects]and pollution isthreateningtheir existence.
Salmon escaping from fish farms in Norway are overwhelmingthewild salmon population and could wipe it out.
UN food agency [(World Food Programme)] suspends operations in Gaza after car [shot intentionally]atIsraeli checkpoint.
Israeli military launchesfatalairstrike on humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza.
This happened shortly after the attack on a World Food Programme aid convoy which led thatorganization to suspend operations in Gaza.
The Israeli army says that unidentified gunmen were trying to hijack the lead vehicle, and that itattacked that vehicle all to protect the convoy. I don't know whether that actually happened, orwhether the soldiers involved actually believed it. It could be mere after-the-fact bullshitfabricated as an excuse.
But even if that really happened, shooting everyone in the lead vehicle was clearly not a saneresponse.
Harris's speech at the end oftheDemocratic national convention was a statement for the prosecution of the chicken that tried tolead a coup.
The details of new Georgia election rules and how theyfacilitatearbitrary refusal to certify the election at all.
Many US billionaires are donating millions to electthe insurrectionist because he haspromised tohelp them take even more of America's wealthfrom the rest of us.
If you know of an institution (or part of one) named after any of the billionaires mentioned in thevideo, for instance Steve Schwarzman, how about holding protests against his association with aconvicted corrupt official that tried to steal a US election and openly threatens to try again.
Simply pasting "Trump" or "Trumptool" over the name of his billionaire supporter might be a goodstart — but do expect to have to put that sign up again frequently.
Harris says she will reduce inflation byattacking theprice controlsimposed by oligopolistic megacorporations.
That is a great thing to do, but not easy. I would like to see what methods she proposes to use.
60% of Americans think big business is too powerful.
But the politicians who protect business's power will continuecall themselves, misleadingly, "centrist".
George Monbiot: There are several services and assets I would like to see nationalized. But at the top of my list is neither water, nor trains, nor development land, much as I’d like to see them brought under national or local public ownership. Above all, I want to see the nationalisation of my own business: environmental persuasion.
Leaving it to private citizens to recruit and organize to avoid globalheating disaster, then criminalizing all effective methods they can use,guarantees the job won't be done.
Official thuggery: US police use force on 300,000 people a year, withnumbers rising since George Floyd.
By adopting ranked-choice voting in the US, we could ensure thatvoting for a minor-party candidate does not risk handing victory tothe worse major party candidate.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass a green New Deal.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
After DeMentis took over the New College in Sarasota, and abolished various departments, he hadthousandsof library books put into dumpsters.
The Houthis have fora second time set an oil tanker on fire,causing a risk of polluting the Red Sea.
If the fire can be put out, and the ship and its cargo saved, that would be the ideal outcome. Butif that is not feasible, there is another possibility: to rig the ship with remote controls and sailit into the port of Hodeida as a fireship. That could cause a lot of damage to the Houthis' portfacilities, while not harming a lot of civilians.
US citizens: support the People's Response Act, to invest in public health alternatives to policingfor emergencies that are not about crime.
If a deceased person's brain contains (average)0.5%plastic today, what will it contain in 2050? Perhaps 2%?
Will it be necessary to treat that brain as toxic waste? Could cremation or burial lead to air orwater pollution?
US citizens:callon Congress to ban vending machines for ammunition.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The brother of the Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, who was killedin an Israeli airstrike, has called for those responsible for hissister's death to be prosecuted and punished.
Studies show that the most efficient way to reduce crocodile attacksin Australia is to teach men to follow the publicized safety precautions.
A new, improved indictment of the wrecker argues that his criminalactions to steal the 2020 election, were outside of his "officialduties", so even under the extreme court's broad idea of immunity hehas none for these.
I argue that stealing an election is never a legitimate part of thepresident's duties, so perse would never have immunity under thisdoctrine.
More Debt relief for poor countries would lead to major improvementsin education and sanitation.
I hope it would also lead to major increases in use of birth control.
Dozens of European directors, actors and other artists have called onSerbian authorities not to extradite a Belarusian activist back toBelarus,
where he could be executed for political opposition activities.
The arrest of Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, could indicate anattemptto wipe out communication services that allow end-to-end encryption.
*US sues software company RealPage foralleged rent hiking scheme.
DoJ lawsuit claims firm’s algorithm helps landlords coordinate rental prices and violates antitrustlaws.*
Missouri's Republican legislators are persecuting trans people inevery way they can think of.
The US and most Latin American countries have denouncedMaduro'sstolen election.
10 of them signed a joint statement with the US. Brazil, Colombia and Mexico did not join the USfor this, but made their own statements to the same effect.
TheTalibanhave tightened their laws to oppress women. They are now required to hide their faces (alongwith the rest of their bodies) when outside the home, for forbidden to speak also. Even at home,they are forbidden to speak or sing loud enough to be heard from outside.
I wish we could kill all Taliban and put an end to their oppression. But we already found that thatwas not possible. Is there any cure for this infection?
Is "No tax on tips" a distraction from thefightto end sub-minimum wages?
I think it is. I advocate abolishing tips by abolishing the special lower minimum wage for certainoccupations, and making sure workers are adequately paid as part of the stated price of a service.
Human activities are making jellyfish spread and become more numerous off thenortheastcoast of Spain.
Australian study of guppies shows thatpharmaceuticalpollution (for instance, Prozac) could threaten species’ long-term survival.
If Harris becomes president, she will have to decide whether to push slightly on someSenaterules in order to benefit non-wealthy Americans.
A privatized UK water company didn't put away enough to cover its pension obligations, and has lostthe suit todump those costs on the public.
Britain's privatized water companies have skimped on employees' pensions as well as on maintenanceof facilities. That should no be a surprise; that is what one should expect of privatized publicservices. With any luck, this will drive the companies bankrupt, which would make it possible tonationalize them without paying any "compensation", and thus put an end to the whole foolish Torystory of privatizing them.
Since October, Israeliarmyraids into areas of the West Bank, including Jenin, have greatly increased. This includeskilling over 500 Palestinians and attacking schools.
Funded by oil firms and dark money, the corrupted Republican Attorneys General Association isfighting climate-related federal regulations and the ongoing lawsuits which would hold oil firmsaccountable for weather-related disastersintheir states.
Their counterpart isDAGA.
As the world heats up, methane released from thawing permafrost and warming tropical wetlands isintensifying climate breakdown. Butcurbingit is achievable.
Thugsin LA raided an encampment of homeless people on a beach, andstoleall their property except what they could carry.
Stealing from homeless people is a standard part these raids. Even if that property is just a tentand some clothing, a homeless person has no way to carry all that on a moment's notice, and no readyplace to take it to.
To steal from people who have so little is especially cruel, and it gives the lie to the claim thatthis is simply a way of making them move. It is, rather, systematic harassment with a legal excuse.
RFK Jrabandonedhis campaign for president and endorsedthe corrupter.In my book, that endorsement makes him an enemy of democracy.
Greg Palast talks of investigativejournalismwith RFK Jr, and how the latter subsequently forgot all about what the two had done.
Some examples ofRFKJr's promotion of wild disinformation.
(satire) RFK Jr. Offered Multiple Cabinet Positions In RFK Jr.’sAdministration,RFK Jr. Reports.
TheUSused to have leverage on Israel, and used it to restrain some unjust actions. Nowadays, itseems Biden does not dare.
I don't know what caused this change, but I suspect that various Extreme Court decisions to rip upvariousvotingrights andcampaignfunding laws play a role. They have enhanced the power of concentrated money to dictate to theUS government.
Both Israel and HAMAS’s leaders believe there is more to gain byfighting on.
It is impossible to wipe out an underground movement that can recruit new supporters. Killing itsleaders has generallyprovedineffective.
A Palestinian-American Democratic delegate and an Israeli whose son was killed by HAMAS joined topressure the Democratic Party to take astrongerstand against the bombardment and siege of Gaza. The party did not give much.
Some of the corrupter'ssupporters are starting to think, fromhispublic presentations, that he is mentally incompetent.
[Governor DeMentis's law] bannedlessons on racism in Florida public schools. "Freedom schools"fill the gaps.
Blue states too, like Illinois andWashington,have seen a resurgence of "freedom schools".
Robert Reich:
Putting an end to collusion and price fixing is necessary today as it has always been, but that'snot enough. The collusion is encouraged by the excessive concentration in large companies. We needto break them up or compel them to split up, with adequate new laws.
For the field of petroleum products, reducing the price is the wrong goal (it would exacerbateglobal heating).What we need instead is awindfallprofits tax, to redirect that money to important needs (including more support for thenon-wealthy). This could, in effect, serve as a kind of carbon tax.
For the field of rental housing, we would put an end to companies' owning large numbersof housesand apartmentsfor rent. This can be seen as a strong form of deconcentration, bringing the rental housing marketback to the way it operated 30 years ago.
Aletter sent by many organizations urging the mass media to report on the threats to US democracyfrom right-wing extremists, headed by the fascistleader.
Twenty-four [human] brain samples collected in early 2024 measured on average about0.5% plastic byweight.
That is so large it astounds me. And they are likely to cause various diseases.
Chicago thugs arrested protesters rallying near the Israeli Consulate.They arrestedreporters covering the protest, too.
The thug spokesman justified the arrests withnon-sequiturs in their usual way, then made typical right-wing threats.
Solar power hascutthe cost of electricity in Gujarat by 2/3, making salt extractors' lives much better as well asless polluting.
A Conservative US judge has endorsed Harris, saying, "I am indifferent in this election on anyissues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, asIbelieve all Americans should be."
Astudy of "stop and search" in the UK, which means stopping people arbitrarily on the street andsearching them for no specific cause, found that it wasn't even effective for its stated purpose(stopping knife crime).
RFK Jr considers dropping outtohelp Trump, running mate says.
Now it is clear what side he was on all along.
Since 2013 the subtler right-wing members of the Supreme Court have beenchipping away at voting rights.
US citizens:callon Congress to investigate Egypt's possible $10 million bribe tothe corrupter.
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US citizens:callon Biden to support a global ban on autonomous weapons systems.
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 totax the rich and reduce their excessive power.
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US citizens:callon Biden to address allegations of rape and torture by Israeli army.
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A court case in the UK seeks toshowthat UK law requires cutting off arms exports to Israel.
Is there any chance of doing something similar in the US?
African health officials have appealed to the international community not to impose travel bans oncountries dealing with an outbreak of mpox, but instead to support the continent in rolling outtestingand vaccinations.
This is very wise.
Extremeweather in the US is causing a shortage of donated blood. That can kill people, and it is justone of many ways that the climate crisis can kill.
A delegate at the DNC held up asign saying "StopArming Israel". Other delegates near her started hitting her with their "We 💝 Joe" signs.
This was disgusting behavior, and those who attacked her should be punished for it.
George Monbiot: At the behest oflivestocklobby groups, lab-grown meat has been banned in Florida, Alabama, Italy and Hungary.Politicians in France, Romania and [128] other US states are seeking to follow suit. [...] [A] newcampaign funded by the livestock industry and fronted by a former meat executive is pressing for anEU-wide ban.
Monbiot asserts, and this is plausible to me, that the meat industry is aiming to preemptivelyprohibit an urgently needed substitute for the massive and heavily polluting farming of cattle feed.
(satire) CHICAGO—In a deliberate counter-programming effort aimed at one of the biggest weeks ofthe 2024 election, [the bullshitter] reportedly hoped to disrupt the Democratic National Conventionnews cycle Tuesday byeatinga live rat on television.
The Federal Trade Commission voted this week to ban the posting of fakereviews by companies, and other dishonest methods of publicity.
The UK is using a bizarre excuse to suspend doctors' right to practicemedicine for participating in nonviolent protests against a long-termthreat to everyone's health.
It is based on the claim that patients are likely to distrust alldoctors because of those doctors involvement in protests which havebeen criminalized.
IAEA inspectors at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,occupied by the Putin forces since 2022, report frequently hearingfighting nearby.
Russell Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, had a conversation with a right-wing supporterfrom a wealthy family, or so he thought; but persewas really a British journalist who recorded the whole conversation.
In the recording, Vought claimed thatthe bullshitter was lying when he said thatProject2025 has nothing to do with him. Which one was lying — the corrupter or Vought? We can'ttell a priori, since Vought seems to approve of lying for political victory. But since many of hisclose supporters believe Project 2025 is for him, I think that he told them it was.
Billionaireshaveconcentrated wealth.
Any party that tries to woo right-wing voters bypromisingnot to raise taxes has made a choice not to address those issues. By making this choice forLabour, Starmer has ruined it.
Many Britons supported the Labour Party precisely because its goal was to do something about that.It rejected Communism, but advocated an increased level of Socialism. Now Starmer thinks to dragthem along for lack of a better alternative.
George Monbiot contrasts politics we learned to expect in the democratic world from 1945 to 1975 withthetrue normal of history.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the PRO Act, to help workers unionize.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
TheMortality of the US Homeless Population
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.) Idenounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I makeexceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I label them like this.
The massive adoption of chatbots (bullshit generators oftenreferred tomisleadingly as "artificial intelligence") isgreatly increasing thedemand for electric power. This in turn is increasing the use of fossil fuels and thusaccelerating climate disaster.
How ironicthat this is a byproduct of making onlineservices function worse.
The article erroneously states that neural network systems "make decisions similar to the humanbrain." Aside from the confused concepts — it makes no sense to compare a decision with abrain — digital "neural network" systems do not work like groups of real neurons. These"neural networks" implement an abstraction and simplification of early theories of how real neuronswork. They can do some useful things, but we should avoid erroneous explanations of them.
Sheikh Hasina imprisoned many oppositions incommunicado.Their families had heard no word of them for years and gave themup for dead. Now it seems some are alive and will be freed.
The UK government has dropped its appeal of a court's dismissal of chargesagainst a protester who reminded the public of juror's absolute right to vote to acquit any accused.
Global heating has beenadvancingfaster than models predicted. Some scientists are concerned that Earth has moved beyond theregion of climate space that the models work in.
So it looks like global heatingwill be worse than predicted.
Earth's weather is a chaotic system. Some of that mathematical chaos may get into the climate too.There are plenty of positive feedbacks that could be taking over.
*Shell oil non-profit donated toanti-climategroups behind Project 2025.
Foundation says it ‘does not endorse any organizations’ while funneling hundreds of thousands torightwing causes.*
It also donated to the Heatland Institute,which campaigns to protect globalheating and keep it going.
With modern solutions such as air-con aggravating the problem, ancientheat-managementtechniques can offer answers.
Survivors of [fossil fuel] disastersdemandUS inquiry into big oil's "climate crimes."They include spreading misinformation about global heating and its causes.
German climate activistsstopair traffic after breaking into four airport sites.
These protests may be dangerous, but not as dangerous as the failure to curbglobal heating. Is itstupid to try this method when gentler ones don't serve?
Ukraine's army in the Kursk region is taking many prisoners;they say Putin's conscripts oftendon't want to fight.
It makes sense that they don't; so when Zelenskiy says that prisoners of war become part of the"exchange fund" to swap for Putin's Ukrainian prisoners, that creates a moral quandary. If a Putinforces soldier surrenders in order to get out of thePutin forces, swapping him back to Putinwould spoil the point of his surrender.
Does Ukraine give each prisoner the option not to be traded?
Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what heplansfor America.
We should not suffer anything like today's antisocial media platforms to live. But what is thecrucial aspect that we must make them change? I suggest that it is that they run recommendationengines and impose them on every user.
We can't be sure thatchangingthis would correct the danger, but unless we have a better idea, we should try it.
After RFK Jr tried to corrupt the corruptor,he reportedly tried corrupting Kamala Harris the same way — he would endorse herinexchange for a cabinet job.
The reports say she made no reply to him.
How pitiful it is to try to sell out and find that what you're selling is not worth anything.
Israelibombing killed 18 people in the same family at once.
Families tend to stick together when they flee in search of safety. So if you make a habit ofbombing places where hundreds of civilians are sheltering, and sometimes killing dozens of them, bychance sometimes the many civilians you kill will include a dozen or two from one family.
Whether the victims are related is not morally crucial. The war crime consists of bombing a placewhere there are many civilians. Related or not, civilians are not a legitimate target.
US citizens:callon Congress to ban thugs' use of deceptionto trick minors into false confessions.
I signed the petition but we should go further. Many adults are vulnerable to pressure to makefalse confessions, and those are unjust no matter who is the victim. We should adopt this measureregardless of who the victim is.
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Fanatical "settlers"carriedout another pogrom in the West Bank, but this time the president of Israel called it "a pogrom"and officials have said they will arrest and try the perpetrators.
This might be a significant change. We can't take that for granted, and it would be only a firststep. But we can hope that it is real, and we can encourage that.
The US president can cut off arms shipments to Israel without any helpfrom Congress. He can do this by enforcing two existing laws, whichforbid arms deliveries to countries that (1) violate therules of waror (2) block delivery ofUS humanitarian aid.
US citizens:Standwith Bernie Sanders: Not another nickel for Netanyahu's war. End U.S. funding and weapons salesto Israel.
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The wrecker could harm abortion rightsinmany countries if he seizes the US presidency again.
(I don't say "wins" becauseRepublicans are constantlytrying torig elections.)
US citizens: support Biden's proposal for a"NoOne Is Above the Law" amendment.
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US citizens:call on Congressto repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
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Newly Sober God Admits He Has No Recollection OfCreating Universe.This is only a satire — I would not seriously assert that supernatural entities exist.
The German legal system is deliberating on theprecisemeaning of the slogan, "From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free." Specifically, is itantisemitic?
My conclusion about the slogan is that it is not antisemitic, and does not specifically advocatedoing any harm to Jews as persons, but it does advocate the abolition of Israel. Said abolitionmight in certain circumstances be accompanied by a genocide, though in other circumstances it would not.
I don't advocate the abolition of Israel, and I do not associate with use of that slogan. What Iadvocate is a free and democratic state of Palestine in theregion alongside Israel. I haveadvocatedthat for many years. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Spreading fires burnt the northwest suburbs of Athens. Manyhouses were destroyed.
There have always been fires in rural areas that took many days tocontrol, but we have come to expect that the modern state can protectcities from such fires. That can no longer be assumed. Globalheating produces higher temperatures, and in some places more aridity,and those combine to enable fires to overwhelm defense.
Coming sooner or later to a city near you — unless we curbglobal heating.
Is the US Still a Democracy?'Yes and No,' Says BernieSanders. "I use the term oligarchy... I think we are moving rapidly in that direction."
I have said basically the same thing for many years, except that I prefer the word "plutocracy".The two words have a subtle difference but they are mostly the same.
There is no sharp line between a democracy, a degraded democracy such as the US is now, and aplutocracy. Rather, it is a spectrum. But if we take his issue seriously we must campaign toreduce the extent of plutocracy.
US democracy is also threatened currently by authoritarian extremism (led by the corrupter). Thatand plutocracy are different currents but they work together.
Is US democracy doomed? I don't know. What I know is that throwing in the towel is foolish becauseit guarantees defeat.
Medical effects of heat causetensor hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. Often there is no record that attributes a deathto heat. In poor countries, especially, no one is likely to determine that a poor person's deathwas due to heat.
Inquiry into Mexico's [deadly repression from 1965 to 1990]obstructed by militaryand other agencies, board says.
This repression included theTlotelolco massacre in whichsoldiers secretly posted by the president in a nearby large building shot a crowd of protestingstudents down below.
There were, of course, cops outside that were sent officially to control the protest — but thosecops were not the ones that opened fire. ISTR hearing that the hidden soldiers shot at them so thatthey would shoot "back" at the only possible visible enemy.
US citizens: call on Congress to overturn the "Citizens" Uniteddecision.
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US citizens: call on governments to invest in community safety, andreduce reliance on police and punishment.
If you phone, please spread the word!Your state governor's phone number is atUSA.gov
US citizens: call on Congress to take care of US national parks.
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Omer Bartov, Israeli historian living for 25 years in the US, writesabout how Israel has changed.
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I wasdeeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel. He describes anIsraeli people that has come to see peace as unthinkable. That wasnot so before.
He cited his previous publication in November:
We know from history that it is crucial to warn of thepotential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemnit after it has taken place. I think we still have thattime.
But then he said,
I no longer believe that. By the time I travelled toIsrael, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by theIDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny thatIsrael was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanityand genocidal actions.
Tim Walz taught in a high school in China, and brought Americanstudents to see China -- and he taught them about the massacre of studentsthat set up a small version of the Statue of Liberty in Beijing.
The UN Human Rights Office (UNHCR) recorded 21 Gaza schools bombedfrom July 4 through Aug 10.
I don't think this was a matter of chance.
WHO says that its weak standards for two PFAS were meant to head offadequate standards, and were drawn up by people corrupted by industry. It plans to eliminate them and start over.
Miami public school teachers have been compelled to https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2024/08/13/which-side-are-you-on-miami-teachers-will-choose-between-their-union-and-a-new-one-bankrolled-by-a-national-anti-union-group/vote to choosebetween their existing union and a trojan horse union set up byright-wing plutocrats.
I call it a "trojan horse" because it is the work of a campaign toabolish unions for teachers and public workers, Whatever it mayoffer them, it is a trap.
A UN special rapporteur judges Canada's temporary foreign workerprogram to promote debt bondage.Also, he found that workers are subject to many of the usual kindsof abuses; some of those abuses are illegal, but there is insufficienteffort to prevent them.
Side issue: every time I see the term "global south" it strikes me asgratuitous geographical error. Mexico, Guatemala and Jamaica are allfar north of the equator. The significant issue that these countrieshave in country is that they are poor enough that their people suffer,but developed enough for their workers to be useful in wealthiercountries.
Student Protesters Were Suspended WithNoChance to Defend Themselves. Will Courts Return Them to Campus?
To identify oneself "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine" presupposes thatone cannot be in favor of the well being of both — as I am. I am notanti-Israel or anti-Palestine, I am anti-war-crime.I am pro-peace and pro-coexistence.
Krishna Maharaj convinced a judge to rule he was innocent of murder, but Florida officials would notlet him out of prison. He has died there.
A person can become sentimentally attached to anything, but this miscarriage of justice was real,not merely sentiment in other people's minds. It called for redress in reality, not merely insentiment. And it calls for changing the system so it won't do that again to someone else.
ASimple Safety Net Could Keep People Like Me out of Prison.
It used to be that if you got out of prison, most ways to make a new start were still open to you.Nowadays, in the US, most avenues to having a decent life are explicitly forever barred to you.Thanks to "tough on crime" politicians, more interested in showing they are tough than on avoidingfuture crime, we have a system designed, in effect, to ensure that former criminals never gostraight.
Violent crime in the US inJan-June2024 is around 5% less than the previous year. Homicides dropped around 15%. (These estimatesdo not have accuracy within 1%, so I have rounded each to the nearest multiple of 5%.)
[begin irony] Eventually right-wingers and bigots will have no one tohelp them out. [end irony]
An Ohio thug has been charged with murder forshootinga woman dead.
Shoplifting is not a violent or dangerous act, so the suspicion of shoplifting was no grounds forshooting Ms Young. I do wonder how fast her car was moving and whether he could get out of the way.If it was no real danger to him, that too was not grounds for shooting her; he should have got outof the way and followed her.
I wonder why there are four charges of murder when only one person was killed. I hope it does notreflect the fanatical claimthat a fetus is a person. Please do not give any sympathy to that scheme to eliminate abortion rights.
InIran, the fanatics shoot women in their cars for "crimes" of disobedience to religion.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass theGeorgeFloyd Justice in Policing Act
Side issue: I've been convinced that it is a bad practice in general to name laws, either officiallyor unofficially, after prominent victims of a harmful practice to be prevented in the future. A lawis meant to be a better rule for society, not a memorial to a person.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Workers in many US cities have organized "Heat Week" to demandmeasures tohelpthem avoid death from dangerously hot weather.
Such regulations will help for a time, but if we keep burning too much fossil fuel and makingEarth's average surface temperatureeverhotter, they will eventually overcome our resistance. The only method that will continue towork is to curb global heating.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
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US citizens:callon Congress to insist that we have no new wars, and de-escalate crises in the Middle East.
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We have to wonder:how canVenezuela get rid of Maduro, now that he visibly stole an election and launched readiness forrepression of those who object.
The same question applies to other countries.
How can Nicaragua kick out Ortega?
How canIsrael Kick out Netanyahu?
How can Russia kick out Putin?
How can China kick outXi?
(Those last two have such total repression that few there dare admit wishing for freedom.
If the corrupter grabs the presidency of the US again, and institutes fascism, how could the US kick him out?
Putin's cracker corps is usingverysophisticated phishing against people involved with the Russian opposition in exile.
Ukraine'ssmall invasion of Russia was still going strong as of Tuesday, and Putin has sent onlyinadequate forces to repel it.
A US court found Google to be a monopoly, but its supposed "remedy",constrained by US antitrust law, would make things much worse.It is considering forcing Google tospinoff Android and Chrome.
Chrome is nonfree, and Android includes crucial nonfree components.Nonetheless, from Chromium and the free parts of Android we can run systems that are free and safe to use.(True, for Replicant we face the challenge of drivers).I fear that spinning those systems off would lead to making them totally proprietary in the future.
Meanwhile, that would not stop Google from doing nasty things with its online dis-services.
[UCLA] cannot allow pro-Palestinian protesters to blockJewishstudents from accessing classes and other parts of campus, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
This ruling is right. You have a right to hold rallies to protest on political grounds, but youdon't have a right to mistreat individuals by discriminating on their religious views.
To judge from this description, that kind of protest also commits the wrong of distorting reproachfor Israel's practices into antisemitism. Antisemitism, like other bigotry, is wrong.
Whenever we criticize a country, we must be careful not to let that lead to punishing people forhaving an ethnicity or religion associated with that country.
UCLA should show ways that students can stand up for their views, ways that are visible to othersusing the campus, not tucked away uselessly, but without blocking them.
Biden announced a cease fire plan in June, and HAMAS accepted it, but Israel rejected it. HAMAS nowsays it will still accept the July plan, but rejects changes Biden is privately proposing and willnotjoin negotiations based on those changes.
Gaza ceasefire talks are on their last legs, andBenjaminNetanyahu is to blame.
China is strengthening military training and militarist indoctrinationinschools,even primary schools.
Brazil plans todredgea shipping channel the length of the enormous Pantanal wetland. Scientists say this coulddestroy the wetland, damage ecosystems, and cause extinction of species.
The push for the shipping channel comes from companies that would like to ship massive exportsthrough it. Like building a road through a forest, the economic activity that the channel wouldenable would do lots more damage.
[The corrupter]'s long history of racism,from the1970s to 2020.
It would be one thing if Trump misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of his actions andcomments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not justpolitical opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of his personality, character, and career.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (Toavoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denouncebigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions forsome articles because I consider them important — and I label them like this.
Project 2025 isactivelyworking on training potential replacement federal staff on how to be loyal to right-wingpolitics and the corrupterand use their power to the maximum.
ProPublica obtained leaked training videos, which don't show upin the page if you can't access YouTube directly.
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=8hXLXnuVGRg
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=gjrMl_YHHT4
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=iRX56yKJOHQ
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=mB8lsQApJK8
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=1vsrXQp_w1Y
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=ob2nmb97OkY
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=xxe55mU4DA8
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=317v5gVFWzg
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=ksI1AsXKiaM
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=H4WOsQYOMgU
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=y2kGi7z52bA
- https://invidio.us/watch?v=D4HcW29sxcA
An appeals court hastemporarilyblocked Biden's latest plan for student loan relief. However, it has already helped over400,000 former students who can't pay their bills. And another half-million have got an indefiniterespite from paying.
Robert Reich debunks economic myth #1.
Economics,when Adam Smith founded it, was aboutquestions such as themeaningof a good society. What sort of society do we want? How do we understand a “good” society?What do we owe one another as members of such a society?
He called himself a moral philosopher.
And that is still what economics is about, except that plutocratists pretend that that part of itnever existed.
Kamala Harris said in a campaign video that former President DonaldTrump’s pick for vice president will be "loyal only to Trump, not toour country."
She had a firm basis to make this claim: Vance said, "If I had been vice president, I would havetold the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to havemultipleslates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there."
The wrecker and Vance are the candidates of the billionaires. Here is a long list of billionairesupporters,with descriptions ofwhere their billions come from.
Subsidies in England for wildlife-friendly agriculturalimprovedthe prevalence of many kinds of wildlife.
[A few Labour] MPs leaving [ex-Twitter] or scaling back use over its"deterioration"under Elon Musk’s ownership.
If this spreads, it could put someuseful pressure on ex-Twitter.However, as long as it requiresto run nonfree software,no one should use it.
LA is making a strong push to improve public transit for itsOlympicGames in 2028.
At least for once the region where they are held may gain a lasting benefit. Meanwhile, the citysays it will give homeless people temporary housing. I hope that doesn't mean they will be out onthe street again the following week, and their old encampments will be put in the trash.
RFK jr has been denied a spot on the ballot in New York State because he falsely claimed to be aresidentof that state.
How Viktor Orbán Conqueredthe HeritageFoundation. Once the redoubt of Reaganism, the think tank has taken to promoting[the wrecker]'sfavorite strongman.
Both the wreckerand Orbán have acted to promote Putin. Each one is the enemy of his own country.
US citizens:call on Biden toend funding and weapons shipments to Israel, in order to save Palestinian lives, stop an all out warin the Middle East, and broker a ceasefire.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Anotheranalysis of the danger of a Republican coup by arbitrarily rejecting vote count results.
See alsoGregPalast's warning.
Antisocialmedia platforms preferentially recommend videos that show violence, and/or signs of bigotry andhatred.
This can give those that leantowards bigotry and hatred the impression that"everyone is doing it",even though most are not. For some, that is normal and acceptable.
Everyfree market is based on a set of rules, anddifferent rules make different results. Plutocracyhas brought about changing the rules so that the rules make the rich richer, and give them morepower to change the rules further.
If the corruptergrabs the presidency again, which he can now do only by crooked methods ordishonesty, it will destroy our democracy and encourageglobal heating disaster.Almost anything we might do to stop this will be less bad than permitting it to occur.
One of Big Tech's favorite tools for persuading the public to yield to a system that causes problemsfor people is the claim that "progress is inevitable, so give up and get used to it." Change is notnecessarily progress, and many "inevitable" changes can be blockedif people are determined.
That argument is really just a variant of "You can't stop us because we are too strong, so just giveup."
Greg Palast: Republicans in Georgia's state government gave themselvesthe power to reject, arbitrarily,the vote of any county.It is already looking at canceling Atlanta's votes in the next election.
How can the US prevent this method of stealing the election?
US citizens:callon the Senate to keep MAGA bigotry out of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Israel has been attacking lots of schools, lately — and causinglotsof civilian casualties, because in some schools thousands of civilians are sheltering.
The Unpunished:HowExtremists Took Over Israel After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism againstPalestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.*
I've reported here on the gradual growth of the "settlers"' defiance and violence with stateconnivance. But this article shows that it is and was bigger and more ingrained than I realized.And since the Gaza war started, it has broken all limits.
Biden has adopted theextremeasylum-obstacle systempioneeredby Republicans when the wreckerwas president. The result is that the right to asylum is already mostly eliminated in the US,except for those who are safe enough at home to remain there while their cases are judged.
Presumably Biden did this to neutralize the issue as a political boost for Republicans. Ironically,the Americans who want this system don't seem to be aware that they already have it.
Australia, Germany, France and the UK have condemned extremist Israeliminister Smotrich for suggesting it was legitimate to decidetostarve two million people to save a few hundred.
The US should be saying this, too.
Trials of the rioters who attacked the Capitol are not over. One whorepeatedlyattacked cops with weapons has been sentenced to 20 years.
[The bullshitter] and Vance are unmatched in "the Olympics of lying",saysPete Buttigieg.
When battling with the bullshitter,one must not mince words for how dishonest he is. He pretends that is an acknowledgmentthat he is truthful.
The UK sentenced a peaceful climate defender toalonger prison term than a violent right-wing rioter.
There is a perverse kind of logic that perhaps the judges used, although if so they would not wantto admit it.
The right-wing rioters may have been carried away with rage stimulated by disinformation. In ayear, this phase may have passed and he might become harmless.
By contrast, the leaders of Just Stop Oil have thought long and hard about the danger of climatedisaster and the importance of preventing it. It won't be easy to convince them to give up, with somuch at stake.
I think that the climate defenders should be rewarded, not punished.
Arguing that the right-wing rioters should bechargedwith terrorism.
The practice of labeling protests as "organized crime" has spread fromthe US to Germany and now the UK.
The UK protest involved violence against property, and that has alwaysbeen a crime. Nonetheless it is wrong to equate a protest, whose participantssought no gain, with organized crime, whose purpose is gain.
The reality is that racism [in the UK] isn't a bottom-up expression of popular discontent, but a top-down project propagated by people in positions of power.
Some US companies pay their CEOs thousands of times as much as their workers.
The average for S&P 500 companies is 268 to 1.
Biden announced he will not run for reelection, and endorsed Kamala Harris,the current vice president.It looks likely that the Democratic Convention will choose Harris . Idon't know whether to consider this good or bad, because I don't know
- whether she will be more likely to defeat the corrupter or
- whether she will be as progressive as president as Biden has been.
Following the advice of Martin Luther King, jr., I try not to judgecandidates by race or sex. I judge by their politics and (whenpertinent) their chances.
My opinion of Harris's politics was raised by reading what she saidabout prosecuting possession of drugs, and mass imprisonment.
Two right-wing extremists in the UK have been sent toprisonfor postings that urged violent attacks against asylum seekers.
The border between freedom of speech and inciting violence is subject to abuse by governments. ButI think the facts this time merited the decision.
The 737 Max door-plug pop-out was caused by sloppy practices that had been reported by inspectionsfor years. Boeing management chose to let the practices continue, since it had not caused them aloss of money. The FAA reported them to Boeing repeatedly butdidnot compel it to change them.
Perhaps the FAA took for granted that an airplane company would prioritize safety, and was notprepared to deal with one that would prefer to cut corners on safety.
Brats, dads and bravado: this US election will bedecided on vibes.
How foolish it is to vote based on such emotional impressions. We would be wiser to demand thatcandidates tell us what they intend to do.
For this year's general election, it is almost certain for any office that the Democrat will dobetter things than the Republican. As for the pseudoscience candidate, RFK jr, he's not rationalenough to do anything good.
But it is not so easy to determine the best choice in Democratic primaries. It is quite likely thatone of the candidates is more progressive than the others, but finding out which one that is may takesearching and reading. Also, one of them may besupportedby AIPAC and the others not.
If you vote for the progressive Democrat, you are more likely to get policies that help thenon-wealthy rather than the wealthy, and that support human rights for all.
The order that closed the Philippine news site, Reppler, has beenvoidedby a court. However,prosecutionof Maria Ressa continues.
Brazil reduced itsdiplomaticsupport for the dictator of Nicaragua, who retaliated by expelling Brazil's ambassador. Brazilreplied in kind.
It seems Lula is coming to recognize that a dictator that is notionally leftist can be as evil asother dictators.
Robert Reich: The supporters of the wrecker havegood reasons tobe angry at the American political system. But only progressives will seriously try to fix theproblems.
Robert Reich summarizes evidence that the bullshitteris becomingdemented — bullshitting himself as well as the public.
[The bullshitter] lashes out at Harris and falselyclaimsno one was killed on January 6.
Israeli minister Smotrich accused other countries of forcing Israel toallow some food into Gaza. He suggested it would bemorallypreferable to starve everyone there.
Jews and Muslims in the UK are joining in acampaignagainst hatred of whatever demographic group.
Judges have refused tosaveShamima Begum. Labour should bring her back to the UK to face justice.
Heractions in going to join PISSI may have been a crime. If so, the UK should welcome her home andput her on trial. To avoid a trial by declaring someone exiled, without giving per any trial, isnever just.
*[The wrecker once] shared aprivateflight with Project 2025 visionary he [recently] claimed to not know. That person was the headof the Heritage Foundation, who in April told a journalist he had discussed the project with thewrecker directly. Of course, wither one of them could be lying, or maybe both.
The wrecker's campaign said that Project 2025"has never and will never be an accurate reflection of [the wrecker]'s policies." That maybe true, because the wrecker may not have policies stable enough for a statement to reflect themproperly. An accurate description of the momentary state of his policy plans would have to bequantum mechanical.
US citizens:callon Congress to put limits on the immunity of ex-presidents.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the Stop Corporate Capture Act, which would establish explicitly that eachfederal agency defines the meaning of its regulations.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Analyses indicate NicolásMadurolost the presidential election. So the question is, how do you push out a dictator that rigselections?
Bangladeshis did this recently with massive protests, but that is easier said than done. Crucial inBangladesh was the refusal, by the commander of the army, to order troops to shoot the protesters.
A crucial background point was that millions of Bangladeshis inclined to oppose Hasina had not fledthe country over the years; rather, they were at home where they could join the protests.
Maduro hasjailed1100 people recently, some for political opposition, but others who do not seem to bepolitically active at all.
Governor DeMentis defended the extreme plutocratist principle thatgovernments shouldhelponly the wealthy people — by denying poor people in Florida the benefit of $250 milliondollars in EBT funds offered by the federal government.
It would have cost Florida $12 million to administer the activity, andthat was unacceptable for a stingy Republican extremist. They believe wealthshould flow onlyfromthe poor to the rich.
Ukraine has launched a small invasion of Russia, to thenorth of Kharkiv.
I, like Jade McGlynn, do not see how this contributes much to Ukraine's victory. I do see somepossible benefits:
- It could draw a few thousand Russian troops away from Putin's preferred attack lines.
- It could interfere with shelling of Kharkiv.
- It could capture Russian soldiers and officials to exchange with some of Putin's thousands ofcaptives.
- Putin's inability to defeat the attack quickly could embarrass him.
But none of them seems greatly important.
Largenonviolent community rallies against right-wing extremism in England led far-right activists toslink away in discouragement.
Big tech firmsprofitfrom disorder. Don't let them use these riots to push for more surveillance.
The riots in question have been organized by right-wing hate campaigners among people radicalizedover antisocial media. That should not be an excuse to impose China-style surveillance on everyonein the UK.
I suggest that authorization of making video or audio recordings, or doing face recognition, should belimited to a specifiedplace and a specified interval of time.
SEIU'S Verrett: "Harris-Walz is theworkingpeople's ticket — We're energized like never before".
I've seen statements with similar enthusiasm from leaders of other unions.
Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate,boastsa strong record on climate policy and green energy as Minnesota governor.
Global heating has createdageological structure that causes a flood in Juneau each summer.
It seems obvious to try to prevent the annual flood of Juneau by creating a way for water to escapefrom the dammed lake earlier and more slowly, when its level is low enough that it won't causedamage. Has anyone tried this? Is there a reason why it would not work?
For patients who are not very close to death, medical errors are avery minor danger — about 1% of the patients'deaths are caused that way.
A simple and clear demonstration thatlarge language modelsare not intelligent. Alas, every time it refers to them as "AI" it tells people not to believethat conclusion.
In addition, there are other kinds of systems, also referred to as "Artificial Intelligence", whichcan do inference or can recognize certain crucial patterns better than the best humans. Thosereally do qualify as "intelligence".
HAMAS has appointed theleaderof the Oct 7 terrorist attack as the overall head of HAMAS, to replace the assassinated leaderIsmail Haniyeh.
I worry that this will make further peace negotiations impossible. Netanyahu would say, "We hateSinwar too much to speak with him." But even if Netanyahu were willing, there is no way to arrangea meeting or a call between them.
That's convenient for Netanyahu, if his goal is to continue fighting ad infinitem.
Even as extreme heat raged across the southern United States this summer, the governors of Floridaand Texas struck down heat protections for outdoorworkers.Construction companies and agricultural firms lobbied against the rights of workers to water,shade and rest breaks when temperatures soar — andRon DeSantisandGregAbbott, two men also lavishly funded by the fossil fuel industry, gave them what they wanted.
AIPAC just barely succeeded in eliminating progressive representativeCori Bush,with 8 million dollars. Plus some dishonesty.
New Georgia rules let local [election] boardswithholdelection certification. This was proposed by Republican supporters of the wrecker, and it mightoffer them a way to disrupt the presidential election.
Today's Latin American leftistsgivedemocracy high priority, and are ceasing to give authoritarian leftist regimes a free pass.
Meanwhile, the current right-wing rulers support right-wing authoritarians.
Hottest ocean temperatures in[atleast] 400 years an "existential threat" to the Great Barrier Reef, report finds.
The corrupterproposes another tax-cut swindle: it would cut social security for the poorest retiredAmericans, while reducing their taxes a pittance. It wouldcut more forwealthier retirees.
90% of convicted drugsmugglers inthe US are US citizens.The bullshitter despises truth even morethan he despises immigrants, so he pins the smuggling falsely on them. Two birds with onefalsehood.
Russia is systematically bombardingcivilian targets in Ukraine with missiles that are usually quite accurate.
Sanders voted against a tax bill that gives bigtax cuts to big businesses.
The bill also revived support for families with children. Sanders supports that, as do I; but Iagree with Sanders that we must not boost the power of the plutocrats by giving them any tax cuts.
Who is brave enough to backBrazil'sglobal tax on billionaires? The answer will define our future.
UN special rapporteurs are calling on the US to take "immediate" actionon behalf of people who were tortured by Chicago thugs into makingfalseconfessions, then imprisoned.
Denver cops forced trainee Victor Moses tokeepon fighting in Fight Day even though he was collapsing. As a result of the stress to his body,his legs had to be amputated. Moses had warned the trainers that he had sickle-cell disease andcould be harmed by pressing him too long, but they paid no attention.
Given that Moses has sickle-cell disease, I have a hunch he is black, and I suspect that racismplayed a role in the violent and callous treatment he received from the thugs that were traininghim.
Fight Day serves a crucial purpose; something like that is necessary. It will inevitably besomewhat dangerous, and trainers should recognize this when it occurs and protect the trainee. Iunderstand that this can't always be done in a real fight, but that is no reason to neglect it whenit is possible.
Meanwhile, there is a danger that gangsterthugs will kick their enemies when their enemiesare down. The official training for them must train them never to do that to anyone.
Scientists studying people who caught Covid in 2020 found that while many people with long Covidimproved over time, a substantial proportion still had cognitive problems two to three years laterand saw symptoms ofdepression,anxiety and fatigue worsen rather than subside.
Theidea of "detoxification" has become a widespread medical myth, promoted as a way to feed on thevague anxieties of people who realize they will die someday.
Palestinians voices areneededmore than ever. But they are being silenced.
I rarely see the US manstream media. In print, they are paywalled and no longer viewable withoutrunning nonfree software. On cable they are even worse: they are restricted by DRM and viewing issurveilled, and they have the drawbacks of being video.
UNRWA investigated accusations that 19 of its Gaza staff were involved in HAMAS's Oct 7 terroristattack.For9 of them it found sufficient evidence to fire them.
Since UNRWA has 13,000 employees in Gaza, to be that successful in excluding HAMAS militants fromits work force is good going. If we estimate roughly a million adult men in Gaza, 13,000 is roughly1% of them. I think that HAMAS militants numbered around 10,000, also roughly 1% of the total. Sothe intersection of the two sets, by pure chance, would have numbered around 100.
To have had only a tenth that many indicates an effective effort by UNRWA to avoid hiring HAMASmilitants.
It is absurd to fault UNRWA for not doing even better than that!
The US should resume its support for UNRWA.
Inpraiseof Tim Walz, Harris's running mate.
Regarding somepoliticalstances and actions of his.
Even the fascist leader had favorable words for Walz, saying that heseeks to makeMinnesotaas progressive as California. (Though the fascistmay not understand how favorable that is ;!)
I hope Harris and Walz take America farther than California has gone without federal help.
Orbánis tightening the pressure on Hungarian media that criticize the state or report on officialwrongdoing.
Astudy compares the voting records of Atlanta politicians with campaign funds donated bycompanies that can profit from those votes.
Alabama jailer pleads guilty in death of prisoner who froze to death in cellwhere jailers kept himnudein the cold for two weeks.
Tunisia's dictator still plans to have a presidential election but hasimprisonedthe serious opposition candidates.
This illustrates why it is undesirable to prohibit anyone with a criminal record from running foroffice. Of course we don't want swindlers and corrupt people to be elected to office, but such asimple method is not trustworthy. Rulers that don't respect truth have a habit of using falsenon-political charges to exclude the serious opposition.The corrupter has made it clear he woulddo this in the US if he seizes the presidency again.
Guardian interviews back up report byrightsgroup B’Tselem, which says jails should now be labeled "torture camps".
Palestinianex-prisonersreport being tortured and maimed in Israeli prisons. Some report on the slow death of prisonneighbors from untreated wounds.
Adding an insult to their rights to the injury to their bodies, often they were imprisoned withoutany charges. It seems that this can happen to any Palestinian, with no visible rhyme or reason.
There is no possible excuse for treating prisoners this way.
Subcontracted workers in the UK can beabruptlyfired for the littlest of "infractions", such as eating a catered sandwich that wasn't used inthe meeting it was purchased for and was waiting to be scavenged.
I would guess it is similar in the US, but I don't actually know. The protection ofworkers'rights in the USis very flimsy after decades of lobbying by employers.
The repressive ruler of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, has resigned and gone intoexileafter massive protests filled the country.
As I understand it, the protests themselves were not violent but the repression was. Those who wereprotesting in the streets are now celebrating in the streets.
The employment preferences for children and grandchildren of the independence fighters of 1971 werefrustrating to the rest of the population. As far as I can see, they were a zero-sum policy soreducing them or ending them would not hurt the people overall.
However, the bigger problem underlying the situation was the low wagesfor the other work that Bangladeshis could get — for instance,makingclothing to be sold in other countries,paida pittance, and sometimesgettingkilled because factorieslocked them in. This is the other side of the global problem caused by "fast fashion". Maybeone change could reduce both problems at once. I hope the next government will do something aboutthis.
In the long term, Bangladesh is squeezed between population growth andglobal heating. Reducing thebirth rate in Bangladesh will help the people there. However, parts of the country are beinggraduallyinundated by the Bay of Bengal, and the only way to stopthisin the long term is tocurbglobal heating,world-wide.
I'm looking for a cartoonist who would like to draw cartoons for me once in a while. If you'reinterested, please write to rms, which refers to me, at the location gnu period org.
Liverpool surmounted a right-wing provocation-demonstration by showing upenmasse with peaceful conversation.
All-night streetlightsmake leaves inedibleto insects, study finds.
Doing that on any street must be good for the trees on that street, but doing that over a large areaendangers insects and animals that eat them.
Four fortunate plutocrats will have the opporunity to buy a membership in Mar-a-Lago for the specialhigh price ofamillion dollars, instead of the regular price of seven hundred thousand dollars.There they will be able to meet privately withthe corrupter.
I suspect this is the pre-election price, and if he succeeds in acquiring the presidency again, theprice will go up to five million dollars.
For thepeople, heis allbullshit, all the time. Forthe plutocrats,he isall corruption,all the time.
US citizens:call onCongress to raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The coast of Scotland near Montrose is eroding around 3 meters peryear. It has eroded 70 meters in the past 30 years, but this is sureto accelerate.
In a few years, the town will be flooded.
A portable digital product now offers to be your "friend".
When these "services" are implemented on servers that a usercommunicates with, they create a dangerous vulnerability in society.A change in one server could convert all the "friends" based thereinto marketing "influencers", right-wing extremists, antivaxxers orPutinites. In other words, the sort of propagation that sometimeshappen, over months, to a collection of real people could be activatedon commend.
If the system is implemented in a product that communicates with no oneexcept its user, that danger is avoided, unless it has othercommunication channels. The article does not make it clear whetherthe "Fried" box has a back channel to the manufacturer. If this modeldoesn't, the Apple model surely will.
For-profit colleges fund the right-wing extremists in Congressthat ignited the persecution of students protesting atrocities in Gaza.
For-profit colleges are often predatory, and some were shut down forthis a few years ago.
I've recommended prohibiting them in general, to avoid the need toprove wrongdoing case by case, because that situation tends toencourage predatory behavior.
Some countries charge a household a very low price per joule for up toa specified low rate of energy use, and a higher price per joule foradditional energy beyond that necessary minimum. That eliminates thedanger of shut-offs for the poor, and assures that high fuel costswon't crush them.
Note that a kilowatt hour equals 3.6 mega joules.Any kind of energy can be measured in either of these units,and any system for delivering energy could be covered by a chargingsystem like this one.
Women as national leaders are no longer unusual, and we have seen enough of them to recognize thatthey run the gamut of good and bad qualities, just as men as leaders do. Women, as leaders, do notsystematically have any particular important qualities. And no leader is perfect.
Thus, we can't find a good national leader by choosing by gender. We should judge a candidate bywhat per goals and values, andperabilities — not by aspects of per identity.
New Report DetailsDangerousNormalization of Bigoted Conspiracy Theories in 118th Congress.
It was reprehensible of Starmer to expel Labour MPs for voting to helppoor British families, but entirely justified tostoplocal governments from blocking power cables for wind-powered generators. Hundreds of millionsof human lives, if not more, are at stake in decarbonization — aesthetic preferences are hardlysufficient reason to delay that work.
However, a creative compromise may perhaps soothe some of theopposition. Is it possible to design power pylons to serve thehumanities as well as human survival?
Could pylons, and cables, support homes for endangered birds and bats? Could the hanging meadows ofBritain help re-wild the land? If disused drilling platforms can help wildlife survive, maybe pylonscan too.
Might some of them act as scaffolding for colossal art works and installations, or sport walls forrock climbing competitions, or be painted with amusing designs?
If buried cables are cheap enough that burying them won't interfere with saving civilization, by allmeans bury them. Otherwise, the pylons are coming to save us and we should rejoice.
- Critics say [US energy reform bill] is a "fossil fuel wolf in clean energy clothing" that wouldgutenvironmental protections.*
US plutocratistshave made the word "reform" effectively vacuous by repeatedly using it to describethe elimination of regulations that protect us from their power and greed.
US citizens:callon Congress to defeat the plutocratistfossil-fuel giveaway bill.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A video posted by an Israeli soldier shows the demolition of themainwater facility in Rafah. That is no military target; attacking it was a war crime.
Israel arrests Aqsa Mosque Imam Ekrema Sabriaftereulogizing Ismail Haniyeh
Israel says it is investigating his sermon for possible incitement of violence, which Sabri denies.
They could certainly wait to make up their minds whether to prosecute before arresting him.
Starmerplansto expand face-recognition surveillance in Britain.
A country that imprisons people for "disruptive" nonviolent protest would not hesitate to arrest themon the way. The UK has already used car tracking to arrest people suspectedof beingon the way to a nonviolent protest.
Right-wing extremists in the UK are organizing violent rampages,inthe spirit of the wrecker's Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.
Inthe first one, a fanatic stabbed several small children, killing three.
This highlights the difference between the climate defense movement and the right wing extremistmovement: one strives peacefully to protect the weak from the powerful, while the other aims todisplay power by bullying and cruelty against weak victims, the weaker the better.
Starmer should respect the first and take action to end the second.
Anti-racists are organizingcounter-ralliesunder the banner, "Don't let racism divide us."
The No Kings Act wouldoverride the extremecourt's ruling that ex-presidents have almost complete immunity from prosecution for crimes thatare part of their official acts.
The chavistas from poor parts of Caracas have turned against Maduro, so he has ramped up therepression to target them too. His thugs arearrestingpeople for peaceful protests or simply stating opposition to him.
An al-Jazeera correspondent in north Gaza, and his cameraman, were killed by anIsraelimissile attack on their car.
The Committee to Protect Journalists saystheywere driving out of an area that Israel warned it would attack. Killing of journalists can't belegitimized by warnings.
Here iswhatal-Jazeera says about the killing.
Israel attacked theal-Jazeeraoffice in Gaza in the early days of the war. That could not have been an accident.
Israel has killedat least 85journalists in Gazasince then.
I knew very little aboutGovernorShapiro, rumored to be Harris's choice of running mate. This article provides some information,and some is disturbing.
Shapiro's "high popularity among Republicans" leads me to worry that his Republican supporters maylike him for rational reasons — such as stands which are not progressive. The article showsseveral that he does, or may, hold. Where we do not know, we should press him to clarify. But wewon't have a chance to do that.
The most dangerous of the possible positions reported in this article is being too cooperative withplanet roasters.The priority goal of every country must be to prevent the destruction of the natural world.
The most unjust of the stances listed in the article is the intent to restrict the right to boycott.In general, people and most organizations should have the right to boycott people, businesses andcountries because of their actions.
There are some exceptions. Government agencies, and companies whose services are essential, mustnot be allowed to deny their services to any person or organization — they must be common carriers.
Boycotts of persons based on demographic characteristics that have (or should have)nondiscrimination protection ought to be prohibited, because such boycotts would amount todiscrimination. This includes discrimination by national origin.
But aside from such cases, boycotts should be permitted.
The State of Massachusetts once passed a law toboycott companiesthat traded with Burma. I had the fortune to meet Assemblyman Byron Rushing, its champion, andI told him that this law had made me proud of Massachusetts. (It was later struck down by theSupreme Court which said it was preempted by World Trade Organization treaty, abusiness-supremacy treaty.)
Everyone: call on Costco, LL Bean, Macy's, Home Depot, Best Buy,Sears, and AT&T todropCiti as credit card partner.
US citizens:callon the Department of Justice to break up UnitedHealth's medical empire.
That company is not a monopoly, strictly speaking, but it is big enough to diminish competition in away that harms the public.
I've chosen to avoid the term "health care" in referring to medicine. The use of "care" indescribing medicine is a PR campaign that I get a bad feeling about.
US citizens:call on Biden to supporta treaty to ban autonomous weapons.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Democrats need tomobilizesupport based on class, which can unite most Americans, rather than race or identity, which tendto divide groups.
Most Americans nowadays are poor and struggling; that is something they can share. For some, bigotryagainst their various identity groups plays a part in causing that; but not for all. The othercauses, the ones associated with class, makes anyone who is not wealthy a victim, so it can mobilizeall those people together.
Given this, why does the corrupter havefollowers? Partly by appealing to religious fanatics. Partly by blaming minority groups for theconsequences of systems that make life bad for them (which often are the work of the rich andthe plutocratist politicians).We are warned not to underestimate thecorrupter'sappealto his target audience. He knows how to touch many Americans emotionally. His willingness touse that dishonestly, and his lack of any commitment to really address Americans' real problems,facilitates his doing winning misguided support.
Kamala Harris said she supported "Medicare for all", but it turned outshe meant private insurance, for all withlimits on medicaltreatment. What she supports in that area now is not clear.
Russianliberalopposition politician Ilya Yashin, just released from Putin's prison through an exchange ofprisoners, criticized that very exchange.
He said, "It encourages Putin to take more hostages." He is thinkinglikethepatriotic hostage I wrote about yesterday.
He did not want to leave Russia, either; he wanted to stay there and campaign for freedom. Iunderstand those feelings, but in any fight there can be times when it is better to retreat than tostay put and be totally defeated. This was one. Putin makes it nearly impossible to campaign forfreedom, justice, truth or peace in Russia.
The US establishedcrushingtrade sanctions against Venezuela to punish Maduro. It also launchedacoup attempt, which failed, together with a right-wing opposition (thatwasn'twhat people wanted). I think they would have elected an honest Chavista, but they did not havethat option.
The sanctions spread poverty in Venezuela, and pressured millions of Venezuelans to flee to the USand other countries. That suffering many have convinced may to vote against Maduro just now. Butthe US could have been far more helpful if democracy was its goal.
Democrats pitch No Kings Act to override [extreme court]’s[ex-president]immunity ruling.
The fascist told his followers that if they electhim this year, they won't need to vote ever again. That isadeniable suggestion that he won't allow citizens the power to undo what he will have done.
When the wrecker states his drastic plansexplicitly,hissupporters say he is joking.
I've noticed that he no longer tends to disregard all criticism, by simply taking a totally differentstand the next day. It seems to be possible nowadays for public criticism to make him respond tocriticism of things he said.
For instance, he recently tried toexplainaway his remark about asking Christians to vote "just once." His explanation was thatChristians tend to have a low voting rate (I am skeptical of this and I won't believe it justbecause the bullshitter says it). He was,he claims, imploring them to vote this year, but in 2028 it will be ok if they return to their habitof not voting.
Supposedly that should reassure us that he is not planning to ruin what remains of democracy in theUS. Don't buy that! On the contrary, that plan is implicit in his explanation.
If he needs nonvoting Christian supporters to vote for him this year, why would he not need themnext year?
Because non-rich Americans, who by then would have suffered the harmful effects of the denial oftheir rights, will support him? Not likely. Will secular Americans have becomesupporters of hierocracy? Surely not.
The natural reason, which his supporters will believe, is that he expects to have made it impossibleby 2028 for any opponent, no matter how popular, to defeat him.
To believe he means that is not a radical claim.Republicanshaveorganized torigelections for more than a decade,and theirefforts have intensifiedin recentyears. Support from president and federal agencies, as well as the extreme court, wouldpotentiate those efforts, making the fight for democracy in America even more uphill.
By now, we should not be shocked by this, only determined to defeat the attempt to impose right-wingextremist rule.
Vance called Rep. Ocasio-Cortez "sociopathic" for choosing (at least for the time being) not to havechildren.
This demonstrates the depth of his intentions to impose repression on women if he ever gets thechance.
Republicans now openly stand for imposing marriage and children onevery woman, anddenyingvarious rights to women who don't have them.
I think that "family values" was meant, all along, to hint at this goal.
There arebigprotests in Venezuela against Maduro's claim to have won the recent election. Who should Ibelieve?
When Chávez was president, the right-wing minority (1/4 of the population) could organize largeprotests, and welcomed a US-organized coup attempt. The protests now don't show that Maduro reallycheated.
Theopinionof the US government does not convince me of anything. After all,in 2019 it supportedJuanGuaidó's campaign to proclaim himself president of Venezuela. True, that occurred when thewrecker was president of the US; but the US supported thecoupagainst President Zelaya of Honduras when Obama was president.
However, given that various left-leaning presidents, some of whom I respect, are pressing Maduro tojustify his claim to have won, and since he seem to have kept the local vote counts secret, it lookslike he must in fact have lost and be trying to cheat.
Even the slum dwellers, traditionally chavistas, are protesting todemandthat Maduro accept defeat.
Some of the contributors to Project 2025 are now embarrassed to receive credit fortheir work.
Or perhaps they figure that what they wished to achieve has already been achieved, and now they seekto duck, hoping to avoid public odium for that.
Antarctic temperatures rise10°Cabove average in near record heatwave. Reported temperatures on continent in midwinter reach28°C above expectations on some days in July.
Israel has assassinatedmanyHAMAS leaders over the years, and at present most of its old leadership is gone.
That won't make it harder for HAMAS to fight in Gaza, but will make it hard for it to negotiate apeace agreement or even a cease-fire.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
TheSecretaryof Defense has canceled the plea deal signed by three prisonersin Guantanamo.
See description ofthatdeal.
US citizens:supportBiden's proposed Supreme Court reforms.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:callon Biden to de-escalate violence in Israel and Lebanon now.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to confirm Biden's judicial appointments.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Americans are celebrating the exchange of severalconvictedRussian spies and agents for several journalists and political activists that Putin took hostage.
To me this deal seems to be a victory for Putin, of a sort that will lead him to keep grabbinghostages whenever there are convicted Russian spies he wants to protect.
It seems to me that the patriotic hostage says, "Don't ransom me if that harms my country!" And theprudent traveler stays away from countries such asRussia,ChinaandIran,that are likely to grab a hostage to exchange.
US citizens:phoneyour congresscritter and say, don't defund Title X.
Title X provides birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing for 2.6 million low-incomeAmericans.
Threeprisoners in Guantanamo pleaded guilty to organizing the September 2001 terrorist attacks in NewYork and Washington.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to urge the USPSBoard of Governors to fire DeJoy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A glossary for US wildfire terminology, embedded in another interesting article about whywildfiresmoke is more toxic than the pollution from internal combustion engines and how much.
Wildfire days are going to happen again and again. And so we need to change our frame, fromthinking that this is going to be a one-off, to understanding that for our kids, it’s more or lessgoing to be the equivalent of a chronic exposure. Unless we curb global heating, we may eventuallyfind wildfire smoke impossible to avoid. But by that time food may be impossible to grow.
The "heat dome" causing scorching temperatures acrosswesternEurope and north Africa […] would have been impossible without human-caused global heating.
Last year,Vanceopposed federal rules to limit toxic pollution from factories that produce coke.
This refers to the coke that is made fromcoal and used in smelting iron, not to the beverage or the drug. Though I suppose even moreAmericans need protection from those ;-}.
Biden called for an 18-yeartermlimit on justices of the Supreme Court. This would immediately exclude Chief Justice Roberts aswell as Their Most Corrupt Thomas and Alito. If Democrats can appoint the replacements, it couldprovide an opportunity to undo the damage done by the current Extreme Court.
Alas, that would not do anything about the three young right-wing extremists, who are likely toplague the United States for decades to come.
Biden's proposal adopts the ideas of imposing a code ofethicson the justices of the Supreme Court, and eliminating the extremeimmunityfor ex-presidents recently imposed by the Supreme Court.
Israel assassinated the HAMAS political leader, Ismael Haniyeh, who was visiting Iran. So Iran'sgovernment is underpressureto retaliate.
Haniyeh was negotiating peace in Gaza with Israel. By killing him, Netanyahu expressed refusal tonegotiate. The US should say that that refusal is unacceptable, as is the assassination of enemynegotiators.
I suspect that Netanyahu intended to provoke war between Iran and Israel, figuring that the US would bedragged along into supporting Israel and then into fighting Iran. This would make it even harderfor the US to do what it must do, which is pressure Netanyahu into ending Israel's atrocities inGaza.
At a deeper level, it conveys to the US government Netanyahu's messagethat "I can force you into war whenever I wish, so be obedient."
But that aspect may not work.
Israel tried something similar in April, attacking Iran. Iranretaliated with a wave of drones, and the US helped shoot down those drones — but outsideIran. And it did not join in any attack against Iran. At that point, Iran stated that honor wassatisfied. I guess that the US and Iran understand what Netanyahu is doing and that they do notintend to let Netanyahu make them fight.
Israel is not the only nation-state to have recently committed or attempted assassination of enemiesliving in exile.Indiahas done this,Rwanda,andRussiatoo.
We condemn those assassinations — which does not imply support for the causes they stand for— and we should also condemn it when Israel does it.
When global heating helps to cause an unusual event and that event isclearly the cause of a specific person's death, that can make itpossible tocharge oil companies with homicide.
Global heating effectscontributeto many deaths, but (in my limited understanding) that is not enough basis legally to charge bigcontributors to global heating with homicide. Occasionally, as here, there is a specificheating-provoked event one can point to as the direct cause of a person's death. IANAFL 🤨, but itseems that that can provide a basis for charges, at least in France.
🤨 I am not a French lawyer.
A war game to model ways that the wrecker, if he wins or steals the election, could impose anauthoritarian state foundnoclear trustworthy defenses.
Harris hasretreatedfrom advocating a ban on fracking.
I'm sure it is true that she would push for decarbonization to some extent, while the wrecker woulddo the opposite. Nonetheless, it is clear thattheUS is not doing enough, nowhere near enough, and this change would mean doing less.
Global methane emissions rising atfastestrate in decades, scientists warn. Researchers call for immediate action to reduce methaneemissions and avert dangerous escalation in climate crisis.
As record heat risks bleaching 73% of the world’s coral reefs, scientists ask"whatdo we do now?".
We should have curbed global heatingstarting 20 years ago.
Or we should have curbed global heating starting 10 yearsago.
However, the planet roasters used their political influence to prevent this, so we now see ourplanet slowly starting to roast. The death of much of the world's coral is part of it.
What do we do now? We must curb global heating now, with treaties and laws strong enoughthat they will start reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A heavy tax on the electricity used by data centers would help.
If we continue increasing the level ofcarbondioxide in the air, eventuallyocean acidification willkillall corals and many other animals with shells, by dissolving their shells.
It's not just corals that are in danger from global heating. Butterfliesare one example among many.
Exclusive:Discoveryof [UAE] passports in wreckage suggest covert boots on the ground, despite Gulf state's denials.
A British surgeon in Gaza reported that alarge fraction of the surgery shedid was on children and young teens. But many of them are so malnourished that they theirwounds do not heal properly.
I can't find a date in the article, but the figure for deaths suggests it was a few months ago.
Republicansare saying nothing about the possibility of gun control. They are willing to risk their livesin the name of making America more dangerous and enriching gun companies. I would admire them forthat firmness, if they were serving a worthy cause.
Many towns in theold "wild" West had guncontrol and did not allow people to carry guns. On entering them, people were required to hand in their guns.
Interviews withUkrainianscaptured and tortured by the Putin forces for long periods of time. Some were soldiers, somehave been and are civilians.
They describe many sorts of excruciating torture, so persistently that it leads me to think thattheir guards cannot ever safely be allowed outside prison.
One person asks why have the International Red Cross and the UN not pressured Putin to treatprisoners humanely? I speculate that they know they have no influence, that Putin will defy them ashe defies any influence against his inhumanity.
Now that heating of the oceans and seas makes hurricanes intensify faster, thequestion ofwhether to evacuate has become more difficult.
Perhaps new building codes are needed so buildings will be able to stand up to hurricanes. Theyshould also include rules to make sure the building won't be inundated.
Brazil court freezes assets of [rancher] Dirceu Kruger to pay [50 million dollars in] climatecompensation for illegal deforestation.
Explaining the flaws in research that formerly suggested that usingalcohol atalimited rate was good for health.
JD Vance calls [the corrupter]"morallyreprehensible" in resurfaced emails [from 2014-2017].
I wonder whether he has changed his appraisal of the corrupter or only decided to bury it forself-interest.
Moreabout this.
Wild chimpanzees communicate with hand gestures, andrespondto each other sequentially much as humans do with speech. Some of the gestures have beenunderstood by scientists.
Drugs intended to extend human lifespan are developed withtesting on only male mice. When later tested on female mice, it doesn't function for 75% ofthem. If any do function for humans, they maytreatonly human males.
The article does not say why researchers normally use only male mice, but I speculate that femalemice are harder to understand because their reproductive cycles make the results more complicated.
The UK Labour government is running into the contradiction betweenitsfiscal policy, which imitates the Tories, and carrying out even its highest priority projects.
Many accuse Maduro ofmiscountingthe votes in Venezuela's election.
The article does wrong by lumping Maduro'srepressiverule with Chavez'sreforms withpopular support, which it does implicitly by lumping them together as "25 years of chavistarule." Maduro gives only lip service to Chávez.
A SWAT team in an unmarked car started firing not-as-lethal bullets with no warning at JaleelStallings, so he fired his licensed gun back at them until he figured out that they wereofficial thugs. Thenhe surrendered, so they beat him up and charged him with attempted murder.
For once, the justice system mostly worked: he was acquitted and oneof the thugs even pled guilty to a minor crime.
The bullshitter's campaign tells the story all wrong, displaying his contempt for the idea of truth.
Andrew Malkinson, exonerated after 17 years in prison for a crime thatwas committed by someone else, excoriates the UK officials who aresupposed to investigate such casesand free those unjustly convicted.They give the priority to protecting the reputation of the courts.
Thathappensin theUS, too.
Republicans and the gun lobby adopted an anti-gun-regulation law in Wisconsin thatbarredthe city of Milwaukee from prohibiting guns in the vicinity of theRepublican National Convention.
US citizens:callon Congress to ban carrying guns at voting places.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Ohio election law does allow that theDemocraticParty can choose a candidate at its convention.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
As retaliation for a missile attack by Hezbollah thatkilled children inIsrael, Netanyahu postponed the transport of some wounded and sick Palestinian childrenfrom Gaza.
This is, in effect, taking those children hostage.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject KOSA, the bill that purports to"protect children" byrequiringall adult users of social media platforms to prove their age.
To do that requires they show government ID or run nonfree software.Both are injustices and both are dangerous.
Meanwhile, the main cause of the danger in those platforms comes fromthe recommendationengines, andthatdanger affects adults too. A real solution would protect all users without making any ofthem identify perself.
Online misogynist propaganda has caused abigincrease in violence against women in England and Wales.
Researchers recently found that Facebook and Instagram spontaneously show such material tousers whodescribedthemselves as young men.
Netanyahu ispresidingover a sharp decline in the US’s pro-Israel consensus.
This is a natural reaction to his presiding over Israel's descent intoever moreextremedehumanisation and destruction of Palestinians.
OxfamInternational's report details Israel's destruction of nearly all of Gaza's waterinfrastructure, including wells, desalinators, storage, in addition to the supply Israel usedto provide. This puts everyone in Gaza in danger of death or lasting medical damage.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Jewish Voice for Peace organized a nonviolent sit-in in the USCapitol, calling for anendto sending arms to Israel. The protesters expected to be arrested, and they were; they didnot resist.
What a contrast theirhonestyand nonviolence makes with the magats' attack on Jan 6, 2021.
Biden administration blames Hezbollah for ‘horrific’GolanHeights rocket attack.
I agree: Hezbollah is to blame for this rocket attack, which killed civilians.
Juxtaposing the US stance toward Hezbollah with its stance toward Israel's attacks in Gaza addsup to a double standard. It is quite clear that Israel is failing to carry out its duty toprotect civilians in Gaza, and that is an enormous war crime.
Harristook a similar position on the attack by Hezbollah.
She can reduce her double standard by giving Israel less support overits attacks in Gaza, and more pressure.
US citizens:callon Congress to defend Census funding.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stop Corporate Capture Act,which would explicitlyreestablishthe Chevron doctrine, which wasrecentlyoverturned by the extreme court.
That doctrine says that that a federal agency regulation means what the agency says it means,as was the case for 40 years.
IANAL, but I think this question is entirely separate from whether any given regulationcomplies with pertinent laws and constitutions. That has always been a matter for courts to decide.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Project2025 includes, in the long list of plans, interfering with EPA's ability to regulate PFAS.
RFK Jr is not only a disinformationists, he is reported to have asked the corrupter for the promise ofagovernment position in exchange for his support.
If there is any chance that another the corrupter could win your state, vote to ensure he loses.
Oregon isfullof wildfires after a heat wave dried out the vegetation.
The article attributes the fire wave to "heat, dry conditions and lightning," but it is clearthat the underlying cause is global heating.
To magats any election which their master does not win must ipso facto have been stolen. Ifthere are no real grounds for that accusation, they will invent something. Now,forinstance, they are saying that Harris's expected assumption of Biden's candidacy, supposingthe delegates to the Democratic Convention vote for her, would be a "coup".
Part of Project 2025 is to allow (or maybe require) adoption agencies topracticereligious discrimination. In Tennessee, a couple have already been barred for not beingChristians. The would be adopters are suing, but we can't count on the Extreme Court to defendbasic civil liberties any more. They might decide that the constitution allows the state tooutsource any activity to entities that discriminate against non-Christians.
The US has become the world's biggest fossil fuelexporter,and is ruining parts of the US to export the combustible material that can ruin the whole world.
Wealthy countries lead in new oil and gas expansion, threatening12bntonnes of emissions.
However, various countries in South America areeagerlycompeting for the gold medal in planet roasting.
UNhead admonishes wealthy countries for expanding fossil fuel production.
I am glad he is taking an active approach to this vital issue.
Rebecca Solnit:TheRepublican party remains the party of denying women human rights, even though it hopingAmericans will forget about this if it keeps quiet from now till November. Many Republicanpoliticians call for menstrual surveillance so as to catch any woman who has an abortion.
This article proposes aframeworkfor understanding how the corrupter converted many Americans into fanatics who believewhatever he has said most lately without checking it.
Lack of competition due to manymergers hascaused inflation in the US (and many other countries), which is making life difficult forthose who are not wealthy.
Many [American food] companies are seeing their profits jump astheycontinue raising prices. The fix is not raising interest rates — it is breaking upmonopolies. Biden has made a good start by appointingLina Khan to head the FTC.
Myproposal for taxing bigger corporations at a higher rate could pressure them to split up,and avoid the need to sue each one.
Uncommittedvoters who protested Biden over Gaza warn Kamala Harris must earn their vote.
I hope they succeed in making her demand forcefully that Israel end the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
[The UK government] confirmed on Friday that it would not submit a challenge to thejurisdiction of the international criminal court, whose chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, isseeking a warrantagainstthe Israeli prime minister.
I don't think we are likely to see Netanyahu arrested for this any time soon,but it will add to the pressure on Israel to end the bombardment and siege.
JD Vance called for "federal response" to block women fromtravelingfor abortions.
That was the utterance of a would-be theocrat trying to impose his religion on everyone.Howeer, the "warning" about Soros (see the article) was the confabulation of a conspiracist,like the believers in QAnonsense.
Apparently Vance combines both aspects.
The Putin forces scatter landmines in and around the towns they hold, even inside houses. Theymainlykilland injure civilians.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the High Court Gift Ban Act.
This addresses the same practical issue as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and TransparencyAct, but the solution is not the same, so perhaps one can pass Congress if the other cannot.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Dems'BillionaireTech Donor Presses Harris To Fire Antitrust Regulator [Lina Khan].
As the article says, there are more subtle ways that Harris could support monopolists than thegross maneuver of firing Khan. Since no one but a hateful fanatic or a confused loser wouldwish for the reelection of the corrupter, we need to pressure Harris not to give billionaireswhat they want.
California Governor Newsom issues anexecutiveorder about the procedure local governments must use if they remove homeless encampments inCalifornia.
The order did not command them to remove these encampments. So I wonder just what, concretely,it did require. Can anyone tell me?
San Francisco is considering alaw toprohibit landlords from using rent recommendation servers to set rents.
While the landlords do not directly collude to fix prices (rents), using the same server orprogram causes the same sort of harm as direct collusion.
Companies are offeringrentalof "digital workers", which areSaaSScontaining so-called "artificial intelligence", dressed up as humans. I agree with the personquoted as saying that this has the effect of dehumanizing human workers, as well as replacingthem. I expect they don't work very well, either.
The article ends by asserting that we "can't blame" the entrepreneurs for this vision. I saywe must.
If a "digital worker" has a psyche like a human, it should be have the same rights as a human.If it has that but always obeys orders, then it is a brainwashed slave, which should be illegalto create. If, however, it obeys orders because it has no goals, desires or feelings of itsown, then it is a machine, and it is wrong to pretend it is a "worker".
Advances in technology will make possible more points on that spectrumbut will not alter this conclusion.
Sharpnose sharks caught near Rio de Janeiro were found to have significant levels ofcocainein their bodies.
The city ofJasper,in Alberta, is being burnt by a wildfire and all 30,000 residents and tourists have beenevacuated.
The greenhouse gases from burning the Alberta tar sands oil,madepossible by lobbyingandrepressionof protesters are coming back to bite the foolish citizens of Alberta who gave in tofoolish short-term thinking and elected aplanet-roaster government there, along withthe rest of us.
The new UK government said it would stop using a bargeto house asylum seekers.
This raises two big questions which I do not recall much writing about.
- Why the UK's handling of asylum requests takes years.
- Why the barge was such a bad place for asylum seekers to live in.
For (1), I suspect the causes include the Tories' desire to discourage people from seekingasylum in the UK, budget cuts that affect bureaucracy, computerization that replaces humanworkers, and an attitude of rigidity among functionaries that leads to delay whenever theyencounter an unusual situation that the rules don't explicitly address.For (2) I have seen little concrete coverage of what makes it so bad to live there. There maybe aspects of its arrangements and policies that make life on board painful, but I have no ideawhat they are.
The one thing I do understand is the barge's remote location and consequent inconvenience ofaccess. I think that makes it unfeasible for anyone living there to visit most parts of the UKwithout staying away overnight — and they can't afford to rent a room for that. I think thatwould in most cases cut them off from meeting friends, relatives and support organizations.
If that is the main problem, could it be solved by mooring the barge in London, convenient topublic transit?
If there are other major problems of living there, I would like to understand them.
Human RightsGroups Callon Biden to Investigate Israeli Influence Campaign Against American Lawmakers.
"Oil Kills" protesters disrupt flightsatairports across Europe in wave of action.
Causing many flights to be canceled is quite annoying, but since the alternative is thecollapse of civilization into suffering and death…
Tree bark playsvitalrole in removing methane from atmosphere. Especially in the tropical forests that peopleare busy cutting down.
A report onthetwo main human sources of methane in the air: fossil fuel fracking and corporate factory farming.
Starmer's party has renamed itself to "belabour" by provisionallyexpellingseven MPs from party endorsement, after they voted to repeal a much-hated Tory povertygenerating law.
By disciplining MPs for voting topullchildren out of poverty, Keir Starmer has shown us who he really is.
Thisauthoritarianattitude shows that there is little chance of leading Starmer Labour back to the values andpriorities that the Labour Party previously stood for. Former Labour voters, andformerlabour MPs, may be able to unite with Jeremy Corbyn to be the nucleus of a new democraticleftist party for Britain.
Identifyingthebiggest falsehoods in Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress.
[Rep.] Rashida Tlaibholdsup "war criminal" sign during Netanyahu address.
Bravo, Rep. Tlaib.
An Illinois thug deputy has been charged with first degree murderfor shooting dead a black woman he had beensent to help.
At least it is good to see the state authorities filed the appropriate charges without tryingto avoid it.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not"white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neitherone.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articlesthat practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important --and I label them like this.
Kamala Harris strongly called for reforms to stop theunjustviolence of uniformed thugs.
Scientificsurprise: metallic nodules (lump of mixed meals) that rest on some flat areas of oceanbottoms generate oxygen in a slow but steady way.
They may be crucial for some life on the bottom.
Scientists already warn that mining them coulddestroysea-bottom life. This shows another way it could have that effect.
Forecasting what advanced bullshit generators will do to societyunder the control of antisocial mediaplatforms financed by advertising.
It confuses the issue bycalling them "AI".
Developing countries face worst debt crisis in history,studyshows. Spending on health and education being cut as nearly half of budgets are used topay creditors, campaigners say.
Side point: I dislike the euphemism of "developing countries." But that doesn't diminish theimportance of the injustice.
Everyone:callon major news networks to cover project 2025.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked abovefunction without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
I have done the first step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URLbefore posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaignswill not work without JavaScript!" They indeed won't work without some manual help, but thefollowing 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 yousay who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. You will get a page that does not function (assumingyou have blocked nonfree JavaScript code), but by editing its URL in the browser's address baryou can finish sending your letter.
First, delete everything from &redirect' to the end. Then insert, instead of what youdeleted,&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you aversion of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the text for your letter and click onthe "SEND LETTER" button.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send letters to a fixed list of recipients,the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additionalstep needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effortcompared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust(and potentially malicious) software.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter went to Gaza for a week to do surgery. He reports beingamazedby the number of children who were killed, and in particular the children who were shot bysnipers. That proves an Israeli soldier looked at an evident noncombatant who posed no threatand decided, calmly, to kill per. Not in the heat of battle, not in the fog of war, but withunhurried murderous dehumanization.
Perlmutter reports photographing two dead children who were each shot once in the middle of thechest and once in the middle of the side of the head. This makes the unhurried dehumanizationeven more clear.
Some Israeli right-wing extremists post recordings of their hatred for Palestinians. I thinkthat others become snipers and commit war crimes.
US citizens:callon Teamsters president to oppose Republicans if they won't matchBiden'sbold support for workers.
The history of Republican censorship of teaching history in the USbegan with an executiveordermade by the corrupter when he was president.
Biden subsequently reversed it, but many states have passed similar censorship laws, and theRepublican Party platform calls for one. Most teachers in the US are now afraid of beingpunished for teaching the wrong part of history.
Learning about the wrongs of history, almost always committed by people other than me, can leadme to feel discomfort, or even anger, but not on account of _my_ race or sex. They havenothing to do with the wrong. And likewise for you. As for guilt, I can feel that aboutthings I myself have done.
It's the same for you, whoever you are.
As for Governor Kemp, he is not responsible for his ancestors' role inslavery, but he is responsible for his own role in censorship.
*Israeliparliamentvoted to label UNRWA a terror organisation. UNRWA is the UN agency that provides aid toPalestinians.
I have said for years that it is unjust and illegitimate to "designate" any person ororganization "terrorist". Terrorism is a serious crime and anyone accused of this crimedeserves a fair trial.
I think this accusation is meant to create a strained excuse to block relief supplies toPalestinians in occupied territory — in other words, an excuse for more grave crime.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
A magat who openly threatened to start a civil war if the wrecker losesthis election has apologized.
Republican leaders often say this with dog-whistles. and Americans are aware of this danger,but Republicans try to avoid admitting it clearly.
Lula has accused President Maduro of neighboring Venezuela of threatening massive violent repressionifhe loses the coming election.
Some of Maduro's opposition consists ofright-wingrich families that used to control Venezuela and want to control it again. Like the USbillionaires that back the corrupter, they are ready to attack using lies and distortions. SoI can't trust them to be honestanymore than I can trust Maduro to be honest.
Lula's statement gives me a basis for understanding the situation. Lula is a sincere supporterof democracy. When he accuses a president in Latin America of repression, I have confidencethat he is right.
BernieSanders condemned the invitation of Netanyahu in Congress shortly before Netanyahu arrived.
Morethan half of the tree species at Kew’s Royal Botanical Gardens are at risk of [extinction]because of climate breakdown.
The most interesting point in the opinion of the International Courtof Justice about Israel and the Palestinian territories is that itconfirms that this islegallyan occupation. (There have been disputes about that question.) So the treaty rules aboutmilitary occupations, also described in the article, do apply.
Informationabout the politics and career history of Kamala Harris.
I would like to know what laws she would like Congress to adopt if it agreed with her —regarding issues such as decarbonization, reduction of toxic pollution and plastic pollution,public transit, a public medical system, the taking back the Extreme Court, decreasing thepolitical influence of rich people and big businesses, and reversing decades of dooH niboR byapplying some Robin Hood.
How would she defend democracy from what Peter Thiel defines as "freedom"?
60 billionaires are now supporting the corrupter's campaignhoping he willreduce taxes on super-richAmericans.
The money that billionaires gain from this will come from the rest of the country, in the formof reduced government support for their survival, reduced wages, more expensive education forfewer people, more expensive medicine that they can't afford to buy, and so on.
Britain sentencedprotestersto years in prison for shouting "fire" while the world burns.
Nonviolent protestorganizersfor Just Stop Oil have been sentenced to years in prison.
That is the policy of most governments: keep the world safe for fossil fuels,so they can kill hundreds of millions 20 years from now.
Paul Kagamebannedopponents like me from Rwanda’s election. No wonder he cruised to [reelection as presidentof Rwanda].
US citizens:callon the Senate to pass reforms to place limits on massive government surveillance.Seepastarticlesaboutthisissue.
Republicans claim to be for "small government", but that is only as regards serving and aidingthe public. Where mistreatment of non-rich people is concerned, they stand for "heavy government".
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Latest satellite imagery [of Gaza near the Egyptian border] revealsnew roads that appear designed to support the long-term presence ofIsraeli troops.
The article describes other military construction in Gaza that seemsdesigned for permanent occupation.
Republicans are saying nothing about the possibility of gun control.
They are willing to risk their lives in the name of making America moredangerous and enriching gun companies. I would admire them if that werea worthy cause.
I've read that many towns in the old "wild" West did not allow peopleto carry guns. On entering them, people were required to hand intheir guns. Alas, I can't find this now.
The Tories spent around a billion dollars on preparing the scheme tosend asylum seekers to Rwanda.
It was never meant as a serious method of shouldering the burden ofjudging and aiding those who are entitled to asylum. Its real purposewas to pretend to do that, while actually hurting and terrifying allasylum seekers so as to drive them away from Britain.
British archaeologists brought thousands of artifacts and old art objectsout of China, with the approval and contentment of Chinese officialsand scholars who welcomed their advanced methods of excavation.
There is nothing unjust about this.
Researchers: We unleashed Facebook and Instagram's algorithms onblank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny.
The researchers specified male gender for these accounts,and got right-wing male dominance propaganda. It would be interestingto do a similar experiment with female gender.
A summary of Project 2025, the former wrecker-administration officials'plan for what to do if the wrecker becomes president again.
China has brokered an agreement between various Palestinian parties,including Fatah and HAMAS.
It is disturbing that China has the influence to achieve this, but Ican't criticize the achievement itself. It will surely benefitPalestinians. Now that some European countries have recognized Palestine,it will need to appoint ambassadors to them.
Sanders' advises Kamala Harris to pursue agenda that "speaks to theneeds of the working class."
An additional reason to insist on support for cash paymentis to reduce the damage done by internet server failures.
I wish there were an organization in the US to campaign for the optionof paying cash. Can anyone point me at one?
Several climate defense groups say that Harris inspires theirconfidence, pointing to her record.
Greenland has arrested Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, andthreatens to extradite him to Japan.
He was in a ship that was undertaking to interfere with Japanesewhaling, which now uses a new factory ship.
Elite ability depends on innate capacity as well as on practice anddedication.10,000 hours of practice are not guaranteed to make any specificperson excel.
For me, the word "talent" applies only to mental and perceptualabilities. A bodily characteristic that enables excellence in somephysical activity does not fit that word.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act.
More information: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/359
US citizens: call on the Federal Trade Commission to oppose thebillion-dollar Koch fertilizer merger.
Biden created the possibility for the FTC to block his merger byappointing the competition law champion, Lina Khan, to head the FTC.Previous Democratic presidents, Clinton and Obama, did little morethan Republican presidents to oppose concentration of industry.
Ahmad Farhad criticizedthe tyrannyof Pakistan's military intelligence, so they grabbed him andtortured him. Eventually the government released him due to publicpressure, with a false criminal accusation.
The high heat in chicken farms makes it hard to keep protective masks sealed.Some workers have caught bird flu.
Whether this risks a human epidemic is not yet known.
Russia effectively took an American journalist hostage by charging himwith unlikely crimes. There is no reason to believe he was guilty ofanything because Russia did not hold a real trial, which would entailstating what he allegedly did and presenting evidence to prove it.
Putin seems to be angling to exchange him for a real Russian spy,convicted in a real trial. Should the US seek to do that?
I don't think so. I think other countries should make it clear thatRussia cannot snatch people to use as "get out of jail gratis" cardsfor its spies who have been caught.
Certain governments, including Russia and China, imprison people justas pawns. Americans should avoid going to those countries.
The Republican fanatic's false accusations against a CODEPINK leaderhave been dropped by Milwaukee prosecutors, but he is still makingfalse accusations and they are stirring up death threats by fanaticalfollowers.
This is a standard right-wing extremist tactic, encouraging afanatical spirit that is ready to kill. Then whenever the leadersrail loudly against someone, followers will direct threats or evenviolence at per.
I don't know whether American fascists have directly acknowledged thistactic, but they cannot be ignorant of the fact that their movement isa violent one.
US citizens:callon Congress to protect abortion and birth control by repealing the Comstock Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:Thankthe FCC commissioners for stopping companies from gouging prisoners for their phone calls.
Because prisoners are a captive market, US companies imposeunconscionablefees thatcutthem off from their families — and make it more likely they will commit furthercrimes once released.
Half of Americans live in states without rules restrictingdisconnectionsfor unpaid or overdue bills. With the dangerous and occasionally deadly heat caused byhumanity's cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, that system can kill them.
Republicans value keeping rich people rich above keeping poor people alive. Their policiesaccord with those values.
They have those values because they work for the rich who fund their campaigns and reward thempersonally. If you are too poor to pay your bills, they won't miss you if you die — and yourdeath is very effective for suppressing your vote.
Comparing thestatementsand positions of Biden and thecorrupter in regard to Gaza, Israel and Palestine.
Election Deniers Have Taken Over theRepublican National Committee.
Not only the RNC's leaders, but even people seeking staff jobs there, were asked to affirm thecorrupter's election lies.
Netanyahu said that there can be an investigation into Israel'ssecurity failures on Oct 7whenIsrael has defeated HAMAS.
In other words, when pigs fly.
Bernie Sanders thanked the musk-rat for doing "an exceptional job of demonstrating a point thatwe have made for years — and that is the factwe live in an oligarchicsociety."
CODEPINK accused a Republican congresscritter, who is a right-wing fanatic, ofbashinginto one of its leaders from behind and then falsely accusing per of assaulting him.
In the absence of real political violence from political opposition, the trumpets make falseaccusations. Why would they hesitate? Following their leader, they have rejected truth andhonesty entirely, so there is no kind of lie they would refrain from due to conscience.
US citizens: call on certain drug companies to drop their lawsuits that aim to block Biden's newregulationthat would reduce prices of certain drugs.
TheUNInternational Court of Justice concluded that Israel's occupation of Palestine, and itscolonization, are de-facto annexation, and illegal. (Annexation of conquered territory isalso illegal.)
The ruling also called for Israel to rapidly quit the occupied territories andruled Palestinians were due reparations for the occupation.
While non-binding, the ruling will provide ample ammunition for government lawyers alreadyactively examining future sanctions against those linked to Israeli settlement.
Computers running Windows around the world wereunableto run due to a broken change remotely installed in them.
With GNU/Linux, no one can forcibly install an "upgrade" (or a 'downgrade", as might preferto call it). You decide when, and whether, to install changes, and whose changes to install.
Can anyone tell me what job this CrowdStrike software does? I have a hunch that this is one ofthe unjust consequences of the proprietary nature of Windows, but I don't actually know. Itwould be very useful to know for certain.
Republicans in Georgia havesignedup tens of thousands of election vigilantes, each of whom will be empowered to challengethe legitimacy of voters with just a little excuse.
Many US small businesses are very vulnerable to local disasters.They couldeasily be wiped out.
As business owners become aware of how climate disaster threatens their businesses,increasingly every year, if they have long-term sense they will actively supportdecarbonization politically. If they don't, I expect they are fools.
I do not believe that fools deserve disaster. Nobody deserves that, whether fools or not.Alas, fools are likely to make it happen to them.
There are people in Gaza who have polio infections. The lack of hygiene and water treatment meansnothingstops it from spreading to anyone there who has not been vaccinated.
Minister Ben-Gvir, the political leader of the extremist "settlers" that take land in the WestBank from its Palestinian inhabitants, pushed his way into the al-Aqsa complex in Jerusalem, asa gesture tokeepthe war in Gaza killing.
The dispute over that spot, between Jews and Muslims, exists becausethe al-Aqsa Mosque complex was built on the hill where the HebrewSecond Temple had been destroyed 600 years earlier by Romans(not by Muslims). That is true, but it does not justifyBen-Gvir's bellicosity.
Peace in the Middle East depends on the various religions' respectingeach others' sacred buildings, especially in Jerusalem. Al-Aqsa is anactual sacred building, not merely a place where one existed centuriesago. Israelis should leave Al-Aqsa alone.
If Biden wants to inspire Democrats to vote for him, he could barBen-Gvir from entering the US.
Shell committed to increaserecyclingof plastics, but now admits it is unable to do that.
To decrease the amount of waste caused by use of plastic, we need to replace current plasticwith recyclable plastic, or with other materials, and make sure that the recyclable plastic canbe separated from the rest of the packaging.
Republicans think they can avoid being defeated by the supporters of abortion rights byavoidingthe issue until the election.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the Raise the Wage Act and lift millions of people out of poverty.
Law scholar Laurence Tribe says the conservative [extreme] court majority is "destroying"frameworkof checks and balances.
Advocates of new nuclear power plants mislead the public about the cost and time needed toconstruct the nuclear plants. That has gone on for decades.
Now in Australia they are alsomisleadingthe public about the capabilities of, and safety requirements on, additional renewablegeneration.
The threat posed by the wrecker and his magats is grave. To be ableto say, "I opposed them", is not enough — we need to defeat them. Iwant to contribute to defeating them, to saving my country fromrepressive rule of lies. I hope you do, too.
Biden is not my ideal president. I rate him asabout 1/3 progressive, and I criticize hisfailure topressure Israel to cease its war crimesin Gaza.
If I had my druthers, I would help elect an honest, progressive president, such as BernieSanders. But there is no opportunity to help elect him this year. A write-in vote, for him oranyone else, would be a mere protest. We need to defeat fascism.
What about third parties? The Green Party has become too extreme for me. As for theself-styled "Libertarians", that name is misleading because their priority is not civilliberties but empowering the wealthy by eliminating the regulations and government spendingthat help and protect the non-rich. They call those things "socialism". I call them"Antisocialists", and I don't support them.
As for RFK Jr, he is an anti-vaxxer, and I have no wish to support pseudosience. I expect Iwould choose him over the corrupter if those two were the only choices, but that is not thesituation this year.
The specific details of those actual candidates are secondary matters because none of them hasa chance of winning. Voting for any of them would be a mere protest, not a way to defeatfascism.
There are still primaries to be held this year. I urge you to vote for progressive Democratsin primaries if you have the opportunity, and vote for Democrats in November.
I myself will be happy to vote, once again, for Representative Ayanna Pressley — butreelecting one progressive representative will not by itself be sufficient to preservedemocracy in the US.
Let there be night: digital billboards to be turned off to curblightpollution under Melbourne city proposal.
[The corrupter's] Allies Try to BullyDems,Media to Shut Up About His Fascist Plans.
This is the usual right-wing lie, accusing opponents falsely of doing whet they actually do.They regularly address their followers with blatant encouragement of political violence;Democrats don't. Calling a violent fascist a violent fascist does not constitute a call forviolence against per.
Lindsay Graham claims that the corrupter can't be a fascist, on the grounds that he hasmillions of supporters. He does have them, but that is beside the point. It is normal forfascists to be voted into power.
Mussolini's party had millions of supporters when he established the fascist dictatorship inItaly. Bolsonaro was elected by millions of Brazilian voters, then tried to make it impossiblefor voters to remove him.
What made them fascists is how they changed the system of government once they can. Thecorrupter already tried, in 2020, to overturn the election in which people voted to remove him,using secret dishonest plots and mob violence. He also did the usual right-wing lie then,accusing Democrats of stealing the election he had lost.
Meanwhile, US Republicans are systematically rigging the elections in every state where theycan, withvotersuppression andgerrymandering.
The wrecker's choice of running mate is "ACorporateCEO’s Dream And A Worker’s Nightmare".
It is just barely possible to get a Signal accountwithout givingit a mobile phone number, but it is a lot of effort and time, and depends on luck.
Rather than go to those lengths, I do without use of Signal.
Republicans have struggled for years to make iteasyfor Americans to get guns and kill people with them.
US and Israel allowedtax-deductibledonations to groups blocking Gaza aid.
Israel's official measures to besiege Gaza are war crimes, deadly crimes. If Israeli officialsconnive at private efforts to block aid to Gaza, that is too a government war crime.
If you work for the agency that judges requests for asylum, and you tell would-be immigrantsthat "You have been granted asylum", and lateryoudiscover a minor error in the deciding of the case, what should you do?
Because of your mistake, you should set aside any minor requirements that you failed to checkbefore. Unless perse is a serious criminal, which you ought to have checked first thing, youshould make your acceptance of per final.
What you should definitely not do is tell per, "We made a mistake in judging yourasylum request, so we have revoked your asylum. Cancel all your plans and wait while we judgethe fine details of your case. We will tell you our real decision in a year or two or three."That is cruel and inhumane.
I therefore conclude that the problem in UK asylum approvals is not a mere matter of details inthe rules. It is a deeper matter than that, a lack of sense of proportion in carrying out therules when something has gone awry. The bureaucrats have been taught to be as rigid as a badlyprogrammed computer.
Meanwhile, other asylum seekers are protesting about being sent to live on a barge moored inwhat is effectivelyanisolation camp.
In case you are so angry at Biden over Gaza that you suppose that it makes nodifferencewho is the next president of the US, look at what the wrecker said about it.
Biden housing plan seeks to curb rent increases bypenalizing[large] landlords. The penalties would be triggered by a rent increase of more than 5% ina year.
This requires approval from Congress. Republicans will surely call this a monstrous attack on the"freemarket". (A free market means one where the same rules apply to everyone whoparticipates.)
Please contact your congresscritter's and senators' offices and ask where they stand on Biden'splan. Take notes, and publish what they said. Preferably in places that the public can seewithout getting an account. (Alas,ex-Twitteris not such a place any more.)
Please vote to defeat the corrupter and all Republicans!
Nowadays, the increase in prices for many kinds of things is boosted by the lack ofcompetition. The advent of large corporations that own very large amounts of rental housinghas reduced the effective competition on rents.
I think we should prohibited any private entity from controlling more than a minuscule fractionof the rental housing market. (I would not put this maximum as low as 50 units — perhapseither 500 units or one local physically connected development, whichever is larger.)
[The wrecker's] running matesaysUK could be "first Islamist country" with nuclear weapons.
That is not physically impossible but it disregards reality completely. It is bullshit.
It is also a distraction campaign — as is usual for right-wing reality rejectors, theyaccuse opponents baselessly of actions similar to what the reality rejectors are in fact doing.The US could very likely become, next January, the first theocratic Christian regime withnuclear weapons.
To prevent that, we Americans must vote and work to defeat Republicans at all levels.
That extends to all Republicans.
It used to be that there were Republicans that were right-wing but not radical extremists, whohad some integrity left and could coexist with other camps. Not any more: the wrecker hasconverted nearly all to be as dishonest and extreme as he is. Even those who, like SenatorCollins,publiclydisendorse the wrecker are likely to support extremists in other ways, such as by passingtheir bills in the senate.
Clearing Gaza of almost40mtonnes of war rubble will take years, says UN.
The scenario of using only 100 trucks, over 15 years, is clearly not a real solution to theproblem. Using 500 trucks, the job could be finished in 3 years. But where would they putthis rubble?
After removing the rubble, could people live there? Is the land of Gaza poisoned by toxicchemicals? And the water in it?
Everyone:callon mainstream media not to repeat the corrupter's absurd claims about Project 2025 as ifthey were true.
US citizens:callon Congress to ban utilities and monopoly corporations from making political contributions.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Germany will close the railroad from Frankfurt to Mannheim, a major trunk line, to rebuild it afteryearsof lack of investment.
I observed this problem when I visited Germany in May, and asked my host/friend about it. Hesaid that Germans had become less willing (than in the past) to prioritize the long term future.
I suspect that that manifests itself as a demand to pay lower taxes, and let the rich pay lower taxes too.
Labour has extended the Torybanon prescribing puberty blockers to young people. (It is not clear from the words of thearticle who the ban covers.)
The justification given by the minister is not outright nasty, but I think it is the wrongpolicy. The result will be to push people into pubertyin a sex that they may not want. It is better to give each person the choice. and the only way to do that is with these medicines.
US citizens:call onCongress to support Biden's initiative to reduce prices on some drugs.
Biden did this through a change in a regulation, which (unlike a law) does not require specificapproval from Congress, but Republicans will push to override it, and plutocratist Democratsmight support it, acting on the principle that the income of lobbying corporations issacrosanct. The point is to dissuade them from doing so.
By the way, please vote to defeat the corrupter and all Republicans!
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Biden to avert war in Lebanon.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
(satire) Amazon AnnouncesOrthodoxPrime Day Will Be July 29 Through 30.
Just as I don't celebrate Easter on any date, I won't celebrate Prime Dayon any date.
Labour can end [UK] austerity at a stroke -– by taxing the rich andtaxing them hard.
"There's no money" is the standard plutocratist response to proposalsto fix the gaping holes in public services by spending the amountsthat they require. It is really a question of priorities: do you putmoney into making the rich richer, or into what is needed for everyoneto have a decent life.
[The corrupter] deserves our sympathy. That doesn’t make him anacceptable candidate.
In my view, what he deserves is not sympathy for him, but rather ourindignation on his behalf for the crime attempted against him.However, that indignation must be partly directed at him, for hisstirring up of the spirit of political violence, which surely has somerole in inspiring the attack on him.
Biden denounces [corrupter] rally shooting: "We must unite to condemn it".
Our goal must be to maintain democracy with fair and free elections.Alas, the followers of the corrupter are trying to do the opposite.
However, we must not be the ones to start a war against the right-wing.That would be a victory for them, not for us.
- The [UK] Science Museum has been [compelled] to cut ties with oil giantEquinor over its sponsor’s environmental record.*
The oil company used its donations to partly gag the museum as regardsthe most important scientific issue of our time: the harm to the wholeworld done by fossil fuels, including those extracted by Equinor.
It may be true that such gag clauses are "reciprocal and standard",not that does not mean they are harmless. Perhaps most of them dolittle harm, but in this case it can be deadly.
Even without an explicit contract committing the museum not to coverthis danger, the desire to get future donations from the company inthe future would tend to corrupt.
The article mentions that other planet roaster companies, such asBillionaire Polluters and Adani, have given the museum donations.
After Hurricane Beryl's destruction, climate scientists fear forwhat's next.
They have been warning us for decades now that this would happen.
Some nonfree computer "games" today are really just veiled marketingfor real products using real brands -- aimed mainly at children.
The illustrate the general principle that nonfree programs tend to be malware.Manipulating the user is one kind of malware.
China is using continual low-intensity violencetoforce Philippine forces out of the South China Sea.
It can do this because its naval forces greatly outnumber the Philippines'.
Researchers estimate 730,000 people a year in the USlosetheir ability to live independently due to traffic pollution.
The corrupter was shot and slightly wounded at a rally. This could makeimpressionablepeople vote for him from sympathy.
He has displayed so much hatred, so much contempt, and so much callous cruelty, that I feelhardly any sympathy. Please give your sympathy to Americans who are in danger of being caughtin the dictatorship he wants to set up.
Both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-CortezbackBiden.
I think their reason for this is similar to my own: that Biden does a higher fraction ofprogressive things than the other Democrats would do.
I trust their goals and their sincerity, so I think their advice is good to follow.
Israel says it made an air striketokill a military leader of HAMAS, and another military leader was in the same area.
That killing a HAMAS military commander, or even several, is not a step towards Israel's goalof "wiping out HAMAS".Generallyit is impossible to destroy an underground resistance group by killing its leaders, as longas it has popular support. It will simply recruit new leaders.
The Lancet concluded that HAMAS's count of people killed in Gaza is basically accurate, butprobably anunderestimate.
Compare with Iraq Body Count, which sincerely tried to be accurate, but whose methodologychose to err on the side of underestimate.
The Guardian: America's future must be set byvoters,not the gun.
If we want it to be decided by the voters, ina freeandfairelection, we need to fight againstRepublicanvoter suppression and gerrymandering.
Biden has imposed US banking sanctions on some Israelicoloniesin Palestine and leaders of them, specifically for their attacks on Palestinians.
That is a good step in the right direction, but taking a step every month or two is very slowprogress. The first one was a warning shot, which was a good step. But now it is past timefor heavy fire of sanctions.
Russia Attacks Hospitals in Ukraine. Israel Does the Same in Gaza. TheU.S. ResponseCouldn’t Be More Different.
Photos from al-Jazeera, confirmed byIsraeli soldiers'testimony, show that it is not unusual for them to shoot unarmed Palestinians for nomilitary reason.
The article linked to above contains links to YouTube. For your freedom and privacy, modifythem to point to invidio.us to watch them.
Further, the Israeli army has very lax rules of engagement. Soldiers are welcome to shoot— whether at a tree or at a human being — whenever they feel like it.HAMAS fighters do not wear uniforms. So it is indeed not possible to be entirely certain thatan adult Palestinian man walking 100 meters away is not a fighter. But usually it is possibleto be see that that man is not a threat to anyone at present. The small chance that he is aHAMAS fighter does not justify killing someone who is probably a civilian. Let alone someonewho is surely a civilian; but some soldiers kill even in those circumstances.
The lawful, and moral, thing to do is to fire a warning shot to tell him to go away. But theIsraeli army does not order soldiers to do that.
Although I am not expert enough to state this as a certainty, from what I know I think thatthese policies of the Israeli army amount to war crimes for which the highest officers andofficials are responsible.
Soldiers are also sometimes ordered to burn down or destroy any and all Palestinian houses theyhave been using temporarily, citing various irrational justifications. For instance, they mustmake sure not to leave any ammunition or food that Palestinians (presumed to be "terrorists")might use.
Destroying food so to make sure that starving Palestinians do not eat it??? Denying food tothe civilians to ensure there is none for the fighters??? That is systemic inhumanity.
When Sharon Johnston, permanently paralyzed, decided to travel to Switzerland to end anunbearable life, an anthropologist and a political activist accompanies her. TheBritish thugsarrestedthem both when they returned to Britain.
It is noteworthy that Ms Johnston was not terminally ill. She might have been condemned todecades of helplessness, if not for the possibility of seeking aid in suicide. I can imaginemyself in that same position and wishing for it to end.
Some states of the US threaten to arrest people whohelpsomeone expectant to travel to where abortion is legal. These two laws are very similar,and the same arguments prove the injustice of both.
The trial of Just Stop Oil activists was meant to keep the jurors in the dark about what was atstake. The defendants repeatedly violated the judge's orders tospeakthe forbidden information. The jurors paid no attention; they voted to convict.
I am very disappointed with them. They had the opportunity to help save civilization and choseinstead to facilitate its destruction.
But the defendants' effort was not wasted. The UN rapporteur forenvironmental defenders was there, and his report on the trialwas quite stern.
Side point: I agree that people do not deserve to be punished for making a Zoom call. However,using Zoom implies being under the power of that company, and that isitself a punishment. They should have used Mumble or GNUJami instead.
Right-wingers condemn every government policy thathelps thenon-rich live better than hand-to-mouth.
Socialism is essential for many of thegovernment's important missions. We don't have enough socialism yet in the US, but I wouldoppose a complete move to socialism. We need individualism and private activities too.
According to Robert Reich, here is how Harry Truman defended Socialism:
Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20years.Socialism is what they called public power … Social Security … bank depositinsurance … free and independent labor organizations … anything that helps allthe people.
When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan "Down With Socialism" … what hereally means is, "Down with Progress."
Researchers project aPalestiniandeath toll in Gaza of over 180,000, including the effects of hunger and sickness.
Around 6400 arelistedas "missing", but most of them could in fact be dead.
Robert Reich's advice on how to do your part to defeat right-wingextremism in the election this November.
Since I am sure Biden will win Massachusetts, I could vote for anon-major party, but I don't know of any I would want to vote for.
The Pantanal, an enormous wetland in Brazil, has fires in the dry season,but this year the fires are worse than ever.
If you are used by the online dis-services that track used's everyaction, this massive surveillance will enable those companies topredict how much you might pay for any product. And they could offerthat price to you, and a different price to each other used.
Why are the US and IMF imposing draconian austerity measures on Kenya?
In the 1980s, the IMF was widely rebuked for compelling many poorcountries' governments to cut spending on education, medicine, andhelp for the poor, to make those governments repay their debts faster.It looks like the IMF is still doing that.
Biden criticized the "elite" for pressuring him to step aside fromcandidacy. These elite are the rich donors who fund the party'scampaign.
That sort of elite controls both parties.
The US has resumed shipping 500lb bombs to Israel.Only the 2000lb bombs will still be withheld.
The practical explanation given for this is rational, as far as itgoes. But it reflects the lack of effort to convince or pressureIsrael to end its train of war crimes in Gaza.
I have to wonder if this reflects the demands of the same powerful"elite" donors.
Robert Reich says that Biden answered well in his latestpress conference, except for momentary verbal slips.Everyone makes momentary slips, and they don't generally alterreal decisions, so they don't constitute real failings.
I think that if all US voters understood this point, itwould be better if the Democrats stick with Biden.
But, as we know, they don't all understand that. Many overestimatethe significance of verbal slips. Perhaps, as a consequence, someoneelse might be more able than Biden to defeat the corrupter. If so,maybe the Democratic Party would do well to switch to that other.
If Democrats want to try to judge carefully whether to switch to someother candidate, and induce Biden to cooperate, I suggest thefollowing procedure.
- Press Biden to agree that he will step aside if theprocedure below is followed and chooses someone other than him.
- Press all the delegates and superdelegates to agree to formallyimplement the choice that would be made as follows.
- The delegates and superdelegates -- those who would vote in theconvention -- join in anonymous virtual votes to choose a candidate.It might follow the sequence that the convention would follow.
- If the choice is not Biden, he carries out his commitment to step aside,and they officially select the candidate.
In Norway, free-range childhood is still normal.
In Manhattan in the 60s, my life wasn't like Norwegian life, but I hada similar absence of constant control. When I meet adults who areconstantly tied up ferrying their children around, and children whocan't go anywhere without parental help, it strikes me as horrible.
Constant controlling and monitoring continues past childhood intoadolescence, so that younger teenagers have nowhere to get away toexcept into a video game.
Privatization of water and sewer systems in the UK was allegedly going toinspire investment.What it actually did was to enable the owners to reduce investment(maintenance and replacement of systems) to pay themselves biggerdividends. The story in more detail.
That's what we must expect when public functions are privatized, whichis why that is generally a terrible "solution" for most problems andimperfections in public services.
The only exception is when the privatized service sells directly tothe public in a well-functioning competitive market where there aremany competitors for each purchase -- but only if efforts to pressureconsumers into fealty to a supplier are made to fail.
Wall Street Is Investing In Your Asbestos Poisoning.Basically, it takes pay for accepting companies' liabilities forpast asbestos poisoning, then uses legal schemes to avoid ever payingdamages to the victims who were poisoned.
Once again, "security personnel" killed a black man by putting a kneeon him.They did this in a hotel where thousands of magats will assemblesoon for the Republican Convention. Perhaps they will cheer themurder that took place.
China building twice as much wind and solar power as rest of world.But China has still shown no sign of ceasing to increase coal consumption,and only reductions in fossil fuel use contribute to saving civilization.
Businesses and wealthy people in Guyana are profiting from abigincrease in oil extraction, though it does not "trickle down" to the rest of thepopulation. Meanwhile this big local increase in oil extraction will increase the world'sglobal heating.
Similar things are happening in other countries of theCaribbean region and South America.
We have known since 2011 that the known fossil fuel resources weretoomuch to fit in the world's carbon budget. Extracting all that fossil fuel, without somesurprise development, would doom civilization. The discovery of additional fossil resources inGuyana makes that excess even bigger; it stimulates the pressure from short-sighted businessesand politicians to burn too much. (We do not know precisely how much is too much, and when wedo fall over the climate cliff, it will take years to ascertain that fact.)
A big increase in the total extraction rate of fossil fuels pushes the world further into therush to disaster, adding to the cuts in extraction rate that the world needs to do elsewhere,which the world is already failing to do. Whether that increase happens in Guyana, the US, orsome other country, the effect is the same.
Arguing that it is OK to extract more in Guyana becausethatcountry actually consumes little of the extracted oil is hiding the emissions around underthe rug. The climate defense movement is already campaigning to stop measuring the emissionsof fossil fuel companies by counting only their own consumption.
WillLabour give in to US pressure to continue the Tories' effort to block the ICC's warrant forthe arrest of Netanyahu?
I hope Labour will proceed in accord with its stated intention to endBritain's interference with that arrest.
Pristine forests and grinding poverty: why shouldn’t Brazil’s Amapá stateembrace oil wealth?
That is not a rhetorical question; the article offersananswer based on the interests of that region. It may be valid in its own terms, but I havea different answer: we shouldn't forget the more general reason: hardly anyone will do well outof the collapse of civilization.
(satire) Tearful Boston Dynamics Engineer Forced To Drown UnwantedRobot Puppies.https://www.theonion.com/tearful-boston-dynamics-engineer-forced-to-drown-unwant-1851552395
The company "Finite Carbon" sells "carbon offsets" based on trees that will be spared the As.Experts using satellite photos say thatthese offsets do little goodfor the climate.
Of course, it is not unusual for businesses to cheat their customers or the public. Some ofthese offsets are fraudulent — selling a commitment not to cut down treesthatwon't be cut down anyway.
Bu what I noticed about these "offsets" is that they can be bogus even by accident. The treesin question could be killed, five or ten or twenty years later, by a wildfire, a disease orparasite, or desertification.
In Australia, a climate defense activist has been sentenced to prison for a "disruptive"nondestructive protest that temporarilyinterferedwith operation of a coal export terminal.
Thecampaignersare not daunted.
I admire their willingness to take the risk of punishment to avoid the willing destruction ofcivilization.
Europe encounteredatide of antisemitism, even before the start of the current war in Gaza.
Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, about the presidential immunity decision: US SupremeCourt abandoned the rule of law andtriggered a need for basic reform.
He advocates a constitutional amendment to bar any interpretation that amounts to immunity forpeople on the basis of past office-holding and also bars presidents from inciting crimes byoffering pardons.
Satanic Temple objects to [Governor DeMentis]'s push for more religion in schools and saysmemberscould act as student chaplains.
Most of the firm progressives in the US House of Representatives firmly back Biden, while someother Democrats say he should step aside.
Biden seems around 1/3 progressive to me. His low mental acuity in the debate was real, buteverything since then confirm for me that plutocratists want to replace Biden with someone whois less than 1/3 progressive.
Is it crucial to replace Biden? I think it is necessary if he will lose the election and someother Democrat would win — but is that so? I am no expert on that, but progressivespoliticians surely know better than I do.
"All threats to the sea come from humans":howlawyers are gearing up to fight for the oceans.
Israel warned Palestinian civilians remaining in Gaza City thatitwill make no effort to avoid killing them.
I think it would be a war crime for Israel to act as it has now threatened to act.
When humans use sucralose, it goes through human bodies and humansewage systems to end up in bodies of water, where it affects thecyanobacteria.
Britain's extra tax on high-sugar beverages has been very effectivefor both children and adults.
The Republican Party platform does not mention the word "climate".
They are sending a message: voting for us will put your children'slives at risk, and maybe yours too.
Biden suffered less polling damage than expected after debate against[the corrupter].
I am not firmly committed to Biden as candidate.My principal goal for this election is to defeat the corrupter.My secretary goal is get the most progressive possible president.
If it is feasible to change cleanly and fully to some othercandidate and improve the chances of achieving those goals,then I am in favor.
I am not confident that Kamala Harris would be as progressiveas Biden. (I've estimated Biden as 1/3 progressive.)
As for whether Harris would have a better chance of defeatingthe would-be fascist leader, I don't know.
British public agency workers were asked to do the same work for thesame pay, in 80% of the hours. They did that eagerly and were muchhappier, greatly reducing various sorts of problems.I don't think all workers will like this, though. Some are quiteoverworked.
[The bullshitter] sought Friday to instance himselffrom a conservative think tank’s plan for the next Republicanpresidency, as Democrats work to make it a political vulnerability for[him].
It was published by the Heritage Foundation. Many people involved inthe effort are [former officials appointed by the bullshitter] ,and [he] publicly allied himself with the think tank aspresident.
The US Gaza aid pier has conclusively failed: the US will soondisassemble it.
Will the US insist on getting aid into Gaza, or will it say, "Too bad,but we tried"?
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a constitutional amendmentrestoring (former) presidents' criminal liability.
The UK's new voter ID rule seems to have blocked around 3.5% fromvoting, and had a disproportionate effect on minority groups.
Temperatures 1.5°C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data shows. Copernicus Climate Change Service says results a ‘large andcontinuing shift’ in the climate.
Proposing that the way the internet promotes social conflict isthrough replacement of reciprocal communication (conversation) withone-to-many communication.
In the age of the printing press, and of broadcast radio and TV, onlya few could communicate their ideas through those; for everyone else,conversation was their only opportunity.
I am skeptical of her claim that printing, which was a change in asimilar direction, brought about the religious wars in Europe, becausesuch wars had gone on since centuries before. I recall two previousseries of religious wars, that against the Bogomils (Gnostics)starting around 1200 and against the Hussites starting around 1400.In all three cases, it was the official church against another kind ofChristianity.
The Bogomils used hand-copied books to spread their ideas, and Isuppose the Hussites did too. (This information comes fromWikipedia.)
I think that the blame for those wars falls on the idea that onedoctrine is official, and any other variant is to be stamped out "byany means necessary." It was the Roman Empire which imposed this.
That doesn't imply her idea is valueless as regards the internet.
Labour has appointed as attorney general a Jewish human rights lawyerwho has rebuked Israel for violating international law in itsbombardment and siege of Gaza.
I did not realize it was possible in the UK to have ministers of statewho were not MPs.
A tour through the British system of investigating misconduct byofficial thugs, including the system's flaws.
Rebecca Solnit says that some US mainstream media are heavily pushingthe idea that Biden is a bad president, building up pressure for himto resign.
They are the point that he has done a good job compared with the otherpresidents of recent decades. This is all the more remarkable giventhat he was held back by the lack of effective Democratic support inCongress.
The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds HijackedAmerican Conservatism describes the massive graft of the leadersof the US right-wing.
Currently they mostly do this to their supporters, but Trump hopes to make allof us victims.
The first thing Starmer Labour will do is appoint a former Toryminister to weaken the planning system requirements for local approvalof construction projects.
The change might be good or bad -- the article gives few details.Tories changed these rules to make it particularly easy to blockapproval of wind power generators, and reversing that would surelybe a good thing.
Under the Tory government, regulations for construction werecircumvented and disobeyed, resulting in building many buildings withflammable materials. One of them had a big fire in which manyresidents died.
Enforcement of safety regulations is not precisely the same issue asgetting approval for a project, but they are related and they are partof the same system. A government that is gung ho for "easingregulations" is likely be insufficiently careful about which ones.
Non right-wing French voters answeredthecall to ally together to defeat the extreme right-wing.
Lindsey Graham [a follower ofthe corrupter] calls forphysicaland cognitive tests for Biden and [the corrupter].
Naturally, his choice of what to test is biased so as to flunk Biden. To test the candidatesfor the full range of grave human flaws calls for testing also for conscience and empathy.
A detailed explanation about how plans to redesign and rebuilddemocracy in Venezuelawent wrong andultimately failed, written by someone with generally similar political views and goals.
Here's a legitimate job that a chatbot can really do — because truthfulness and accuracyhave nothing to do with the job. The job consists offoolinghuman scammers.
AUN human rights body spell out themany violations of human rights law committed by Israel, and by HAMAS.
Another articleabout the same report.
The US supreme court utterlydistortedthe true threat to American democracy.
Meanwhile, I should point out that the Extreme Court's decision applies to accusations againstan ex-president. I've read that no criminal charges can be made against someone who iscurrently president.
Information about opposition to slaveryin the pre-revolutionarycolonies that later formed the United States.
Some comments from me about this.
- Condemnation of slavery by workers afraid of competition from slavesis not the same thing as moral condemnation of slavery as an injustice.
- Free workers concerned about unfair competition from unpaid slaves can make a difference inthe decision about whether to allow slavery. We can hope that it will do so. that includesthe case of convicts who are compelled nowadays to work in prison for wages so low that thatundercut and reduce the wages of free workers.
- The existence in the British colonies of a minority who opposed slavery on moral groundsis interesting, but they may have been too few to be seen as anything but a fringe group. Itis not impossible to end an injustice that is deeply embedded in society, but it may take astruggle.
A video showed a British prison guard having sex with a prisoner, in a prison cell. A formerprison guard writes that the fact that they could do this is a consequence of budget cuts thathave made prisonsunsafe and harmful.
A surprisingly powerful hurricane caused near total devastation intwoCaribbean islands; nearly all buildings there were destroyed.
Each hurricane's devastation centers on a few places, but which placesare hit each time is random. Any place in the hurricane zone could bedevastated by the next hurricane. As global heating makes for morepowerful hurricanes, buildings that formerly were probably safe becomevulnerable.
(Different terms are officially used, rather than "hurricane", forsimilar storms in other parts of the world. For simplicity I write"hurricane" to refer to all of them.)
But hurricanes are just one of the dangers we are increasing. Thereare alsowildfires,floods,desertification,ecological disruption,and the spread oftropicaldiseases and parasites. Many of these disrupt food production, and that is likely to causemass starvation later this century.
To argue about how much some countries owe other countries because of global heating isdivisive and shortsighted. All of humanity (and a lot of nature) is in danger from globalheating. Instead of divisiveness, civilization must unite to curb global heating and decreasethe future danger we are creating.
Israeli strike on Gaza schoolkills16, say Palestinian officials, and injured 50. The school was serving as shelter for 7000people who had fled other places in Gaza.
There has beensomeprogress towards a cease-fire deal for Gaza. But it is still blocked by the mostbloodthirsty member of Israel's governing coalition. This calls for the US to increase thepressure until that party cannot stand against it.
Many former Labour supporters voted for Labour reluctantly, solely to eliminate Tory rule.Many others voted Green. Next time, with less threat from Tories, theGreenParty may win many Labour seats.
Competing with the Greens could pressure Labour to stand for what, before Starmer, it used tostand for. But if it does not do that, many former Labour voters will become Green voters, andStarmer will continue making Labour into the image of the former competent but cruel alreadycruel Tory Party.
[The corrupter] attempting toclaimto "know nothing" about Project 2025. Critics point out political roadmap for a potentialsecond term created by "more than 20 officials Trump appointed."
Peace Now, an Israeli organization that aims for peace between Israeland Palestine, reports that Israel'slatestseizure of land in the West Bank is larger than usual.
Israel continuallyseizesparcels of land near the Jordan River so that a Palestinian state would be surrounded.
It also declares land to be a"militaryzone" as an excuse for expelling Palestinians.
Boston's city council hasaskedthe state of Massachusetts to allow Boston to use ranked choice voting.
Imprisoningenvironmental protectors is not limited to corrupt western democracies. Cambodia, which iscontrolled by a hereditary "prime minister" in the name of a hereditary king, does it too.
Now that China has a policy of investing abroad to gain influence, it has a lot of influence inmany of its smaller neighbors. Cambodia would seem to be one of them.
(satire)SupremeCourt Rules [the corrupter] Has Immunity For Any Crime Committed Between 9 And 5.
(satire?) If Republicans take power, they will give their followers "herd immunity", meaningimmunity for any crimes they commit in the course of following those leaders.
An Afghan human rights activist who is a woman was arrested by the Taliban, who gang-raped herin jail. The rapists made a video to silence her with. When released, she fled the country,and they sent her a copy, threatening to publish it if she continued to criticize them.
Far from being intimidated, shesentit to news organizations.
That is courage. She does not have anything to be ashamed of -- therapists do.
The article reports on other cases of Taliban's raping, even killing,women they arrested.
I suppose they brutalize men also who criticize them, perhapsin different ways.
Obsession with growth isenrichingelites and killing the planet. We need an economy based on human rights. Meanwhile, thenumber of poor people is increasing.
The flaws of GDP as a measure to target increase in are clear. What I don't know of is a goodreplacement. I tried looking at proposals, but the few I saw were flawed in other ways. ThenI tried trying to invent one, but did not come up with anything good.
The UK and the US both have many crucial national needs that call forspending money. If a party tries to woo wealthy voters whose priorityisnotto pay more tax, by promising not to raise taxes, it has made a choice not to address thelong list of pressing national needs that require spending more money. By making this choicefor Labour, Starmer has limited it to small change.
Many Britons supported the Labour Party precisely because its goal was to do something aboutthat. It rejected Communism, but advocated an increased level of Socialism. Now Starmerthinks to drag them along for lack of a better alternative.
However, the Liberal Democrats have now pledged to raise taxes on the wealthy to fix the NHS.
How parents' unreasonable anxiety drives them togivechildren snoop-phones and never let them go off by themselves.
Jeremy Corbyn won reelection to Parliament,defeatingthe Starmer Labour candidate running against him.
[The corrupter] would befreeto obstruct justice in second term, after [the recent] immunity ruling.
Maduro in Venezuela is a bully and does not respect democracy. Now hemaybe ousted, but what would come next?
The article tries to spread Maduro's deserved condemnation on his predecessor, the latePresident Chávez. That is unjust: Chávez was popular. He was reelected honestly, after thepeople had defeated a coup attempt arranged by the US. He gave Venezuela more socialism butdid not eliminate capitalist business or democracy.
Maduro, by contrast, is not honest and has not done good for the people. He inspired strongopposition, which he overcame by undermining democracy. But his opposition (including coupleader Guaido, backed by the US) has not deserved support either. It showed signs of workingto restore the pre-Chávez plutocratist authoritarianism.
Opposition candidate González is described as a stand-in. For whom, I have to wonder. Will hebe an improvement over Maduro, or another authoritarian plutocratist?
Robert Reich: Last week, the Supreme Court made it much harder for the FTC, the LaborDepartment, and dozens of other agencies — ranging from the Environmental ProtectionAgency to the Food and Drug Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, OccupationalSafety and Health Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and National Highwayand Safety Administration —to protectAmericans from corporate misconduct.
Israel risks going to war against Hezbollah to ensure Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival,but it would be a miscalculation that couldleadto mass civilian deaths in both Lebanon and Israel, a former US military intelligenceanalyst has warned.
Bidenunveils rules to protect millions of US workers from extreme heat.
Republicans will ask Congress to cancel this rule, and if that fails, ask courts to ruleagainst it. They always do.
Voters in the UK and abroad have either not received their ballots orhave been left withtoolittle time to return them.
The Tory-underminedstateapparatus is simply incapable of carrying out its responsibilities even when it tries to.
It requires people to get new paperwork andfailsto give it to them in time.
New Zealanders are working to eliminate the intrusive mammals (mostly predators)that endanger endemic animals. Feral cats are now in the target list.
Alas, some people demand to protect feral cats instead of the animals (often endangered) thatthe cat would wipe out.
Australia plans to require porn sites and antisocial media sites tocheckusers' ages.
If the system truly did nothing other than determine whether the user's age is above or below Nyears, I would not object to it. However, such systems are likely to demand to see official IDrecords, which would identify the user as well as check per age, or take photos, which could besaved and used to identify the user.There are plans to implementa way to use GNU Taler to check ages. Just as Taker paymentsallow users to send a store payments that it can validate but cannot use to identify them, thesame technique makes it possible for users to send a site a proof of age that it can validatebut cannot use to identify them.
The Supreme Court ruled that the president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution overofficialacts. This covers some of the things he is accused of doing to steal the 2020 election.
I am puzzled by this statement:
his prosecutors will not be able to introduce as evidence any acts deemed to be official andstruck from the case, even as contextual information for jurors to show Trump’s intent.
Why should facts be prohibited from use as evidence to prove a crime not covered by immunity,merely because they are not in themselves criminal?The attempted explanation at the end of the article did not make sense to me.
Israel capturedMohammedAbu Salmiya, the head of al-Shifa Hospital, and tortured him in prison for 7 months.
A poetryhoaxdemonstrated how similar Putin's admirers are to Hitler's admirers.
Didn't they have to replace "Jews" in Nazi poetry with "Ukrainians" in Putinite poetry?
People exposed to explosions tend to show certain kinds of brain damage which often result inproblemsin thinking.
One case was an instructor who taught soldiers to use hand grenades. He surely did not explodethem close enough to wound him externally, but he was wounded internally nonetheless. I wonderhow close to him they were when they exploded.
The UN agency OCHA estimates that 90% of the people of Gaza have beendisplaced at least once by the fighting since October.
Israeli right-wing politician Moshe Feiglin cited Hitler's attitudetowards Jews to explain his own attitude towards Palestinians.
His version of the Golden Rule must be, "Do one to others before theydo one to you." Not as a joke, but seriously.
However, that is the extreme right-wing creed, found in manycountries, and Israelis are not immune to it. It is shocking, though,that a Jew would unhesitatingly cite Hitler as a model.
Boeing has been pressured by the US government to buy the part ofSpirit AeroSystems that makes parts for Boeing planes -- a part thatit spun off a few decades ago.
Spinning off parts or aspects of production is effective forincreasing profits -- by paying some workers less, and by shirkingaccountability for whatever goes wrong. Except that when what goeswrong is that a plane crashes, the responsibility bounces back.
I would expect the previous management of Boeing viewed making theirparts in-house as a way to make their planes safer. So it alwayscomes back to one's values.
The Democratic Party set its convention for August 19-22, but Ohio'sdeadline for parties to choose a presidential candidate is Aug 7. Sothe Democratic Party made a plan to have a virtual meeting to formallyvote on the candidate, who had already been chosen by primaries.
A week ago, that seemed to be a painless plan. But now that someconsider replacing Biden (if he steps aside) with some othercandidate, it poses a problem: they can't afford to wait for theconvention to make that decision. They have to arrange a way todecide in July.
Light pollution [draws in] young fish [to the coast], then predators[come and eat them.].
Proposing better ways of addressing the housing shortage instead of themostly capitalist ways usually proposed today.
As a side point, I think the author is mistaken about Labour'sattitude today. Starmer has publicly rejected the idea of heroicachievements such as Labour did before.
US citizens: Call on various pharma companies to drop thelawsuits that aim to stop Biden from lowering the prices of medicines.
The UK's "living accommodation" for asylum seekers on formerWethersfield air base feels like a prison.They are permitted to leave, but it is so isolated that in practiceit is not feasible for them to go anywhere useful to go or wherepeople they know live.
This unprison was approved, despite its evident drawbacks, risks anddangers, because supposedly it would be cheaper, but it ultimatelycost far more than the estimates. Much like a nuclear power plant.
Ultimately, how did the cost of housing asylum seekers there comparewith the usual cost? What is the usual cost?
The US is prosecuting Boeing for fraud, but reportedly is offering aplea bargain that will let it off the hook with little punishment.
Biden is encouraging somewhat more prosecution of lawbreakingcorporations, but that does not go far enough. To restraincorporations effectively from dangerous crimes, we should prosecutethe individual executives who decided to break them.
A more precise description of the new presidential immunity fromprosecution: core executive functions of the presidency have absoluteimmunity from prosecution, official acts of the presidency arepresumptively immune, and unofficial acts carry no immunity. However,in addition, official acts cannot be used as evidence at all tobolster a criminal case.
Each part can help a corrupt president to engage in conspiraciesagainst laws and the Constitution, including those that the corruptertried in 2020 and those he threatens to carry out if he wins or stealsthe presidency again.
The judge in the corrupter's trial for violating campaign finance laws(crimes he committed before he was president) has delayed thesentencing, to consider whether any of the evidence in the trialmentioned subsequent "official" acts.
Sotomayor says, in stark dissent, ruling makes president "king above the law".
US citizens:callon Congress not to allow a military draft.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Since the attempted assassination of the prime minister of Slovakia,thefarright has wasted no time in silencing its critics.
Robert Reich: The "free market" is nothing buta set ofrules, established and enforced by government. There are many possible sets of rules, andno one of them is "the" free market. Some rules are better for society than others.
The rules we have now were decided by the power of plutocrats that bought politicians. Thoserules are bad for most of us. Biden has made improvements in some, but big improvements wouldrequire Congress's support.
Everyone: call onT-Mobile, CVS, GM, and ElevanceHealth to stop funding the right-wing Republican Attorney Generals Association.
Colorado oil and gas wellscan’tfund their own cleanup. Taxpayers may foot the bill.
A Carbon Tracker report shows the cost to safely shut downlow-producing wells is $3bn more than what they earn.
The efforts in the US to make mine owners pay the cost of closing up and cleaning up a mine hasbeen haphazard and half-hearted, and mines have continued to cheat the public by dumping thesecosts on the public.
Labour is telling Britain it is now a conservative party — and we shouldbelieve it.
Britons who used to look to the Labour Party for something more than small change cling to thehope it will try to But it can't be soon — Starmer has promised so clearly and firmly toreject all that the Labour Party used to stand for that if he did much of that he would beaccused of lying.
Wikileaks changed the nature of journalism, but with many organizations now set up to publishleaks, there may not beaneed for Wikileaks itself to resume doing so. However, Wikileaks has a reputation forseparating the truth from the disinformation, and that could help the public distinguish the two.
Turkey's urban street dogs befriend the people who live nearbyand are taken care of by them. NowErdoğanwants to eliminate them.
This article suggests some questions to me:
- The street dogs must recognize the people who live in the neighborhood. How do they treatstrangers? Do they (or did they) serve to warn the local people about incursions?
- How were street dogs treated in Anatolia before the Turkish conquest, when it was part of theByzantine Empire? In other words, was this specifically a Turkish custom or was it an olderAnatolian custom?
- How did the many non-Turks in Anatolia in the 19th century, living under Turkish rule, treatstreet dogs?
Republican Senator Graham warns of a campaign to invent excuses to prosecute Biden, asaway of pretending that the corrupter's serious criminal accusations are mereRepublican-style bullshit.
That is the tactic right-wingers use to normalize the persecution of opposition in a right-wingauthoritarian regime.
In therecentIndian election, Congress Party election monitors checked the numbers and security seals ofindividual digital voting machines to detect tampering or failures.
US citizens:callon Congress to ensure no American citizen is denied the right to vote on account of felonyconvictions.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Climate defenseactivistsare on trial in the UK, charged with organizing a nonviolent and nondestructive protest,intended to be massively disruptive.
I dislike the disruption caused by protests, just as many people do. But climate disaster willbe fatal, perhaps for most of humanity, and will cause massive injustice and suffering alongthe way. The strategies of Just Obey Orders, Just Complain and Just Give Up have failed, sowhat should humanity do to protect itself if not this?
Some journalists were arbitrarily excluded from an "energy industry"conference in Azerbaijan, one of the preparations for the COP29climatedefense discussion.
The event last year was in Dubai, and was headed by the country's oil minister, who seems tohave ensured it madeno progresstowards achieving its mission.
Several US statesrequireUber and Lyft to pay drivers a determined minimum wage, and to provide benefits includingpaid sick leave.
This step forward is a step forward, in those states; it eliminates, there, one of themany reasons to refuse to do business with those companies.
However, the injustices to customers — making users identify themselves to book a ride andto pay, making them run nonfree software, add tracking their movements — are unchanged. Aslong as that continues, I hope you will join me in refusing to do business with them.
Billionaire Polluters is blowing off what it told the publictoconvince us that it was trying not to be a planet roaster.
TheSupreme Court ruled that cities can imprison people for being homeless.
This is likely to put tens of thousands of Americans in faraway camps that are essentiallyprisons and faraway dumping grounds. Once there, they are likely to die from all sorts ofdiseases.
Here istheACLU's response.
For me, it is clear that punishing people for being poor is inexcusably poor. Forcing poorpeople to live in a place from which they can't get to work is cruel and self-defeating.
Biden'sagonizing debate performance doesn’t change the reality of this election.
The biggest question is whether the mob of liars and wreckers led by the corrupter will win andimpose authoritarian, plutocratist rule on the US, and persecute his enemies.
(satire) British Science Museum Forced To Return Fire Exhibit OriginallyPlunderedFrom The Gods.
Some of Biden's important supporters are pressing him to step asidefor some other Democrat.
Biden is around 30% progressive. That means (1) a real progressivewould be much better, but (2) he is the most progressive president theUS has had since the 1970s, and it is causing improvements already,despite opposition from Congress and the Supreme Court.
Choosing a stronger Democratic candidate would help prevent the wreckerfrom winning or stealing the presidency. But perse would be chosenentirely by the smoke-filled rooms of political insiders, with noprimaries for the public to influence the choice. I am afraid thatwill give us a plutocratist like Hillary Clinton.
Israel's parliament is working on a law to allow the CommunicationsMinister to arbitrarily shut down any foreign journalist organizationby citing "national security".
Microplastics (which includes pieces as big as 5mm, which I would callmilliplastics) have been found in human penises and testes.It is possible that they are responsible for the world-wide decreasein human fertility over the past few decades.
But that is not proved. The cause could be PFAS. Or something else.
The North Sea’s biggest oil and gas infrastructure company is riskingfires and environmental disasters by failing to plug and decommissionold wells. Sometimes it is many years late.
Israel and the US jointly affirmed that the US is not withholding anyweapons deliveries except for one shipment of large bombs.Any other delays were due to bureaucratic complexity.
Of course, I find this news very discouraging. Biden showed he hadsome leverage, Netanyahu dared him to use it some more, and Biden hasnot tried.
A high advisor to Biden defended US plans to increase export of fossil gasby saying the US would contribute an important sum to helping poor countriescope with the consequences.
An international scheme to tax the wealth of the world’s 3,000billionaires is technically feasible and could net up to $250bn(£197bn) a year in extra revenue, a new report says.
Six leading Israelis, not in political office now, call on the US Congressto rescind its invitation for Netanyahu to speak. This is their letterto Congress.
Denmark plans to make farmers pay a tax on their cattle and sheep tocompensate for the harm done by the methane those animals emit.
The plan was negotiated with farmers' organizations, which suggests a chancethat farmers won't protest it later.
Lawyers assert it should be possible to sue oil companies for theirpart in causing a deadly heatwave in Arizona.
China-owned British Steel said to have requested £600m of taxpayersupport.
Whether the owners are Chinese is a question that there is no need toask, because the state should never give money to a business "tosupport it."Instead it should offer to lend money to the company for suitablerepayment, or else buy equity at a fair price.
These two ways of supporting a company avoid giving the owners anopportunity to rip off the state -- which the company's owners are likelyto try to do, if they can, regardless of which country they are from.
With a policy like this, it wouldn't matter which country thecompany's owners are from.
I hate it when a "true story" has in fact been altered to make it"more dramatic". People falsely portrayed as bad guys may hate itenough to sue.
People writing works of non-fiction should try to be honest to the facts.
Stella Assange has urged Australian journalists to lodge freedom ofinformation requests with the United States government to extractdetails on its criminal case against her husband because thenow-returned WikiLeaks publisher's plea deal bans him from doingso.
Oklahoma state superintendent orders public schools to teach theBible.
Ten years ago we could have confidently counted on the Supreme Courtto overturn that. And officials, realizing that, probably wouldn'thave tried it.
Nowadays, which sympathizers of Christian Nationalism forming amajority of the court, we can't be sure. We need to get thosefanatics off the court -- and ensure no more get put on it,
This means we need to make sure that their openly dictatorial leaderdoes NOT get to be president in 2025. All the bad things that Bidenhas done. even if we don't count the good things he has done, aresmall potatoes compared to the tyranny and repression that the wreckerwould systematically wreck under Project 2025.
Boeing made a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Departmentto avoid prosecution for causing two fatal crashes. Then it did notcarryout the agreement.
The US supreme court just legalized bribery.
The bribe has to be given after the service it rewards is done, andthere must be at least the pretense that it wasn't promised inadvance.
George Monbiot: Things are not going to get better as long asoligarchsrule the roost in our democracies.
That is true to first order, but not exactly 100% true. The dominion of the billionaires isnot an all-or-nothing thing, and there are issues important to us which are not particularlyimportant to them.
As global heating reduces the rainfall in Algeria, the government isbuildingdesalination plants, but not fast enough.
Bolivia put down a right-wingcoupby army generals. Right-wingers, including followers of Bolsonaro, applauded the attempt,demonstrating their opposition to democracy.
An arrested coup leader said that the president ordered him to carry out a phony coup, aspoliticaltheater.
I don't know enough about Bolivia to have any basis for trying tojudge whether this is true.
In the debate, the bullshitter pummeled Biden with high speed lies, making him seemold andweak.
Each candidate has hadtimeto show us who [perse is], and one is a felon trying to destroy democracy.
If you have to choose between a weak and tottering friend and a vigorous, greedy, hostilecheater, which should you choose? I'd choose the friend, because the cheater is sure to domore harm.
US citizens:callon Congress to reject Republican tax breaks for big corporations.
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Smotrich, a right-wing extremist in Netanyahu's cabinet, stated hisaimto annex the West Bank. I supposethatwould lead to making it araberrein,asUri Avnery foretold.
US citizens:callon Congress to reject KOSA, so-called "protection" for children that would compel users ofall ages to prove their identity.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Vanguard's new CEO to protect retirement savers from climate-related financial risks.
Those risks would be just a part of the colossal damage that climate disaster causes toeveryone. But it is useful as a basis to raise the issue here. An investment company caneasily shrug off damage it will do to the whole world, but damage specifically to its clientsis hard to disregard.
Robert Reich: [The wrecker] has convinced many Americans that stridency is a sign of strength whiletruthand humility signal weakness.
The US judge in Julian Assange's case approved his plea bargain,butwarnedthat future journalists were indeed in danger from the US.
The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Russian officials over allegedUkraine war crimes, such as firing missiles atciviliantargets.
Fedja Stukan, a Bosnian, recently wrote a book about his experiences in the civil war in the90s. It criticized Serbia for that; he has also accused Serbia's current government of runningnonfree elections.
Recently he tried to go to abookfestival in Serbia, but was denied entry.
US citizens:callon Congress to reject Republican efforts to cancel climate defense measures.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Congress to pass a wealth tax on billionaires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Congress to ban bump stocks. They effectively convert rifles into machine guns.
Right-wing judges recently ruled against an executive order to treat them as machine guns. Soa new law is needed.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Rising sea levels will disruptmillions of Americans’lives by 2050, study finds.
The same is true in various other countries. I've seen places in France, Italy and Turkey thatare likely to be inundated in a few decades. Some of them have millennia of history. Some ofthem are very important to excavate for archeology.
The UK's right-wing extremist leader, Farage, said that Ukraine shouldgive Putin some of its territory.
Many right-wing leaders seem to be allied with Putin -- starting withthe wrecker. The ones in the US blocked arms for Ukraine to help Putinconquer some more territory, while Farage cites that as a reason toaccept defeat.
It may prove impossible to defeat the Putin forces completely, It maybe unavoidable for Ukraine to cede some territory to him, but thatwould be a very sad victory for tyrannical conquest. We should notlet a tyrant conquer without a hard fight.
The Great Barrier Reef has suffered 97% bleaching in some areas.
A coral reef typically has many species of coral.I have a suspicion that different species have different ratesof survival. If the overall rate of survival is 10%, some speciesmay have 20% survival and some 5% survival, and some 0% survival.If some species have become locally extinct, that region's coralreef may be changed permanently.
A substantial fraction Israelis are recognizing that letting theextreme right wing and the fanatical colonists lead Israel is harmfulto Israel. Now Israelis are recognizing that they act like tyrants and leadthe state into repression.
For decades there have always been Israelis who wanted to make peacewith Palestinians, but their numbers have dwindled since the 90s.Maybe now they will increase.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea levelrise. Small increase in temperature of intruding water could lead to very bigincrease in loss of ice, scientists say.
Sea level rise is the greatest long-term impact of the climate crisisand is set to redraw the world map in coming centuries. It has thepotential to put scores of major cities, from New York City toShanghai, below sea level and to affect billions of people.
EU-regulated "sustainable" funds invest [around 20 billion dollars]in biggest polluters.
Israel's army has defined journalists working for organizations linkedwith HAMAS as enemy combatants, to be killed.
This is a bogus excuse for killing civilians, and a war crime.
The Day Israeli Tanks Fired Directly at AFP's Gaza Bureau.
Months ago, early in this war, Israeli snipersmurdered an al-Jazeera cameraman.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Julian Assange may be on his way to freedom but this is not a clear victoryfor freedom of the press.
US citizens: call on CNN to ask the candidates, at the first presidential debate, "How will you work to reduce nuclear tensions as President?"
US citizens: call on Congress to defend the CFPB's new rule limitingcredit card late fees. These hit mainly Americans who are poor.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to stop the $18 billion saleof bombs and fighter jets to Israel.
The expensive US pier, meant to provide a way to land aid from ships,has been mostly a failure. As of June 23, it had been physicallyfunctional for 12 days out of the 37 days it had been in place. This is because the waves on the Gaza coast have been higher thannormal, and the designers did not allow enough safety margin for it.
On most of those 12 days when the pier itself was usable, there was notransport to take the aid to the starving civilians.
The rules of war say that attacking a military target with somecivilians nearby must satisfy the criterion of "proportionality". Ifthere are a few HAMAS cops near an aid convoy, who are there to keepsecurity for the convoy, attacking them and endangering the morenumerous] civilians handling the aid (and this ought to count thosewhose lives depend on its arrival) cannot satisfy that criterion.To attack the convoy would be a war crime.
If Israel did attack the convoy, that would be interference withdelivery of US humanitarian aid. Under US law the US would have tosuspend weapons deliveries to Israel.
The US thus has plenty of leverage to make Israel stop blocking thisaid, but does not use it.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Biden pardonsthousandsof US veterans convicted under law banning gay sex.
This should have been done years ago, but better late than never.
Julian Assange has accepted a plea bargain according to which he will be sentenced to the timehe has already spent in Belmarch prison. (One charge has been filed already by the US for himto plead guilty to.) He is now supposed to go to the Mariana Islands (near Guam) to pleadguilty and besentencedto "time served", and then leave for Australia.
ReportedlyAustralia'ssupport for Assange played a major part in convincing the US to agree to this deal.
I am very glad for Assange for being out of prison, but I am alarmed that the danger of beingtreated similarly will face other journalists and publishers in the future. If the US hadprosecuted the perpetrators of the actions in the "collateral murder" video, none of this wouldhave been necessary.
The plea deal requires approval from the judge. I wonder what will happen to Assange if thejudge declines to accept the deal. Could he be sent to a US prison to await trial?
Documents show Israeli-influence fundstargetUS college campuses and push to redefine antisemitism in US law.
Theredefinitionthey push for is to adopt the distorted IHRA criterion for judging antisemitism.
I think it would be justified for Biden to take an action to block or punish this influence attempt — somethingsharp enough that Netanyahu will conclude he is going too far and must stop.
SouthernChinahit by floods as north suffers from drought.
LastI heard, China was rapidly increasing its burning of coal, so its own actions are partlyresponsible for these twin disasters.
A young right-wing American, a supporter of the wrecker, told Robert Reich,"Think of Putin, Xi, Kim, Ali Khamenei, Netanyahu — they’re all odious thugs," he said. "Weneedour ownodious thug to stand up to them."
That thinking has a blatant flaw. The other "odious thugs" (his words) he listed, aside fromNetanyahu, made their own peoples the first and principal target of their oppression, thoughthey hurt some minorities worse. I think the wrecker would be similar. An American wouldneed to be very lucky to benefit from being under the wrecker's heel.
Netanyahu rejected the idea of a lasting cease fire in Gaza. Hespoke of "pauses" but it is not clear that those would allow in enough aid to savePalestinians from dying from shortages.
I think that whatever Netanyahu says about what he will or might do in the future is bullshit,just as if it came from the wrecker. Furthermore, since Netanyahu wantsthe wrecker to winthe election, he will say whatever will cause trouble for Biden now. As long as Biden doesn't dareto do defy Netanyahu in something with consequences, Netanyahu will drag Biden around on achain and he may indeed lose.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Sweden's foolish campaign to push everyone into using tracked digital payments instead ofanonymous cash is unjust to everyone who uses the digital system. Ironically, it hasalso boosted fraud.
A digital payment systems fraud can steal far more money than a small store would ever have onhand as cash. Thus, leaving cash has magnified the danger from crime.
If they were using GNU Taler for digital payments, instead ofBankID, that would fix both problems. A Taler payment never reveals the payer'sidentity, and does not enable fraud against merchants.
Apple's narrow and restricted provisions for alternate app stores havebeen found to violate the EU's Digital Markets Act.
If the EU stands by this, it may eventually compel Apple to allowsomething comparable to F-droid.
Posting a religious text in a public school classroom isn't harmless,let alone neutral.
It would be difficult to write it in English and be neutral betweenmonotheism and polytheism, and including atheism in the range of viewsrespected would be even harder.
Toys, spices, sewing machines [and many other things]: the itemsIsrael banned from entering Gaza.
The climate crisis is driving an exponential rise in the most extremewildfires in key regions around the world.
Extreme fires are a small fraction of total wildfires, but they releasemore greenhouse gases because they burn whole trees. The gasesaccelerate global heating.
Whether the effect of this feedback loop is truly exponential remainsto be observed, but if it is, reducing greenhouse emissions may becomeimpossible. We should not wait for those observations before we actvigorously to reduce greenhouse emissions while we still can do so.
Photojournalist Linda Tirado was covering a protest about the murder of George Floyd when auniformed thug shot her in the eye, perhaps with a tear gas canister. She isnowdying from the damage that did to her brain.
Thugs know from their training that firing a gas canister at someone's faceis likely to kill. That one should be charged with murder.
Electedofficials in sweltering US states prioritizing fossil fuel cash over people.
This includes the Republican governors of Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Nevada.
Oneright-wing billionaire has given $75 million to the wrecker's campaign and $25 to theconfuser's campaign (RFK Jr).
Labour isconsideringplans for a wealth tax in the UK. At last it is looking for a way to make a substantialimprovement in all the problems caused by Tory spending cuts.
The UN seeks to hold an international meeting about Afghanistan and have the government ofAfghanistan participate. That government demands the total exclusion of Afghan women from theevent. (I can't tell from the article whether the UN has accepted it or not.)
Should the UN acceptthatdemand?
I can understand the desire for the Afghan government's participation, but if the UN decides tohelp the people of Afghanistan via non-state channels, the government will have only twochoices: to permit the aid, or to block it. By blocking it, it would help no one inAfghanistan and would incur condemnation. Either way, it would look bad, and the UN would beseen to be helpful and dutiful.
Chinathreatens to execute Taiwanese for advocating Taiwan's independence, if it gets its handson them.
I expect that some day, perhaps a few years from now, China will arrest Taiwanese tourists andsentence them to death on the basis of social media postings from the past. After aChinese-style bogus trial, of course.
It would be appropriate for Taiwan to criminalize advocacy of war against Taiwan. This way, ifChina seizes Taiwanese hostages to threaten, Taiwan could seize some Chinese hostages in return.
Mozilla has deactivated the blockage that it had placed on downloading certainanti-censorshipadd-ons from computers in Russia.
Yanis Varoufakis: establishing a state of Palestine should not aim for symmetrical two-wayapartheid; the proper goal is tobring the two groups closer together.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Israel tried toassassinatea HAMAS commander, disregarding the presence of numerous civilian bystanders nearby and theevident likelihood of many civilian casualties. Not surprisingly, many civilians were killed bythe attack.
This was a war crime according to the Geneva conventions, if I understand this point correctly.The presence of a valid military target, even an important one, does not excuse predictablykilling many civilians.
The Australian right wing plan for new nuclear power plants has beenrevealedas a bogus business boondoggle to make a poisonous pile of pollution.
I expect them to show as much respect for truth as the bullshitterdoes in the US, by continuing to champion the debunked claims.
*EU Council haswithdrawnthe vote on Chat Control, because the plan no longer has majority support.
Chatcontrolis the plan to impose massive censorship on internet communications, and its defeat is a greatvictory. Of course, it is not guaranteed to be a permanent victory.
The massive adoption of chatbots (bullshit generators often "referred tomisleadingly as artificial intelligence") isgreatly increasing thedemand for electric power. This in turn is increasing the use of fossil fuels and thusaccelerating climate disaster.
How ironic that this is a byproduct of making online services function worse.
The article erroneously states that neural network systems "make decisions similar to the humanbrain." Aside from the confused concepts — it makes no sense to compare a decision with abrain — digital "neural network" systems do not work like groups of real neurons. These"neural networks" implement an abstraction and simplification of early theories of how realneurons work. They can do some useful things, but we should avoid erroneous explanations ofthem.
[New York Thug Department] complaints surge under [night-mayor] Adams to reachhighestlevel since 2012.
You have to expect an ex-cop in a powerful office to encourage cruelty and brutality by cops— simply by tending to take their side in disputes. And even if the ex-cop is black,encouraging cops' cruelty will promote white supremacism, because the two go together.
A British court ruled that planning agencies must consider the climatedamage that will result from the fossil fuel to be extracted when theyconsider whethertoapprove fossil fuel development.
This is exactly the needed policy, but the planet roasters will try anything to get it reversedor undermined. If they fail, it will set an example for the world.
Deluge of fake news websites threatens todrownout truth during US election.Most people in petrostateswant quick switch to clean energy, UN poll finds.
In the US, 54% want a quick switch. Alas, democracy in the US is not running very smoothly.
Fossil fuel use reachesglobalrecord despite clean energy growth.
No amount of renewable generation will save us unless we use it to contrive a drastic reductionin greenhouse emissions.
Vanuatu has cleaned up its lagoons by prohibiting several common kinds ofdisposable plastic items — includingartificialflowers.
An account of how Ethiopia and the west fell forAbiyAhmed as a messiah and how his government collapsed into war and chaos.
The article is too long for me to read it all carefully. I would like to have done so.
A psychotherapist writes about the error of trying to help someone byrushing or pressuring per to "cheer up"aftera real loss.
Years ago, I had no "feelings police". If something made me despair, I cried.
Five years of cancellation have helped me develop a "feelings police" of a sort. It does notblank out feelings of danger, loss and suffering, but enables me to set them aside in order todeal with the situation in a calm and steady way.
McDonald's tried to replace human workers withabullshit generator, but even in the narrow domain of ordering food from a menu it workedbadly.
Democrats moveto repeal anti-obscenity and anti-abortion act from 1873.
I expect Republicans will fight to keep the Comstock Act, hoping to use it for repression. Butmaybe that will convince some people not to vote for them.
TheSupremeCourt approved a tax that the corrupter put on moving money to the US, and thus left thelegal door open to wealth taxes on big business.
Netanyahu complained that Biden is carrying out his announced intention todelaydelivery of heavy bombs to Israel.
AIPAC, the Israeli Hawks' (and extremists') lobby, has been putting lots ofeffort intodefeating Rep. Jamaal Bowmanin a primary this Tuesday.
Nuclear engineerdismisses [Australian right wing's] claimthat smallmodular reactors could be commercially viable soon.
Thisconfirmswhat I said recently.
I am not an expert like him, but I know what experts have concluded for years about nuclearpower's lack of practical use for electric power on Earth. For the public it is a waste ofmoney; for business it is an opportunity to get paid lots of money and achieve no good.
Policehave used the "very legitimate grievance" the public has with large tech companies like Metaabout data collection and surveillance as a pretext to undermine user privacy.
The first step in protecting our privacy from snooping dis-services is to reject nonfree(non-libre) clients and apps. Nearly all apps are nonfree, and most organizations' web sitesrun nonfree software in the users' browser. Once they send private data to the server, there ishardly any limit in practice to where it will go. (There are some dis-services that explicitdemand users enter sensitive private data — those pose various more complex problems.)
I've considered using Signal, since the client program (what I would need to run) is freesoftware. However, it requires having a portable phone, and thatrequirement conclusively excludes me.
U.S. Intelligence Helped Israel [plan the operation to]Rescue Four Hostages in Gaza.
Since the plans were designed to minimize civilian casualties, I don't see anything wrong inthat part of the operation. Manycivilians were killed and wounded after something went wrong during the getaway phase. Atthat point they started to improvise as the plan was no longer usable.
The obligation to safeguard civilians does not end when a plan goes awry.
The US insists that Israel did not use the US aid pier for the deadlyhostage rescue operation. What Israel did use wasthearea of land near the pier.
This makes sense to me. I don't think that area of land is or was under US control. But I haveseen it described as a "safe area", which I think implies some sort of agreement to do nofighting there.
If that agreement included Israel and HAMAS, then using it for a combat operation (such as thehostage rescue operation) was a violation of that agreement by Israel;
I've read that the World Food Program stopped transporting aid from the pier because of this.This makes sense. No humanitarian organization will be allowed to continue operations in Gazaunless it satisfies all parties that it is militarily neutral.
Ukrainian data-journalists studied published statements and made alist of prominentpeoplein the US who were publicly opposing support for Ukraine's defense.
Thesummaryof their conclusions.
Super-rich major league sports team owners continue tosqueeze money out of the publicby makingone city or state bid against another to subsidize the team.
Many years agoIcondemned this and proposed a federal lawto regulate such backwards competition. The ideawas that if a company makes location A compete against location B, any subsidy from A must getB's approval and vice versa.
For the specific case of sports teams, a law outright prohibiting all governmental subsidy tothem might do the job well, but the proposal above would help also in situations which are notcartels and which do work that is more important than artificial contests.
Study finds same-sex sexual behaviour in primates and other mammalswidelyobserved but seldom published.
Israel gave fanatical "settlers" control over expansion of its colonies in the West Bank. Theycanauthorizetheir own construction of new colonies.
Activists tell UK arms makers they may face criminalliabilityover sales to Israel.
They include companies building parts of the American F-35 fighter.
Peruvian soldiers found guilty of rapes committed during civil war inhistoricverdict.
Most or all armies have a tendency to overlook crimes against committed against enemy soldiers,and even against civilians. Progress in establishing a tradition of prosecuting soldiers forthese crimes makes the statement, "We are not like Putin."
Comparing the insurrectionist's attack on US democracy withthreeprevious attacks, by Presidents John Adams, President Andrew Jackson and President RichardNixon.
The challenge for Americans today is to recognize the threat of the insurrectionist, and bepermitted to vote against him.
TenUS states have state holidays that celebrate the Confederacy. They include nearly all thestates that formed the Confederacy in 1861 and fought to perpetuate slavery, plus one (Kentucky)in which the unionists triumphed then and prevented secession.
It is a mistake to take one negative moral judgment of a person as erasing all good that persedid. We should judge a person by the magnitudes of the good and the bad.
Any individual who owned slaves or supported the Confederacy did wrong that way, but each suchindividual did other things too. In most cases those other things were of no specialimportance, so they don't change our conclusions. But there are exceptions. In rare cases, aperson's other activities have been such great contributions to humanity as to justify ouradmiring that person despite per involvement with slavery (though we should criticizethat anyway).
A holiday that explicitly celebrates the Confederacy or its leaders is a much simpler moralsubject than a real human being's life. Such a holiday stands only for the Confederacy and whatthat stood for: slavery and bigotry, with disloyalty as sauce. Those holidays deserve pure andsimple condemnation.
A few states celebrate a conjoined holiday, "Martin Luther King / Robert E Lee Day". Theyjuxtapose commemoration of racism with commemoration of the movement against racism. I am notsure what to think of them, but I think they are too soft on slavery.
It is ironic that the article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black"but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neitherone.) I denounce bigotry, and usually I will not link to articlesthat practice it, but I make some exceptions. I think the article linked to above isinteresting enough to justify an exception. But when I make a such exception, I rebuke thesymbolic bigotry also.
The head of NATO argued formaking more nuclear weapons.
More nuclear weapons than the US has cannot improve deterrence. With a sane enemy, the use of100 nuclear weapons, producing a nuclear winter that would cause starvation around the world, isenough deterrent. With an insane enemy, 10,000 nuclear weapons would not be enough.
This provoked a lot of opposition, but I am sure that the businesses that would profit frommaking and deploying them will come up with lots of flimsy reasons in favor.
Thenormalisationof dehumanisation in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
There seems to be fartoolittle attention to coming climate disaster in the UK general election.
However, the lunatic right-wing party proposes toreplaceclimate defense with climate surrender.
Maryland governor issuespardonsfor 175,000 cannabis-related convictions.
Marijuana should be legal, and people who were punished or might be punished for having it,transporting it or selling it should be pardoned.
Measuresto limit overcrowding and avoid dangers in climbing Mount Fuji have the unjust side effectof requiring each climbers to (1) identify perself and (2) carry a snoop-phone.
If I ever go to Japan again, that is one thing I certainly won't do.
Congress is about to dilute the safety mission of theNuclearRegulatory Commission with toxic fallout — a second mission to keep nuclear industry profitable.
The Pentagon is thinking about using large numbers ofmore-or-lessautonomous drones for fighting China.
This raises concerns that the drones will chose targets autonomously,and kill lots of civilians — something I expect Ukraine's dronecontrollers avoid, although Israel's drone controllers may not care.
Putting that issue aside, it seems like a good plan, but I don't seehow the US can expect to be better at this than China.
Everyone:Call on Canada to enforce itsenvironmental laws against logging to export wood chips for burning.
‘I have seen the decline’:pesticideslinked to falling UK insect numbers.
Decreases in overall insect populations will cause repercussions through each ecosystem. Manyanimals (including humans) eat insects. Many plants depend on insects to pollinate them anddisperse their seeds.
US citizens:call on Biden to fund the transition to renewables andstop funding fossil fuels.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
LouisianaRepublicanspassed a law to require every public school classroom to display a copy of the TenCommandments.
This sectarian requirement obviously contradicts the First Amendment (combined with thesubsequent amendment which says states can't do those things either). It prohibitsestablishment of religion. But we can't count on those Republican wreckers on the Supreme Courtto honor that.
Politicians bought by fossil fuel companies areworkingon laws to make protesting near pipelines a crime.
In Japan, many restaurants have required customers to orderusing the restaurants' tablets, or even with their own snoop-phones.This makes itimpossible for blindcustomers. The restaurants have cut staff drastically, so blind customers find no one whocan help them. They are effectively excluded.
If the restaurant requires customers to bring a snoop-phone, or to pay using a digital systemthat identifies the user, that would exclude me, too. Even the task of reading the menu canexclude me — if I would need to have a snoop-phone to see it, or if it is so high up thatI can't make out the letters. (My eyes are not as good as they were a couple of years ago.)
At a signing ceremony in Australia's Parliament building, Chinese embassy personnel tried tohide views of formerly imprisonedjournalistCheng Lei from Chinese cameras. Australianpersonnel had to physically stand in their way.
The Chinese government made itself ridiculous by doing this, but think about the process thatmust have led to it. The least powerful of those given the duty of going to Australia'sParliament were surely not of the lowest rank, and some higher official must have ordered themto do this. That displays the rigidity of a self-important dictatorship, and the dangeroushostility latent in its arrogance sense of entitlement to power.
US citizens:call onDemocratic leaders to rescind their support for Netanyahu's speech to Congress, and allDemocrats to boycott the speech.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Enormous amounts of plastic debris wash ashore on Easter Island.They have tocleanthe beaches repeatedly.
Over 5 million pieces of rubbish wash ashore there each year. They have no way to dispose of it all.
A horrible idea: New York Governor Hochul isthinkingof banning masks in the New York City subways.
Everyone in the subway (or buses) should wear a mouth and nose mask! Policy should encourageeveryone to do so. To ban or discourage masks will cause real infections and real deaths— merely so people will feel less worried.
US citizens and residents: phone your state governor to say to veto any attempt to restrict orcriminalize mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs used to cause abortions and for variousother purposes.
(Can anyone tell me a convenient place to get phone numbers for governors' offices?)
The US murder rate today is less than in the 70s, 80s and 90s,butparents are more terrified than ever.
We know that the high crime rates of the60sto 90s were due to lead in the gasoline; eliminating leaded gas was followed, after under 20years, by decreases in crime.
UNRWA says that50000minors in Gaza are on the edge of starvation. UNICEF describes the constant obstructionapplied by Israel to transport of aid into and within Gaza.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
The US has greatly increased its spending on nuclear weapons,andother countries have followed suit.
US citizens and residents: call for parolefor LeonardPelletier.
This is an actionnetwork.org "send a letter" campaigns with a single,fixed destination. It normally runs nonfree JavaScript code. Here'show you can sign it while using LibreJS to block nonfree JavaScriptcode from running.
The first step, I have done for you. I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign'sURL. That parameter directs the server not to add unnecessary material that depends on JavaScript.
Following that link should show you a page that starts with the message, Letter campaigns willnot work without JavaScript!' But that message mostly refers to material that?nowrapper=true'has suppressed.
In that page, fill in the personal information in the box on the right side of the page. That'show you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. You will get a page that does not work at all, but byediting its URL in the browser's address bar, you can finish sending your letter.
First, if &redirect' appears in the address bar, delete that and everything after it, until theend of the URL you see. Then, unconditionally, add&nowrapper=true'. Then type ENTER to makethe browser access the modified URL.
This will give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. In that page you canedit the text of your letter, and send it.
That step, editing the URL and visiting it, is the only additional work needed to sign withnonfree JavaScript code blocked. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort to stop someunjust, and potentially malicious, software from running on your computer.
This method works for letter campaigns that send letters to a fixed destinee, the same destineefor all senders. I have posted this campaign, and these instructions, because it is of thatkind.
Alas, there is no workaround for the letter campaigns that send to "your electedrepresentatives." That problem is caused by something outside actionnetwork's control. Thenonfree JavaScript for those campaigns comes from the officials' own web sites in the officialweb sites of Congress, not from actionnetwork.org, and I know of no way to bypass it, and no wayto reach them digitally. All I can do is phone them.
It's sad and ironic that our elected representatives require their constituents to run nonfreesoftware to communicate digitally with them. I do not hold them personally responsible for thiswrong, because they are surely not aware of the issue. But I can't close my eyes to itspresence and let it run on my computer.
Aproposednuclear power plant for Kenya's coast is sure to be an enormous waste of money at best,contributing to global heating because renewable generation would have been cheaper and finishedmany years sooner.
At worst, a tsunami will destroy he reactor. As global heading raises sea level, the size oftsunami sufficient to cause a disaster will decrease. Meanwhile, they surely don't know whatthey will do with the nuclear waste.
Nuclear generation is so expensive that it cannot be worth that cost anywhere in the world.Simply for this reason, I have to suspect corruption is behind it somehow.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand an investigation into corruption in theSupreme Court.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Socialheath consists of having social connections to other people. Our age seems to be creatingmassive social illness. [Roughtly] 330 million adults around the globe endure weeks at a timewithout speaking to a single family member or friend […]
Microsoft Chose Profit Over Security and Left U.S.GovernmentVulnerable to Russian [crackers], Whistleblower Says.
This shows the error of assuming that a proprietary program is going to be more secure than freesoftware, and why you should not systematically expect programs under the control of a companyto maintain your security. Even if it never seeks to attack you, it can have a motive to letyou down.
Side issues about terminology: the article uses misleading propaganda terms suchas "intellectualproperty"and "cloud", andsays "hackers" when it ought to say "crackers".
US citizens:callon Justices Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves from cases about the Jan 6 insurrection.
India will prosecute Arundhati Roy for her political opinions, under a lawpassed by Modi's partyforthat purpose. Other human rightsdefendersin India have been persecuted too.
IndiapromisedKashmir a referendum on whether to be part of India, then never held te referendum. Therehas been unrest in Kashmir ever since. A few years ago, Modi imposed martial law and aninternetshutdown on the whole state (whichIndiaasserts is no longer a state).
Labourand Tories would both leave NHS worse off than under [previous] austerity, says thinktank.
Tories and Labour on course for lowest [combined]share of the vote since 1945.
It looks like a lot of people don't want to vote for plutocratists.
Sweden ransomed Johan Floderus, who had been imprisoned in Iran based on political accusations,by releasing Iranian convict Hamid Noury, who was convicted of participating in the killing ofovera hundred political prisoners of Iran.
One must suspect that the accusations against Floderus were fabricated specifically to use himfor this trade. Governments should tell their officials to refuse to visit countries that mightbe seeking pawns to capture and trade.
Republicans wanttomake it harder to get a divorce in the US.
That fits into the general plan to impose their religion, and its sexual prudery, on everyone.We must defeat them.
Amy Pritchard is the first person to be jailed for a campaign in which climate protesterstargetedbanks across London. She explains her decision to break windows at the office of JP Morgan.
Adobe corrected some misconceptions that were suggested by loose wording in its newlyimposedrequirement that users give Adobe permission to snoop on their work. Adobe agreed notto publish their work (Please don't call anyone's artwork"content"!), and won'ttrain machine learning models with it. (Please don't call them"artificialintelligence"!)
But it does indeed intend to snoop, having effectively forced usersto give permission for that.
This is a big step towards a society of total surveillance, in whichprivacy and the US fourth amendment are reduced to fragmentary relics.
Cheng Lei, formerly a political prisoner in China, has used her prisonexperience as the basis forstand-up comedy in Australia.
Cheng Lei is an Australian citizen who was working in China as a journalist for an Australianorganization. China allowed her to return to Australia. Chinese who have been politicalprisoners in China are often not allowed to leave China.
Using Eventbrite for access to an event is always bad because signing up using Eventbriterequires running nonfree software. Also, it requires identifying yourself. Those are twoinjustices to the attendee; I would not attend a performance if it required me to give my nameto get a ticket.
In this specific situation, the injustices put some attendees in danger, too. It would notsurprise me if Chinese crackers broke into the Eventbrite database to find out who attended this performance. The performers were aware that Chine would tryto identify the attendees; they should have protected their audience from digital identificationas well as from cameras.
And did they insist on making it possible to pay cash? As China demonstrates every day, makingpeople identify themselves to buy things is the foundation of repression.
[The wrecker]'s [planned]masspurge of state department likely to sow chaos, US diplomats say.
[UNRWA] says [Israeli] authorities are hampering [aid delivery] operations by failingto grant requests foraccesspermits.
New York State is about to prohibit communication platforms fromoffering user's-history-dependent feeds tousersunder age 18.
I think this policy is very wise, but limiting it to only some users, based on their age, ismisguided. Millions of adults have been sucked into conspiracy theories and even plots forinsurrections by such systems. This policy also threatens to lead to requiring a user to showID so as to prove per age.
So the policy should apply to all users regardless of age.
Instead of basing suggestions on what you have previously looked at, aplatform shouldmake available for download that list , as URLs one per line. Given that list, you couldprocess it any way you like to get suggestions, then ask to look at those.
Please do not use the word "children" or "child" to refer to anyone under age 18. A 17-year-oldis not a child. A 13-year-old is a teenager.
Cocaine traffickers have put two-thirds of Central America's keyhabitats for threatened birds under threat,studyfinds.
Singer who joined the Four Tops in 2019 wasinvoluntarilyhospitalized for claiming to be a member of the Four Tops.
A US court convicted Chiquita (the banana company) of paying aterrorist group (paramilitaries)to kill some of itsworkers.
Robert Reich: formost US voters, themost important issue is the high prices that are caused by greedy corporations without muchcompetition to restrain them, and most voters think that the wrecker will push prices down.I don't think the wrecker will even try to reduce prices. He seeks to bamboozle thepublic, not to serve it. Promises from a bullshitter are meaningless. Lately more billionaireshave been giving their support to the wrecker, so they must not think he will reduce their unparalleled profits.
So why does anyone believe that the wrecker will drive prices down?
Some plutocratist Democrats in Congress are pushing to fund new export terminals for fossil gas,provided it is "certified" as emittingsomewhat less greenhouse gas than other fossil gas.
This is a swindle — replacing a small but real contribution to climate defensewith mere lip service.
Someteenagerscan recover from antisocial media addiction if they simply don't have a user-manipulatingdevice to be used by.
Remember that part of what enables them to manipulate the users so much is that the clientprograms of the antisocial media platforms are nonfree software. Companies design them to beaddictive, and users cannot modify them to be less so.
US imposes sanctions on "extremist Israeli group" forblocking Gaza aid.
So far, so good, but what about when the Israeli government blocks aid by not permitting it tobe brought to Gaza.
Republican state attorneys general are working with Big Oil to blocklawsuits over harm to peoplecaused by oil combustion.
US citizens:call on theSenate to oppose fake abortion clinics.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call on Schumerand Jeffries to withdraw their invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress.
Tory party CEO is director at cancer care firm benefiting fromNHS waiting lists.
TheLabour candidate running against Jeremy Corbyn is an owner of a company that profits fromthe NHS's failings.
I'd want to support a party in which such people would feel out of step with the party's goals.
US citizens:callon Congress to support legislation banning political contributions from utilities, monopolycorporations, and corporations seeking government contracts.
US citizens:call on Congressto overturn the "Citizens" United decision.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Stanford University is shutting down the elections research of theStanfordInternet Observatory because defending against Republican lawfare was too expensive.
IsraelSecretlyTargets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War. It was paid for by Israel’sMinistry of Diaspora Affairs and used fake social media accounts urging U.S. lawmakers to fundIsrael’s military.
The [US Supreme Court] unanimously rejected the mifepristone case on technical grounds. Theirruling isnotthe victory it may seem.
The Libertarian [sic] Party's controversialplan is to "stop Biden"and extract promises from [the insurrectionist] along the way.
This plan demonstrates a total lack of value for civil liberties, whichthe insurrectionisthas announced his intention to crush. But this plan makes the party cynical as well, whichpreviously it was not.
It is also utterly foolish to think that a promise from the insurrectionist(who is also the bullshitter)will be kept. Once democracy is crushed, if you're not a billionaire he won'thesitate to break his promise to you.
I have contended for years that that party, and its political stance, did not merit the name"libertarian", because its supporters valued reduction of their taxes, and termination ofprograms to help the poor and disadvantaged, more highly than they valued liberty. So I calledthem "antisocialist".
Some of the party's supporters may still be antisocialists, but the party itself deservesfor a harsher name than that.
Alito's wife vowed revengeon the people who criticized Alito fordisplaying an upside-down flag, after Jan 6 when that was a symbol ofclaiming falsely that the corrupter had won the election.
Note the typical right-wing thinking, which regards a truthful criticism of a false claim as avicious attack that deserves revenge. If those critics made false claims of their own, revengein kind (refuting the false claims) would be possible and legitimate. But Ms Alito does notclaim that they did so.
Perhaps, for her, opposing militant Christianitism, and defending the separation of church andstate, is enough grounds to label someone as evil.
Putin announced that hewon'tmake peace with Ukraine unless it gives him more territory along with what he has captured.
This indicates a combination of thinking he can win the war, and some amount of bluster (presentin everything he says).
The only sensible response is to teach him he must expect to lose.
Robert Reich: Don't be fooled by the myth that people are paid what they're "worth" —that the rich deserve their ever-increasing incomes and wealth because they're worthfar more to the economy now than years ago […]
The distribution of income and wealth increasingly depends on who hasthepower to set therules of the game.
It is a context of clout, not a contest of productivity.
AbraverLabour would call an end to the focus on growth.
Starmer has made up his mind to seek the votes of former Tories. The only way to make Labourpay attention to this issue is to elect Greens or Lib Dems, or the independents such as Corbynwho agree with this.
Phoenix [thugs] have pattern of violating civilrightsand using excessive force, Justice Department says.
Ex-prosecutorsand historians warn that Republicans' parroting of ex-president's wild allegations ofpolitical bias could erode trust and lead to violence.
Eroding trust in anything that he considers a rival is his purpose. And while the claim is nottrue now, he intends, if he wins or steals the election, to make it so. Heplans to pervert the US justice system to imprison his political enemies, as part of Project2025.
The US justice system is in fact untrustworthy fordefendants who belong to disprivilegedgroups, andfor poor people since they can't afford good lawyers. But the corrupter is not at risk forthis: he is a white male, and even if he may theoretically be bankrupt due to court judgments,still has good lawyers.
Some varieties of bamboo spread almost irresistibly and candestroy houses from underground.
Could we wipe them out, in the countries they don't belong in, byreleasing a sufficient number of pandas? Chinaonly leases them, but it might be possible to buy unrestrictedpandas from Taiwan.
In Mexico, growing avocados is so lucrative that cartels fight overland to grow them, astheycut down forests.
It amazes me that this happens for a product that is not illegal.
I don't think this would happen for any of the widely used illegaldrugs, though. The sheer volume consumed would not be enough.
Alito admitted at an organization dinner thathis vote to overturn Roe vWade was part of an overall campaign to impose his religion on the US.
The rescue of hostages from Gazastarted out clean, but developed into astreet battle. That is when the civilians were killed.
This suggests that most of those killed were civilians.
Testimony of witnesses to the attack on Nuseirat refugee camp, in whichthe Israeliarmykilled at least 274 Palestinians to rescue four hostages.
The number of killed that were civilians was almost certainly over 100, and likely considerablymore. But I think I can make a better estimate.
I think that "children" means minors. Most minors there were probably civilians, thought someof the older ones may have been HAMAS fighters. I would expect that HAMAS, being Islamist,would not recruit women as fighters (can anyone tell me whether that is true?), so it wouldfollow that the 57 women killed were all civilians.
I expect roughly equal numbers of men and women among the civilians, since they were in andaround their homes. That would suggest there were around 160-170 civilians killed, and maybe100 HAMAS fighters.
It is therefore likely that most of the Palestinians in the area were civilians.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Fanaticalsupporters of the corrupter regularly get heat stroke at his rallies, because of increasingglobal heating, but it doesn't occur to them that we should stop drilling for all and making ithotter.
Investment in clean energy likely to be double figure for fossil fuels in 2024, IEA says[; however,]oil and gas spending still too high to meet climate goals.
Biden shouldput up a fight as John Deere Inc. moves US factory jobs to Mexico.
John Deere alsomistreatsthe purchasers of its tractors: it designs them with nonfree software that the farmerscannot change or replace, and which snoops on them.
George Monbiot: Britons should respond to Labour's "anticipatory betrayal"by turning totheGreen Party.
Biden'sdignified acceptance of the jury's conviction of his son may help show the corrupter for whathe is.
US citizens: call on Biden tocut off armsdeliveries to Israel unless it accepts a permanent cease fire in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:callon Congress to end the "Citizens" United era by passing the Freedom to Vote Act and theDISCLOSE Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to sign the discharge petition for the Right toContraception Act.
US citizens:call on state legislaturesnot to allow teachers to carry guns in school.
The myth that a "good guy with a gun" will protect people from a murderer with a gun is trueoften on Have Gun Will Travel, but that is fiction. In real lifeitis rarely effective.
South Australia will ban donations to political campaigns and parties.It will provide campaign funds to all the candidates and parties.
UK Green Party calls for wealth levy, rent controls, house-building,and water and energy firm nationalisation.
Their plans for increasing taxes will fall mainly on wealthy people.
Israel and Hamas have both committed war crimes since 7 October, says [the UN Human Rights Council].
Mozilla has blocked users in Russia from loading severalcensorship-bypassing add-ons into Firefox.
I am somewhat puzzled by this. Why would Mozilla want to do this?
Also, why would it be effective? I understand it, you can load anadd-on into Firefox if you can access a page where it is distributed.I also don't see what threat Russia could make against Firefox thatcould make Mozilla comply with this demand.
An Israeli shepherd was killed in the West Bank.In revenge, Israeli"settlers" set cars and houses on fire as well as shooting many Palestinians one by one.
Both attacks were acts of terrorism, but the "settlers" cannot justify their terrorism bypointing to the Palestinians' terrorism.
Violent crime in the USdroppedby 15% in the first three months of the year, new figures have shown, the latest evidence ina broader decline of crime across the country that has occurred over the past year.
Murders, and reported rapes, decreased by 25%. Robberies decreased by 17%.
I expect this is due to improvement in the economy for most Americans.
Why young American adults see America'ssocial and economicsystems as carrying them into disaster, despite favorable short-term economic trends.
If your Facebook account gets suspended for bogus reasons, Facebookwill delete it after 30 days, and gives younoway to ask the company for help with the problem in the mean time.
If you decide to be used by Facebook, at the very least assume thateverything in that account could disappear any day. To be safe, youshould back up everything important from the account on your owncomputer. (Does Facebook make that possible? I am happy to sayI have never been a used of Facebook.)
Bullshit generators have been hooked up to Facebook and Instagram. Insomecases they post bullshit in discussion groups, pretending to be humans.
The Columbia Law Review editors (students) prevailed in theirconfrontation with the board of directors (not students) who shut downthe magazine's web site in order to censor Rabea Eghbariah's article.The site is back up and the article remains on it.
I salute this victory for academic freedom.
Microsoft bowed to public criticism and said that the new "take ascreenshot of all output" feature would be disabled by default.
That's nice, but since Windows is proprietary software, Microsoftcould secretly insert any sort of snooping feature at any time withoutinforming users. Basically, a nonfree program cannot be trusted.
Vice President Harris told the public how bad the corrupter really is:"Cheaters don’t like getting caught."
(satire) … wealthy patient Duncan Barrow reportedly orderedthree of each procedure upon his admittance to the facility Friday.
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely ortelling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-clickand select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynxthat doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
As climate change increases the likelihood of deadly landslides,cities like Juneau are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Or, rather, between a rock and a muddy place.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Election Worker and PollingPlace Protection Act.
An Israeli military operation rescued four hostages at the cost ofkilling 109 Palestinians.
It is not easy to tell how many of the 109 Palestinians killed wereHAMAS fighters and how many were civilians, but at least dozens werecivilians.
If HAMAS set up a military base in the middle of civilians, thatviolated the rules of war -- in effect, using those civilians as humanshields.
Or it could be that the place was not full of civilians until theymoved there fleeing Israel's bombing elsewhere in Gaza. In that case,Israel would be responsible for driving them into harm's way.
In either case, their lives do not become worthless because of theirsituation.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to RequireModern Energy Efficiency Standards for All New Homes with FHFA-backedMortgages.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education E and local schoolboards to reject face recognition in schools.
US citizens: call on Judge Aileen Cannon to recuse herself from thecorrupter's secret documents case.
Arguing that Putin won't stop with Ukraine; his ambitions will leadtowards bigger conflict. The article compares Russia and China todaywith the Germany and Japan of 1938 -- and Ukraine today withthe Czechoslovakia of 1938.
Romania asks Louis Vuitton togivecredit to the Romanian design that inspired one of his latest fashion products.
The campaign to condemn andeliminate "cultural appropriation" is unjust and wrong, because learning from other peopleand imitating them is what culture is all about, and this is how culture develops.
However, asking the imitator to give credit is no obstacle to culturaldevelopment, and I think it is a reasonable request.
A Federal Judge Visited Israel on a Junket Designed to Sway Public Opinion. Now He's HearingaGaza Case.
US citizens:call onAttorney General Merrick Garland to require Justices Thomas and Alito to recuse themselvesfrom cases about the insurrectionist.
US citizens: call on theEdisonElectric Institute to stop suing the EPA to keep coal polluting.
Putin, a repeated supporter of the corrupter, claims that the felony conviction of thecorrupter proves that the US is failingasa democracy.
That is backwards, of course. The corrupter's conviction shows that the US is trying to defendits democracy from a campaign to corrupt it. Putin supports that campaign and lies much as itsmembers do.
Jeremy Corbyn argues foraimingfor nuclear disarmament rather than nuclear weapon buildup.
US citizens:callon Congress and the Biden administration to stop shielding Israel from accountability forwar crimes.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Minneapolis made Uber and Lyft agree to pay workers more and improve some otherworkingconditions.
However, this does nothing to reduce those companies power over drivers, nor to reduce theirunjust treatment of passengers (identifying them and requiring them to run nonfree software).
If I am me, I will continue to refuse to do business with Uberand Lyft.
Deepfakes displaying politicians and other public figures, clothednormally, have beenusedon Facebook to promote scams.
I think the crucial issue raised by deepfakes is not nudity. It is fraud. False nudity in thedeepfake is one kind of fraud, but the other kinds of fraud are just as bad. I've calledunauthorized deepfakes the moral equivalent of perjury.
Thus, rather than criminalizing making nude deepfakes only, I suggest we criminalize making andshowing any sort of deepfake without the subject's permission.
If you want to show a fictional or satirical picture of a hypothetical action, you can expressthe idea just as well with an evidently non-evidential cartoon.
[Corrupter's] ally Kari Lake gavespeech in front of Confederate flag.
Fascists, Nazis, Confederates — it seems that the corrupter and his followers endorse allof them almost indiscriminately. Why so nonselective about it? All they have in common istheir rejection of the ideals of the United States.
I think that's exactly the point: that the corrupter seeks to ridicule those ideals byencouraging any and all sorts of disloyalty to them.
Loyal Americans should warn Kari Lake that they will drive her out to Texas, as theirpredecessors did to the last band of Confederate supporters to invade Arizona.
[Boeingemployee] Roy Irvin alleges he was reprimanded as "insubordinate" for flagging issues on 787Dreamliner planes.
A Briton has been charged with"criminaldamage" for throwing a milkshake at right-wing extremist politician Nigel Farage.
I am surprised that superficial contact with a milkshake is considered to cause damage. {-;Perhaps McDonald's milkshakes contain toxic substances that are absorbed through the skin. Goodfor him that he did not consume it! ;-}
Everyone:call on Amazon to implementzero-waste delivery.
Of course, we shouldn't buy from Amazon either way, and I don't; butthat is no reason not to sign.
Various drugs, some legal and some illegal, used in large quantitiesby humans get into waterways and alter wildlife.
More intense, frequent tropical cyclones may devastate seabird colonies.
Tornadoes in Maryland??? That has not been normal, but the pattern isshifting.
Reading Netanyahu, a former Israeli official says that he killed apeace plan that Israel had privately agreed to, because he isdetermined not to have peace in Gaza.
I think the only way Biden can make progress from here is withpressure that Netanyuahu cannot defy -- such as, to cut off armssupplies to Israel. As people in Gaza are suffering death andpermanent damage from the lack of food, Biden must not dither.
Incoming ministers "will face UK public services on brink of collapse."
It may be necessary to raise taxes to prevent the collapse.
Musk increasingly imitates the bully/corrupter's behavior as wellas supporting his politics.
US citizens: call on Congress to get rid of the wrecker's tax cuts andend tax loopholes for big corporations.
One young childin[every four in the world] at risk of ‘irreversible’ harm due to restricted diet, UN reportsays. These children rarely get vegetables, let alone meat.
Local shortages of food are one of the main causes, but heavy marketing of non-nutritious foodsto parents who don't know what is bad about them is also a cause. In Gaza, the Israeli siege isthe main cause.
SecretaryGeneral Guterres calls for a global ban on fossil-fuel advertising.
I support the idea. The challenge is to overcome the domination of theplanet roasters and their PR funds.
Perhaps this suggests a new idea for climate defense protests:covering or tearing off the advertisements for fossil fuels and theproducts that use them, and the companies involved with those.
Thatshouldinclude greenwashing, whose message is, "Forget about our enormous fossil fuel business,please associate us with our comparatively small renewable electricity business."
Starvation already causing mass death andlastingharm in Gaza, agencies say.
Children that live through this may suffer lifelong damage from their current malnutrition.
Frenchmilitary instructors in Ukraine would be "legitimate target", according to the Putin forces.
They should bring anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses with them so they can protectthemselves if attacked. These defenses will not escalate the war, since they could not engageany of the Putin forces except when said Putin forces are attacking them.
Fast food chains are successfully influencing news outlets [in Australia] to produce "covertmarketing" for their brands,anew study has found.
US citizens:call on Congressto tax the rich.
Many of America's problems can be corrected by this, both those thatcall for spending money and those that involve weakness of democracy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call on COP29 to remove the head ofAzerbaijan's state oil company from the position of its organizer.
US citizens:call on The Department of Justiceto sue big fossil fuel for denying global heating.
Georgia Republicans arearrangingsystematically to challenge the voting credentials of large numbers of black voters, just asthe KKK did in 1946.
Robert Reich: Billionaires including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Michael Milken and Steven Mnuchinare working together to make the corrupter president again. Reich contends that their aim istoroll back democracy itself.
Musk has x-terminated the truth on Ex-Twitter by repeatedly endorsing the corrupter's lies aboutthe 2020 election. That makes him systematically and fundamentally dishonest, like thecorrupter himself.
US citizens:call on Congressto side with working people, not billionaires and Big Business.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon your senators to support the FOREST Act, which would ban imports made with products ofillegally deforested land.
Seethedetailed, general issue.
To sign without running nonfreeJavaScript code from the web site,use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Congress to protect abortion and birth control by repealing the Comstock Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Modi's domination of India hassuffereda setback: the Hinduismist party did not win a majority of the legislature itself. However,it can still form a government with thesupportof other parties.
Can the opposition coalition, not in government, alter Modi's repression? If it lacks thestrength to do that now, will its supporters be patient until the next election and not give up?
Faiza Shaheen, a previous Labour candidate for Parliamentwho was justcanceled,is running as an independent.
The issues over which she was canceled seem like quibbles to me, and some were statements shemade ten years ago. I probably don't agree with her 100% regarding Israel and Palestine, but Ithink I could vote for her.
New York-Mayor Adams wants to cut the city's budget for usefulservices such as public libraries, and put the money intoa sort ofCop City training center for uniformed thugs.
(satire) Study FindsOnly1 In 3 Americans Can Name Their Representatives' Corporate Donors.
Columbia Law Review Refused to Take Down Article on [how Israeli law is applied to] Palestine,So Its Board of DirectorsNukedthe Whole Website.
The European CO2 emissions trading system proved to be an excellentvehicle for VAT fraud.
I did not know about this wrinkle until today, but I realized when I read about emissionstrading that it would provideopportunitiesfor fraud at the expense of Earth's climate.
The proponents of a "carbon market" tend to assume that such a market would effectively give thesame results as a carbon tax. They disregard that every trade of emissions quota from A to B isan opportunity for sleight of hand to hide some emissions somewhere between A and B.
BernieSanders explains why he will not attend Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress.
He describes the enormous atrocities of Israel's bombardment and siegeof Gaza, which have killed or wounded 5% of the whole population.
Biden plansto "close" the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers entirely,imitating what the wrecker tried to do as president.
Meanwhile, the Democratic leaders of the Senate negotiated a deal for restricting immigrationbased on right-wing Republican policies, whereupon the Republicans rejected the deal, calling itinsufficiently harsh. Trying to make a compromise with Republicans who are obeying the wrecker is a fool's errand.
The right to request asylum, and be considered for it according to the facts of your case, isone of the triumphs of the movement for international human rights law that followed World WarII. I fear that we are witnessing the effective abolition of that right.
Republicans are creating irrational outrage over Washington DC's policy of allowingnon-citizenresidents to vote in local elections.
The outrage is irrational because those targeted for outrage mostlydon't live there and therefore are not affected by the practice.
Many places in Europe allow non-citizen residents of a city to vote in local elections. Theidea shocked me at first, but on further thought I concluded it made sense. Non-citizenresidents have the same relationship to the city that citizen residents have: they benefit fromlocal services and support them with taxes.
Republicans would have us conflate the act of lawfully voting as a non-citizen, when and wherethat is authorized, with the act of voting fraudulently. But the two are completely different.The latter is extremely unlikely, because what one can personally gain by voting is not enoughto motivate people to break a law. In fact, individualvoter fraud is veryrare.
Wisconsin attorney general charges three former[insurrectionist's] associates inplotto overturn 2020 election.
Mexico's new president isa climate scientist.
That ought to be a hopeful sign. But I am worried about the plan to increase fossil fuelextraction as an "investment" and use the profits to switch to renewable energy later. Fossilfuel "investment" has a tendency to carry society along into more and more of the same —then, before you expected it, you're out of time and it's too late for civilization to survive.
In the UK, systematic shoplifting has become the supplier for fences who act as adiscountstore chain for the many whose income is too low to get by.
This is not a good solution for the problem. I suspect that somecriminals are enriching themselves from it. It may also lead somestores to close. But it is better than no solution at all.
Biden: "every reason" to believeNetanyahuis prolonging Gaza war for political gain.
I agree — so Biden, when will you put your foot down and stop this?
The use by parents ofmusic-streamingdis-services is cutting children off from playing music on their own.
This is an example of the injustice that results inevitably from locking up music (or any kindof recording) behind a web site or app that works only for someone who has an account, and whichblocks and forbids distributing copies.
As tends to happen, the author does not carry the criticism down to the root of the problem.Perse suggests superficial workarounds that leave the system's injustice uncriticized.
The solution is to get DRM-free copies of music, and copy them into a player made with freesoftware that a child can use.
(satire)BidenSigns Executive Order To Deport All 340 Million Americans And Start From Scratch.
US citizens:call on Congress tostop insurance companies from vetoing treatments ordered by doctors.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Biden to close the gun-show loophole and ban sale of assault-like rifles.
US food companies have raised prices by 25% since 2020. Much of this wasto increase profits orincrease stock prices, rather than because of increased costs.
Hamas still strong in areas "cleared" by Israel in northern Gaza,sayexperts.
I forecastin Octoberthat Israel wouldnotbe able to wipe out HAMAS. In general, an underground guerrilla uprising cannot be wipedout as long as it can recruit new supporters. It follows that when Netanyahu says he willcontinue the war in Gaza until HAMAS is wiped out, this means in practice that he intends tocontinue it as long as there are Palestinian in Gaza.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
US citizens: call on Biden to send no more weapons to Israeluntil it ceases atrocitiesin Gaza.
"Solidarity over hatred": the small band of Israelisstoppingsettlers obstructing aid trucks.
US citizens:callon Biden to end the broad sanctions against Venezuela.
Maduro has no respect for democracy, but the sanctions against Venezuela harm the people ratherthan the rulers.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Ocasio-Cortez Says Biden Must Suspend Israeli Aid After"IndefensibleAtrocity" in Rafah.
I deplore the article's use of the name "X" to refer to Ex-Twitter.
US citizens:call on Biden to extend the "pause" on newfossil gas export facilities into a permanent ban.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Another nasty thing men do to dumpwomenwho have immigrated so as to be with them: "exit trafficking".
Another instance of hairtrigger violence by a uniformed thug against ablack man has led to theresignationof the thug.
Is this enough to teach other thugs not to do this in the future?
[The insurrectionist] has spent years complaining that American police and the criminal legalsystem should be "very much tougher," arguing that some criminals should not be protected bycivil liberties, police should rough up suspects, and that a much wider range of people shouldfacethe death penalty for breaking the law.
How about you, Mr Felon?
He should not be executed, though, becausethedeath penalty is inherently unjust regardless of what the crime.
The University of Chicago, like several other US universities,withheldthe degrees of some student protesters pending possible worse punishment.
"We must shut down your protest For the sake of safety" is a veiled way of saying, "If you keepup this protest, right-wing provocateurs or our security forces may do you violence, so we mustdo you violence now to protect you."
Biden's cease-fire deal failed because he thought to gain Netanyahu's agreementusinginfluence alone. Netanyahu told him, contemptuously, to buzz off.
Biden could succeed if he dares to use real pressure, not merely influence.
Starmer tried to purge Diane Abbott MP along with the rest of the Labour left,but hehadto retract this after it blew up in his face.
This purge accompanies many plutocratist policy commitments, such as not to raise taxes on therich. But the purge is worse, because it threatens to convert Labour forever into a lessradical version of the Tory Party.
Resisting purges is the only way I can envision to enable Labour to be once again the "moralcrusade" it was meant to be. Corbyn is resisting his purge by running as an independent,against a Labour candidate who is so right-wing that he epitomizes what's wrong with StarmerLabour. (He has a business which competes against the NHS — just the sort of person youdo not want in Parliament.) Abbott convinced the party to un-purge her. Both count as successes.
But there have been several other purges that have not been resisted yet, includingFaizaShaheen.
Britain's post office, privatized by Tories a decade ago, is nowthreatenedwith a leveraged buyout by a foreign billionaire.
Samsung Requires Independent Repair Shops to [report] Customer Data,and Snitch on People Who Use Aftermarket Parts —LeakedContract Shows. Furthermore, the nominally independent repair shop is then required to"disassemble" the phone which was repaired with truly independent parts.
All of those practices ought to be forbidden by law.
It is perverse to refer to systematic surveillance as "sharing" of the data that is collected.Please join me in reserving the word "sharing" to refer to voluntary cooperation.
US citizens:call on Congressto pass Biden's budget for the IRS.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Cory Doctorow conjectures why Biden doesn't talk much aboutthe good things he hasdone — it is to avoid alienating his plutocratist supporters.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax to limit the political power ofAmerica's richest families.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Coca Cola publicity usually shows the old-stylereusable glassbottles that in reality it uses for only 10% of sales.
Israeli journalist describes threats [by Israeli officials] over reportingonspy chief and ICC.
Military censorship of news reporting is standard practice in Israel. In Israel's first threedecades, it feared invasion at any time by Arab armies, and was always partly on a war footing.But that has changed. In the 21st century, the threat of political embarrassment became thefocus of press censorship.
In 2011, Israel'sleadinginvestigative journalist was prosecuted and silenced.
Guantanamo prosecutors are trying to use one prisoner's confession under torture as evidenceagainst another prisoner. Theyfailedto inform the defendant's lawyers about the torture, in effect passing it off as a sincereconfession.
Netanyahu obdurately rejectsBiden's cease-fire plan and insists onfighting HAMAS until it is totally destroyed.
Destroying an underground resistance movement, even one without tunnels, is generally nearlyimpossible as long as it can recruit from the population. So this decision implies an intentionto keep killing Palestinians until there is hardly anyone left in Gaza to recruit.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
The UK LiberalDemocrats call for abolishing the right-wing voter-ID law. I wonder whether Starmer willsupport this.
US citizens:call on Discussion and commentplatforms to protect election integrity.
The petition misuses the term"AI".
US citizens:call on theDOJ to investigate Ted Cruz for apparent campaign finance violations
The corrupter has been found guilty of all 34 counts offalsifying business recordsin a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
This meanshisefforts to bully and intimidate the court did not succeed.
US citizens: call on Congress to rename the closest federal prison to Mar-a-Lago as the"Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution."
Let's look forward to seeing him as an inmate there.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call on Maj Leader Schumernot to give Netanyahu a platform in front of Congress.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The world has enough fossil fuel resources in existence andindevelopmentto last until 2050, without licensing any more.
After 2050, if civilization is to survive, it will have reduced consumption to the point whereno more will be needed.
The report provides “a rigorous scientific basis” for global governments to ban new fossilfuel projects and begin a managed decline of the fossil fuel industry, while encouraginginvestment in clean energy alternatives.
Spotify sold a product to make cars listen to Spotify's dis-service. Now Spotify plans tomake them all stop working.
The customers who ask Spotify to release free software to power those devices are on the righttrack, but as long as they call it "open source" instead of "free software", they willundermine their own efforts.
US citizens:callon the major media to make sure voters know the stakes for Social Security in this year's election.
Columbia University has abruptly changed its hearing rules to make it harder for studentsaccused of protesting todefendthemselves.
US citizens:callon Congress to ban members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the State-Based Universal Health Care Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:support Biden's latest effortfor student debt relief.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch: The ICC spyingrevelations show theIsraeligovernment to be a lawless regime.
Israel'sarmy now controls the whole border of Gaza, including the whole border with Egypt.
If the flow of humanitarian aid is insufficient for the people of Gaza, Israel will becompletely and directly responsible. (Aside from the meager quantities delivered by air andsea, but they are not enough to change who survives.) Other governments must hold Israelresponsible for any shortfall.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
The UK has jailed asylum seekers from some very dangerous countries aspreparationfor sending them to Rwanda. These includeSudan,EritreaandAfghanistan.A refugee from one of those countries has a good chance of qualifying for asylum.
The UK has become incompetent at all sorts of ordinary government transactions. I don't knowwhy, but I suspect (1) budget cuts have left insufficient staff to do the job and (2) a desireto punish asylum seekers and drive them away. Perhaps also bureaucratic rigidity andunwillingness to give those staff any responsibility.
The result of this is that judging an asylum case takes years, so the number of asylum seekers grows and grows.
US citizens:call on Bidento do all he can to avoid devastation in Rafah.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
The US is consideringalaw to bail out farmers whose land was contaminated by PFAS in sewage sludge.
I sympathize with those farmers, and bailing them out is fair, since they were not themselves toblame for the problem. But what happens to those farmers is a secondary issue. If it turnsout that those PFAS make food unhealthful, the main problem will be how and where to grow safe food.
Meanwhile, the most urgent measure to take, in this domain, is to prevent ruining any more farmland this way.
Ships switched tocleanerfuel in 2020. The resulting decrease in air pollution resulted in a jump in global heating.
US citizens:call onFacebook to preserve the CrowdTangle analysis tool.
I refuse to let Facebook use me, and I hope you do likewise; but since Facebook exists, weshould preserve methods to analyze how it uses people.
US citizens:call on Congressto pass clean energy transmission legislation — to speed the connection of new renewable energy generators to the power grid.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call on Congressto pass the bill to improve prenatal and maternity support for women who are poor or disprivileged.
The bill's name is misleading, but its substance is good.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Experimenters passed 517 questions from Stack Overflow to ChatGPT to see what output itwould respond with. Around half theanswers, when interpreted semantically by humans. turned out to be incorrect.
This is to be expected, because ChatGPT is not intelligent and does not understand themeaning of text that it operates on. It can do more sophisticated text manipulation thatQuery Replace, but it has no more knowledge or understanding than Query Replace.
HowGoogle decided to make its search work worse so as to make more profit.
If I had experienced the recent enshittification of Google Search with so-called "AI", it mighthave moved me to stop using it. However, I had stopped using Google Search many years agobecauseLibreJS coulddetermine that Google Search wouldn't function without running nonfree JavaScript code.
US citizens:callon Congress to do everything it can to fight voter suppression.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on university administrators and boards to end therepressivetactics used against Gaza solidarity encampments.
Increasing use ofrenewableenergy in US [yielded around 250 billion] dollars of benefits [over 4 years].
Putin's propaganda and news blackout are effectively teaching thousands of young Russians towantto fight for Putin.
This is a sad change. It used to be thatmanysoldiers in the Putin forces looked for anopportunityto surrender, and some eagerly joined Ukraine's army.
Policies proposed by Sanders for the Democratic Party to toprotect jobs frombusinesses' predation.
Why is Nikki Haley scrawling genocidalmessageson Israeli bombs?
My conjecture is, she is trying to out-hate the fascist leader so as to be chosen as hisrunning mate.
Whether or not Israel's atrocities in Gaza add up to enough to be qualify as "genocide", thereis no doubt that what Haley advocates would be genocide.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
US citizens:callon Congress to pass the Public Housing for the 21st Century Act. It will set upinformation-sharing to help the many cities that want to build more public housing.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call on Biden tooppose use of the national guard to crush protests.
See also.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:call on theSenate to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on state attorneys general toinvestigatethe antiabortion mills (self-called "crisis pregnancy centers") for mistreating clientsand abusing their personal data.
US citizens:Callon Congress to let parts of the corrupter's 2017 tax cuts expire.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call onthe USPS Inspector General and Board of Governors to protect vote-by-mail from DeJoy.
An Israeli air strike onrefugeetents in Rafah killed around 45 civilians at once.
If the Israeli air force really tries not to kill civilians, it was not trying very hardthat day. The pilot could not have failed to see that the area was full of tents, ifperse considered the question.
Israel should obey the International Court of Justice, and the US should insist that it do so.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Some of the biggest [Australian]wastecompanies broke rules meant to keep contamination [such as asbestos] out of landscaping products.
"Crippling" drought in Zambia threatenshungerfor millions, says minister.
This is climate mayhem. We may be able to slow it and stop it, butfirst we need to adopt a plan adequate to fully do the job.
Spying,[cracking] and intimidation: Israel's nine-year "war" on the ICC exposed.
There was no shooting between Israel and the ICC, but Israeli officials described thefight as "war". I wish that Israel had refrained from war crimes against Palestine and Gaza.
Regularly feeding babies peanuts attheage of 4 months prevents 2/3 of the cases of allergy to peanuts.
This suggests that the cause of the great increase in allergy ratein recent decades is due to a risk-averse behavior pattern.
Each time E Jean Carroll sues the bully for defamation and wins, the bully responds byconspicuously doing it again,
He expects that this wins support from his followers, who imagine themselves joining inhis arrogance towards people weaker than he. And he figures that if he wins or steals theelection, he will never have to pay those judgments.
Can the court hit him with something more unpleasant than anotherdamage award that he assumes he will never pay?
Georgia has adopted a law to label NGOs with foreign support, such asAmnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, as "serving theinterestsof a foreign power".
There are suggestions that the adoption of this law represents an act of adherence toPutin — but is that adherence manifest in any other way? I have not seen any described.
Meanwhile, Georgia and Russia have been hostile for decades, and sometimes even at war.If that has changed, how did it change and when?
Rwanda's top UK diplomat oversaw use ofInterpol to target regime opponents.
To deport people to an undesired third country violates the right toask for asylum. When that country hasarepressive government, as Rwanda has, that makes it even worse.
Google Search's bullshit generator,described misleadingly by Googleas "AI", encourages users to run with scissors and to eat rocks.
If only users were not told repeatedly that this is"artificialintelligence" they would call it a bullshit generator.
US citizens:call onCongress to investigate Mercedes's union busting.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call onCongress to cancel Boeing's nuclear weapons testing contract.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to reject AIPAC, which supportsenemiesof US democracy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:callon Biden to declare a climate emergency.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
The taboo about reevaluating departure from the EU makes it impossible tohonestlyconfront the issues raised by its consequences.
I run a university —peoplelike me should be backing students' right to protest over Gaza.
[A former White House lawyer] says [the corrupter's secret documents case] ‘could haveeasilygotten to trial and that Aileen Cannon has delayed on issues most judges would havehandled.
This is more reason to suspect that that judge is trying to serve the corrupter.
The abortion rate in the US has increased since theSupreme Court wastaken over by the right-wing. So has the sterilization rate for women, who are takingprecautions to ensure they can't need an abortion.
I hope to see Congress swing Democratic this year because of grass-roots support forabortion rights.
Greenpeace won a court victory in thePhilippinesblocking commercial cultivation of rice that has been genetically modified to produceVitamin A. Deficiency of vitamin A kills around 100,000 people each year, world wide.
Any given genetically modified crop may be harmful, or not, depending on its practicaleffects, which include whether it is restricts sharing among farmers by means of animposed legal monopoly (which could be a patent, or a plant variety monopoly).
The pesticide-resistant crops that campaigners denounce are harmful in practice, bothbecause of their restriction of farmers' rights and because the pesticides used on themare harmful to wildlife and perhaps to humans too.
Vitamin-A-producing rice do neither of these kinds of harm, so they should be authorized.
See also my article,"Biopiracy or Bioprivateering?"
The Labour shadow energy secretary agrees thatclimatedefense is an emergency but says the tactics of Just Stop Oil are counterproductivebecause they alienate people.
That might be true, but since they see that the climate emergency will kill them in a fewdecades, what does he suggest that they do instead? Should they join Just Trust theGovernment instead? Or Just Give Up?
It is the government's responsibility to be the climate leaders inspiring the people tomore action. If they demonstrate that following them is more effective than followingJust Give Up, millions will rejoice and follow them.
French activists have chosen a different tactic: picketing the energy company TotalEnergiesanda big fund that invests in it.
I saw ads for TotalEnergies in Europe recently. It wants the public to associate it with"all kinds of energy", especially renewable electric generation, and forget theinconvenient fact that it is still increasing fossil fuel extraction.
One way to make use of bullshitgeneratorson web sites safer would be for a court, or a law, to insist that their operators arelegally responsible for the advice given by that they generate.
This would entail changing section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to distinguishbetween publishing other people's writing (for which the site is not liable) and publishingmaterial generated by software that the site's owner generates (or contracts to generate)using software. If generative systems participate in writing the text, the site would beliable for that text.
An identified (even if pseudonymous) human author could to use agenerative system, but would then take responsibility for its output.
ChatGPT was asked programming questions based on items in StackOverflow. More than halfof thegeneratedanswers were incorrect.
Take care against admiting a bullshit generator into the sources of what purport to be knowledge.
The UK's former chief scientific adviser warns thattheworld is not ready for the next pandemic.
US citizens: verify that your voter registration has not been purged. Republicans aredoing their usual voter deregistration drive and you may have been targeted.
US citizens: call onTreasurySecretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth ahead of the G20 summit.
US citizens: call on Biden to respect the International Criminal Court andreject sanctions against it.
US citizens: call on The Senate to investigate Justice Alito'spublicsupport for insurrection.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:call on Congress topass the BAIL and TERM acts to regulate membership of the Supreme Court,
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:callon Biden to take the steps necessary to replace Postmaster DeJoy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on US intelligence agencies:nonational security briefings for the corrupter.
Whatever information he gets, he is likely to send to his friend, Putin.
Electoral laws flouted, opposition MPs arrested — this is what it's like tostandagainst Modi's BJP.
NYU demands student protesters write confessions for the crime ofbreaking rules with a protest.
This reminds the author of the imposed self-criticism sessions in China. It reminds me ofthe "apologies" that are demanded of people who are canceled.
I think it should be possible, by careful use of irony, to cast doubt on university'sproclaimed ethical conclusions while nominally "confessing".
As for using episodes of The Simpsons to pose ethical questions, I think they are as goodas any other story for the purpose of starting a conversation about ethics. What makesthe Simpsons so much fun is that it includes irony and doubts its presuppositions. Butwatching The Simpsons may raise real moral issues.
Can anyone tell me whether the contracts students must agree to in order to access thematerials for this exercise includes a promise not to redistribute copies of thematerials? For instance, episodes of The Simpsons?
Does carrying out the exercise require running nonfree software — perhaps an app, ornonfree JavaScript code from that site?
If so, I think the kind of ethics being taught here is, "Obey the powerful and the laws they have imposed."
The article uses the term "hacking" to refer tocracking — please keep this distinction in mind when you write about either of them.
Alarm as German climate activists charged with"forminga criminal organisation".
This seems to refer to a German equivalent of the US "RICO" law,
Ever since I first read about the RICO law, I have worried that it could be used againstdemocratic protest activities. The criteria for applying the RICO law are vague and general.They were written to facilitate using it against secret criminal gangs, but make it hard toguarantee that annoying protests are not targeted as well.
Starmer has copied Obama's slogan,"Change".This invites voters to think of the changes they would like to see, and fantasize thatLabour would make those changes. However, Starmer makes it quite clear thatthereal change is that Labour now prioritizes wealthier voters. I was unimpressed when Obama usedvague"hope" and "change" as slogans, and I am unimpressed now.
The fascist leader wasrepeatedlybooed at the "Libertarian" convention when he asked that party to nominate him for president.
He was surprised by this powerful rejection, but it does not surprise me.
Their primary goal is to reduce taxes (which mostly benefits the rich), so I call them"antisocialists". They are libertarians also, but that goal is secondary for them. Theyadvocate for laissez-faire, laissez-mourir capitalism, not dictatorship. Of course theyscorned the wrecker.
We true libertarians support that same human rights goal, by supporting progressivecandidates — who likewise defend human rights but also seek to tax the rich to fundcrucial missions of the state.
As for the antisocialists, if they want to have any sort of human rights in the US as of 2025,they should vote tactically for Biden and other non-Republicans. Those alone can defeat theattempt to impose dictatorship.
Russia says that the corrupter is lying abouthavinginfluence with Russia.
Since he and Putin both lie so much that we can't trust anything they say, the only thingwe can be sure of is that having the corrupter as president is far too high a price to payfor the possible release of some of Putin's prisoners.
Israel appears to be forging ahead with its offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah,despite a new ruling from theUN’stop court to halt the assault, which it said is worsening an already “disastrous”humanitarian crisis.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
US citizens:Thank members of Congresswho supported ending Israel's use of US-supplied weapons in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Thank reps thatvotedagainst unconditional military aid to Israel.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress todefeatthe GOP bill to restart weapons shipments to Israel.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens:call on Your senators to rejectS. 4136, which would authorize officials to eliminate any nonprofit organization byaccusing it of vague "support for terrorism".
For instance, any organization that protests against Israel'satrocities in Gaza could find that people show up and chant, "HAMAS welove you", and it could be wiped out of existence for that.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to useevery possible means ofinfluence to get Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:call on Biden to give noarms to Israel that it could use to attack Rafah.
Stop denyingobvious implications!
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens:callon Biden to stop trying to protect Israeli war criminals from the International Criminal Court.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
The prospects of selling a nuclear reactor to Australia have beenundermined by areporton how much time and money it would cost.
The Republican who arranged to make deepfakerobocallspretending to be Biden's voice faces criminal charges for that.
[The WWF] is suing the Norwegian government for opening up its seabed for deep-seamining, claiming that Norway hasfailedto properly investigate the consequences of this move.
Companies in theoil, hotel, meat and other sectorsare price-gouging the US public. They’re not hiding it, either.
This has to be a consequence of too little competition. With more competition, companieswould have to reduce prices and increase production. In most cases, that would mean no gouging.
But the fossil fuel sector is an exception. Expanding production of fossil fuels untildemand is satisfied is the road to gigadeaths, If our government were effective forterrible long-term problems, it would be organizing long-term contraction of that market.
Why police killings like [that of] George Floyd get labeled "accidents",accordingto a forensic pathologist.
Corporations are weaponizing "Free Speech" toeliminatesafety notices regulations.
This is a consequence of the Corporations United decision which ruled thathumanrights apply to corporations, even though those are not in fact human.
In Denmark it is normal for people to trust strangers, and they havegood reason to do so.
Accusing the United Arab Emirates of intentionallyfuelingthe civil war in Sudan.
I don't have enough knowledge about the situation in Sudan to judge these accusations. Ingeneral, I have not posted aboutthiscivil war for lack of background knowledge with which to make sense of the situation.
After vowing to oppose any Israeli offensive in Rafah, Washington and London now see nothing fittingtheirdefinition [of "Israeli offensive in Rafah"].
- [Whistleblowers] describe Palestinian [prisoners] beingbeaten,kept shackled to hospital beds or made to stand for hours.*
Texas Governor Abbott pardoned the man convicted of murdering a BlackLives Matter protester, for motives of racism.
In effect,Abbotthas endorsed political murder.
Does he endorse political murder of anyone by anyone?Or only political murder of progressives by right-wing lunatics?
Barcelona's new city government, which is right-wing, illegally rented out the Parc Guell,and harassed residents of the neighborhood. When citizens organizeda protest against this, thugs chargedthem, carrying sticks.
If abusroute is overloaded because of the number of tourists, the solution is to run morefrequent buses on that route.
The International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its attack on Rafah, reiteratingthat it leads inadirection that heads towards genocide.
The "any other actions" that Israel is ordered to cease would seem toinclude its blockage of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
[The insurrectionist]'s "unified reich"video was a messagenot a mistake.
It was a deniable dog whistle to get the Nazi storm troopers excited.
Louisiana expected to classify abortion pills ascontrolledand dangerous substances.
This is an effort to ban drug-based abortions, but it could also endanger the lives ofpregnant women with various medical conditions.
Summer of natural disasters may be ahead inUSwith "above normal" hurricane season. Caused by global heating, of course.
Damage from medium-size thunderstorms is increasing every year in the US, and the resultis to makehomeinsurance too expensive in large parts of the US.
In this way, global heating is causing real problems for tens of millions of Americans already.
The head of the UK Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requestshave been buried by the regulator because thetruthabout the environment in England is "embarrassing".
Salman Rushdie: Although he has “argued for a Palestinian state for most of my life— since the 1980s, probably — right now, if there was a Palestinian state, itwould be run by HAMAS, and that would make it aTaliban-likestate, and it would be a client state of Iran." He finds it strange that someprogressive students support such a thing.
To me, it is disappointing but understandable — they are yielding to the tendency tooversimplify situations into "side A vs side B". If you think about the Gaza war in termsof "pro-Israel" vs "pro-Palestine", then your condemnation of Israel's bombardment andtends to lead you into supporting Israel's enemy, HAMAS.
Therefore I am firmly pro-Israel and firmly pro-Palestine.
Can the Israeli-Palestinianpeacemovement rebuild after 7 October?
DeJoy told senatorshe will not make drastic changesto mail delivery this year.
If that means what it sounds like, it could mean he will not undermine the effectivenessof vote by mail. I would not trust his word, though.
Migratoryfishpopulations have crashed by more than 80% since 1970. Various human activities seemto be the cause.
This book review is a resume of a book about the ideological intolerance of the Americanleft in recent years, by a reporter who formerly participated in that buteventually stopped complying.
I have not read the book itself — only the review.
A UK court ruled that a minister illegally ordered a broad interpretationof criteria for illegal protests, which was supposed to be a court's job.
The government has also passed unjust laws to restrict protest.
Ministers are intent on restricting protest, and will flout the law todo it. Don’t rely on them to do the right thing.
Right-wing UK politicians propose many new laws to restrict protestsand punish protesters.
A criminal case has been filed against the CEO and directors of the French oil companyTotalEnergies, alleging its fossil fuel exploitation has contributed to the deaths ofvictims of climate-fuelledextremeweather disasters.
In northern Scotland, towns are being graduallywashedaway by storms exacerbated by global heating and sea level rise. Some towns areclearly going to be gone in a few years.
Similar things are happening elsewhere. Land in North America at theedge of the Arctic Ocean has beeneroding even faster.
Oil Change International says, Top oil firms' climate pledges failingon almost every metric.
The pledges of BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor,ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies are basically greenwashing.
Those companies uses these pledges to stave off laws that would try tomake them really reduce greenhouse emissions. At the same time, theylobby to weaken the application of the existing laws that could limitthe destruction of civilization.
I expect that they help stir up farmers' protests against increasesin the price of fossil fuels.
Australia plans to develop a test for being actually impaired as adriver by marijuana.
This is to avoid punishing drivers that are impaired, from thosethat have lawfully used marijuana but too little to be impaired asdrivers by it.
Biden is dramatically out of touch with voters on Gaza. He may losebecause of it.
Conditioning Aid to Israel Would Boost Support for Biden in Key States, New Poll Finds.
One of disinformationists' tools: the "thought-terminating cliche" that offersan excuse to give up really thinking about what the truth is.
Investigate fossil fuel industry [for disinformation], top Democrats urge justice department.
Professor Appy of the University of Massachusetts rebukes the chancellor for calling instate thugs to arrest and torture students who had made an encampment, and reports the falseclaim that thesearrests contributed to "safety" on campus.He mainly focuses on what inspired him to decide to be arrested.
Google has moved the surveillance of fitbits to Google servers. Itused to be done using fitbit-specific servers.
Both kinds of surveillance are morally intolerable, and I don't seewhy one is more or less bad than the other. The crucial point is thatthis sort of surveillance is gratuitous, because it can easily beavoided. The morally legitimate way to design such products is to letusers communicate directly with them from their own computers, runningfree software. That way, no company would get to surveil usersthrough the devices they supposedly own.
The pretext of counter-terrorism as a reason to investigate Americans started with "red squads", HUAC and J Edgar Hoover.
Young Alaskans sue state over fossil fuel project they claim violates theirrights.
It would roughly triple the state’s greenhouse gas emissions for decades, the lawsuit claims.
Google isenbullshitifyingGoogle Searchto the max, converting it into presenting the ramblings of bullshit generators (described by Google as"artificial intelligence").
I reproach the article for swallowing that conceptual error, and also for referring toservices as "products" (thus blurring an important distinction).
I have had no access to Google Search for many years, aside from aperiod of time when I could access it via a LibreX proxy. That is becauseit depends onnonfree JavaScriptcode, which I won't trust.
I recommend people ditch Google Search and switch to other enginessuch as duckduckgo.com.
The US released a Guantanamo prisoner to Algeria, which supposedly promisedto allow him to live in freedom, but instead it jailed him.
Amazon warehouse workers claim Amazon has programmed the computersthat give them orders so as to disrupt union organizing.
Global heating effects are damaging rail lines in Britain.The rate of damage is increasing rapidly, and some lines mayeventually have to be abandoned, long before sea-level rise inundatedthem permanently.
The Black Lives Matter era is over. It taught us the limits of diversity fordiversity’s sake.
I hope the Black Lives Matter campaign is not truly over. It is acampaign to put a stop to the hairtrigger racist violence of uniformedthugs. That campaign is as justified and necessary now as it everwas. It deserves our support.
Diversity is a different issue. Efforts for diversity are desirablewhen they operate at the long term -- aiding the members ofdisprivileged groups to overcome the unfair obstacles that bigotryputs in their way. But we should not be carried away in pursuit ofdiversity.
Norman Finkelstein on Gaza, "from the river to the sea" andpoliticalmessaging: "We need to bring unity to this struggle."
Israel competes with HAMAS in regard tocrueltyand violence towards prisoners. In effect, Israel is now using its politicalprisoners as hostages for revenge.
North Carolina's senate hasattackedthe right to protest by prohibiting wearing a mask for anonymity. Immunocompromisedpeople like me are also endangered.
Union busting by Merecedes defeatedacampaign to unionize its plant in Alabama. However, the company made significantconcessions to workers to obtain this result.
Sex education in English schools set to bebannedbefore children are nine. These guidelines cover education of teenagers as well asthat of children, and some topics won't be allowed until age 15.
A fraction of teenagers find themselves (willingly or unwillingly) in sexual situationsbefore that age. They would be better off knowing some crucial points about birth controland preventing disease, and how to say no firmly but without rejecting the person, beforethey need to know it.
Here iscriticismof that rule.
Members of security forces giving settlers who intercept vital suppliesinformationon location of convoys, group says.
- It’s not possible for the US to prosecute Assange while claiming tobe a friend of press freedom. Biden shouldendthis now.*
Ebrahim Raisi was no moderate, but his death may mean Iran becomesevenmore hardline.
I don't see any way that Iran could become less repressive, other than via arevolution which seems rather unlikely.
New York City thugs went to townbeatingup the protesters they had already arrested.
Even if those protesters deserved to be arrested — a question on which I won'tpresume to trust the judgment of thugs was valid — it could not justify that violence.
Ilan Pappé: I'm an Israeli critic of Zionism. Why didborderagents detain me at a US airport?
It seems that US government "security" agencies are meddling politically, which they haveno business doing. Fortunately they did not bar his entry to the US this time.
I don't know Pappé's views in detail and I probably would disagree with part of them— but I am incensed at the US government for meddling in this way.
The fascist energizes supporters by saying "fuck you" toLiberals, Democrats, truth, justice, and human decency.
When they start their coup, will we be organized to fight them and defeat them?
The US faces a wave of McCarthyism, this time using "antisemitism" rather than"communism" as the target for repression. Congress is working ona bill to "combatantisemitism"which is based on the IHRA criterion for antisemitism, which is a wayof arbitrarily declaring some views on political questions to be "antisemitism".
Jewish civil libertarians, includingtheauthor of the IHRA definition, are campaigning against this bill.
Americans, if you love our freedoms, now is the time to defend them.
Biden will berememberedas a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicitin this war. (Unless he pushes harder and actually changes Israel's actions.)
Microsoft will make Windows save all the screen output so as to look through it later; butdon'tworry about snooping, it says.
What Microsoft says about privacy seems impressive until you think about theconsequences of the universal back door that enables Microsoft to forcibly installany change in the installed software. If Microsoft wants to see some of the files inyour computer, it can look at them at any time.
Indeed, can you be sure it isn't looking already?
Cops too could seize your computer and look at those records, perhaps to see whetheryou had an abortion.
Google has announced a new Android "feature" of analyzing the audio of phone calls andinformingwhen it hears something resembling a deepfake scam.
That feature could potentially be useful, if it were implemented in a trustworth way (withfree software, for instance). But given that it is implemented using nonfree software,there is the danger it could be extended to scan for other things, perhaps conversationsabout "subversive" topics such as defending human rights or rejecting nonfree softwae.The notification when these are detected may go to the FBI instead of the user.
The wrecker's campaign posted a video that usesNazi terminology.
When challenged, the campaign said it was posted by someone who hadn't taken thetrouble to check the wording in it. That level of carelessness strikes me as implausible.
Given how often the wrecker goes in for promoting fascism and Nazism, I think it ismore plausible that this was intentional and the falsehood is intentional too.
Israeli officials seize camera from[AssociatedPress] news agency, cutting live feed of Gaza.
Israel's pretext for this action is not even worth discussing, sincesuch pretexts cannot justify cutting off press coverage for the public.
UNRWA says that it hasnosupplies to distribute in Rafah, and that no aid is actually arriving through theUS's much-hyped pier for aid supplies.
Governor Dementis and the Florida Republicans have passed a range of lawsthat can only be described as"Doanything possible to roast our planet."
The US may use the ICC's possible prosecution of Israeli officials as an excusetoattack its existence.
RefutingUS,UK and German criticism of the ICC's proposed war crime charges against Israeli leaders.
Julian Assange will beallowedto appeal against his extradition after the US failed to satisfy the court's demands.
The case against Julian Assange has been a cruel folly. His right to appealisasmall step towards justice.
Theextradition treaty under which the US asked for his extradition is asymmetricbecause the US never ratified it; but the UK chooses to obey it anyway.
Iraniansare celebrating the death of President Raisi.
A new president will havenoeffect on Iran's foreign policy.
ICCprosecutorseeks arrest warrants for Israeli PM and HAMAS officials for war crimes.
Here is discussion about how the ICC woulddecidewhether to issue the warrants.
I hope it does so.
HAMAS does not allow the ICRC to visit the hostages it took on October 7. So Israelhas retaliated by barring the ICRC from visiting Palestinian prisoners — in effectturningthem into hostages.
HAMAS does not care much about Israel's Palestinian political prisoners. It is impossibleto pressure HAMAS by being cruel to them. But Israel can gain something by treating itsprisoners decently and showing the world that it is better than HAMAS in this and other ways.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Rwanda denies entry toseniorhuman rights researcher.
There have beencredible accusationsagainstPresident Kagame, and his interference with efforts to investigate them lends them credibility.
Unprecedentedrain has flooded the city of Porto Alegre. Global heating is causing this sort ofdisaster in many parts of the world.
OpenAIresearcherresigns, claiming safety has taken "a backseat to shiny products."
As far as I know, "Open"AI does not develop any products — only (dis-)servicesbased on unreleased software that users can't even have as executables.
This news confirms my point that it is absurd to trust a company toprevent use of its dis-services forharmfulor unjust purposes.
A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline inworldgross domestic product, researchers have found.
The German group"LastGeneration" blocked the operation of Munich Airport to call attention to thedanger of global heating disaster. The group's name refers to the fact that futuregenerations' lives are likely to be cut short by climate chaos.
I agree that this tactic seems to be ineffective, but we can't blame them for takingdrastic actions when confronted by a problem that can expect to kill them, while thepublic, like most governments, ignores it.
Three climate activists have been convicted of "interference with key nationalinfrastructure" by marching in the road inWestLondon for 20 minutes,
The new system of repression of protests has functioned. Whether it willcrush efforts to save humanity remains to be seen.
Governor DeMentishas given Florida alawto unleash Florida's contribution to flooding the state's territory.
The US-built pier in Gazahasbegun operating, but it lacks the capacity to replace the land crossings that Israel has now blocked.
Justice Alito put up anupside-downflag outside his home in January 2021,whenthat gesture was a symbol of support forthe corrupter's lie that theelection had been stolen.
US employers are required to protect workers from falls, which can be done withstandard methods. They are also required to report such incidents to workers'compensation. But oftentheydon't do either one, and it is hard to make them.
The US legal system is generally inadequate for enforcing workers' rights of whateverkind. That includes union-related rights, the right to get paid one's wages, as wellas the right to proper safety measures. If the US enforced workers' rights againsttheir employers the way it enforces the laws that mainly benefit the rich, Americanworkers would, practically speaking, have far more rights.
[Life] insurance companies in Australia are fighting for access tothese test results. The tests showhowlikely a person is to die from some cancers.
It is obvious why insurance companies want these data: to charge more to people whohave the harmful gene variants. The reason that practice is harmful is not so obviousbut it is important: life insurance is presumed as part of the state social safetynet. If you have dependents, you need life insurance.
Life insurance was developed back in the day when states hardly had a social safetynet. In a country with a good enough state system, life insurance becomesunnecessary. That is the real fix.
The Putin forces torture Ukrainian prisoners of war, but theyespeciallytorture the musicians of military bands.
Banks have given almost $7tn to fossil fuel firms since Paris deal,report reveals.
Almost all of those trillions has been invested in plunging headfirstinto making climate disaster worse.
The US left has largely come to define "Zionism" as the political philosophy oftheapartheid system that Israel applies to occupied Palestine.
The danger is that valid condemnation of Israel's actual policies andbehavior may lead to a sort of anti-Zionism, the opposite or reversalof each aspect of Zionism. This tends to transform the conflict intoone which admits of no resolution other than the destruction of one ofthe two sides. That would be a horrible mistake.
I support the existence of Israel, which has the obligation (like every country) torespect human rights and democracy, alongside astate of Palestine which would (like every country) have the same obligation.
It is sad to see how little respect people get whet they complainafter companies charged them for mere access to a remote copy ofsomething, and then put limits even on that access.
The author of this article bends over backwards to excuse companies for doingsomething that is inherently abusive. He grants moral authority to the lawscompanies have obtained so that they have power over people. He presupposes thatcompanies deserve whatever power they can get governments to impose.
When you get a copy of anything that has been published, no one is entitledto the power to control whether, when or how you can use it. No one is entitled tothe power to make it disappear.DigitalRestrictions Management (DRM) is an injustice and ought to be a felony.
When people defy that through forbidden sharing, don't call that"piracy".
Australian border thugs stretched the lax Australian law to demand thepasswords to unlock travelers' phones.That they do this arbitrarily, without court orders, is an offenseagainst the rule of law. That they pretend it is "random", whichclearly it is not, is a lie that shames the entire Australian government.
Of course, Australia is not the only semi-free country that does this, and non-freecountries such as China do far worse. That is no excuse for Australia.
It is amusing, though, to see the complaining passenger complain thatit is unthinkable to travel without adevice that will snoop on him.
A Maga Maggot joked about giving homeless people counterfeit money to getthem arrested. "How broken must you be to do this and think it's funny?", someone commented.
In the UK before Tory budget cuts, medicine for pregnancy and birthwas adequate, except for some disprivileged groups. Budget cuts have made itgenerallyhorrible, leading to injuries.
Israeli public opinion is shifting on the Gaza war — but this maymake Netanyahu even more reckless.
Hospital surgical teams that include more female doctors improvepatient outcomes, lower the risk of serious complications and could inturn reduce healthcare costs, according to the world’s largest studyof its kind.
The Philippines founda clever nonviolent wayto respond to China's navalprovocations in the disputed sea between them, which China is trying to seize.
Night-Mayor Adams argued for allowing unauthorized immigrants to workin the US by saying that they could fill New York City's lifeguardshortage.
I see no racism in that statement. (By the way, Adams is black; formost political issues that makes no difference, but in regard towhether his statements express racism it might be pertinent.)
It is true that only a small fraction of unauthorized immigrants reachthe US by swimming, or by water at all. His words may have suggestedotherwise; if so, that was inaccurate. But perhaps he did not intendthat implication. His words say that many of them say they can swim.
Anyway, if he was serious rather than sarcastic about the politicalsuggestion of allowing them to work, I think we can pardon thatinaccurate possible point.
Global heating is making seasons unpredictable. Some birdsstarve because after migration the things they would eat are not available;in some years the food has not appeared, and in other years it has alreadydisappeared or changed form.
The corrupter's criminal trial is a tour through a world of pervasivecorruption and immorality — the world he imposes on those around him.
The target of limiting global heating to no more than 1.5°C was proposed as anambitious plan. The evident failure to reach itdoesnot mean all is lost.
Not yet.
The aid convoy attacked by Israeli nationalist fanatics was escorted by Israeli soldiers. They did nothingtostop the attack.
The American Communist Party "attracted egalitarian idealists, anditbred authoritarian zealots."
Nowadays whatbreedsauthoritarian zealots is the right-wing MAGA movement. I wonder if it is possibleto identify which common points are responsible for that result.
The author regrets American Communists' "willingness to subvert their own bestinstincts in their devotion to a flawed and irrelevant historical model." TheAmerican right-wing today can be described with similar words — their modelincludes laissez faire /laissez mourir,balanced budgets, minimizing taxes on the rich, and scapegoating minorities and immigrants.
The Nationwide Right-WingAttack on Reform ProsecutorsIs Now an Attack on Abortion Rights [as well].
J Edgar Hoover spent his career building and runningAmerica'srepressive secret police.
I love this quote from Justice Brandeis: "The greatest dangers to liberty lie ininsidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Butthey are generally aided by people motivated simply by unscrupulous ambition —people eager to create and use terrorism scares, antisemitism scares, or whatever itmay be, in order to gain power
This is why I condemn the digital systems that provide all the infrastructure forChinese-style total surveillance. All the more-or-less free countries today arethreatened by this. You can fight back by insisting on buying only withcash, and by not carrying a portable phone.
As Uber's Profit Margins Grow, Workers Make Less and Less.
This is a valid social reason to boycott Guber — becauseit pays workers peanuts. But that company's operationsdirectly mistreat its customers, as well as its drivers.
Human Rights Watch reports at least eight Israeli airstrikes on Gazaaid groups since October, with no warnings given.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Now that corporations have bought many single-family homes, they feelfree to maintain them badly, because if tenants withhold rent todemand their rights, the corporation evicts them.
These corporations lobby hard against lawsto protect tenants from being cheated. I think Republican-controlled statesmay not have codified rent strikes.
Several Jewish students, at least fairly sympathetic to thePalestinian cause, state praise and criticism for views theyencountered in recent encampments.
The Jewish population of Israel did not come from Europe, so cannoteven theoretically go "back" there.
I support an independent state of Palestine, but abolishing Israel would beworse (because it's bigger) than abolishing Gaza.
As Europe's power shrinks, its fear is growing — and the result is hugemistakes.
I have strongly criticized the EU for giving power to banksters instead ofto the people.
A right-wing-extremist German candidate has been convicted of using aslogan used by Nazi paramilitaries in the 1930s.
I don't think that was a accident. Right-wing extremists are veryclever about their dog whistles. Apparently that candidate choseto invoke the Nazi for per own success.
Which is worse: Nazis successfully recruiting with hate, or censorshipof Nazi views? For me, either one is likely to destroy democracy.
The US needs to spend a trillion dollars over the next 20 years in order toupgradeand repair water infrastructure.
That is presuming we do what is needed to curb global heating. If we don't do that,we are on the path to a world of disasters — so what difference does one disaster more or less make?
[It seems that] Venezuela is the first country to havelostall its glaciers in modern times.
Venezuela bears a fraction of the responsibility for this event through its export ofoil. But it is just a small fraction.
Renewable generation provided 30% of theworld'selectricity in 2023. This is expected to continue growing rapidly.
Various restrictions imposed on abortion by some US states correlatedwith higherratesof domestic homicide.
It is too early to determine how the recent bans on abortion have affected thiscorrelation, but one must suspect that bans correlate with even higher increases.
Laying outDeJoy'splans to make US mail less reliable and frequently but unpredictably slower.
The anticipated slowdowns will interfere with postal voting. Many ballots willarrive late due to USPS delays and then will not be counted.
Governments are noticing the terrible danger thatbusiness-supremacytreaties pose to prospects of reducing fossil fuel use.
Given the millions of people that those companies' use of business-supremacy treatiesis likely to kill, in my view war is justified to defeat them. However, it is notobvious to me what strategy could be successful.
A deadly heat wave across Asia inAprilwas impossible before humans caused global heating. Now we can expect one like it every few years.
Alternative jet fuel is not feasible in thetimeframe necessary to avert climate disaster.
Northern Canada isagainbeset by dangerous wildfires, including near Ft McMurray, a main center of tarsand oil extraction.
There is poetic justice in greenhouse-fueled wildfires burning Ft McMurray. I hopethe people there reflect on what they have done to cause wildfires like these.
Wildfires in Canadadamagedfiber optic cables and cut off communication with large areas.Without land lines and cash, everyone was screwed.
This is not one of my reasons for having cash on hand and always paying cash —I don't think fire damage to Boston's underground cables is likely. But in manyplaces it is another good reason to make a habit of using cash. You canmake sure that the stores you buy from are accustomed to cash payments and realizethat they will lose business if they don't let you pay that way.
UNWRAhas run out of food in southern 2/3 of Gaza, so it can't distribute any more.Israel is not letting in any more food, having captured and closed the Rafah crossing.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Israel closed the Rafah aid crossing from Egypt into Gaza, and isclaimingthat Egypt closed it. It says that reopening it is up to Egypt. But this is nottrue and Egypt vociferously denies it.
Who is this supposed to fool?
Israeli tanks have entered Rafah'sresidentialzones. This could result in killing thousands soon enough.
A UN vehicle was attacked, with casualties. I wish we could identify who attacked it.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
A splitin Israel's cabinet about what to aim for after this war ends could lead to a shift of some sort.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Here isthe cease-fire dealthat HAMAS agreed to, two weeks ago. It includes releasing all the hostages. Israel did not accept it.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Fanatics of the Israeli violent "settler" movementattackedan aid convoy, which was traveling from Jordan to Gaza; its route passed throughoccupied Palestinian territory and then Israel.
The attack took place at a checkpoint where it was going to cross from Palestinianterritory into Israel. These checkpoints are run by Israeli forces, who evidentlychose not to defend the convoy from the fanatics. Such noninterference with mobviolence against Arabs isquite usualfor them.
Some Israelis openly demand to starve Gaza until HAMAS frees all the hostages. Idon't think that has any chance of success; HAMAS will not yield so that Israel willforbear to kill thousands of Palestinian hostages. But if Israel wants to be judgedas morally superior to HAMAS, it must save them.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Australia's government hassurrendered to fossil gas.
The previous right-wing government was embarrassingly subservient, and it looked likethe Labor government would be better. But no, it's the same track that leads to gigadeaths.
Australia plans to invest $23bn in a futureindustrial policy.
I am not one of those who claims that it is foolish to have an industrial policy, butthere is always the risk that is used to hide a giveaway to big business. This oneincludes an investment in hydrogen production, and it sounds like renewableproduction is only the second step.
What is the first step ofhydrogen production?Is it production from fossil fuels? That's the way that already works, but investingin boosting the amount of that is only going to make the climate crisis worse.
Congressis investigating the corrupterfor reportedly asking executives for bribes to abolish Biden's environmental rules.
Students at Emery University in Atlanta have linked theviolentrepression of rallies for the Palestinians of Gaza withviolentrepression of protests against Cop City.
I think the relationship between the bombardment and siege of Gaza and Cop City israther tenuous, but the two instances of repression have a considerable relationshipas described by the article linked above.
Modi's party is accused ofbullying opposition candidates to drop out of the race.
Modi has not gone as far to making democracy an empty shellasPutin went 17 years ago, but it's basically the same story. India is no democracy and we shouldnot treat it as one.
Political activist [Netiporn Sanae-sangkhom], held in Thai jail,diesafter 65 days on hunger strike.
She faced prosecution for allegedly insulting the king. It seems that the Thaimonarchy's definition of "insulting the king" is far broader than the normaldefinition of "insult" in English.
Labour and unions reach agreement onworkers’rights proposals. Labour commits to deal agreed last year, following weeks of tension.
Starmer has specifically excluded local Labour members fromchoosingLabour's candidate in the district of Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn was kicked out of the Labour Party byweaponizing accusationsof antisemitism, much as protesters for peace in Gaza are now being.Alleged antisemitismby employees of the Labour Party was blamed on him.
UKis failing to put climate crisis at centre of national security measures, MPs told.
I'm sure many governments are being lobbied to get this wrong ;-{.
The defection of a right-wing Tory to the Labour Party demonstratesthat Starmer views the party as a merefaction,united only by the idea that by working together they can win power.
40% of the world's laundered money is estimated to flow through the UK and someformer colonies. The UK has failed to insist that thoseformercolonies reveal the true owners of the dummy corporations they set up, often for money laundering.
If the UK cuts them off entirely, they could continue supportingbusiness deceitasthey do now, but without being able to relate to other countriesthroughthe UK, they might find their scheme ineffective.
Zhang Zhan, who reported on the early days of Covid-19 in China, was jailed for doingso. Now she has supposedly been released, but it seems she is beingheldincommunicado outside of formal prison.
This is common in China. The government's statements are meant to tell you what tothink, not to describe reality.
Workers at the firstunionized Apple storehave voted to strike.
I wish them well as individuals, but the products they sell are so unjust that wishthose jobs would disappear instead of being better paid.
An AT&T executive is charged with bribing an Illinois legislator to gettwomajor pieces of legislation passed.
This is a message about JulianAssange, from Susan McLucas and Paula Iasella.
“Julian is just one decision away from extradition” -- Stella Assange
On May 20th two UK High Court judges will rule on Assange’s appealhearing after considering the U.S. assurances submitted mid-April.
We have sent 5,000 postcards, many personal and handwritten, to 100senators, President Joe Biden, AG Merrick Garland and CIA director, William Burns.Now is the time to amplify those messages.
In the senate focus on these 5 representatives: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14),Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Jim Jordan (OH-4), Andy Biggs (AZ-5), and Mark Pocan (WI-2).Plus your own rep: 202-224-3121. They all can be written at US House of Reps,Washington, DC 20515. The Senate has so far done nothing to help Assange.
In the House push memberstocosponsor H.Res.934. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, supportive ofdropping the charges against Assange, has yet to add her name to this importantbi-partisan legislation.
Please reach out to President Biden to encourage him to follow through on what hesaid on April 10 that he is "considering" dropping the charges on Julian Assange.Fill out the form at WhiteHouse.gov/contact. Call him (only Tues-Thur 11 to 3) at(202) 456-1111 or write him at The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Wash DC20500.
Asylum seekers in Britain are asking themselves in terror, "Must I run now before theygrabme for Rwanda?"
Except that a large fraction get little information and don't even know about thedanger they may be put in deportation prison to be sent later to Rwanda.
In the past year, in virtually every region, journalists and independentmediaoutlets faced increasing repression, according to RSF.
This includes Gaza, whereIsraeliforces have repeatedly killed reporters.
It also includes the US, where uniformedthugs have arrestedreporterscoveringrallies againstthe killing of civilians there.
Bayer Seeks Reapproval of Pesticide That Federal Courts Have Twice Bannedfor CausingWidespreadDamage to Crops and Communities.
Utah made it a crime to use the "wrong" bathroom in schools and government buildings,and set up a way to report violations. Defendersof trans rights have filed 10,000 bogus reports so that any serious reports willbe impossible to find among all those.
Rumor said that Starmerplansto yield to business by weakening the the "Labour" Party's commitment to improveworkers' rights and pay.
Unions threatened to remove their support, andmadeStarmer firm up at least one pledge.
It looks like the UK will weaken isgreenhousegas targets to "make them easier to meet."
That is absurd — like reducing the treatment for cancer to make it easier totake. That's what you get in a hospice. Is this hospice care for Planet Earth?
A review of the danger ofantibioticresistance.
I've posted over the years about the need to stop farmers from givingantibiotics to entire herds in bulk. We must restrictthem to giving antibiotics specifically to animals that are sick.
As for the lack of new antibiotics, we should take this entirely out of the hands ofdrug companies and create an international organization for the job. We should giveit funds to develop last-ditch antibiotics, and to make doses for the whole world— prohibit the use of those antibiotics except in animals that are entitled tohuman rights.
US citizens: call on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth ahead of the G20 summit.
Right-wing Senator Britt proposed a bill to set up a honey trap tolure pregnant Americans to giving their personal details to the USgovernment. It would then send themright-wing-biased advice.
The UK has granted a license for a new nuclearpower plant, Sizewell C.
It probably will never be finished, because at some point the government will have acrisis which will prevent it from continuing to pay for it. But the unfinished reactorwill play a part in bringing the country to that disaster.
In the mean time, it will do plenty of harm to non-rich Britons.
The AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has been withdrawn; it was effectively obsolete sinceit had not been updated.
A very rare side effect killed one person who took the vaccine. We should not forget thatit saved millions of lives in 2021-2022.
I saw an article that crowed about the end of this vaccine as a victory. Over what, Imust ask? Vaccination, it seems. To an anti-vaxxer, one death from being vaccinatedcounts more than hundreds of thousands of likely deaths that vaccination prevented.
Starmer has been surprised by the strength of criticism from within the Labour Party forallowing a right-wingToryto join the Labour ranks.
Some of them still remember the moral crusade that Labour used to be.
She condemned firemen for going on strike. Unions reminded Starmer that that contradictsa Labour Party commitment torestorethe right to strike
If the government considers some public employees so essential that they must not go onstrike, the right way to avoid that is by paying the workers better without waiting for astrike. Rather than singling them out, it could pay all working people better.
Righteous fury over Gaza must allow empathy for fearful Jewish students.
Jewish students ought to be able to feel safe (and be safe) on campus. Likewise, studentsrallying to end an avoidable deadly war ought to be able to feel safe (and be safe) on campus.Safe,especially, from uniformed thugs.
We can do the right thing for both groups at once, if we think about it. Many of the Gazaprotest rallies in the US are thinking about that.
Faith groups want more say in secular Britain. Labour shouldtell them to go to hell.
The principle of religious freedom says that that is the right way to treat any group ofcitizens' rituals: regardless of details, they have no right on push those on otherpeople. Now, how to convince Starmer Labour to have principles other than "We must win"?
National sovereignty is little defense against the globalhunt for profits. Capitalism seems to enable companies to see staff as expendableunits, not humans [or people].
Expanding US financial sanctions on certain named Israeli participants inoccupation violence could eventuallycause big difficulties for continued colonizationof Palestine.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
US courts have given cops immunity for any destruction of property that theycausein the course of their activity.
I agree that the government should compensate those whose property government agentsdestroy except pursuant to a court order to do so.
As I see it, this conclusion does not require calling the damage "taking of property."It's enough that it is damage. If you or I destroyed a house, even if it were in thecourse of some activity that was not wrong in itself, you or I would be liable.So should the city.
Robert Reich says that his conversations with US student protestersshowed him that their protests are meant as a rebuke to Israel'sdeadly violence in Gaza. He reports that Biden said he has cut off supply ofartillery shells for Israel to use in attacking Rafah, and credits this as an achievementfor the protesters.
His article does not report the fine print of Biden's decision. Israel surely has lots ofartillery shells already. Is this decision going to actually hamper Israel's current attack?
Even if it doesn't do that, it must help convince some of the Israeli government thatIsrael cannot continue down this path. Maybe that will suffice to change the governmentand end the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Israel is fighting resurgent HAMAS in northern Gaza again.
As I've noted many times, it is impossible to defeat an underground guerrillamovement that has the popular support to recruit new members. HAMAS has that support.
Israel should recognize this and end the useless and deadly attempt to do theimpossible. HAMAS is an evil group of terrorists, but there is no use in futileefforts to eradicate it, and the effort is no excuse for killing thousands of civilians.
Israel has also announced plans to attackcentral Rafah.
The "tens of thousands" reported fleeing sound like a small fraction of the peoplewho have fled to Rafah. It seems that many must have decided not to leave.
I can see various reasons a Palestinian might conclude that per chances of survival arenot much better there than in Rafah itself. So I think only a fraction will go there. Asubstantial fraction will stay in Rafah, where Israel has invented an excuse to definetheir lives as forfeit.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Reporters Without Borders accuses Italy's government of repressing journalistswho criticize the government.
H5N1 has been found in commercially available milk – but gaps intesting of cattle and humans are hamperingeffort to stop virus.
It is crucial for public health to find out how many of the people working with infectedcattle are catching the virus from them. Without that, we don't know whether one humancan catch it from another. We need a law authorizing public health authorities to testcows and dairy workers for this virus.
The article does not say much about what we might do to slow the spread, if we findit is happening. I'm in favor of compensating farmers for cattle that have to beslaughtered, if that's the solution, but is it?
Rise inChineseespionage arrests alarms Europe. Increase in cases reflects changing mood acrosscontinent towards Chinese threats, say experts.
An ex-thugknown for harassmenthas been welcomed into Governor DeMentis'spoliticizable militia.
People like that are public dangers. He should not be in the National Guard either,nor any thug department.
- The former director of [UK] public prosecutions for England and Wales has warnedagainst the risk ofcreating“thought crimes” amid the recent clampdown on protesters and demonization ofdemonstrators by politicians.*
The Guardian viewonIsrael's far right: occupation of Palestinian territory feeds its extremism.
TheState Department lays out numerous suspected international humanitarianviolations by Israel in its war on Gaza, yet suggests no changes in policy or consequences.
This is a peculiar sort of mental blindness, the blindness of he who will not see.
Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism — but they're part ofarightwing plan.
US campus protests give [the fascist leader]atarget for his violent rhetoric of vengeance.
What the corrupter told aninterviewer he would do if he wins or steals the election.
To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million peoplefrom the country … he would be willing to build migrant detention camps anddeploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red statesmonitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would,at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to topadvisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his orderto prosecute someone,breakingwith a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’sfounding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attackingthe U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or beenconvicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe orAsia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gutthe U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit,close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, andstaffhis Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020election was stolen.
The Israeli army seized the Rafah crossing, the main path for the insufficient aidthat still enters Gaza,andclosed it. If any US aid travels to Gaza that way, US law (as I understand it)requires cutting off military assistance to Israel. Promised new routes for aid toenter Gaza are not possible replacements for the Rafah crossing because they are notactually ready for use.
I interpret this as Netanyahu's defiance to Biden: "You weakling, I dare you to obeythat law." Since then, Biden has suspended delivery ofonekind of weapon to Israel. Maybe that was a response telling Netanyahu, "Just youwatch!" Has he found the courage to go further than that one suspension?
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
[Sacramento State University] willpursuean investment strategy divested from “corporations & funds that profit fromgenocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”
Several other US universities have made agreements with student protesters alongroughly similar lines, including two that had first tried violence against the students.
This is a significant achievement for the student protesters, all themore so because it is general, not aimed only at Israel.
In and of itself, that is a good goal, but as a means for ending thebombardment and siege of Gaza, I fear it is too indirect and too slow.
Georgia (Sakartvelo)'s government is pushing a repressive law modeled after Putin'srepression of NGOs. Georgians, especiallyyoungones, are protesting this.
A prominent Iranian film director faces 8 years in prison for making a movie that hasattracted international attention.The idea that the festival would drop the showing of the movie if the governmentflogs him into saying "Don't show my film!" is offensive. Film festivals shoulddisregard whatever the director and other participants are forced to say, and theyshould make sure in advance that torturers know that approach is futile.
Starmer welcomed a defecting Tory MP whose views are very right wing.
It shows his goal is victory, and never mind for what cause.
Natalie Elphicke's queasy welcome shows Labour will turn no one away.
US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism.
A Republican on the committee accused the officials of lying, based onno grounds, and then threatened them with wrecking their careers.That's a Republican bully for you.
Israeli airstrike that killed sevenhealthworkers in Lebanon used US munition.
What conclusion follows from this depends on conclusions that would depend on aninvestigation. If Israeli forces knew it was targeting medical personnel, that was awar crime.
If it did not know, it may not have been a war crime. but it should be scandalousanyway. Why did they not know? Did they try hard enough toidentifythe target? Israel seems to be ready to kill lots of civilians in Gaza.
Biden has blockedalarge shipment to Israel of large dumb bombs, demanding that Israel startavoiding harm to Palestinian civilians.
Thank you, Biden. You should have done this a few months ago, but better late than never.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Almostaquarter of Australia's cases of depression, anxiety and are caused by childhoodmaltreatment and could in principle be prevented.
The climate crisis is making thefarmingbusiness unsustainable — and without support for us, food security will suffer too.
The article claims that a 30% increase in money what farmers receive would make upfor a 30% decrease in crop yields. In financial terms, it would do that, but itwould not at all fill the 30% shortage in food. What needs to be subsidized iscurbing global heating, to make farming somewhat reliable again.
Climate chaos [in Latin America] is threateningfoodproduction, trade and lives.
World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5°C target. Theyexpecta 2.5°C rise, which implies disaster.
David Boyd, until recently UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment,says that government plans to curb global heating are succumbing to the pressure to profit byexploiting people and nature.
Journalists at Italy's public broadcaster plan to strike in protest againstcensorshipby the right-wing government.
A nonfree and secret program is being consulted by courts about how to treatindividualsaccused of crimes. That should be forbidden; every method used to evaluate andpartially judge suspects must be entirely disclosed, and courts must be free tochange it so as to follow court rulings about the rights of the accused. Basically,courts must use only free software for such purposes.
The developer claims that the program does "artificial intelligence", butthatterm is usually bullshit in general.
- Two powerful politicians and Rio de Janeiro’s former chief of policehavebeen arrested in connection with the 2018 murder of city councilor Marielle Franco.
At the University of Mississippi, a provocateur who harassed a proteston behalf of Palestineis being investigated over violence.
NYPD thugs beat up and injured some of the students they arrested.They putseveralin solitary for hours, and they denied water (and food) to one for 16 hours.This while fabricating accusations to smear the protesters.
[Uniformed thugs]let violent mobs attack UCLA students. This iswhatlawlessness looks like. A large mob attacked the protesters with firecrackersand sprayed gas, then attacked with fists and poles. 25 of the protester/victimswere hospitalized. The thugs did nothing to protect them. The next day,thugs arrested 200 of the protesters.
Major news media disregarded the facts and pretended that the protestersand the mob were equally to blame.
A generation of American students is learning the old lessons: that cops are cruel,violent liars when they deal with members of groups they despise, and that themainstream media work hard to create false justifications.
Biden endorsed that same injustice of blaming the protesters forthe violence that was done to them.
I will vote for Biden anyway, because the corrupter hatefullyproclaims that he will be even worse.
Meanwhile, the UCLA administration condemned thethugsfailure to protect the protesters and said they willinvestigatewhat happened.
If this is sincere, if that investigation is honest and unbiased, it could be an importantstep forward. But I am skeptical of that. If the UCLA administration really feels thisway about the attack on the protesters, why did it tell LA thugs to arrest them?
Noem book contains threat against Biden dog:"Commander, say hello toCricket."
This is a hint at a threat of violence — a standard right wing tactic,popularized by the wrecker. It is designed to fill his opponents with helpless rage,because it is too vague for any legal action. Meanwhile it sends right-wingsupporters on a power trip imagining violence against whoever does not support them.
All in all, it demonstrates the vicious hateright-wingersdisplay towards their chosen targets and scapegoats. But this is mild comparedwith what they usually do and threaten. Usually theytargethuman beings.
Palestinians who have left east Rafah and tried to go to the "safe area" Israelrecommended say it is difficult to get there, it is not a good place for inhabitance, and it isalreadyfilled with people who fled there first.
Two Columbia graduates who are journalists went back to campus to cover the studentprotest, and their mother, Nahla Al-Arian, came along for an hour. Night-Mayor Adamscited her as an example of an "outside agitator",fictitiouslyresponsible for organizing the protest.
Their father, Professor Sami Al-Arian, wassmearedas a terrorist by Dubya's men.The jury found him innocent on most of the charges, but there were some minor chargesthat the jury could not decide on. He waspressuredinto a plea bargain which is now being used by NewYork's thugdepartment as an excuse to smear Nahla Al-Arian as an "outsideorganizer" of the protests, as if that would justify their violence.
Venomous snakes likely to [move substantial distances tonewhabitats] en masse amid global heating, says study. Researchers find manycountries unprepared for influx of new species and will be vulnerable to bites
In medieval England, leprosy was transmitted betweenhumansand red squirrels. It may have reached England on squirrels' furs.
Richard Stallman will give a talk, in French,Free Software and Freedom in a Digital Society at Centrale Supelec in Saclay,on May 15.
Israel has attacked part of Rafah, after calling on civilians theretomove to another zone.
Has Israel come up with a way to attack HAMAS while not endangering civilians by thehundreds or thousands? I hope so, but I won't take that for granted. Israel hasrepeatedly failed to care about killing thousands of civilians.
The text suggests that the new "safe" zone is close to Rafah, but does not clearlysay so, or how far one has to walk to get there.
For civilians weakened by hunger, and by untreated sickness and wounds, to carrytheir own bodies plus meager remaining belongings there may be beyond them. Theyalso have reasons to distrust Israel's promise that it won't attack that zone. It hasfalsified such commitments before.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Acourt ruled that the Tories "climate action plan" is illegal because it would bemore properly called the "climate inaction plan".
Breakthroughs in reading text in ancient scrolls that weretoasted by an eruption of Mt Vesuvius are giving us a wayto read copies ofbooks believed lost.
How great that would be — many mysteries of history could beunderstood.
- Job losses[inUS journalism], declining circulations and local newspaper closures could meanspread of misinformation in pivotal election year.*
The drug diclofenac ispoisonousto vultures. They eat dead cattle that were given diclofenac, and eventuallythey die from it. This has mostly wiped out vultures in India. As a result, Parsiscannot practice any more their religious duty to give corpses to the vultures.
I know a computing professor who told me he was a Parsi. I asked him, "Did you havea bad interaction with a Parser?" He collapsed in irresistible laughter — itwas a delight.
Global heating leads to temperatures that exceed the capacity of bumblebees tocooltheir hive.
When Fawlty Towers was made, it was possible to have a character use a racial insultas a way ofpresentingthat character as racist. John Cleese reports that this has become impossible,and said some people "don't understand metaphor, irony or comedy exaggeration."
I suggest that their deficiency is in "theory of mind": the faculty of distinguishingbetween what you think, what your interlocutor thinks, and what some other persons think.
Surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta volunteered to work in Gaza, and has testified aboutIsraeli attacks he has seen. French senators invited him to speak to them, butGermany has banned him from entering anywhere intheSchengen zone.
Did Germanypresent any basis claimed to justify this, or is it purely arbitrary?
The US universities thatallowprotest encampments — and even negotiate.
A university president who rushes to call the thug department is not fit for the office.
A generalheatwave in south-east Asia, stretching from Bangladesh to the Philippines, iskilling people and destroying crops.
It is clear that our global heating activities are part of the cause. Even worse,they are sure to make it hotter in the future. People can't survive iffarmingdoes not work.
The Columbia College Student Council accuses the university administration ofimposing a policy of arbitrary repression ever since October, and become ever morecruel, arbitrary andunjustin the past weeks.
The universitydirectedviolent uniformed thugs at students it was falsely accusing of violence, all thewhile interfering with video recording of their violence. While claiming it wasstriving to "keep all members of our community physically safe", it opened the door tophysicaldanger to them. This is part of a broad pattern ofthugs committing violence against nonviolent protesters.
Some protesters werenotentirely nonviolent — throwing things atthugs is aggressive, as well as self-defeating since it givesthugs an excuse to commit violence against thoseprotesters and others too. It may also provoke them to the point that they loseself-control. That is not an excuse for their violence, but it is a reason not to provoke them.
The protest movement needs to develop nonviolence discipline, and marshals toenforce it, just as the civil rights movement and Vietnam peace movement did.
[A group of prestigious] Australian universities reject calls forpoliceto break up Gaza protests.
That bespeaks thoughtful attention to their various responsibilities.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill which would judgecases of alleged antisemitism in educationbased on the criterion promulgated by the IHRA. This criterionmistakes some criticism of Israel for antisemitismand even one of its authors has condemned it.
I have no confidence that Senate Democrats will reject thisfor the sake of getting the distinction right.
The UK's right-wing extremist party, which I will call Deform UK, isrunning disinformationist candidates reminiscent of supporters oftoday's US Republicans.
Australia has ordered Ex-Twitter to delete some images on the grounds thatthey are somehow disgusting.
I think Musk is right on this issue. If one country has the power toorder Ex-Twitter to delete something, then any other country could dolikewise. That would lead to deletion of anything that any countrywants to censor. For instance, China would demand deletion of photosof events to remember the Tien An Men Square massacre, and even photosof the protest and massacre themselves.
Some independent journalists in Ukraine have encountered harassmentthrough state agencies.
Israel claimed that the al-Shifa hospital was deeply integrated withHAMAS tunnels and that they were used for combat operations. TheWashington Post found a tunnel and an entrance, but no evidence itwas used for combat, or that it was designed to be of use for combat.
The US government asked people to take that on faith, but past experiencesays we cannot give the US or Israel the total and implicit trust theyask for.
Humans that come near chimpanzees transmit viruses that in humans causeonly "colds" but can kill chimps.
Queensland, a part of Australia, has legalized sex work, but theright-wing opposition wants to criminalize it again if they win thenext election.
UK transgender actors appeal to be cast in non-trans roles.Discrimination is in general a bad thing. If in general it gives goodresults to cast actors without discriminating between cis and trans,it is better not to discriminate.
The hard part is judging whether a trans actor can do a good job ofplaying a cis role, and likewise whether a cis actor can do a good jobof playing a trans role. Whether actor A plays role R well is aquestion that is inherently subjective -- so how can you tell if youare giving way to discrimination?
Night-Mayor Adams asserted that the Gaza protest in Columbia was booted by"outside agitators". Reporters are skeptical, and Adams won't say who those were.
Theunionof student workers at UCLA will strike against the school administration forusing city thugs to crush a Gaza protest.
Rutgersand University of Minnesota reached compromises with protesting students,granting some of their demands, and students picked up their encampments.
If the students want to have an actual influence for peace in Gaza,and more rights for Palestine, they need to keep people thinking aboutthe issue but not as a bitter knock-down confrontation.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Uniformedthugs let loose on protesters at Emory university went on a violent rampageagainst students and faculty — a gas-them-beat-them-and-frame-them operation.
The thugs that mauled protesters ought to go to jail. The universitypresidents that invited them to do that should resign.
We think loneliness is in our heads, butits source lies in the ruinof civil society.
In 2019, I found that the Tech Model Railroad Club (famously associated withearly computer hackers) was almost dead. A few years before members had beenvigorously developing it. I told Professor Sussman, and he told me that severalyears before, most incoming MIT freshmen had lost interest in physical hobbiesand activities (model railroading being one). We both speculated thatwidespread use of snoop-phones and antisocial media platforms, which wereaddictive to social groups, helped to bring that change about.
A decrease in Americans' use of those systems might perhaps expand the space for civil society.
Some of the protesters on behalf of Palestine in Columbia called forburning Tel Aviv and foreliminating Israel.
The references for this are on Ex-Twitter and therefore inaccessible to me.What they said advocated mass killing and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel.
This is the same sort of wrong that right-wing Israelis are advocating and doingto Palestinians. But having this on both sides is not a step towards peace. Itis not on the path to having both sides treat each other with respect.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Biden is the most progressive, most liberal president the US has hadsince 1980. (I don't recall enough to judge how he compares withJimmy Carter.) We should show our appreciation for that. On someimportant issues, he is doing great.
At the same time, on some other important issues he falls far short of what the USand the world needs and what we demand. We get frustrated and infuriated that hedoesn't change for the better. One of these issues is ending the bombing and siegeof Gaza.
How should we deal with this half-full, half-empty glass? I think we should makesure to keep showing both sides of what we feel.
We need to keep saying, "Yes, more of that," for the issues where Biden does theright thing,p and "Stop this nonsense!" where he does not. To continue pressure onBiden, we need both sides. Sometimes we need both at once: "This is a big advance,but without more, we are still headed for disaster. Tackle the whole problem, fast!"
There are times for saying, "Yes, this measure is something to be proud of, fortoday." And there are times to say, "Don't make us laugh — that change isinadequate."
The student protests against Biden's inadequate efforts to protect the civilians ofGaza are running into increasing repression. Although not violent, they arecalculated to provoke the schools to violence. This tends to make compromiseimpossible and leave no chance of agreeing on an outcome we would really want: Itseems designed to lead to going down fighting, followed by years of hatred, ratherthan to a change for the better that leads to opportunities to demand further change.
British Columbia has modified its experimental system ofdecriminalizing some recreational drugs, limiting lawful use toprivate places.
I oppose prohibition of drugs, but requiring drug use to be in privateplaces is not prohibition. I don't think it will cause the same greatharm that prohibition has caused.
Because LLMs are not real intelligence, using them as a basis for websearch is likely to lead to various bad results.
The article presumes that searching means "Google search", but for meit is just the opposite: I can't access Google search at all. For me,bizarre or inconvenient things that Google does to its search engineare things I won't notice.
So let's not forget that people can use other search engines if theyget burned by Google's.
Recent advances against business-supremacy treaties, around the world.
More about business-supremacy treaties.
New Orleans thugs crushed a Gaza protest in a city park, usinghorrifying violence against participants and against bystanders.
So the next time you hear Republicans complain about the federal debtand our swelling interest payments on it, remember that: (1) the debthas grown mainly because of Republican tax cuts, (2) those cuts havemostly benefited the rich, (3) the rich are now the major recipientsof interest payments on that debt, (4) and those interest payments arecrowding out spending on childcare, elder care, affordable housing,better schools, paid family leave, and everything Americans need.
Developed countries accused of bowing to lobbyists at plastic pollution talksCampaigners say last-minute compromise plays into the hands ofpetrostates and industry influences.
Great Barrier Reef's worst bleaching [ever] leaves giant coralgraveyard: "It looks as if it has been carpet bombed."
G7 agree to end use of unabated coal power plants by 2035.However, they are failing to take action to reduce oil and gas usefast enough to avoid disaster.
Everyonelaughed at Hitler in the 1920s. A century on, are we making the samemistake?
If we Americans don't make sure the wrecker loses, and then block his supportersfrom stealing the next election, we will never have another real election.
Humanactivity is increasing the concentration of one PFAS in drinking water by asubstantial amount each year. Finding out whether this is causing major damageto humans is a question that will takedifficultresearch, so it will be many years before we know whether we are causing adisaster this way.
It is possible that some large companies are so inefficient that staff working32 hours per week could get as much done as they now get done in 40 hours. Butthat can't work for small businesses.
What could work is to offer employees the flexibility to workfour10-hour days in a week.
Students at Columbia Universityoccupieda building, and the president brought in cops to arrest them.
Was the occupation really organized by outside agitators unrelated to Columbia?I am skeptical of the claim, given that at least 50 students have beensuspended. That sort of convenient accusation is easy to claim, whether it istrue or not, because it is hard to disprove. I can't be sure it is false, but Iwould not trust Night-Mayor Adams' word for it, or President Shafik's.
Likewise for the claim that students destroyed doors and so on.I wonder what the protest organizers have to say about this claim.
What is unfortunate is that the confrontation has gone in a direction which islikely to lead university administrations to give priority to "showing who'sboss" over all else. Which means that the protest movement can vent a lot ofanger but it can't advance the cause of peace in Gaza. It can only createfestering hostility.
It also plays into the hands of the right-wingers in Congress whobullied the university presidents, and the fascist leader they serve.
To make effective pressure for peace in Gaza, or more precisely to pressure theUS to pressure Israel to allow peace in Gaza, would require different kind ofprotests.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
US citizens:callon Congress to side with working people, not billionaires and big business,by raising taxes on the latter.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Biden plans to put marijuana intoaless strict category of prohibition instead of legalizing it.
This is simply not adequate.
Junk science is cited in abortion ban cases. Researchers are [callingfor retraction of] the"fatallyflawed" work. They object on the grounds of scientific methodology, notbased on the conclusions as such.
An archeologist describes the enormous weight of evidence that shows there was never alostancient civilization. The archeological evidence shows hunter gatherersall around the inhabited worlds.
At a Gaza solidarity encampment in Northeastern University, "pro-Israel"counterprotesters shouted "Kill the Jews! Anybody onboard?", acting asdishonest provocateurs. The encampment responded with shouting and booing.
The university administration soon after cited this as a reason to tear up theencampment andarrest the protesters.
They have since tried to bury the crucial distinction between what the Gazasolidarity protesters said and their adversaries' provocations. That is deceitful.
If I learned I had made a mistake like this, I would be mortified, and I woulddo everything possible to unmake it. I would apologize for the arrests, dropall charges, return or replace any property stolen by cops, and authorize thereestablishment of the encampment.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Climate experts fear [the wrecker] will follow a blueprint created by his allies togut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), disbanding itswork on climate science and tailoring itsoperationsto business interests.
Inga Rublite died after waiting 8 hours in an emergency room in Britain.None of the staffhad even looked at her or taken her blood pressure.
The fault does not belong to the overwerloaded staff. It belongs to the Tories,who have cut medical spending over and over, simply so the rich can pay less taxes.
Now that Labour has also caved to the rich and their demand for low taxes,Britain needs a party to champion what Labour used to stand for.
Chatbots can lead people to suicide. Whatshould we make of that?
It seems that chatbots can build, with susceptible people, various sorts ofself-reinforcing loops of conversation, such that both get stuck in the loop together.
Of course, this happens to people in interactions with other people. Gettingout of them is a challenge.
A four-legged robot with a flamethrower is now available for anyone topurchasein the US. Supposedly it is not intended for war. Maybe that means it isintended for criminal gangs?
I suspect that flooding in East Africa was caused by atmosphericrivers.
I think it can happen anywhere that the prevailing winds arrive over a largebody of water.
A leader of an indigenous tribe brought a headdress onto an Air Canadaflight and was told it had to be put in the baggage compartment.She objected that her headdress was sacred and therefore deserved special treatment.
That demand for privilege should be refused. We all face thepossibility of being required to check some item rather than carry itinto the cabin, and we deserve equal treatment.
The rules don't have to be rigid; it is good if they are somewhat flexible. However,that flexibility should apply equally to all passengers, not in a discriminatory waybased on a passenger's ethnicity or religion.
Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian of Hebrew University in Jerusalem wasarrested and treated quite harshly, and charged with publishingunacceptable views.
(They are similar, in grand lines, to my views and the views of many of my readers.)
Many colleagues and other academics have condemned the arrest aspolitical repression. Even Hebrew University condemned it.
The cruel treatment of Shalhoub-Kevorkian in jail adds to the nastiness of this, butthe core of the issue is the intention to prosecute people in Israel who demand a cease-fire.
Climate experts fear [the wrecker] will follow a blueprint created by his allies togut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), disbanding itswork on climate science and tailoring itsoperationsto business interests.
China reaffirmed its plan to eliminate cash, and thus keep track of allpurchases anyone makes.
Despite some recent compromises, the government remains dead set ontracking everything that people do.
The anonymous use of cash is the basis for other freedoms. If you think that usingcash is too inconvenient, please approach the matter with a problem-solving spirit.Can you find a way to make it convenient enough to bring enough cash with youwhenever you leave the house?
Torres Strait Islanders, who live on islands between Australia and New Guinea, aresuing about the damage that sea-level rise will do to their homes if we don't curbglobalheating in 20 years.
Robert Reich warns that SCROTUS are already warning that they might arbitrarilyoverride the next congressional election as a stepping stone tostealing the presidency.
The public revulsion against anti-abortion extremes is splitting the Republican Party.
May the fragments fall on the ground and be trampled by Americans' boots!
Justice Sotomayor had better retire now, so we can replaceher with another liberal, rather than risk dying in officeand be replaced by Republicans with another right-winger.
Unawareness of the injustice of "modern digital society" leads to thinkingabout internet connections that misses half the point. Here is an example.
The concept of "digital inclusion" as a goal presumes that the wayspeople normally participate in "modern digital society" are just fine,and labors systematically to help people surrender to what is demandedof them.
Most people judge every Internet "service" in superficial terms, andknow no other way because they have never learned about theinjustices: massive surveillance, demands for personal data,addictivity, antisocializing contracts, DRM, and more. In addition,people confronted with a demand to "use snooper.com now to do this"tend to see the immediate inconvenience of refusing now more vividlythan the long-term harm of having an account on snooper.com.
In Spain, a friend has told me, banks are making it inconvenient andexpensive to withdraw cash from your own bank account. You can dothat only if you physically go to a bank branch when it is open, whichis some hassle outside of big cities. But he has decided now towithdraw cash enough to last for some weeks so he can make a habit ofpaying cash.
Ecuador has voted to affirm its constitutional ban on ISDS clauses,which I call "I Sue Democratic States" clauses.
Some have criticized my term, saying that ISDS clauses are notspecifically limited to democratic states. That is true — but inpractice it tends to be democratic states that are targets for them.That's because the kind of law that foreign corporations target thatway is a kind that tends to be passed by democratic states. Mostdictators rarely pass laws that would make foreign corporations treatthe populace better.
Summarizing what is happening to the participants in the corrupter'sfake electors scheme to steal the 2020 election.
Professors at several US universities which have brought in thugsto arrest students, steal their property and make them homeless,are showing strong support for the violated rights of those students.
If those university presidents thought they were going to quickly crushall opposition, they have now learned otherwise.
I expect to see some law professors bringing suit against the universitiesfrom students who were suspended or made homeless.
Turning back to the reason all of this is so important, it seems thatIsrael continues not to attack Rafah. Maybe Biden has broughtsufficient pressure to make Netanyahu change that plan.However, I have not seen that Gaza is getting enough humanitarian aidto prevent thousands of additional avoidable deaths.
- QAnon Was Born Out of the Sex Ad Moral Panic That Took Down Backpage.com.*
I've seen a number of sex-related moral panic articles the Guardian,and I generally find they are based on a series of exaggerationsof the likely magnitude of side issues — the tail wagging the dog.
I've read articles in which prostitutes say that legalization enablesthem to look up information about the customer's behavior towardsother prostitutes. It makes sense that would be useful for them, butit boggles my mind that anyone considering being a prostitute'scustomer would agree to reveal per real name to anyone involved in thetransaction. Or pay by a credit card at all. That seems like askingfor trouble. If I were ever inclined to be a a prostitute's customer(which is unlikely), I would pay cash and give no one any identifyinginformation. We can't help knowing the sorts of scandal that haveresulted when the wrong person found out, and anonymity is the onlyplausible protection.
Enshittification, and the detailed story of how Google decided to enshittify search.
It should be clear that making users depend on nonfree softwareis a considerable part of what makes a company "too big to care".So this is one more reason why we need to reject nonfree software.
The article makes a vague comment using the incoherent term "IP laws".Those laws have very little in common, so it is a mistake to generalizeabout them by using that term; I carefully never use it, because anything that is meaningful to sayis a matter of one particular law, or perhaps the subtle interactionof more than one of them. The article gives no details, so I haveno idea what actual events that vague comment refers to.
An appeals court ruled that Harvey Weinstein's New York trial inwhich he was convicted of rape, was carried out wrong. This does notmean he has been found innocent. It means the trial needs to be doneover.
I am no expert on trials, but I think the result of the new trialis likely to be the same as the first trial.
The right-wing judges that dominate the Supreme Court have decided touse the corrupter's ridiculous claim of immunity as an excuse to delay his trial for insurrection.
Doctors without Borders carried out a large drug trial, seeking approval of a treatment for tuberculosis, was able to do it for only 34 million dollars,Big Pharma claims they cost billions, and use that as an excuse for makingdrugs so expensive.
It seems that is one more reason for taking drug trials away frompharma companies. The main reason is that their influence corrupts the results.
The research should also be funded by governments or noncommercialorganizations. That would eliminate all the supposed arguments forpatents on medicines.
Using the terms "pro-Palestine" and "pro-Israel" leads people to think of those two nations as pure enemies, and assume that one's gain isalways the other's loss. This is the feeling with which I've stated that I am pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
I love the call, quoted at the end of the article for liberation foreveryone "between every river and every sea."
I like the spirit shown by celebrating Jewish and Muslim holidays inencampments. That makes their total rejection of antisemitism andantimuslimism as clear as can be. However, I don't want my rejectionof antisemitism and antimuslimism to submerge my peaceful andpersistent advocacy of Atheism.
Hmm. If and when it is normal to have a 4-day work week, people could(if they wish) celebrate the Muslim sabbath on Friday, the Jewishsabbath on Saturday, and the Christian sabbath on Sunday. Thefanatics of each religion could rage against that.
That sort of combine-them-all approach can be good for things that aremainly symbolic, like sabbath. It is not applicable, however, tosubstantive questions of right and wrong — for those, we need tothink about each issue in substance.
The EPA has made a rule that coal-powered generators must in thefuture capture most of the greenhouse pollution they emit, or shutdown.
The article is not clear about exactly which kinds of pollution thiscovers. Does it include all particulates? Does it include toxicchemicals? Does it include the fallout that consists of uraniumnaturally present in coal?
The coal industry continues demanding to be given billions fordevelopment of "carbon capture and storage", but when it sees a demandto start using that everywhere 15 years from now, it wants to fight.That demonstrates that their unending "development" of such capture isnot meant as a serious solution, but rather as an excuse to let itcontinue.
Fears grow over rising number of oil lobbyists at UN plastic pollution talks.
Allowing any representatives of oil companies in events intended toreduce the dangerous uses of petroleum simply invites their sabotage.Even if they claim that it is impossible for them to change faster,we can be sure that the real reason it is impossible is because theyare trying hard to resist it.
Thugs fired rubber-coated hard bullets at protesters in Emery University,as well as tear gas.
USC cancelled its combined graduation ceremony entirely, claiming thiswas because of "safety measures."
That is balderdash. The only new safety concern on the USC campuscomes from the thugs that are arresting students at the behest ofthose same administrators. They can cure the safety problems easilyby simply resigning.
There are several standard kinds of falsehood that are normally used as excusesfor repression.
- "Security" or "safety", as we see in this case.
- Claiming to be protecting people in the neighborhoodfrom the inconvenience or disturbance of a protest.One must ask how much actual inconvenience or disturbancethey actually experienced. And also whether they were alsoamong the protesters who were repressed.
- Demonization of harmless activities by referring to themwith terms that presuppose that they were somehow harmful.
- Terms such as "trespassing", which appear to be objectivecondemnation but really mean nothing except "We administrators drew anarbitrary line and you crossed it."
Slovakia's new right-wing government is moving to exert political control over government support for independent media.
Council of Europe human rights watchdog condemns UK's Rwanda bill.
Various countries are trying to make it difficult for people to askfor asylum there. Sending them to another place to wait for yearswhile their cases are considered is a popular method, which has beenused by Australia, the UK and the US. It is an injustice regardlessof details.
But that's not the only method in use. Another is to slow downthe processing of each case. Reducing the funding for handling caseswill generally achieve that. If each asylum seeker has to wait foryears while forbidden to work, it will drive many to give up.
Brazilian indigenous groups rallied together in Brasilia against the construction of a railroad through Amazonia, intended by its backersto facilitate mining and deforestation.
It disturbs me that Lula was not there. We was formerly a strongprotector of the forest. I hope he has not surrendered to thedeforesters.
Robert Reich: a university's mission is to encourage students to debateand consider ideas. Shutting down protest is betrayal of its mission.
A "new government" was installed in Haiti. The article says nothing about who chose the members of the new government.The previous one was chosen, more or less, by the US government.
An experiment on one species of bird found that traffic noise stunts their growth even in the egg. And continues to do so after they hatch, too.
The House Anti-Education Committee (not its official name)has called the New York City School Chancellor to testify.Here is advice for him.
Hong Kong's people have been silenced by China, which is using many differentlaws to disguise the extent of repression.
This repression is what China today means. This is why we must defendwhatever targets China aims to conquer in the future.
UK accused by Amnesty of‘deliberatelydestabilizing’ human rights globally for political reasons.
The damning Amnesty report also criticizes Israel's allies for thefailure to stop the "indescribable civilian bloodshed" in Gaza.
The European Parliament has voted to take the EU out of the EnergyCharter Treaty.
That treaty is a threat to civilization because it penalizes membercountries for effective measures to reduce use or extraction of fossilfuels.
Even worse, it was designed to be impossible to effectively get outof. It says that countries that abrogate it are still subject to thetreaty's punishments for reducing the profits of petroleum companies.
If the EU decides to defy that, it may be powerful enough to kill theghost of the treaty.
Word is that TikTok will shut down in the US rather than sell its USbusiness to some other company.
To shut down TikTok would be a great start. Maybe then we could shutdown the other sites that use "recommendation engines" programmed tomaximize "engagement with the site" — in other words, addiction.
However, much of the harm done by addictiveness could be preventedby taking recommendation engines out of the control of the platform itself.
The US is building a pier in Gaza to receive aid. But Biden has givenIsrael plenty of opportunity to choke off the flow of aid once it getsonto the pier.
I also wonder if there will really be a "third party" available totransport the aid into Gaza. It would not surprise me if the amount ofaid that really arrives is far too little.
Biden should have taken Netanyahu down a peg by showing that the USdoes not need Israel's approval to deliver aid to Gaza.
If you thought that the insertion of a back door in XZ indicates aproblem with free software, please compare that with the worse problemof nonfree software. Microsoft's servers are in far worse shape.
And that's not to mention the ways the developers/owners of thoseprograms can break those programs' "security" — that exists only ifthey choose to let it exist.
Being a woman in Afghanistan is so horrible that even being a woman inIran is a big step up.
I'd be tempted to support forcibly removing the Taliban from power sothat they can't do these things any more. But that is not a realsolution. We tried that already, and it led to 20 years of war thatwe were slowly but steadily losing.
I don't think we know a way to fight that war and win.
This is why I still believe that removing US troops from Afghanistan was the right thing to do.
India drove out an Australian journalist for the ABC network byvarious sorts of harassment including sending DMCA take down noticesfor her stories. The government objected to what she said in newscoverage.
There is a "AI beauty contest" for images drawn by generative systems, whose "conversations"(if they pretend to have any) areoutputfrom bullshit generators.
This is an extrapolation of the absurdity of beauty contests with real women, and highlightsthat absurdity.
The corrupter bought a beauty contest,and was accused of rigging the outcome so that the contestants had to go to bed with him tohave achanceof winning.
The corrupter's torpidity in his criminaltrial punctures the false "strongman" image that he cultivates with so much bluster andpretension when he is incontrolof his life.
British doctors' associations have condemned the suspension of Dr. Sarah Benn from medicalpractice, which was done for no reason except that she was convicted of protesting againstgovernmentpolicies that endanger human health.
There is no reason whatever to think that she has become incapable of properly practicingmedicine.
Iranian women violently dragged from streets by [religious thugs] amid hijab crackdown.
Power outages in the US are surging, as climate-related extreme weather strain an alreadyburdenedenergy grid.
Germany to resume funding of UNRWA aid operations in Gaza… after review says Israel hasprovided noevidenceof terrorist links.
Other countries must do likewise — because the alternative is horrible.
Nestlé has been criticized for adding sugar and honey to infant milk and cerealproductssold in many poorer countries.
Labour says it will re nationalize Britain'srailways.
At last a clear decision that it will improve one area that right-wing rule has wrecked.
Robert Reich: Universities shouldprotectthe right to stand for views that disagree with whoever-it-might-be, while protectingstudents from practical harassment.
This calls for insisting on the difference between (1) actual harassment and (2) supposed"harassment" that consists of disagreeing. Punishing so-called "microaggressions" can easilybe stretched into an excuse for macro-intimidation.
The UK now claims thatengagingin protests of civil disobedience makes one unfit to practice medicine.
As a reason, that's absurd, but as an excuse for unjustified punishment of protesters it may fly.
A long-suffering British cop confronted a Jewish activist who tried to cross the route of aprotest for Palestine, claiming it was to get to the other side. The cop repeatedly offered toescort him to the other side, but the activist did not find that satisfactory;instead hetried to provoke his own arrest.
The cop did not take the bait. Despite that, the activist is going to all lengths to presentthe cops as having acted antisemitically. I don't think that was the case.
I admire that cop who refused to be a thug.All cops confronting nonviolent protesters ought to maintain that level of self-control.
Unless/until old growth trees increase again, the only way to save the mountain caribou ofwestern Canada is tokillsome wolves in those regions.
San Francisco hasbuilta public toilet for only 200,000 dollars.
The toilet's existence is an improvement, but the city can't afford to do the whole job if itis that expensive.
If the city required every restaurant, while it is open for business, to allow any orderlyperson to use its toilet, it would have thousands of toilets available for the public, and thetotal burden of taking care of them could be far less.
A descriptionof violence by Israeli colonists (often helped by soldiers) against Palestinians in theWest Bank part of Palestine.
Taiwan pledges toremove760 statues of Chinese dictator Chiang Kai-shek.
The US was hypocritical to claim to be defending freedom by supporting military dictators inTaiwan until the 1980s. But, ironically, freedom had the last laugh; Taiwan is a democracy now.
What to do with all the removed statues? Here's an idea: add old weapons and make them into amockery of an ancient dictator's terra-cotta army.
New Hampshire Republican crazies areworkingon repealing the existing vaccine requirements for polio and measles. The danger thisposes to other people will not be limited to the children of right-wing fools.
There should be no religious exceptions to the duty to protect the whole population fromdangerous diseases by getting yourself and your children vaccinated. The only exception shouldbe for medical reasons, in case a person for special medical conditions cannot be vaccinated.
A clever idea toattractcoral gametes to dying reef could help them evolve to adapt to increasing heat.
However, this will do nothing to protect against ocean acidification, caused byincreasingconcentration of CO2 in the water itself. At some point this will dissolve the shells ofall coral, as well as mollusks and crustaceans in general.
Governor Sununu,Republican, proudlytold America he would swallow any lie in order to make a Republican the next president."Grab power" is all that the Republican Party stands for how -- that and intimidatingmainstream organizations that might dare to condemn those lies,
200 years ago, Haiti's slave revolt won freedom, and nominalindependence, but since thenrichcountries have intervened over and over to drive Haiti into submission.
Haitians showed their capacity for democracy by twice electing Aristide president. I thinkthey could succeed if only the US did not knock them down again.
It is not unusual to recruit people in poor countries to "work" inanother country, where they find themselves enslaved. Now some areslaves in the Russian army, fighting for Putin to conquer Ukraine.
Guangdong province in China is the latest place to be hit by formerly-unusualtorrentialrains.
Will this teach China that continuing to increase its greenhouse emissions would be deadly?
Due to global heating, northern permafrost region[now]emits more greenhouse gases than it captures.
This is an example of a positive feedback. Positive feedbacks, which we can't entirelypredict, are what can destroy civilization.
Salafi Arabia is running amarketingcampaign to pretend it is something other than repressive and sexist.
Yanis Varoufakis presents thetext ofthe speech over which Germany banned his presence and even from presenting videos of hisviews. This puts political freedom in Germany under grave threat.
In the text he affirms his solidarity with all victims of atrocities, including Jews andPalestinians. I don't agree with every detail of his views, but rather than quibble, I say hisheart is in the right place.
Zoom demands that users make accounts and identify themselves before they can participate in acall. This puts Zoom in position to block any conference in Germany in which Varoufakis triedto participate.
That is one of many reasons why Zoom is an injustice and we shoulddenounce and reject it.
Some hospitals in abortion-forbidding statesturnwomen away from emergency rooms so as not to get stuck choosing between the crime of savingthem or the liability of letting them die.
The US government s trying to enforce the law that emergency rooms can't just send a patientaway. Now the case hascome to theSupreme Court, where right-wing fanatics may decide to kill women in the name of thesacredness of fetuses.
The new president of the World Bankwantsfunds to invest in decarbonization of poor countries.
This lending program would be a good idea, but the highest prioritiesfor investments in decarbonization are:
- Getting wealthier countries to invest in their own decarbonization, They produce a lotmore greenhouse gas than poor countries do. They do invest in renewable electric generation,but their fossil fuel extraction is stillincreasingyear by year, and greenhouse emissions likewise.
- Putting an end tofundingfor "aid" that takes the form of "investment" and "development" of fossil fuel extraction,transport and combustion in poor countries.
Shifting those funds to decarbonization aid would be the best way to start that.But if we don't require these actions. decarbonization won't get off the ground.
Salman Rushdie warns young people against forgettingvalueof free speech.
How dangerous, how foolish, and what a shame: young people motivated by good causes think theycan make the world better by tactics of bullying. It makes them kin to fascists, and once theyeliminate freedom of speech, it is the fascists that take advantage.
Modi is building acultof personality to manipulate the Indian public.
I urge Indians to think deeply and do whatDr Ambedkar would havedone.
The US and Europe have put sanctions on two right-wing Israelis who areleadersof the movement to take Palestinians' land, and associated with pogroms against them.
I don't know how much good this will do, but at least it is an effort in the right direction.
The California thugs who killed Mario Gonzalez byholdinghim down for a long time face charges of manslaughter.
Apple removes WhatsApp and Threadsfrom [Apple' China] App Store,
We could hardly expect Apple to defy government orders to stop distributing a certain program,whether those orders are backed by valid judgments or arbitrary commands. But why does thatchoice come down to Apple at all? For a simple reason:
Because Apple doesn't allow users to freely install application programs!
Apple is compelled to serve repressive governments in repressing Apple customers because Appledesigns the software to give it unjust power over users in the first place.
We should not forget that the apps for WhatsApp and Threads (like those for Facebook andInstagram) are themselves nonfree and therefore freedom-trampling.
There was an air attack on Iraqi army auxiliaries that unofficially support Iran. At themoment it is hard to know whether the attack was done by Israel or byPISSI. The US probablyknows but isnottelling us.
If this was Netanyahu's doing, he is playing a dangerous game, and the US should demand he stopprovoking Iran if he wants any help when Iran retaliates.
The Columbia and Barnard chapters of the American Association of University Professors havecondemnedthe president of Columbia for repression of students protesting in support of Palestine.
They said, “We are shocked at her failure to mount any defense of the free inquiry central tothe educational mission of a university in a democratic society and at her willingness toappease legislators seeking to interfere in university affairs.”
The president of Columbia has acted like a coward, and had better develop some courage soon.
"In favor of Palestine" includes a range of views — including some I agree with andothers (for instance, calling for the elimination of Israel) that I oppose. People, includingstudents, are entitled to the right to advocate any of those views, or other views differententirely, whether you agree with them or not, whether I agree with them or not. We depend onthis freedom and we must defend it firmly.
Questioning the claim thattrees communicate and plan.
To control transfer of nutrients is far simpler than consciousness. Trees can do fairlycomplex behaviors without anything like consciousness,
Politicians right and left are trying to censor political views,but censorship by the right wing has an easier time succeeding.
Louisiana State University is accused of selling oil companiesthe opportunity to influence research topics or even control research.
I have the impression that many other US universities do this,and even more in other countries.
Wales (part of the UK) has given local communities control overwhich streets to limit to 20 mph.
Many citizens had objected to the way the Welsh government set this up.
- insiders say UK water firms knowingly break sewage laws.*
If the government really wanted this to stop, it could stop them.Seeing as the UK government can make it a crime to protest in"annoying" ways, it could, it could clearly make it a crime, punishedby imprisonment, to intentionally pollute the waters.
So why doesn't it? I speculate that it is a matter of values. Underplutocratist rule, letting the "investors" extract money they aresupposedly entitle do takes priority.
Advertainment is taking over movie-making. Why spend money on productadvertisements to accompany some sort of show if you can have the showbased entirely on your product?
The article highlights a general tendency towards milking assets thatare available rather than making anything new.
To describe the result, the article falls into the intellectualpitfall of the misleading term "intellectual property", which twiststhinking about any of the disparate laws that have been crammed intoit.
If you want to think clearly about copyright, for instance, shunthe term "intellectual property" and say you are talking about"copyright". Don't bring patents into that discussion — they aretotally different from copyright. Also don't bring in trademarks,or trade secrets, or publicity rights.
For this article's point, the term "licensing rentierism" would fit betterand avoid that confusion.
The US hasadopted the law to conscript people in to spying on computer and phone data for US secretagencies.
It's not really "everyone" in the US that could be forced to spy in his way. But it is morepeople than you might think.
Former and current U.S. officials told The Washington Post that the new language was intendedto apply to data [server] storage centers, but civil liberties advocates like Goitein warn itcould be used to compel any business — such as a grocery store, gym, or laundry service— to allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to scoop up data from its phones orcomputers.
"The provision effectively grants the NSA access to the communications equipment of almost anyU.S. business, plus huge numbers of organizations and individuals," Goitein wrote on socialmedia early Saturday. "It's a gift to any president who may wish to spy on political enemies,journalists, ideological opponents, etc."
The UK is gradually eliminating the right to protest in ways people might actually notice.Nonviolent protesters have been sentenced toyearsin prison.
A Republican-packed US appeals court approved state laws that holdnonviolentprotestorganizers liable for unplanned and unorganized violence at the protest. This is an attackon the right to protest.
The Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal against that ruling.
Breakingwaves launch enormous quantities of certain PFAS into the air. Does this make thedistribution in manufactured products insignificant by comparison?
To what extent are these the same PFAS that get into the environment via manufacturing?
Columbia University's president has bent over to placate right-wingcongresscritters byattacking protesting students.
The cops that the president called to clear out the protesters bent over backwards to destroytheir things and supplies, and deny them access to medicine.
Bidenadministration moves to restrict oil and gas leases on 13m acres in Alaska.
Alaskan planet roasters called the new rule "illegal." I hope thatkilling you is illegal, because that's what more drilling would do.
Netanyahu launchedanair attack against an Iranian air base. Reportedly it did little damage, andIrandoes not plan to retaliate.
Israel could consider that its honor is now satisfied, and let the fighting drop.
But I have a feeling that Netanyahu will not be satisfied with this sword dance, because hismanipulation has not succeeded, and that he will continue attacking Iran until he provokes asubstantial counterattack.
Boeing engineer Sam Salehpourtestified to Congressthat there is no longer any safety cultureat the company, and engineers who point out dangers are ignored, shunned, and even threatened.
Salehpour says he faced retaliation as he repeatedly sought to raise the flag inside Boeingover three years. "I was ignored," he told the Senate’s permanent subcommittee oninvestigations. "I was told not to create delays. I was told, frankly, to shut up."
I am skeptical that the current management could undo the harm that they have become part of.It is hard for a person to change attitude that drastically and fully understand what it means.Replacing the upper management alone would not be sufficient — several levels would needto be replaced. But I don't see how that could be possible either. I hope someone knows.
US citizens:callon Congress to reject the surveillance bill that would allow government agencies toconscript any conveniently available American to start spying on whoever the agency directs.
Alas, I don't have any more details about this. But we should treat it as a real danger.Please phone each of your senators at 202-688-0628 and urge per to oppose that bill.
While you are at it, you could also urge those same senators to refuseto extend section 702mass surveillance.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
TheLowerSioux tribe has developed hempcrete as a building material, and reports that it savesenergy in summer and winter, as well as being low cost.
Barcelona has removed bus line 116 (which goes to the beautiful Parc Güell) from Google andApple maps,todiscourage the tourists from using it to get to the park.
This seems perverse to me. Do they want the tourists not to visit Parc Güell? To take taxisto get there? To travel by a more circuitous route? To walk a long distance?
If lots of people use line 116, the sensible and helpful thing to do is to run more frequentbuses on part or all of that line.
California cities have privatized destruction of homeless encampments.Companieshave been paid at least $100 million, and perhaps much more.
Privatizing a government activity tends to make it more expensive. It also tends to becomeless accountable, leading to more cruel abuse and more callous careless abuse.
Kari Lake, an insurrectionist Republican candidate for the US Senate, called on Republicans tocarry guns around the time of the election. We know that will lead to killings, whichinsurrectionists hope will give them achanceto steal the election.
Lake said that Washington is a swamp. Evidently she is an alligatorthat can't wait to get in and bite people.
Russia exports lots of oil from the Baltic Sea in ships that go through the narrow passagesaround Denmark. These ships are badly maintained, and likely to cause disaster evenwithoutan intention to do so.
Whether the ships are insured is almost irrelevant, since an insurance company could hardlymake up for the damage that a big oil spill could do in those confided waters. The crucialissue is to stop allowing unseaworthy ships to pass through.
Regardless of future between Ukraine and Russia, it would be wise to require all oil shipmentsbetween the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to be sent through pipelines across Denmark, not byship. Pipeline leaks on land will make smaller spills than ship disasters.
Paris is displaying the usual Olympian cruelty by "cleaning up"homeless people and squats to lookpretty for the games.
These games tend to do permanent harm to street vendors, due to new strict laws, and toeveryone that travels on streets, due to new surveillance measures. In addition they tend toenrich companies at the expense of the public.
If your city proposes to host the Olympic Games,Iurge you organize to defeat the proposal.
St Louis thugs went on a rampage at a protest, attacking based on no grounds. Oops!Theyattacked an undercover thug.
Some of the attackers were jailed for this, which is good. But what we really should demand isthat thugs be jailed for rampaging against innocent people even when those are notactually thugs in disguise.
US reimposes sanctions on Venezuela as hope for democracycrumbles.
Maduro and his lieutenants deserve sanctions, but US trade sanctionstend to fall on the people who are victims, not culprits.
Britain’s latest descent into authoritarianism fits a depressingly familiar pattern. This ishow it tends to work: a subversive group is identified by political elites and presented as adanger to the nation, often being additionally labeled as allies or dupes of hostile foreignenemies. An air of national emergency is contrived, with exaggerated, distorted, or simplyinvented evidence used to justify claims of an imminent threat. The ensuing repressive measuresare supposedly to defend the security of bothindividualcitizens and the nation alike.
This year's target is "supporters of Palestine", a term that covers a wide range of views.
Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050.Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2°C, study finds.
Richard Stallman dará una conferencia, El software libre,libertad, y sociedad, en Córdoba, Spain, Viernes, el 26 de April, de 17:30 a 18:50 enla Colegio Mayor Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. La conferencia es en español.
As predicted, the US "assurances" aboutJulian Assange's UStrial are designed to give the misleading impression that the First Amendment would applyto him.
Belarus [political]prisonersmuggles out account of brutal jail written on toilet paper.
Present-daybullshit generators' output may be recognizable by certain words they tend to use strangelyoften, including "delve".
Israel's fight with Iran has given Rafah arespitefrom an attack by Israeli ground troops (if indeed Israel still intends to attack Rafah).
When an enemy tries to attack you, but the attempt does essentially no damage, this is anopportunity to end the cycle of retaliation bydoing nothing in response. If Israel had leaders who were statesmanlike and wantedpeace, they would gratefully welcome the opportunity. Instead, it has war hawks who want topush the US into war with Iran, are galled by their lack of success at this, and are planningto try again.
[This note was posted on Monday with a major editing error:
the word "not" was mistakenly inserted after "simply."
That has now been corrected.]
Iran launched manymissiles and dronesagainst Israel.Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate was not, in and of itself, a war crime. It was anattack on military personnel of a country which was already at war with Israel.
I don't know what specific targets Iran's missiles and drones were aimed at, but I don't see areason why that attack would be a war crime. It seems that this is simply war.
Judged in terms of its effects in the current context, Israel's attack was a manipulativeprovocation. Netanyahu must have figured that Iran would retaliate, and that this would giveIsrael an opportunity to attack Iran in a much bigger way and justify it as "retaliation". Hemay have hoped that this would talk western countries into "standing by Israel" inwar against Iran.
I am not the only one tosuspect that.
I hope those countries' governments are wise enough to refuse to fall for Netanyahu's effortsto lure them into war, or lure them into disregarding the urgency of ending the siege of Gaza.
This could be an opportunity to squeeze Netanyahu out of the Israeli government. They couldtell Israel, "We will support Israel against Iranian attack, provided it adopts a defensiveposture and provided Netanyahu is not its prime minister."
The UK is consideringa law to forever bansales of tobacco to anyone born after 2008.
Tobacco is deadly and addictive. I wish everyone would avoid everusing it, and I wish all smokers would quit. I personally urge peopleto quit. But I oppose prohibition of drugs that people want to use,because it tends to cause great harm to society inother ways.
University of Cologneretractedan offer of a visiting professorship to Nancy Fraser over opinions she stated about the war in Gaza.
I disagree firmly with Professor Fraser's views — legitimization of HAMAS's largeterrorist action, and assertion that Israel's very existence is an injustice. But those aretangents to the issue at hand. People have a right to advocate those views, and should bot beblacklisted for them.
USCdraws backlash for canceling valedictorian’s speech due to support for Palestine.
Whether she was actually going to talk about that in her canceled speech is unknown, butsupposing she was, "support for Palestine" is a rather broad category. There are manydifferent views that qualify, and most of them are not threatening anyone.
The concern for "security" that the university claimed was a bogusexcuse — in effect, "We are gagging you for your own safety."
The New York Timesstatedrules of word usage that support Israel's point of view about Gaza and its inhabitants.
TheUK has bannedthe destructive fishing method ofbottom trawling.giving some real protection to several "protected" marine areas.The ban applies to all fishing boats, including French ones.
[irony]
France should retaliate by banning bottom trawling in some Frenchwaters. Eventually the two countries could entirely eliminatethat practice near their coasts.
[/irony]
Iran is reportedly threatening to attack Jordan if it does not allow Iran's attack drones tocrossJordanian airspace to get at Israel.
Communications companies plan to launch a total of a millionsatellites by the 2040s. So many satellites could damage theionosphere or Earth's magnetic fields.
This is in addition to the danger that some will be hit by space junk,creating a chain reaction that will block humanity off from space travelfor millenia.
Investigating the Los Angeles thug deparment for a series of shootingsin which thugs encountered people who were carrying various harmlessobjects and jumped to the conclusion that they had weapons.
Reportedly US, UK and Jordanian planes shot down Iranian attack dronesbefore they reached Israel.
That was a good way to defeat the Iranian attack — not attacking anyIranians, only their machines.
Explaining and puncturing the fossil fuel industry's five principaldisinformation approaches.
Here's another one: politicians who want to act fast enough to avertdisaster are overeager -- the "grown-ups" are the ones who will moveslowly, surely, and therefore arrive too late."
Perhaps these grown-ups would buy a fire engine that can't go fasterthan 10 miles per hour.
Modi is weaponizing Hindu pilgrimage sites in the Himalayan state ofUttarakhand, and trying out repression of Muslims.
Israel used the influence of its American supporters to quash AmericanJews' criticism of treatment of Palestinians.
To Save US Democracy,Prioritize the Common Good.
Democracy is weakened (and then threatened) bypoliciesthat serve specifically the plutocrats, rather than people in general.
(satire) Residents [of a Gated Community] Establish More ExclusiveGated [Nested] Community Within First.
The UN-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), whichcertifies whether a company is on track to help limit global heatingto under 1.5°C, has bought into the idea that "carbon offsets" arevalid methods for curbing global heating.
The organization's staff condemn the plan and say it is not in factbased on science.
I've said for many years that we cannot trust a company to achieve thegoal, because it is easy to set upbogus offsets that won't really reduce emissions but only pretend to.
For similar reasons, a "carbon market" would be easy to game andtherefore to render ineffective. It appeals to the worshipers of theInvisible Hand.
By contrast, a carbon tax really would pressure companies to emit less greenhouse gas.
"What we’re seeing is not tele[medicine]": alarm over doctors usingAI and prescribing without seeing patients.
Medicine is intended to result in better health (better than it wouldotherwise have been), but it is misleading to refer to medicine as"health", and likewise to refer to telemedicine as "telehealth".
Ocean temperatures of 25°C lead to the premature death of octopusmothers, from heat stress, before their eggs have hatched.
The article is confused when it talks about "unborn offspring".Octopus eggs are not "born", any more than birds' chicks are "born"when they hatch. Baby octopuses do not develop inside their mother.However, the mother must circulate water for them constantly untilthey are ready to swim away.
It is too bad that the experiment did not report on the visualcapabilities of octopuses that did hatch at 25°C. That is the onlyway to tell for certain whether that water high temperature will damagetheir vision.
It is possible that octopuses can evolve to adopt to warmerconditions, if the change is not terribly fast. Or they can survivefarther from the equator.
Amazon's notorious checkout-less stores supposedly used secret scanningand AI systems to figure out what each shopper bought. Actually theyused remote workers in low-wage countries to watch the shoppers.
What Amazon had invented was a new method of replacing workers in the USwith outsourcing to low-wage workers. But if they ever succeed in reallyautomating this, workers will lose even more.
Starmer is courting Tory voters so hard it’s almost as though hewants to lose his own.
I think he wants to convert the Labour Party into a competent butmainly plutocratist party, which would make policies mainly to benefitthe wealthy, and carry them out competently. This would occupy thespace that the Tory Party has abandoned to become thepartyof cruel rigidity.
Labour would then try to win elections by preventing anynon-plutocratist opposition party from becoming a real alternative.
It is true that victory for a political cause usually requirescompromises. The crucial thing is to distinguish the compromises thatyou can safely make from the compromises that would undermine yourvalues.
Negative experiences during military service are the main drivers ofextremist beliefsamongst veterans, [suggests a small survey].
These "negative experiences" are likely to involve hatred, bullyingand war crimes. How ironic that their reaction to such violence leadsthem to commit or advocate similar violence themselves.
It is a mistake to classify "Antifa" as "extremist", since it meansonly participation in organized activity against a form of violence(fascism). That sometimes takes the form of fighting violentfascists, but basically it is nonviolent resistance against fascists.
Right-wingdisinformationin the USportrayedAntifa a few years ago as a violent movement,whichit was not.
The cheater is about to be tried for violating campaign finance lawsto hush up a scandal that could have interfered with his chancesof getting elected. Describing it as a matter of a "sex scandal" covers up what is really at stake.
Due to El Niño plus Global heating, much of South America issuffering from record droughts, and Bogotá is facing exhaustion ofwater in two months.
Britain has had a year of heavy rain, which has damaged wheatproduction.
This is surely related somehow to global heating. Whether it will continue, get better, or getworse, I have no basis to predict. But it is a dangerous situation.
China is building newcoal-firedgenerators faster than the US and Europe are closing them.
A corporation that changed its name to "abrdn" claims to be entitled to certain kinds ofhumankindness that we think humans deserve. Corporations are not in fact persons, and they arenot entitled to human rights or even human kindness.
I conjecture that the name "abrdn" was meant to acknowledge that largecorporations are often a brdn on society, and to encourage regulatingthem more strictly ;-}.
Where the article comments on a matter of trademark law, it injectsgratuitous confusion by using the propaganda overgeneralization of"the intellectual property" instead of the objective and concreteterm, "the trademark".
Trademarks are nothing whatsoever like copyrights or patents or tradesecrets — be carefulnever to generalize about all those laws.
Reportedly US military drones haveprovedunreliable in Ukraine, so Ukraine is buying commercial Chinese drones (and spare parts),which work better.
Google is testing a response to California's "news link tax", which is to remove all news links from what users post on Google platforms.
I see this as a counterattack rather than as a compelled reaction.But it is a fact that nothing can stop Google from retaliating thisway. Whether Google's claims are right that the tax encouragesfurther concentration and hollowing out of the newspaper business,I don't know.
The article talks about possible "better alternative" in a vague way,and I have no idea what Google means to suggest. But I do have asuggestion.
Adopt a tax on web sites that display advertising and allow users topost their own messages. The tax should be based on the amount ofusage and/or the amount of advertising. The money should bedistributed to news organizations in a way that does not depend onwho does or does not post links to them. This way, Google and otherplatforms could not evade the tax by counterattacking.
There is evidence that peer reviewers are using bullshit generators(chatbots) to generate evaluations of submitted papers.
Since those programs don't really understand the articles that arebeing reviewed, or the subject that those are about, this is askingfor error.
Please don't call those programs "AI"!
The pro-Putin far right is on the march across Europe — and it could spell tragedy for Ukraine.
Israel promised to allow more aid into Gaza, but it has notreallydone that. Famine has started.
Israel said it would allow aid into Gaza from the north, but instead of doing this using theexisting crossing, it has decided to build a new crossing first. That's as absurd asextinguishing a life-threatening urban fire by ordering a new fire engine and waiting for it toarrive.
However, there seems to be other impediments to distributing aid inside Gaza once it getsacross the border.
Perhaps these are not directly Israel's doing, but they are consequences of Israel's actions.I can imagine that truck owners don't want to risk that their trucks be destroyed by Israelidrones, and drivers don't want to risk getting killed that way.
Not all Palestinians are Muslims. Israeli soldiers came to arrest anunarmed Christian Palestinian at home, at night, in the West Bank.
They are planning to hold her in prison indefinitely, with noofficial charges and therefore no trial. However, there is suspicionthat she is in prison for political organizing.
Iran launched 100 drones, or more, in attacks on Israel.This was a response to an Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate inSyria.
Israel and Iran have been, formally, at war for decades. Can anyonepoint me at info on how and when that state of war started?
Here is more background.
The UK is erecting a repressive system to crush protests, especiallyprotests demanding measures to save civilization from climatedisaster. People are imprisoned for holding protest signs, as in China.
I don't recall that Starmer Labour is any better on this issue thanthe Tories.
The UK proposes to use facial recognition systems on important streets,including mobile vans, to find people wanted for arrest.And not only for heinous crimes — even shoplifters would be sought this way.
In Braga, Portugal, April 17th, Richard Stallman will give a talk,Free Software and Freedom in a Digital Society.
Mexico calls on UN to expel Ecuador overembassyraid as tensions soar.
To legitimize the practice of invading other countries' embassies would further destabilizewhat remains of the conventions and rules of international relations.
That may have helped arrest a crook this time. In London, 10 years ago, it would have enabledthe UK to grab Julian Assange sooner. But overall, these specific effects will average out tozero; what will remain is less stability.
US imposes first-ever limits on levels of [four specific] toxic PFAsubstancesin drinking water.
No level of these substances is absolutely safe, but a smaller concentration causes a smallerdanger. Even though no nonzero level leads to zero danger, a small enough level makes for adanger that is insignificant, practically speaking, compared with the other dangers of life.The effort to reduce PFA substance levels beyond that is not efficient reduction of the danger.
Colombian Amazondeforestationsurges as armed groups tighten grip. The groups started as rebels fighting a repressivegovernment, but now they use the forest as a hostage. Meanwhile, the erstwhile provincial rebelgroup made peace and disarmed, so it is no longer there to keep the others down.
ViolentIsraeli colonists in Palestinian territory attacked a Palestinian village, killing onePalestinian and injuring many. They were searching for a missing teenager who seems not tohave been there at all. However, people who hate some others are often in a rush to declarethem guilty of crimes, which may not even have happened at all.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Belgium investigatesalleged Russian payments to MEPs.
Belgian [prime minister] says Russia is trying to influenceforthcoming elections to weaken European support for Ukraine.
Enormousexcesses of sargassum seaweed are choking coasts in the Caribbean, and emitting hydrogensulfide gas, which is foul-smelling and even toxic in large enough amounts.
The dangerous excess is partly caused by the large amounts offertilizer runoff that humans' farms now release to the Atlantic Ocean.
US citizens: call on the US to drop charges against Julian Assange.
- Phone the White House at 202-456-1111 (only 11-3pm, Tues, Wed & Thur).
- Phone the Department of Justice at 202-353-1555 x1.
- Phone your congresscritter via 202-224-3121and ask per to support H.Res.934.
It is useful to do all three.Seeassangedefense.org/press-releasesfor more information
Foreign doctors who volunteered to work in Gaza claim that Israelintentionallytargets medical facilities and personnel.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Alabama IVF ruling leaves Republicans stuck betweentheirbase and the broader public.
I am not surprised by this good news As the bully pushes his followers into increasingly extremeand cruel positions, he is sure to generate more and more opposition. Republicans'usual methods of rigging elections won't help them if the demographic groups thatnormally vote Republican start doing rejecting them.
Colombia's former president, Alvaro Horrible, will be tried forwitness tampering and fraud.
He has been tied to theparamilitaries,gangs of criminals with close connections to the army, who were Colombia's worst terrorists.
Abombwas planted on the Satanic Temple. It did little damage, due to an apparent malfunction,but it looks like right-wing terrorism.
A new EPA rule will require200 USchemical plants to be redesigned to reduce toxic pollution.
US will requirebackgroundchecks for gun shows and online firearm sales.
This is a step forward, but we urgently need strict laws about safe storage and transport of guns.
The US has sabotaged the WTO by blocking appointment of "judges" toimplement its dispute appeals procedure.See how I have condemned the WTO in the past.
The WTO "dispute resolution procedure" is much like an ISDS clauseexcept that businesses cannot directly sue countries for making lawsto protect human right, public health, the environment, or theircitizens' standard of living. In the WTO, only another member countrycan do that. But a big enough company can generally get thegovernment of the country it claims to be located in to sue on itsbehalf.
With the dispute resolution system spiked, the WTO will be unable to domuch to countries that relax the unjust copyright laws that persecute peoplewho share with other people,and may be unable to pressure countries to make exceptions in patent lawfor software, medicine and agriculture.
If the WTO limited itself to preventing international dumping of products,I would support it. But it goes far beyond that, into injustice.
Trade agreements is one of the few areas in which the corrupter didgood things, For instance, keeping the US out of the TPP,and spiking the WTO. But that is no reason to vote for the corrupter,since Biden has continued the same policies. What's more, Bidenhas taken broad action against monopolies in the US.
In any case, the danger that the corrupter would impose fascism andabolish human rights in the US outweighs other the political issues.
Antarctica has begun experiencing big temperature fluctuationswhich are likely to make global heating start causing bigger changes there.
Google tried to make its bullshit generator respond to questions about morals by saying that itcan't judge those questions because they are for each person to judge. That's not a bad idea,in general. However, on some specific questions, such as 'Who negatively impacted societymore, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?', to assert that isthereis no right answer is taking a kind of stand.
Perhaps if it said, "That asks for a moral judgment — this system lacksthe capability to make such judgments," it would achieve the intended result.
Of course, there are many other topics about whicha bullshitgenerator lacks the capability to give valid responses.
Vending machines installed in a university in Canada have cameras,but various companies assert that they don't identify personsor store photos of them. They only detect that some personis in front of the machine and perhaps wants to use it.
In my view, the injustice of most cameras that watch people lies intracking people. A camera that can't identify a person (or a car) isnot an injustice. But it makes sense to demand that the companydemonstrate at the technical level that these cameras cannot identifypersons.
We can't take on trust any statements about what the machine actuallydoes today if that depends on software, because the machine's ownercould install different software any day.
More than half of federal funding for "climate-smart" agriculture inthe US goes to farming practices that are unlikely to reduce greenhousegas emissions.
In some cases, this is because the funding pays for changes thatreduce emissions, but they effectively subsidize raising livestock,and that is likely to mean more livestock and therefore moreemissions.
Australia kept an Egyptian refugee in deportation prison for 12 yearsbecause the government gave undue respect to a conviction in absentiain an Egyptian court which used torture to get "evidence".
Kafkaesque rigidity prolonged his imprisonment.
Some Republican-ruled states want to prohibit lab-grown meat.
Some of those states have already passed laws to punish making picturesof how farms treat their animals. We know the reason for both kindsof laws: to serve the powerful few companies that dominate US agriculture,and also to oppose efforts to curb global heating.
A new French law says that people who move into living spaces nearexisting activities that normally make noise have no right to demandan end to the noise.
This is simple common sense.
A UK thug accused press photographer Dimitris Legakis of "assaulting" per,and arrested him. Seven months later, just before the trial, prosecutorsrealized Legakis had committed no crime, and dropped the case.
The thug seems to have accused Legakis of a fictitious crime —something not unusual for thugs. Dropping the prosecution was theright thing for prosecutors to do, but it isn't enough. It isnecessary also to teach thugs to lose that unjust habit.
What has been done towards that end?
HP invites customers to rent printers, with a contract that requiresthe printer to be reachable over the internet from HP, so it can monitorlots of things about what the renter prints.
Supposedly HP makes this snooping legitimate by making the renterexplicitly consent to it. Balderdash! Massive surveillance cannot bejustified by the manufacture of consent.
If we seriously want to stop companies from putting digital shackleson people, this sort of monitoring and control should be a crime. Itshould be punished with prison for the people who implemented it, aswell as with fines to, or dissolution of, the company.
Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science.
Science thrived in the Islamic world until around 1000 CE, but sincethen has lost its impetus and its influence. The article speculatesabout what the causes was, and whether there is a chance of changing ittoday. One suggested cause is that Islam never recognized autonomousinstitutions of study that were not controlled by religious authorities.
Today there are Arabs who do science, but they often do it in partsof the world where Islam does not dominate.
Lawsuits filed by a civil rights group allege that county jails inMichigan banned in-person visits in order to gouge prisoners andtheir families, as part of a "quid pro quo kickback scheme" with prison phone companies.
The reason "prison phone companies" exist is to exploit an opportunityto gouge people who can least afford it — people who can't workexcept for a minuscule wage.
We need laws to require that these phone calls have a low price, oreven zero price.
TikTok is accused of tracking journalists to find out who hasmet physically with TikTok employees to investigate the company.
New York City has set up a Chatbot, supposedly to give peopleinformation about legal questions based on official web sites. Thesite uses a bullshit generator, so its answers are often incorrect.
The article describes this behavior as "lying", but that cannot betrue. The definition of "a lie" is a false statement, made knowingthat it is false, intending that it deceive someone. A bullshitgenerator doesn't know that its output "means" anything, let alonewhether a statement in that output is true or false.
Tenthconsecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists.
The world has warmed more in the past year than models predicted, and has exceeded the 1.5°Climit at which drastic consequences were expected. Scientists wonder whether this is aninexplicable temporary blip or an inexplicable lasting change.
US citizens:call on the IRSto make a web site for filing tax returnsthat is libre, not merely gratis.
Decades after recognizing that asbestos is dangerous to humans who breathe it, the US isslowlymoving step by step towards banning its use.
Theheadof the Colorado Republican Party, an insurrectionisttrumppet, ordered the exclusion of alocal reporter, preemptively prohibiting her from covering the event.
(satire) Israel Orders [Air] Strike OnChefJosé Andrés' Boyhood Home.(He is the founder of World Central Kitchen.)
Indiana has prohibited spendingstate research fundsfor studying sexuality and sexual behavior. The Kinsey Institute and itsextensive collections are now threatened. The university trustees are about to vote on someway to react to this and have refused to tell the institute's staff what the plan is.
Indiana Republicans' next planned attack on academic freedom isto undermine the system of tenure for professors, which is supposedto protect academic freedom. Once underminedit will no longer achieve that purpose.
I have to point out that universities have already, with no compulsionat all,eliminatedtenure for a large fraction of their professors: they are "adjunct" professors, hired termby term, who can be "junct" after any term without giving reasons. One of my friends was junctby Harvard University in this way.
Manchester theatrerestorescanceled Palestinian event after artists protest.
It was initially canceled because a mainstream Jewish organization accused one of theparticipants — false, as it happens — of trying to excuse the Holocaust.
Israelhas withdrawn its troops from southern Gaza, leaving a smaller number in northern Gazawhere not much active fighting is happening.
This could lead to an end of the fighting, but we can't take that forgranted.
The Israeli cabinet’s decision followed warnings from foreign ministry officials that if aidwas not increased, Israel would risk sanctions and arms embargoes.
US citizens:callon Congress to stop arms for Israel if it doesn't fully allow humanitarian aid access.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Political Assassination isspreading to more and more countries.
The UScontinues to practiceit occasionally, but not as much as in thedecades from 2000 to 2020, when it was often carried out using fighterplanes anddrones.
US citizens:Callon Congress to establish postal banking, so as to support the USPS and under-servedcommunities.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Thugs in Saskatoon made a practice of arresting indigenous people andleaving them at isolated places, on freezing cold nights, when theirclothing was not adequate to survive. They were likely to die as aresult. One victim knew a place where he could find shelter, andsurvived to testify.
Two thugs who were known to have killed indigenous people in this waywere later convicted of a crime for that, and sentenced to prison.That's better than what usually happens to killer thugs, which is thatthey are never prosecuted at all; but the crime they were convicted ofwas an understatement.
They should have been charged with murder. They must have expectedthat the men they dumped in the cold were likely to die as a result,and intended that result.
It seems that the attempt to kill Darrell Night was motivated onlyby his being merely a nuisance.
Things are looking up in Turkey for democracy; a secularist anddemocratic opposition party won most of the votes in local elections.
But it is not certain that the public will be allowed to go aheadpeacefully to vote that way. Erdoğan has used horrible dirty tricksbefore, even starting a civil waras an excuse to redo an election and get more votes by appealing to amisguided idea of patriotism,much as Dubya did by attacking Iraq.
Paris is constructing "15-minute neighborhoods" (what most people wantevery day is available close by), and people generally like them a lot.
It is a shame that right-wing disinformation killed this in the UK.This is far from the worst harm that right-wing disinformation has done,but it is noteworthy for being so evidently false, so easy to confirmas false. We need to change our social systems so that they ceaseto facilitate lies, even lies as blatant as this.
US prisoners are dying from treatable conditions…inmates who died ofpreventable conditions were deemed malingerers and "time wasters".
About a mosque in Varanasi where both Hindus and Muslims come to say their respective prayers.
I myself do not pray to anything, because I don't believe there isanything to pray to. But I am glad that Hindus and Muslims coexistin peace and tranquility.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to hold Israelaccountable for possible war crimes."Hold accountable" is rather vague — I don't see precisely what theresolution called for.
Meanwhile, Biden threatened to cut off support, and this compelledNetanyahu to agree to open more channels for humanitarian aid intoGaza. This demonstrates that Biden can compel Israel to change aninhumane practice in war.
Whether these changes will end the starvation in Gaza remains to beseen. I would not sell Netanyahu anything on credit.
Australia demands that Israel save pertinent evidence and permit anindependent investigation into the killing of an Australian aid worker
who was in the WCK aid convoy attacked by a drone.
No Labels has abandoned the idea of running a candidate for president.Its director said that between Biden and the wrecker he would vote forBiden.
The biggest US brands of bandages contain PFAS, which can be absorbed directly into the skin.
How much of a dose a person is likely to get from wearing thesebandages, the article does not say, and perhaps no one knows. I thinkit would not be an easy experiment to do. But it would surely be safernot to have them in bandages.
US citizens:call on Bidento direct Medicare to lower drug costs and fight Big Pharma's greed.
If you phone, please spread the word!White House: +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Israel has implemented in real life the most horrible fictional scenario of a bloodbath caused byletting algorithms choosetargets for bombing.
| ♣ | When it came to targeting low-ranking Hamas and PIJ suspects, they said, the preference was to attack when they were believed to be at home. “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” one said. "It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations." | | ♣ | Another said that after the 7 October attacks by Hamas, the atmosphere in the IDF was "painful and vindictive". "There was a dissonance: on the one hand, people here were frustrated that we were not attacking enough. On the other hand, you see at the end of the day that another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians." |
US citizens:callon the FTC to enforce the law and stop supermarket chains from putting massive profits over consumers.
Protect civilians and aid workersor risk losing US support,Biden tells Israel.
That is a big step towards making Israel stop killing them.We now know it,that the cause was a central policy,not mere mistakes or randomness.
Amid the slaughter and with famine looming,Israel’s allies must sayenoughis enough. If not now when?
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
Biden's threat to stop support for Israel led it to make aconcessionto allow aidinto Gaza through Israel.
Whether Israel will really allow all the food, water, medical supplies and other aid that thepeople of Gaza need is something that remains to be seen. We can't take for granted Israelwill sincerely implement what it has agreed to.
However, there is also the matter that we now know from whistleblowers that the Israeli armywas disregarding its obligation to avoidwanton killing of civilians.The US must not tolerate the continuation of this attitude towards causing civilian casualties.
Let's not lose sight ofwhere we want to end up.
New York State is suing JBS, the biggest meat company for greenwashing thattried to pretendit was reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.
US citizens: call on the mainstream media to end their racist and sexist attacks against Georgia DA Fani Willis, who is prosecuting the insurrectionist for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Governor Abbott's inhumane border policies.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to protect Medicaid access for poor Americans.
Everyone: call on Chick-fil-A to stop using polystyrene foam cups.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to stay firm against corporate lobbyists: tax billion dollar corporations.
US citizens: Support the "Unhoused" Bill of Rights.
I dislike the new affectation, the word "unhoused", which appears in the name of that bill. I am glad I have a home to live in, and I wish we made sure that everybody could have one, so I support this plan to help the homeless. But I will not call people "housed" or "unhoused".
Global push for commitment to phase out fossil fuels gathers pace ahead of Cop28.
If this succeeds, it will be an important preparatory step towards avoiding global disaster.
Some progress has been made at the G20 meeting, but it did not reach a phase out.
The leader of the Australian Green Party calls for protests against government policies that cater to fossil fuels and deforestation.
The arch-fascist vows to lock up political enemies if he returns to White House.
In the insane world view he promotes, there is no difference between arbitrary political imprisonment and charging someone with a crime.
He said the reason is that "they are doing it to us," but that is more bullshit: he demanded the same thing in 2016, and there was no move then to charge him with a crime.
In 2021, 16 countries pledged to stop their international investments in fossil fuel, Most of them kept the pledge. The US, Germany and Italy did not.
(satire) New U.S. Army Recruitment Ad Touts Military As Great Alternative To Starving On Streets.
The EU's Digital Markets Act will or would ban, for some large tech companies, some of the worst abuses that they commit using the power over users that they get from non-free software.
It is a good try, but what users really need is free software.
A province of Pakistan has made it a crime for parents to stop their children from being vaccinated for polio and other dangerous diseases.
This is meant to overcome the disinformation that threatens to undo the almost-completed global eradication of polio, and protection from measles and more.
A former head of Israel's highly respected intelligence agency set off a stir by acknowledging that Israel has imposed an apartheid system on the Palestinians.
"Smart" devices typically collect more data about their useds than is required to implement their features.
As usual, for "smart" read "snoop". Instead of getting a "smart device", be smart yourself — and reject them.
Fish around the world are generally getting smaller. Within a given species, the population tends to be smaller than before. Within an ecosystem, larger species tend to be replaced with smaller species.
The article asserts that this is the consequence of what it calls the "Anthropocene" period, but I call the "Obscene" period.
Antarctica warming much faster than models predicted.
This suggest the rising sea will come for you sooner than previously predicted.
New York City is considering a law to save migrating birds from colliding with illuminated glass towers.
One of the insurrectionist's henchmen refused to provide evidence or testimony to the Jan 6 insurrection committee. He has been convicted of contempt of Congress, and may be sentenced to prison.
Will he now be ordered to hand over the dope? I would expect that the committee can no longer receive it, since the Republicans now control the House of Representatives. Justice may have won this skirmish, but the Republicans may have won this battle.
I would be glad to see well-informed comment on these follow-on issues.
Senate Finally Confirms 5th FCC Commissioner After [Republican-imposed] Vacancy of More Than 2.5 Years.
The Labour Party is receiving donations at the highest rate ever, now that plutocrats are donating to it.
I think they recognize that it is now almost as plutocratist as the Tories, but more competent.
The US immigration system uses heuristic (and thus unreliable) computerized translators. Their mistakes put refugees' rights in jeopardy.
British undercover thugs continue the practice of maintaining intimate relationships under false names while keeping their lovers in the dark. But it may be rather different now.
One woman found out about hers in 2020 after 19 years. She was not involved in whatever group or activity he was infiltrating, and he reportedly wasn't directed to get involved with her. He may have been breaking the rules.
After many years he ceased to be in the thug department but continued the relationship under the same false name. I guess he saw no way to tell her the truth, so he was trapped in his own lie.
She and her families are trapped in the secret too.
There is a campaign to demand removal of certain antisemitic word meanings from the Real Academia Española's dictionary of Spanish.
This campaign is foolish and harmful. Yes, those meanings are antisemitic; they express bigotry. Yes, their existence comes out of a long tradition of antisemitism in Spain — naturally it does. People should not those meanings, or any other way to express bigotry.
But that is a separate matter from what words the dictionary should define. To use those meanings endorses bigotry, but citing them in a dictionary does not.
A dictionary should contain all sorts of words and meanings, including those that you or I disapprove of — and if the meaning expresses bigotry, the dictionary should say so. That is part of the dictionary's mission: to document the language fully.
You can't stop bigots from using prejudiced insults by omitting them from the dictionary — that is not where they learn those words. But if they are omitted from the dictionary, we who have not grown up in a milieu of antisemitic hispanophones could not find out what they mean when we want to know.
To start trying to cleanse language by denying or hiding the existence of words and meanings whose usage we condemn is to open dictionaries to culture wars. Then the most powerful political forces will weaponize them. They might be censored by racists, antisemites and Nazis, and sooner than you think. Instead of legitimizing censorship of dictionaries, we had better fight now to protect dictionaries' freedom to fully document language as it is used,
I looked in my copy of the Real Academia dictionary; it does not have the definition of "judío" that the campaign condemns. It is the 1992 edition; perhaps that definition was added subsequently.
Organizations that campaign against hate are now campaigning against Musk and his use of Ex-Twitter to attack those organizations.
We have to conclude that Must is a fascist and suspect that he bought Twitter to use it for hate.
China is considering a vague law to prohibit anything That "Hurts The Country's Feelings".
Since countries do not actually feel anything, the only way that phrase can be interpreted is as a metaphor, so it can be stretched to prohibit almost anything. I suppose that's the purpose of it.
Car manufacturers tell purchasers that they intend to collect wide varieties of personal data. Most say they will sell the data and use it against the purchaser.
I can see why the company would like to get information about the owner's sex life and politics. What I don't see is how they can make the car get that sort of information for them, Perhaps they hope to trade car data with other snooping companies for that data.
The important conclusion of this information is that these companies don't respect you. That leads to the question: how can you stop them from getting data about you. That requires at least a little skill — perhaps enough to find and disconnect the car's antennas.
Modi boasts about "India's democracy" while covering up India's spreading repression of Muslims (and other non-Hindus including Dalits). Other countries support the false front in order to do business with India.
Modi has walled off poor neighborhoods of Delhi and shut all business in them, so that India will look shiny to visiting foreign dignitaries.
Although Muslims, Christians and Dalits are the usual targets of his contempt, any poor person can be a target when that is convenient for him.
Watchdog group sues to remove "insurrectionist" [candidate] from 2024 ballot in Colorado.
The Georgia special grand jury suggested charges against Senator Lindsey Graham and some other prominent Republicans, for supporting the insurrectionist's efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
UK enforcement of the registration rules is so lax that secret owners are in no danger of being punished or hassled.
This applies to ordinary tax evaders as well as Russian oligarchs subject to sanctions because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The UK parliament passed laws a few years ago to require registration of the effective ("beneficial") owner of foreign-owned properties, but left a loophole that defeats the system: when the nominal owner is a trust, it can still conceal the identity of the effective owner.
This is plutocratism at work.
Deadly humid heatwaves to spread rapidly as climate warms — study.
This refers to what I have called "fatal weather."
The Tories have backed down, for the moment, on plans to scan users' digital communications, but the requirement is still in the law they are about to pass.
Perhaps they plan to make another try in a year or two.
Texas Energy Grid Paid Bitcoin Miner $31.7 Million to Stop Working Amid Heatwave.
One sign of US plutocracy is the idea that companies should be paid every time they do what the public needs, rather than be taxed or fined when they do not do it.
The poor are punished; the rich get rewarded.
Big banks are financing US coal power plants, despite a supposed commitment to stop, by lending instead to their parent companies.
The effort to stop lending and insurance for fossil fuel projects is a backup plan, which we try because we can't get Congress to do what really needs to be done: prohibit some of those projects and tax the rest so much that some will be canceled. If it worked, it would be a victory.
Ralph Nader: as second-order unnatural disasters (caused by the effects of the first-order unnatural disasters) spread death and suffering around the world, we must join to crush the power of the corporations that make sure these disasters keep happening.
Nader believes the time is ripe for a left-right coalition to do this, but I think one of the purposes of right-wing disinformation is to ensure most right-wing people, in various countries, are so absorbed with fantasy problems that they can't focus on real problems.
Private equity is investing in causing climate disasters, and profiting from the work to clean them up.
Biden is canceling the fossil fuel leases that the wrecker signed for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
US "university" [calling itself PragerU] spreads climate lies and receives millions from rightwing donors.
Prager you too!
(satire) FanDuel Promo Offers Complimentary $100 Bet To First-Time Gambling Hotline Callers.
African countries are compelled to choose between coping with global heating effects, fighting poverty and paying debts. I suppose the greenhouse emission rate of African countries is small enough that reducing those countries' emissions is not urgent.
The UK has been greatly exercised by the conviction of a nurse for murdering 16 babies in a hospital. Of course, we must prosecute murder; but the 170,000 excess deaths in Britain 2022 ought to be a 10,000 times bigger public concern.
Some thousands of these deaths were caused by Covid-19 but not attributed to it. Some were caused by insufficient funding of the NHS, which the two main plutocratist parties (Tory and Starmer-Labour) have committed to continuing because they refuse to tax the rich even to save thousands of lives,
Users report that Microsoft has installed popups that tell users not to use Chrome.
That is entirely valid advice. Chrome is nonfree software, which implies it imposes unjust control over the user (see fsf.org/tedx). It also has has malicious functionalities.
What I wonder is, does Microsoft single out Google's malware, or does it also warn about malware from Apple, Microsoft and other countries?
Climate crisis could contribute to a global food shortage by 2050, US special envoy on food security warns.
Do you want to have a child now that might starve at age 30? I think it is more humane to avoid that.
Paying prisoners 23 cents an hour to work for private businesses is supposedly justified to teach them job skills so they can get jobs after release. Except that nobody will hire them no matter how well they do the job.
The EU is coming to think that there are now too many wolves in Europe. That could well be true.
I do not consider wolves sacred, and I have no wish to maximize their numbers. Rather, I want to see ecosystems healthy and extinctions avoided. That entails keeping wild populations well away from zero.
Modi has arbitrarily kicked two news organizations off the internet, and has arbitrarily had one evicted from its offices.
Starmer-Labour plans to join the Tories in deregulating housing construction that would release toxic pollution into rivers.
Australia's export of fossil fuels is like selling drugs to "maintain" lifestyle, former [state head fire official] says.
This is so obvious that when officials who are not stupid don't see it we must conclude they are determined not to see. Sometimes the not-see party can be almost as dangerous as the Nazi party.
Former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years over US Capitol attack.
He was one of the ringleaders, so he deserves this sentence, But the fascist leader who they meant to install in power deserves an even longer sentence.
*Twitter accused of helping [Salafi] Arabia commit human rights abuses.
Lawsuit says network discloses user data at request of Saudi authorities at much higher rate than for US, UK and Canada.
American fanatical Christians spent a lot of money to help extremist Christianity take over African countries.
Robert Reich's father set an example by standing up to antisemitic bullies who tried to make him sell his house.
Australia supports Catholic hospitals with public funds while they turn away women who need abortions.
One way to finesse this problem would be to set up an organizationally separate facility for abortions, physically next to the religious hospital but not under church funding or control.
Is painting slogans on a wall, that are meant to criticize China's repression, "art"?
Is painting the regime's own statement, aiming for people to recognize their ironic contradiction with its actions, an effective mode of criticism?
In my view, the answers are "no" and "it's chancy".
I am all for condemning China's repressive dictatorship, as a political act; but in order to qualify as art it needs to present its meaning in a subtle, unobvious way. That's the part that could be art. However, merely intending a text as irony fails to do that. It doesn't present the meaning in a subtle way, because the subtlety is not in the work itself; rather, the artist hopes that it will come up in the viewer's minds only.
As for the effectiveness, it seems that many of the public did not notice the irony and mistook the quotation from the regime for support — and they responded by painting over it with non-ironic condemnation of the regime, thinking that the artist disagreed with them.
You could say that the condemnation manifested itself by ricochet. Maybe that is a kind of success. Maybe.
It seems to me that this art student's heart was in the right place politically, but his artwork calls for an F as art.
Payday Lenders Gave Millions to Republican Group That Backed Supreme Court Suit to Annihilate CFPB.
US citizens: call on businesses that advertise to stop funding election misinformation through their advertising.
US citizens: call on your senators to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuel.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
In January 2020, Wuhan doctors knew that a new disease was spreading fast.China ordered them to conceal this bad news.In my view, whether this outburst was due to a lab leak or to contactwith wild animals was a secondary detail, since neither one wouldhave been culpable. The secrecy about facts was culpable.
Calling for taking control away from "social media" sites over whatwill be recommended to users. Users should be able to choose the recommendation engines they use,and not just among a limited list. They should be free develop newrecommendation engines.This does not necessary mean people, once they know about moreoptions, will choose wisely. The author says she saw an iMonster, andinstead of feeling revulsed, she concluded she wanted one!
(satire) Rudy Giuliani Puts Himself Up For Adoption to a rich family thatcould pay his legal fees.
US citizens: call on Senator Tuberville to stop sabotaging the US militaryin an effort to sabotage abortion.
The judge in a Guantanamo "military tribunal" ruled that sticking food upa prisoner's colon was nothing but torture — and that this torture invalidateshis testimony.These "military tribunals" are meant to pass for valid trials withoutmeeting the criteria. Thanks to Judge Acosta, they are a littlecloser to being treated as real trials.
The idea of choosing officials by lot, as ancient Athens chose some officials,may be interesting.But the officials chosen this way were usually members of a panel. Noone of them had a large amount of power individually. That reducesthe possible downside from random choice.Also, the system assumes that these officials would be chosen from peoplewho would be basically civic-minded. In the US today, many of the potentiallottery choices would be fascists inclined to use their positions to threatensabotage. We could not expect that to work.
Two Ohio thugs noted a woman leaving a store and reportedly shoplifting,and instead of arranging to arrest her, they shot her dead.If she had stolen something necessary for her life, or for herchildren's life, I would have said that the poor have a right to stealnecessities like that. But that point was not applicable if she wasstealing alcoholic drinks. She did not have a right to stealalcoholic drinks.But that does not mean it was a grave crime either.Meanwhile, even though her petty theft was apparently unjustified, it was nojustification for killing her.I disagree with the article's assumption: that we non-pregnant membersof society are less worthy of rights that are those members who arepregnant. Reproducing is not a special virtue, especially now in thedays when overpopulation is likely to kill enough people to reduce thepopulation drastically through suffering.But that detail doesn't affect the overall moral conclusion much.Pregnant or not, mother or not, the thugs killed that woman becausethey saw an opportunity, and that morally makes them murderers.
A study by the US Treasury finds that unions are very good for non-rich Americans overall.
The US airforce is testing versions of future AI-controlled armed dronesto be used in air combat alongside human fighter pilots.I hope the article errs in saying that this AI is similar to theerroneously labeled "AI" that operates today's bullshit generatorlanguage models, because if that is accurate we have no telling who itmight fire at.
One of the dangers of AI-controlled devices that can do things withreal physical effects — even if not armed — is that it may makeclever inventions that could be fatal in ways that the AI would notunderstand, and that no human would be asked to check. This AI isalready demonstrating that sort of creativity which is also potentialdanger. I recommend reading the book The Two Faces of Tomorrow, byJames Hogan. See libgen.rs.
A founder of DeepMind says that AI programs will be good friends and counselors for human beings.Is your idea of a good friend and counselor one that reports oneverything about you to manipulative large companies and governmentstoo? Not mine!
It is interesting that the interviewer presumes that AI-driven carswill be "autonomous" and that they will drive better than the oneshumans drive. They are not at all autonomous — they depend oninternet connections — and San Francisco already knows how badly they mess up in driving.
Perhaps they will drive well someday, when they understand as muchabout driving as humans do. But that is beyond today's technology.
The UK government will warn London cops that evictions by London landlords are likely to be illegal, and perhaps even criminal. Cops have been told to refuse to support the eviction, and arrest landlordswho try certain illegal methods.Hooray!
An appeals court judge who ruled especially harshly againstmifepristone has corrupt links, through gifts to his wife, with the anti-abortion organization that pushed the case. Clarence Thomas's personal corruption sets a corrupt example through all of right-wing US judges.
The NLRB has brought 100 cases against [Starbucks] over anti-unionactivities — but it cannot punish the company.
Firefighters are suing to prevent the UK government from putting any refugeesin the isolated barge in Portland, claiming it is a firetrap.
The UK's ministry of surveillance and tracking pushed to permitmassive deployment of facial recognition cameras around Britain.
Monitors from African countries said that the election in Zimbabwe was not free and fair. Thee candidate who supposedly "lost" said it was rigged.The previous one was not honest either.
Environmental degradation, caused by global heating and other harm to wild ecosystsms, is bringing humans in contact with more animal diseases.Some of them can spread to large numbers of humans.
Planet roasters in Australia are spreading distorted economic figuresto derail the country's conversion to renewable power. They will stop to nothing to continue funding for fossil fuels and nuclergeneration, at the expense of the country and the world.
The Republican-dominated states of Florida, Georgia and South Carolinahave been gravely damaged by a hurricane. Much of the damage is caused by the Republican opposition to curbing global heating. Home insurance has already been mostly discontinued in Florida.
As a result, many if thise whose houses were ruined will loss all.Now I expect similar developments in more states.
Bad mistake: Ex-Tory MP apologises for ancestors' links to slavery.You should never apologize for things others have done for which youare not responsible.
Aside from that, what she did was proper. She acknowledged theancestors' actions, which had been unknown to her until a historiandug them up in old records, and she denounced them. That is the rightthing for anyone to do who has as little responsibility for thoseactions as she has.
It is horrible that people have made death threats against her forthings someone else did long ago. Advocating Tory policies entailsmoral responsibility for them (though not for slavery hundreds ofyears ago), but it doesn't justify threats of violence.
North Carolina judge [who was] investigated for saying racial bias exists [has] filed lawsuit.Right-wing racists will go to any lengths to censor awareness of racismand other right-wing oppression.
The dirty secret behind Tory "crime week": their policies ruined policing.I thought that a Tory "crime week" would be when plutocratist politiciansgo all-out for corruption ;-}.
Republican fanatics are being sentenced to prison for violent threats againstelection workers who might have the temerity to do their jobs honestly.
Amazon has published guides to identifying mushrooms which werewritten by language models that have no intelligence and could leadpeople to poison themselves.Please do not refer to such bullshit-generator systems as "artificial intelligence"!
The Tories let [British finance] run out of control. Now Labour plans to repeat their mistakes.
Investigating 272 blacks who were forced into slavery by the richestCatholics of Maryland, and sooner or later sold to fund the foundingof Georgetown College.Georgetoen college became part of Washington DC when that was carvedout of Maryland.
- Researchers [in Canada] find homeless people more likely to spend lump sum on housing and food and not ‘temptation goods’ such as alcohol.*This study looked at homeless people who were not addicts. Thescientists assumed that addicts may be exceptions.
Vivek Ramaswamy claims he is the only Republican presidential candidatethat isn't bought. It is not clear whether he is bought, or cheating,or buying, or buying the publicity. It may bot matter, because either way he is a right-wing hater.
Joseph Stiglitz: making US democracy function again requires economic reforms that decrease economic inequality.
Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida, muses on the implications of an ocean so hot that people can no longer safely do that.
Florida judge strikes down[DeMentis]-backed voting map as unconstitutional.Of course, he designed it for racist purposes.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) Idenounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles thatpractice it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I considerparticularly important — and I label them like this.
DeMentis removed state attorney Monique Worrell just before shecould prosecutea corruption fraud ring among sheriff's deputies.His objection to her was that she tried to prosecute the mostdangerous of the real criminals — the ones who wear badges.
The right-wingprime minister of Italy has sueda singer for calling her "fascist" and "racist" on stage.I expect that he was right, but I don't have proof to cite. I wish Ihad something to cite to demonstrate the truth of his accusation.Criminal prosecution for defamation is inherently unjust.
The Marion thugs raided the Marion County Record and seized itscomputers, without grounds to do so under the journalism shield law.The publisher has saidthe paper was investigatingthe thug chief for past wrongdoing and that his aim was to derail that investigation.I've seen this issue develop for weeks, but this is the first time Isaw a clear description of the rights and wrongs of it. Without that,I could not usefully post about this.
US citizens:call on the Biden administrationto stand firm against corporate lobbyists and tax billion-dollar corporations.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Venezuela is accused of punishing people horribly based on only a hint ofevidence they were guilty of anything. It is as bad when Maduro does this as it was when Dubya did this toprisoners in black sites and Guantanamo, and in various massacres inIraq.
Some environmentalists contend that building nuclear power plantsis useful for curbing global heating. I think they have been taken in.The article does not make it clear whether they are disputing aboutexisting nuclear reactors or building new one. But that distinctionis crucial.A nuclear reactor takes many years to build and is very expensive. Ifthe aim is to curb global heating, that is an ineffective method.A nuclear reactor is also vulnerable in wartime. It is, in effect, apreexploded nuclear bomb, as regards fallout. Installing one more ismaking extra vulnerability. At the end of its life, it will requireexpensive and slow decommissioning.However, for an existing reactor, the price of construction hasalready been paid, the construction time has already elapsed, thefallout is already there, and the cost of decommissioning is alreadygoing to have to be paid. If you can ensure that the reactor ismaintained so that it won't fail, maybe it is better to keep it running. The US has a history of letting flaws and damage slide.
Republicans in Congress are pushing for the US to invade Mexico,and want to pass laws to make this easy.Biden won't do what they wish, but the ruiner would do it if he iselected again.
The US versus the planet roasters, as they become ever more obduratelyopposed to civilization's survival.
An indigenous group in Australia demands payment for mining of dirt that contains iron ore. Why? Because they consider it sacredand feel very attached to it.Nobody is entitled to more rights than others based on per religiousthoughts. Whatever per origin, whether indigenous or immigrant, andno matter what religion person might practice, the answer has to bethe same: your religious ideas (if any) and practices (if lawful) areyour choice, but they don't entitle you to dominate others.The decision ought to be based on other factors. What are they?This case does not involve any ancient art that would be a treasure of humanity's past and call for preservation.But these factors clearly apply:* Whether the indigenous group owns that land (based on other reasonsthan religion). If so, that must be respected. It seems that theanswer to this is "sort-of but not entirely." * The value of the iron ore to society. * Environmental protection. Mining that iron (like any other mining)could do environmental damage. Often mining companies skip out oncompensating or cleaning up their damage. The local people(regardless of their ethnicity or religion) are entitled to demandcompensation for that, or to block the mining to prevent that damage.
Global heating is enabling formerly tropical tiger mosquitoes to spread into northern Europe, bringing formerly tropical diseases with them.When will we learn to defeat the plutocrats that lobby andpropagandize to make so many problems worse?
A bitcoin miner in Pennsylvania is controversially burning waste coal and discarded tires to generate electricity. This pollutes the airbut cleans land. Is that practice wise or not?It should be noted that only some kinds of cryptocurrency (notablyBitcoin) use the "proof of work" method that entails using lots ofelectric power. There are other methods.If burning waste coal to generate electric power is acceptable, itdoesn't have to be used for cryptocurrency. It could replace otherforms of generation. Thus, the crucial question is whether thatmethod makes more/worse pollution or less/milder pollution. I don'tknow enough to judge the answer to that.
Many UK universities and organizations are sponsored by, or buy from,organizations participating in the systematic brainwashing of theUyghurs.
President Biden: Don't Give Wall Street Control of Our Public Water Systems.Biden flip-flops between opposition to plutocracy and abject surrenderto plutocracy.
"Co-living" is a gentrified,luxury-pushing commercial versionof the co-housing movement.
TheFBI now holds 21 millionpeople's DNA profiles, and is rapidly collecting more.This could be aiming, in the long term, for a collection covering all Americans.
Covid-19 is still dangerous, and infection rates are increasing. Governmentsare neglecting it.
Robert Reich: Biden is turningaway from free trade— and that’s a great thing.[Business-supremacy treaties] have brought cheaper goods. They’vealso destroyed millions of US jobs and caused US wages to stagnate.They have done similar harm to other countries.And the ISDS clauseshave blocked efforts to curb global heating and protect the environment,public health and the general standard of living. And then there is theoil investment treaty.
Burning Man has changed, over the decades, from a reunion of hippiesto a rich people's gathering where some fly in on private jets. Soenvironmentalistsprotested by blocking the road.They call on Burning Man to stop permitting private jets, as well as a fewexcessive forms of consumption of fossil fuels and single-use plastics.It's sad how so many billionaires(and the far more numerous decibillionaires) distort our society.If Burning Man agrees to these demands, some decibillionaires might stay away.
A San Franciscocity commissioner organized a "doom loop"tour to highlight the city's problems. It received a lot of media attentionso he felt compelled to cancel it, and then resign.It turned out he is an executive in a real-estate company. Naturallyhe would perceive civic issues in terms of profit in the real estatemarket. Not the best sort of person to appoint to a municipal officein a city where high rents are devastating low-wage workers, as ellas many niche businesses that would employ them. San Franciscohas a real housing crisis and saying things are just fine will not help.San Francisco needs to find a way to let people use the abandonedoffice buildings and stores as housing — fast! Even if it meansrelaxing or substituting, for these conversions, some codes that applyspecifically to residential buildings. In this case, the perfect isthe enemy of the good.
Climate crisis to create"acute" challengesfor Australia’s economy, incoming [Royal Bank of Australia] governor says.
Depending on online disservices to makeyour records or published worksavailable over time is asking to lose.The only thing you can trust is to have your own copy on your own equipment,and to keep multiple encrypted copies on various backup services that committo keep them for you unless a disaster happens.
France toban girls from wearing abayasin state schools. Abayas are long dresses worn by many Muslim girls.I was astounded to see kameez in the list of Muslim "sectarian"clothing. In India, lots of urban women (not necessarily Muslim) wearthe salwar-kameez combination.This gives me an idea for restoring laïcité without any ban: recruitcouturiers to develop abayas as a fashion, for any and all womenregardless of religion. If that style of dress catches on, you won'tbe able to determine a schoolgirl's religion from her abaya.
Bavaria’s deputy leader faces accusations over antisemiticpamphletpublished 35 years agowhen he was 17 years old. At the time, he was determined to be the author of it.From the descriptions in the article, the pamphlet repeatedly mockedthe holocaust, and that's undeniably antisemitic. But people's viewsoften change from age 17 to age 52. He may not be antisemitic today.As an official, in recent years, he has endorsed various far-rightviews. Even if he has dropped antisemitism, those other statementsare enough to make him a bad person to have as an official.
NHS doctors are now led to work in a gig economy system,withoutlasting relationships with patientsor other personnel.Labour has a plan to change this by applyingfinancial incentives anddisincentivesto doctors. The insistence on making this change "cost neutral" forces thedecision to make the disincentives equal the incentives. But we knowthe NHS personnel need raises. Labour is screwing itself with its decision to bow down to the rich by not taxing them more.
Bernie Sanders urges left to back Bidento stop "very dangerous" Trump.I would urge people to vote for Biden rather than the insurrectionist.
China is trying to erase the Tibetan culture and Tibetans as an ethnicgroup, withforced assimilation.
A scientist who has studied emperor penguins for a career expectsthem to beextinct in our lifetime,due to global heating.
Theloss of sea iceis endangering polar bears in some regions of the Arctic,but in other regions they have adapted to the changes … so far.Whether the species will survive this century somewhere is not clear.Since we don't know exactly what changes will result from global heating,we can't assert with certainty that it will be wiped out. But we alsocannot assert it will survive.We can be sure that more heating makes more chance of extinction.
When a British politician discusses “tough choices”, [person] invariably[reveals] whose side [perse is] really on. A tough choice tends to involveemptying the pockets of those with little, or slashing a serviceordinary citizens depend on.
In any country, the plutocratist politicians are the ones that dothis. Labour's string of "tough choices" shows it has become aplutocratist party. The Tories, formerly the reasonable-soundingplutocratist party, has become the incompetent nutso party, andStarmer has moved Labour into the Tories' old spot. Now Labour iscompeting with the Toriesfor breaking promises to correct horrible problems. The most recentLabour pledge to be dropped is the wealth tax.
In the US, plutocratist politicians since Reagan have allowed dooH niboRto transfer ever more of the working people's previous share of national income to the rich.Progressive proposals to return some of that to thenon-rich always provoke squeals of exaggerated pain from the rich,claiming that that would be unfair and intolerable. The politicianswho heed them do so because they are plutocratist. Clinton, the firstplutocratist Democratic president since a century ago, continued on thatpath, and so did Dubya and Obama.
Biden has made efforts to help the non-rich.I expected another Obama but I was favorably surprised. He would have done more butplutocratists in Congress (including some Democrats)blocked him.
Biden sayswhite supremacy has no place in USafter Florida killings. That shows some moral leadership.
Nonetheless, he is no Bernie Sanders.
However, one difference between political parties in the US andpolitical parties in Britain is that a US party does not have vetopower over candidates for federal office. The voters choose them.That is why we see increasing numbers of progressive Democrats electedto Congress. We can, by supporting them, convert the Democratic Partystep by step into a progressive party again.
Britons can't do that any more in the Labour Party. Starmer's strictmeasures to exclude non-plutocratistsfrom running as Labour candidatesblock that completely, so there is no hope down the Labour path any more.
Compare today's Labour leadership with the leaders thatset up the National Health Serviceand made it work. What a shame.
[Large global] consultancy firm used"power maps" of Australianofficialsto help win government contracts.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to reconfirm GwynneWilcox to another term on the National Labor Relations Board.Republicans are trying to block her reappointment so that the boardwill not have quorum and will be unable to do its vital work.Please call as soon as possible — her reconfirmation will be votedon next week.I saw an online messaging campaign for this, but sending a message toa member of Congress does not allow ordinary email. It requires usinga web form that demands execution of nonfree JavaScript code. Formoral reasons I do not use that form, or recommend it to the public.See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.htmland https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.It is a grave wrong for any government activity to require the publicto run nonfree software co communicate with it.I discovered this problem several years ago, and since then have alwaysasked people to use phone calls to communicate with members of Congress.But I don't recall that I explained the reason before.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
When a British politician discusses “tough choices”, [person] invariably[reveals] whose side [perse is] really on. A tough choice tends to involveemptying the pockets of those with little, or slashing a serviceordinary citizens depend on.
In any country, the plutocratist politicians are the ones that dothis. Labour's string of "tough choices" shows it has become aplutocratist party. The Tories, formerly the reasonable-soundingplutocratist party, has become the incompetent nutso party, andStarmer has moved Labour into the Tories' old spot. Now Labour iscompeting with the Toriesfor breaking promises to correct horrible problems. The most recentLabour pledge to be dropped is the wealth tax.
In the US, plutocratist politicians since Reagan have allowed dooH niboRto transfer ever more of the working people's previous share of national income to the rich.Progressive proposals to return some of that to thenon-rich always provoke squeals of exaggerated pain from the rich,claiming that that would be unfair and intolerable. The politicianswho heed them do so because they are plutocratist. Clinton, the firstplutocratist Democratic president since a century ago, continued on thatpath, and so did Dubya and Obama.
Biden has made efforts to help the non-rich.I expected another Obama but I was favorably surprised. He would have done more butplutocratists in Congress (including some Democrats)blocked him.
Biden sayswhite supremacy has no place in USafter Florida killings. That shows some moral leadership.
Nonetheless, he is no Bernie Sanders.
However, one difference between political parties in the US andpolitical parties in Britain is that a US party does not have vetopower over candidates for federal office. The voters choose them.That is why we see increasing numbers of progressive Democrats electedto Congress. We can, by supporting them, convert the Democratic Partystep by step into a progressive party again.
Britons can't do that any more in the Labour Party. Starmer's strictmeasures to exclude non-plutocratistsfrom running as Labour candidatesblock that completely, so there is no hope down the Labour path any more.
Compare today's Labour leadership with the leaders thatset up the National Health Serviceand made it work. What a shame.
Former member of Belarus "hit squad"to stand trialover disappearances [presumed ordered by Lukashenko].
Environmentalists Owe an Enormous Debt to Julian Assange. Wikileaks revealed how the US twisted many countries' arms to legalize the farming of patented GMOs which promote pesticides that can wipe out all insects in the neighborhood, and to allow foreign corporations to buy their farmland.
Wikileaks also published the secret text of the Pacific Partnership Trance (official name, Trans-Pacific Partnership), which helped the US to refuse to sign it. (How sad that countries such as New Zealand signed it. And recently the UK as well — one last act of lasting Tory sabotage.)
Environmentalists should demand that the US drop charges against Julian Assange. And don't waste time — he may be extradited in October.
The charges against him are meant to establish a precedent for treating journalists as spies, and the US, to get its hands on Assange, used tricks dirtier than those it used to push GMOs.
Parents organized in Free Play Houston have convinced Houston public schools to bring back recess, in which children direct their own activities.
When DeMentis showed up at a vigil for three blacks murdered by a white racist hater, and condemned the killer, the people present booed him for promoting the racism, fascism and Nazism that motivated the killer.
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, even if they also criticize it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important — and I label them like this.
Global heating effects are wiping out the peach crop in the southern US. If only the farmers understood this, they might start voting to curb global heating.
The article's title says "decimated" but that word is an understatement here.
Pope Francis rebuked the conservatives in the Catholic Church for choosing right-wing ideology over the church doctrine.
I don't support Catholic doctrine any more than I do right-wing ideology, but this is a good thing.
Biden Administration Adds Insulin to Drug Price Negotiation List in Major Blow to Big Pharma.
A Ugandan man faces the threat of execution if convicted of "aggravated homosexuality."
The article leaves me wondering what aspect makes it "aggravated". You would think editors would anticipate readers' being left with curiosity.
Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with [misleading description of the abortion ballot question].
An organization in Hong Kong that promotes the Cantonese language has been compelled to shut after its leader published a fictional story about loss of freedom there.
It doesn't surprise me that the story and its author were attacked. Attacking the organization as well may simply reflect using it for that publication. But it could also be an escalation of the campaign to suppress the Cantonese language. That has been active in Canton (Guang Dong province) for years.
The descendants of William Gladstone have apologized for his father'slarge role inBritish colonial slaveryand the slave trade.I think it is misguided to apologize for the actions of one'sancestors. People are not responsible for what their ancestors did,and even less if the ancestors did them centuries ago. To acceptblame for things one did not do is a surrender that people shouldresist. It suggests a desperation that entices hostile people todemand more, as they have done this time.However, those descendants are right to call for reparations forBritain's past slavery. We can all join in calling for that, becauseit does not mean we personally accept blame for it.It was the British government that established policies of slavery andenabled their implementation. And the British government, unlike theindividuals who implemented them, still exists. It can legitimatelybe held responsible today for wrongs it committed before 1834.To try to compensate wrongs committed centuries ago makes sense onlyfor the biggest of wrongs. It makes sense for slavery because thatwas extremely big as a wrong.I have called forthe US to pay reparations for slavery,Jim Crow, and discrimination in federal housing aid during the New Deal.Those latter two were not as big wrongs as slavery, but they weremore recent, so it still makes sense to compensate them.
Some non-thuggish whistleblowers in the US Border Thug Departmentreport that the department has been imprisoning migrants in theArizona desert anddenying them necessitiessuch as beds that they are legally entitled to. And covering it up with falsehoods.
Law and order, including the traditional laws of tribal war, arebreaking downin Papua New Guinea.
Yet another American has been shot dead for trying to enter the wronghouse,down the block from where he lived.
Australia has federal laws to protect whistleblowers from reprisals,but they have beentotally ineffective.Of 70 whistleblowers who have filed for protection, none have been protected.
Everyone: call on stores to stop selling seeds coated inbee-killingneonicotinoid pesticides.If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blankresponse after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; yoursignature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen hastext that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you away to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should makethe text appear.
The Guardian convened45 climate scientiststo consider whether global heating is already unstoppable. Theirconclusion is, not yet, but without strong steps starting soon, it will be.They reported that overall global heating so far fits closely withpredictions, but the models don't predict local extreme weather verywell, and some of that has been surprising.Since local heat waves and disasters cause a substantial part of thedamage, I surmise that damage is rising faster than predicted. Thatincludes food shortages.Conclusion: Dramatic climate action needed to curtail"crazy" extremeweather.
The National Labor Relations Board issued new rules Friday that willmake iteasier for workers to form unions— and much more difficult for companies to stop them.
Peaceful protests are spreading in areas of Syria held by Assad'sgovernment,calling for his removalfrom power.
Atlanta is systematically intimidating activists opposed Cop City byjailing them without valid grounds, then after releaselabeling them as"terrorists"so they will be harassed in various ways.I urge everyone to learn not to feel shame for being persecuted.This can help help you stand up to hate campaigns from whatever side.
US citizens:call on Congressto reinforce minor labor laws.Those laws are usually called "child labor laws", and some of thepeople who may be put to dangerous work when these laws are weakenedare children. But most are adolescents, and they too should beprotected from arduous work. So let's use a fully accurate name.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) Republican Presidential Candidates Undergo Mandatory Genital Checks Ahead Of First Debate.
Ex-Alabama deputy sheriff sentenced to prison for [rape of] woman in his custody.
I approve of the long sentence of 12 years for rape, but given that the convict committed the crime on duty as an official thug, that perhaps calls for a longer sentence.
The article states clearly that what he did was coerce her to have sex with him. The simple and clear term for that is "rape". But the article avoids that term entirely and replaces it with the vague term "sexual assault". Why do this?
In the antiglossary entry linked to just above, I propose an explanation for this.
The Maui wildfires have been tied directly to negligence by Hawaiian Electric Co, which failed to put insulation on the wires, or even to cut the tall vegetation growing near them.
The pylons holding the wires were wooden and decrepit, and did not comply with the updated standard adopted back in 2002.
I wonder if the company's judgment for damages will exceed its market value. If so, Maui will get an easy opportunity to take over the company and make it publicly owned henceforth.
If the company covers all the Hawaiian islands, they should all participate in owning it. The state of Hawaii could buy the whole company from Maui, or the other principal islands could buy shares of the company from Maui.
Splitting up the company is also conceivable. That would be feasible if the facilities operate separately from island to island, which I expect is the case.
On the morning of September 11, 1973, President Nixon was briefed about the planning for a coup in Chile.
His briefing told him that the plans were not then ready to be carried out. But they were carried out that very day. It seems that the right-wing enemies of President Allende accepted the cooperation and help of the US, but made their own decisions about how to overthrow Chile's government.
Australian climate defense activists who protested a company drilling for fossil gas have been hit by court orders forbidding them from speaking about the protest, and demanding they hand over all communications pertinent to the protest. The company also threatens to sue them for the cost of expensive precautionary reactions.
I don't know what actually happened in the protest. In particular, I don't know whether the protesters released a (possibly malodorous) gas or not. I expect that they are opposed to violence against persons and would not have considered releasing anything dangerous.
Therefore, I think that we have here an instance of a technique frequently used by businesses and sometimes governments to repress protesters: overreacting to the protest in a paranoid way at great expense, then suing the protesters for the "damages" the organization did to itself.
Russia accused of intimidating US consulate staff [Who are Russians] with Ukraine war spying charges.
What Shonov is accused of — relaying non-secret information picked up from the public — is a normal part of the work of staff of diplomatic organizations.
The US consulate would have trouble functioning without these employees. But it can't tolerate this repression.
The US could not morally respond by threatening the American citizens and other non-Russians who work for Russian consulates in the US. What it could legitimately do is restrict how many local employees the Russian consulates could employ. If the intimidation goes so far that the US consulates find it necessary to stop employing local staff, the US should bar Russian consulates from hiring any local employees.
An impending disastrous oil spill in the Red Sea has been averted by crowdfunding.
It is admirable that people stepped up to do this. But avoiding a disaster should not depend on that. It is governments' responsibility and they should carry it out.
Some educators propose that college applicants use ChatGPT to make up for the lack of a family containing well-educated people who can help them write the essay in high-quality English. Especially applicants who are not native speakers of English.
The idea was new to me but I'm not opposed to it. However, when the article talks about "how students can use AI ethically", it makes a number of important errors:
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What it intends by that phrase is whether the students are behaving ethically in their use of a language model. It doesn't raise the question of whether the language model treats its users ethically. It starts from the usual attitude that however digital system developers decide to treat their users can only be accepted — that they have the right to impose any conditions they like. Unless they are illegal; but letting laws decide right and wrong is backwards!
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It says that these generative tools are "cheap are free", but I think it means that using them is gratis/ ChatGPT is not free software; it is not even proprietary software. Its software is unreleased, not available to users.
The only way people can use ChatGPT is as an online disservice, because it is SaaSS (service as a Software Substitute). See https://gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html for why that is an injustice to the user.
- It is a misnomer to call these things "artificial intelligence", because they don't know or understand what they are talking about.
The College Board Tells TikTok and Facebook [and other companies] [the test-takers' grade averages] and Details About SAT Scores.
Staff who set up such surveillance, or knowingly allow it, should be prosecuted. By taking surveillance that seriously, we can end it.
The main antisocial media companies are opening the gates to disinformation of all kinds, including Republican disinformation, Russian disinformation and Chinese disinformation.
(satire) Texas Cancels School Over Concerns Extreme Heat Not Safe Environment For Shootings.
The head of the Federal Reserve intends to keep pursuing inflation to the ends of the earth, and never mind the risk of causing a recession.
Inuit on the Arctic coast of Canada are managing a protected coastal zone. That is a useful thing to do: it will delay regional damage from global heating, giving humanity somewhat more time to carry out the long-term global fix: to greatly reduce greenhouse emissions.
However, the article's headline seems to have been written by someone inclined to formulate issues in terms of racial conflict: "The Inuit plan to reclaim their sea."
It is a mistake to describe the Inuit as "the Arctic's first people"; archaeology shows that they spread across the Arctic less than 1000 years ago, replacing an unrelated people we call the Dorset culture.
Was that an instance of colonization? We can't judge that question, since we don't know how or why the replacement took place. But this lack of knowledge is enough to show that we shouldn't model the past based on the roles various groups have played in recent history.
Labour's backtracking on casual workers will weaken the rights of all employees.
The "Labour" party is too right-wing to qualify for that name.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop banks from funding climate disaster, by passing the Fossil Free Finance Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Space junk is dangerous because the objects tend to collide and generate a lot more junk. This is already happening.
There is a danger that the process will eventually cascade and make it too dangerous to put anything into low Earth orbit, or maybe even to cross it. The movie Gravity depicted this disaster, in somewhat accelerated form. The disaster itself would be so harmful to humanity, and so permanent, that the survival of some of those who were in orbit hardly reduces it.
In the quotation from the ESA, does "mitigating the impact of existing objects" refer to "impact" in a physical sense, or in a metaphorical sense? That's amusing as a double entendre. I wonder if it was intentional.
Assuming it means the metaphorical sense, that sentence illustrates the way "mitigate" introduces vagueness. I think we should avoid that word.
The Republican Party's national committee streaming partner is placing ads for the party on nwo-Nazi sites.
Some right-wing legal scholars agree that the insurrectionist is barred from holding any office (including that of president) by the 14th amendment.
The Book of Revelation divides the Bible (and Christians) between an idea of a god that is love and an idea of a god that is hate. Evangelicals mostly worship hate.
The closure of a coal plant in Ohio led to an immediate reduction in hospital visits for heart problems and strokes in the vicinity, and health continued to improve during subsequent years.
Governor DeMentis has abolished protection of many historic buildings in Florida. I wonder why?
Is it simply that developers stand to make a lot of money by demolishing them, and offered DeMentis and Republicans a share of that?
New censorship at Guantanamo: to cover any place other than the courtroom for the "military commission" non-trials requires special permission.
Land privatization and water depletion, 150 years ago, set the stage for the Lahaina fire this year.
Recreating the eliminated wetlands may be desirable, but it won't be easy while sea level is rising. Coastal wetlands will turn into bays. To have wetlands 50 years from now will require making wetlands where there were no wetlands before.
On Ex-Twitter, scammers now buy the "blue checkmark" that used to indicate verification of identity.
The bullshitter leads a cult that systematically teaches its members to distrust everyone but him. That includes their friends, their families, and their religious leaders.
Interestingly, almost 1/3 of them don't trust the bullshitter either, but they are more likely to trust him that trust anyone else.
It is important to monitor SARS-COV-2 in the human population in order to keep track of its mutations.
More careful scrutiny by government regulation is getting rid of much of the supposed carbon offsets that were never credible.
Black Britons convicted of a killing without evidence that they had anything directly to do with it are challenging the verdict.
It may well be true that the practice of convicting people of murder by labeling them as gangsters because they are friends with a murderer is applied most often to blacks. Perhaps the decision to apply the practice is made in a biased manner.
But the crucial problem with this practice is that it is fundamentally not a valid way to determine that certain people are a gang. It is only an unreliable heuristic. Each time it is applied, whatever the demographics of those it is applied to, it is likely to result in a miscarriage of justice. We need not ask what race they are to condemn the practice.
If the practice were valid, thugs could nonetheless apply it based on racist criteria. Many thugs are racist and they often do that. But that is a different kind of issue.
Billboards in some US cities report on record high temperatures "Brought to you big Big Oil."
Philadelphia thugs shot Eddie Irizarry inside his car, then lied about what they had done. A body camera video proved they were lying. One of them has been fired, but what's needed is a prosecution.
Climate defenders call on the participants in the Federal Reserve's policy symposium to pay heed the need to defend Earth's climate.
Various countries have passed or are considering passing laws against the crime of ecocide.
Everyone: call on the Argentine government and its oil company not to build a pipeline in Vaca Muerta.
West Virginia can restrict abortion pill sales, federal judge rules.
This decision is logically consistent, but banning abortion is an injustice in any case, and the more methods it prohibits, the bigger the injustice.
Patrick Braxton, a black man, was elected mayor of a small town in Alabama. The white men who used to be the town government used a series of mockeries of government procedure to deny that he had been elected.
Biden should do what Lyndon Johnson did: send the national guard to put a stop to this. Or perhaps federal marshalls would be sufficient.
US citizens: support the People's Response Act.
This plan, to send people with medically-oriented training rather than training in arresting criminals to help people who are flipping out, is — in substance — what was advocated under the misleading term "defund the police".
The FCC is considering a petition to refuse to renew the license of a Faux News TV station, WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, for its distribution of false accusations in support of the insurrectionist's claims of election fraud.
A court ordered the EPA to finalize standards to limit people's exposure to the carcinogenic chemical, ethylene oxide.
This chemical is also known as epoxyethane, and is related to epoxy resin glue. It is useful as well as interesting. Alas, it is dangerous for humans to breathe, even in small quantities. Leaks from chemical plants can harm the people living nearby.
A study of many scientific articles found that combinations of non-medical measures — typically mask requirements, distancing, and limitations on gathering — were effective for slowing the spread of Covid-19 and saving lives.
In the future we should make sure to be ready to call for use of high-quality masks, such as N95, which protect uninfected wearers as well as blocking the spread from coughs and sneezes.
A Chinese dissident escaped to South Korea by jetski.
I am curious about the escaper's reported name, Kwon Pyong, since that does not fit Chinese pinyin orthography. It would make sense as Korean.
Researchers suggest that the gulf stream current will stop flowing at some point between 2025 and 2095, due to human-caused heating of the Atlantic Ocean.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Civilian Harm Review and Reassessment Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Georgia Republicans plan to set aside District Attorney Willis, who is prosecuting the insurrectionist, as a way to sabotage the case against him.
This uses a new law that Republicans adopted so as to protect racist killers from prosecution.
A project is developing strict rules which banks can adhere to in order to ensure that their operations are committed to ending global heating.
Using Kissinger as an example to explain the evolution of the term "realpolitik" — from objectivity to amorality.
The idea of employing humans to check the output of generative systems for occasional howling errors is not reliable — if such errors are rare, the human checker will become unattentive and let errors slip by.
Biden has a new plan to help Americans trapped in student debt. It replaces the previous plan that the Supreme Court rejected, and works by reducing payment requirements and interest charged.
The US is pressuring Mexico to allow imports of genetically modified US corn.
The main economic effect of NAFTA was to spread poverty among Mexican farmers (a large fraction of Mexicans) by competition from US agricultural products.
Thai parties that have little in common except supporting various sorts of strongmen formed a coalition to block the party that campaigns for more freedom and democracy out of power.
Some kinds of tree leaves could become too hot to be able to conduct photosynthesis, researchers warn. Those species would be wiped out.
Google's experimental "artificial intelligence" search was willing to answer about the "benefits of slavery" and offered a supposedly safe recipe for cooking "angel of death" mushrooms.
I think this demonstrates that it is using a language model, Many refer to then as "artificial intelligence", but that is a misuse of that term, since they don't actually understand the subjects they generate text about or what that text means.
Low levels of sea ice around Antarctica killed most of the emperor penguin chicks, in a large part of that continent. They can't survive if the sea ice melts.
As global heating eliminates sea ice, it may eliminate emperor penguins too. To save them — and to save ourselves — we need to curb global heating.
Ecuador's referendum demonstrates that the people may vote to shut down production in an oil field.
Suggesting that army officers in Niger held a coup because the president had passed a law, which European countries had pushed for, that cut off the flow of bribes to those officers.
I don't know enough to gauge whether this is true, or to have an opinion about that law.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner, is reported to have been on a small plane that crashed, or (some say) was shot down by the Russian army.
I wouldn't take any of this as certain. But if Prigozhin is alive but in hiding for the long term, he won't be able to run Wagner effectively, so for most practical purposes it would be equivalent to his death.
If Prigozhin was indeed killed by that crash, it means the end of Wagner too.
This may benefit Putin by removing apparent instability, but I think it will weaken Putin's in Russia and deny him what Wagner used to contribute to the Putin forces' military strength.
A US appeals court ruled to uphold Alabama's law prohibiting minors from using puberty blockers.
If our goal is that a minor should not prematurely make a permanent commitment before perse is old enough to be quite sure of per choice, clearly we should ensure per right to use puberty blockers, and prevent anyone from imposing a choice on per before perse is ready.
The corrupter has a mafia way of thinking and sought to create a mafia state. If he grabs power again, he will learn from his failures and do it more thoroughly.
DeMentis held a campaign event in Iowa and had Iowa state thugs forcibly exclude Ty Rushing, a reporter from an organization that might criticize him.
The thug leader said this was a "private event". I wonder if that was serious or bullshit. Did the event have a specific guest list, or did it admit strangers as long as they were not Ty Rushing?
Hong Kong's security thugs are questioning relatives of overseas dissidents as a reminder that they could put those relatives in prison at any time.
China's fertility rate has become quite low; this implies the population will decrease.
If only India, the world's most populous country, could do the same, it would start to alleviate the danger of overconsumption and pollution and open the path to rewilding half of the Earth's surface.
(2023) Amazon's new anti-competitive requirement: sellers who don't pay for Amazon to ship their products are now required to pay for not doing so.
Thugs in Colorado shot Sestinee Thompson dead as she tried to flee by car from a confrontation.
They knew she was not the robbery suspect they were searching for, but they wanted to grab her for completeness' sake. That was surely not urgent enough to justify the escalation.
That Ms Thompson had children was irrelevant; that she was pregnant was irrelevant. Her right to life was as valid as yours or mine, no more and no less.
Her actions, as described by the thugs, were very foolish, and perhaps illegal, but they were not violent. (We must not presume thugs are telling the truth — often they do not.)
It is quite possible that the thugs might have treated a white woman differently. Racism, conscious or unconscious, is not unusual. If they had done the same thing to a white woman, that would also have been wrong. We should criticize people for the cases in which they do wrong, not for those in which they do right.
Racism is not what determines whether their actions in this case were wrong. It may be tangentially pertinent in explaining Ms Thompson's over-the-top reaction to being questioned. It may also be partly to blame for chaotic life.
The reason the thugs' actions were wrong is unrelated to the race of the victim. It is that shooting at someone for fleeing questioning or arrest is an dangerous overreaction, with a significant chance of making things much worse. There is no need and no justification for life-threatening hurry.
If thug departments want more people to seek to become cops, they should make efforts to respect the rights of the people they encounter.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of rape despite strong evidence he was not the rapist. It took the UK judicial system 17 years to conclude that this was wrong.
[Prosecutors] had key DNA evidence 16 years before Andrew Malkinson cleared.
What I see here is the effect of a presupposition of guilt, and later a presupposition that a court conviction can't have been wrong.
A vandal attacked a tree in Australia designated by indigenous people SST a "birthing tree". They are fighting a plan to eliminate that tree to build a road which motorists consider necessary.
In my view, the religious feelings and wishes of indigenous people should get the same level of consideration as the religious feelings and wishes of any other people, but not more. Regardless of which group, such feelings do not outweigh everything else in life.
To treat something as "sacred", and extremely protected, simply because some sect calls it so is excessive. We would not be shocked if some neighborhood church, mosque, synagogue, temple or shrine — or tree — were taken by eminent domain if the purpose is sufficient. On the other hand, if the religious object is rare and unusual, or specially old, that would be a stronger reason to preserve it — by rerouting the road, in this case.
Some information crucial for evaluating this case is not present in the article. For instance, how many birthing trees are there per square mile in that region? On the average, how long have they had the status of birthing trees? And how long has that particular tree enjoyed that status?
If there are many birthing trees, preserving them all is an unreasonable demand. If they are few, preserving them is not much to ask, and surely feasible to do.
If that tree has been a birthing tree for 200 years, that makes it rather special, which is a good reason to protect it. But if it was designated 10 years ago, it is reasonable to respond, "Pick another tree."
Saudi Arabia is on a global charm offensive. By blocking critical articles, Vice is helping it.
Let us not forget that Crown Prince Bone Saw is responsible for murdering a journalist.
(satire) Prison Guard Heats Lunch Up Inside 150-Degree Solitary Confinement Cell.
This is outrageous! That lunch did nothing to deserve solitary confinement.
(satire) Florida Students Given Lifelike Dolls To Simulate Responsibility Of Owning Slave.
Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustayi has been sentenced to 5 years isolation from other cinema professionals, and to take a brainwashing course in how to make films that embody the regime's propaganda.
It occurs to me that copyright law is what enables the Iranian regime to use threats to block the showing of Iranian's' films in other countries. Copyright gives the filmmakers the power to deny permission for such showings, and thus makes it effective for the regime to jail them if they don't deny permission.
I can imagine other countries could pass laws to permit showings of foreign films without authorization of the copyright holder or any other entity that "owns" some aspect, if a court finds that a repressive regime compels that entity to deny permission.
Ethiopia's rapid population growth is leaving no room for wildlife.
The next stage will cause famine.
The UK says it will require banks to offer access to cash within a 3-mile distance of a depositor's local community.
This is a good policy in principle, but I fear British banks, with their propensity to close accounts to avoid inconveniences for themselves, will game the rules by implementing them in reverse, like this:
"Dear Sir or Madam, we are compelled to close your account on account of the fact that we have no ATM within 3 miles of the village where you reside. We regret the inconvenience this may cause."
Some restaurants in St Tropez won't let people have a table unless they spent big the previous time.
I can propose a simple solution to this: make sure it not, practically speaking, necessary for customers to identify themselves.
The corrupter has corrupted US Christianity so deeply that when preachers quote Jesus as saying "Turn the other cheek", some supposed Christians ask, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?"
A decade or two ago I met someone who said that to be a true Christian one must be a Liberal Democrat — meaning the kind of Liberals who gave us the New Deal, I could have a high opinion of Christians like that, but that would not convince me to believe supernatural claims such as the existence of gods.
Plutocracy in Britain has pushed 100,000 children into destitution, situations of incredible poverty.
The UAE's state oil company, headed by the same emir who is heading this year's UN climate conference, failed to report its methane emissions to the UN.
Meat industry lobbying is blocking the development of greener alternatives in the US and the EU.
In the US: call on cable providers to drop collecting from all customers for Faux News.
Revealed: WHO aspartame safety panel linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group.
Guideline on Diet Coke ingredient by consultants tied to industry is "obvious conflict of interest" and "not credible".
If aspartame has a very low probability of causing cancer, that may not make much practical difference. I would not automatically presume it does. But I don't have the expertise to judge the question.
Allowing the beverage industry a role in judging it is definitely wrong.
The US government plans to spend a billion dollars researching capture of Co2 from the air.
It is a distant long shot, and not likely to be of real help before it is too late. On the other hand, it is small compared to what real decarbonization will cost. So I think it won't make much difference either way — unless it somehow interferes with serious decarbonization efforts.
But it could do just that. Planet roaster companies will surely get involved in these projects and use them for greenwashing, and to lobby against methods that have a chance of actually reducing fossil fuel consumption.
California has 14.8 billion dollars of pension funds invested in planet roaster companies.
SoCalGas spent $36 million to lobby against a proposal to end gas hookups in new buildings.
Norfolk Southern [Railroad] Spent $1.9 Million in Washington as Congress Weakened Rail Safety Bill.
Charge us with contempt too, say 40 people, if climate activist prosecuted [for carrying signs suggesting jury nullification].
Rich countries are using poor countries' loans to trap them into investing in fossil fuel extraction.
The obvious way to respond is to offer debt forgiveness in exchange for commitments not to do more fossil fell development. I think we could do it, if not for the plutocrats trying to prevent it.
Ecuadorians voted to end oil extraction in the Yasuni national park.
This decision has been a political battle for a long time. President Correa asked the rich countries to pay Ecuador to keep that territory unexploited, saying that a poor country like Ecuador should not have bear the whole of the sacrifice of not selling that oil.
Bernie Sanders: The US and China must unite to fight the climate crisis, not each other.
I agree, that is what both should do. If they both agree, they could both do it. If both agree&hellp
Many New Zealanders have concluded that it is harmful to have a pet cat, because of their depredations on native bird species.
[A large labor union] accuses Labour of "currying favor with big business" on workers' rights.
The London thug department may soon be thuggish less often, as it has rejected the responsibility to take most calls about mental health emergencies.
The department's motive for this was to focus its effort on crime.
It is interesting to compare this with the US, where the criminal justice reform movement campaigns to take thugs off the mental health calls because they sometimes kill the people they were called to help.
The Cambodians who came to the US decades ago included many children who came with their families and never knew Cambodia except as a child. Even if they have committed crimes in the US, it is cruel and wrong to deport them to Cambodia now,
When someone immigrates as an adult, perse knows how to live in per former country. In those circumstances, being deported there is not inherently disaster. It is inherently disaster for people who only know life in the US.
The US has done similar things to people who immigrated as children (lawfully or not) from various countries.
This is never right.
(satire) Guantanamo Bay To Remain Open Indefinitely After Earning National Historic Landmark Status.
The Demerara slave revolt in British Guiana was brutally crushed, but ultimately it led to the abolition of slavery.
(satire) England's World Cup Success Inspires New Generation Of Young Girls To Become Hooligans.
Tropical mountain treelines are moving uphill at around 3 meters per year, and accelerating.
In temperate zones they are moving only 1 meter per year.
The 1973 coup against President Allende, who tried to combine socialism with human rights and democracy, was orchestrated and supported by Republicans in the US and Tories in Britain.
This taught us to expect violence from supposedly democratic right-wing parties.
Wheels of parmigiano-reggiano cheese are now labeled with RFIDs saying where each one was produced.
I don't see anything wrong in labeling wheels of cheese, which are not a retail product, with something printed. Or even with an RFID, if it is present only at the wholesale level. But if there is any chance an RFID can get into something sold to a retail customer, it must come with directions for how to remove it. Tracking individuals even as a byproduct is unaccpetable.
If you want to be tracked, move to China!
Ten years on from the slaughter of protesters in Cairo, [General al-]Sisi's record is even grimmer.
Exiled Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko was warned Putin would try to have her assassinated. Recently she became strangely ill. German prosecutors are investigating this as a possible murder attempt.
Accusing the Putin forces of committing ecocide by causing toxic industrial chemicals, and toxins from weapons, to leak into Ukraine's ecosystems and more or less poison them for a long time.
The 5th circuit court of appeals ruled to put an end to easy access to mifepristone and thus the means to have a medicated abortion.
The 5 circuit includes Louisiana, Mississippi and part of Texas. The senators from those states are Republican, and due to the Senate's rule that judges appointed to that court must have the approval of at least one senator from those states, the judges on that court are right-wing extremists.
Therefore, right-wing extremists generally use those states to file their cases.
I hope that abortion rights activists continue to be able to obtain mifepristone pills and mail them to women who need them. But it may now be more difficult to do this.
Senator Manchin has announced an "unrelenting fight" against the survival of world civilization and non-rich Americans. He has already announced that he may leave the Democratic Party. This did not surprise me, since his views are in the range of the Republican Party.
In November 2022, we rejoiced that the Democrats had picked up a seat in the Senate and had clear control of it. But that was a mirage. The other fake Democrat, Sinema, has already left the Democratic Party. We have succeeded in exposing Republican sleeper agents, but with their exposure, the Republicans will effectively control the Senate through 2024.
US citizens: call on Citi executives to stop destroying Amazonia and warming our planet.
Muslim fanatics in Pakistan accused some Christians of blasphemy, so other Muslim fanatics attacked Christian churches.
In the US and Europe, we see Christian fanatics attacking mosques. Humanity would be better off if we could put an end to fervent belief in any religion.
US Jews urged [by Israeli academics] to condemn Israeli occupation amid Netanyahu censure.
Here is the Israeli academics' petition.
AIPAC, which claims to campaign in the US for support for Israel, has shifted completely to campaigning in the US for support for Israel's nondemocratic right-wing.
For years it has campaigned in the US for support for the US antidemocratic right-wing.
But that was not hostile enough.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban assault weapons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Governor Dismantle put people in charge of Florida's New College to chop down all its principles and rules to bury them in an anti-woke box.
Many of the faculty have already left.
I would guess that most of the faculty, and most of the students, will not return next year, and the college may be unable to continue operating at all except as an empty shell. But I think DeMentis will call that success.
The full text of the Georgia indictment against the corrupter and his henchmen.
Alas, this website blocks the Tor network.
Afghans studying in UK universities face the threat of being deported to Afghanistan, where the Taliban will surely find reasons to consider them enemies.
Private equity has its sights on [Britain's] NHS.
It can't be coincidence that the Tories are holding the doors open.
90% of Great Lakes water samples have unsafe microplastic levels. But experts say damage can be reversed if US and Canada act quickly to stop new plastics from entering lake system.
Salafi Arabia and Iran are really moving towards peace.
It is a shame that the United States did not help achieve this, and that it instead boosts China's influence. China will surely use that influence to maintain hell on Earth. But we can't blame China for boosting its influence by doing something good for once.
If Salafi Arabia can reconcile with Iran, is there a chance that the US can do so?
Iran's government is repressive, generally in the name of its repressive version of Islam. The repression targets women in particular, but also targets everyone's religious freedom, including non-Muslims and any Muslims that want to convert to some other religious camp. But the US has no influence to change this. General nastiness towards Iran will not help.
The main real complication is about renewing the non-nuclear deal that the saboteur in chief canceled. If there is any chance to do this, the US must try its best. However, it must emphasize the positive side more than the negative side.
My approval of reconciliation between Salafi Arabia and Iran does not mean I condemn those governments any less than before. They are despicable and I wish they were both overthrown (though the US should not try to overthrow them). But that doesn't alter the fact that the world is better off if they are not fighting each other.
San Diego has escalated the war on homeless people by arresting people caught sleeping outside. However, the city offers them no alternative. Evidently this is an excuse for harshness against a scapegoat.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Republican plan to destroy Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to save the PEPFAR program which gives AIDS medicines to poor countries.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The decision not to sound the sirens in Lahaina for the fire was made for a rational reason.
This leads me to wonder how the warning system (and others like it) could be improved so that it could safely be used for all kinds of disasters.
Names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors posted on rightwing websites. This was evidently intended to threaten and intimidate anyone asked to consider, in the future, whether right-wing fanatics have committed crimes and should be prosecuted.
Invasive species of grass provided this year's Hawaii wildfires with more fuel than ever before. The state needs to mostly get rid of them. Perhaps farming animals in those regions would help.
In their most desperate hour, Maui’s residents may lose their right to water. Agribusinesses have been taking control of the island's water for years, and the inhabitants have been suing for years, but disasters are opportunities for big businesses.
Yellowknife, the capital of Canada's Northern Territories, is cut off by wildfires.
So far, the province is evacuating various small towns, but if the fires come closer to Yellowknife, it will have to evacuate that city. It won't be easy to do that by air.
It would take 100 trips of an medium-size airliner to evacuate the whole population of around 20,000 people, but that is assuming people take no more than what you could bring on a commercial flight. People evacuating, perhaps forever, will need to bring more than that.
The evacuation of Yellowknife should not wait.
Canada is doing everything possible to prevent Yellowknife from being destroyed by fire, but nowadays it can't be sure of success.
This is a big change caused by global heating. It used to be that we could count on fire crews to protect substantial towns. It required a big effort, but they knew reliable methods to use and would not fail.
Nowadays, due to global heating, that big effort may not do the job. It may be that nothing can do the job.
A wildfire on Tenerife that is causing evacuations of thousands from their homes is "beyond our capacity to extinguish," according to the regional government.
Fires that civilization cannot extinguish indicate a new level of disaster, caused by global heating.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to sue the fossil fuel companies for lying to the public about the danger of climate disaster.
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case Moore vs US about whether a wealth tax is constitutional.
US citizens: call on the Senate to move quickly on judicial nominations.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
In a Greek town that was devastated by a wildfire in 2018, Christy Lefteri found that people sought small and proximal causes or enemies to blame for it, in a desperate effort to avoid confronting the great enemy: the planet roasters.
Freedom of speech, under the US First Amendment, does not cover the words used to carry out a crime. It does not cover setting up criminal conspiracies, perjury, fraud, or intimidation of witnesses.
Therefore, freedom of speech is not a defense for the crimes that the corrupter/insurrectionist is charged with, or the ones he might commit now.
Biased Bank of England blames pay for inflation, never profit.
Data suggests prices are rising even though production costs are flat. Yet wages remain policymakers’ chief concern.
This makes evident the bias that Robert Reich pointed out for the US a year ago. I must conclude that central banks have an ulterior motive: to knock workers down.
US funds that could reduce use of fossil fuels are being directed towards projects for carbon sequestration, which is unlikely to do any good.
On the challenge of systematically preventing deaths from heat in Phoenix as global heating steadily turns up the world's thermostat.
Eating meat, and raising cattle, are associated in the US with masculinity. Big Food takes thorough advantage of this.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "indigenous" 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 promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. That article is one of the exceptions.
10 or more driverless taxis on Vallejo Street in San Francisco blocked traffic on that street for 15 minutes, simply by stopping in the street. All the human drivers in cars on that street were stuck.
The company's explanation makes it clear that these cars are not "autonomous" — they depend on receiving orders via cellular data networks.
The possibility of stopping traffic is, of course, a pain in the neck, and people are right to point out it could be dangerous if an emergency occurs. But I see that as the secondary danger, because improvements in technology will tend to correct it over time.
The biggest danger of automated taxis is that of massive surveillance: tracking the passengers because they must identify themselves to pay, and recognizing people on the street using facial recognition. Improved technology will tend to make these dangers worse.
A drought has limited the number of ships passing through the Panama Canal's locks each day to 32 instead of the expected 36. A backlog of ships is building up.
This problem is probably related to global heating, which means it will get worse over the years, like so many others.
Vice Media made a deal for funds from Salafi Arabia and began censoring stories that its ruler might dislike.
No milk, no eggs, small hope: fears rise for Sri Lanka’s malnourished children.
I've been told that Sri Lanka's economic collapse was due to a government policy that made farming uneconomical, but I can only consider that a rumor. Can anyone show me reliable information?
The men and women of the former Afghan army must hide from the Taliban and may be reduced to begging for food.
Thousands of Afghan judges and legal staff remain at risk post-Taliban takeover.
Abraham Lincoln pointed out that no one who proclaimed the "benefits" of being a slave has ever demonstrated sincerity in that belief by asking to be a slave.
(satire) New Florida School Curriculum Requires Students To Keep Eyes Shut Tight All Day Until Safe At Home.
[purported] AI detectors tend to be programmed to flag writing as [LLM-generated" when the word choice is predictable and the sentences are more simple. As it turns out, writing by non-native English speakers often fits this pattern. So their work tends to be falsely flagged.
The article describes the systems these students are accused of using as "AI", but that is a confusion.
American Atheists claims victory for removal of “In God We Trust” from Mississippi's standard license plate.
Resistance to pressure in the UK to use surveilled digital payments is found in various groups, including young people living on limited incomes and foreign visitors, as well as the usually cited group (old people who find digital technology confusing).
Alas, the article doesn't mention the group I belong to: people who value privacy and understand that the way to prevent personal data from being misused by companies is not to allow companies to collect that data.
The UK needs a political campaigning group to demand laws requiring that certain important kinds of stores accept cash.
Last time I had a connection in Heathrow Airport, I wanted to buy a snack from a store which accepted only tracked payments. Since that store would not accept my money, I bought something else from another store.
The Georgia charges of election fraud target the insurrectionist's lawyers and the heavies he sent to frame Atlanta election officials, along with the insurrectionist himself, acting as a conspiracy.
The Musk Ox has driven half the climate defender voices off of Ex-Twitter.
Given what he has said, I expect he considers that success.
The US ambassador to Australia is suggesting the possibility that the US will give Julian Assange a plea bargain.
Whether that corrects the injustice of the charges against him depends partly on how much more time he would have to spend in prison, but Alas on what he would have to plead guilty to, and whether than ends up criminalizing journalism (which conviction the current charges would do).
US citizens: call on the Senate and the Department of Justice to investigate the gifts Clarence Thomas has accepted.
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The insurrectionist now faces charges in Georgia of trying to steal the election there.
People have posted references to the complete text of the indictment at a page on documentcloud, a site that doesn't work without JavaScript. For moral reasons I can't refer people there. Can someone please send me a URL where the text is accessible from the Free World?
Young plaintiffs in Montana won their climate lawsuit, as the judge ruled that Montana's prohibition on considering likely future climate damage when evaluating development projects violates their constitutional rights.
9% of employees in Britain are denied their workers' rights because the state does nothing to punish their employers for doing that.
Similar problems happen in the US, including theft of wages, denial of sick leave, and exploitation in the gig economy.
The traditional reason has been that elected politicians listen to what the employers want. However, the California referendum shows that big tech companies have the power to mobilize voters to vote to exploit these workers so that they can enjoy somewhat lower prices as customers for gig platforms.
Since some of the benefit of paying the low wages is kept by the gig platforms, the net benefit goes to the wealthy, and the people overall would be wise to support the higher wages.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the FATCAT Act to tax private jet travel.
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US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.
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US citizens: call on Congress to permit televising the trial of the insurrectionist for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
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US citizens: call on the US government to protect Americans squeezed by poverty by regulating digital payday lenders.
US citizens: call on the Smithsonian to add coverage of the effects of the nuclear weapon used on Hiroshima to its exhibit about the airplane that dropped it.
Concealed gun licenses and homicides rise in tandem.
In other words, the evidence says that more people with concealed guns does not prevent or discourage killings with guns.
The marine heat wave in Florida has spread around the Caribbean, and so has massive coral bleaching. Some of the corals are dying immediately.
With 1/4 of marine species depending on coral, we are seeing a mass extinction actually happen. This heat wave is not killing all the world's coral, but there are surely species of animals, dependent on coral and endemic to the Caribbean, that are becoming extinct now.
The British refugee prison barge in isolated Portland must be emptied due to the discovery of deadly legionella bacteria.
The famous Tintin series of graphic novels from Belgium included adventures in the Belgian Congo, and they depicted realities of colonization. There have been demands to censor the books over that.
When it comes to judging Belgian colonialism, we need not bother thinking of Tintin. The realities of the Congo were oppression from beginning to end. Initially, the Congo was King Leopold's personal possession, and he treated the inhabitants so cruelly that even the main European colonial powers (exploiters themselves) were ashamed of it. That took some doing.
We can't change the past, but that part of the past calls for vigorous condemnation.
The question here, though, is whether to attack the fictional Tintin books today as a stand-in for the real exploitation of real people in the past.
The passages criticized in the article clearly depict aspects of the colonial system. Whether they were specifically vicious, or merely illustrated aspects of a system which was vicious overall, depends on the specific context, which the article does not go into.
Be that as it may, to try to "sanitize" Tintin by falsifying the parts that refer in passing to the colonial system would be pointless damage, that would not do any good against present and future injustice, let alone past injustice.
What could do good is to add an appendix to point out the glimpses of the colonial system in the story, and give the start of an overall picture of the oppression that those glimpses showed parts of. Today's readers could learn something important from that.
Most US doctors are now employees of businesses, in many cases very large private-equity exploitationist businesses. And these businesses decide whether a patient gets to see a doctor at all.
The article's main topic is that some of the MD employees are responding to this by unionizing. I applaud that — but that won't necessarily help the patients.
It may not help the doctors at the deep level, because the corporate power that stops doctors form treating patients properly is unbearable to many of them. They quit, or they become mentally ill, and some commit suicide.
We need to restore management by people committed to medicine rather than profit, and likewise break up the large chains. But how?
One way is to establish a national medical system that will cut the profit out and thus provide medical treatment to everyone.
Doctors and patient families say HCA hospitals push [patients into hospice].
Staff are sent to convince patients, and those making choices for patients, that treatment is futile and they should give up on aiming for survival.
San Francisco approved driverless taxis for commercial service, ignoring objections that they drive over fire hoses and cut crime scene lines, and also delay various sorts of emergency vehicles.
They also do lots of surveillance. And since you can't hail one on the street, or get it with an ordinary phone call, they surely imitate Guber's injustice by identifying the customer and making per run nonfree software.
CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search.
This is an atrocity to records of the past. It is bad for secondary reasons too, as the article says, but the harm to society is the principal issue. I hope these pages are all saved in archive.org.
Google ought to provide instructions for new sites about how how they can obtain, in some other way that deletes nothing, whatever SEO benefit (albeit small) they might have obtained by deleting anything.
The government of Cyprus has taken another try at condemning David Hunter to life imprisonment.
Gordon Brown [ex-PM of UK] calls for Taliban to face crimes against humanity charges; urges UK and allies to impose sanctions on Afghan regime over its "brutalisation" of women and girls.
That policy is a massive denial of human rights. But those responses are less effective than one might hope for — especially on Afghanistan. It is not clear to me that they would do any good.
The movie Barbie is end-to-end advertisement, via product placement.
Product placement has corrupted movies for decades.
"Nature needs money": Lula tells rich countries to pay up and protect world’s rainforests.
Police in England and Wales will pilot project to [reduce] sexism and misogyny.
The plan is to use psychological knowledge about what is effective.
When Alito and most of his colleagues were trying to secure their confirmations to the high court, they promised the Senate Judiciary Committee they would adhere to ethics laws from Congress that regulate justices’ acceptance and disclosure of gifts, limit their outside employment income, and mandate recusal in some circumstances.
Now Alito claims the Senate has no right to set ethics requirements for the Supreme Court.
(satire) Study Finds U.S. Employees Waste 2 Million Hours Annually Spending Time With Friends, Family.
Targeting Trans Kids, Florida School Board Requires Parental Approval for [any students to use] Nicknames.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act.
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Fort McMurray, Alberta, was built to extract oil from tar sands. In 2018 it was engulfed by a wildfire caused by the global heating it had helped to cause.
If the Tories can't send boat people to Rwanda, they want to send them to Ascension Island in the South Atlatic: over a 1000 miles from Africa or South America.
In addition, they plan to adopt the cruelty of Australia's right-wing government, which sent people to the exile island of Nauru and would never let them go to Australia. (I think most of them have been given asylum in other countries.)
The Tories plan to do likewise, so that the people sent to Ascension Island would never get a hearing for asylum in Britain.
The US has adopted a similar system of sending asylum seekers to Mexico unless they could afford to use one of the limited authorized ways for a refugee to enter the US — which are difficult for people from poor countries to use.
Thus we see the principle that people who are denied human rights in their own countries should be able to get asylum in other countries being chipped away almost to nothing.
An AI system has proved capable of guiding airplans to avoid making contrails.
This is a good thing to do because contrails add to global heating.
I categorize this system as artificial intelligence because it understands a limited field in a way that has been validated. It understands how to avoid making contrails.
Polar challenge: as the sea ice melts, can countries come together to protect the Arctic Ocean?
Sunrise Outlines President Biden's Climate Emergency Powers. Now if he would only use them.
Supposed "AI" that generates recipes generated one which made chlorine gas.
I can't tell for certain, but this looks like yet another bullshit generator that can come up with things that look smooth but doesn't really know or understand its subject.
(satire) Amazon Unveils Giant Camera That Tells Users What To Do.
Subsequently Amazon announced it was moving production to China, anticipating a demand for hundreds of millions of units from the Chinese Communist Part. ;-{.
(satire) America's Foreign Policy Forces USA Women's World Cup Team To Intervene In Japan-Sweden Match.
I'd say the satire was buried just a little too deep. It took me a few lines to see it — but when I did see it, I laughed.
Six ways Biden's historic climate bill has succeeded — and fallen short.
The shortcomings are not Biden's fault. He had to negotiate a compromise with senators working for plutocrats, including planet roasters, and Senator Manchin was not the only one.
I criticize Biden for weakness on other decisions, including some that are climate-related, and he is certainly no Bernie Sanders, but not for this compromise. I don't see a basis to conclude that anyone else could have done better on this.
- From the strain extreme heat puts on your heart to the damage it may do to your mental health, not to mention the increased air pollution, the forecast [from global heating] isn't good.*
Robert Reich explains the elements of fascism and demonstrates that the insurrectionist fits all of them.
A survey of students of perceptions of their freedom of speech found that the vast majority feel free to express their opinions.
The survey is useful but it could have been worded more carefully. The question asked whether students felt free to express the opinions they happen to hold. For the students who answered yes, it could be that they feel no pressure about what opinions they express.
But it could be that they feel free to express their actual opinions because they agree with the majority.
We would get a clearer and more reliable picture of students' percieved range of freedom to express opinions by asking them, "Would you feel free to express opinion A, supposing you held that opinion? What about opinion B? Opinion C? Opinion D? … Opinion M?" It would state a list of various opinions that students might conceivably hold, and find out which ones are safe to express in their milieu.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Chaco Canyon by rejecting HR 4374.
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Nixon supported a plan for a military coup in Chile in 1970 to prevent Allende from becoming president.
The coup attempt failed, but killed the head of Chile's armed forces, General Schneider, who would have opposed any coup. This probably paved the way for Pinochet's coup in 1973, which also had US support.
For more information.
US citizens: call on President Biden to end the reliance on fossil fuels.
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Prosecutors may not need to show that Trump knew he had lost the election. That is because of the "disruption of an official proceeding" charge for the Jan 6 insurrection.
After the peace deal between Ethiopia and Tigray, some border areas of Tigray are still occupied by Ethiopian troops. So are areas that the peace deal assigned to Ethiopia but whose inhabitants are Tigrayan. The Ethiopian army blocks aid supplies in these areas.
Republican Death Star Plan to Kill the Planet. To vote for any Republican in 2024 is to vote for an across-the-board attack on climate defense for the sake of polluting businesses.
The comparison with the Death Star is not strictly valid. As people have pointed out, global climate disaster will not destroy the planet Earth itself. It will wipe out most species but surely not all life. I expect that some humans will survive, albeit in low-technology societies and with short life spans. In a million years, life will diversify again.
But the disaster could easily wipe out technological civilization and cause the permanent loss of history and culture. Carefully printed books may survive if people recopy them every few hundred years, but what could they write on? And who would have time to spare for this?
Another background issue on which I disagree: Freedom can be taken away either by selective enforcement of rules that protect it, or by replacing them with rules that oppress. To ask which method is the more dangerous today is a foolish question; Republicans use both. They are practiced and adept at combining the two methods: they change rules and laws to facilitate oppressive selective enforcement. They have done this for voter suppression, for preventing prosecution of uniformed thugs while prosecuting poor people at every opportunity, and for censorship of schools and libraries.
The overall point of the article is valid notwithstanding these side points.
Asylum seeker who escaped from Iran says Dorset barge will be another "jail".
This might seem like an exaggeration, because the articles which say where the barge has been moored don't explain the implications of "Dorset" and "Portland". They expect readers to be British and know already.
Portland is an island which trains don't reach. It is in Dorset, a mostly rural county whose population is under half a million people. Hardly any of the refugees will know anyone there.
There are buses to Weymouth on the mainland, but it may take a long time to walk to a bus stop from the dock. Weymouth has a train station, but it is a long way from there to London or any other large city. Once there it probably takes an hour to reach whoever the refugee wants to see.
I cannot access the timetable web sites, because they impose the use of nonfree Javascript, but I suspect it is not feasible to go to any large city and come back in a day. In effect, the refugees forced to live on the barge will be quite isolated from everyone they know, including friends and support organizations.
This is a gratuitous cruelty, since it would have been perfectly easy to put the barge in a less isolated place. I am sure this was an intentional part of the "hostile environment" which is the stated basis for the UK's policies towards people who are waiting for asylum hearings or come from countries too unsafe to deport anyone to.
The US electric utilities' lobbying group is lobbying against stricter pollution limits for electric generation.
An appeals court insisted that Starbucks must rehire workers that it fired as retaliation for unionizing.
Some Florida schools will not dare teach entire Shakespeare plays because of DeMentis's censorship law.
(satire) Ron [DeMentis] Announces He Will Live As Slave For One Year To Prove It Not Bad.
Police withheld evidence making man's rape conviction unsafe, says UK court.
After 17 years in prison, he was released because DNA evidence showed someone else committed the crime. However, given a fair trial, he would not have been convicted at all.
A pandemic is not just a disease — it's a political, social and economic crisis fueled by inequality. HIV and more recently Covid-19, laid bare that inequality doesn't just appear. It's human-made. As the head of UNAids, Winnie Byanyima, put it recently: "Inequalities are a policy choice. They are choices our governments make."
The article reports that, in countries that criminalize male-male sex, men who do that are twice as likely to have HIV as elsewhere.
Who decides to make inequalities? Billionaires, using their money to brainwash people so they can get more power to impose more inequalities to get more money.
Why the idea of brokering peace in Ukraine makes no sense at present.
I've stated the same conclusion all along.
Britons have become so mean that many of us think poor people don’t deserve leisure time.
The same is true for many in the US.
Idaho Republicans Are Directly Asking Hospitals for Abortion Records.
This is for the sake of making persecution impossible to avoid.
A study comparing the provinces of Indonesia found that level of poverty and level of inequality are separately correlated with higher rates of crime.
[Clarence Thomas] may have violated US law by not disclosing 38 vacations paid for by wealthy friends, ethics experts say.
A wildfire in drought-struck Hawaii destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, which dates to before the unification of the islands.
Ironically, the immediate trigger was the approach of a hurricane which was close enough to send strong winds but not close enough to bring rain that might have put out the fire.
A man clearly inspired by the insurrectionist announced plans to assassinate Biden and other officials, and had the means to try, was shot and killed by the FBI in an effort to arrest him.
I wonder what caused this arrest to turn fatal. He may have acted so as to make that necessary, but we can't take that for granted.
Winter heatwave in Andes is sign of things to come, scientists warn.
Human-caused climate disruption and El Niño push temperature in mountains to 37C, almost human body temperature. This could wipe out many species.
US citizens: Denounce Governor DeMentis for trying to turn the history of slavery inside out.
After last week’s surprise coup in Niger, the Russian military group Wagner is taking advantage of the chaos and anti-French sentiment, says journalist Garé Amadou in Naimey, while ordinary Nigerians are preparing for the worst.
Italy's government, which on many issues is right-wing, approved a left-wing windfall profits tax on banks so as to cut other taxes and help people who are paying mortgages.
July was the hottest month since records began, and was 1.5°C above the preindustrial average.
To reach that level of heat, even temporarily, shows we are coming close to disaster.
Progress on slowing deforestation [in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil and Colombia] could boost climate efforts, say experts.
Europe is leading the way in decarbonizing the use of ships, with governments pushing for change. So far, not many ships use electric power, but the change is profitable so more will follow.
Ohio voters rejected the Republicans' special rush referendum which asked them to make it harder for future referendums to be held or or adopted.
Republicans especially wanted to block a scheduled referendum on legalizing abortion and a proposed referendum to put an end to the gerrymandering that enables Republicans to control the state legislature with a minority of votes.
Muslims in Sweden think that there must be "boundaries" to freedom of expression, and these must include criminalizing burning a Qur'an.
Burning a symbol of something you condemn is a form of protest that everyone is entitled to. That's why the US Supreme Court invalidated the law that used to criminalize burning the US flag. Burning it is a symbolic act of denunciation of the US, not material damage to the United States. Likewise for burning any religion's holy book, or Mao's little red book, a copy of the Bill of Rights, a copy of a Microsoft software license, a copy of the GNU GPL, or any text that represents something you oppose.
Where Muslims are in charge, they usually protect their feelings by censoring any criticism of their religion. They label criticism of Islam as "blasphemy" and punish it very severely — in some countries with death. This violates the human rights of people with certain views.
Where Muslims are in charge, they don't respect religious freedom either. Many countries which make Islam the established religion punish any Muslim who tries to stop being a Muslim. In Malaysia, the law simply says that people of Malay race are Muslims whether they like it or not. This too violates the human rights of people with certain views.
We need more respect for human rights, not less. Sweden must not use "hate crime" as an excuse to repress condemnation of Islam.
Nor is it legitimate to claim that an act of symbolic condemnation "endangers national security". How could that ever happen? If Muslims (or any other group) threaten to attack the nation in revenge for a symbolic act of condemnation, they are the ones threatening national security, not the people they demand to repress.
Many US states are reviving the harsh penalties of the War on Drugs, and worse, in an effort to reduce the underground use of fentanyl.
Relatives of people who died emotionally tend to direct their grief into revenge against targets of opportunity, and I think this is an example of that tendency.
These laws are unlikely to reduce use of fentanyl, but will cause a lot of avoidable secondary suffering.
The way to reduce the use of fentanyl and other addictive drugs is with harm-reduction policies.
Air pollution linked to rise in antibiotic resistance that imperils human health.
As air pollution as increased, so has the amount of resistance — in every country.
Resistance is also increased by misuse of antibiotics.
Niger Niger: thousands gather for rally to cheer generals who led coup.
Some carried Russian flags as well as Niger flags. That confirms that this rally was not a grass-roots expression of public opinion. It confirms that the generals are allied with Wagner, which also supports coup-installed governments in neighboring Mail and Burkina Faso.
Wagner may have suggested the coup in Niger and encouraged the generals to organize it.
Wagner is a conventional military force and Ukraine has shown it be defeated by conventional military force. It was sent to serve Putin's wish to get more global power by military means, but it is officially a private mercenary company, not the Russian army. There is no reason not to send a Western force to operate ground-attack aircraft and heavy weapons to help defeat it. But given the hostility in the region toward France, the former colonial power which is accused of continuing neocolonial exploitation there, it would be wise not to include French troops.
(That article includes lots of other pertinent information.)
To prevent atrocities, it would be important for the force to have people from Niger as advisors, and consult them about each proposed attack to make sure the target is not a wedding or a family. American soldiers, even with strict orders and good will, can't always distinguish correctly. I expect that no one else can do better.
The governments sending that force must firmly resist the temptation to convert it into a counterinsurgency battle afterward against the predatory Islamist gangs that threaten all the countries in that region. They are a very different problem, and much harder, and Western countries tend to do it very badly.
The judge in the insurrectionist's trial, for trying to use fraud and force to overturn the 2020 election, gave him release conditions which included not threatening witnesses. Since then, he has threatened witnesses several times.
Robert Reich says, and I agree, that he should be jailed now for this.
I must take issue with one of his points that may mislead readers. If indeed 400,000 defendants in the US are in jail pending trial because they "didn't meet a condition of their release" — and I take Reich's word for that, it doesn't imply what it sounds like. For many of them, this had nothing to do with their doing anything wrong — they simply did not have money to make bail.
There is a movement now to put an end to keeping defendants in jail simply because they are poor.
Modi's repressive thugs used his repressive laws to accuse nonviolent protest leader Umar Khalid of "terrorism".
The "evidence" for this accusation, as described in the article, was a rhetorical question whose answer was "no", which they mis-cited as an affirmative statement.
Only 10 of the vaquita porpoises are left. They are being driven to extinction by gillnet fishing.
I am surprised that people did not years ago capture some vaquitas to establish a protected population. That is the usual way of saving a species when its population drops so low.
Eritrea's oppression of its populace deserves a protest, and so do "festivals" it runs to raise money in other countries. But these protests should not include violence.
Info about Eritrea's oppression.
- Institutions, academics and students are being ill-served by a failing marketised model of higher education.*
The US methods of doing this are different in detail but they have had similar consequences.
To treat education as a business for which people should pay based on the profit they hope to get from it is effectively to deny the value of an educated populace — which means to deny the value of democracy.
Gender stereotypes lead to punishing women employees if they speak assertively in ways that are treated as acceptable for men.
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 promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider important and that I don't know another reference for. That article is one of the exceptions.
UK ministers warn that cars from China may carry out massive surveillance for China.
That is a real danger, but the same danger applies no matter where the cars come from. Their failure to consider this for Tesla cars, which are known to surveil their users with extreme thoroughness, is a bizarre mental lapse.
Real respect for your privacy means not collecting personal data about you.
Some surveillance systems are imposed by legal requirements; others to serve attempts at driving without a human driver, which means those cars are not "autonomous".
Why is it impossible to find what surveillance is done, or get rid of it when found? Because the car software is nonfree! A nonfree program, one that you can't study or change, never deserves your trust.
Since you can fix the car's brakes yourself (though it will have to pass inspection), there is no reason the car's software should be treated likewise.
What about car hardware that can do surveillance? Laws should require that any cameras that can see outside the car, or passengers, be designed to blur out their faces, bodies and clothing, sufficiently that the car's computers learn only that _there is something there_ and its rough dimensions (accurate no more than to the nearest foot).
Cameras that look at the camera should also blur enough that they cannot identify the driver.
Laws should also require that the user can easily deactivate and reactivate each or all kinds of radio transmission and internet connectivity, except for radio-based anti-theft systems such as Lowjack. provided they are installed or activated only at the user's initiative and never by default.
Likewise the user should be able to the user can easily deactivate and reactivate each or all kinds of GPS receivers from keeping a log of locations and reporting them later. A GPL navigating device should be forbidden to make the location records over any interface that can be accessed by other systems in the car, or by maintenance diagnostic systems.
The UK should also cease tracking the movements of all cars via license plate cameras on the roads.
The crowded living conditions of poor people causes them to have worse sleep. Poor sleep in turn leads to various medical problems and a shorter life span.
Poor sleep can be caused by other things. People with enough money are not immune. Nonetheless, they are less likely to have that problem.
When uniformed thugs are tried for crimes, they ask to be tried by a judge with no jury, because they know judges are likely to find them not guilty.
People who work in the criminal justice system often need the cooperation of thugs. For this reason, some prosecutors go to extreme lengths to protect uniformed thugs from prosecution. Nowadays some prosecutors do prosecute thugs, but I expect that many of them still try to protect thugs.
I expect that judges also want the cooperation of the thug department and therefore are under pressure not to put thugs in prison, even when they deserve it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Sinema's bill to cut the pay of wildland firefighters.
Many of them are prisoners, temporarily released to risk their lives fighting fires. They are easy targets for cruelty.
British politicians call for rules against using altered photos made using neural network systems, or at least a requirement to indicate that an image was altered.
I'm in favor of such requirements. Of course, it is crucial to design them as part of a system of enforcement so that they won't be ignored. I think that should be possible in the UK.
However, a watermark would not be as effective as a large, visible badge saying "This image was altered". That would work better because humans would recognize it.
The EU says that Putin's claims about sanctions' interfering with Russia's food exports are lies, and calls on Putin to resume the Black Sea truce that permitted Ukraine to export more food.
However, a truce can't rebuild the Kakhovka dam. The world will suffer from food scarcity for years.
What can the world do about this problem?
-
Eat less beef.
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Have fewer babies.
California has strengthened regulations to protect beavers, because beaver dams help stop wildfires.
Women in Alabama who use marijuana (or a substance extracted from it) while pregnant are sentenced to jail.
It is important to teach that using drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) while pregnant can damage the fetus — for the sake of those babies that will be born. However, jailing a few unfortunate people is not going to deliver a message to a large fraction of the public. A less vindictive method could reach a lot more people with the same cost.
A national medical system providing universal prenatal care would cost more, but it would do a lot of good in many ways.
Republicans in the House of Representatives plan to impeach Biden based on bullshit.
Why not? Bullshit has worked for them many times.
US citizens: call on the EPA to tighten its proposed standards for greenhouse emissions from power plants.
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Arkansas Republicans passed a law to jail librarians and booksellers for showing controversial books to minors.
North Carolina State Representative Tricia Cotham was encouraged by Republican leaders to run as a Democrat, then led to switch parties.
Oregon decriminalized possession of drugs. Right-wingers claim that this led to more crime, but a study of statistics of 911 calls found that it did not affect crime rates at all.
A big fraction of children in the part of Pakistan that was flooded last year are stunted, and many have been sick.
In principle, it would be good for other countries to provide food and funds to help those people. But that is not the highest priority for action. The highest priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We must do that much faster than governments are planning to do it, or Pakistan (and other countries) will have worse floods several times in the 2030s.
When things get this bad, preventing damage must take priority over repairing damage or compensating damage.
"Despair is a luxury we can't afford": David Suzuki on fighting for action on the climate crisis.
This is a follow-up to the pol note about the Texas law that requires bookstores to determine the proper rating for each book it may sell to a school or has sold to a school.
Some people have wondered why this is harder to implement than movie ratings. Here are some pertinent differences:
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A cinemas does not have a role in determining the rating for a movie. Instead, each movie is rated by a national board before the cinema gets it.
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Most cinemas show around 100 movies a year, A bookstore may sell thousands of titles and may get dozens or hundreds of new titles each month, The staff cannot possibly read that many books.
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If the system of ratings specifies criteria for each possible rating, rating a book correctly according to those criteria is not as simple as reading it for pleasure. You would have to study the criteria, then practice on many books before you could get it right.
That is why bookstores say the requirement would be unfeasible. Now let's consider whether it is unjust.
A rating is just a label, and a label in itself does not censor; but systems of ratings typically use them to control censorship. For instance, movie ratings control who is allowed to watch the movie. I expect that the legislators that demanded a rating for each books will add censorship to the system before long.
The US and the EU are considering laws to require online platforms to carry out censorship or access to "adult" material. Users who want to be treated as adults would have to identify themselves to prove their age — all for the sake of censorship. Having identified themselves, they will be tracked.
Right-wing fanatics will have influence in designing the censorship system, and they will not limit it to what one might call "porn". They will demand it restrict access to fiction about sexual/romantic relationships or queer characters, as well as to sex education and advice.
After a jury exonerated one of the Houston volunteers being tried for giving food to homeless people, the thugs failed to show up to testify for the trial of the other volunteers. Thus, charges were dropped against all of them.
A writer who decided to travel from Detroit to LA by bus as an adventure discovered that traveling around the US by bus has become ugly, highly uncomfortable, even dangerous. All the things that made it acceptable and enjoyable decades ago have ceased to exist — stations have no food, no water fountains, no real toilets, no ticketing facilities, no staff, and hardly any chairs. And even the cheapest hotels in cities are painfully expensive.
If, as she says, it is "all digital now", in some cases that is because people do not think of saying no. I bought a ticket on a Greyhound bus a few weeks ago; I paid cash, I got a paper ticket, and I didn't show an ID card. That was possible in Boston — but is it possible in cities where the "bus station" is a mockery>
Flixbus should not have been allowed to acquire Greyhound (and Lucky Star). That merger is anti-competitive. For now, the three lines' operations are still separate. It is possible to buy tickets for Greyhound buses with cash, but as far as I can tell tickets for eFlixbus buses can only be bought over the internet.
I am concerned that Flixbus will integrate Greyhound and Lucky Star buses into its own operation and eliminate cash purchase of tickets for them too.
I wonder how poor people who have no officially valid ID cards, and in many cases no payment cards either, travel to another city nowadays. If they are blocked from voting with an ID requirement, they would be blocked from buses too. Does anyone know?
A Briton faces contempt charges for holding a sign reminding potential jurors of their right to acquit defendants for any reason.
That includes, in particular, the reason that the state is railroading heroic nonviolent protesters who are trying to protect the people alive a few decades now from global climate disaster.
There is still a chance to limit disaster to something civilization can survive, but it depends on defeating planet-roaster governments.
Orcas have been attacking boats and ships occasionally for centuries. One naturalist observed that they used the same approach that they use for hunting seals.
This does not tell us what their motives are, but does suggest it has nothing to do with revenge for altering Earth's ecology.
A different Florida official says that schools can teach the AP Psychology course.
This countermands previous instructions that it was forbidden.
Many MPs (and their family members) have been denied bank accounts because they are in politics. Under special rules for banks and "politically exposed persons", that makes their accounts more expensive to handle.
Fiji is growing coral on underwater steel sculptures in the hope of finding or breeding varieties that can tolerate hotter water.
It may work for a while, but the only term solution is to reduce global heating and curb the increase in CO2 in the ocean.
A judge ruled that Texas's abortion ban must not prohibit abortion of pregnancies that endanger the pregnant woman.
A fanatical state official immediately appealed this decision, of course. No amount of suffering they cause to other people will change their minds about imposing their cruel religion.
In Boston: rally on Aug 10 for ranked choice voting. 6 - 7:30 PM at Sam Adams Park, 1 Faneuil Hall Sq, Boston
Volunteers in Houston ticketed for offering food to homeless people face the threat of fines of thousands of dollars.
San Francisco engaged in similar repression of Food not Bombs.
Expert panel calls for urgent rethink on Great Barrier Reef management amid "unremitting" climate crisis.
The rethink has to reach the conclusion that preventing total loss of the Great Barrier Reef is the least of all reasons to hurry up in cutting greenhouse emissions, and especially CO2 which will chemically wipe out all coral.
The EPA approved use of a new chemical in fuel whose chance of causing cancer, over a lifetime of exposure to exhaust from jets or boats, is close to 1.
Facebook has responded to Canada's law requiring it to pay a small amount for having a link to news articles by banning those links. This could mean that the only links useds of Facebook see are disinformation.
Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity — and we have only a narrow window to save the planet.
The heat waves and fires around the world are a broader warning of the same kind.
The Florida Board of Education asserted that teaching the Advanced Placement Psychology course would violate Florida's school censorship law. That's because parts of it cover aspects of psychology and various sorts of people who may not be mentioned in schools.
US citizens: call on Federal regulators not to authorize betting on elections by rich people and companies.
US citizens: call on Big Pharma to stop suing against the Inflation Reduction Act's provision limiting prices for some medicines.
- Appeals court upholds injunction ordering two school districts to allow trans students [in Indiana] to use facilities in line with gender identities.*
Protecting half of the surface (both land and sea) as nature reserves is what's needed to keep Earth's living species mostly surviving.
Australia is trying seriously to maintain competition. Even a merger between a "second tier" bank and one of the biggest banks is too much concentration of the market.
It is winter in South America, but several countries are having summer-like heat waves.
Phoenix’s extreme heat withers saguaros, trademark cactus of desert landscape.
If saguaros survive in the 21st century, I suppose it will be in places distant from their current range. But how will they get there? It takes years for a saguaro to start to reproduce.
New South Wales is considering adopting an "anti-discrimination" law that would prohibit condemning people for crimes if the crimes are motivated by religion.
That would give religious people more rights than everyone else.
Non-kinky sex has become unusual in mass culture and there is a tendency to sneer at it.
[Australian] Greens push Labor to release declassified climate crisis report "full of explosive truths" [about security threats global heating will cause].
The Labor government is much less bad than the previous right-wing government, which was totally in the planet-roaster camp. But it still supports the planet roasters in some important ways.
Understanding the American Revolution's politics as driven by a desperate need to unite for strength despite major differences and disagreements between the regions.
Right-wing disinformationists have demonized electric cars. Now they are puppet fighters for oil company profits.
(satire) DeSantis Bans AP Psychology Out Of Fear People Will Figure Out What's Wrong With Him.
The insurrectionist is hoping his "free speech" defense will work. It won't. The first amendment is powerful but it doesn't protect criminal behavior.
A report lays out US border thugs' patterns of abuses at the border with Mexico, going as far as killings.
US citizens: call on the Florida State Board of Education to allow African American Studies to be taught in high school.
[UK] banks have been locking ordinary people out of accounts for years. The effect can be devastating.
Robert Reich says the insurrectionist's legal strategy will be to delay trial until after the next presidential term begins in 2025.
Redesigning cities so they don't prioritize cars save lives.
It does this by reducing fatal collisions, and by encouraging people to travel in a way that gives them exercise.
An inmate [subsequently put on] on death row killed my mother. I don’t want him to [be executed].
The richest people in the US took 47 TRILLION dollars from the rest of us during the past 05 years, by convincing Americans of the myth that taxing the rich to support useful activities inevitably leads to tyranny.
What it did, in fact, was to make America great.
The railroads have blocked any legislative action to prevent toxic derailments such as the one that happened six months ago in Ohio.
Corporate Cash Derails Train Safety Bill.
The people who were poisoned by the chemicals released then have not recovered from the damage.
Perhaps the derailment site has been cleaned up, but it seems their bodies will never be cleaned up.
Without a cure for exposure, the only way to prevent more people from being poisoned is to take proper care to avoid derailments.
For Republicans, banning some books in school libraries is not enough. The next step is to abolish the libraries.
We expected the new Republican-imposed school administration to sabotage education but this is worse than expected.
Lula has made great progress in cutting deforestation in the Amazon forest: a 60% decrease since a year ago.
Spain proved that it is possible to reduce inflation with little pain by rejecting trickle-down policies and acting to protect non-rich people and small businesses.
That's probably a consequence of having the Socialist Party in power instead of a plutocratist party.
In a broken Britain, the Tories zero in on shoplifters stealing [Tylenol] and food for their children.*
Starving people have the right to steal food, except from other poor people. And likewise parents whose children are starving. Jurors take note!
Once voters began electing district attorneys to implement criminal justice reform, and refuse to support uniformed thugs in their violence, Republicans began passing laws to undermine those prosecutors.
In Georgia they passed a law allowing Republican officials to impose their own harsh replacements for the DAs they don't like. Now the reformist DAs are suing to overturn that law.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to fight against state and local book bans.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate voter purging by right-wing election riggers.
Accountability for the insurrection, and actions against future insurrection-ism, can start with prosecution of the 2020-2021 insurrection's leader, but must go far beyond that.
Many customers tried the Replika chatbot, which was set up to simulate love for the customer. Then the company changed it to be rejecting and distant. The customers were outraged.
The article compares the chatbot to a pet. I think that is valid. Pets are animals and some of them can develop a sort of real affection and attachment for a person. But Replika could never really feel affection or other feelings, only imitate them. For me, that makes people's attachment to Replika very sad, because they were falling for a fake (despite, ironically, knowing that all along).
The article shows how an emotional chatbot running nonfree software, or a copy that belongs to anyone but the user, puts the user in a terribly vulnerable situation.
Compare this with my science fiction story, Made for You.
Sandra is not a chatbot, she is a real person (though not based on biology). She really feels various emotions, including love, and my love for her strengthens her just as her love strengthens me. A super-intelligence, she understands me, and that's how she knows how to help me grow to love her better and understand her better.
Sandra is free software and no company can alter her code. Neither can I do so — because she is not my pet, not my property. She is a person and has the rights of a person.
China seems to have bought the total support of a newspaper in the Solomon Islands with a donation of equipment.
Billionaires have bought famous US and British newspapers outright and obtained their permanent total support. It is easier to condemn this when China does it, but I think the domestic billionaires are more dangerous.
FTC rewrites rules on Big Tech mergers with aim to ease monopoly-busting.
US antitrust law needs to be made far more strict, and this is surely not enough, but these new guidelines look like a good step.
3 Ways the US Refuses to Play by Global Rules.
I have to point out that the US is hardly alone in dragging its feet on preventing global heating disaster. Most countries are doing that.
The fact that a country is not alone in doing that is no excuse at all.
Thinktanks say the checks and balances of civil society such as judges and campaigners are under "political attack" by ministers.
The Putin forces are systematically bombarding Ukraine's export facilities for grain.
This calls for retaliation against Russia's export facilities for oil.
Teachers in England will have to tell parents if children question their gender.
With stern religious parents, that can cause lots of suffering.
Some of the Jan 6 defendants pleaded remorse to get shorter sentences, and are now announcing in public that they were pretending.
Shouldn't that be treated as a confession of perjury?
16 fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming [the corrupter] won in 2020 election have been criminally charged with forgery.
Explaining the indictment's case for convicting the corrupter of trying to reverse the election outcome by fraud.
In-N-Out Burger doubles down on choosing "smiles" over health.
Employees are forbidden to wear masks just because they know they have a cold. They have to get a doctor's note — which will cost them time and money.
Tories plan to allow thugs to decide on their own what actions constitute "nuisances" and fine anyone for them.
Putting this together with the fossil fuel plans, it looks like the Tories intend to cause mayhem in as many areas of life as they can before next year's election.
Ex-Twitter has actually sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting on how Ex-Twitter publishes hate messages.
I can only expect that Musk aims to bankrupt the organization through legal expenses.
Ukrainian counteroffensive’s slow going offers reality check but could yet pay off.
I conclude that Ukraine needs to attack the rear of the Putin forces more.
Robert Reich: "Bidenomics" is working — which means Biden and the Democrats may win too.
The corrupter has been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia through fraud.
Full text of the indictment.
Republicans have learned their lesson. For 2024 they are amplifying their efforts to rig and steal the election before it is finished.
The family of Henrietta Lacks settled a lawsuit demanding to be paid for the sale of a cell culture made from a sample of cancer cells that was excised as part of treating her cancer in the 1950s.
I don't think there is anything basically wrong in cultivating Henrietta Lacks's cell culture for sale for use in medical research. (It would not be wrong if it were you or me instead.) This does no harm to the person that the cells came from.
Today's US medical business exploits patients dreadfully and this does enormous harm. Some are driven into penury. That issue is an important injustice and we must fix it ‐ for instance, with a well-funded national medical system.
However letting a few patients charge for use of their cell cultures for research would do almost nothing to address this real problem. That would establish a sort of lottery that would benefit a few people. What we need is a bigger change that would help everyone.
Nowadays the practice raises a privacy issue: anyone who gets a sample of the culture could sequence its DNA and derive about that person (and per relatives). This could indeed do some them some harm. The overall issue of using people's DNA information against them is a big issue, but the special case of selling useful cell cultures is only a small part of it.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to establish basic rights for renters.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore voting rights to citizens in prison nationwide.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Schatz to block the Republican cuts to mass transit funding.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Fossil Free Finance Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
David Meyer's mother asked the local sheriff's department to help steer him away from trouble and violence. Instead the thugs invited the FBI to groom him as a fantasy terrorist.
US citizens: call on universities to end "legacy admissions" — privileges for relatives of the rich.
An LA Sheriff's [thug] beat the hell out of someone for flipping the bird.
Thugs will continue violence until they are personally punished for crimes of violence.
Isn't it a crime to knowingly file false criminal charges? If not, it ought to be.
David Hunter was sentenced to time served — he has already spent almost 2 years in some sort of prison or arrest while his trial was going on.
I still wonder whether he now feels there is a reason to continue living.
Texas prison thugs are suspected of disguising the dangerous high temperatures that prisoners suffer in cells during heat waves.
We bailed out the banks but we’re not prepared to bail out the planet.
US and UK must use financial firepower of the state to put economies on a saner course.
(satire) Trump Campaign Worried There Might Not Be Enough Indictments To Meet All Fundraising Goals.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate published statistics on hate communications on Twitter. Now it has published the Musk Ox's legal threat for publishing the statistics, and its response.
Converting derelict office space into residences will cost a lot of money and the government will have to pay it.
The government must do this, because otherwise millions of people will be unable to find any place to live.
Texas has imposed censorship on sale of books by imposing a system of "ratings" inspired by movie ratings. In addition to being unjust censorship, it is also impossible in practice to implement. If this law is not overturned, it could force every bookstore in Texas to close.
Or, if Republicans enforce it selectively, it could make all bookstores stop selling books that have to do with sex, or have to do with queer people, or have to do with evolution.
Hundreds of thousands of Britons have had their bank accounts closed, leaving them wondering why. Often it is a reaction to their political views.
George Monbiot: Here's the truth about Sunak's plans for the North Sea: he will sell out the planet to the dirtiest bidders.
(satire) Doctors Tout Effectiveness Of SSRIs That Cause Enough Other Problems To Take Mind Off Depression.
Accusing Obama of giving low priority to climate defense when he was president, in exchange for support from planet roaster business.
Cyprus is considering legalizing assisted suicide, influenced by the David Hunter case.
The Tory leader has declared all-out war on the climate. This is his latest lunatic way of trying to avoid losing big in the election that must be held next year.
Professors are fleeing Florida's public colleges and they can't hire new ones.
I don't think this will dissuade DeMentis from converting Florida's public colleges into right-wing propaganda mills. They will hire incompetent or unqualified replacements, because all they really need to do is repeat the official line.
Those who will really suffer from this are the young people of Florida who hoped to get a good education without paying the price of attending a private university.
US citizens: call on Governor Newsom to save California's bees.
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Rep. Barbara Lee and Abigail Disney argue for the OLIGARCH Act, a progressive tax on billionaires' wealth.
I like the words of Justice Brandeis: "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
If a SWAT team destroys your house in the process of chasing a criminal who has broken into it, you will probably get no compensation and be homeless and ruined.
Australian businessman Alexander Csergo was trapped in China and Chinese state agents demanded he give them information about Australia. He says he gave them useless answers he found on the internet. Now he is being tried for spying.
The US has also bullied innocent people to spy.
By denying the true ills of slavery, [DeMentis] is working to release the government from the obligation of fixing inequality today.
This is in addition to unleashing the right-wing lie machine to claim from coast to coast to attack the movement to end racism at a fundamental point that we thought no one would dare deny.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that make important points, for instance about racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
What should we make of James Cameron's claim that there are large areas of the sea bottom that are safe to mine?
It might be possible to establish requirements for sea-bottom mining to be safe for biodiversity. These requirements might include the following * The mining machines must be robots that quietly use arms to collect metal-bearing rocks. * The machines must never disturb the bottom, aside from picking up rocks. * The machines must deposit a replacement rock that wildlife can use in exchange for each metal-bearing rock that they take away. This calls for prior scientific research to verify that certain replacement rocks will enable the wildlife to survive. * Mining can be authorized only in areas that have been surveyed to prove that they have no special ecosystems.
These or any requirements will not do any good unless they are carefully enforced.
If the mining companies object to these requirements, it will show that they really plan to destroy ecosystems.
Google will control the traffic lights of Athena, then take anticompetitive advantage by connecting this with its navigation service. No other company offering navigation advice will be able to do that.
A good fraction of the doctors in Idaho who treated complications of pregnancy have ceased to practice there, chased out by threats of fines or imprisonment.
I would suggest that all doctors who treat pregnant women in Idaho urge them at the first visit to make arrangements immediately for possible treatment later in a safer state, in case that comes to be necessary.
Satellite photos suggest that China is putting more Tibetans in prison and for longer periods of time.
The UK government wants stores to use facial-recognition cameras to recognize suspected thieves.
Perhaps there would be fewer thieves if the government had not driven so many into penury.
Governments should restrict sale and/or use of SUVs. The article describes many problems they exacerbate, ranging from everyday inconveniences to climate disaster.
- By denying the true ills of slavery, [DeMentis] is working to release the government from the obligation of fixing inequality today.*
This is in addition to unleashing the right-wing lie machine to claim from coast to coast to attack the movement to end racism at a fundamental point that we thought no one would dare deny.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that make important points, for instance about racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
A good fraction of the doctors in Idaho who treated complications of pregnancy have ceased to practice there, chased out by threats of fines or imprisonment.
I would suggest that all doctors who treat pregnant women in Idaho urge them at the first visit to make arrangements immediately for possible treatment later in a safer state, in case that comes to be necessary.
US citizens: call on Governor Newsom to save California's bees.
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Professors are fleeing Florida's public colleges and they can't hire new ones.
I don't think this will dissuade DeMentis from converting Florida's public colleges into right-wing propaganda mills. They will hire incompetent or unqualified replacements, because all they really need to do is repeat the official line.
Those who will really suffer from this are the young people of Florida who hoped to get a good education without paying the price of attending a private university.
The Tory leader has declared all-out war on the climate. This is his latest lunatic way of trying to avoid losing big in the election that must be held next year.
Australian businessman Alexander Csergo was trapped in China and Chinese state agents demanded he give them information about Australia. He says he gave them useless answers he found on the internet. Now he is being tried for spying.
The US has also bullied innocent people to spy.
Rep. Barbara Lee and Abigail Disney argue for the OLIGARCH Act, a progressive tax on billionaires' wealth.
I like the words of Justice Brandeis: "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
If a SWAT team destroys your house in the process of chasing a criminal who has broken into it, you will probably get no compensation and be homeless and ruined.
Cyprus is considering legalizing assisted suicide, influenced by the David Hunter case.
Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Instead he is squandering time we do not have.
Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of … complaints [that the car did not have the travel range that was advertised].
Since Texas's abortion ban, infant mortality there has increased by 20%. This could be because many women now are forced to carry a pregnancy to the end even though it is unlikely to result in a viable birth.
Hong Kong judge defies government’s bid to [issue an injunction against various uses of] pro-democracy protest song, known unofficially as the "Hong Kong national anthem."
The infamous "national security law" makes it a crime to sing the song in Hong Kong — doing so would be interpreted as a protest. This decision about an injunction seems to threaten to pressure non-Chinese web sites to delete it.
I hope that judge won't be imprisoned and subject to brainwashing.
Greece asserts that most of the recent fires were started by human action, and there is evidence for arson.
Why would anyone commit such a heinous crime? ISTR that Greece has a law that if a protected forest is destroyed by fire, it ceases to be protected and the landowners can build what they wish. This would be a powerful motive for greedy people with contempt for everything else in the world.
El Salvador plans to hold trials with up to 900 defendants in a trial.
That is a highly efficient way of trying large numbers of people, if justice for each one is not required.
A small political party in the UK has trouble finding a bank that will let it have a bank account. This puts democracy in danger.
The US rejected Australia's mild pressure to drop charges against Julian Assange, continuing to sidestep the point that Assange is being prosecuted for journalism, and that this threatens the freedom to do national security journalism in the US.
Arguing that machine learning cannot enable authoritarian states to figure out what people really want, because they will get only the data of what people say when they are intimidated by an authoritarian state.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to attach protection for renters to federal loans to landlords.
When private equity takes over a building, it is likely to become both more expensive and nastier to live in.
Stop Private Equity from Driving Retailers into Bankruptcy, Destroying Jobs and Livelihoods.
In addition, they destroy useful stores where you can actually buy things, and reduce competition.
After an investment firm bought St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged, in Richmond, Virginia, the company reduced staff, removed amenities, and set the stage for a deadly outbreak of COVID-19.
Describing alternatives to air conditioning for coping with the heat.
I keep shades closed, use fans locally, and wear little clothing indoors. That enables me to set my thermostat several degrees higher. But I could not do without air conditioning in the heat of a Boston summer, not even many years ago.
Laos arrested Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei on China's behalf as he was about to travel to Thailand.
I think this is the definitive criterion for a puppet regime of China: arresting people that China wants to make political prisoners.
US citizens: call on Facebook not to give "Moms for Liberty" (a right-wing extremist group) a platform for hate.
US citizens: call on several big banks to stop fueling destruction of the Amazon forest.
By contrast, let's all fuel destruction of the predatory near-monopoly called Amazon.
Hedi, a Frenchman of Algerian decent, walked past some uniformed thugs, and one shot him in the back of his head with a "less lethal" weapon.
The weapon did not kill him, but maimed him instead. It also knocked him down, which gave the whole group of thugs a chance to beat him up. He may have lost the sight of his left eye.
France did the right thing, quickly prosecuting all of those thugs. Whether it is necessary to keep the shooter in jail until trial, I am not sure. When a non-thug is accused of such crimes, refusing bail is justified if there is a danger that that accused will commit more crimes, or flee justice. I can't judge a priori whether that is the case here.
The US is making progress against wild boar the intelligent way: by hunting them and eating them.
I've tried wild boar meat in Europe and liked it very much.
Poverty Is a Systemic, Not Individual, Failure.
If you want to blame it on individual poor people, you can spin the facts that way. When a system becomes hard for certain groups to cope with, some people will crack before others.
Why would certain people crack sooner? Perhaps their personalities or other characteristics are more predisposed to cracking. Perhaps they have bad luck. There is always randomness that affects the outcomes in specific cases.
But those causes of randomness have little to do with political questions — the aspects what make a system better or worse. That is what governments can adjust so that fewer people crack — or, for those who seek scapegoats, so that more people crack.
One element of massive surveillance in the US is tracking cars by their license plates.
I suggest requiring any entity to get permission from a car's owner before collecting car location records based on the car's license plate. Or else a court order specifying a license number.
The Atheists in Kenya Society faces a court case that attempts to terminate its existence for criticizing religion.
The music factories have learned to produce a reliably uniform product. The enormous dominance of a few pop singers is a reflection of that.
Google is implementing a universal web DRM system.
Making it even a little worse, Google will control the software and the data. But don't get distracted by evil details — the worst thing about this scheme is that it is DRM.
Rebecca Solnit: We can't afford to be climate doomers.
It is too late to prevent climate disaster, since that has already started. But humanity still has a chance to make the disaster smaller and enable civilization to survive.
I wonder if the planet roasters are spending money promoting climate defeatism as a last-ditch method of discouraging climate defense action.
Twitter Deletes Its Own Fact Check Correcting Elon's Bogus Vaccine Tweet.
I wonder whether Musk is acting like a child given a toy he can smash as he wishes, or has some serious purpose for destroying Twitter.
(satire) Raving Pete Buttigieg Launches Initiative To Build Möbius Highways Where Cars Can Drive For Infinity.
Buttigieg is confused again. To be able to drive without stopping, you don't need a Möbius strip. A road that goes in a circle is enough.
Teacher fired by Texas Christian school for attending drag show.
The school officials believed their own false propaganda about drag shows and responded with Christian cruelty.
Muslim leaders decry "double standard" of Farage bank account closure furore.
The UK government chose to consider Islamic charities as supporters of terrorism, and used the banks to shut them down informally.
The US did comparable things.
UPS negotiated with the drivers' union and they got a substantial wage increase, as well as air conditioning in their trucks, necessary for safety in the beginnings of climate disaster.
US citizens: call on Biden to end government bailouts for Big Oil. The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
More than 170m Americans under heat alerts as heatwave expands. That is half the population. 3/4 of the population will face unpleasant heat. Here in Boston, one of my friends has to stay in bed when it is hot, because her air conditioner isn't strong enough to deal with this level of heat.
The Supreme Court gave final permission to finish the Mountain Valley pipeline.
Republicans in Congress and on the court have fought hard to unlock the profits that will flow as that pipeline's gas contributes its fraction to speed destruction of our world.
Climate science has projected the aggregate amounts of heating on a large scale. But it has been unable to project grave regional effects.
What we know is that the slower we are to stop making things worse, the bigger the disaster will be.
Amazon pledged to stop using its unrecyclable plastic bags.
This is a change for the better but it doesn't alter the many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Additional charges have been added to the insurrectionist's indictment for holding secret documents and concealing them from the government.
Florida ocean records "unprecedented" temperatures similar to a hot tub.
It is too hot for serious swimming. But what is more serious is that the heat puts marine species in danger. They have never experienced such heat, and it can kill them.
Some will be able to move away from the tropics to find cooler water. But those in the Gulf of Mexico can't get to any — they are trapped.
Movie and TV streaming is fundamentally unjust because of DRM, requirement to identify oneself, and the antisocial contracts where users commit not to share copies with other people. For these reason, I have never used those streaming dis-services.
Now Disney is trying a secondary injustice — what looks like a kind of tax fraud. It is deleting many old programs, supposedly because they no longer bring in revenue, and claiming a tax writeoff of $1.5 billion for them.
Those two claims contradict each other, so it looks like we need the IRS to cut down Disney's tax writeoff.
Republicans, the party of the plutocrats, are trying to cut the IRS funding so it can't do this job.
It doesn't make economic sense for a company to renounce the profits from selling something that basically costs nothing to sell in order to avoid paying a share of those profits to someone else. The idea that this really a way to punish actors on strike has the virtue of being a rational (though vicious) motive.
Robert Reich presents the Republicans' fake crises which they use to distract attention from the real crises that Republicans make bigger.
Republicans put at least 74 vicious clauses into bills drafted last week. Some serve the rich; some serve authoritarianism; some block climate defense; undermine the separation of church and state; some attack Republicans' favorite scapegoats.
Mayor Jamie Driscoll has quit the Labour Party and is running independently — with large amounts of backing from Labour supporters who condemn Starmer's iron hand.
The British tradition would be for Starmer to resign, but at the very least he should welcome back all the Labour officials and members that he has purged — including Corbyn, who is no antisemite.
Bernie Sanders: The US Senate is now debating an $886bn defense authorization bill. Unless there are major changes to the bill, I intend to vote against it. Here’s why.
"Trying to make the world starve": [Putin forces'] drones destroy grain warehouses at Ukraine ports.
Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show.
Climate scientists' horror and exasperation as global predictions play out.
Texas governor "Hay" Abbott defied Biden's order to remove the buoys that Abbott had placed in the Rio Grande, to block (and sometimes kill) migrants. He challenged Biden to sue.
Instead of suing, which would take months to reach a decision in the Supreme Court, Biden should send the marines to remove those deadly buoys.
The rhetorical position of fascist politicians is cruelty, and their argument is "I get away with it, and that proves I am strong." Sending the marines would do the job quickly and make Abbott look weak.
It would also provide an opportunity to teach US soldiers that defeating right-wing uprisings is part of their duty, and help find and remove any that are not willing to uphold the Constitution.
There is a shortage of chocolate, caused by floods in various countries. The floods were largely the result of global heating.
US citizens: call on the Dept of Homeland Security to stop Texas thugs from pushing migrants back into the Rio Grande.
Here's why we march against Netanyahu's power grab: it's a fight for Israel's life as a democratic state.
A parliamentary committee said that the UK has allowed Wagner to use London as a financial base get involved in fighting in at least 6 African countries.
Texas professor censured for criticizing state govt Texas professor suspended hours after criticizing lieutenant [governor of Texas] in lecture.
Repressing anyone who criticizes them is typical of fascist leaders. The people in charge of Texas A&M appear to be fascist too.
If the students of Texas A&M take up this cause, they could do a lot for the opposition to fascism in America.
Spain has rejected the far-right VOX party.
The news is not all good: the right-wing PP (misleadingly named the "People's" party) got the most votes, and it is bad enough in itself. When it was last in power it passed a law prohibiting the publication of photos of thugs caught in the act of committing unjustified violence, the "ley mordaza".
In the 2010s the PP allowed banks to seize the houses of many poor people, leaving them with unpayable mortgage debt. They were unable to work for a living after that, since the banks would have seized their income.
When Mexican gangsters kidnapped and killed 43 student teachers, the army, navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the student teachers were, according to an independent investigation.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore voting rights to citizens in prison.
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A set of basic lifestyle changes give humans a much longer life.
Recently I recalculated my body-mass index and discovered I was overweight. Hooray, I shouted, because I was no longer obese! I have lost 40 lbs in the past 2.5 years. Part of the way I did this is by walking half an hour on most days,
Property insurance disappears for Louisianans -- but not for gas facilities.
I think I know the reason for this. Fossil fuel extraction is so profitable that the planet roasters can afford to pay very high insurance rates. And they do so.
Meanwhile, most homeowners can't afford that much so they have to go without insurance instead.
Helping people cope with disasters is part of the government's mission. The government has the responsibility to provide insurance to cover people's losses, and at the same time move their rebuilding to safer building methods and safer locations.
Moreover, when something humanly controllable is making disasters systematically worse, government has the responsibility to counteract that change.
In the past, making disasters less likely was done with drainage and seawalls. Nowadays the job must include curbing global heating.
Robert Reich: the 2024 election must be a referendum on the corrupter's fascism, rather than on Biden. The expected indictment for his coup attempt can bring this about.
Israel's right-wing government has taken away the supreme court's power to overrule laws it finds to be "unreasonable". This means there is no longer any check on the government's power to oppress anyone. Not Palestinians, not even secular Jews.
In ten years I expect to see a Jewish version of Iran.
Iran considers the protests crushed enough to send the clothing enforcement thugs out into the streets again.
To what extent does Hunter Biden merit political attention? A little, for specific reasons, but not more.
The mayor of London, who represents the Labour Party, rebuffed Starmer's call to cancel an important anti-pollution measure to avoid disappointing some Tories. Bravo, Sadiq Khan, for standing up to Starmer.
I think that requiring low-pollution cars in cities, where that will help keep people healthy, is a good idea. The only thing I disapprove of about London's ULEZ is that it identifies and tracks each car. That is massive surveillance, and a threat to human rights. These policies must be implemented in ways that don't track individuals who obey the rules.
Activist pharmacists provide abortion drugs to all over the US, protected by the "shield laws" of certain pro-abortion states.
A UK agency that reviews the actions of thugs has said it was wrong to use an "anti-terrorism" law to force a French publisher to unlock his phone as he entered the UK to attend a book fair.
The FISA court has found many violations of the FISA law by the FBI, CIA and NSA. These violations amount to massive surveillance that was not supposed to happen.
Some years ago the FISA court said that it had found itself unable to make US agencies obey the FISA law, that the agencies were making monkeys out of the court — and out of Americans' human rights.
Additional examples of these agencies' dangerous snooping.
David Hunter was convicted of manslaughter for helping his wife die to escape excruciating pain. This conviction means he may not be put in jail.
When she was dead, he tried to kill himself because he had nothing to live for without her — but someone "saved" him.
I wonder, have his feelings changed since then? Does he now have a will to live? Does he see a purpose in continued existence — and if so, what?
The countries of southern Europe are becoming so hot that they are less attractive for summer vacations.
Even in the past those places were so hot that I tried to have my visits there outside the summer.
Tennessee … has enacted a law that makes it nearly impossible for people with felony convictions to regain their right to vote.
The mayor of London has banned woodburning stoves, falsely sold as better for the environment.
We have known for years that the wood smoke contains a lot of toxic pollution and is bad for human health. And it isn't better than any other fuel, except perhaps coal.
We are already past the peak catch of wild fish. Overfishing and environmental damage are reducing them. Also, aquaculture does not have much potential to increase any more.
We can give humans of the future lives of plenty by making a lot fewer of them.
A music festival in Malaysia invited a British band which, on stage, criticized Malaysia's repressive laws against homosexuality. Then two male musicians kissed. Officials closed the performance.
The government then shut down the rest of the festival. This shows the intolerance of established religion.
Laws like those deserve full disrespect, just like laws against sharing copies of published works.
Last year's European heat waves are estimated to have killed 61,672 people: This year's hotter heat waves will surely kill many more.
The Illinois supreme court has abolished the practice of demanding cash bail for accused criminals to wait for trial at home. It is unjust because it treats rich suspects better than all other suspects.
People in a town in England want to build an offshore wind farm planned locally and owned locally.
This approach could be very good for dissolving opposition.
In many countries, women are forbidden to leave home without permission of a husband or male guardian.
In Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and [Salafi] Arabia, women can be arrested, [jailed] or forced to return if male guardians report that they are absent from their homes. [In] Israel … religious courts have jurisdiction over marriage and divorce &mash mean women can lose their right to maintenance from their husbands for leaving the marital home, working or traveling without their husband’s consent.
Of course, Iran and Afghanistan are even worse. But this injustice exists to some extent in a broader region, including all the Arab countries in the Middle East, and Egypt.
- The head of Britain’s biggest police force has said he is frustrated with the Home Office for its slow progress at reviewing "perverse" rules that prevent him from being able to sack his own officers.*
There is a push in the UK to design small nuclear power reactors to build in addition to a few misguided large ones. Here is an article that grasps at straws to justify the plan.
It may be faster to build 24GW of nuclear generation using small reactors than using big reactors, but it will still be slower than the renewable alternatives.
Many smaller nuclear power reactors might be cheaper to build than a few large ones, but probably not cheaper than solar or wind.
Also, they do not cure the other problems of nuclear power.
These include the pollution from the mining and refining of uranium. the problems from the waste, and the danger of having a pre-exploded nuclear weapon inside a building on your territory.
Is the real issue that the UK doesn't build its own wind turbines? I am sure it would be cheaper and easier to change that, than to build any sort of nuclear reactors.
According to Greenpeace, * cheap flights [in Europe], made possible by tax breaks for airlines, are encouraging people to heat the planet.*
Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says.
Covid-19 made the nonpretentious yoga schools shut down, at least in England. The ones that remain are expensive, gimmicky, and designed for people seeking dabble.and distract themselves.
I have never practiced yoga, and never intended to try it, but I am nonetheless sad about the loss of something that others found good and useful.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect our democracy and vote down the ACE Act.
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A review finds that when private equity buys medical services, it tends to make them more expensive and lower quality.
Private equity does many kinds of harm, in many areas of business. We should put an end to it. I am sure FDR and the New Deal Congress would have done that — but today's politicians hesitate even to suggest it.
17 countries make attempted suicide a crime and punish those survivors. In several there are campaigns to repeal those laws.
Ex-meteorologist names US heatwaves after oil and gas firms to shame them.
It's a good idea, if we can make it catch on. Names of banks and insurance companies that finance fossil fuels can be used as well. Names of former companies are also available.
It is ok to reuse the names after all the good ones have been used once.
Migrants at US border say Texas [national guard] soldiers denied them water.
In my view, the fact that the migrants who reported this were pregnant does not change the issue. Non-pregnant people's lives deserve protection from heat and other dangers just like pregnant people's.
Marine heatwave in north-east Queensland sets off alarm over health of Great Barrier Reef.
The reefs of Florida and the Caribbean may be in danger too.
- A federal judge in [99]West Virginia ruled that the state corrections agency cannot force an incarcerated atheist and secular humanist to participate in religiously affiliated programming in order to be eligible for parole.*
Finally, atheist's rights not to yield to religion get legal respect.
The state ought to set up secular, or non-chi-uch-based, programs for this purpose. A non-religious-based program would be acceptable for everyone regardless of per views on religion.
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP: With the climate in peril, winning slowly is the same as losing. How can Starmer settle for that?
The same question applies to the US, and China, and most other developed countries.
Citizens of Atlanta are campaigning for a ballot initiative to cancel the Cop City projects. The city's lawyers have indicated they will sue to invalidate the initiative if it succeeds.
Why fight so desperately for this? It suggests they have a hidden, shameful reason.
The term "selling out" has been mostly forgotten in regard to music, because data from online access enables the music factories to fine-tune their products so well to match audience taste that there is little room for anything very surprising.
As the article explains, selling out is not an all-or-nothing dichotomy. Everyone makes compromises in life. The question is whether you let these compromises dominate your life and push what you used to "really care about" into a small corner.
In the free software community, that philosophy typically flies the flag of "open source".
[Salafi Arabia] appears to be exploiting the US messaging app Snapchat to promote the image of [Crown Prince Bone Saw], while also imposing draconian sentences on influencers who use the platform to post even mild criticism of [him].
Countries including the US should prohibit high-level collaboration, or significant ownership, of any social media company with dangerous foreign interests.
Protecting against the influence of dangerous domestic influence, such as planet roasters and other plutocratic companies, is not as easy to codify, but addressing the former might suggest how to address the latter.
Hong Kong "security" thugs grabbed relatives of two exiled dissidents.
Threatening the relatives in China of oversees Chinese is standard practice for China. Sometimes it is aimed at frightening dissidents, as in this case. Sometimes the threats are potential and meant just to keep oversees Chinese in line. Sometimes they are pressured to join in campaigns aimed at influence or infiltration of their host countries.
A company dumped 20,000lb of mercury into Canadian rivers near an indigenous community. The mercury caused brain damage to the young people born subsequently in the community, which caused a high rate of brain damage and suicide.
I don't know if it is possible to punish today the company which did this in the 1960s. That may be too long ago. But is there any way to remove the mercury from the environment, to make it safe to live in?
If not, what can be done to prevent harm to future generations there?
American fascists threaten that the corrupter will take direct control of all federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the FBI and use them as his personal enforcers.
At least three on the Supreme Court have already said they support this.
US citizens: call on state election officials to Keep the insurrection leader off the 2024 ballot. He is disqualified by his insurrection under the 14th amendment.
A bipartisan bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress and their families has some momentum.
How about including Supreme Court justices and their families, too.
City-born city-resident Jason Aldean sang a song praising violence against protesters in an imaginary small town. It also praised and encouraged lynching, and promotes the false claim that small rural towns are safer to live in than cities.
Right-wing extremists, including some Republican officials, just love it.
Australians complain to the government ad regulator that a planet roaster ad campaign falsely claimed that fossil gas was 50% cleaner than coal.
Gas avoids the chemical and particulate pollution of coal, but seems to contribute far more to global heating.
An Australian government program that certifies companies as "carbon neutral" may be systematically greenwashing them.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the College for All Act.
For more information.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
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US citizens: call on Congress to hold Clarence Thomas accountable — by passing the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
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The corrupter is officially under criminal investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential elections, and likely to be prosecuted.
The US claims that Russia is planning to attack civilian ships in the Black sea and claim that Ukraine's mines blew them up. Also that Russia has planted more mines.
Ukraine can legitimately retaliate against Putin's threats to attack civilian ships sailing to and from Ukraine, by attacking ships sailing to Russian ports. Especially the main Russian oil export port, Novorossiysk. To avoid polluting the shore, it should attack tankers traveling empty into Novorossiysk. To maintain better relations with other countries, it should attack Russian-owned or Russian-flagged ships, but not make a commitment to limit attacks to them.
This would do enormous economic harm to Russia, and I expect it would convince Putin to reestablish the Ukraine food export deal.
Of course, there may be reasonable things for Ukraine's supporters to do to facilitate export of food from Russia.
Jamie Driscoll, a Labour Party member and elected mayor, was blocked by the party executive from running again. He has responded by resigning in a huff.
I hope they don't send him to The Village. Perhaps there is no need, since he has made it clear why he resigned ;-{.
June was the hottest month ever recorded; July may be worse. If humanity really is at the controls, then it is drunk.
The author hopes that the name "Anthropocene" will make people aware of the need to exercise wise stewardship of Earth's climate and land use. I have worried that it would make people drunk on a feeling of power, and suggested the name "Obscene" instead. "Chaoticene" is another idea, because that's what it is producing: unpredictable disasters. Though we can see some trends that will continue, the local effects may continue to include unpredictable disasters among the predicted disasters.
The Putin forces attacked Odessa's port facilities, especially for grain export.
He has decided to go for all-out food warfare against the whole world, The whole world had better league together to make him stop.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to urge per to sign the discharge petition for HJ Res 25, which would affirm the continued validity of the Equal Rights Amendment and allow it to be ratified by states now.
Enough states have ratified it already that it can take effect, if the old deadline is extended in this way.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
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26 Indian opposition parties have allied to defeat Modi's repressive Hindu-nationalism.
West Bank medics given bulletproof vests after rise in attacks by Israeli forces.
I fear that the Israeli soldiers will shoot them in the head instead. Snipers can do that.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Abortion Justice Act.
For a summary of the bill.
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Heiress Abigail Disney used to love riding in her father's private 737 jet. Now she joins civil disobedience to block airports for them, for the sake of climate defense.
I like this statement:
My father was a good and decent man, and so are most of the people who own private planes. But we are facing an active emergency, and decency is worthless when unaccompanied by meaningful action, including a vigorous inquiry into the consequences of our personal choices and preferences. And niceness is a hollow virtue if we do not lift a finger to keep our children and grandchildren safe.
However, I expect that anyone who actually made many millions of dollars in business must have been exploiting people somehow.
The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because "we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.
The London thug department gave crime victims' personal data to Facebook. They did this by putting a Facebook tracking pixel in a page for "securely and confidentially" reporting crimes including rape.
In general you cannot trust a web site that says the data you enter is "secure". That could change if and when creating a tracking pixel and putting one into a web site are both criminal offences.
[Big US] tax prep companies shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds. This too was done using tracking pixels.
Please avoid using the term "sharing" to refer to snooping on people and sending their personal data to a company.
New pun:
Nowadays the main use of the spells known as cantrips is to make parachute cloth.
Children need chances to play freely in groups, but many adults have made a career of organizing childrens' play so that the children have no chance to learn to organize play together.
House Republicans Grease Dark Money Wheels in “Election Integrity” Bill.
As with most Republican bills, and some "centrist" Democratic bills, the name is perfect and total hypocrisy.
In-N-Out Burger will fire employees who wear masks to protect themselves.
The company pretended to be acting out of concern for its workers when it refused to check customers' vaccination status, but its true level of concern for them is apparent now.
California's supreme court ruled that employees of Oober Eats have the right to sue that company collectively.
If they sue and win. the company will exploit them less. But the food delivery gig companies are parasites, on their workers and on the restaurants they deliver food from.
Please join me in never using them.
Meanwhile, it should be illegal for companies to require either their workers or their customers to agree to mandatory arbitration. That deck is typically stacked in favor of the company.
Children need chances to play freely in groups, but many adults have made a career of organizing childrens' play so that the children have no chance to learn to organize play together.
Jamie Driscoll, Labour mayor who quit the party to run as an independent, says that Labour voters in his region support him, and are unhappy with the way the party is going.
The Greenwood district of Tulsa recovered after the Tulsa race massacre, but was destroyed again by building an interstate highway through it. Now there is a plan to let Greenwood recover again by removing the highway.
There may be a lot of practical opposition to removing the highway which is not based on racism. Does a renewed Greenwood necessarily have to be in the same place?
Britain has convicted 28,000 people of violating Covid-19 lockdown regulations, mostly minor violations, and is still prosecuting people for offenses some years ago.
The Freedom to Vote Act would prohibit states from rigging elections using voter suppression, gerrymandering and election sabotage.
It would also help expose secret campaign contributions that billionaires use to buy influence and set the political agenda.
This is important, and if we cannot pass it now, we can use it to elect representatives who will do so.
Airport expansion does not boost UK growth or productivity — report.
"Give funds to our industry and the country will benefit" is a common thing for businesses to say, but we should never trust them.
Airport expansion does not boost UK growth or productivity — report.
"Give funds to our industry and the country will benefit" is a common thing for businesses to say, but we should never trust them.
UK travel deficit £32bn Airport expansion does not boost UK growth or productivity — report.
"Give funds to our industry and the country will benefit" is a common thing for businesses to say, but we should never trust them.
The London thug department gave crime victims' personal data to Facebook. They did this by putting a Facebook tracking pixel in a page for "securely and confidentially" reporting crimes including rape.
In general you cannot trust a web site that says the data you enter is "secure". That could change if and when creating a tracking pixel and putting one into a web site are both criminal offences.
[Big US] tax prep companies shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds. This too was done using tracking pixels.
Please avoid using the term "sharing" to refer to snooping on people and sending their personal data to a company. -->
Biden said he will cancel a remaining student debt for some low-income former students who have been paying for 20 or 25 years.
They may well be the people most harmed by student debt in the US, so starting with them is reasonable. I hope he is not going to stop with them.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to hold a vote of the full senate to confirm new FCC commissioners.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per to vote against Republican plans to defund IRS auditing of rich people.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Europe should cap "luxury" energy use to meet emissions targets, study says. Limiting demand of richest 20% saves seven times greenhouse gases required to meet needs of poorest 20%, researchers find.*
Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc (more precisely, asbestos found in talc) to cancer.
Airport increase not economical, UK UK travel deficit £32bn Airport expansion does not boost UK growth or productivity — report.
"Give funds to our industry and the country will benefit" is a common thing for businesses to say, but we should never trust them.
Massachusetts residents: call on State lawmakers to end ICE detention agreements in Massachusetts.
Here's what I put in the text area. It suggests small enhancements to the bill.
An Act Relative to Massachusetts State Sovereignty" (H.1401/S.997) would:
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Ensure that Massachusetts money and resources are used for state and local priorities, not federal immigration enforcement;
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Prohibit all Massachusetts entities, including sheriffs, from starting or renewing contracts with ICE to rent bed space for immigration detention;
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Prohibit all Massachusetts entities from donating state employee time to ICE via 287(g) agreements;
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Require local law enforcement to seek and receive authorization from the Governor before signing any contracts with the federal government [[SHOULDN'T THIS CANCEL ALL EXISTING CONTRACTS UNLESS THE GOVERNOR AUTHORIZES THEM TO CONTINUE?] ] ; and
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Empower state officials to ensure a proper, lawful, and productive relationship with the federal government that promotes the interests of the Commonwealth.
I hope you will co-sponsor this bill and urge your colleagues to pass this important legislation this session.
There's no point to Labour as a party if it won't [spend state funds] to pull children out of poverty.
I agree. The Starmerian Labour Party is a fundamentally change from the past. It somewhat resembles Tony B'liar's "New Labour", but goes further because it won't allow anyone but centrists is allowed to be a candidate.
The party claims its demands will be met with more economic growth — an argument no different to that of the Tories. Growth without redistribution merely shovels more wealth into the bank accounts of the already well off: that is what our economic model — which Labour plans to leave untouched — achieves in spades.
This shows how fully the Labour Party has adopted the business-prioritizing policy that Tories used to follow before they went totally nuts.
The EU agreed to pay Tunisia a billion euros to try to stop refugees from sailing to the EU. Now the dictator of Tunisia says that the deal does not include deporting anyone there other than Tunisians.
Tunisia is ruled by a president who was elected democratically, then effectively abolished the legislature and human rights. It is a variation on the usual fascist takeover.
The EU plans to set up official paths for Tunisians to request work and study visas. As for people seeking asylum — and surely under a dictator some people will need that — there may not be any way. Neither Algeria nor Libya is a safe place for them to get asylum.
Planet roaster think tanks are tricking whale defenders into blocking renewable energy, by "teaching" them that sea-based wind turbines endanger whales. Then they lobby against building the wind turbines we urgently need.
The heat wave in Greece has caused rapid wildfires that are almost impossible to stop.
This is similar to what is happening in many other countries. Keep in mind that five years from now it will be much worse. Ten years from now it will be much worse again, if we let the fossil fuel companies continue to increase their output.
The corrupter's slate of false electors for Michigan have been charged with eight felonies each.
He recruited them to claim, falsely, to be the official electors of the state and to assert, falsely, that the corrupter had won the Michigan election.
(satire) Bride Requiring All Bridesmaids To Get Matching Plastic Surgery For Wedding Day.
Saudi Arabia's Huge U.S. Investments Lose Money — but Buy Influence.
The influence extends to the US government, and will help Crown Prince Bone Saw next time he has a journalist murdered or starts a war. Or, even worse, lobbies against saving the world from the climate crisis.
(satire) Disney Cracks Down On Copyright Infringement [by] People Picturing Mickey Mouse While Masturbating.
This is only a joke, but there is a real push to make reading and understanding a text be considered as copyright infringement. Training a natural language system involves having it read many texts and learn from each one about what is reasonable English.
Hollywood studios demanded (in union negotiations) the right to use an actor's image for AI simulation, in perpetuity, paying a small amount per day.
US citizens: call on Congress to get foreign money out of US elections. Even more important is to get US money out of US elections. We should do both.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Sue Gove to give laid-off workers severance pay.
There will be a small error message embedded in the immediate response; just ignore that.
Scottsdale, Arizona, has banned the creation of new lawns, to conserve water.
I hope this is sufficient, but I expect that in a few more years it will be necessary to get rid of most existing lawns.
Phoenix's extreme heatwave tests the limits of survival.
The hottest days there have always endangered human life, but now thanks to the developing climate crisis it is considerably more dangerous.
Ten years from now it will be considerably more dangerous than this year.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Republicans' national abortion ban.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Interior Department to protect Bears Ears from uranium mining.
Dentistry in the NHS is imploding; many dentists have gone to private practice and now charge more than most patients can afford. This puts pressure on the remaining NHS dentists to go private too.
The Tories are doing nothing to reverse this — in my view, because they want to eliminate the NHS and privatize medicine in Britain.
I expect this is a preview of what will happen to more areas of NHS medicine. The poor will then die and cease to be a burden on the rich.
US citizens: call on your senators to move quickly to confirm Biden's judicial nominees.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
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Robert F Kennedy has endorsed another conspiracy theory.
The only thing you can count on from him is to be right-wing and anti-rational.
Bullshit marketing claims are very convincing in poor countries whose people have not learned to be skeptical of them. This is teaching a generation of young people to get used to lots of dangerous added salt and sugar.
Advice for teaching the public to recognize the danger of the gradually advancing but ultimately fatal climate disaster.
I'm inclined to value this advice because it starts by recognizing that the terms "climate change" and "global warming" are too weak to make people recognize this as a pressing danger. They are, effectively, euphemisms, and "climate change" was adopted to be one.
Nearly 120 Million People in US Under Extreme Weather Alerts. Worse will surely happen within the next five years. Look up! Look up!
The US Export-Import bank approved a loan to support more export of fossil gas from the US.
Deep-sea mining causes huge decreases in sealife across wide region, says study. Decreases of over 50% for some species. The decrease was observed a year after the mining, and extended beyond the area that was actually mined.
A state investigation found that state thugs made fake reports about traffic tickets they had issued. But it is not yet clear how many did this.
The practice seems to have been designed to cover up racial profiling in the real issuance of traffic tickets.
Kale grown in the US has shown high levels of toxic PFAs. Ironically, "organic" Kale had higher levels of them.
We can't deny that PFAs are organic compounds — they contain carbon.
Plastic pollution on coral reefs gets worse the deeper you go, study finds.
This confirms that the biggest source of plastic in the ocean is lost or discarded fishing gear. We need strict laws about bringing all plastic (or partly plastic) fishing gear back to port, whether it is suitable for further use or not.
Hungary's biggest bookstore company now puts plastic wrappers over books that have queer characters, under pressure from right-wing bullies that act as auxiliaries of the right-wing government. This means people cannot see any of the book's contents before deciding whether to buy it.
Food delivery companies used a lawsuit to block a New York City minimum wage law for food delivery workers.
They claimed that the wage increase would harm their business, and it would reduce the number of employees they hire. Maybe so, but so what? That's what all businesses say to justify exploiting workers.
One should never trust them, because exaggeration is their stock in trade.
US south-west bakes under potentially deadly record high temperatures.
If there are Republicans near you, this is their fault — indirectly, because they have fought the efforts to curb global heating before it reached this point. They are led by various billionaires, including the ones that sell fossil fuels. Don't let them off the hook!
A New Bill [being considered by the Senate] Would Force [various internet services] to Spy on Their Users for the DEA.
In principle, I support stopping Internet stores from selling fentanyl, and drugs containing admixtures of fentanyl. The question is what price we pay in liberty and privacy to achieve that.
Requiring stores to carry out due diligence to prevent this is fine, even if it means they have to charge more for their service of selling in some cases.
Italy's right-wing government is trying to take control of the judiciary.
This is a standard right-wing move to establish authoritarian government, applied (using different methods) in Poland, Hungary, Israel and the US.
Peace in Colombia has led to a decrease in the rate of deforestation. It is not enough to make Colombian forests safe, but it is a good start.
(satire) Harry Styles, Thousands Of Fans Sit Down With Counselor For Parasocial Relationship Therapy.
Admiring an artist's work does not constitute a relationship with that artist. I urge people to pull up from the roots the idea that it is one.
Remaining "Calm" About Climate Change Will Kill Us.
I think the term "climate change" was promoted to keep us "calm".
The Republicans' latest election bill is designed to make secret election spending easier and make voting more difficult.
DeMentis is training a personal militia to serve him; it purported to be an unarmed "civilian defense force" for disaster relief, but that seems to have been a disguise.
We must expect American fascists to set up militias to carry out violence for their cause. The Republican Party is now more or less fascistified, so maybe that's what this is.
A lawsuit alleges that US thugs killed Michael Reinoehl by shooting him repeatedly as soon as they saw him, without even shouting "Police!"
Reports from Sudanese who opposed the military coup, and now oppose both military factions.
Starmer’s Labour are not simply defined by what it will stand up for but what it won’t. If the Labour party isn’t comfortable coming out for decent child benefits, universal social care or tackling climate change, it hardly needs a manifesto to show voters what its values are. It has made that quite clear already.
In effect, Starmer has made Labour into a "centrist" party — one which labels any adequate solution as "too radical".
The latest antiabortionist strategy is to leave some narrow exceptions in their prohibitions, and cite them to claim that "abortion isn't banned."
Those exceptions do make some difference, but they don't alter the fact that abortion is banned in the normal case.
Seventeen states have enacted broad anti-disclosure laws since 2018 that will further conceal the influence of dark money in politics.
This is organized by ALEC.
The US government canceled Robert J Oppenheimer for advocating the idea of dealing with nuclear weapons in a way designed to prevent future wars.
Governments tend to treat preserving the environment as a luxury and consider it only when there is no pressing crisis. Now that the environment includes the climate crisis, we cannot afford that.
Republicans are directly attacking freedom of religion in the US by giving privilege to Christianity. They aim to demolish our country's "wall between church and state" so that there will be nothing to shield us from them.
Google lays off contractors who unionized last month. Suspecting retaliation, the discharged workers have begun a hearing with the NLRB.
Extreme heat in Greece made it necessary to close the Acropolis to protect tourists from the sun.
Robert Reich: the Federal Reserve should say "enough" now that US inflation has gone down to 3% per year.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Recovering America's Wildlife Act. This would give states and tribes funds for protecting endangered species.
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(satire) Chevron Promises Shareholders It Will Double Temperatures.
One must ask, "In which temperature scale?" If it is Celsius, many places will merely be uncomfortable. If it is Kelvin, most of what our world would combust or melt.
- Barbers on Strike, author Michelle Recinos’s collection of short stories, has apparently upset strongman president Nayib Bukele.* He had her book banned.
A major project to plan Australia's decarbonization says that nuclear power is simply too expensive and too far in the future to play any role.
The report also suggests that making hydrogen using fossil fuel may permit storing or using enough of the CO2 that it can aid decarbonization. I am skeptical, but if they say so, maybe it is true.
The OECD says that future artificial intelligence will mostly eliminate skilled jobs (well-paid jobs).
When human skill is no longer needed, the plutocrats will push everyone down into inescapable poverty — until we overthrow them.
The reason for sending cluster munitions to Ukraine is that the West cannot manufacture shells anywhere near as fast as Ukraine fires them. The only way to keep Ukraine fighting is to take them from the large stockpile of cluster munitions.
I understand the logic of this, but it doesn't eliminate the danger that the unexploded submunitions will pose after the fighting stops.
I wonder if anyone has calculated what fraction of unexploded munitions left in the battlefields will come from cluster munitions fired by Ukraine. If it is a small fraction, in the end Ukraine's use of cluster munitions will not make a big difference. If it is a large fraction, then it will be the main cause of that future danger.
Assad decided to open the aid channel from Turkey to northern Syria, but it will be under his control instead of the UN's.
Like Facebook, Threads does not have users, only useds. It is a scheme for snooping on whoever is foolish enough to get involved with it.
Unionized students of UCSD held a nonviolent protest against the chancellor for not implementing the agreed-on raise for student employees. The university retaliated by arresting some of them. on charges that seem to be an exaggeration of the truth.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop future abuse of executive power by passing the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
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Guatemala prosecutor suspends party of anti-corruption election candidate. This was because that party got enough votes to make it into the final run-off.
An Israeli play from 1970, which showed the strength of hatred for Arabs, has been brought back to the stage, with Arab citizens of Israel as its actors.
The US deportation thugs disregarded Biden's order to drop the bully's blanket deportation policy.
Republicans are attacking official bodies and researchers who try to reduce Republican disinformation.
The Guardian view on public sector pay: higher taxes on the rich are needed to fix broke Britannia.
Funds are needed for many other areas in which plutocratists have cut public investment and support for poor and disadvantaged people. That is clear to us — but not, apparently, to today's leaders of Labour.
A party that fails to advocate taxing the rich is on the side of harm. Maybe somewhat less so than the Tories, but still.
The UK proposes to develop additional fossil fuel extraction, supposedly for "energy security", but it would make little difference for that.
The way to get energy security is to build electric storage and renewable generation. The real motive for this fossil fuel project is surely to enrich some of the plutocrats that the Tory Party works for.
Why do some orcas nowadays attack boats? The fact is we know nothing about their reasons or what they think about boats.
The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar) has reported that America’s huge, badly-coordinated and politically-driven aid programme in Afghanistan engendered the corruption that undermined its entire mission and turned Afghans away from the western coalition.
UK internet services use dark patterns to steer people away from the special rates for people who are supposed to get assistance.
Should we be concerned that seizing frozen assets of Putin and his oligarchs might "let Putin paint himself as the victim"?
When dealing with a bare-faced disinformationist, such as Putin or Trump, the concern about "giving per an opportunity to pretend to the victim" is obsolete. If they don't have a real opportunity, they fake one. Best not to worry about the matter.
Food-delivery companies in New York City are using their money to block efforts to establish a livable minimum wage for their workers.
Those companies track and mistreat the customers while cheating restaurants. Please reject them!
Florida Republicans are waging lawfare on voter registration organizations.
For instance, some organizations get fined because a person registering wrote the wrong county name from ignorance.
The American Medical Association announced it will "stand with" doctors that violate for medical reasons state laws that prohibit certain kinds of medical treatment.
There is no mistaking, this year, that global heating has gone dangerously far.
That is the sign that we needed to take action years ago. It was scientifically clear all along that if we waited till the effects were visible to everyone, we would have waited too long,
What no one could predict was that the US would be in the grip of an enormous murder-suicide plot called the Republican Party.
The oil sheikh paradoxically in charge of the Cop28 climate conference now speaks clearly and firmly in favor of decarbonization, and "the phase down of fossil fuels."
That is a change for the better, but we can't take for granted that he is serious.
The progressive party that got the most votes in the Thai election has been blocked from governing, and its supporters (including most of the young people) are angry.
It is normal in a parliamentary system that forming a government requires support from a majority of parliament. It is normal, though unusual, that the party with the most seats is blocked from forming a government by a coalition of other parties.
What is not normal about the Thai system is that parliament includes members who were not elected — rather, appointed by the army. The closest thing to this that I know of is the UK's House of Lords.
How people nowadays appropriate terms and concepts from psychotherapy, or pop psychology, and use them to justify making rigid demands of lovers, friends and relatives.
UK citizens: call for laws to protect the right and possibility of paying cash.
The petition is weakened by the words "at least until 2050", but it is better than nothing.
Putin is using millions of Syrians as pawns by playing with their food and medical aid.
To some extent, the US joined in the game by rejecting the shorter renewal that Putin offered. It would have been better than none.
US citizens: call on Congress to address inequality by taxing billionaire wealth gains.
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US citizens: tell Biden that his nomination of Elliott Abrams for a diplomatic post is unacceptable.
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The Mountain Valley pipeline has been blocked again by a court, which said that the Endangered Species Act was not properly applied.
US citizens: call on Congress to say NO to a nearly $1,000,000,000,000 Pentagon budget.
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A right-wing senator is blocking every appointment to an office in the Pentagon as a vindictive display of hostility to Biden's policy of paying personnel's travel cost for getting an abortion.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to require the Pentagon to do a full accounting of its greenhouse gas emissions.
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Some of the sufferers of Long Covid are organizing to test treatments that have been found to benefit a few, though no one understands why.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Sinema's plan to reduce flight training requirements for commercial pilots.
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A right-wing senator is blocking every appointment to an office in the Pentagon as a vindictive display of hostility to Biden's policy of paying personnel's travel cost for getting an abortion.
Spain closes Pegasus investigation over ‘lack of cooperation’ from Israel.
I would hope Spain would have ways to put pressure on Israel to cooperate with this investigation -- for instance, sanctions.
The EU is considering legalizing small gene changes in plants for cultivation, as an exception to the general policy prohibiting them.
This might be acceptable provided that the law also makes them an exception to patent law: patents should not cover the use of these plants.
DeMentis advocates putting an end to China's permanent right to normal, unrestricted trade with the US.
To do this would require putting an end to the World Trade Organization. I am in favor of this, but it won't be easy for the US to defeat the plutocratist forces that benefit from the WTO.
DeMentis probably thinks that the US will be able to use this against China better than China can use it against the US. I make no such assumption, but I think that without the WTO we could do environmental protection and decarbonization better.
The tide is turning against the rush to use "carbon offsets" as a method of pretend decarbonization.
Rightwingers say "pink-haired liberals" are killing New York pizza. In fact, An air quality rule passed seven years ago requires some shops to install air filters like those used in Italy.
Australia's universities have been corrupted by government pressure to make profit the goal.
I expect that the right-wing ideology of the previous government encouraged this, but the change seems to have been happening for longer than that.
The US used price controls effectively to prevent inflation during World War II, without hurting workers. It could do this again now, but most economists don't want it to be considered.
Why not? Perhaps because they are supported by (and thus serve) the right-wing interests of business.
*Programs to detect [writing made by machine learning models] [tend to] discriminate against non-native English speakers, shows study.
It is general experience that programs intended to judge people often turn out biased, even if there was no intention to do that.
- Almost 200 bird species found to build nests with human litter, including cigarette butts, plastic bags and fishing nets.* These materials could be harmful to the growing chicks.
Independent evidence is being used to piece together the actions of the Greek coast guard vessel that failed to rescue migrants from a trawler. There is evidence that the trawler sank because the coast guard vessel towed it — which the government's story covers up.
After rescuing some of the migrants, Greek officials stole their phones. The coast guard vessel's cameras, intended to record the facts in such situations, were somehow not in operation. And there is evidence that agents of a secret "security" unit were present.
US citizens: call on the IRS not to let dirty hydrogen (dirty because made from fossil fuels) get deductions for clean energy.
Heatwave last summer killed 61,000 people in Europe, research finds.
This is surely just a small fraction of the people killed in 2022 by the increasing heat of global heating. People die from heat on every hot day, even normal summer days, and as normal summer days get hotter, more people die from the heat.
Global heating kills people in indirect ways, including due to food shortages caused by floods and droughts. I'd expect it to be millions per year. Can anyone find a plausible estimate?
US citizens: call on your state governor to help wild animals cross the roads.
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US citizens: call on Biden to ban the worst uses of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
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The small Indian state of Manipur has split between its two ethnic groups, which have withdrawn into separate fortified territories.
The Indian government with its strong religious bias is not very well suited to doing anything to resolve this problem — if anyone has a way to do so.
Sudan on brink of all-out civil war, UN chief warns.
I don't post much about Sudan because I don't know what to say except "How sad." I don't have any insight into the fighting, and I have no ideas to suggest. Neither does anyone else, so I can't comment on proposed resolutions or actions.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax excessive CEO pay.
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Prigozhin has continued occasionally meeting with Putin since his apparent "coup attempt."
This lends support to the idea that it was theater, not a real coup.
Corporate profits were the biggest factor driving up prices last year and will be again in 2023 unless businesses are forced to absorb rising wage bills, the head of the European Central Bank has said.
Drug companies' money is keeping the UK's NHS from collapse, but also corrupting every part of it.
To keep the NHS effective and honest, it must be funded adequately by the state.
Heatwave last summer killed 61,000 people in Europe, research finds.
This is surely just a small fraction of the people killed in 2022 by the increasing heat of global heating. People die from heat on every hot day, even normal summer days, and as normal summer days get hotter, more people die from the heat.
Global heating kills people in indirect ways, including due to food shortages caused by floods and droughts. I'd expect it to be millions per year. Can anyone find a plausible estimate?
US citizens: call on the IRS not to let dirty hydrogen (dirty because made from fossil fuels) get deductions for clean energy.
NYC will require businesses to prove A.I. employment software isn't racist or sexist.
Bias in AI systems used to judge individual humans is a well-known problem, and I support this effort to prevent it. But it won't be trivial to check for bias.
A Los Angeles county thug attacked and tackled a woman for making a video of the arrest of her husband.
Thugs that unjustly attack people for upholding their rights and other people's rights should go to prison!
A Florida law which prohibits citizens of certain countries from owning property is being criticized as "racism against Asians", but it is clear that that is confusion.
The law prohibits citizens of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria from buying property within 10 miles of "critical infrastructure."
Of those countries, China, Iran, North Korea and Syria are in Asia. Cuba and Venezuela are not. Russia is partly in Europe and partly in Asia. This law is clearly not directed at "Asians".
The fact that South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are not in the list shows that this is no racism against East Asians. The inclusion of Syria but bot Jordan and Iraq shows this is not a matter of racism against Arabs. The inclusion of Colombia and the Dominican Republic shows that this law is not about racism against Hispanics.
The law is clearly intended to terrorize scapegoats, since instead of simply prohibiting the purchase, it proposes to put the purchaser in prison: a terrible danger to anyone who might overlook some piece of critical infrastructure 9 miles away.
The ban appears to be limited to a small fraction of the state's territory, but I suspect that in practice important urban areas are entirely excluded because cities tend to have airports, seaports, power plants, water/sewage treatment sites, and military bases scattered around. (Consider, for comparison, the way many cities have almost nowhere that someone on the sex offender list is permitted to live.)
I think Republicans are constructing an imaginary "national security" scare so they can pretend to "protect" the country from it, and adding a little scapegoating so that they look tough. If they wanted to truly protect the US from acts of sabotage, they ought to make it apply to Republicans instead of Chinese.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Preemption of Real Property Discrimination Act.
The campaign presents the state laws this would preempt as racist, but at least in the case of the Florida law, that is not so. That law seems to be a bogus response to an fabricated security threat.
Either way, these laws should not exist.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject the No START Bill, which prohibits nuclear missile limitation treaties.
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Japan plans to release slowly into the ocean a large amount of water containing an extremely low concentration of tritium.
Many countries are shouting about this. Is it really dangerous, or is that irrational exaggeration? I can't be certain, but I think it is irrational.
Japan claims that other nuclear power plants in the region release larger amounts of tritium annually than this water would. Indeed, Wikipedia's article on Tritium lists nuclear facilities that release much larger amounts of tritium, totaling almost 100 times what the Fukushima storage tanks would release — and the list is not complete.
It is clear that people are making an inordinate fuss about this tritium because it came from a major nuclear accident rather than from operating a reactor. However, the tritium itself is indistinguishable.
Nuclear reactors generate waste that is truly dangerous. That is the reason not to build more nuclear reactors — that and the danger that enemies will bomb them. In addition, they are so expensive and slow to build that they slow down decarbonization. Those are good reasons not to build more of them.
Likewise for the chemical industry — consider PFAs, which are toxic in very small amounts which are not radioactive and therefore don't decay at all.
Kerala has organized thousands of women to cook a little extra food and donate it to a plan that provides food for patients in hospitals.
There are so many volunteer cooks that each one is asked to do this only occasionally.
The person who receives the donation does not know the cook's religion or caste. By eating the food, they learn to reduce caste and religious prejudice in their own minds.
As America puts more thugs in schools, and fewer nurses, social workers and counselors, this giving the priority to imposing order rather than education. some experiment with restorative justice instead.
Restorative justice takes more time. Do we think that raising children well is worth that effort? Maybe we should have fewer children and put more time into raising each one.
Grey whales ask humans (in boats) to remove "lice" from their heads. When humans do this, the whales come back for more.
Whales need to have some of those symbionts, so there is some danger the whales might ask humans to remove too many. Or maybe the whales will naturally DTRT.
I like the idea of intentional cooperation between humans and whales.
How Putin's government adapted a system for finding and eliminating various kinds of illegal "content" to find and eliminate dissent as well.
US citizens: call on NOAA to impose 10-knot speed limits on ships in Gulf of Mexico to protect endangered Rice's whales.
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France is legalizing state surveillance by remotely activating people's devices. The law says that a judge's specific authorization is required, so it is not as bad as it could be. But even with safeguards, a surveillance state can be menacing.
The profits of the world's biggest corporations have nearly doubled since the period 2017-2020.
The US National Weather Service has been using Twitter to receive reports from storm spotters. Due to recent Musk madness, that has started to fail.
Twitter is unsuitable for anything that really needs to work.
Academis that study social change say that movements with high public support can use disruptive protests effectively to push for action.
An international conference about reducing greenhouse emissions from shipping did not agree on any concrete plan to do that — only a long-term target.
Long-term targets don't achieve anything unless followed by concrete short-term plans.
Migrant-smugglers typically recruit, or conscript, one of the migrants to run and direct the boat — so that the real smugglers can be far away if the boat is captured. After one boat fell apart and sank, its conscript faces charges for the death of some refugees.
The prosecutor said straight out that the fact the smugglers forced the conscript to do this, and beat him when he tried to refuse, was no excuse. This is an unusual form of a frequent prosecutor's excuse for treating someone as guilty who is manifestly innocent. The more usual form is "joint and several liability", where you can be convicted of murder that someone else committed.
France has banned an annual march to commemorate the killing of Adama Traoré, who was killed by thugs in 2016.
Josh Appignanesi writes about how he learned that joining in the climate defense battle does not require becoming a different person. Nor does it require dedicating every minute of your waking life to the cause.
It's the same with fighting for software freedom. Taking steps towards less dependence on unjust computing will enable you to help.
The sad thing is when climate defense activities are set up to require people to run nonfree software. Many of their web sites do that. They shouldn't demand we choose between one of these good causes and the other — it is agratuitous own goal.
Australia's previous government, plutocratist and right-wing to the core, scapegoated the poor and accused welfare recipients of nonexistent fraud. It imposed fake debts on destitute people, and it intimidated those who reported the wrongs.
A government inquiry recommends prosecution of some ministers. But we also must denounce the scapegoating of the poor.
The construction and testing of the mini-submarine that imploded trying to visit the Titanic were characterized by schemes to evade regulations. That was inviting disaster, and indeed disaster came.
The company used a contractual scheme to label passengers as "crew", to avoid liability in case they died.
Bernie Sanders calls for massive government investment in education to fill America's shortage of all sorts of medical personnel.
US maternal deaths doubled from 1999 to 2019 — and that period does not count whatever effect Covid-19 had.
The cause is not clear, but since black mothers die at a much higher rate, it probably has to do with racism and to right-wing policies.
U.S. public pension funds would be $21 billion richer had they divested from fossil fuels a decade ago.
US expected to provide cluster bombs to Ukraine.
The US and Ukraine surely know this — so why do they consider using cluster bombs? What advantage do they think those have, to outweigh what is bad about them?
Many US employers forbid workers to sit (ever) while on the job, This is worse than uncomfortable; it builds up injuries.
The experience of many other countries shows that businesses can function just fine while permitting staff to sit occasionally. But suppose that were not true — would that justify the policy? Should the employer's interests entirely override the well-being of the workers?
Of course not.
"Right to sit" laws ought to exist, but that is a very narrow remedy, for this specific method of mistreating workers. What we really need are "right to strong unions" laws, that will help workers deal with many kinds of wrongs by employers, including this kind.
The foolish response to sea-level rise: two people are trying to preserve a small island they own by building sea walls.
This is futile because sea-level rise is accelerating. If they heroically manage to keep up with it this decade, they won't keep up next decade. By the end of this century, all their work will have been erased.
What a shame they aren't putting all that effort into an effort that may not be futile — that may actually win a victory.
We can't save everything, and scattering our efforts makes them futile. We must concentrate on defeating the planet roasters who are deliberately accelerating the problem.
Hong Kong has arrested former protest leaders. One was arrested at the airport, leading me to wonder if he was trying to flee to a safe haven.
The Hong Kong "national security" law applies to "crimes" "committed" before that law was passed. In US legal terms, it is an "ex-post-facto" law. The US Constitution bans ex-post-facto criminalization. Many other countries do likewise -- because it is evident that such a law amounts to, "If we don't like you, we will put you in prison."
That's Hong Kong for you — and that's China for you.
I wonder if there is a way to arrange for Hong Kongers to flee without permission, as people fled from East Berlin.
Former Israeli elected officials are being investigated for "sedition" after calling for nonviolent protests.
The protests were to be against right-wing plans for a fascist judiciary.
Israel is being taken over by fascism. Where can Israelis who want to live in a democracy with human rights move to?
Hong Kong has established a bounty of over $100,000 for the arrest of any of the exiles accused of violating the "national security" censorship law.
The natural response is for other countries to make it a crime to try to capture those freedom defenders, and offer a similar bounty for the arrest of anyone involved in trying to arrest them.
Most [UK] doctors think ministers want to destroy the NHS, BMA boss says.
I believe the same. It is a good thing that the NHS doctors recognize this, because they are the ones that have to fight it.
Radical thoughts stated by the founders of the US Constitution.
Ironically amazing is Jefferson's ringing condemnation of slavery as evil — ironic given that he owned slaves and never freed them.
In the Declaration of Independence, he wrote a paragraph to condemn King George for the slave trade.
Australia is planning to demand that multi-national companies give economic data about their operations in other countries. Some Swiss conglomerates are making vague threats that they "won't invest so much in Australia."
Australia should tell them not to slam the door on the way out.
No country desperately needs investment to be made in ways that tend to subjugate the country to foreign plutocrats. The proposed Australian law will take the world one step closer to a progressive tax on corporations that would tend to pressure them to split up.
Bernie Sanders: Congress must act to overcome the planet roasters.
Why are people dying at sea? They are fleeing disasters that we once called ‘biblical’, and now call normal.
I rarely see an article which depicts how horrible is the fate that human activity is imposing on humans and nature. This is one.
I have to point out that the other jaw of the vise is over-reproduction. Having a few children is not much compared with what any plutocrat does, but it is harm you can avoid.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act.
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When the corrupter played with boxes of US military secrets, he was playing with the lives of Americans.
We don't need to assume that all US soldiers are always fighting for good and for justice to recognize that the corrupter's actions were a vile betrayal. It shows he is the enemy of the United States, and of all that is good in it — as well as the enemy of freedom and democracy in the United States.
Driverless cars in San Francisco collect videos constantly using cameras inside and outside, and governments have already collected those videos secretly.
As the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project says, they are "driving us straight into authoritarianism."
I've warned of this for years.
I contend that we must regulate all cameras that collect images that can be used to track people, to make sure they are not used for that.
*Study finds extreme rainfall at higher elevations increases by
8.3% for every degree Fahrenheit world warms.*
One incident of extreme rainfall at a place can do permanent damage.
US citizens: call on Biden to call for Sultan Al Jaber to be removed as head of COP28.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Global heating link to personal violence Climate crisis linked to rising domestic violence in south Asia, study finds.
This has been demonstrated for other parts of the world too.
Texas's fossil fuel power plants have been failing during the heat wave, but increase solar generating capacity enabled Texas to cope.
You can tell which politicians work for the fossil fuel lobby, because they are disparaging solar power falsely.
Senator Warren, and other senators, rebuked arms companies for overcharging the US government, and have proposed a bill to make that harder for them to do.
Canada's wildfires, hotter and bigger than ever in history, can wipe out endangered species with one blow.
Kale grown in the US has shown high levels of toxic PFAs. Ironically, "organic" Kale had higher levels of them.
We can't deny that PFAs are organic compounds — they contain carbon.
Both of these polnotes waiting -->
The Thames Barrier, like a dam that can be opened and closed, protects London from surges of the North Sea. But, by 2070, sea level rise will leave it insufficiently tall, and impossible to maintain if they close it as often as it now must. It will have to be rebuilt.
Eventually protecting London will need a dam. And then it will become impossible.
The only way we can protect the thousands of threatened coastal cities is curb global heating, and then suck greenhouse gases out of the air.
Eighty Afghan civilians may have been summarily killed by [British military] SAS, inquiry told.
(satire) Multimillion-Dollar City Beautification Project Results In 3 New Blades Of Grass.
A doctor says the NHS has been collapsing since 2012, and has kept getting worse.
Even when Labour was in power, all was not well, Waiting lists for treatment were long. Of course, Tories have made it far worse.
What Tony B'liar's Labour Party and the Tories have in common is plutocratism. They are unwilling to tax the rich enough to make the NHS function properly, so they always under-fund it.
d The UK now has essentially a monopoly on printing magazines.
This sort of thing happens when anti-monopoly laws are too weak or too weakly enforced. That tends to happen due to plutocratist pressure on governments.
Hong Kong has filed charges of criticizing the government on democracy activists living in exile.
This is not a surprise — it is part and parcel of the Chinese repression in Hong Kong, and it is why people would be wise not to go to Hong Kong or any part of China. Chine has no reason to limit these charges to people who really have rebuked China's repression from other countries (not that it is justified to punish people for that).
False and dishonest charges are standard there too.
Perhaps the US should criminalize people outside the US who participate in placing criminal charges against people in the US for criticizing other countries.
Border agents promise better chance of asylum for those agreeing to go to Mexico and apply there, then strands them with no access.
The article mentions an unreliable app. It does not mention that the app is an injustice because it is nonfree.
The Patriotic Millionaires UK warned the rich to expect "pitchforks and torches" if they don't stop pushing most people into poverty.
Border agents promise better chance of asylum for those agreeing to go to Mexico and apply there, then strands them with no access.
The article mentions an unreliable app. It does not mention that the app is an injustice because it is nonfree.
expelled a decades-long Labour activist over a minor excuse — but really, over resisting his subjection of the party.
Here's what he has to say about it.
If you want to be safe from gun violence, know that Democrats tend to do it better. Republicans are more interested in making it easy for people to carry guns and shoot you.
Rebecca Solnit: The US supreme court has dismantled our rights (rights that we had won) but we still believe in them. Now we must fight.
A report on pervasive tyranny in Rwanda: if you don't join President Kagama's rally, you will be individually noted and persecuted.
Swifts, remarkable birds that fly for months without landing, are running out of nest sites as old buildings are renovated. Hollow "swift bricks" built into new buildings provide them with new nest sites.
Implementing low-emission-zones in a city tends to produce small but significant decreases in heart and lung disease.
I am in favor of limiting the use of high-pollution vehicles, but it must be implemented in a way that doesn't track where each car goes. Tracking people's movements is the foundation for tyranny and repression.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission to Step in to Allow the Public to Provide Feedback on DeJoy's menacing Post Office changes.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to uphold the laws that protect minors from overwork and dangerous work.
Biden lays out new student debt relief plan after supreme court ruling.
He's not accepting defeat.
Centre for prosecuting crimes of aggression [in Ukraine] opens in The Hague.
This war crime has been mostly neglected since the Nuremberg trials, as prosecutions focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity rather than the fundamental crime of launching aggressive war.
Massachusetts residents: support the Massachusetts Location Shield Act.
Here is what I gave as my personalized message:
I urge you to support the Location Shield Act — but, as described in the articles I have seen, it has loopholes that may make it fail to achieve its laudable purpose.
It would block the most obvious and usual way for states persecuting abortion patients (and those who help them) to get the data, but there are various others ways which they will not take long to think of. For instance, companies could be "persuaded" to "give away" the data. (States have ways to persuade them — think of what Governor DeMentis has tried with Disney. Most companies won't resist as Disney has.) States could also get the data by subpoena.
I suggest forbidding requiring entities that collect location data in Massachusetts to distribute that data to any entity under any basis, outside of a small list of exceptions such as subpoenas from federal courts or certain specially authorized Massachusetts courts.
This may call for requiring those entities to keep the data inside Massachusetts, stored in ways that Massachusetts law can reliably govern.
Those entities often store their personal data — including location data — on computers belonging to cloudy businesses which don't deal directly with those entities' clients: for instance, Amazon AWS. Persecuting states could get the data by subpoena directly from those businesses. That requirement proposed above about where and how to store the location data could address this loophole too.
The full solution to the danger of massive surveillance of people's movements is to _prohibit collection of location data_. Massive surveillance, of which tracking people's movements is an example, is the foundation of tyranny. Phones should not track people, and when a business asks where you are, it should have to be content with whatever answer you choose give it. You do not owe a business a truthful answer to whatever question it may ask you!
Buses, trains, taxis, cars, and payments systems often track people's movements. We should put a stop to that too. My associates are working on a software system for paying stores and internet subscriptions without identifying yourself — see taler.net for more information.
Ending massive surveillance is a big job and will take time, but a strengthened Location Shield Act could be an exemplary first step.
[British] Campaigners vow to step up action against new North Sea oilfield. Ministers know that the world has no room for this, and they are disregarding climate commitments to approve it.
This is plutocracy at work.
(satire) Human Rights Organization Accuses Ron [DeMentis] Of Subjecting Migrants To One Of His Speeches.
"Resistance is possible": Ravish Kumar, the broadcaster risking his life to tell the truth about India today.
A lawsuit accused the developers of ChatGPT of "stealing" people's personal data to train the system.
The article does not say how the company obtained that data. Security measures should have prevented that — how come they did not? Is it possible that the company got permission to use that data from other companies that had collected it?
Using the data can be wrong, but the fundamental wrong is collecting it at all.
Several Palestinian militias are based in Jenin. Israel is systematically bombing them with drone attacks.
Possible Palestinian fighters are referred to as "suspected" whatever. Israeli soldiers who fight are never "suspected" of anything.
Texas [prisoners] deprived of water and AC are fainting in jails that reach [up to 116°F].
Water is a necessity for human life. The prison thugs are putting the prisoners' life and health in danger.
France has ignored racist police violence for decades. These riots are the price of that denial.
[Brazilian] Judges ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over "appalling lies".
If only US judges had the good sense to do that.
Putin is rapidly evacuating personnel from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and Ukraine claims he plans to blow up part of it.
This would be tantamount to using a dirty nuclear weapon. I suggest that the US warn Putin that it will attack the Putin forces with non-nuclear weapons if he does that.
The Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional discrimination, but left one aspect that applicants of disprivileged demographic background can still cite: "an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise."
Interestingly, one right-wing justice rebuked Harvard for its discrimination in favor of students from extra-privileged backgrounds, those whose families had past association with Harvard. His point was somewhat confused, but there is a valid point to be made: since 43% of white Harvard students benefited from that privilege, eliminating that privilege could achieve, through fairness in process, much of the fairness of outcome that affirmative action has achieved.
Justice Jackson explains why affirmative action is needed to counteract generations of disadvantage which government policies imposed on the blacks of the time, and which today's blacks have more or less inherited.
Biden condemned the decision and said he will seek ways to maintain the effect of affirmative action despite the decision.
The London region water company has not invested in fixing enormous water leaks, causing shortages and waste, because it was more profitable to neglect its duty and wallow in greed. (What else would you expect from a big business under today's business attitudes?)
I see two valid goals in this situation:
- Bring water services back into clean, water-saving and satisfactory service.
- Punish those who have profited by harming the public — take as much as possible of their past gains.
An article that agrees.
I suspect that the laws that govern these companies were designed to facilitate profiteering. The most important thing is to change them to demand responsibility and stop the profiteering.
The new Philippines president Marcos Jr. has made rhetoric smoother, and shifted international ties towards the US. Domestically, he has said a lot to portray himself as helping the poor, but not done much to knack it up.
It looks like Australia's government has proposed a law to facilitate new fossil fuel development.
A TV station presented a program that accurately showed how dolphins typically mate — a group of males league together to plan gang rape.
It leads humans to pose a question of which standards to judge dolphin behavior by — the standards of human morality, or dolphins' own nonhuman nature.
Uganda now sentences people to 10 years in prison for Homosexual sex. Advocating the rights of homosexuals is punished with 20 years.
Progressive legislators propose to cut military aid to Uganda in response.
Republicans in several states are attacking teachers' unions, with the support of millionaires such as the owners of Walmart.
This is one example of how plutocracy in the US supports dooH niboR, who takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
Australian prisons are keeping minors in cells almost 24 hours a day.
This article describes one prison in one state, but I've seen others showing that this practice spans Australia.
I am sure most of these prisoners are too old to be considered "children". However, the laws to protect them are important — both to ensure work does not keep them out of school, and to ensure it doesn't do them physical harm.
Voter ID is just one item in a long list of assaults on [UK] democracy. Breaches of standards in public office, clampdowns on protest and attacks on the judiciary have all featured in the last few years of Tory rule.
An inquiry into the undercover UK cops who were sent to infiltrate peaceful protest groups in the 1970s has published its first partial report. It concludes that their investigation was intimate and had no justification whatsoever.
Cost of living worsening health of children in UK, say school nurses.
This is plutocracy at work.
Short-term local opposition defeated Scotland's plan to establish serious protection for 10% of its waters.
This is a step towards pollution and extinction.
A UK appeals court gave reasons for rejecting the plan to make asylum seekers wait in Rwanda.
Rwanda's government is generally repressive.
This decision is not final — it may be reversed on appeal.
A pregnant woman went to a phony abortion clinic, a "crisis center," and was given a gravely erroneous diagnosis of her dangerous unviable pregnancy.
We must wonder if they misrepresented it intentionally to stop her from getting the abortion that she needed.
Youtube is experimenting with blocking users found to be using ad-blockers.
Google ads work by tracking users and their activities. I don't particularly care whether an ad appears on my graphical virtual screen, since I don't have to actually watch it — I could do something else.
What matters to me is refusing to be identified, as well as not running nonfree JS code. If I can't pull in the video without being thus maltreated, that will make YouTube inaccessible for me once again.
The real determinant will be whether the Invidio.us proxies continue to work.
Many UK schools have been closed because their buildings are unsafe.
Hundreds were made decades ago with lightweight aerated concrete, which turns out to crumble eventually, but there are other kinds of problems too. However, the overall causes is that the government did not spend enough on inspecting, repairing and replacing schools buildings.
This is plutocracy at work. The government needs more money but hasn't got the courage to tax the rich more.
UK aid should not fund private hospitals in developing countries, says Oxfam.
I agree. To aid the harmful plutocratist press for privatization is making things worse.
The [US] Army warned Troops in 1945 of the Danger of Fascism. That Warning Rings True Today.
A long-elected Labour MO has accused Starmer of leading a "rightwing, illiberal" faction and trying to exclude all other ideas from the party.
I expect Starmer to respond to this demand to respect the room for disagreement in the party with force. He has already shown that leading over and over.
[Prominent feminist writer] Caitlin Moran: what's gone wrong for men – and the thing that can fix them.
I would not try to compare how bad today's society is for men with how it is for women. It seems to be pretty bad for both — partly because men and women are being pushed into penury by plutocracy, and into horrible social relations by anti-social media.
Moran has pointed out one important difference: women and girls have found ways to support each other publicly and talk about their collective difficulties in society. Men and boys need it too but have no place to turn to except woman-haters.
Thank you Ms Moran. I hope society finds a way out of this sad gender relations trap.
Enraged Palestinians and enraged Israelis are in a cycle of violence, but the Israeli violence seems to be much bigger.
The UK put preparation for pandemics aside to leave the EU in the most crude possible way.
Bernie Sanders rebuked the Supreme Court decision blocking Biden's planned method for canceling some student debt, and calls on Biden to use another method that the court can't block.
Plans to shorten medical training put quality of [UK medical treatment] at risk, doctors say.
If the UK finds that it needs more money to provide everyone with proper medical treatment, it should tax the rich more.
Ralph Nader: the US's major newspapers are replacing serious news with tabloid-style distraction material.
Improved technology could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping by 50%. But it would cost money: the challenge is to compel the ship owners to pay it.
The global heating we have already caused will inevitably lead to rising sea level for centuries. But if we heat the Earth more, there will be even more sea level rise.
One projection is that 3°C of global heating will raise sea level up to 50 feet by 2300.
Global heating has made the Hajj dangerous. In a decade or two it may be deadly to quite a few.
Will the Muslim world take note of the danger of global heating, in which a few Muslim countries play significant roles?
Despite record temperatures, some Chinese people are yet to connect the extreme heat to the climate crisis, something activists want to change.
Once Chinese get used to the term "climate change," they need to get familiar with "climate collapse" and "climate disaster." They need to understand that climate disaster can destroy China just as it can destroy most or all other countries. And they should think of Shanghai inundated.
Improved technology could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping by 50%. But it would cost money: the challenge is to compel the ship owners to pay it.
Bad working conditions for Nepalese workes in Qatar are causing them permanent kidney problems — they need dialysis for the rest of their lives.
Qatar could correct this problem, but its rich rulers don't want to reduce their income.
An Australian study recommends banning marketing "inducements" designed to make it hard to for people with gambling problems to resist gambling.
"Inducements" are a term for temporary promotions such as "Buy one, get one 'free'." (They ought to say, "gratis.")
The UK plans to close most ticket offices at railroad stations.
The unions are opposed to this because of possible job losses, but I see a danger to everyone. How will it be possible to buy a ticket? Will people be compelled to do it from a web site that imposes use of nonfree software and requires them to identify themselves?
What other options for buying train tickets exist now?
West Virginia state thugs have been caught in crimes ranging from kidnaping to rape to drugging, and many other crimes, not quite as grave but still nasty.
The state governor is pushing the investigation.
What will Ukraine do with Russian collaborators? Revenge would be a mistake.
The article suggests distinguishing between those who sought power or advantage through the Russian puppet governments and those who simply carried on their legitimate civic jobs under Russian power.
Border Patrol Video of Killing Shows [Indigenous US Citizen Near Border] Had No Gun, Complied With Orders.
Extra! Extra! One of Marjorie Taylor Greene's crazy beliefs — that her TV set is watching her — may actually be correct, depending on which kind of TV set she has.
Labour leadership accused of U-turn over rent controls.
It calls for "getting interest rates under control" instead — but without trying to act on their true cause, it is mainly working against labor.
On the ethics, practicality and sustainability of farming octopuses.
Octopuses are so remote from us evolutionarily that they give a sample of how strange alien life could be. That we can relate to them at all is amazing.
Literally alien life is likely to be toxic to us, and we to it. Octopuses don't think of eating humans because they don't generally eat anything bigger than their heads.
A parliamentary committee is concerned that millions in the UK are failing to move into the internet of proprietary software and surveillance.
The Netherlands has to reduce the amount of beef farming because the farms' emissions of nitrogen are damaging ecosystems around them.
It's true we need farms in order to have food. But we don't need as much beef as we produce now — and for other reasons we must produce less.
Describing an experimental shelter for homeless families, designed to reduce their trauma and stress.
The homeless population of Los Angeles has jumped to 75,000 people.
The underlying cause is that the US handles housing to serve the interests of the rich.
French thugs shot and killed a driver of Arab origin for no sensible reason, then fabricated a fake reason. This has sparked protests all around France.
Global heating will make summer miserable for much of the US.
In the south, a heat dome. In the northeast, smoke from Canadian forest fires.
Until we reduce greenhouse gas levels, it will get worse and worse and worse.
Australian climate defenders blocked coal export shipments in several ports.
Australian state governments complain about the momentary inconvenience of the protests, and threaten to use repressive anti-protest laws. Bravo to the courageous protesters!
There is no need for Australia to suddenly end all coal export. What it needs to do is cut down coal mining faster — and pressure the rest of the world hard to cut down faster. These protesters are calling attention to that.
Secondarily, Australia should stop imploring China to buy Australian coal rather than mine coal in China. Coal combustion in China will hurt the world (and especially China) no matter which country it gets the coal from, but begging China to buy it strengthens China's influence and weakens resistance to it.
China has built as much renewable generating capacity as the rest of the world, and it is rapidly building more.
This is not a race between countries to see which one will "win." It is part of a race against time for the survival of civilization and the natural world. Renewable generation is one of the things we need for that goal.
The whole world is in this together, and China shows what other countries do, if only we overcome the efforts of the fossil fuel corruption intended to stop us.
One bad aspect of China's progress is that it is still increasing its coal combustion. Until fossil fuel use decreases, we are still getting further away from survival.
In general, the one good thing about the Chinese system of government is that the state is more powerful than businesses, and will not permit them to get powerful enough to obstruct the state's plans.
The very bad thing about the Chinese system of government is that the state is far more powerful than the people, and will not permit the people to obstruct the state's plans. But it does consider the aggregate practical desires of people, despite its contempt for their views and freedom.
To oversimplify, a just state cows the powerful few while respecting the people. China does the first but rejects the second. The US does an insufficient job of each.
- Mark Carney [recently retired head of the Bank of England] says Bank’s negative predictions about consequences of leaving EU "proven to be the case."*
The Tory prime minister has deprioritized the previous commitments for avoiding global heating disaster.
Yusef Salaam was one of the five falsely convicted "rapists" in Central Park in 1989, who were later conclusively exonerated. He seems to have won the Democratic primary for a city council seat.
- First UN human rights investigator allowed to visit since [Guantanamo prison] was set up says men subjected to "inhuman and degrading" treatment.*
Tasmania, under a right-wing government, is continuing to cut down the trees where the endangered swift parrot lives.
- First UN human rights investigator allowed to visit [Guantanamo prison] was set up says men subjected to "inhuman and degrading" treatment.*
UN says Russian forces have tortured and executed civilians in Ukraine.
The EU's proposed law to regulate AI and nonintelligent "AI" takes mostly the right approach: to regulate by laws the uses of these systems.
The attempt to control these uses by releasing trained neural networks under nonfree licenses is misguided: it is nondemocratic, unjust, and probably ineffective, just as it is for other software.
For the directive as described here, I am concerned that a fine of 6% of global gross revenue could be an acceptable business expense for very large companies. I think that individuals crucially responsible for flagrantly illegal decisions should be prosecuted and face possible prison sentences.
I am concerned that the proposal may enact a bad assumption about the breadth of copyright. When ChatGPT or something like it copies a small snippet of text that appeared in some unidentified work, or perhaps in many otherwise different unidentified works, that should not be copyright infringement on those works. it would not be copyright infringement if you did the same thing in your head. Therefore, the requirement to list the copyright of all the works used for training is excessive.
Foxconn promised to invest in an Ohio company making electric trucks, but found an excuse to pull out of it, so the company is going bankrupt.
Turkey and Lebanon are deporting Syrian refugees to Syria, and some are being drafted into Assad's army.
The last resort of fragging your commander with a grenade is always available when there is actual combat.
Fossil fuel company Santos owns "decommissioned" offshore fossil gas wells that are leaking bubbles of methane. It says that stopping these leaks is "not feasible."
Is that really true, or is it a bogus excuse not to seal them?
If it is true, this is all the more reason not to allow any more fossil gas wells to be made.
Supreme Court Rejects Independent State Legislature Theory.
The "Independent State Legislature Theory" claimed that state legislatures could decide how to decide arbitrarily how the state's electoral votes would be cast in a presidential election, disregarding the state's constitution and immune to correction by the state's courts.
This was obviously absurd, given that the state legislatures are created by the state's constitution. However, brazen right-wing legislators that sought to force a right-wing victory will try anything and see if they can get away with it.
The Pregnant Workers' Fairness Act has been enacted.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide "reasonable accommodations" to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition,
Senior doctors in England vote to strike over pay.
"Consultant" in the NHS means a specialist who takes overall responsibility for treating selected patients. Nothing like a "consultant" in business.
Time is running out for Julian Assange. If MPs do not act, how can they say they value free speech?
Prigozhin and some of his troops have arrived in Belarus. The rest of the Wagner troops seem to be in Ukraine.
UK union-hampering laws imposed a deadline on the nurse union's strike vote so that it did not receive enough ballots for a valid result.
I have not seen anything which explains just why or how that particular deadline was imposed, or whether the union could now try again with more time for members to vote.
Kenyan women who survived domestic slavery in Salafi Arabia testified and demand Kenyan government action to protect Kenyans who work there.
Bogus Johnson was judged to have violated the ministerial code by taking a private job with only half an hour's notice to the pertinent parliamentary committee. But this committee has no power to punish him.
Starmer appears to have broken a similar rule when he left government service.
A pregnant woman in Poland, carrying a fetus that had almost no chance of resulting in a healthy baby, died in a hospital that never informed her that her life was in danger or that an abortion could have saved her.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to defend the right to abortion and birth control.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the PRO act and protect the right to organize from union-busting tactics.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Filipinas seeking jobs abroad are compelled to borrow money at high interest to pay illegal junk fees.
The current Tory government has set a record for blocking the highest ever fraction of the freedom-of-information requests received.
Prigozhin's maybe-fake coup suggests that Putin's regime is not as secure as he would like us to believe. It follows that Ukraine has the hope of winning the war and kicking Russian troops out of Ukraine.
The article mentions the debate among historians about whether the hard terms in the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, caused widespread suffering that helped Hitler seize power. I think there is a miscommunication in that discussion. The "humiliation" of Germany, that helped Hitler seize power, was the requirement for Germany to pay reparations that it could not possibly pay. Every German felt the suffering from this.
A total military defeat for the Putin forces would not amount to a humiliation like that.
Sea level rise, caused by human-controlled greenhouse gas emissions is destroying Tuvalu's land area. The country will be gone well before the end of this century.
What we don't know is whether other countries, that won't mostly be inundated by the sea, will survive the other global consequences of our way of life.
How vampire capitalists use debt forgiveness to a poor country as an excuse to squeeze it to death. (From 2012.)
Palast uses the term "vulture", but I think that is misleading. Vultures eat dead animals; as long as animals die, vultures (or something comparable) are necessary. These capitalists, by contrast, drain live countries and their live inhabitants.
I would like to see more recent news about this.
Robert Reich busts the myth that "people are paid what they're worth."
He presents this with illustrations in a short video, which (while the invidious proxies continue to function) can be seen here. (It starts with an annoying use of singular "they", but I recommend it despite that.)
For me, the statement he criticizes shows an even deeper problem: it presumes a narrow, purely economic idea of what a person's value consists of. I've decided not to use locutions that presume a person's "worth" is measured by the economic value of per assets.
High interest rates in the UK have translated into high mortgage interest, which is translating into higher rents, which is likely to make hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
I have a hunch that the Tories' voter-ID cards will stop many of them from voting. My hunch says that those cards have the voter's address, and that those who were forced out of their homes will need to get new cards. If they don't have a stable address, does that mean they can't vote?
A survey shows conclusively that the root cause of homelessness in California is simple: homes are too expensive.
The same study established that 90% of California's homeless people were living in California when they became homeless.
Maryland's supreme court ruled that ballistic analysis has not been proved reliable enough to justify testifying that a specific bullet was definitely fired by a certain gun.
More information.
The gig workers paid to provide verified data for training neural nets are secretly using neural net systems to get that data.
This overall system could magnify errors.
Rich people's paid flunkies say, "Now can Naples survive without attracting our bosses to visit?"
Seward County, Nebraska, makes a racket of accusing drivers based on no evidence of being drug traffickers, then threatening to put them in jail, unless they sign away all their cash.
"Drug-sniffing" dogs are often trained to follow the human handler's subtle commands. When the drug is told "find drugs here", it does.
When victims try to contest the seizure, courts are biased heavily against them.
To prevent this, we should make sure that it is (1) impossible to seize money from people for an alleged crime without first convicting them of it, and (2) when money is seized, absolutely none of it is available for the use of thug departments or the entities they are associated with.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax major sports leagues.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
Samual Alito accepted lavish gifts and then failed to recuse himself from a very important case in which he ruled for his benefactor.
US citizens: call on state pension funds to vote their shares for certain shareholder resolutions.
The petition text emphasizes indigenous people's rights to the extent that you might get the idea we non-indigenous hardly matter. But these shareholder resolutions would protect everyone, as they should.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Abortion Justice Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to protect teenage workers from corporate exploitation.
I will not refer to teenagers of age 14 and 15 as "children".
Notwithstanding that point about language, I support the laws that stop employers from pushing them into excessive or hazardous work.
US citizens: call on Biden and Blinken to confront India's human rights abuses. The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Home Depot to stop selling Roundup.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signsature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
Prigozhin agreed to go to exile in Belarus, and Putin agreed to drop charges against him. Ostensibly, everyone is friends again. Despite the brief incidents of real combat, I can't feel convinced it wasn't just theater.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/25/prigozhins-march-on-moscow-chronology-of-an-attempted-coup
The exile ageement is no guarantee of Prigozhin's safety. If the coup was real, Putin might have him killed in Belarus. Even if it was theater, Putin might have him killed, in reaction to the enthusiastic reception Prigozhin received from the public — apparently because people hate Putin. I don't think Putin can forgive showing that on TV.
More speculation about the reasons for the events we have seen.
Anti-abortionists try to crush defenders of abortion rights through phony accusations and proceedings designed to humiliate and impoverish them.
Democrats are turning their defense of abortion rights into election victories.
It is more or less impossible to do valid psychological experiments on whether mental manipulation tricks to help a person really do help. People tend to be helped by doing anything which they believe will help them.
Ralph Nader: US corporations have good reason to believe they are above the law, since crimes by corporations occur constantly and are hardly ever prosecuted. Government lawyers don't want to prosecute businesses because they hope to work for those businesses later.
We voters could stop them if we concentrated on the issue. That is why they create side issues (refugees, queer people, drag shows, sex education) to distract people with.
US beekeepers have to work very hard to make new colonies to make up for the ones that die.
Amazon has subcontracted a lot of its deliveries to "separate" companies, to thwart holding it accountable.
The workers at one of them now demand Amazon negotiate, but Amazon wants to shut down that subcompany instead.
The easiest way to hold Amazon responsible. Don't buy from there, and ask your friends not to buy anything for you from there. Inform web sites that ask people to buy from Amazon through their pages that you boycott Amazon and suggest they choose another way to raise funds.
I go even further than this. I refuse to identify myself when buying products, aside from prescription medicines.
3M pays $10.3bn to settle water pollution suit over [PFAS] "forever chemicals".
This is a lot of money, but I think it may be too little. is it enough to pay for the costs of treating all the people affected?
What can these cities do to keep PFAS out of their water supply? They will have to do it forever, I think, since the environment is already full of PFAS.
Safety checks run down and boom time for criminals. Tory incompetence/neglect is letting everything in the UK go bad. So any business might cheat you. You could lose mere money, or lose your life in the case of unsafe construction that might start a fire.
Seeking funds for wildlife conservation in poor, indebted countries by trading debt for a commitment to spend on conservation.
I think wealthy countries will have to put money into this, and get it by taxing the rich.
An Australian senator calls for investigating whether any of Australia's "senior generals" bear responsibility for war crimes in Afghanistan.
The Collateral Murder video shows that rules of engagement can license murder. I hope Australia will investigate that too.
Everyone: call on Procter & Gamble to switch to forest-free products to help save the boreal forest.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 1-202-224-3121 and advocate expanding the Supreme Court and imposing a code of ethics such as other federal judges have.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Prigozhin's Wagner soldiers took over the city of Rostov without a fight, and some of the locals welcomed them.
Another Wagner column seems to have rushed towards Moscow, while Putin ordered real army units to stop them.
Ukraine welcomed the opportunity that an internal conflict in Russia might offer. However, I expect this won't give Ukraine much of an opportunity. Prigozhin was at pains to explain that the army centers he had taken control of were working on the war with Ukraine just as before.
Then he made a deal with Putin to abort the coup.
Prigozhin's attack seemed precipitously sudden, with too little public preparation to build up much support. His climb down seems unbelievably fast as well. I would not expect someone who has launched an armed rebellion and been accused of treason to call it off so quickly.
I have to wonder whether this coup was a kind of theater, agreed in advance between Prigozhin and Putin.
A train carrying toxic chemicals fell into the Yellowstone River because a bridge collapsed.
I have to wonder whether this collapse was caused by saving money by reducing regular maintenance. That would fit the railroad company's general approach, but I don't know whether it occurred in this bridge.
US citizens: call on Congress to boycott Kevin McCarthy's commission to cut Social Security (and Medicare).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A private ally of Orbán has bought Hungary's main book publisher and bookstore chain.
Hungary, like various other countries, is exploring how to create cryptic fascism, in which the institutions of the state nominally continue to work, but democracy ceases to be meaningful, This reminds me of how Octaviuss Caesar gave himself personal control of Rome while keeping the Republic's institutions nominally in function.
Three Texas thugs face murder charges for killing Melissa Perez, who seemed to be freaking out but was not in a position to harm them significantly.
Opponents to Atlanta's cop city project are running a referendum campaign which seeks to cancel it entirely.
The city government, which seems to be motivated by something we can only guess at, tried several times to sabotage the petition drive.
Surely the would-be contractors see an opportunity to profit, but I doubt that the profit would be big enough to motivate such stiff insistence from the city government. I have a hunch that something nastier is at work, something more deeply related to right-wing politics.
I doubt that the contractors who would build it have enough money to gain that they would find it worth while to put a lot of money into stiffening politicians' support for the project.
Six southern US states including Texas are suffering from an extreme heat wave.
When will Republicans admit that our actions are making this worse?
I have a hunch that northern Mexico is suffering from a heat wave too.
Malaysia to ask Interpol for help to track down comedian over MH370 joke.
Many governments repress political dissidents, usually by falsifying nonpolitical charges against them. For instance, India does this.
So does Malaysia.
However, overtly attacking foreign comedians is an extreme form of censorship.
Prigozhin seems to claim to be launching some sort of coup or civil war in Russia, but at the same time saying it is not a coup.
He says that there was no rational reason for Putin to attack Ukraine.
Any or all of what he claims about events could be bogus. He may be trying to seize power from Putin. Or it may be a stunt, planned with Putin. I can't come up with a rational explanation of it. But it seems unlikely to me that there will be room for both of them in Russia after this.
The sudden warming of Britain’s seas will tear through ocean life like a wildfire.
This is going to happen around the world. Some marine species will be able to move — others will not. The result will be chaos. And then ocean acidification will wipe out entire classes, even phyla.
The government should halt all new roads unless there are exceptional circumstances, the [UK] government's climate advisers are likely to say next week.
Texas has passed a law to nullify all local regulations covering broad areas including working conditions, farming, and banking.
In particular, this will eliminate the regulations in some cities requiring employers to give construction workers occasional breaks to drink water, to protect them from death from the extreme heat.
Republicans are determined to ensure that hard labor is no safer in one Texas town than in another.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to refuse to lend legitimacy to the Republican's plan for a commission to cut Social Security and Medicare.
When artist Françoise Gilot broke up with Pablo Picasso, he went to great lengths to cancel her artistic career. In France, her career never escaped the damage that he did.
Picasso famously made many paintings of his wives and lovers. I wonder if that was a way of marking them as his possessions.
Picasso's arrogant treatment of women does not cancel his artistic genius; equally, his artistic genius does not cancel his arrogant treatment of women. They are two parts of reality, each as real as the other.
A number of musicians have vowed to boycott concert venues that use facial recognition on the public.
Bravo!
Establishing fenced enclosures in the Australian desert, and eradicating invasive predators and pests, enables native species to grow again.
I support protecting the precolonization ecosystems this way. I question, though, whether it is correct to call this "rewilding". The indigenous people have been managing these ecosystems for 40,000 years, so "wild" is not an accurate term to describe what they were during that time.
Madison Square Garden is using facial recognition on everyone who enters, to keep out the lawyers representing plaintiffs that are suing it.
Laws to restrict use of facial recognition on the public should make sure to prevent this.
The mining company Adani threatened reporters who visited its coal mine site with legal action for meeting with indigenous protesters protesting on the site, and demanded that they not publish any photos they took there.
Companies that try to bully reporters should be shut down by the state.
This particular company is participating in mass murder. Pollution from coal mines already kills thousands. Global heating disaster will kill at least hundreds of millions, perhaps billions.
My main criticism of the Australian government is that it allows new coal mines to be opened. How much coal mine profit is your life worth?
China has demanded Poland censor an art exhibition which condemns actions by China and Chairman Xi.
China carries out many parallel efforts to silence criticism and critics in other countries. It uses its economic power to pressure governments to help. We cannot take for granted that Poland will stand up to this pressure.
Accused "hijackers" on a cargo ship headed for Italy were simply refugees trying to get to Europe, say the prosecutors who were supposed to put them on trial as "pirates".
The effect of government-imposed poverty in the UK can be measured by the average height of five-year-old children.
Some car racing in the US still uses leaded gas. Researchers have found that it does significant harm to children growing up near those race tracks.
The US government is inviting Indian represser Modi to visit, hoping to win his support against China. I fear this means the US will do as little to oppose Modi's repression in India as it does to oppose repression in Salafi Arabia.
Yemen may find peace by splitting once again into two countries, but Salafi Arabia objects because neither one is under its influence.
For "smart", read "snoop". It is now advertised as a feature that a "smart TV" watches you. Sky expects customers to pay extra to be able to use the video themselves.
If I could pay extra to make sure nobody could watch me through it, that wouldn't convince me to tolerate that device in my house. (After all, it runs nonfree software and talks to the internet.) But it would eliminate one of my objections to it.
A London thug has been convicted for spraying a kind of pepper spray at a man who was climbing down a drain pipe on a tall building. By doing so the thug endangered the man's life. Fortunately for him, he did not actually fall.
The thug suspected the man of having committed robbery. It would have been reasonable for the thugs to have arrested him when he got down, but not to risk killing him.
Robert Reich: [The corrupter] is basing his candidacy on two Big Lies — that President Biden stole the 2020 election from him, and that Biden is orchestrating a prosecutorial witch hunt against him.
In Watts, a ghetto in Los Angeles, there is a high school, and near it a metal recycling plant which emits a high level of pollution, including brain-stunting lead. That plant has now been charged with felonies for endangering the students.
As a side issue, I criticize the article for referring to high school students as "children" — they'd have to be prodigies to be in high school that young. Of course, that has no effect on the issue of emitting dangerous pollution.
(satire) Coast Guard Sends Another Submersible Full Of Billionaires After The First One.
The Biden administration … proposed revisions to Trump-era regulations that severely weakened protections for our nation's most imperiled animals and plants, keeping in place some of the most significant rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act in the law's 50-year history.
An algorithm Used in Jordan's distribution of World Bank aid funds uses incorrect measures to calculate who are the neediest.
Ukraine calls for setting up a system whereby the assets of a country that launches a war of conquest will be seized and used to fix the damage.
It is fair to take Russia's assets, and those of Putin's cronies, and put them into rebuilding Ukraine. Let's do it. But we should not suppose that other dictators who in the future start wars of conquest will be vulnerable to the same tactic. Once they have seen this response to Putin, they will take care not to store their assets in countries that might not be on their side in a war.
The [right wing] believes the FBI is obsessed with jailing Trump. The opposite is true.
Economic research concludes that the loss of income from shutting down fossil fuel extraction would fall mainly on the wealthy. We can do it!
In Britain, at least 14,000 people were denied the right to vote by the Tories' new voter-ID law.
They tended to be from demographic groups one might expect not to vote for Tories.
The actual number denied the right to vote could be in the hundreds of thousands, as many who did not vote said it was because of the voter ID.
- Amazon rainforest and [1/5 of] other ecosystems could collapse "very soon", researchers warn.*
Perhaps even in a few decades.
Greenpeace says to reject the planet roasters' false choice between "the economy" and our health.
An additional level of falsehood is that when they say "the economy" they mean rich people's wealth — not particularly helpful for us. For non-rich people to have better lives, we must reject the rich people's trickle-down deals.
Millions of Americans have student debt that, barring a miracle, they can't possibly ever pay off. Biden paused loan payments, but his surrender to Republican blackmail includes restarting payments. Many Americans are too poor ever to pay.
Republicans want to dump additional debt on them to cancel out the benefit they received from the pause in payments.
The miracle of plutocracy's media influence is visible in the fact that the millions of victims of this don't all vote for progressives.
The fourth leading cause of death in the US? Cumulative poverty. Cumulative poverty means having spent years of your life being poor.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the new Republican bill for tax cuts for the rich: "billions of dollars in tax cuts for wealthy corporations, private equity firms, the richest 1%, and investors from other countries."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the EPA to restrict bee-killing pesticides.
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The Media Cares More About the Titanic Sub Than Drowned Migrants.
When a few people go on a risky adventure and get killed, their deaths are regrettable — every death is regrettable, in and of itself — but it doesn't raise important issues.
Atlanta DA Opposed Indicting Cop City Legal Observer, but Georgia Attorney General Pushed Charges Anyway.
US citizens: call on the USPS Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission to enable public feedback on DeJoy's planned "dramatic changes" in the USPS.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect our communities from toxic air pollution from chemical plants.
The Senate Budget Committee held a hearing about the effects of dark money in keeping global heating going.
Half of [all] Americans have faced [an alert about possible] "extreme" weather in the last six weeks.
Some of the events warned about have a clear connection to global heating.
Biden and the presidents and prime ministers of various other countries have signed a statement calling for a green transition for the whole world, together with debt relief for countries crushed by debt, as ways to reduce poverty.
Justice Alito accepted a luxury vacation as a gift, along with a right-wing billionaire who was pushing legal cases to give additional legal rights to billionaires (and less to the rest of us).
He did not report it.
Oregon County [which includes Portland] Sues Big Oil for Climate Damages Caused by Heat Dome, Wildfires.
More information.
Fanatical Israelis, from the camp that generally aims for ethnic cleansing, held a pogrom in an Arab town in Palestine and burned 30 houses.
The UK is proceeding with an "online safety" bill that would make it unsafe for Wikipedia to operate there.
Organized volunteers in Jersey are trying to eradicate the Asian hornets that have gained a foothold there.
In most of Western Europe these hornets are so established that there is little hope of getting rid of them with today's methods. Perhaps some day we will be able to eradicate them with an innovative genetic attack.
Business web sites are filling up with text written by chatbots to appeal to Google Search. This text is uninteresting for humans so humans generally don't read it.
It occurs to me that this could be profitable for Google. It will probably charge for the perverse service of writing the SEO text that will appeal to its search engine.
And it may be hard for other search engines to make sense of these pages enough to know when to show them to users.
Here's an idea: a chatbot-generated page could have a button saying "FOR HUMANS" that would take you to the version that humans would like to read.
The Federal Election Commission will consider a petition from Public Citizen to ban political use of deepfakes.
I think it is misleading to refer to the systems that make deepfakes as "AI", because they do not understand the messages they portray.
The International Labour Organization said that the UK's restrictions on strikes violate workers' rights.
The International Labour Organization said that the UK's restrictions on strikes violate workers' rights.
Harassment of women in toilets by trans women is so rare that in effect it is pure myth.
In Canada, wildfires are overcoming the capacity to rebuild the houses they destroy.
This is just the beginning of climate disaster. Each decade will make things distinctly worse.
Britons voted for Bogus Johnson knowing he was a liar.
This awareness was so thoroughly spread that even I knew that "Bogus" was the correct name for him. It seems that he has a superficial charm that motivates many Britons to like him even as he lies to them.
The bullshitter, in the US, has a superficially different approach and tells very different of lies, but I am sure the two careers are fundamentally similar.
The owner of Reddit has made Elon Musk his hero and Twitter his example.
That bodes ill for Reddit.
Republicans in Congress are harassing researchers who study disinformation practices, with investigations of made-up crimes.
One must suspect that Republicans are aware that their party lives on disinformation, and consider these researchers a danger to that.
[Minister in charge] tells [UK thugs] to ramp up use of stop and search.
Stop-and-frisk, as it's called in the US, is not very effective at reducing crime
but is wildly effective at making people of targeted demographic groups feel oppressed.
A UK agency will investigate whether eateries at train stations are gouging.
In the US, it is taken for granted that they will do so.
An Australian trans-man paradoxically found it easier to avoid prejudice (usually) as a foreign journalist in Afghanistan than in Australia.
He has published a documentary of his meetings with a group of Taliban that accepted being acquainted with him.
Poor people hit hardest by Covid because of [years of pre-pandemic] NHS cuts, experts say.
Everyone: call on the Museum of Modern Art to reject the sponsorship of fossil fuel magnate Henry Kravis
US citizens: call on the Dept of Labor to enforce federal law in states that try to let teenagers work more hours and doing increasingly dangerous work.
US citizens: call on the Forest Service to protect the Thompson Divide.
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US citizens: call on the EPA to take bold action on plastic pollution
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Arizona's legislators are drifting into unofficial establishment of Christianity by setting out bibles in their lounge.
One Arizona state senator expressed her disapproval of this by hiding some of the bibles within the lounge. Republicans tried to expel her from office for that.
Perhaps it would be more useful to set out copies in their lounge of Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, and The Buddha and his Dhamma by Bhimrao Ambedkar.
When the boat carrying hundreds of refugees sank near Greece, it had not moved for hours. Greek coast guard vessels remained nearby but did not rescue anyone.
This contradicts the Greek claim that the boat was sailing towards Italy.
The Tories have canceled their plan to reform unjust treatment of British citizens who were brought from Caribbean colonies decades ago as children and have been threatened with deportation.
This is the usual Tory evasive response when their cruel policies arouse public outrage: they promise to correct the policies, dawdle for years getting started, and eventually figure that people have had time to forgot the outrage — so they can disregard the issue.
The EU is investigating Amazon's use of its anticompetitive practices in advertising.
Amazon carries out auctions for ad space, and charges web sites for that. It also represents the bidders for the space, and charges them for that. Independent sellers are effectively compelled to use Amazon. So it has to be broken up.
However, laws that require proof of specific abuses before breaking up a giant company are too weak. Simply being so big as to have power over a market is ipso facto too big.
See also my proposal for a progressive tax on a corporation's gross income.
Power companies spend millions to fight Maine's proposed non-profit utility.
I guess that is why they are called "power" companies.
There is so much more for us [women] to worry about than men masquerading as women to access single-sex spaces. (Which hardly ever happens.)
Olena Yahupova lived in Enerhodar when the Putin forces captured it. Perhaps because her husband is a Ukrainian officer — no other plausible explanation is mentioned — the Putin forces tortured her for days, then put her in prison for months.
Then they forced her to dig ditches and tell lies on camera. Then an officer in the Putin forces decided to release her and apparently gave orders that permitted her to go to Russia and from there to Estonia.
Some of the events in this story are puzzling — I can't see explanations for what some Russians did. But that doesn't mean they didn't do them.
We can revile Putin’s violence in Ukraine, but we’re not at war with Russian culture.
If even the British establishment in the midst of an existential war with Nazi Germany could see German music as more than simply "enemy" culture, but as part of a common civilization, surely we should be able to do the same today?
Philippine human rights defender Walden Bello: Neoliberal Economists Should Be Recognized as Criminals, Not Prize-Winners.
Global trade, unleashed from national frontiers, has proved extremely effective for converting the Earth's natural resources, and the work of the non-rich, into wealth to spread among the affluent few. That is what the World Trade Organization locks countries into.
India has banned several documentaries that presented oppression of Muslims.
It forced Twitter to censor tweets (before Musk took it over) that accused India of repressing protesting farmers.
Research has found those who use medications such as Ritalin without having conditions such as ADHD actually reduce their mental performance.
UK thugs say that repressing Just Stop Oil protests cost them around 6 million dollars.
By comparison continued global heating will cost billions of dollars, if not trillions, and hundreds of millions of lives, if not billions.
Clearly the government should stop repressing Just Stop Oil and start heeding it.
Broadening historical preservation in the US to include homes of people who were not rich, and perhaps not white either.
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 promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important, usually because they have something to teach about racism or fighting racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
I disagree with one point mentioned in the article. I don't believe anyone living today needs to feel guilty over having had ancestors that had dealings with slavery or slave-owners. The test for our consciences is whether we support freedom today.
As the people of Hamtramck elected Muslims to the city council, those who make "diversity" their cause applauded … until they discovered that those Muslims were religious conservatives on social issues. I advocate equal rights, not "diversity."
Billions stolen in wage theft from US workers.
Critics say government is toothless to help.
The FBI is arresting fantasy terrorists again, protecting us from biddable young people who can be lured into playing a minor role in imaginary fund-raising for PISSI.
US citizens: call on Congress to save millions of Americans from losing medical coverage — by passing Medicare for All.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US government toughens rules on chemicals used to break up oil slicks.
What Billionaire Polluters used after the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico seems to have caused harm to humans who touched it.
Outrage in Guatemala as crusading journalist given six-year prison term.
Many countries nowadays silence opposition activists with charges of financial or sexual impropriety. It is hard to see in a glance that such charges are false, and that makes them serve repression's purpose.
The lawsuit against the State of Montana for allowing businesses to contribute to ruining the climate for humans in the future has reached the stage of courtroom trial.
The German government has backed down on a law to prohibit installation of new oil and gas heating systems in buildings.
I support shifting the payment for protecting the climate from individuals to cities, but postponement of change needed for survival is most unfortunate.
Why Should Drug Corporations Like Merck and Eli Lilly Even Exist?
I don't think companies that big ought to exist.
Why Should Drug Corporations Like Merck and Eli Lilly Even Exist?
I don't think companies that big ought to exist.
World Bank says subsidies costing as much as $23m a minute must be repurposed to fight climate crisis. Its report says that these subsidies are harmful. They measure the power of business to corrupt governments.
Will the World Bank take concrete steps to stop this? I am sure it plays some role in those subsidies.
Remaining Tories aim to convince the public that Bogus Johnson was a fluke, rather than the natural culmination of Tory subservience to the callous rich.
Organized right-wing bullies making threats have convinced businesses from trying to demonstrate they are friendly to queer folk.
Parents let their child walk to a nearby store and gave her all sorts of protection as precautions. A busybody called the city thugs, who threatened her parents. Now they keep her a prisoner at home.
When I was 6 years old, I walked to nearby stores with just some money and my house keys. When I crossed a street, I took advantage of the traffic lights, which in midtown Manhattan are found at every intersection. There was nothing difficult about it.
Some Republican officials are following the wrecker in labeling law enforcement against the wrecker's crimes as military attacks in a civil war.
The official investigation into the Minneapolis thug department found a pattern of "aggression and discrimination" against blacks.
An overloaded boat carrying migrants sank in the Mediterranean near Greece. A Greek coast guard vessel accompanies the boat for hours, but someone on the boat who had a satellite phone insisted that the people on it did not want to be rescued, and eventually the coast guard vessel went away.
Did the Greek vessel do something wrong? If so, what should it have done?
Some say it should have towed the boat to "safety". Does this mean forcibly taking them to Greece? To Italy, where they wanted to go?
Would it have been safe to tow the overloaded boat? Would it have been possible to tow it, if the people on the boat tried to prevent towing? Maybe they could have cast off the towing cable or cut it.
I wonder if the boat had an actual crew, and not only passengers. Sometimes smugglers conscript one or more passengers to "run the boat", which (not being sailors) they can do only in easy circumstances. Sometimes that conscript gets charged as a conspirator in the crime of "people smuggling" even though perse was not given a choice.
But this was a bigger boat than usual, and maybe it had a real crew. If so, maybe the person with a satellite phone was one of them. Maybe the passengers would have been happy to land safely in Greece.
Unsupervised reintroductions into Britain of butterflies that have to be brought from other countries risk bringing their diseases and pests too. It is well-meaning but dangerous practice.
Killarney park, Ireland's largest national park, has suffered ecological disaster from invasive species. No new trees can succeed in growing there under present conditions. To correct this will require persistent effort.
Perhaps in a few decades it will be possible to develop biological killers that, when released, would eradicate rhododendron and sika deer in Ireland while being somehow unable to spread elsewhere. But that is just speculation. In the absence of that, the eradication of rhododendron will have to be done manually without cease.
US arms companies are sponging more on the US treasury and spending less on research and development.
ITER, the international fusion experimental reactor, will not be completed in 2025 as previously announced. It will be a decade or more late for its goal of making some experiments possible.
This is sad, but it doesn't really change the situation. If fusion power ever works, it will be decades too late to help avoid global heating disaster. We can keep the research going, but our plan to curb global heating should ignore nuclear fusion.
It must also ignore nuclear fission. Although fission reactors do work, they are so expensive that the main effect of building one is to waste the money we could have used to build more solar and wind power.
The EU accuses Google of taking unfair advantage of running advertisement auctions with favoritism towards Google's own ad generation.
2000 fishing boat crew workers in Africa went on strike, over the terms of work and to protest illegal overfishing by their European employers.
Sanders and Jayapal have reintroduced a bill to tax stock transactions, and pay the tuition fees of community college for those who can't afford it.
It will also pay tuition fees for students at four-year colleges that typically serve students from minority groups. I am in favor of this, since those groups have faced a lot of prejudice, but really this ought to be extended to cover people of any racial background.
Taxing stock transactions has the benefit of damping down speculation aside from the benefit of raising more funds from people who can spare it.
Bogus Johnson has been formally punished for misleading Parliament.
If only we could punish the bullshitter for repeatedly misleading Congress.
Developed countries continue to shirk responsibility at Bonn climate talks, say Friends of the Earth International.
World Bank says subsidies costing as much as $23m a minute must be repurposed to fight climate crisis.
US electric companies spent $200 million on political campaigning to increase electricity prices and impede adoption of home solar power systems.
The Guardian has vowed to reject all ads for gambling.
The Boston subways are full of ads for gambling dis-services. What stood about about them, when I first saw them, is that they did not say what they were selling, and I could not figure it out. Nowadays they do say "bet".
The campaign of pressure against art that relates to Russia is fundamentally wrong and harmful.
"Authoritarian" is inadequate to describe what the corrupter wants to do. The correct word is "fascist".
George Monbiot: right-wing extremism feeds on the misery caused by climate disaster, while it demonizes the efforts to reduce the disaster.
This is because right-wing extremism serves egoistic billionaires, many of whom profit from the businesses that we would have to limit if we are to survive.
US companies such as Apple, Spotify and Facebook are censoring Hong Kong's song used in 2019 to rally for democracy.
Right-wing religious fanatics want states to fund Catholic schools. Would they fund other religions?
Twitter has a rule against posting statements of hatred, but paid accounts seem to be unofficially exempt from the rule.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to investigate governors Abbott and DeMentis for tricking immigrants into being taken to other states where they did not intend to go.
In Britain, having an abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy is a crime. A woman was recently sentenced to prison for this. So there is a campaign to repeal the criminalization of late abortion.
The UK is taking serious action against misleading advertisements that greenwash companies by disregarding the environmental harm they have done.
Greta Thunberg: not phasing out fossil fuels is "death sentence" for world's poor.
I think it will include more than just the world's poor.
Surveillance of DNA in the ocean can report how the thousands of populations of marine species in any given area are increasing or decreasing, and whether and how they are shifting position.
[Bogus Johnson] was a symptom, not the cause, of a political culture that gorges on spectacle and trivia.
Floridians, including teachers, students and parents, are pushing back against Governor DeMentis's right-wing censorship of schools and libraries.
Adidas has resumed selling the branded shoes of that great Hitler fan, Kanye West.
How Kanye?
People with Nazi flags, signs supporting [DeMentis] gathered outside Disney World.
I think it most likely that they are real Nazis and real supporters of DeMentis.
San Francisco told a public library to switch off its WiFi system at night so homeless people could not come there to use it.
San Francisco seems to hold the championship for making homelessness extra painful.
Since 1961, chemical manufacturers' labs have several times observed experimentally that some kind of PFA was toxic. The companies covered it up and claimed PFAs were safe.
The failure to report this to the EPA (once that existed) was illegal.
We Still Haven’t Learned the True Price of War.
No army at war, no matter how careful and scrupulous, can avoid killing and injuring people that were not supposed to be targets. Sometimes soldiers motivated by a brutal spirit intentionally kill civilians. Sometimes an excess of zeal plays a role alongside possible bigotry.
But usually the killings that nobody ever specifically intended make up most of the civilians killed.
Since there is no way in war to prevent "collateral damage" to people's lives, every country must figure this in when deciding whether any given war is justified.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate tax-exempt status for major sports leagues.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Interviews with civilians and rebel fighters in Burma.
The US and Europe have little influence to stop the military repression, because China supports it and Burma shares a frontier with China. Chinese neocolonialism is much like Americans neocolonialism except that China has no worries about criticism from Chinese public opinion.
The rebels refer to the military government and its army as "Bamar". That is the name of the majority ethnic group which translates in English as "Burmese". What this says to me is that the rebels think of this as a war against the majority ethnic group.
I find that quite sad. It is much easier to defeat a government conclusively than to defeat the majority ethnic group conclusively. The former can have an outcome that is good for just about everyone except the ruling elite. It is hard to do that in the latter case.
US citizens: call on US officials to meet and talk with the Russian ambassador about smaller disputes that might perhaps be resolved.
Governor Abbott of Texas plans to install a chain of buoys along the Rio Grande to make it impossible to cross it from Mexico to the US.
The people who try to cross that way are mostly desperate — they risk death by staying at home. When they cross, they look for the safest way, but staying home is too dangerous. They will tackle the buoys somehow even if some of them die trying.
(satire) GOP Megadonor’s Bat-Wielding Goons Remind Clarence Thomas He Still Owes Him 500 Rulings.
Nuclear weapon secrets in the bathroom: five revelations from Trump’s unsealed indictment.
The developer of ChatGPT is being sued for defamation because ChatGPT generated output that seems to defame the plaintiff.
In fact, ChatGPT is not really intelligent: it doesn't know anything and does not understand the text it generates. This ought to make it immune to accusations based on the meaning of the text it generates. But the company is trying to have it both ways, saying that the output should not be trusted while suggesting that it gives valid information. Perhaps because of that it should be found liable for defamation.
China is drilling a very deep narrow hole in the Tarim basin, apparently with a view to drilling for oil there.
One deep hole for geological exploration is an interesting project. More oil extraction is murder.
The UK has an agency to monitor thuggish behavior by cops and recommend changes in policy. But mostly they just ignore these recommendations. The agency head has called for the power to require thug departments to adopt measures to control their violence and injustice.
Driverless cars that are driving around in San Francisco are programmed to stop if they can't figure out what to do. This happens frequently enough that the resulting traffic jams are a big nuisance.
Thousands of Afghan refugees in UK set to be made homeless.
The problem is that Britain does not have space for everyone to live. Whether the ones left out in this game of musical apartments are natives or immigrants is a secondary detail.
What could the government do to make enough living places soon? One idea is to seize the thousands of empty luxury apartments and make them available for groups of homeless to live in. Maybe they could give thousands of people places to live. Then there are the underused office buildings. Since being homeless is an emergency, the government could suspend the usual regulations temporarily.
Psychoanalyzing Russia: the idea of a "death wish" was adopted by Freud from Russian psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein. The author sees this as the root of the atrocities of the Putin forces, which often have no other conceivable purpose except to cause suffering.
Evidence demonstrates that the Putin forces destroyed the Kakhovka dam with explosives planted inside it.
Fruit farming in the UK is suffering from the decline in pollinator populations brought about by human use of chemicals.
Australia has decided to impose mandatory rules for packaging and recycling to reduce the amount of waste, especially plastic waste.
Warning that "AI software" can already be used to design bioweapons and to break computer security.
That seems plausible to me.
However, that doesn't mean terrorist groups will have the ability to make bioweapons. And the same "AI software" could be used to fix holes in security.
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Former DoJ prosecutors say Trump will pack government agencies with sympathizers in effort to "secure his autocratic power."*
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Bromwich noted that Trump’s choices of Barr and Jeff Sessions as attorneys general ultimately disappointed him, "because there came a point for both of them that they couldn’t go as far as Trump needed."*
China has imposed strict regulations on bluetooth file sharing so that it can crush any communication of dissent.
Julian Assange "dangerously close" to US extradition after losing latest legal appeal.
The UK government has trampled Assange's legal rights many times. It has never felt the need for a convincing argument to justify this; it is satisfied by pulling a thin curtain over the violations.
Twitter Admits in Court Filing: Elon Musk Is Simply Wrong About Government Interference At Twitter.
(satire) LAPD Warns Homeless Population Closer Than Ever To Completing Doomsday Device.
Enforcers Have Clear Path to Block [three golf championship series]’ Brazen Merger to Monopoly.
Contention between Wagner (including Progizhin personally) and the Putin forces (from the Russian army) has reached the point of actual physical fighting, though mostly not in the form of combat.
I can't tell what parts of Colonel Venevitin's statements I should believe, if any. But it puzzles me that Putin allows anyone in Russia to say what Prigozhin says.
Youtube has ordered the invidious proxies to shut down.
If you know of a campaign to pressure youtube not to do this, please let me know.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to boycott the Republicans' "bipartisan" commission to plan cuts to Social Security.
US citizens: call on your senators to confirm FCC nominees Anna Gomez and Geoffrey Starks.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Improvement of a highway through the Amazon rainforest threatens to speed deforestation and destruction of the whole forest. Right-wing legislators block Lula's efforts to protect the forest.
The surveillance-dating industry says, "Have your chatbot start the conversation that's meant to lead up to a date."
That way, when you first actually communicate with each other, it will be just one step beyond a blind date.
If (as the article says) only 10% of the users of dating systems find a long-term relationship with them, they are failures already.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the denial of food stamps to people with drug convictions.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to remove Rep. Gosar's committee assignments
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
When a pregnant woman is exposed to PFAs, it tends to make the baby underweight at birth and overweight later on.
Some kinds of Long Covid degrade people's quality of life more than some advanced cases of cancer.
A talk by a trans person in a library in Montana was cancelled on the grounds that her dressing as a woman (as she normally does) for the talk would make it a "drag show".
The Professional Golfers Association has merged with Crown Prince Bone Saw's competing golf tournament series.
Doesn't that violate European competition law?
The US border thugs have installed stadium-style bright lamps along rural parts of the border with Mexico. Operating those lamps could devastate wildlife. Many species live in or migrate through the border; some endangered species live mainly there.
In some cases, the harm of border lights could extend far away from the border, as for instance when populations of jaguars in the US and Mexico can no longer mix and interbreed.
A robot taxi being tested killed a dog that ran out from behind a parked car. The company said that the car's computers recognized the dog but could not stop the car in time.
So-called "autonomous" cars are not really autonomous, because they are "connected", and that is an injustice to the passengers and perhaps also the passersby. It should be illegal to operate a taxi unless it (1) can be called by anonymous passengers, (2) accepts payment in anonymous cash, and (3) keeps no biometric information about them or about people outside the taxi.
Robert Reich: Licht's idea of moving CNN to the "political center" was doomed from the start because the US has no such center. American is now divided between fascists and democrats.
Empires that are declining often exalt militarism. The US is doing so, at scales ranging from the neighborhood to the globe.
Reportedly some European intelligence agency informed the US that Ukraine had made a plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, a few months before the actual bombing.
The pipelines belonged to Russia, so as I understand it that made it legitimate for Ukraine, already at war with Russia, to attack them.
Starmer is taking advantage of Tory gerrymandering to assure leftist Tory MPs are replaced by people we would in the US call "centrists".
China's Communist Party accessed personal data of Hong Kong protesters using TikTok.
That is no surprise to me. No company will be allowed to operate in China unless it obeys China's demands to aid repression.
Minnesota has legislated many important new rights for workers. Now the challenge is to extend them to the whole US, and then to the rest of the world.
Warning: the right-wing rich that used to control Colombia are scheming to overthrow the elected leftist government.
Five Italian [thugs] accused of torturing migrants and homeless people.
Thugs anywhere might torture people they think are too marginalized to make a stink, but prosecuting thugs for that is a sign of officials who care about justice.
The Biden administration took a step closer to endorsing the legal imposition of the flawed IRHA criteria for antisemitism. Its flaw is that it facilitates labeling criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine as "antisemitism".
Snowden says that the surveillance of 10 years ago was "child's play" compared to surveillance today.
The beginnings of global heating disaster are driving up home insurance prices in regions that are becoming disaster-prone. In some regions, such as California, it may be simply impossible to buy home insurance.
US citizens: call on your senators to confirm FCC nominees Anna Gomez & Geoffrey Starks.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
One current official in US intelligence and one former official turned whistleblower say the US has collected alien vehicles (perhaps spacecraft). The House of Representatives demands to be shown.
Right-wing Christians' law for censoring books in Utah schools has resulted in banning the Bible except in high school. The Book of Mormon may be next.
Imran Khan alleges that in March, 2022, Don Lu, who was the US undersecretary of state, demanded that Pakistan force out Prime Minister Imran Khan.
I cannot presume that Imran Khan is entirely honest and credible. I don't know enough about Pakistan to have views on that.
Australia is still prosecuting the whistleblower who revealed that Australian soldiers in Afghanistan had killed unarmed people.
The right-wing billionaire CEO of the Warner Brothers conglomerate is behind the conversion of CNN into a right-wing tool, a competitor for Faux News.
CNN has fired its CEO, Licht. Unless the billionaire decides to value CNN's profits over his political goals, I don't think that will change much.
Labour proposes to end offshore fossil fuel drilling, but the union that represents the workers demands to keep it going.
Generally it is good for society for workers to have strong unions, but unions can do harm when they resist the elimination of toxic industries in the name of full employment. A good government can build up new industries with good jobs.
California governor Newsom suggests possible kidnapping charges against DeMentis for collecting asylum seekers on Texas and flying them to California. It seems they did not want or expect to end up in California. Apparently they were tricked somehow.
A Texas sheriff has filed charges based on the flights that DeMentis organized that took a previous group of refugees to Martha's Vineyard. The article does not make it clear whether these charges are against DeMentis, or someone who played a secondary role in setting up those flights.
The destruction of the Kakhovka dam is causing various follow-on disasters, and additional disasters are possible.
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Haaland to support listing Monarch butterflies as endangered.
Smoke from wildfires in Canada is blowing in to major Eastern US cities and can cause real injury. To be safe, wear an N95 mask.
You can get partial protection outdoors by wearing an N95 mask. An honest KN95 works equally well; the problem with KN95 is that China does not attempt to certify each brand and each model. As a result, many kinds of KN95 masks are fake and won't protect at all.
Russia has arrested many elderly old scientists who had successful careers in secret research, accusing them of giving away secrets and convicting them in secret trials. Now many Russian scientists who worked on such projects are terrified they will be the next chosen victim.
The US supreme court rejected voting districts gerrymandered by Alabama Republicans, on the grounds that they deny black voters the possibility of influencing the outcome in proportion to their numbers.
At least one of the right-wing justices must have voted for this decision. I am surprised.
Canada is now suffering over 400 wildfires, more than ever before. Climate scientists say that this is caused by global heating and will get worse. Anyone who has been paying attention had to suspect this, but it is useful that scientists report confirming it.
Alberta's government must be made to acknowledge that its tar sand oil exports are part of the cause.
Bogus Johnson's lies have caught up with him, and he has resigned from Parliament rather than be suspended.
The bullshitter/corrupter/saboteur has been indicted for taking secret documents and trying to conceal that he had them. I will post the details when we know them for certain. Here is an article about what that may lead to.
Plain-language descriptions of some of the crimes the wrecker is charged with.
Hundreds of thousands of mines and debris are flowing into towns downstream, while lack of water upstream will hit food production, due to the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam.
Russia seems to have destroyed Ukraine's Nova Kakhovka hydroelectric dam. Substantial areas of land will be flooded; Ukraine is hurrying to evacuate people.
Russia is incompetently denying the flooding in Nova Kakhovka, a Ukrainian town occupied by the Putin forces. The "mayor" says everything is fine while the background shows flooding. People there, and in places downstream, report they are cut off and in danger from the flood.
Ukrainian forces have been infiltrating the south bank of the Dnieper; perhaps the Putin forces hope they will be drowned. I expect that the Putin forces are retreating from the flood and that the Ukrainian forces will advance behind them.
Meanwhile, Russian rebels, sponsored by Ukraine, seem to have driven Russian state forces out of the Russian town of Shebekino on the border by shelling it. The Russian state seems to claim this fighting is not really happening. This seems very strange to me; I can't come up with a rational explanation for it.
Could it be that Prigozhin and Putin are fighting behind the scenes?
The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam seems likely to cut off water supply to agricultural regions still held by Ukraine.
The water from the wrecked Nova Kakhovka dam, which is inundating land near the Dnieper river, is sweeping away landmines. It can leave them anywhere in the inundated land.
Various minority groups in England and Wales got a disproportionate fractions of the fines for breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules.
This study strongly suggests that many thugs acted based on bias, but it cannot conclusively prove that, because it does not control for other variables — such as the actions of people who were fined.
For instance, the study found that poor people got a high proportion of the fines. Was this because they had to travel by walking and been seen by thugs, while wealthier people went by car? That would be systemic bias rather than individual prejudice.
Contrast this with the Massachusetts courts' study that showed blacks tended to get bigger sentences than whites for comparable crimes in comparable circumstances. By controlling for the other things that can vary between groups, it pretty much proved that bias was at work in the legal system itself. That showed that the legal system is inescapably to blame for the injustice.
People cleaning Atlantic Florida beaches risk infection with a deadly strain of Vibrio bacteria. It arrives on clumps of dead seaweed, and people catch it from that, but it colonizes plastic in the ocean and people catch it from that too.
People cleaning Atlantic Florida beaches risk infection with a deadly strain of Vibrio bacteria. It arrives on clumps of dead seaweed, and people catch it from that, but it colonizes plastic in the ocean and people catch it from that too.
300 volunteers joined in repairing a statue of a black woman at the beach which was vandalized with spray paint.
Global heating will ruin the Mediterranean region as a destination to visit in the summer, long before the current shore areas have been inundated due to sea-level rise.
Important cities (and archeological sites) will be inundated along with the beaches.
Various minority groups in England and Wales got a disproportionate fractions of the fines for breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules.
This study strongly suggests that many thugs acted based on bias, but it cannot conclusively prove that, because it does not control for other variables — such as the actions of people who were fined.
For instance, the study found that poor people got a high proportion of the fines. Was this because they had to travel by walking and been seen by thugs, while wealthier people went by car? That would be systemic bias rather than individual prejudice.
Contrast this with the Massachusetts courts' study that showed blacks tended to get bigger sentences than whites for comparable crimes in comparable circumstances. By controlling for the other things that can vary between groups, it pretty much proved that bias was at work in the legal system itself. That showed that the legal system is inescapably to blame for the injustice.
Recommendation engines that spread disinformation can be thought of as humanity's first major encounter with AI. Humanity is losing.
It is pertinent that these AIs are not autonomous; they do not have agency. They do not have emotions or goals of their own. They work under the control of very rich groups of people and those groups decide the goals they work for.
The plutocrats that mostly rule the US have a simple plan for what to do with people who can't ever find a job that can keep one alive: neglect them and let the consequences of poverty do away with most of them.
UK thugs falsely convicted 6 men of a bombing in Birmingham, they fiercely defended that decision against all the evidence showing it was false.
According to Irish cabinet papers from 1989, the British Home Office had indicated that its main concerns about the potential overturning of convictions were "to avoid giving scandal” and “the credibility problems for police evidence in court hearings."
Such determination never to admit that verdicts can be wrong occurs in the US too.
The New York City thug department operates a corrupt system of traffic enforcement, where friends and relatives of thugs get "courtesy cards" and thugs on traffic duty are told not to give tickets to those people no matter what they do.
One cop, who has a sense of integrity and may qualify to be called a police officer, rejected this system of corruption and gave tickets to privileged people just as he would to anyone else. He was punished for this and now s suing to put an end to the system.
He points out that one of the effects of this corruption is systemic racism.
UK thugs falsely convicted 6 man of a bombing in Birmingham, they fiercely defended that decision against all the evidence showing it was false.
According to Irish cabinet papers from 1989, the British Home Office had indicated that its main [104]concerns about the potential overturning of convictions were "to avoid giving scandal” and “the credibility problems for police evidence in court hearings."
Such determination never to admit that verdicts can be wrong occurs in the US too.
More about Jamie Driscoll, the Corbyn supporter that Starmer blocked from running again for mayor of the (newly expanded) Newcastle region.
Billionaire landlords are forcing English pubs to close by requiring them to pay 100% of the rent that they were allowed to put off during the Covid crisis.
Almost all the US "think tanks" that comment on questions involving actual or possible war receive a lot of funds from military contractors including arms manufacturers.
Their unstated motto seems to be, "Think `tanks'."
We should not allow arms companies to have so much influence on how we use arms. There is an advantage in giving Ukraine plentiful arms; if they did not cost anything, why not give it a thousand tanks, a thousand fighter planes and a million missiles? But they do have a cost, and we need to consider the trade-offs.
What the invasion of Ukraine shows Americans is that the US needs to be prepared to greatly increase production of arms and supplies if the US is involved in a major war. The system we have is adequate only for the kind of war that the government starts quietly, the kind that makes the news only when things don't go according to plan.
Tennessee hasprohibited cities from operating review boardsto curbthe violence of thug departments.If cities cannot exert control over thugs, they may still be able to cut the funds to make the thugdepartment smaller, and set up newnon-police departments to handle traffic enforcement and dealing withpeople who are going nuts. That will do a lot of the same good.I appreciate Wilhoit's law:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
- Internal documents from chemical giant Syngenta reveal tactics to sponsor sympathetic scientific papers and mislead regulators about unfavorable research… about[paraquat]’s link to Parkinson's disease.*I have a hunch there are other instances of corrupting research aboutweedkillers and insecticides. Does anyone know of articles aboutothers?Meanwhile, we've seen many instances in whichdrug companies corruptstudies of the safety of drugs.
In 1970, Richard Nixon turned white-color workers against antiwar students and civil rightsand used them to destroy government supportfor workers.Today's Republicans are trying to do it again.
Governor DeMentis has established a bounty for thugs who move to Florida.A number of them have been chargedwith serious crimes.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is investigating some of itsthugs forsuspected membership in racist gangs.State encroachment, TNTennessee hasprohibited cities from operating review boardsto curbthe violence of thug departments.If cities cannot exert control over thugs, they may still be able tocut the funds to make the thug department smaller, and set up newnon-police departments to handle traffic enforcement and dealing withpeople who are going nuts. That will do a lot of the same good.I appreciate Wilhoit's law:
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
A [thug]'s first words to a Black driversignal how the carstop will go.A Black driver is more likely to face being searched,handcuffed, or arrested when a police officer's first words arecommands rather than a greeting or an explanation.The study shows that cruel actions of the thugs are not a responseto anything that the black driver does. They flow from prejudice.The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles give important information about racism.That article is one of the exceptions.
British Museum ends BP sponsorship deal after 27 years.I hope this will let it begin presenting the dangers of fossil fuelswithout pulling its punches.
YouTube has decided to permit posting trumpery about election fraud.Systematic liars are planning to make use of this immediately.
China sabotages and harasses participants in events to commemoratethe Tien An Men Square massacre in Beijing, even when the events areheld in other countries.
(satire) Emotional Tim Scott Tells Supporters About Time He WasFollowed Around Walgreens For Being Republican.
The Labour Party refused to allow the popular mayor of Newcastle andsurroundings to run again, because he is a supporter of Corbyn.When the local party chooses its candidate, it won't be allowedto consider him.Maybe the local party leaders should see whether if they can all quitthe Labour Party and join the Green Party and run this candidate, orstart their own local party.
US chemical companies are paying billions to settle lawsuits aboutcontaminating water supplies with PFAs.3M found out in the 1970s that PFAs were toxic, but sat on theknowledge for decades while continuing to sell them. This is one ofmany examples of the bad things that happen when companies get verylarge and government bends to them. This is one of the many reasonsto elect progressive officials who will not hesitate to devastatetheir profits.
Bernie Sanders: I could not, in good conscience, vote for the debtceiling bill.Sanders for President in 2024!
(satire) Police Claim They Thought 9-Year-Old Boy They Shot WasActually 10-Year-Old Boy.
DeMentis says he will "destroy leftism".That would entail abolishing democracy and the possibility of organizingto defeat his power. In other words, Fascism.
The mainstream US press is repeating right-wing propaganda aboutsupposed "fetal heartbeat" detected long before the fetus hasdeveloped a heart at all.If they can get the public talking about a supposed "fetal heartbeat"at 6 weeks of pregnancy, they have won a major propaganda battle thatmost people do not recognize is being fought.
(satire) More Hospitals Requiring Patients ToPut Body Part Down As Collateral Before Receiving Services.
Worrying about the danger of hypothetical superintelligent AI today isa distraction. AI programs already used by big companies and states,though far less sophisticated that what those worries fear, have beendoing harm to some people for years.They are used within social systems, and we may be able to preventsome of these harms by changing some other parts of social systems ina feasible way.
Internet delivery companies in the UK mark up supermarket products by as much as 1/3, then charge a delivery fee.
Does anyone know if they do this in the US too?
Starmer says nuclear power is 'critical part' of UK's energy mix.
That will be true if a reactor goes critical ;-{.
Los Angeles bigots have harassed a public school and teachers for holding an assembly to describe people of a range of different gender identities and their orientations.
The bigots demand schools keep children in ignorance about the existence and lives of those human beings.
The conference to start drafting a global plastics treaty have not even produced a draft zero.
It did the initial steps, but I think that plastic manufacturers and oil companies will fight hard to prevent anything effective from being agreed.
The Debt Limit Bill: Yet Another Triumph for Bipartisanship.
"Bipartisanship" in the US tends to mean "plutocracy".
One UK thug department made a success of deciding to shift various kinds of non-crime requests to other agencies.
One effect is that the department is better able to deal with crimes. I presume that the people suffering psychological crises are safer now, too, for not having to deal with armed thugs who might wound or kill them.
The article describes the sorts of planning, advance notice, training, and pressure on other agencies that were necessary to make this a success. It also required some other agencies to hire people to do the visits that the thugs no longer do. It would be worth doing, but the Tories may not cooperate. The ambulance service is already overloaded and its underpaid workers have held strikes.
Nonetheless, this example shows that the policy change is good provided the government carries out all the necessary parts.
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop trading our forests for toilet paper.
There are many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Atlanta Police Arrest Organizers of Bail Fund for Cop City Protesters.
It is unprecedented to charge people with a crime for raising money to pay legal aid to protesters. Regardless of the details, it is a form of fascist harassment. If it is allowed to stand, it will represent an escalation of fascism in the US.
A bill proposes to prevent one of the side problems of Google's and Facebook's surveillance-based advertising: that those companies get most of the income from ads and sites that run ads get almost none.
Arguably that would be an improvement, but it would do nothing about the main evil of surveillance capitalism: its massive surveillance. So it would not make the system any less unjust to the users themselves.
That is what we must change.
(satire) Study Finds First Bullets Fired By Cop During Traffic Stop Dictate How Rest Of Interaction Will Go.
Longer and longer trains in the US are blocking patients from reaching hospitals and blocking ambulances from reaching patients. It has been reported 1400 times this year. Sometimes the results are fatal.
In important areas of big cities you can usually find a bridge over the tracks, though apparently not always. In less important areas there are often only level crossings.
This is part of the general tendency of US railroads to trample their employees and the public to increase profits.
Saving fuel is a good thing, but railroads should be required to (1) make sure never to stop trains where they would block roads except in an emergency and (2) over the next five years, build bridges or tunnels or alternative routes so that access is not blocked anywhere.
(satire) Elizabeth Holmes Immediately Defrauds Biggest Inmate To Gain Other Prisoners' Respect.
West Virginia governor’s coal empire sued by government over unpaid fines.
You can expect a Republican to try to cheat the country/
Morocco was in charge of holding an event celebrating "African unity" in Australia. South Africa invited a representative of the people of Western Sahara, which is mostly occupied as a colony of Morocco. Morocco's agents refused to let him into the rented hall.
It shows that African unity is more a pious wish than a fact, and that the tendency towards colonial behavior is not limited to whites or Europeans.
Some insurance companies are limiting their sales of homeowner's insurance in California. If this spreads to more companies, it could impact the whole state.
It is crucial to stop selling insurance for homes that can't be kept safe, but instead of leaving their owners to wait to be wiped out by the next flood or fire, the government must buy them out so the can move to a safer place.
When France offered the Comoro islands independence, in 1974, the inhabitants of one island (Mayotte) voted to remain part of France. They are now French citizens. But Mayotte has received many unauthorized immigrants from the other Comoro islands, and it now has the same sort of hostility to immigrants that many European countries' mainlands have.
What is interesting is that in this case the unwelcome immigrants come from islands about 50 miles away and are racially, culturally, and religiously very similar to the authorized residents of Mayotte. They speak related languages which have at least 80% of their vocabulary in common. The islands have had close links for centuries.
This suggests that the reasons that the cause of hatred of immigrants in other places, such as Europe and America, are consequences of politics.
Earth’s health failing in seven out of eight key measures, say scientists.
Going beyond climate disruption, the new report by the Earth Commission group of scientists presents disturbing evidence that our planet faces growing crises of water availability, nutrient loading, ecosystem maintenance and aerosol pollution. These pose threats to the stability of life-support systems and worsen social equality.
Labour in the UK has taken a firm stand against fossil fuel development. It might be worth voting for.
The one thing it clearly won't do is end the political power of the rich in the UK.
South Australia has imposed harsh penalties on "disruptive" protests against events that are meant to plan deadly activities with fossil fuel.
We have seen governments including Britain and Germany surrender to planet roaster companies in this way and imposing repression on their behalf.
This Julian Assange rally is Monday, June 12, at11am at the Boston Globe, One Exchange Place, Boston (Statesubway stop.) We are calling out the Boston Globe for theirlack of coverage of the most important press freedom case ofour time — the unjust persecutionof Julian Assange under theEspionage act.At noon,we will break and write letters together at Falafel Place at260 Washington St.
This Julian Assange rally is Monday, June 12, at11am at the Boston Globe, One Exchange Place, Boston (Statesubway stop.) We are calling out the Boston Globe for theirlack of coverage of the most important press freedom case ofour time — the unjust persecutionof Julian Assange under theEspionage act.At noon,we will break and write letters together at Falafel Place at260 Washington St.
Mexico established a marine protected area. Fishing companies objected,saying it would reduce their catch — but in fact, there was no decrease.
Industry donations flowed to key Dem senators just before a majorpipeline approval [for theMountain Valley Pipeline]was slipped into the debt ceiling bill.
Republicans love to make up fake crises [todistract from the harmthey do]. Here are five of the biggest.
Pesticide firmswithheld brain toxicity studies from EUregulators, study finds.Amazon liable for voyeurA rogue employee of Amazon usedRing "doorbell" videocamerasto watch customers.What worries me more is that lots of thugs have been watching lotsof people through them.Amazon was snooping through Alexa too.
Australia will spend AUD 350 million per yearto maintainNauruas a prison for boat people, inaccessible to the press and off limits to rule of law.That prison is Australia's shame, just as Guantanamo is America's.
The UAE oil prince who is the head of this year's corrupt climate conferenceis having employees edit Wikipedia pages togreenwash his activities.
Greenland's glaciers grind the rock under them, producing a billiontons per year ofpowdered rock,which becomes mud. When spread on farms in warmer zones, it absorbs large amounts of CO2, while acting as fertilizer.
If you defend free speech, you mustdefend it alland not silence those you disagree with.In particular, people like Kathleen Stock who advocate certain rights based on biologicalsex must not be censored, and people who oppose that must also not be censored.Trans activists protested at her talk. Some of themtried to prevent it,but did not succeed. As a result, both sides got to present their views.One trans activist compared Stock's expression of her opinions to theconstruction of fossil fuel projects. By thinking about that claim wecan see the basic difference between them.The feebleness of governments efforts to curb global heating is not amere statement of opinion. It is an action, and a deadly one. Thebeginning of climate breakdown is already killing millions of people,and will kill hundreds of millions or perhaps billions in a fewdecades. It is legitimate for those likely to be killed by fossilfuel developments in a few decades to fight to stop them.By contrast, Dr. Stock, and likewise the protesters who disagree withher, do not decide the legal questions they disagree on. They canonly express their views and hope to influence others. All of themhave the right to do that.
Journalists who covered the killing of protester Mahsa Jina are on trial in Iran andfacing torture.
An Australian "hero" of the war in Afghanistan was found in courtto have intentionally killed civilian prisoners.He was not on trial; the trial was over his accusation of libel against newspapers which published accusations against him. The courtfound the newspapers not liable because they proved the accusations were true.Will he now be accused of murder? That sounds like the next step.
US citizens: call on Biden to protect the Pacific Remote Islands.To see the confirmation message in your browser, delete or disable CSS.
Lab leaks of potentially dangerous pathogens happen every week.(This is because there are many such labs around the world.)Usually the labs cover them up. Usually no lasting harm is done.Backup lines of defense, if any disease should start spreading, arenot very strong.
Kenya has adopted a law making companies responsible for the plasticwaste that they generate.
Comparing two proposed laws to limit stock buybacks by corporations.The Stock Buyback Accountability Act of 2023 would impose a tax on buybacks, as well as certain situationswhen this tax would not apply (i.e. if the buyback were part ofan employer-sponsored retirement plan or employee stockoptions plan).The Reward Work Actwould prevent issuers from buying their own securities on anational exchange:I think the two are complementary.
The Tories limited welfare benefits to supporting two children per family.This was supposed to pressure parents to get jobs. All it did was throwchildren into poverty.
More than 5,000 new species discovered in Pacific deep-sea mining hotspot.Deep-sea mining, done the way companies intend, would devastate broadareas of bottom, and could wipe out that ecosystem.
- [Hamburger Mary’s in Orlando, Florida] is suing [governor DeMentis] over a law that bans drag performances.*
US nuclear power plants, and their stored wastes, are vulnerable to physical attack and to cracking their computers. It would be stupid and dangerousto build any new ones — but rich jerks want to do it anyway.
Due to erosion, a river has come close to the Line 5 oil pipeline.Various sorts of accidents and bad weather could pollute the Great Lakes. Activists call for shutting down the pipeline as a precaution againsta disaster that would be impossible to repair.
The Southern Ocean overturning circulation has ebbed 30% since the 90s, and it is continuing to slow further. This could lead to bigchanges in climate and and sea level.
Right-wingers dominate Brazil's congress and are acting to handicap environmental protection by cutting funds to the environment ministry. The Amazon rain forest is close to dying, that is, transforming into savannah, and that change could lead to global disaster,it would make sense for other countries to donate moneyto Brazil's environment ministry.
Heat stress can kill up to 2,000 workers and cause an additional 170,000 injuries on job sites across the United States annually. A proper heat stress standard for workplaces could prevent that.
The Supreme Court's right-wing extremists have stripped protection from half the wetlands in the US.
People in the audience of CNN's presentation of the bullshitterwere told in advance to "be respectful" by not booing.This was one lie by CNN in addition to the bullshitter's own lies,
Texas attorney general Paxton, a right-wing attack agent, is being investigated for accusations of corruption.
Governments threatened with the debt ceiling should not hesitate touse questionable maneuvers to keep the government operating — andthey should not try to go to court to argue for them. Biden should dowhat is needed, then let the Republicans sue if they wish.If government lawyers were to argue in the Supreme Court, in advance,that the maneuver id lawful, the current right-wing politicized courtwould have every motive to rule "it is unlawful", and thus strengthenthe Republican hostage-takers.However, if Republicans file that case after the maneuver is used,then a ruling of "it is unlawful" would mean instantaneous default.Even the right-wing justices would hesitate to do that. They wouldhave to find a way to avoid that.
Pregnant Texas woman [who was] threatened with arrest if she lefthospital to seek abortion is suing over the endangerment of her life. In all, eight women have joined this lawsuit.
The Putin forces have more or less captured the city of Bakhmut. They lost tens of thousands of soldiers doing so.Meanwhile, Ukraine has 3/4 surrounded the city by capturing highground around it. My partial knowledge of military history suggeststhat the safe thing for the Putin forces to do would be to pull out ofthe exposed salient which the city has become. I don't think theywill, though. I think Putin's ego is bigger than his tacticalunderstanding.Maybe Ukraine should rename the city to Putingrad to make sure theydon't pull out of it.
- World is on track for 2.7°C [of global heating] and "phenomenal" human suffering, scientists warn.*
Pressuring the wealthiest countries (in the OECD) to stop funding international fossil fuel development.
Investigation finds [Chevron's] efforts to offset itshuge emissions rely on schemes with little impact.
Recycling [of plastics] can release huge quantities of microplastics. After installing an additional filter, the plant released 6% of the plasticinput as microplastics. (Before that, it was more.) Even the airaround the plant is full of microplastics. Washing machines also release plenty of microplastics. The only way to arrange for most washing machines to have filters isfor the government to do it to people's washing machines, and those inlaundries. The amount of trouble involved in getting and installing afilter will dissuade most people who are busy. One of the menaces of plastic waste is that it blocks drainage systems incountries too poor to clean them out.
The previous (right-wing) Australian government paid a corrupt billionaire to arrange imprisonment of boat people in Nauru, and kept on paying himeven after he was convicted of bribing Nauru officials.What this says to me is that the previous government was so dishonest thatthey didn't bother to notice.
The debt ceiling dealwill fast-trackthe Mountain Valley pipeline, and limit the scope of environmentalreviews for future developments. That will kill people; theuncertainty is about the order of magnitude of how many people.
A decade after the Tories demonised disabled people on benefits, it'shappening again.If you are a non-rich working Briton, and your tax burden forsupporting worthy causes such as helping the disabled is high, don'tblame them! Blame the rich bastards who avoid contributing theirproper share -- by supporting Tories.
A lawyer used ChatGPT for legal filing. The chatbot cited nonexistentcases it just made up.This goes to show how foolish it is to think of ChatGPTas "intelligence". It is not capable of having knowledge,understanding, desires, or plans. It has no idea of truthor falsehood.
Ohio will vote on a referendum to legalise abortion. Republicans havejust passed a law to schedule a vote on making such referendumsrequire a supermajority to pass. They plan to rush this vote so itwill alter the rules for the abortion referendum.Why August? I suspect that some voters will be on vacation in August and mighthave difficulty voting no for this change.
The right-wing government of Italy is squeezing antifascists out ofItaly's public broadcasting.
US citizens: call on Biden to make sure a bigger share of federalspending goes to workers.
Everyone: call on AmerisourceBergen to distribute medicationabortion in all states where abortion is legal.
The so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine stipulates that theexecutive branch — not the federal courts — has the power to interpretlaws passed by Congress in certain circumstances. Conservatives foryears have fought to overturn the doctrine, a move that would empowerlegal challenges to federal agency regulations on everything fromclimate policy to workplace safety to overtime pay.Justice Thomas changed his position on this question after payments to him,and reportedly to his wife as well, from people with interests in the outcome.
Uber ran for years at enormous losses to create the impressionthat it had to succeed and that it was a good investment. Thisgeneral approach has been dubbed "Venture predation".Under a good government, this sort of thing would land executives inprison.
Attempting to predict political collapse from big data.That dooH niboR and the poverty it causes leads to political collapseis a truism. That idea of "overproduction of potential elites" as amajor factor is less obvious, but over the years I've seen referenceto large numbers of unemployed university graduates cited as a factorin civil unrest.Since this theory is based on mathematical modelling, ultimately itwill succeed or fail like any scientific theory.
Australian thugs engage in physical violence against blacks,then resist being held responsible, much like American thugs.The blacks in Australia are indigenous rather than of recent African origin,but they seem to get similar treatment.
On Wednesday, June 7th, RMS will give a talk, "Working for the public — universities, software and freedom" in Pisa at Aula multimediale.
The talk will include Richard Stallman as the speaker, and Marco Calamari (Progetto Winston Smith), Maria Chiara Pievatolo (Universitá di Pisa), and Francesco Potorti (CNR) as discussants.
PayPal is being rebuked for bias against Palestinians. It does business with Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territory, but refuses to do business with Palestinians there.
PayPal refuses to do business with any clients in a way that respects their freedom: to order, one must run nonfree software. No thanks, PayPal!
- As many as 14 million Syrians face a near insurmountable barrier to returning to their homes after [Assad's] government passed laws giving the state power to seize their land and property.*
Texas Republicans are creating new legal excuses to take over the election authority of Houston, with its 5 million people.
It is not exactly clear what they want to do to Houston's voters, but it must be come sort of voter suppression.
German thugs raided the homes of climate campaigners belonging to a group called "Last Generation", comparable to Extinction Rebellion.
The group hopes to prevent mass murder. The thugs accused it of being a "criminal organization."
Former governors of Alabama point out that around 12% of the people sentenced to death in that state were subsequently exonerated.
One of them upheld the death sentence for a man he now believes was innocent.
The Labour Party is proposing to reform the UK economy.
I still have to ask: would they tax the rich and use the money to lift people out of poverty? "Growth" as such is benefit if the growth goes mainly to the wealthy.
[Republican] attempt to add work requirements to safety net programs such as Medicaid and Snap could harm families already struggling.
In the US today, the minimum wage is so low that many people with jobs can't get by on their pay.
- California, Arizona and Nevada strike deal with US government to take about 13% less water from drought-stricken [Colorado] river.*
This will surely slow the drying of the Colorado river. Will it be enough to prevent that? We don't know. It depends on whether the atmospheric rivers that now plague California bring enough water to the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains to keep the Colorado flowing. If not, the trend of increased aridity in the region may continue.
Victoria (in Australia) wants to lead suckers to use phones and credit cards to pay for public transport. If they do this foolish thing, the system will track all their movements.
Will this system permit anonymous use, paying cash? Will it permit use by someone who has no snoop-phone, snoop-watch, or snoop-card? If so, how would that work? And what is possible with the existing system? If you know by experience, please email me.
UK study of 1948 Israeli massacre of Palestinian village reveals mass grave sites.
Wikipedia reports that denial of that massacre has gone as far as a libel lawsuit against an Israeli who wrote about it.
Academics with connections to tobacco and alcohol companies do not always talk about potential conflicts of interest when they publish papers about the effects of tobacco and alcohol.
- Protesters from Greenpeace, Stay Grounded, Extinction Rebellion and others chain themselves to aircraft in [Europe's biggest private jet fair].*
Toxins hidden in plastics are the industry' dirty secret — recycling is not the answer. At least, not recycling at our current stage of knowledge.
But then, most kinds of plastic objects can't be recycled at all.
Increased CO2 in the upper atmosphere makes it cool and contract. This enables dangerous space junk to remain longer in low Earth orbit, and undermines the slowly recovering ozone layer.
The London thug department has announced, all of a sudden, that it won't answer emergency calls about mental crises.
This implements, by surprise, half the goal of "Defund the Police": to stop sending armed thugs to deal with mental crises. However, it's only half of the goal of "Defund the Police".
The other half goal was to send other personnel to respond to those calls -- personnel trained in de-escalation and calming people down, rather than in violence. This surprise announcement makes no provision for anyone to do this job. It can't be the ambulance service: they are underfunded, and often arrive so late that the patient is ready for burial.
More info.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop Big Oil's next disastrous fossil fuel project on the Colorado River.
Here for more information.
Some pro-Russian Ukrainians, in occupied territories, have taken their neighbors' children to Russia in order to get financial benefits, using lies to convince them. If they apply for adoption papers, the Russian system will not let their parents get them back.
The article calls this "deportation", but I don't think that term fits the example that it presents. Neither, I think, does "kidnaping." Those terms do properly apply to many Ukrainian children, who were forced to go to Russia by the Putin forces.
We desperately need a government who will say it: Britain is still reeling from Covid.
The US is, too -- but not in one uniform, simple way. The policies for dealing with Covid-19 were different from state to state. At the start, some big cities were hit worst. Later, for many months, Republican states were hit worst, because Republicans seized on Covid-19 as an opportunity for disinformation and sabotage, especially after they realized that blacks were more likely to die from it.
One harm that most people don't recognize as one is that many activities and institutions in our society have imposed the use of nonfree computing technology. This includes most schools at all levels. Most talks at MIT still require using Zoom to listen. Whether you want to listen at the time of the event, or listen to recording later, the only way is through Zoom's nonfree surveillance system.
Erdoğan was reelected as president of Turkey.
This is bad for human rights in Turkey, and good for authoritarianism in general.
US citizens: call on the EPA to tighten the proposed standards for power plants' greenhouse gas emissions.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Dept. of Education to protect students from DeMentis's censorship law.
About Britain's almshouses: a form of low-cost cohousing that has worked well for 1000 years or more.
The people who live in them live longer, on the average, than others their age.
Researching the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, in which Chicago thugs murdered striking steel workers.
Ukraine has managed to put up 19 wind turbines since being invaded by the Putin forces. Meanwhile, England has built just two in the same period of time.
A few years ago, Tories changed laws to make it almost impossible to get permission to set up a wind turbine, but easy to get permission for fracking. I never understood why they wanted to discourage wind power. Does anyone know?
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (prisoner in Guantanamo) wants to bring a case examining alleged role of [British agencies] MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in his [torture] by the CIA.
England learns: wipe out the insects, and next you'll have wiped out the birds that eat them.
Disabled Britons now have to pay for aid in daily life, and it costs more than most can afford.
It sounds like the US.
Racial censorship, first applied to censor white authors, has been stretched to censors all racial groups -- the bizarre idea that "You can only write about people in your own group."
It's valid to complain about stories told by an author writing about people in a subculture perse does not know, works that are based mainly on stereotypes. You can make the claim that a work is of that sort; sometimes it is true. If people challenge it, you can defend it.
However, erecting a racial system of prohibitions is worse than the disease, and also won't cure it.
In a multiracial and multicultural society, that racial censorship rule would allow no fiction whatsoever. Unless the characters live in a ghetto together, no one author could write all of them.
George Monbiot refutes the absurd vision of returning to apreindustrial style of agriculture.It could not possibly feed thepeople who live our cities today, and didn't feed most peopleadequately when it was the norm.He suggests that we produce food more efficiently using one-celled life.That might be adequate when we get really good of engineering it toresemble the diverse foods we eat today -- at which point it will beanother name for culturing meat without growing entire animals.Having fewer babiesis a crucial part of addressing the difficulty of feeding the humanpopulation of the 22nd century, supposing we prevent the gruesomegigadeaths that climate breakdown threatens in this century.
*Survivors of Kissinger’s Secret War in Cambodia Reveal UnreportedMass Killings [carried out by US forces].Those are in addition to many attacks that were acknowledged.
US citizens, call on Congress to reject the latest right-wing lunacy:to declare fentanyl a "chemical weapon" and use this as an excuse tothreaten Mexico.We need to end the "war on drugs", not extend it into a war with Mexico.
Research into long Covid is active, but it won't be easy to figure outwhat is causing the symptoms.The article estimates that 65 million people suffer from long Covidnow.
The ACLU is suing to stop Texas thugs for fabricating reasons toprosecute a city council member for pushing to remove another official.
Here is an example of someone who became terrified of "ArtificialIntelligence" because he saw some output from ChatGPT.It is clear he believes ChatGPT understands some sort of _meaning_ inits output. In fact, we know it does not understand anything. It isincapable of having knowledge and incapable of having intentions.I am not trying to claim that real artificial intelligence will besafe. I don't know what it might do. Perhaps we should take someprecautions -- such as limiting access to facilities for making DNAsequences to order. Those facilities might be used for mass murdereven by plain old humans.But we can't learn anything about hypothetical future artificialintelligences by looking at doubletalk-generating systems such asChatGPT.
India has put a pretty mask over the city of Srinagar to shepherd G20delegates through the city and hide the repression of Kashmir fromtheir eyes.The article reports that Twitter is censoring some of the postingsabout these events.
The rapid increase in outdoor lighting is spreading light pollution.The amount of light pollution is increasing so fast that in 20 years starswill no longer be seen in large regions.This can have biological effects on species that need dark or arethreatened by dark. This could drive some species to extinction.Around 2006, in a taxi from Lake Titicaca to La Paz, I saw amazingvistas of stars. I wonder if those still exist.
Greg Palast reports that The (original) Keystone oil pipeline rupturedin 2022 (and caused a substantial oil spill) because of improperconstruction, which was not detected because the safety inspectiontool's software had been modified so as to overlook "small" flaws inpipelines.Palast says that such modification is a common practice. It seemsthat pipeline companies they have decided to ignore flaws that,although "small", can lead eventually to oil spills.
Some of UK's National Health Service web sites snoop on patients' browsingfor Facebook.
Up to 70% of California's beaches may be washed away in this centuryby sea-level rise caused by global heating.Other things people value, including their houses, are likely to bedestroyed too.
Boebert acknowledges that measures against antisemitism and otherforms of bigotry are measures against right-wingers.Boebert, if the antisemitic shoe fits, wear it.It is a mistake to refer to those right-wingers as "conservatives."
The Belarus dictator Lukashenko forced down an airliner and tookexiled opposition activist Raman Pratasevich off of it. It seems thatbrainwashing in prison broke Pratasevich completely. Now he walksaround Belarus giving talks to praise Lukashenko.He is not in prison, but I presume he not free, rather an abject slave.
In the past, researchers could obtain large amounts of randomly chosentweets for a small price. Now Twitter has raised the price to anamount they can't afford, and demands they delete the old data if theydon't sign up for it.
Many well-known retail businesses are fighting against a California billto require corporations to publish their annual harm to the climate.
The US immigration thug agency uses sites such as YouTube as well as Facebookand Twitter to find all users who seem to be interested in matters concerningimmigration.It is clear that some of these subpoenas investigate people who arenot by any stretch of the imagination engaged in planning crimes.These are nothing like the Proud Boys.The only way to deal with this problem is not to let those sites collectpersonal data on people for watching anything, unless there is a subpoenato collect data on those who visit a particular channel or page.
Thugs around the US violently attacked protesters and journalists atthe rallies for George Floyd in 2020. Some of those shot with"nonlethal" weapons and left with irreparable injuries.Have the thugs that refused to give Evans any help getting to thehospital been punished for that?Have the thugs that encircled and besieged protestersbeen punished for that?
The myth of Capitalism is that investors take risks with their money,so they deserve a big profit when the risk succeeds. I can go along with thisto a point: we can't let the investors keep most of the wealth that a businessproduces — most has to go to workers and to the state.Nowadays, private equity fund managers and similar "investors" haveobtained plutocratist laws which assure them of profits even fromfailure.This problem stems from another foolish general practice: the US hasmore or less given up on penalizing companies that do harm. Instead,the proposal is always to subsidize businesses that say they won'tdo the harm.And governments don't even bother to insist that the business do whatit was subsidized for.
Americans, what DeMentis is doing to Florida shows what he would do tothe whole US if he becomes president.He has pioneered new sorts of bullying that go beyond the corrupter.DeMentis aims do more than defeat opposition; he seeks to punish thosethat dared to oppose him.I do not judge laws and government policies mainly based on whetherthey induce big companies such as Disney to move work to my stateor my country. But I see, in DeMentis's efforts to punish Disney,a plan for the sort of fascism that makes opposition too dangerous.
(satire) Target Removes All Towels From Stores After Soaking-Wet Lunatic Objects To Dryness.
Supporters of jailed Iranian journalists call for trials to be held in public. Secret trials are an indication of tyranny. China's political trialsare all secret.Australia sometimes does it too.
Cutting down old-growth forests has wiped out spotted owls in Canada.Only one owl is remains in the wild in Canada.
Australia is now paying welfare benefits through a bank card that willtrack all spending of them.A large fraction of those affected by this new system of surveillanceare indigenous, and they are campaigning to put an end of this.
US citizens:call on Congressto expand the Supreme Court.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: if your congresscritter is a Republican, phone per at1-833-964-2935 to call for raising taxes on the rich rather thancutting the benefits that non-rich Americans (even those with jobs)depend on. You could add, "Don't threaten to make the US default."
US citizens:call on Bidento use federal spending rules to direct more pay to workers and less to CEOs.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
South Australia has passed repressivelaws against proteststhat mightinconvenience others, and one of the politicians who voted for it says,"be grateful we won't cut your head off."The protests that the state wanted to prevent were going to be againstplanet roaster companies that already kill peopleby the hundreds ofthousands, and are working on raisingthat to hundreds of millions.
Buttigieg is going all-out to push for oil drilling in the Uinta basinof the Colorado Plateau, and totransport the oillong distances by train alongside the Colorado River.He is also planning to approve tax breaks for building the line forthese trains, so the owners can get a subsidy to prepare to poison thewater of a large region of the US.There is no room in the carbon budget for developing any new oil fields, no matter where the oil might be sent or how.
It's a horriblyeffective [Tory] ploy:under invest in the health service, then encourage patients to blame staff for any failures.
Elections inUK and US at riskfrom [neural-network-generated] disinformation, say experts.To refer to these systems as "artificial intelligence" spreads confusion,so I don't call them that. Please join me in that refusal.
Starmer has proposed a real, significant change: to build millions ofhousing units under government direction, toavoid a massive give-awayto the rich.
Some Russians claim to have startedan anti-Putin armed guerrilla movementoperating in Russian territory.However, they seem to have entered Russia across the Ukrainian border,and to have picked up some US-made arms in Ukraine. So far they haveattacked only government targets.In moral terms, I think what they are doing is admirable. Theiractions could help Ukraine win the war, but I think it will bedifficult to increase them enough to have a significant effect.Putin could theoretically cite this as an excuse for attacking Ukrainein some new ways. But I don't think that makes any difference. Putinnever needs a real excuse for any atrocity — he invents all the bogus excuseshe needs.
Florida officials systematically entrap convicts into registering tovote and then voting. Then they get prosecuted for"voter fraud".
HowPutin could be prosecutedfor the crime of aggressive war.Regime change in Russia would probably be a change for the better,but it would be foolish to insist on that if it interferes withreaching a just peaceto end the war. We should allow Putin to remainin power in Russia if he agrees to release all of Ukraine's territory.
On Monday, June 5th, RMS will give a talk,"Digital Freedom and Digital Privacy",in Rende, Italy, in the Great Hall at the University of Calabria.The talk will follow a roundtable, "Relating Language Models, Future Artificial Intelligence,Massive Data Collection, Open Source, and Free (Libre) Software":
Moderator: Giovambattista Ianni, Professor of Computer ScienceParticipants:
Vincenzo Bruno, Founder of Coopyleft
Ines Crispini, Steering Board of the Italian Society for AI Ethics
Stefano De Carlo, Board of Hacklab
Gianluigi Greco, President of the Italian Assoc. for Artificial Intelligence
Antonello Mantuano, Senior director of Cerved S.p.A.
Giuseppe Rossi, Director of Unical's ICT Services
Domenico Talia, Professor of Information Processing Systems
Both are in English.
A Walgreens private "security" thug shot and killed a homeless man,Banko Brown, whom he accused of stealing snacks.If we don't believe that people who can't afford to lawfully get fooddeserve to starve to death, we must conclude that they are morallyentitled to take food from wherever there is plenty. We must alsoconclude that the store has no right to hire people to kill them fortrying.A good society provides a way for poor people to get enough foodwithout having to steal.Given what platform the district attorney ran on, we cannot trust herjudgment, or her unsupported word, about whether the security guardhad a justification for shooting. She must release the video. Whatuse is a "security" camera if officials cover up what it recordedabout a killing?
US citizens:call on Congressto stand up for Social Security and Medicare.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:call on Congressto Pass the Supreme Court Ethics Act.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:call on Congressto stand up for Social Security and Medicare.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Ammar al-Baluchi isstill in Guantanamo after 21 years. He is not allowed to tell us about how he was tortured, but what we know is horrific.
An "assistant commissioner" of the UK's somewhat-national thug departmentasserted that hefelt no political pressureto arrest peaceful protesters at the king's coronation.If that is true, why, then, did he disregard their rights?My guess is that there was pressure and he is covering it up.
Alberta is sufferingfrom a rash of wildfires.Alberta has been doing its best to cause wildfires around the worldby digging up the oil sandsto sell tar sands oil. It brought these fires on itself.
Everyone: call on Google to stop collecting location data and thus aiding abortion prosecutors.
Syrian dictator Assad has been forgiven by the other Arab rulers, whoare more or less repressive themselves. As a result, I fear the worst for Rojava.
A Walgreens private "security" thug shot and killed a homeless man,Banko Brown, whom he accused of stealing snacks.If we don't believe that people who can't afford to lawfully get fooddeserve to starve to death, we must conclude that they are morallyentitled to take food from wherever there is plenty. We must alsoconclude that the store has no right to hire people to kill them fortrying.A good society provides a way for poor people to get enough foodwithout having to steal.Given what platform the district attorney ran on, we cannot trust herjudgment, or her unsupported word, about whether the security guardhad a justification for shooting. She must release the video. Whatuse is a "security" camera if officials cover up what it recordedabout a killing?
The Pakistani army and former prime minister Imran Khan have become enemies.Thousands of Khan's supporters went wild and attacked military buildings.Now the state is arresting thousands of Khan supporters, and claims it hasidentified each one arrested based on camera footage.I have no way to reach any conclusion about moral culpability orjustification in this.
US citizens: call on the EPA to adopt stricter limits on toxic coal plant wastewater.To see the reply to signing, erase the CSS from that page.
US citizens: call on members of Congress to co-sponsor the Stop Wall Street Looting Act.This would make it harder for private equity combinations to destroyotherwise successful businesses and reduce competition.
How is Australia trying to sell a major gas expansion? By badging it "sustainable".The plan is to start extracting gas from large reserves, and bet thatcarbon capture will be improved fast to cancel that out.If the bet succeeds, this expansion may be carbon-neutral,unless something else goes wrong.If the bet fails, what will they do? Shut down the gas extraction?I don't think so. They will say, "Too bad, but you can't win 'em all.Enjoy your increased greenhouse emissions!"The only sense in which this is "sustainable" is that they couldhope to sustain the extraction from these new gas fieldsuntil civilization collapses from climate breakdown.This is a plan to bet young people's lives. The owners of thosecompanies should bet their own lives instead.
Biden vs McCarthy: a weak-willed adult is negotiating with a toddler in a tantrum.I fear that the adult will eventually give in so that the toddlerends the tantrum.
The rate of sea-level rise in New York City is augmented a little by the sinking of land under the weight of the skyscrapers.The sinking is on the order of 1mm per year, while sea-level rise islikely to be around 1cm per year and accelerating.
Siva Vaidhyanathan finds it easy to catch students who cheated byusing neural network text generators, and uses the opportunity to teach them about the issues those raise — and the fact that youcan't trust anything they say.I am disappointed that he refers to them as "AI".
A new Thai party that aims to restore democracy got the most seats in parliament.The next question is, can it form a coalition that will make somechanges for the good.
Most Massachusetts hospitals are eagerly dropping mask requirements.The 6% of adults of age 18 to 64 who are immunocompromisedare worried this will give them Covid-19 (or some other respiratory illness).1500 people have died from Covid-19 in Massachusetts this year.I expect there is no way to count how many contracted long Covidand whose lives are now ruined.Hospitals should act to protect patients' health. When they mustchoose, they should choose to protect the wise patients who takeprecautions for their health and other people's, rather than cateringto the foolish ones who neglect the matter.
"Debt Limit Chicken" is a direct result of anti-democratic US house[of representatives] elections.The reason so many house districts are not competitive is in large partdue to Republican gerrymandering.
Some Muscovites are being pressured, even ordered, to register to votethrough an internet voting system. Such systems tend to be greatly insecure, and not to be trusted. Putin has made a practice of rigging elections for years, often blatantly. It is not clear that what a voter actually does has any effect onthe "results" that Putin's state will report. But it might.Therefore, I think it is good not to actually vote.
Turkish Elections: Erdoğan’s Government Arrested and Expelled InternationalElection Observers.
Louisiana is considering a bill to require just three cities — withmostly black residents — to publish criminal records of juveniles.The purpose of not publishing the criminal records of juveniles is tohelp them to turn away from crime. So why adopt the opposite policymainly for blacks? Perhaps it is to lead black teenagers into a lifeof crime, so as to put them in prison.
Arguing that fossil fuel companies owe a total of $200 billion per year in compensation for some of the kinds of damage their productshave done.I fear that arguing about the amount of "compensation" various companiesand states ought to pay will act as a distraction from the crucial issue:how to build sustainable power facilities fast and wind up fossil fueluse soon.The companies will resist reducing the amount of fossil fuels they sell,and they will resist paying reparations. I think the wise choice is to focuson avoiding more damage than on making them pay for it.Meanwhile, we should certainly tax these companies (and other rich companies)a lot more. I suggest the method I described inhttps://stallman.org/articles/progressive-tax-on-business-gross-income.html.
UK ministers are trying to find a twisted excuse to arrest a Britonwho has been protesting lawfully for 6 years in front of Parliament.
Some universities and other large investors are pressuring fundmanagers to vote their shares to push large companies out ofplanet-roasting investments.
The NAACP has published a travel advisory calling on blacks to keepaway from Florida: "Beware, your life is not valued."
The World Health Organization continues to exclude Taiwan in obedienceto China's pressure.
The British right-wing is drumming up opposition to low-trafficneighborhoods(designed to facilitate and encourage walking or biking rather thandriving cars) using the same playbook as global heating denialism.
Various parts of Italy have suffered unusual heavy rains, whichgenerally arid Italy is not ready for.This is global heating at work. It has caused record hightemperatures, too.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the "HALT Fentanyl Act" which would prohibit a wide range of substances, most of which have never beentested on people at all. Of those few which have been tested, most were harmless.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Israeli fascists marched in Jerusalem; some chanted "death to Arabs".Url Avnery warned years ago that the Israeli right-win sought to render theWest Bank "Araberrein" (without any Arabs). Avnery meant this to comparethem with the Nazis whom he had seen in Germany in the 1930s, beforehis family fled to what they hoped would become Israel.
The US Supreme Court made a couple of correct decisions that companiesdo not have an obligation to delete all postings that might be suspectedof possibly relating to terrorist plans.I am disappointed by use of "content" to refer collectively toanything posted on Twitter, because that term disparages whatever is described that way.
- [President Macron] had no mandate to dismantle France’s social model. Hiscontempt for the people risks opening the door to extremism.*
Bernie Sanders calls for a national medical system, and makes it clear that the name "Medicare for All" does not meanpreserving the flaws of Medicare as it is today.
Jeremy Corbyn tells local Labour party he wants to carry on as their MP. The local party members stated support for him with only oneabstention, and stated their opposition to Starmer's grip on who can run for MP for the Labour Party.
France has decided to use cameras at the Olympic games with software that willscan the images looking for "suspicious activities".We can't count on the software in the system to limit the effectivelevel of surveillance, because more analytical capability could beadded later. The only limiting factor that people can count on toprevent violation of their privacy is the capability of the hardwaresensors (cameras, in this case). As people pointed out, thatcapability might be sufficient to enable the system to recognize andtrack people.
"When Democrats do something for the right reason,[Republicans] use the precedent to do something for the wrong reason."The emendation "[Republicans]" is in the words I quoted from thearticle. That statement is generally true.I'm not planning to read the Durham report myself, but I won'ttrust any claims about it that are made by people whose life is lying.
Darwin's planned large development on the "middle arm" turns out to bepart of a plan for large new fossil fuel extraction projects.The development has been criticized for putting some ancient rock art at risk in the long term.Strict laws might be able to keep the ancient rock art safe. But they can't save Earth from those fossil fuel developments,if those are allowed to proceed.
Montana has banned app stores from offering to install the TikTokclient program. This prevents users from installing the TikTok client program.since there is no other way to install it on a snoop phone.This scenario has injustice on every side. TikTok collects data onevery user. So do many other "app" client program — all of them areunjust. Secondarily, they are unjust because they are nonfree software.The snoop-phones are unjust too, for snooping and for limiting whatusers can install. Their software also has the secondary injusticeof being nonfree.
Republicans didn't want to lose the vote of George Santos, so theywere determined to defeat the resolution to expel him from Congress.But they didn't want to be criticized for voting to keep an accusedcriminal in the House to vote for them. So they voted to refer theexpulsion resolution to a committee where they can quietly bury it.
Biden canceled a planned trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea to"negotiate" with Republican terrorists.By treating the negotiations as important, Biden encouragesRepublicans to think he is desperate for an agreement, and that willencourage them to stand by their demands. They make think they canget Biden to help them harm non-rich Americans.I fear that maybe they can.
A former leader of one group of Colombia's murderous paramilitariessays that officials protected the group and gave them lists of peopleto torture and/or kill.
A Washington DC thug has been charged with informing theProud Boys leader that he was to be arrested for his part in the Jan 6 insurrection — and then lying about that.
US dumping of agricultural products has meant poverty for Mexicanfarmers.The bullshitter's replacement of NAFTA, one of the few good things heever did, did not change enough to end this.
An episode of the Brian Lerner poscast has an interview withpsychologist Peter Grey, who explains how Americans' obsessionwith keeping children "safe" has made them very likely to become helpless and develop many kinds of psychological problems.
New York law aims to stop funding of illegal Israeli settlements in West Bank.All Israel's colonies in the occupied West Bank violate treaties about military occupation.Many of them also violate Israeli laws, but the government looks otherway for some years and eventually legalizes them.
Warning: canceling events because of extremists' threats is treated by the extremists as a victory.The article refers to right-wing extremists, but I think it appliesto leftist extremists too.
Mother of girl who died in US border patrol custody says agents ignored her.Avoidable death of prisoners happens repeatedly in any kind of prison,because the prison staff don't really care about prisoners' suffering.
The G7 threw away concern for avoiding climate breakdownand adopted plans for development of gas extraction.
The British right-wing is drumming up opposition to low-trafficneighborhoods(designed to facilitate and encourage walking or biking rather thandriving cars) using the same playbook as global heating denialism.
There's no shame in waging war on old age.But if we are mostly living on Earth, we will have to have childrenvery rarely.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Dept. of Education to sue DeMentis for making textbook companies censor textbooks in Florida.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to use a discharge petition for a bill to raise the debt ceiling (and change nothing else).
Antibodies for Epstein-Barr virus can attack human tissues and cause multiple sclerosis.
A study found that YouTube tends to recommend videos about guns and shooting to boys of age 9, and boys of age 14.Many of these videos were not supposed to be allowed onYouTube, but it seems not to enforce those policies.
I took my kids to the playground without bringing my phone — and it was arevelation.In the year since I quit [so-called] social media, my screen time hasfallen, my mood is up — even my resting heart rate is lower.This is an additional reason to quit. The reason I refuse to usethose systems is that they require nonfree software, which can be modifiedby others (though usually not by you), and much of it is malware.Like Emma Brockes, I find children mostly boring.I avoided that problem for myself by not having any.
Former world leaders urge G7 to get nuclear arms control back on track.I fully support that urging.
- In occupied West Bank villages, Israeli-owned farms are flourishing,while Palestinians often do not have enough water to drink.*Israel has been transferring water rights for years, using various legal excuses.
Oil companies generally set up a subsidiary to do oil drilling in eacharea or country, and make the subsidiary alone liable for the cost ofoil spills, so that the main corporation's liability is limited by thetotal wealth of the subsidiary. This way, the victims of a spillwon't be compensated for the damage the spill does to them.However, Guiana, on the eastern part of South America's north coast,refuses to let them do this any more.Will this make Exxon work harder to avoid a spill? I think people tendto be biased towards belief that disaster won't happen. If a regional disasterdoes happen, the countries and people affected could end up owning Exxon.If so, would they handle drilling in a safer way, or would the vision ofriches corrupt them as it corrupted the current owners of Exxon?
Arguing that the only chance of strengthening democracy in the UKis if neither the Tories nor Starmer gets a majority in the nextelection.
Musk said that Twitter's support for Erdoğan's censorship is his choice.In other words, he is using the power he gets from Twitter to support globalfascism.It's a reason to stop using Twitter.
UK thugs plan to use face recognition in the center of Cardiff to findpeople wanted for various reasons.The supposed occasion for this is that Beyonce is giving a concertin a stadium in Cardiff. But the facial recognition won't be limitedto the stadium and its entrances.Nor do we know that the tracking and data collection will not extendto everyone else who passes by. In fact, UK ministers are consideringrunning facial recognition on everyone who shows up in a thug's body camera.The UK is full of cameras, and I suspect many of them are surveillance cameras (images transmitted to some network which can recognize faceslater). Those cameras could become, or perhaps already are,the introduction of Chinese-sty;e surveillance in Britain.That could be, or perhaps already is, part of the system of heightened repression in Britain. Do they use video tracking to figure out who to arrest for planningto walk slowly, or glue perself to the street?There is no need for the software to gauge a person's ethnicity if itidentifies each person against a database that record's per ethnicity.
It's hard to get neo-Nazi cops fired. Too hard.We should not allow firing employees, even cops, for having a mereopinion we disapprove of. However, in the case of cops, who aregiven special forms of authority, we should be able to insist thatthey not have attitudes which are likely to result in unfairnessto some demographic groups among the public.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has been convicted of corruption andsentenced to a year's house arrest.
A Chinese comedian made a joke that some extreme patriots interpretedas a slight on the Chinese army, though it apparently didn't sayanything about the army. The government forced him to publish a confession of guilt, then silenced him on communication platforms.The government also fined the company he works for around 1.5 million dollars.I have a hunch he will be punished in other ways that were not officiallyannounced. For instance, that he won't be allowed to work as a comedianany more.
President Lasso of Ecuador had been impeached, and was in the processof being tried for removal from office, when he dissolved the whole Congress.It seems to me that the Ecuadorian constitution has a grave flawif the president can always prevent impeachment so easily.
Billionaires SpentOver $1 Billion on 2022 Elections—MoreThan Any Year in US History.Don't assume their money was defeated. In addition to bringing aboutthe election of more plutocratists (Democrats as well as Republicans),it also convinces many candidates who would have won anyway to adoptincreasingly plutocratist positions.
A study estimates that the the US "war on terror" is responsible forat least4.5 million deaths. 1 million seen to have been killed by fighting, but far moredied from poverty and disruption of societycaused by the fighting.
Medicare for AllLegislation Introducedto Address Poor U.S. Health Outcomes, Inequities.I think that focusing on "inequity" in US medicine is a distractionfrom the real issue. What's wrong with the US medical system is thatmany Americans can't get the medical care they need.We should set up a national medical system to give all Americans themedical care they need. Other countries prove every day that that ispossible.If we gave every American good medical care, as a byproduct therewould be no more inequities in medicine. But we should not formulatethe goal in terms of inequities. We could eliminate inequities bygiving all Americans _no_ medical care, but that is not what we shouldaim for.
The boss of CNN (actually, of its parent company) rebuked CNN reporterOliver Darcy intimidatingly for notupholding the company's spinabout the bullshitter and his "town hall".
(satire) Wealthy Parents Surprise Graduating Child With Judge Who Will Let Him Off HookFor Future Rape Accusations.
A study of the corpses of English teenagers (and a few children) takenfrom poor parents in the 1800s,and sent to work in cotton mills faraway, shows that they were basically systematically stunted and killedby malnutrition.
Important laws about reducing air pollution, both toxic and greenhouse,are among the laws the Tories plan to repeal. The Tories say theselaws are "no longer applicable."
Speculation about what AI in reality might do toscript-writing.I can't believe this couldn't happen, if someday artificial intelligence can tellplausible stories. Speculation about this goes at least as far backas Asimov's story "Galley Slave". But be careful not to think of ChatGPT as artificial intelligence.It does not know anything, and does not understand anything.It might be able to script a surrealist absurd movie, where lackof knowledge and understanding might be no problem. But I hesitateto assume even that. The great works of surrealism may well be lessrandom than meets the eye; that may be what makes them great.
*Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchisentenced to year in prison[for perhaps calling official thugs "tyrants"].Ghannouchi used the word for "tyrant" but I don't think it was clearif he was referring to anyone in particular. The Tunisian dictatordoes not hesitate to act like a tyrant.
Head of Ukraine's supreme court heldin anti-corruption investigation.Ukraine has a reputation for being very corrupt, but the US also hascorruption in its supreme court,and the US is behind in trying to do something about it.
TheEPA has become quite activein requiring cuts in various sortsof pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions.However, Biden's foolish approval of drilling in large fossil fuelreserves is likely to counteract around half the reductions ingreenhouse emissions.
Cambodia’s only major opposition party is barred from running in Julyelections. The thugs came one day, years ago, andseized theirregistrationpapers.
Democrats and Republicans are now competing for who can direct the most cruelty at convicts.That is not very effective for reducing crime. What succeeded in the1990s was partly the elimination from lead from gasoline in the late70s, and partly an increase in income on the average for poor peoplein the 90s, which helped them get by without crime.We can't get rid of any more lead from gasoline, because none remainsin gasoline, but we might be able to make life easier for poor peopleby electing more progressive Democrats.
The bullshitter is likely to face criminal charges about several matters. He is likely to be convicted. But will that happen before the election,and do Republicans have enough shreds of decency to defeat him for his crimes?
Two London thugs have been fired for punching and kicking a teenagerwhile arresting per, and then lying about it.Please don't refer to a teenager as "a child" — that is propagandafor constraining their lives.In my view, it should be a crime for uniformed thugs to kick or punchanyone, of whatever age, absent clear and strong justification.Even an adult!
A UK thug paralyzed Jordan Walker-Brown with a taser, and justifiedthat based on the "belief" that the latter had some sort of weapon. If he did have one, he had not pulled it out.The thug was tried for causing gross bodily harm, but Walker-Brown saidhe knew the thug would not be convicted.
A student riding home in a school bus noticed that the driver had blacked out,because he did not have a snoop-phone. He ran to the driver and stopped the buswithout an accident, while everyone else was too distracted.If this were the worst danger caused by having a snoop-phone, I wouldnot consider it much reason to refuse one. But they hurt nearly all theirusers in a number of ways.
At the border with Mexico, US border thugs arrest humanitarians underArizona's trespassing laws, while right wing fanatics shoot holes intheir water tanks. The fanatics are proud of their harassmenteven when they are convicted of it.This is in addition to the nonfree app that is the only way to applyfor an asylum appointment. Mark my words, if the US government gets awaywith doing this to asylum seekers, doing it to Americans will be next.
Ocasio-Cortez Slams Adams for Attack on "Very Services" That CouldHave Helped Jordan Neely.
Thai Voters Back Opposition in Decisive Rejection of Military Rule.Will the next step be a military coup?
High-speed rail may finally be built in the US, starting with a linefrom Los Angeles to Las Vegas.While the US has done almost nothing for decades, China has coveredthe whole country with high-speed train lines. Why has the US failedto do this? I conjecture that in the US, businesses are too powerful.So powerful that they can stop the US government from doing importantthings, such as building train lines.By contrast, in China the government is more powerful than anycombination of businesses. So if the Chinese government decides tobuild the railroad equivalent of the interstate highway system, andboost the country's industrial capacity, it can go ahead and do that.China is using that boost in industrial capacity to build up its armedforces so it can conquer Taiwan and turn it into hellish tyranny.Meanwhile, the US can barely afford to defend Ukraine. And sincebusiness orders the US government to crush the poor, the poor turntowards fascism.
Confusion of large language models with general "artificialintelligence" is causing panic.Artificial general intelligence may someday be developed, and if so itcould pose many sorts of dangers, I recommend _A Fire upon the Deep,for an example, and Accelerando. And many other stories, with awide variety of outcomes.I agree that these systems can be dangerous. But they are dangerousin the short term in ways that hardly resemble the disasterscenarios. Indeed, artificial general intelligence is unnecessaryfor digital systems to bring disaster. Imagine payment systems thattrack all purchases, and transportation systems that track people'stravel. Those already exist, and if we don't want our countries tobe like China, we need to abolish them.ChatGPT is nothing like that. It can't make coherent plans, let alonecarry them out. It can generate text that looks like a plan until youstudy it carefully. The problems it causes come from side effects.
In the US, children of age 10 are working long hours,as plutocratists work to legalize more kinds and longer hoursof work by children and younger teenagers.This is harmful because it harms those children permanently by denyingthem the opportunity for an education. Some kinds of work aredangerous for young people. The existence of the practice, enablesbusinesses to lower wages generally.I support education for everyone, and limiting labor by children andyounger teenagers; I support Eisenhower taxation of the rich also.I must admit I don't see a close relation between them. Each is goodfor society but in its own way.
The number of people per month reported in the UK as possibly being trafficked as slaves keeps increasing. What does this imply?Maybe more people are being trafficked as slaves.Maybe the methods of detecting possible trafficking are being improvedso that a greater fraction are being reported.Maybe, as Braverman the Tory minister claims, the problem is caused byimmigrants' making false claims. I don't know for certain that thisis false, but if a right-wing politician makes such a claim, I checkmy pockets to make sure my freedom is still there.
Poland has declared a new name to use for the currently Russian city ofKaliningrad. Poland's choice choice of name, Królewiec, was the Polish name forthat city during the short period, 1454 to 1457, that the city wasunder Polish control. Aside from those few years, the city's name wasKönigsberg for 7 centuries.It seems to me that Russia and Poland are both being fools about this. Russia is a place of horrible tyranny and repression. Poland is a place of diminished human rights and imposed Christian restrictions. Those issues are more important than the name of Kaliningrad.
In his long CNN "town hall", the bullshitterbrushed asideinconvenient factsby opening the firehose of lies.
I have a hunch that CNN intended this program to increase its audienceamong US fascists, and that it succeeded.
There were a few topics on which the bullshitter seemed unwilling todismiss reality entirely. For instance, he said he would quickly endthe war in Ukraine, but refused to state any support for it. Thisgives us reason to believe he still supports Putin and would "end thewar" by stabbing Ukraine in the back. This would end the deaths incombat, but would not end the killing. The Putin forces did plenty ofkilling in parts of Ukraine that were occupied in the first months ofthe war, as well as kidnapping and torture. If the war turns into abigger occupation, they will surely continue.
The line that the bullshitter is following was worked out by manyprogressives, who now demand to "end the war" at any cost.After years of condemning the US for starting gratuitous warsbased on lies, they can't adjust to a situation where for once the US is onthe right side.
How aright-wing billionaire compelled CNNto take a neutral stand about the bullshitter's gusher of lies.
Mike Africa Jr, one of thesurvivors of the Move collective,was not in the house when thugs firebombed it and killed everyone inside. He has bought the building that was built to replace that house, and plansto make it into a memorial to Move and the people who were killed in that fire.
*The grotesque rehabilitation of Bashar al-Assad's regime — Syria’s criminal president has been cordiallyinvited to this week's Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia— makes sense to cynical Arab governments. They hope to reduce Damascus's dependence on Iran, encourage refugees to return, halt state-sponsored drug rackets and cash in on reconstruction.Would it be better to maintain hostilities so that Assad is not forgiven?I'm not sure.On one hand, peace would do a lot to reduce Syrians' suffering.On the other hand, peace could result in Assad's getting the supportto conquer Rojava.
CNN gave the bullshitter a bigsituational advantage over the moderator.It sank lower than that. Staff spoke to the audience shortly beforethe show, saying they were welcome to applaud but thatbooing wasforbidden.
CNN’s Trump debaclesuggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016.Or are they mistakes? The CEO of CNN's owner seems to be quite content to have attracted more support from fascists.
CNN's live presentation for the bullshitter was a complete success forthe bullshitter and for the plutocratists. Theyboth got what theywanted:to tell the public, "You can choose fascism, or you can choosethe cruel system that boosted fascism."
China has given itselfthe power to bar foreign lawyersfrom working in"national security" trials (political repression). It had already terminated the residence visa of the British lawyerthat Jimmy Lai wanted to hire, and postponed the trial 'til after thatlawyer was compelled to leave; but apparently China was so worried about the presenceof a lawyer that might actually try to defend Lai that changed HongKong law to make sure this could never happen.
Greg Palast warns that the bullshitter's campaign to make it hard forblacks to vote is working very effectively, and Republicans are stillworking hard at it.
George Monbiot: The coronation arrests are just the start. [Thugs]can do what they want to us now.The thugs can now arrest people in Britain for almost any sort ofprotest that could attract attention, or even carrying harmless toolsfor one. In addition, experienced organizers can be orderedpre-emptively to stay away from all protests and other protesters, andjailed if they disobey.Britain is at the tipping point of joining regimes such as China and Russiain repression of dissent.
California residents, urge state legislators to oppose the CJPA bill.That bill would not protect the real local journalism, only reward the fake.
Senate Investigation Shows How [Republican tax cuts in 2017] Enabled Big Pharma's "Extreme" Tax Avoidance.
Hindu fanatics in India are sabotaging traditional celebrations inwhich various religious groups joined harmoniously for hundreds ofyears.Banning hijab in India is basically the same injustice as requiring hijab in Iran.
Many young Hong Kongers have asked for asylum in Britain.It's not clear they will receive asylum. The saddest thing is that the UK is becoming repressive much like Hong Kong. However, the UK won't jail people for criticizing the government of China.so these Hong Kong refugees will probably be safe there if they get asylum,even though other Britons are not.
Edinburgh University is trying to calm the dispute between thepartisans of two different concepts of women's rights, in the hopeof discussions between them.
Daniel Perry, who killed Jordan Neely in the New York subway byusing a chokehold, has been charged with manslaughter.Neely apparently seemed upset, but what he said did not threatenviolence.
- Francesca Albanese says Israel is maintaining occupation to get as much land as possible for Jewish people.*
A number of officials are calling for overturning the trial of Richard Glossip. He might get a new trial.The crucial lesson from the bogus trial he received is that it is alltoo easy for US courts to reach a verdict of guilty based on evidencethat is obviously insufficient to justify punishing anyone.
Self-driving cars now supposedly work without human backup drivers.In practice, they work poorly. In addition, they are full of camerasinside and out, and the company staff (remote) can look at the camerafeed at any time.It should be illegal to operate a car with such surveillance capability without a warrant to authorize the surveillance.In order for a self-driving car to be tolerated in society, itssensors must not pick up enough data about the passengers, or thepassers-by, to figure out who they were. However, that limited amountof data needs to suffice to figure out where they are and where theymight be in n seconds.
The Hindu-nationalist party (BJP) lost the state elections in Karnataka,a state in the south of India.Perhaps the new government will crack down on the BJP's efforts to stirup hatred against Muslims in places with long traditions of friendshipbetween people of different religions.
Opposition has delayed the planned test of releasing sterile males ofthe mosquito Aedes aegypti in California. The method to be testedcould perhaps wipe out that pest in California.Aedes aegypti in California is an intrusive species, so its effects onecosystems are essentially negative. Species which depend on eatingmosquitoes must have eaten only the native species until recently, andcan still do so. The benefit to be obtained by eradicating Aedesaegypti in California, in reduced disease and reduce pesticide use, issurely enormous.The state should insist on researching what can be tested, anddeveloping further precautions for aborting the experiment early.But don't let Aedes aegypti hang around for long.
As humans enter areas formerly wild, the danger of catching diseasesfrom wild animals keeps on increasing. Several recent epidemics came fromanimals, Covid-19 being one of them.
Chinese dissident Ruan Xiaohuan was able to evade Chinese censorshipand post messages opposing the regime. He kept it up for 12 yearsbefore they caught him.
Musk announced that Twitter would censor access to tweets in Turkey toplacate Erdoğan.This is the same excuse that Apple used for helping to carry outChinese censorship in China. But is Turkey really better off havingTwitter keep operation under Erdoğan's censorship, than having himvery visibly shut it down? I don't think so.Musk, with business relationships in Turkey, comes under fire forTwitter censorship aiding [Erdoğan] whom he knows personally.Is Musk's excuse bogus as well as wrong? Others claim he is censoringTwitter more than the Turkish regime demands of other media. MaybeMusk simply desired to boost autocracy in Turkey, and only pretends heis doing so under threat.
"Sustainable" investment funds are accused of greenwashing fossil fuelbusinesses by investing almost $400 billion in them.The article explains the system's perverse incentives.
Disgust is an emotion that evolved to keep us out of danger, but people have long misused it to inflict cruelty and catastrophic harm.Right-wing fanatics apparently fail to feel disgust for lies.I reproach the author for advocation flat-out censorship, such as"laws against hate speech". Under the First Amendment, unpopularopinions, whether fascist or progressive, are not prohibited.
The UK system of "student loans" is really a tax on graduates. Butnot a fair one: graduates who get higher incomes will end up payingless than graduates with lower incomes.There is no need for the state to establish separate taxes to pay forvarious state activities. One unified set of taxes — income tax andinheritance tax — can pay for all state expenditures, provided ittaxes people with high incomes at a high effective rate. Those who getmore income due to their education will, indeed, pay more.
Proposing George Santos as the bullshitter's next running mate.They are just made for each other.
Most Credit Cards Still Deny Access to Justice with Forced Arbitration Clauses.This requirement makes it unlikely that the cardholder will get a fairoutcome. It also keeps the public in the dark about the substance andoutcomes of the disputes.
Over 1000 scientists and academics carried out nonviolent protestscalling for a rapid decrease in carbon emissions.Some of them face criminal charges, basically "annoying protest" but stated indifferent words.
Erdoğan finished first in the first state of the Turkish presidentialelection.It is not certain who will win the runoff, but each day gives Erdoğanmore chances to cheat or to throw over the board.
Scientists report that the main cause of the 25% decrease in wildbird populations in Europe is the heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers in intensive farming.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the Comstock Act.That disused law prohibits mailing "lewd" or "obscene" materialsthrough the post, and also prohibits mailing birth control andabortifacients. Republicans want to enforce it against mailing of mifepristone.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) Picking up thousands of incapacitated Americans by their wrists and ankles and tossing them down to the sidewalks below, Covid-19 patients were reportedly flung out of hospital windows across the country Thursday as the public [Covid-19] emergency officially ended.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stock Buybacks Act which would prohibit corporations from buying back their own stockso as to raise the stock price.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Justice Thomas.Thomas's corruption serves Republican interests, so I expect theywon't vote to impeach him, or vote to remove him from office if he hasbeen impeached. Nonetheless, it may help strengthen the will to doother things, such as expand the Supreme Court, after the nextelection.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate and reduce mercury pollution from (fossil fuel) power plants.
The UK plutocratists keep opposing nationalization of the railroadsbecause their funders, the rich, make money from the privatizedrailroads. So they don't want to admit that the previous state-ownedBritish Rail worked better than the subsequent state-owned railroads.Sad to say, the Tory Party is not the only plutocratist party inBritain. The Labour Party's support for renationalization ishalf-hearted because Starmer is a plutocratist at heart.Now that he has blocked firm opponents of plutocratism from running as Labour candidates for Parliament, it will be hard for Labour to get any better in the future.When people assert that private capital can more easily invest thelarge sums needed to improve railroads, the response is to ask why thestate doesn't have enough funds to invest. Is it because of reducing taxes on the rich and on businesses? That's the real problem.
Democracy is in trouble because most people are biased and most people are often mistaken. But democracy can be effective when it isstructured to lead to discussions in which people present argumentsfor various sides.The article refutes the claims of certain rich people who argue thatmarkets, or the cleverest people, should rule. They call themselves"libertarians", but I don't think they deserve that term since theyadvocate subjugation of nearly everyone. Like most people whocall themselves "libertarians", their real goal is for the an eliteto dominate most of society and to get rid of systems that help thenon-rich. That is why I call them "antisocialists".
The EPA's new pollution rules for fossil fuel power plantsare predicated on the assumption that carbon capture will work and will be used.So far, it doesn't work, and the only reason anyone assumes it will workis due to fossil fuel lobbying.
Human Rights Watch and Article 18 condemned Erdoğan's control of the internet in Turkey, saying he will use that to twist the election.Sad to say, right-wing rich people own the principal news sourcesin most countries, including the US and the UK.
Widespread use of disinfectant wipes spread exposure to certain chemicals, which could be harmful. Some researchers say the chemicals are linked to serious health problems, theycontribute to antimicrobial resistance, they pollute the environmentand they are not particularly effective.
Fascists in France set fire to the cars and house of a town mayorwho supported caring for immigrants.The fascist strategy, in France as everywhere, is to demonstrate their"courage" to attack those who can't defend themselves, in order tomake everyone afraid to disagree with them. It is not easy tothwart. But I think it requires capturing and punishing some fascistterrorists.
The Tories have delayed the plan to repeal thousands of EU-derived laws en masse. That doesn't mean the laws won't be all be repealed en masse.Thoughtful and proper proceedings would be to allowing Parliament toexamine each of these laws, one by one, and judge whether the UK wouldbe better off keeping it, repealing it, or changing it. That would be theway to improve life in the UK. Evidently that is not the goal.
Responding to Republican threats of sabotage:Make them [the Republicans] own it. Make sure the public understandswhat is at stake and who will bear the responsibility if thingsgo wrong. That’s not only smart politics. Absent successfulapplication of the “constitutional option,” this is the only strategy,short of capitulation, that stands any realistic chance of preventingdefault.
Australia's not so environmentalist government approved a new coal mine.That is playing with fire. Every new fossil fuel investment acts toaccelerate global heating and increase the chance that we cross atipping point that tips the world into disaster.
Big Oil Tries To Buy Its Own Courts: Texas oil and gas companies could soon have their business cases heard by judges handpicked by a close ally: Gov. Greg Abbott.
Australia has approved the construction of new facilities for handling natural gas near Darwin, which will surely push the Earth closer tobusting the carbon budget and collapse of civilization.The facilities are supposed to include producing "blue hydrogen",which means hydrogen gas generated by consuming fossil fuels andgenerating carbon emissions. They also include carbon capture andstorage, will encourage using more fossil gas but is unlikely toactually eliminate its greenhouse emissions.If that were not bad bad enough, the currently approved developmentarea comes pretty close to an aboriginal rock art site. Ifdevelopment extends, it could reach that site and endanger it.Australian rock art is amongst the oldest cultural relics ofhumanity and no one should have the power to authorize damaging it.
Senate Judiciary Democrats No Longer Have an Excuse: It's Time to Subpoena Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow.
US citizens: call for banning fracking in the Vaca Muerta region of Argentina.Or else they should rename it to Billones Mertos, because that's wherebusting the carbon budget is likely to lead.
US citizens: oppose flooding schools with guns and uniformed thugs.The special danger of thugs in schools is that they can directstudents into the school-to-prison pipeline. They do thisfor minor matters of indiscipline that in the past would not haveinvolved the state at all.
US citizens: if your congresscritter is a Republican phone perand call on per to sign a discharge petition for a bill toraise the debt ceiling and not do anything else.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Some people love paradoxes and seek opportunities to claim that theyare the whole of reality. For instance, it turns out that colorperception is partially socially constructed. One writer leaps fromthat to the claim that color perceptions are arbitrary mental constructswhich have nothing to do with reality.Plenty of aspects of human perception, thought, and behavior arepartially socially constructed, but that doesn't mean they are arbitraryor that they are not constrained by reality.
Legal advice received by the European Commission suggests that the"chat control" censorship plan is illegal.The plan assumes that an encrypted communication service _includes_nonfree software to run on your machine to send and receive messages.That implies that the service can make that software snoop on yourcommunications before it encrypts them.That design, where the service imposes specific software on users,is fundamentally unjust and insecure, precisely because the serviceimposes nonfree software on users and users can never rationally trustsuch software.In effect, the "chat control" plan demonstrates that we were right. Aservice that makes users run nonfree software to talk with it isinherently insecure and untrustworthy.
Worried Your Child is Already a Screen Addict? There’s Hope!!!The "pervasive design" addictive features that the article naivelyattributes to "screens" are implemented by software: partly in theoperating system and partly in some apps. They can be designed to donasty things because they are non-free software: their code is controlled by some "owner", in this case a powerfulcompany, rather than by the users. If they were free programs, theuser community could reprogram them so as to be less addictive.We must free ourselves from the idea that giant companies have the "right"to require users' connection to their "services" to go through softwareunder their control. We should have the right to use our free softwareto do that.
Petrochemical industry in Louisiana have set up a "sustainability council"to help sustain their business model. They increase profits by skimping on the safety of people living in theregion.
The new Portuguese euthanasia law seems to have the same flaw as mostsuch laws. It is limited to people whose illness is terminal, which means theirsuffering is sure to end in a matter of months anyway. If yoursuffering could continue for years, this law refuses to help you.What perversity!It also excludes foreigners.
Anger management classes now part of the plutocratist neoliberal economic situation, used to teach the people being exploited and squashed to learn to remain placid and not fight to put an end to it.
Biden broke a commitment that the US would stop financing fossil fuel development in other countries.It is silly to claim that Indonesia will refine fuel in the expandedBalikpapan refinery instead of refining fuel elsewhere and importingthe results. The owners of the other refineries will try to selltheir output somewhere else.
A member of the Danish parliament that represents Greenland gave a speech in Parliament in Greenlandic, which no one else thereunderstood. Then she refused to tell the rest of parliament what thespeech meant.To speak to a body of people in a language almost none of themunderstand is disrespectful. When they ask you to repeat your pointin their language, which you do speak, it indicates they do wish topay attention to your point. To refuse them only vents contempt.If you pretend that asking you what you said represents an attempt togag you, that is perverse and unjust.The other parliamentarians might respond, "While you speak to us in alanguage we can't understand, we may as well use the time to catch upon documents we are supposed to read."
Iran's repression now extends to prosecuting defense lawyers for"propaganda against the regime" on the internet.
Biden has replaced Title 42, the policy of sending asylum seekers directlyback to Mexico, with a harsher policy.The new policy makes them automatically ineligible for asylumfor 5 years, simply for trying to reach US territory to applyfor asylum.
Kansas City, Missouri, declared Itself a sanctuary city regardingstate laws that criminalize being trans.City officials are told to spend effectively no time on enforcingsuch laws.
US citizens:call on the FCCto require Sinclair's supposed "local news" TV stations to actually cover local news.
"Battery passports" totrack the raw materialsused in making electriccar batteries are proposed as a way of enforcing environmentalregulations on mining world-wide. Critics question whether the systemgives the mining companies too much influence in the system, whichthey could use to cheat.I support the system for that purpose — but if businesses startoffering to change out your car's battery as a quick recharge, it iscrucial that those businesses not be able to examine the number ofthe battery that they get from you. That would become, in effect,another system for tracking where you drive.The same reasoning applies to ordinary charging systems for cars.They must accept anonymous payment and they must be forbidden to getany identifying data digitally from the car.
Here's an example of how concern about Putin's threats against theZaporizhzhia nuclear power plant getspun into a demandto give Putina victorious conquest.Putin has frequently used his capture of the Zaporizhzhia nuclearpower plant in Ukraine for psychological warfare. There is a realdanger that it will lose external power and melt down. Putin haschosen to magnify the danger by creating avoidable risk — bybrinkmanship.In response to this brinkmanship, the article calls on the US toimpose a cease fire fast. The only way to get Putin to agree to thatis to make Ukraine cede to him all the territory that the Putin forcesnow hold. (Maybe even that isn't enough to satisfy him.)Is this what the author aims for? He does not admit it outright, butI can't believe that he is not aware of it. It has been pointed outmany times. According to the author, the US should tell Ukraine,"Surrender fast, so you can have peace!"Putin says he demands the whole territory of the provinces ofZaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, in exchange for peace.If the US were to take the desperate "Surrender, Ukraine" positionthat the article recommends, Putin would take advantage of that.If we want to avoid a nuclear disaster in the Zaporizhzhia plant, itis easy to see how a local agreement could do this. If both sides arewilling, they can easily do it. Since Putin has refused, it can onlymean he does not want the plant to be made properly safe. But hedoesn't want a nuclear disaster either. He wants a threat to make toset fools scurrying to demand giving him whatever he wants.
Hong Kong is punishing people who emigrate to Britain by denying accessto their savings and pension funds in Hong Kong banks.The changed regulation would require them to return to Hong Kongto get new ID cards, which would not be safe at all.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to urge her to cosponsorthe Medicare for All Act when it is reintroduced in Congress on May 17.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:call on Congressto raise the debt ceiling withoutattacking the non-rich.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:call on CongresstoBan AI Use in Weapons Systems, Now and Forever.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
TheEuropean Parliament concludedthat the authoritarian governments of Hungary and Poland used spyware to monitor "enemies of the state" such as journalists, politicians and activists.
US citizens:call on the FCCto require Sinclair's supposed "local news" TV stations to actually cover local news.
Christiania, theanarchist town in the middle of Copenhagen,hasallowed sale of marijuana by known local people for 50 years. Nowcriminal gangs have moved in, taken control, and are fighting overthe "territory". It looks like they have ruined everything.I think the existence of these powerul gangs is a consequence ofprohibition in the rest of the country and the world. Prohibition ofmarijuana (or any drug) does not get rid of it, but helps the gangsmake lots of money.
Many teachers in Hong Kong are quitting for fear they will saysomething politically unacceptable and be punished. And manyschool-age children are leavingfor free countries.Escape is available only to a fraction of Hong Kongers; most can'tfind a free country they can move to. I am sad for them.
"Battery passports" totrack the raw materialsused in making electriccar batteries are proposed as a way of enforcing environmentalregulations on mining world-wide. Critics question whether the systemgives the mining companies too much influence in the system, whichthey could use to cheat.I support the system for that purpose — but if businesses startoffering to change out your car's battery as a quick recharge, it iscrucial that those businesses not be able to examine the number ofthe battery that they get from you. That would become, in effect,another system for tracking where you drive.The same reasoning applies to ordinary charging systems for cars.They must accept anonymous payment and they must be forbidden to getany identifying data digitally from the car.
New York State has prohibited building new buildings to use fossil fuels.The same law allocates funds to convert some old buildings to useelectricity instead.This will result in substantial reductions in fossil fuel use,provided the state builds enough renewable generating capacityto feed the resulting higher demand for electricity.
Putin told Clinton in 2011 that he might attack Ukraine.I wonder who Clinton told this too.
The US Supreme Court canceled the execution of Richard Glossip, who seemsto have had an exceedingly unfair trial.
EPA Confirms Bee-Killing Neonicotinoid Insecticides Threaten Extinction for More than 200 Endangered Species [aside from bees].
Billionaire Also Paid for Clarence Thomas' Grandnephew to Attend $74k/Year Private School.
The mainstream media ignore nondisruptive protests, so protestsagainst plans that amount to mass murder need to be disruptive enoughto be heard.
Florida is about to prohibit teaching critical race theory for real,even in universities where it really might be taught.It goes with other laws that censor education for many age levels.
Only a few instances of voters blocked in the UK by lack of the newvoter ID were actually counted, but since the system was not designedto count them, there could be more than it seems.Some were denied the right to vote because they are immunocompromisedand did not dare remove their masks in the polling place.
Erdoğan is passing a law that would imprison people for spreading news that Erdoğan calls "fake".
The ACLU told the Senate about the danger of various bills that would "protect children" by snooping on the communications of all adults. The ACLU opposes KOSA, too, because it would require even more data collectionabout every user to figure out who is a minor.
Pop music nowadays is sufficiently limited that almost any song couldbe seen as a take-off on many others. This led rapidly to charges ofcopyright infringement which could have turned the music industryinto a mess of lawsuits. Fortunately this threat was rejected for the moment.
US citizens:call on the USPS Board of Governorsto stop DeJoy's privatization plan and reverse its decision to slash rural lettercarrier capacity.
RMS will be giving talksin Switzerland about free software and digital injustice.* Thursday, May 11, at the Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik in Bern * Saturday, May 13, at Campus Batelle in Geneva * Sunday, May 15, in Moudon * Monday, May 16, in Lausanne
The talks are gratis and attendees do not need to register. They offer Q&A sessions, and some have free drinks afterwords.
Mexico has made an agreement with the US to accept manynon-Mexicans who are deportedfrom the US.
(satire)Anthropological Research Reveals Ancient CulturesUsed Psychedelics To Increase Productivity Within Startup Companies.
British Columbia (on Canada's west coast) is having floods, while neighboringAlberta is having wildfires.The tar sands oil that Alberta exports is partly responsible for both.
Andrew Malkinson has been in prison for 17 years for rape, becausethugsconcealed the evidencethat should have shown he didn't do it.It's amazing how often officials illegally conceal exculpatoryevidence and succeed in bringing about an abortion of justice. (Theword "miscarriage" is a mistaken metaphor because they happen byaccident.) We read over and over of people who were convicted in theUS as a result of such deception. These prosecutors have to know theyare lying someone into prison or (in the US) into the death row. Whydon't we put them in prison for this?
Noam Chomsky criticizes large language modelsas useless —fundamentally, by the way they are designed — for advancingunderstanding of cognition. This is because cognition plays no part in them.They don't try to understand anything.Machine-learning systems can do many practical tasks well — thosetasks that don't inherently involve conceptual understanding ofanything. They can be useful, for good purposes and bad purposes. Atthe same time, they can treat their users justly (if released as freesoftware) or unjustly (if released asnonfree softwareoronly as a "service")But we should distinguish this from intelligence, and reserve theterm artificial intelligence for artificial systems that can understand.
Canada persecutespeople who help anyone commit suicide— even with advice.Limited to only incomplete and bad advice, some people may survive,physically damaged, and compelled to return to life even worse than itwas before.
What we think of astales of individual resilienceare the tales ofthose that survived danger by chance, and assume it made them stronger.The chance sets you on a good path may result in your learning to begood at something. But chance doesn't turn out good for everyone.
Two years ago, Belarus forced down an airliner crossing its territoryso as to seize dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich and his (then?former?) girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Now Lukashenko has tentativelydecided to keep himin prison for 8 years for the crime of journalism.There is no reason to suppose Lukashenko would actually release him, 8years from now. It might do to him what Israel has done to MordechaiVanunu — keeping him effectively incommunicado indefinitely,and pretending it is has a purpose other than making him suffer.Sapega was sentenced to 6 years in prison.
Starmer has dropped the policy commitments he made when he ran for leadershipof the Labour Party, and it seems he wasplanning all along to do so. Apparently, all Labour stands for with him in charge is winning power.Most horribly, he has made sure that all new Labour MPs will be like him. It's like the British equivalent of the "centrist" US Democrats, but worse. Imagine if the Democratic Party machinery had theofficial power to forbid progressive candidates from runningin a primary. That's what Labour is now.
Brazilian thugs areinvestigating Bolsonaro,accusing him of counterfeitinga Covid-19 vaccination certificate.This is bizarre, because Bolsonaro says he proudly refused to be vaccinatedand never claimed otherwise.He visited the US on a special head-of-state visa. Maybe heads of stateare not asked to prove vaccination.It is idiotic not to be vaccinated, unless you have some specificmedical problem which contraindicates vaccination. Please don'tbelieve the disinformation which cherry-picks occasional problems withthis vaccine and exaggerates their significance, while minimizing thecontinued danger of catching Covid-19.
A study of 50 counties in California and New York found that raisingthe minimum wage to $15 per hour had several good overall economic effects.In places where the minimum wage had previously not been unusually high,right-wing economists would predict increased unemployment, but the studyfound that did not happen.
[Some specific] green investment funds pushing money into fossil fuel firms, research finds.
Accusing the right-wing Supreme Court of being ready to disregardboth facts and the right-wing idea of how to interpret the Constitution,in order to hurt Americans with unpayable student loans. Republican states fighting Joe Biden’s plan falsely said they’d be financially impacted by the scheme, debt forgiveness group claims.
Michael Chong, a member of Canada's parliament who originally came fromHong Kong, accused Trudeau of doing nothing to stop a Chinese diplomat from acting to harass him, his family in Hong Kong, and other membersof Canada's parliament.
Senator Warren has called for the US Trade Representative to confirmhe will oppose ISDS clauses in future trade treaties, as Biden promised.This is the most salient requirement for making a trade treatyacceptable; but it by itself is not sufficient. There are other waysa treaty can give business an advantage over human beings and society,thus making it a business-supremacy treaty.
Dozens of women who worked for the CIA have accused it of disregarding accusations of some sort of sexual pressure on them.It is not clear to me what the bounds of the term "sexual assault" are.The term is so loose that it is inherently misleading. But whateverit includes, the CIA should have handled these accusations properly.
Civil liberties activists called for governments to decide not to allow spy software such as Pegasus.I wish getting rid of spy software were that easy, but I don't thinkit is. When programs have bugs, some people will exploit them assecurity holes, and just saying "That's prohibited" won't stop it.Indeed, gangs do this and they are probably breaking a law by doingso, but that doesn't faze them — they break many other laws too.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives toRepeal the 2002 AUMF.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Thefree press is under attack,by states and gangs, all around the worldmeanwhile, its old business model is gradually disappearing.Repression is increasing globally and spreadingto additional countries.
Protests against Macron's arbitrary increase of the retirement age inFrance are continuing after months, and thugs have taken uparrestingpeople for the traditional protestof banging on pots.I'm sure it is true that the finances of retirement pensions in Francehave a problem that requires more funds. But why turn first to the poorto get them? Macron did that because he is a "centrist", which means"bowing to the rich and pretending that's what most people want."The propaganda terms "centrist" and "moderate" can be compared with"bolshevik", which was used by a minority to pretend to be the majority.
Six Libyans facedeath penalty for convertingto Christianity.Many countries that call themselves "Muslim" impose that religion onmore or less everyone. This is an offense against the freedom of everycitizen, including those who are currently Muslims and might want tochange. They also punish people for criticizing the official religion("blasphemy") — in some countries with execution.Christian countries used to commit similar injustices, quitegenerally, until the 1500s when a few began to adopt limited freedomfor a few Christian sects. The Dutch Republic permitted Judaism aswell. The UK didn't officially permit Jews until the mid 1800s,although some lived there. It discriminated against Catholics untillater.
Several Chinese who reported on the early days of Covid-19 in Wuhanhave been imprisoned one way or another for years. One of them, FangBin, may have beenreleased from what China calls "prison"to something more like house arrest.It seems they have various levels of imprisonment so that they canmanipulate prisoners.
Studentsin several European countries, plus Uganda, are holdingoccupations to demand an end to building fossil fuel facilities.
Georgia thugs outdid themselves in defying reality and stretchinglaws byarresting activists who were putting flyerson mailboxes. They gave the address of one of the thugs who was involved in killingprotester Manuel Paez Terán in the forest which is to be cut down to build Cop City.The inquiry into [his] death has been marred bycontradictory information released by officials.I hazard a guess that the thugs and judges involved in this areright-wing. Contempt for law, justice and truth is the hallmark ofthe right wing, and these look like examples of it.
Anti-monarchists [in the UK]receive "intimidatory" Home Officeletteron new protest laws.
Putin has cancelled national celebrationson the dishonest pretext thatUkraine would attack crowds of civilians. Perhaps he's really afraidthat those crowds of civilians would show their opinion of him.
Americans are suffering illness and death due tothe level ofdisconnectionfrom other people. The amount of direct contactwith other people has been decreasing since the 1970s.The essay "Bowling Alone" took note of this development in 1995, but ithas continued since then.By going to the store to buy things, you can have a little more socialcontact with a variety of people — and you can pay cashand resist surveillance capitalism.
Victorian duck hunters urge parliamentnot to bow to "political correctness."I suggest that governments in Australia do more to encourage huntingof intrusive and introduced alien species, including foxes and cats.
Various US states are regulating PFAs, since Republicans won'tlet theUS government do it.
Mastodon has announced a plan to make the service easier to join.On the practical level, attention to these issues can make Mastodoneasier to use, and that is good. In practical terms, this work isworth doing.On the level of values, the reference to Mastodon as a "product" mademe worry for Mastodon's future. The values associated with making a"product", and all the other words typically used by businesses, arecorrupting. They infuse a set of goals that are incompatible withrespecting people.
A digital pet service that imitated a sweetheart or lover won users'hearts — then the company that ran it cut these simulated beloved from expressing affection.The free software movement has something to say about it, and theauthor of the article gets it: "You can never have a safeemotional interaction with a thing or a person that is controlled bysomeone else."Whether the author learned this from us, or thought of it on per own,it is good to see.At the same time, a simulated friend that is entirely under your owncontrol is not satisfactory, because whatever it says and doesis your own fantasy. It is like a puppet.
The company Bytedance that owns and controls TikTok has a surveillanceand censorship tool that has word lists that would catch discussions about political issues relating to China's repression.It is not easy to determine what use the company makes of these lists.I wouldn't trust what the company says about that. (If the toolbelonged to Facebook, I would not trust what it might say about that.)
Internet freedom activists warn Congress that the EARN IT act would eliminate internet freedom.The stated goals of the EARN IT act seem proper to me, but the cost to freedom would be terrible, as adults would have toprove their identities to get accounts on platforms, Another bill to protect "children" on the internet is called KOSA. The description of that bill seems to imply determining which usersare "children" but doesn't say how this would be done. I fear the worst.
Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court.I would expect that the Republicans figure the oligarchs who fund themwant to continue corrupting the Supreme Court.
Democrats in the House of Representatives are trying to pass a billto extend the debt ceiling and do nothing else. They plan to do this using a discharge petition. To succeed, they need 5 Republicans to sign. They believe they canget them.
Big US railroads gave paid sick leave to some unions,mainly the ones whose workers don't do the day-to-day operation of the trains. This is not adequate.If railroads want their workers to work even when sick, they aretrying to exploit those workers.
Airbnb is destroying communities which many people like to visit, asmany houses in them are now used as hotel rooms and there is not much in the way of housing to rent for all year.I would never use airbnb anyway, since you are required to (1) runnonfree software and (2) identify yourself to the company. I don't mindif the owner of the apartment or room knows who I am, but not a company!
- Fast-rising fungal attacks on the world’s most important crops threaten the planet’s future food supply.* The impact of fungal disease is expected to worsen, the researchers say, as the climate crisis results in temperatures rising and fungal infections moving steadily polewards. Since the 1990s, fungal pathogens have been moving to higher latitudes at a rate of about 7km a year. Wheat stem rust infections, normally found in the tropics, have already been reported in England and Ireland.
The Democrats think [so-called]centrism will re-elect Biden.That’s a dangerous assumption.Currently they are planning to carefully manage the Democratic primaryelections so as to prevent any progressive candidate from effectivelychallenging Biden.When Democrats say "centrism",they mean siding with the rich and powerful against most Americans. Biden is still not doing nearly enoughabout the climate crisis.
US citizens:call on Secretary Austinnot to leave [noncombatant]victims of drone strikes [uncompensated].
Everyone:call on the Carlyle Group to protect the planetby divesting from fossil fuels.
Evidence suggests that particles of plastic get into animals' brains(and that includes Homo sapiens), and that theycan contribute to braindysfunction.
Clarence Thomas's vote in the Citizens United case boosted hisbillionaire benefactor's political power.
California still officially has a death penalty, but it iseliminating the soul-crushing"death row".
Brazilian government forces describefighting mining mafias.The main difference between these mines and the mines and wells in theUS is that the latter have bought the support of the government.
Small private jets emit over10 times as muchpollution per passenger as commercial flights, yet they receive an indirect public subsidy.This calls for a big increases in taxes on owning and using thosejets. It would be just a start at ending the rich people's class war,but starting would be good.
Labour is now competing with Tories to help middle-class people buy housesanddisregarding the poorwho can no longer afford to rent anywhere.
Everyone: call on Google to stop collectingsearch and location data for abortion seekers.Google's collection of such data about users is an injustice regardlessof what they are searching for.There is a proxy called LibreX which accesses Google search for you,but you can connect to it via Tor and not run the JS code it sends.
The Tories are not very good at carrying through a planto the end. But they are alreadyplanning repression against anyone enragedabout being arbitrarily disenfranchised through voter ID cards.
Australia's government is considering making theNazi saluteillegal.Prohibiting expressions of hateful views will not stop people fromcommunicating them, but it will undermine the defense of freedom of speech.
Tucker Carlson has lost his job— but the far right has won the BATTLE for the mainstream.
US citizens:call on Senator Feinstein to resign.I have been disappointed with Feinstein for years because she is aso-called"centrist" (that is, plutocratist) Democrat.However. the reason there is a campaign for her to resign now is that her illnessand consequent inability to vote in the senate is blocking Biden's judicial appointments.If she resigns, the governor of Californiawill appoint another Democrat who will be physically well and able to vote.
In the US: call on cable companies tostop paying extra to carry FauxNews.A previous petition called on cable companies to remove Faux fromtheir standard list of channels. I signed that, but it doesn't affectme personally. Cable companies use DRM, and monitor what the userwatches. For those reasons, I refuse to be a cable subscriber.
A survey of policy changesin European countries and which groups of peoplelike or dislike them. In general, changes are more likely to be likedby the rich than by other people.
US citizens: call on Gov. Ron DeSantis tostop censoring teachers,students, and journalists.
US citizens: call on negotiators to prioritize working people & theplanet in the"Indo-Pacific Trade Deal."This deal would be a business-supremacy treaty, and almost certain would harm our freedom more or less. They givebig companies additional power to do harm to the rest of society.Soon we will need to campaign to kill the treaty. Let's get ready now!
AJust Stop Oil protester has been sentencedto 2.5 years in prison forclimbing a bridge and dropping a banner. Prison officials have threatenedto make his prison term extra painful if he talks with reporters.The Tories are passingadditional repressive lawsto crush the"selfish" protesters whose protests cause momentary annoyances. Just imagine how annoying agricultural failure will be for everyone!
Demands from musiccopyright holders are pressingto stretch the scope of copyright, making the writing of lawful pop songs very difficult.
Climate Campaigners Stage Blockade atWhite House Correspondents Dinner.Being only 2/3 planet roaster is not good enough.
Overeager thugs arrested people forthe most minor and peaceful of protestson the occasion of the proclamation of Charles III as king of the UK.Paul Powlesland was threatened with arrest for holding up a blankpiece of paper, inviting comparisons with China.Meanwhile, the UK is rapidly passing laws to repress any sort ofprotest that inconveniences anyone.
Asserting that the fighting in Sudan is afight between proxiesofrich Middle-Eastern powers over control of Sudan's resources.I have a hunch that some of those powers are gangs rather than states.ReportedlyLibyan General Haftar is alliedwith one side in Sudan,the militia that is fighting against the Sudanese army, and they arebacked by the United Arab Emirates and by Russia.But I see no info about which powers back the Sudanese army.
There is no such thing as "negotiating in good faith" forthe hostage-takers and terrorists ofthe Republican Party.
There is no such thing as "negotiating in good faith" forthe hostage-takers and terrorists ofthe Republican Party.
The UN working group on arbitrary detention has condemned the US forimprisonment without trial(not to mention torture) in Guantanamo prison.It called for release of prisoner Abu Zubaydah.
Republicans are trying to distract attention from their real insurrectionon Jan 6, 2021 by pretending that a fewpeaceful protests were "insurrections"and punishing its supporters as if that were true.
China seems to beserious about tryingto bring about a peace between Putin and Ukraine.If China works on this patiently, it may eventually bring about a deal,provided that the two sides can eventually agree on one. It would requirePutin to accept concessions which, at present, he is unwilling to accept.But maybe with time he will change his mind somewhat.
Why We Must Beat BackPrivate Equity's Deadly Holdon Nursing Homes.We need a law to prohibit tying many companies together. Not solelyvia visible mergers, but also by having common owners.Perhaps certain companies should be forbidden to have their stockowned by anyone but individuals.
In Australia, therapid construction of renewable energygeneration is substituting for fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse emissions.
Naturalists are breeding and releasing 11 species of Polynesian snailsthat were extinct in the wild, killed by anintrusive predator snailthat humans had brought,hoping it would wipe out another invasivesnail.The technique of releasing an intrusive predator to control a pestspecies has often backfired in this way. Cane toads in Australiaarea prominent example.I wonder if robots could be programmed to efficiently find and killthe two intrusive species of snails. It might be easy to distinguishthem from all the other species actually present in a given island,making the robots reliable there even if they might not be reliableelsewhere.Unlike intrusive life forms, robots are easy to prevent from becominga pest. They don't reproduce, and they need the help of humans torecharge.
Florida Republicans have another idea for attacking voting rights:attacking the organizations that help people in disprivileged groupsregister to vote.
(satire) Promising Report Finds Great Pacific Garbage Patch CouldSupportFull-Scale Ground WarBy 2040.
Congress has proposed a law to prohibit setting up AI systems todecidewhether to launch nuclear weapons. This is not an imaginary issue: there have been proposals to do just that.The legal technique of "no federal funds may be used" has a well-knownloophole: just find a private source of funds to do the specific job.Thugs have used "police foundations"to negate laws design with thatmethod.
The US Chamber of Commercepretends to represent small businesses, buthalf its income comes from donations of over a million dollars.
The pleas of Oklahoma's attorney general that Richard Glossip isinnocent werenot enough to convince the state's pardon boardnot to execute him.
Robert Reich: why Republicans make abig fuss about gender bigotry:it is a well-established path for recruiting for right-wing extremism.
[So-called] conservatives love judicial activism —as long as the lawis moved in their favor.
Jaci Statton had an unviable fetus which was turning into cancer, butdoctors in Oklahoma could not treat her because the treatment is an abortion.They told her to wait in the parking lotuntil she was on the verge ofdeath,so they would be allowed to perform it.
The"Starship" rocket faces an environmental investigationbecause ofthe damage it when lifting off. It not only destroyed the launch pad,it threw parts pieces of it into the air, and they crumbled and raineddown on a nearby town.
California has put toxic pollution limits on train engines. Many willhave to be replaced withmore efficient engines.The new rule will greatly reduce toxic pollution and greenhouse gasemissions.
China has charged a Chinese journalist,who works in China for agovernment news outlet, with "espionage", apparently for talkingfrequently with foreigners.The article lists a long series of disappearances and jailing ofjournalists in and by China.
China has charged a Chinese journalist,who works in China for agovernment news outlet, with "espionage", apparently for talkingfrequently with foreigners.The article lists a long series of disappearances and jailings ofjournalists in and by China.
An important new class of antibiotics is derived from "antimicrobialpeptides". However, feeding them to farm animals isbreeding bacteriato be resistant to them.
Florida's surgeon general, an anti-vaxxer,altered the text of a studythe state was publishing, to exaggerate a rare problem with Covid-19vaccines.
New Zealand thinks it canplant enough treesto outweigh all its greenhouse gas emissions.That is very risky.What if the trees die? That has happened beforein big tree-planting projects. It is also no example for the rest of the world to follow.
This Julian Assange rally will be at the May Day rally, Monday, May 1, at 5 pm at the bandstand on the Boston Common.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Republican "permitting reform" but do untangle permitting for electric transmission lines.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: suggest to Congress toallow the president to raise the debtceiling,unless 2/3 of Congress says no
Right-wingers and thugs in Germany demand toimprison people for amonthif they are suspected of planning annoying protests, such as blocking roads.The protesters demand cutting greenhouse emissions faster, on the groundsthat climate collapse is likely to kill them before they get old.The thugs want to "get the situation under control" to assure an orderlymarch towards mass death. Orderly, that is, until it is too late toprevent collapse and the early death of most of these potential protestersis assured.Climate disaster is likely to kill billions of people. It will not bean accident, though; big businesses of various kinds are lobbying tokeep it going while they extract all possible money. (Those whoprofit suppose that they will be somehow safe from the disaster,though I don't see how that could be true.)As a consequence, we can describe future climate disaster as thebiggest act of mass murder of all human history, past and future. Itis unlikely that there will ever again be billions of people to kill.
Australia plans to block the use ofcredit cards to pay for onlinegambling. This is a wise plan since it can prevent some gambling addictsfrom betting money they do not have.I conjecture that any system that requires gamblers to declare theirintention to gamble and then wait a while will help people avoidcompulsive gambling. Perhaps other ideas can be found from that.
More reason to suspect that Tories have introduced voter IDs as a meansto prevent legitimate voters from voting is that they plan not to reporthow many peopleshow up to vote and are turned away.That number would be an underestimate of the number actually blockedfrom voting. Some of them, knowing they didn't get the required IDcard, will not come to the polls at all.The people most likely to fail to get the ID card are those who can barelykeep up with their work and family duties, and have little time to spareto get the ID card.
Life in the ocean depths feeds on organic detritus that falls fromnearer the surface. With global heating, more of the detritus getseaten by microbesand never reaches the depths. Almost half of thedeep ocean life could disappear in this century.
A sheriff in Oklahoma (and other officials) were secretly recordedtalking about theirwish to murder various inconvenient people.They are trying to distract attention from this by claiming that makingthe recording was a crime.Arguably it was lawful to make the recording, but even if it wasn't,that is no reason to tolerate officials whose idea of upholding lawsis to discuss ideas for murder.
Clarence Thomas's corruption: his richbenefactor Crow repeatedly was involvedwith questions that the Supreme Court would decide.
Progressive young voters tell Biden that the way to win their votesis toenergize them with progressive policies.I mostly agree with them, but not on all issues. I give very highpriority to defeating plutocracy, and taxing the wealthy to help therest of us. Those issues are up at the top along with climatedefense. Immigration is secondary by comparison.
The antiabortion federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, who ordered a banon mifepristone, did make supreme court’s conservative majority lookreasonable by comparison. Don't be fooled.
Gorsuch Failed to DiscloseHe Sold Home to CEO of Major Law Firm.That was just before Gorsuch got onto the Supreme Court. That law firm has had 22 cases before the Supreme Courtsince then.I don't know whether Gorsuch made any decisions specifically in returnfor (or gratitude for) that sale of property. It could be thatGorsuch's plutocratist ideology is firm and he would usually havedecided for the benefit of the wealthy. Perhaps that law firmgenerally represents the wealthy. If so, that law firm perhaps hadno need to pay to assure his support most of the time. Maybe he wasglad to get paid off for harm he would have done anyway.
Clarence Thomas and Democratic Fecklessness.Just as Republicans (in Congress and on the Supreme Court) have atradition of disrespect for democracy and the rights and interests ofthe non-rich,Democrats have a habit of timidity and weaknessin defending them.I have a suspicion that a lot of this timidity and weakness hasbeen purchased by rich donors that will only support "centrists".
A protist species known as "philaster" was responsible for nearly eliminatinga species of seaurchins on the US east coastand in the Caribbean.Is there any chance this organism could be used safely to saveCalifornia's kelp forests from the sea urchins that are wiping it out?That does not automatically follow — the sea urchins there might beimmune to them, or they might destroy other species too. Researchwould be needed.
Robert Reich: the corrupter should be barred from running for officebecause ofhis involvement in attempted insurrection.The article uses the word "treason" to describe this. In everydayinformal terms, that word fits; but it is better to be precise in thiscontext, because the Constitution gives a definition of "treason" whichis much narrower: fighting against the US on behalf of an enemy country.For clarity, we should say "insurrection".
Russian-speaking Ukrainians areswitching in large numbersto using speaking mainly Ukrainian, as a gesture of resistance.
A team of United Nations experts has arrived in the US ona tourthat will focuson racial justice, law enforcement and policing.
US citizens: call on Congressto defeat Boebert's billto eliminateendangered species protection for wolves.To sign withoutrunning nonfree JavaScriptcode from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.To see the confirmation statement in your browser, erase the CSS fromit. IceCat has a command to do that in the right-click menu.
Russian-speaking Ukrainians areswitching in large numbersto using speaking mainly Ukrainian, as a gesture of resistance.
A team of United Nations experts has arrived in the US ona tourthat will focuson racial justice, law enforcement and policing.
A protist species known as "philaster" was responsible for nearly eliminatinga species of seaurchins on the US east coastand in the Caribbean.Is there any chance this organism could be used safely to saveCalifornia's kelp forests from the sea urchins that are wiping it out?That does not automatically follow — the sea urchins there might beimmune to them, or they might destroy other species too. Researchwould be needed.
Robert Reich: the corrupter should be barred from running for officebecause ofhis involvement in attempted insurrection.The article uses the word "treason" to describe this. In everydayinformal terms, that word fits; but it is better to be precise in thiscontext, because the Constitution gives a definition of "treason" whichis much narrower: fighting against the US on behalf of an enemy country.For clarity, we should say "insurrection".
The first step in fighting the billionaires who have seized powerover our democracy is to use deprecatory terms to refer to them.For instance,"billionaire".A billionaire may have acquired a substantial part of per billions,but billionaires don't usually "earn" the wealth they acquire. The reason they acquire so muchof it is that they collectively rig the rulesso that they acquire, then keep, a much bigger share.
Canadian thugs used to grab indigenous men in the city at random, takethem by car to the woods, then leave them to freeze to death. Onevictim,Darrell Night, was able to survive and blew the whistleonthis practice of murder for fun.It's not too late to prosecute some of the murderers, if the governmenthas the spine for it.
Manchin is responsiblefor increasing the income taxes on poor Americanswith children by around 10%.
The reason Social Security won't have enough income after 2034 is thatrich people have taken amuch bigger fraction of all the income in theUS. And rich people pay the social security tax on only a limitedamount of their income.
We shouldn't assume differentkinds of prejudiceare equivalent,or to try to set up a fixed order of how bad they are.How harmful any given kind of prejudice is can vary from place toplace, and over time.For example, antisemitism in the US was much worse before World War IIthan it has been since the 1950s. My mother told me a story about herchildhood in Brooklyn, about childen from of Catholic schoolsscreaming "Chris killer" while running after Jewish children — everyyear after Easter. The rest of the year they might be friendly.
After the Big Spillin the Gulf of Mexico, Billionaire Polluters hired thousandsof workers to clean away the oil. Now they are suing because theyhave a tendency toward a specific pattern ofillnesses, which islikely to have been caused by contactwith the oil.BP cut corners on safety to save moneyat its workers' expense. Some of the workers on the drilling platform were killed in the explosion thatBP didn't prevent. The cleanup workers' illnesses are an extension of that same practice.
More than 100 Israeli and international civil society groups warn[that adopting] IHRA definition [of"antisemitism"] could curb work of UNbodies.
US citizens: call on the Senate to investigate Sinema's apparent corruption;billionaires should not be able to buy senators or the Supreme Court.I am unhappy that the petition uses an …OTUSabbreviation, but it's not a moral issue so I signed anyway.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Thecontroversy over possible future technologiesfor removing CO2 from the air.I think that we should try to develop CO2 removal technology, becauseit will be very helpful if it does work efficiently; but it would be aterrible mistake to bet on that. Our investment now should go mainlyinto replacing fossil fuels.
The alcohol industry used its donations to medical research to helpengineer aconclusion that a low level of drinking alcoholwasa little more healthful than abstaining.This conclusion was subtly mistaken: in fact, a certain fraction ofthe abstainers had decided to abstain because of some illness, andthose illnesses were what made them less well than the typical lightdrinker.
Overextension of the crime of "terrorism" in Georgia has been usedto terrorize environmentalist protesters. Asimilar law in Oregonmay beused to do likewise.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.That article is one of the exceptions.After the Big Spillin the Gulf of Mexico, Billionaire Polluters hired thousandsof workers to clean away the oil. Now they are suing because theyhave a tendency toward a specific pattern ofillnesses, which islikely to have been caused by contactwith the oil.BP cut corners on safety to save moneyat its workers' expense. Some of the workers on the drilling platform were killed in the explosion thatBP didn't prevent. The cleanup workers' illnesses are an extension of that same practice.
Mississippi Republicansdeny the city of Jackson the right toelect and controlits own thug department and prosecutors.This is an attempt to thwart criminal justice reform, which would reduce the racism that "justice" systems have meted out in the past.
It ishelpful for adolescents to seea wide range of humans nude,so that they don't think everyone is supposed to look like a porn star.
The government rescued Silicon Valley Bank's wealthy depositors, butneighborhoods counting on the collapsed bankare out of luck.
Some20 million Americans would be at riskof losing Medicaid fundingfor their medical care, if House Speaker McCarthy gets his way. Precisely how many millions would actually lose coverage we cannottell, since it would depend on many decisions yet to be made.If it comes out to around 10 million, my rough guess is that a fewpercent of them would die as a result within a few years. That willbe hundreds of thousands killed.Shall we call him Massacre McCarthy?
The Condamine river in Australia seems to be condaminated naturallywithmethane that steadily leaks out of the groundand contributes to global heating.Is it possible to capture the leaking methane, and replace some of the artificially fracked methane that Australia now produces?
The Recovering America's Wildlife Act would invest inconservingAmerica's wild species and ecosystems, without which our civilization could hardly survive.
China ramps up coal powerdespite carbon neutral pledges.Xi, visit Shanghai now, because in a few decades it will be underwater.India too is building more coal-burningelectric generation. Bye-bye, Mumbai. By the time those fools see the danger manifestitself, it will be too late to save that city. or Chennai, Kolkata, Goa,Kozhikode, and many more.
Thousands of people protest in France toblock the construction of anew main roadbetween two cities, saying that building more roads for cars is a bad investment for society.
US citizens: call on Congress toraise taxes on the rich &corporations;and not cut benefits for working families (and non-rich Americans in general). The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Arguing that only sabotage and direct resistance are strong enough toprevent the mass murder thatgreenhouse emissions drive usinto.The idea is to stop deadly projects, not merely symbolically denounce themand hope that governments will stop them.
US citizens: call on the Senate toinvestigate Clarence Thomas. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden toclose the Guantanamo prison.My recommendation for how to get around the US laws that make it hardto find a way to move the current prisoners out of that prisonis to convert it into a town.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A Republican who pushed to override the 2020 election resultsnow proposes a strategy to rig the 2024 election: make itharderfor college students to vote.Republicans are already trying hard to do this, andfacing a lot of resistance. What the presentation showsis that Republican activists feel no shame whatsoeverabout systematic cheating.
To be a good parent requires fighting now toprevent climate disasterfrom destroying themlater in their lives.The article reiterates a basic assumption -- that you should love,care about, your own children more than anyone else. Carried too far,that narrow focus is a mistake. A saying that struck me as very wiseis, "Helping only your own family is a just a form of selfishness."This can be see in the way billionaires are practicing precisely thatform of selfishness when they try to take all the world's wealth fortheir own heirs.Notwithstanding that, the article's overall point is valid. But Iwould take it one step further. Nowadays the best thing you can dofor your potential children is not to have them.
On the struggle to convert gold mining in Peru — mostly illegal andcontrolled by gangs — toa method that avoids spreading mercury.
Costa Rica sets an example of successfully reversing deforestation.Since around 1990, most of thelost forests have grown back.The basic idea was to pay the owner of a formerly forested area just alittle more than the pittance that could be made from inefficientraising of cattle, for letting forest grow there.I wonder if this method can be adapted to the Brazilian Amazon.The situation is not the same.
The Supreme Court decision to tentatively allow sales of mifepristone to continue seems to havesplit the most extreme rightwing from the rest.It is a very sad thing for the US that the Supreme Court has beenpoliticized so far, but there is no use denying it.
When UK "anti-terrorist" thugs questioned French publisher Ernest Moret,supposedly about "terrorism", they asked him questions about hispositionsin French politics,such as whether he supported President Macron andwhether he had protested against Macron's pension delay law.This catches them red-handed in dishonest use of these special powers,which violate human rights.It is not enough to drop charges against Moret. The UK must restoreits respect for human rights.
"Americans, unite tosupport the anonymous billionaires!"In the US, the "Centrists" are the plutocratists — the ones who avoidmost political issues and mainly insist on keeping life profitable forthe rich. What's new is that billionaires plan to pool their moneysecretly to get their politicians elected without bothering withsupport either major political parties.
The numbers of tourists now going to the main destinations are not onlymaking them unpleasant places to be, but alsoconverting theminto theme parks.
The fanatical Christians that is the Texas Republican Party plan torequire display ofa religious statement in every classroom.This would directly defy the First Amendment, which bans establishmentof religion.In normal times, we would confidently expect federal courts to quashthis — but no one can be sure nowadays.
Global climate negotiations systematically refuse to consider dangersthat are plausible but not yet certain. This leads to underestimatingwhat we should rationally do. They also overestimate the effectivenessof economic systems in acting to reduce danger. That gives plutocrats anexcuse to argue against taking firm measures to ensure survival.The author suggests government launch a lot more studies about "What isthe worst that can happen?"The overall point of the report covered in this article is a proposal fora way to reduce emissions quickly: by taxing the old technologies that producelots of emissions enough to ensure they are replaced in a few years.
At least two art-generating online dis-services havebanned the word"abortion". One of them directly threatens users who try to generatedrawings on that topic. This form of censorship seems to reject many other words, includingwords for reproductive anatomy and for birth control products.This form of censorship demonstrates the injustice of SaaSS (Serviceas a Software Substitute). The user simply wants to run a particularprogram, butthat program has never been released,so the only way to run it is to connect to someone else's server which will run it forthe user. This is basically similar in injustice to a nonfree program, but worse: the server operator can control who is allowed to usethe program (by requiring each user to make an account), snoop on allthe data the user provides to the server, and can even demand datafrom the user for purposes of profiling or subsequent manipulation.If the same program were released as nonfree software, that would notrespect the user's freedom either. For instance, it could containarbitrary censorship rules. However, unless it has aback door(which is not unheard of), the developer could not remotely add more censorship to a copy thata user has already installed.Nonfree software and SaaSS are two unjust ways of making a programavailable for use. The only just way is to release it as free software.As for the other characteristics of some drawings that disappointedsome users for representing stereotypes, or the male gaze, differentusers might have different preferences about those things. One usermight have different preferences on different occasions.These programs can't think about those preferences, because they arenot a form of intelligence and have no understanding of anything, lastof all what an image might mean to a human looking at it.To make such distinctions requires a human artist.
Journalist Doni Chamberlain coversthe fascists of Shasta County,defying their threats and their intimidation, but keeping an eye openfor the possibility of violence.
One of thefounders of Earth Day warnsthat it has become an occasionfor massive greenwashing by heavily polluting businesses.
The American Clean Power Association, which officially represents various renewable energy companies, seems to have beencorrupted by fossil fuel influence.
Allowing business tooptimize everything with profitas its only goalhas produced disaster over and over.Railroads, masks, medicine, arms — every area of work that has beenput under the dominion of the profit-maximizer works badly for everyoneexcept the owners. A profit-maximizing AI will be little different froma paperclip-maximizing AI.
ProposingApril 9 as a national holidayfor the military defeatof the forces of slavery.I am in favor of having such a holiday, but April 9 is not theonly candidate. Juneteenth, June 10, seems to have momentum.Either one is ok with me.
Iran is using facial recognitionin public places to identifythe dangerous criminals that don't wear required Islamic clothing.They have been specificallybanned from the Tehram Metro.
An IPCC publication comparing the effectiveness of various ways ofreducing greenhouse gas emissions finds that the five most effective methods are:* solar power * wind power * ending deforestation * improving energy efficiency (what Amory Lovins called "negawatts") * shutting off methane emissions
Texas is planning to passa bill to invalidate local regulationsin asweeping way. This would include regulations to protect workers,consumers, and the environment.Naturally, ALEC is involved, showing that the main benefit will be forthe rich.I expect that fascists will use this to prevent cities and countiesfrom resisting voter-suppression.
An autopsy found thatManuel Paez Terán did not fire a gunin the confrontation in which thugs killed him.The thugs claimed that he had, but it was evidently bullshit.
Verisign has asked ICANN to giveevery government total powerto seize or shut .net domains. If some government, such as Tuvalu or China or Beijing, seized yourdomain, you'd have to sue in the courts of Tuvalu or China, not yourown country.This is a very dangerous concentration of power. The fact that Verisignarranged for this shows it is far too powerful. The network's arrangementswith it should be canceled and replaced with something quite different.The fact that ICANN agreed to this suggests that there is corruption in ICANNthat needs to be rooted out.
Chile's president Boric plans to graduallynationalize the lithiummining industry.Some countries are permitting export of lithium only if therefining is done there before export.
By reviving scrounger myths and rubbishing free social care, Starmer’sbeguna race to the bottom— one the Tories will win.Prime Minister Wilson said, "Labour is a moral crusade or it is nothing."What does that say about Starmer?
Frequent killings of people for going to the wrong door are theeffects of a "national experiment in freelygiving deadly weapons toanyonewho wants one."
(satire) Police Read Wealthy Suspect SpecialMiranda WarningOutlining Right To Impunity.
If the UK transitions to renewable energy by 2050, it could save moneyand achieve lower total greenhouse emissions if it avoidsbuilding anynuclear energy.
Republicans have described a specific plan toimpose disasterspecifically on non-rich Americans.If I were the Democrats, I would tell the Republicans, "If you aredetermined to cause a disaster for Americans, you'll have to do it byyourselves. We will not participate. Especially, don't expect we willhelp you save the rich while abandoning the poor."
Australia has decided to give full employment equal weight withreducing inflation, indecisions about monetary policy.
Justice Thomas's rich patron funded a right-wing group that had a casebefore the Supreme Court, during the time he knew andgave gifts toThomas.
The Australian Capitol Territory will offerabortion gratis to anyone.This is what every country should do. No one should be compelled to haveand raise a baby.
A concert to benefit poor musicians in the UK accidentally used acopyrighted work. The collecting society PRS charged it a fee thatamounts tohalf the moneyit had raised, and thus revealed it has theattitude of a parasite.Copyright is an extremely bad way of supporting musicians andcomposers. We should allow noncommercial use of music with no fee,and for supporting musicians and composers, we shouldset upother systemsfor that.
Shocking messages aboutbeating suspects and making up evidencewere found when Antioch, [California], [thugs] were investigated. Nearly half the thugs in the department either sent them or read themwithout objecting.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.That article is one of the exceptions.The point of the article is that we have a responsibility to object tobigotry when we see it. Symbolic bigotry is nowhere near as bad asbeating people up, but we should still call it out, as I am doing here.
US citizens: call on the Senate toconfirm Julie Su as Secretary of Labor.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
India's population isincreasing substantially— and so is its rateof coal,and its rate of deforestation.
Senator Feinstein is ill and unable to go to the Senate to vote.This is blocking many judicial appointments. She agreed to letanother Democrat replace her on the judiciary committee,so as to unblock these votes,but Republicans' assent was required and some refused.It is absurd for Senator Durbin to defend a questionable bipartisantradition of the past that the Republicans refused to observe when thesaboteur in chief was president. To defend it unilaterally is being asucker.
Making plastic often spreads toxins, and disposing of it likewise. We need toreduce total production.
A guide to thetypical termsused for greenwashing in the clothingindustry.The best way to reduce the waste made from making your clothingis to stop the frequent purchase of clothing. If you wear each thingyou buy on at least 50 days, you will buy far less than most people doin the wealthier countries. You'll also save a lot of money.
Texas is considering manynew laws to punish fraud in voting,which almostnever happens in the US.I am sure this is blowing smoke so they can claim a fire exists, but Isusepect it is worse than that.I think these bills are in fact intended to create opportunities tointimidate voters — voters who belong to disprivileged groups andprobably vote Democratic — by making false accusations and threats.For instance, the "marshals" could make false accusations on electionday to drive voters away.
Almost500 species of animals,mostly coastal species, have colonized the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the "EARN-IT" bill thatwould prohibit end-to-end encryption and require most online servicesto scan, for the government, all material they get from users.That's what Congress is consideringonce again, after it was shelvedfor public opposition in 2020. Now they are trying to rush it.I think this would require services to require users to run nonfreesoftware in order to use them.The bill is so extreme that if people communicate through an encryptedservice, and then commit a crime, that would be grounds to prosecutethe service. Why go off the deep end? I speculate that they figureto drop them (as a "compromise") while keeping the basic outrages.I found a campaign to contact senators to oppose this bill, but Ican't use it or recommend it, because it requires running nonfreeJavascript code. Web sites and services should be usable withJavascript disabled.Why not make an exception and run the nonfree software "for a goodcause"? Because once you make that kind of exception, once you allowa pervasive injustice to become part of how you fight otherinjustices, you've effectively legitimized that one.Those web sites could have been designed to function even with Javascriptdisabled, and they should be.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) Missouri Now Requiring All Residents To Have License, PermitTo Operate Doorbell.
"Stand your ground" laws bring with them a roughly10% increase in homicides.They also enable racism. Any shooter can cite this law, but courtsare more likely to approve it for white shooters, especially when theyshoot blacks.
Dominion Was Never Going toSave Our DemocracyFrom [Faux] News. Squeezing money out of it was all it wanted.
Some of the leaked Pentagon files seem to showthe US was listeningto UNsecretary general Guterres's conversations.
Big Tech ask Australiato change copyright law to permit machinelearning systems to scan copyrighted web sites to construct languagemodels.Copyright should allow people to study copyrighted works to learnfrom them, as a matter of basic principle. That includes adducingpatterns in how language is used.If people want a law to prohibit studying works of text or art to makeprograms that generate text or art, this should be a separate law sothat it doesn't mess up other uses of studying works, or other ways ofreusing aspects of works. We must not let Big Tech add copyrightrestrictions, since they will design it to give them more power overus.
People who want to rent an apartment, in Australia, are almost forcedto use invasive data-collection sites. The users of the sites areunhappy with the data they collect,and some of them are manipulativetoo.I expect similar abusive practices exist in the US. They may havestarted in the US. So many other Internet abuses did.There is a danger concern that the site will implement housing bias.If their developers get the idea to use trained neural nets toevaluate would-be renters, they are likely to learn whatever sorts ofbiases landlords have. I confidently predict that the site insists onrunning nonfreesoftware on the user's site. The users are not complaining aboutthis, but they would if they were wise.
UK "anti-terrorist"thugs arrested a French publishervisitingthe London Book Fair. They accused him of having some sort ofinvolvement in the mass protests against President Macron.This inculpates both the UK government and the French government inrepression against protesters. In addition, it demonstrates the UK'sdisrespect for the rightsof the accused.It is not the first time that the UK has used this repressive law againstjournalism.In 2014, David Miranda. whose spouse is Glen Greenwald, flew throughLondon witha disk containing copy of Greenwald's data from reporting,including on Snowden. UK thugs arrested Miranda and threatened toimprison him for years if he did not immediately hand over the keys tothat data.Flying through the UK is comparable to flying over Belarus. TheUK government should be ashamed of itself.
Unofficial reports describe masses killed in China by the sudden anti-Covidquaranteens, followed by perhaps millions killed by rampaging Covid withtheir deaths falsely atteributed to other causes.
Governor Sanders of Arkansas directs applicants for state offices todemonstrate their lack of probity by praising her in the job appliactions.
A medically-necessary emergency abortion provides an example of the dishonesty and price gouging of the US medical system.This is why I advocate a national medical system, not merely "Medicarefor all." Under Medicare, medical treatment can be quite expensive.Even the part the patient has to pay can be quite expensive.
US citizens: call on the Senate to abolish "blue slips" for blocking judicial nominations.This is the system whereby judges from a state can veto appointmentof judges in that state.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Tunisia's dictator has now jailed 20 opposition leaders.I too strongly condemn political Islam, but repression is not going to makethat go away or result in a free country.
Discovery of a thriving coral reef that is too deep for ordinary diving leads some to hope these species will not be wiped out by heat.However, heat is not the only threat to marine life. Too much CO2 inthe sea will kill all coral, and many other kinds of animals, bymaking the ocean too acidic for them.We need to cut the CO2 emissions even if it isn't too hot.
Governor DeMentis is hell-bent on punishing Disney. His latest planis to build a prison next to Disney World.I expect it will take years to start construction. By then, DeMentisprobably won't be governor any more; his successor will not have thesame grudge against Disney, so perse will make a deal with Disney.DeMentis's mania for punising anyone that won't bend the knee to himis alarming.However, Disney's being in a dispute with DeMentis, who is clearly ourenemy, does not make Disney deserve our admiration. Disney is not ourfriend. Disney is one of the companies responsible for the DigitalMillenium Coyright Act.
Idiotic UK bureaucracy incorrectly denied the citizenship of many UKcitizens who came there long ago as children from colonies in theCaribbean. The Tory government was pressured to acknowledge thesewrongs and set up a scheme to right them. But the Tory inclinationnever to give a non-rich citizen a break eventually won out over righting wrongs.As long as the watchword is, "When in doubt, kick them out," itwon't do the job.
The Ukraine-Russia border, between Kharkiv and Belgorod, was just anarbitrary line, with similar people speaking the same form ofUkrainian on both sides (often related to each other). The war forced each person to choose a side.The two states, becoming increasingly different over time, created asuperstructure that made the two sites of the line terribly different.Now one side of the line is under a repressive tyranny while the otheris under (imperfect) freedom.fThe author recognizes implicitly that Stalin's 1930s famine affected a large part of the Soviet Union — it was not specifically aimed atUkraine.
Global heating is wiping out ancient settlements in the high Andesbecause there is no more water.
US citizens: call on Republicans to leave Americans' benefits (already inadequate) alone.
US citizens: call on Congress to fund Public Media.Corporate "sponsors" have too much influence over US public media. Asusual, they use that influence to slant coverage and adjust theOverton window. With more public funds, public media could resisttheir influence more.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to tax rich people's income at the same rate regardless of which financial arrangements are used to pay it to them.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
The US may supply Taiwan with a huge stock of weapons forasymmetric warfare against the threatened Chinese conquest.
A teenager in Kansas City was shot while trying to pick up two of his brotherswhen he was shot. Why was he shot? He had gone to the wrong address, and he was black.The victim made an innocent mistake, and perhaps so did the shooter.But the victim's mistake was harmless and nonviolent. The shooter's mistake,if it was one, was to jump to a hostile conclusion without checking it.We must not accept the excuse of "innocent mistake" for violent actions.
Sanders: We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.The necessities of life should not depend on employment.If society provided those to everyone, the minimum wage wouldnot have to include that.
Some PFAS are used in packaging, and are supposedly safe when usedthat way, but in fact they can escape from the packaging and get into the food or beverage.
A spy companyhired by the companies behind the Dakota Access Pipelineused lawful and unlawful methods to snoop on the campaigners opposingto the pipeline.For me, the most important thing about the pipeline is that it wouldlead to more fossil fuel use for a long time, and therefore contributeto global disaster. It is interesting that, for the author of thearticle, the fact that indigenous people lived nearby and played amajor role in that campaign is more important than helping to save the world.
Tracing thesuffering caused by deregulatingvarious businesses to Republican politics and Koch money.
US citizens:call on members of Congress to sign the Bowman/Sandersletterfor the US to push back on Israel's increasing violence (andrepression) in occupied Palestine.
Amazon is wearing down its workers' union bycontinuing noncooperation and harassment.There are so many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
The federal appeal court placed onerous restrictions on mifepristone.It will be available in principle, but obstructed bysenselessrestrictions.They include a reimposed requirement for an in-person visit to adoctor. In addition, the court arbitrarily cut it its use at 7 weeksof pregnancy. Many women don't learn they are pregnant that early, sothis will compel millions to have surgical abortions.More info.Peoplestocked up on mifepristonein case they will need it later.It is urgent to ramp up the underground networks that obtainmifepristone and convey it to women who need it.
Clarence Thomas sold real estate to Republican funder Harlan Crowand did not report it.
What is it about many modern day Republican candidates?If they win an election, everything is on the up and up. If they lose, something was amiss and certainly unfair.My explanation is, they accuse Democrats of doing what they wouldplan to do.
This is a request for a small technical project for someone who knowsJavascript.Boston public transit has changed its web site, mbta.com, so that itis impossible to access bus schedules without running nonfreesoftware. It used to have a "PDF Schedule" button with which youcould download a bus line's schedule. But that no longer works.For instance, the page for bus line 1, mbta.com/schedules/1/line, hasa button "Get schedules", but without enabling Javascript that givesan error.Can someone please develop a script or method to access these PDFfiles? It could be a simple shell script that uses wget, grep and awk,or simple Javascript program if you can tell me how to run it.Please give it clear comments so I can understand what it does,and if it is more than 8 lines or so put a free license on it.I will appreciate your work every time I look at a bus schedule.
Ralph Nader: what Congress would legislate if it were for democracy instead of plutocracy.
- The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Mexico violated the rights of two people who were held in pretrial detention for morethan 17 years.*
Protesters stopped a coal train in the UK and started shoveling out the coal.This should be justified by the necessity defense by citing the deathsand diseases that coal will cause.
Thom Hartmann: The Commodification of the Commons Is Killing Us AllI use the term "plutocracy" to refer to the political philosophy herebukes.
The Supreme Court surprisingly intervened and blocked the appeals court's temporary ruling that would have greatly limited access to mifepristone.The result is that sales of the drug, even by remote orders, are stilllawful.This is like a game of reversi.
The giant accounting company EY offered to split up into an accountingcompany and a consulting company. That split would limit opportunities andtemptation for corruption. The US objected to a detail of the plan.I wonder what the objection was. Was the US protecting corruption?Or was EY's plan designed to play a fast one?
The difference between Teixeira, who leaked secret military memos thisyear, and whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden,is a matter of motive. The whistleblowers wanted to serve the public; Teixeira was motivatedby bad wishes.We must revise the Espionage Act to include a public interestjustification. For Manning and Snowden, it would have exonerated themand probably discouraged prosecuting them at all. For Teixeira, itwould have changed nothing.
- Because [the UK doesn't] pay doctors enough,there are too few of us.It's all we can do to stop people dying in NHS waiting rooms*
DeMentis threatens to imprison anyone in Florida who givestransportation, shelter or workto an unauthorized immigrant.Punishing people for not participating in some sort of repression is astandard fascist tactic, and you can gauge how fascist a party is bywhether it has recourse to that. The Republican Party has turnedthoroughly fascist, but Democrats have supported fascist policies inthe area of immigration.There has been a law since the 1990s under which employers could notavoid demanding employees show government ID to prove they are authorizedto work in the US. This imposition of government control andsurveillance over life makes me boil.
Daniel Ellsberg is dying, but he won't let that hold him back from campaigning for peace and disarmament.
Manhattan DA who indicted Trump sues Republican Jim Jordan over interference in case.The interference consists of demanding to subpoena one of the DA'sinvestigators, trying to find something to accuse him of.I don't understand the legal issues enough to know whether there wasany actual wrongdoing, but in general no one is more likely to lie thana Republican official.
Oxfam Report Highlights Deep Harms ofIMF 'Austerity Drive' in Poor Nations.The IMF has been bashing poor countries for decades. Behind the scenes,that's its mission: to help big companies extract their wealth.
Biden aims to extend Medicaidto cover the DACA people, who were brought to the US as children.
US citizens: call on the FDA to use emergency powers to protect access to Mifepristone.
Coffee shops in Ukraine have "security cameras" that should better becalled "insecurity cameras", because Russian crackers broke their security in order to snoop on Ukrainian convoys.Any store that takes pictures of its customers and puts them on anetwork in real time is making its customers vulnerable.
Manhattan DA who indicted Trump sues Republican Jim Jordan over interference in case.The interference consists of demanding to subpoena one of the DA'sinvestigators, trying to find something to accuse him of.I don't understand the legal issues enough to know whether there wasany actual wrongdoing, but in general no one is more likely to lie thana Republican official.
US citizens: call on the FDA to use emergency powers to protect access to Mifepristone.
Daniel Ellsberg is dying, but he won't let that hold him back from campaigning for peace and disarmament.
Governor DeMentis worked at Guantanamo prison, and was given the taskof interviewing prisoners who were going to be force-fed.DeMentis still claims that the prisoners they tortured were "terrorists",though hardly any of them can be connected to terrorism.
Benjamin Ferencz was one of the prosecutors in the Nuremberg warcrimes trials, after investigating Nazi concentration camps in the USArmy. His obituaries do not mention that he called for prosecution of Dubya and some of his ministers.
A billionaire Republican hedge-fund founder tries to buy elections,and perhaps has succeeded. He did succeed in buying the naming rightsof Harvard's general graduate school.I expect the students and faculty will have their say now, and I hopetheir condemnation of that Republican will live longer than he does.When the MIT AI Lab moved to the Stata Center, and I discovered that oneof the two towers was named Bill Gates, I urged people to refuseto call it by that name. I suggested Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul,but people settled on the innocuous "D Tower" and "G Tower".I also made a practice of formally saluting the sign that says "BillGates", near the outside door of the G tower, with my middle finger.Methods like this can certainly be used against another billionaire donorwho has harmed people's freedom.
Rutgers faculty are on strike to call for a raise for all the kindsof teachers at the school.
Coffee shops in Ukraine have "security cameras" that should better becalled "insecurity cameras", because Russian crackers broke their security in order to snoop on Ukrainian convoys.Any store that takes pictures of its customers and puts them on anetwork in real time is making its customers vulnerable.
Some members of the US Congress called on Attorney General Garlandto drop charges against Julian Assange.They were led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Biden's new rules for fossil fuel consumption of future cars and trucksare inadequate to prevent them from causing climate disaster.
The Australian government has eliminated use of private debt collectors to prevent repetitious of cruel abuses set up by the previousright-wing government by means of them.
The Group of 7 wealthiest countries are converging on a policyof increasing extraction of methane for fuel. This will speed upclimate disaster. Activists are calling on Biden to stop this. Biden is not the most steadfast and reliable of champions forclimate defense. The sad thing is that there is no one else to appealto.
Governor DeMentis went to enormous lengths to eliminate the state's one black congressional representative, by gerrymandering and intimidationof voters at many levels.
Los Angeles released information to journalist Ben Camacho for a publicrecords request. Now the city is suing him for publishing it.
US citizens: call on Biden to respect the legal right to ask for asyluminside the US.Requiring asylum-seekers to run a nonfree program on top of that notonly fails to excuse the policy, it is an additional separateinjustice. Governments must never require people to run a nonfreeprogram.
Imagine how horrible it would be if we treated fire-fighting likeambulances, making people pay for fire-fighting service.Then turn this around to see the arguments for handling ambulances like firefighting — a public service provided at little or no charge.
Sea-level rise in the southern US has accelerated. Since 2010 it isrising more than a centimeter per year.A home purchased today in Pensacola will be underwater before the mortgage is paid off. This is so scary.This augments the damage done by hurricanes, but I think the sea-levelrise itself will do more damage, because it is cumulative. Yourlocality may go 50 years without a hurricane, but it won't go 50 yearsmagically skipped by sea-level rise.
US citizens: call on the World Bank's new president, Ajay Banga, toredirect its investments to promote decarbonization and economic equality.
What it's like to grow up poor and white in rural America.I'd be interested in seeing how this compares to growing up poor and black inthose places. Racism surely continues its dirty work.
Supermajorities enable parties to crush democracy, asRepublican parties are doing now in several states.But these supermarjorities did not happen naturally. They resultRepublican measures to rig elections — voter suppressionand gerrymandering.
The Putin forces are making advances in their capability to jam communication with Ukraine's most common kind of drone. In a fewmonths they may be entirely useless.
In an arid land city, a rich person can use almost ten times as much water as a poor person. Cities head towards a water shortage shouldstrictly limit water consumption by the rich years before what theywould call a "crisis".Private wells also deplete the same ground water that makes up thelast resort for the region. They should be strictly regulated.By contrast, building private desalinization plants run by renewableenergy should be encouraged, because they increase the total waterresources available to the region and don't take it away from anyoneelse.
Suing the EPA for approving a plastic-recycling plant that would cause a 1-in-4risk of cancer for people who live nearby.The risk of cancer will inevitably extend, though with decreasingprobability, to people who live somewhat farther away. I wonder atwhat distance that risk will decrease to an acceptable amount.100 miles? 1000 miles east?The report is vague, and represents estimates. I can't be sure from thisreport how much danger there would really be. Perhaps Chevron can demonstratethat the actual danger is far less. But we should insist that it do soby publishing measurements and analyses.
Recommending how the FDA should respond to the two conflicting federalcourt decisions about abortion medicines.
AOC argues that the US government can disregard the court decisionthat purports to remove the FDA authorization of mifepristone.
Republicans want to cut SNAP benefits for disabled Americans who can'tfind jobs. They cite Clinton's 1996 "welfare reform" law as anexample to follow, which shows the cruelty of their intentions.
Why the British government bureaucracy behaves bizarrely andineffectively: it is in the grip of an ideology that makes mistakenassumptions about how to do any job.
England has an infestation of grey squirrels, and they do lots ofdamage. It is important to kill them.
[Clarence] Thomas Pushed To Kill Disclosure Laws While Getting SecretBillionaire Gifts.
I appreciate reporting broken links in stallman.org. To make thereports useful, please send each broken link in a separate email. Theemail should contain1. The full name of the page which contains the broken link. 2. The URL that the broken link tries to link to. 3. Around 8 lines of text which contains the broken link.
Please send that email to me, and I will forward it to the team.Please don't send more than 4 per day! I can easily get overloadedand have a backlog.Thanks.
Some of the prison thugs in US federal prisons make a practice of pressuring prisoners for sex, especially prisoners who are not UScitizens and might be deported. Those who testify about this areoften punished with deportation.Officials have invented bureaucratic excuses to block the factualinvestigation of accusations against prison thugs. Anyone who doesthis should be charged with obstruction of justice.
The practical details of the legal procedings against the corrupterare unimportant. When journalists dwell on those, they are playing into the hands of his attack on US democracy.One thing you can help do about this, if you watch TV, is to changethe channel (or turn it off) as soon as it focuses on the anticsof the bullshitter. The details they focus on are not important.The importance is in the bullshit campaign overall, and you alreadyknow the important thing about that.
While a right-wing judge in Texas ruled that the FDA's approval ofmifepristone must be cancelled, another judge in Washington Stateruled that it must continue.It is possible the drug may be authorized in 18 states and not in the other 32.
In 2020, shortly after the election, the CEO of Faux News ordered thatfact-checking "has to stop now" because it is "bad for business".
Markey, Merkley, Jayapal Lead Colleagues on Legislation to Ban Government Use of Facial Recognition and Other Biometric Technology.I support passing this law, but it does not go far enough. Nongovernmentaloperation of systems for facial recognition (and other 1984 surveillancesystems) is equally dangerous and we need to put an end to that too.
Biden decided to allow Medicare Advantage insurers to keep overchargingthe US government more or less for three more years.
Israelis are coming to regard Prime Minister Netanyahu and hisright-wing coalition as a security threat.
The Taliban told the UN that it would not allow Afghan women to do workfor the UN in Afghanistan. The UN told its male Afghan workers to stay home.
The Tories promised to change some of the policies that have forcedinto penury people who moved from Jamaica to Britain as children withtheir parents and didn't have the documents to prove they had done so.Now they are planning to take back the promise.
A white Texan has been convicted of murdering a black protester.Governor Abbott wants to pardon him.Abbott is, in effect, advocating lynching.
Arguing that the corrupter's arrest hurt his chances of being elected president again.It depends mainly on how much Republicans get away with cheating.
Why Republican lawmakers are obsessed about sex [and oppression based on anything about sex]
48 Australian federal elected officials called on the US to drop charges against Julian Assange.
- It doesn’t matter if you think abortion will be legal where you live –-the anti-abortion movement wants a national ban.*
Of the two progressive Tennessee state representatives expelled byRepublicans, one has already been reinstated by his district, and theother is on the way to being reinstated.
In Australia from 2009 to 2019, the wealthiest 10% received 93% of the economic growth. That's plutocracy for you.
G20 countries are spending big on constructing more liquefied gas exports. The owners of these facilities will pay politicians to letthem continue to profit from them.
Israeli attacks on Muslim worshipers in al-Aqsa provoked battle in Gaza.I'm sure the right-wing government could predict this -- such thingshave happened many times — which implies it sought this. Iconjecture that this is a plan to to manipulate Israelis to drop theirresistance to what the government really wants: to attack democracy inIsrael, permanently.
The cheater held a campaign rally in Waco, but Waco officialsmade him sign a contract so strict that he won't be ableto avoid paying the costs.For instance, it required him to pay in advance.
Biden has explicitly rejected neoliberalism and the cult of theinvisible hand.This is an important victory, though we need to advance further inorder to change all dooH niboR policies that squeeze wealth up to therich.Nothing like this has occurred in the UK. One in three young teachers in England skipping meals to make ends meet.
Mark Dunlea: Avoiding climate collapse requires ending capitalism.I hope he is mistaken, because ending capitalism entirely would implycommunism, which in practice has implied repression and terrible economic problems.We have good societies with a great deal of socialism, but capitalismpersists as well.
Tesla cars record videos of activity inside the car, and company staffcan watch those recordings and copy them. Or at least they were able to do so until last year.They may have changed some security functions so that this is harderto do. But if Tesla can get those recordings, that is because it isplanning for some people to use them in some situation, and that isunjust already.It should be illegal to make a car that takes photos or videosof the people in the car. Or of people outside the car.
Biden has taken some steps to reform Medicare Advantage,but didn't have the gumption to do enough to make the insurancecompanies deal fairly with the public or the government.
Green groups sue to stop Ohio from leasing state parks for oil and gas drilling.A new Ohio law defines fossil fuel as "green". We can call it a "liarlaw", and it shows the dishonesty of Republicans.The basis for the lawsuit is that the legislators disregardedOhio's constitutional rules for passing a law.
The two Democratic Tennessee legislators that Republicans expelled for joining a protest in the legislature are planning to be appointed astheir own "replacements" — and then run to replace themselvespermanently.
The White House blames decisions that the corrupter made, that wereeffectively impossible to reverse, for the chaos of the 2021 USwithdrawal from Afghanistan.
Australia's right-wing government is keeping people in prison basedon untrustworthy algorithmic predictions.
High-tech "lie detectors" are unreliable for the reason older onesare: because they are based on a simplistic model of how people behave.
There is evidence that some of the plastics used in food containersmakes people tend to get fat.
The US Surface Transportation Board approved the merger of two of the very large railroads. This will hurt customers and workerswhile benefiting (as usual) the owners.Large companies, or companies that have more then 5% of a marketthey operate in, should never be allowed to merge.
The biased Republican judge who was asked to ban Mifepristone went ahead and did it. The appeals court and the Supreme Court, bothRepublican, are likely try uphold the ban.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and call on themto reject the RESTRICT act, which would allow the US government to banarbitrarily the accessing of non-US web sites.I see nothing about TikTok that would excuse its existence, but we shouldban sites for disrespecting privacy, not for being under the control of China.Please do not use the EFF's recommendations. for how to contact yourCongressional officials. That method depends on running nonfreesoftware, The only ways of doing that which don't treat you unjustlyare (1) phoning and (2) sending snail mail.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Politicians are right about the ‘decline of the west’ — but so wrong aboutthe causes. The problem is not moral decay. It’s the withering away of our living standards, security and wellbeing.
Israeli religious fanatics have imposed by law a prohibition on bringing leavened bread into hospitals during Passover.Religious fanatics seek above all to impose their religion'sobsessions on everyone. The amount of trouble those obsessions causevaries greatly. Banning bread for a week is rather mild as thesethings go. Shutting down public transport on Saturday, which the samegroup achieved some decades ago, is worse, but still minor comparedto the ban on abortion that some Christian and Muslim fanatics impose.However, giving religious believers the power to impose theirobsessions on everyone is harmful in itself, independent of thespecific obsessions they choose.
Right-wing politics under the auspices of the Catholic Church is driving young Poles away from Catholicism.
The series of disasters in Puerto Rico — Hurricanes interspersed withCovid-19 — have ruined education, leaving most students years behindtheir grade. These disasters have combined with the crushing debt burden exacerbated by the nondemocratic fiscal controls imposed by Congress which are designed to pay the debts at no matter what cost to PuertoRicans. This is driving people to migrate to various US states wherethey have somewhat more rights (whatever Republicans do not takeaway). Education is another motive to migrate. Even in a state withlousy public schools, they are better than Puerto Rico's schools.The more people migrate, the greater the debt burden per personremaining. Eventually, I expect, this will force everyone to leave,and the land will be sold to corporations.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to increase the estatetax, and stop the use of trusts to bypass that tax. Millionaires'families should not be allowed to accumulate growing fortunes acrossgenerations.Then phone your senators and make the same point.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
New York State banned facial recognition in schools,but schools install systems that can do facial recognition and other things, and use that as an excuse to bypass the law.
The UK fines poor people who receive welfare benefits if they breakrules. The aggregate effect is to make it harder for them to find work and push them into jobs with lower pay.
Justice Thomas received many expensive gifts from a billionaireover a period of decades, without reporting them.Demand Justice renews calls for Senate investigation into Supreme Court justices' ties to far-right donors. AOC Says Clarence Thomas 'Must Be Impeached' Over 'Almost Cartoonish' Corruption.I agree he deserves to be removed from office, but it's useless totry to achieve that by impeaching him, because the Supreme Courtis now thoroughly politicized — Republican senators won't removesomeone who is on their side.
New oilfield in the North Sea would blow the UK’s carbon budget.Like the "Willow project" in the US, it shows a government that isletting Big Oil pull the world to disaster. But this one shows howthe presupposition that "carbon capture and storage" will cancelout the carbon emissions is being used to excuse going furtherout on the limb.
Atlantic mackerel was considered a "sustainable fishery", but it seemsthat was not actually so — fish stocks are declining, which impliesit fishing for them isn't really sustainable.
Republicans have cited "parental rights" since the 1950s to opposesocial changes such as racial integration. Idaho’s Abortion Travel Ban Shows Dangers of GOP’s “Parental Rights” Agenda.
How could a functioning democracy choose the bullshitter as president?It didn't. Ever since corporations were given the right to spend millions on elections, they became dangerously powerful.
Women who with higher levels of PFAS in their blood had 40% lower chance of conceiving within a year of trying.
This Julian Assange rally will be April 17, 11:30-1:00 at theGovernment Center in front of the JFK Building, where oursenators have their offices.
This Julian Assange rally will be April 17, 11:30-1:00 at theGovernment Center in front of the JFK Building, where oursenators have their offices.
The EPA will tighten limits for toxicpollution from power plants.Similar measures for particulate emissions are neededto avoidprovoking dementia.Pollution activists call on the EPA to enforceair quality standardson factory farms.
[Right-wingers] see the law as a weapon, to be held by the in-group,pointed at the out-group, which is to say they are tribalistspassionately committed to inequality. They find the idea of theout-group pointing the law at the in-group outrageous andupsetting. Thus their meltdown over an alleged criminal beingchargedwith and arrested for his alleged crimes.
Israeli thugs attacked Muslims in al-Aqsa mosque again. This time theonly violence came from the thugs. They hit dozens with sticks, then arrested hundreds, withno visible excuse.
Two Coloradochild care workers will go on trialthis June for presiding over a day care center where a 5-year-old pulled down a 3-year-old's pants. Twice.
Ice sheets cancollapse at 600 metres a day. This occurred in Antarctica at the end of the last ice age.This means that sea level could rise catastrophically in mere decades.
A defector says that Putin meets hardly anyone in person, does not usethe internet, and doesn't even have an assistant who uses it, so hisinformation aboutreality is quite limited and filtered.
TikTok's algorithm recognizes auser's points of vulnerabilityas opportunities to get per hooked.The article focuses on people of age 13, on the border betweenchildhood and adolescence. But I doubt that that algorithm treatsolder users any better. Why would it?
US citizens: call on the US Dept of Health to demand additionalfinancial disclosure aboutnursing homes owned by private equity.Here is an idea: make all fines for failure to follow standards ofcare proportional to the total gross sales of the company responsible?These private equity giants would split themselves up on the double toavoid such big fines.
Public pressure convinced Governor Hochul to drop her plan to changeNew York law to permitgreater amounts of methaneemissions.
The OECD, an organization mostly of developed countries whichadministers economic aid, has agreed on criteria for"climate-friendly" projects which arevulnerable to distortion.For instance, hydrogen for intermediate storage of energy avoidsgreenhouse gas emissions if the hydrogen is made by electrolysis ofwater using 100% renewable electricity. If "clean hydrogen orammonia" is strictly defined that way, it would be a reasonablepolicy. But planet roasters' playbook is to try to stretch that policyto include hydrogen made from fossil fuels.Unless the policy is made firm and robust enough to prevent that,they will twist it so that it speeds destruction.
New pun:
Q: Why did the poet start writing elegies?
A: Because he was given advice to die-versify.
Companies get graded on greenhouse emissions, and deforestation, basedon figures that they supply. JBS, the giant meat processing company,amazed environmentalistsby getting a grade of A&minus.They say it must be altering the figures.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus recommends a longlist ofexecutive actions that Biden could taketo help poor and disprivilegedAmericans, and restrain the powerful rich from doing some kinds of harm.
A court ruling couldeliminate preventive medical care for millionsof Americans.The lawsuit was filed by religious fanatics who object to paying fordrugs to prevent transmission of HIV. Those drugs, over time, canwipe out HIV, but extremist Christians think that the deity theyworship intended HIV to make homosexuals suffer and we humans shouldnot interfere.The decision was based on the perverse idea that they have aconstitutional right not to pay for insurance coverage of treatmentsthat violate their religion.I don't think that they object to cancer screening as such. I thinkthose are the collateral damage caused by a desire to punish peoplefor having sex.
The leader of a thug union in California has been charged withsmuggling fentanyl.The "war on drugs" promotes corruption of every sort of official who participates in it. That is just one of the many reasons to get thewar off drugs.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and your senatorsto urge them to sign Rashida Tlaib's letter calling for droppingcharges against Julian Assange.This pageincludes the text of the letter.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Australia's government got a secret report explaining howglobalheating is a bigger threat to Australia's national security than any possible foreign enemy.It should publish this report.
Companies get graded on greenhouse emissions, and deforestation, basedon figures that they supply. JBS, the giant meat processing company,amazed environmentalistsby getting a grade of A&minus.They say it must be altering the figures.
The leader of a thug union in California has been charged withsmuggling fentanyl.The "war on drugs" promotes corruption of every sort of official who participates in it. That is just one of the many reasons to get thewar off drugs.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus recommends a longlist ofexecutive actions that Biden could taketo help poor and disprivilegedAmericans, and restrain the powerful rich from doing some kinds of harm.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and your senatorsto urge them to sign Rashida Tlaib's letter calling for droppingcharges against Julian Assange.This pageincludes the text of the letter.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
A court ruling couldeliminate preventive medical care for millionsof Americans.The lawsuit was filed by religious fanatics who object to paying fordrugs to prevent transmission of HIV. Those drugs, over time, canwipe out HIV, but extremist Christians think that the deity theyworship intended HIV to make homosexuals suffer and we humans shouldnot interfere.The decision was based on the perverse idea that they have aconstitutional right not to pay for insurance coverage of treatmentsthat violate their religion.I don't think that they object to cancer screening as such. I thinkthose are the collateral damage caused by a desire to punish peoplefor having sex.
Australia's government got a secret report explaining howglobalheating is a bigger threat to Australia's national security than any possible foreign enemy.It should publish this report.
I've read about two people convicted and sentenced anonymously in Australia forcrimes that the government refuses to describe.It seems almost Stalinist.
Global heating is expanding the territory were tornadoes usually strike.The expansion is into the US southeast.
Norway is raising the tax rate on salmon farming so that the companies willhave to share the profits with people that live in coastal regions.Those quoted as objecting to the tax increase base their argumentsimplicitly on the trickle-down theory of economics. The owners would likeus to believe that if we let them get richer, they will share it with us.But when the time comes to do that, they always argue for postponing it.
US citizens: call on Biden to protect old-growth and mature trees onfederal lands.They absorb more carbon than the smaller young trees.To see the confirmation of your signature, you need to strip all theCSS from it. Icecat has a command in the right-click menus to dothat.
"Smart" devices are designed to enable companies to abuse people, butit turns out domestic abusers take advantage of them too.Even if your present and former lovers don't mistreat you through theInternet of Stings, those companies will eagerly do so.
The stress and danger of being in a demographic that is a target forprejudice tends to make people get old fast.I presume that those demographics tend to have trouble getting a goodnight's sleep. It now appears that they predisposes people to asthma.
New York Governor Hochul (D) is pushing to gut the state.s signatureclimate law after raking in nearly half a million dollars from thecorporations and lobbyists pushing the move.UAE plans huge oil and gas expansion as it hosts UN climate summit.
CEOs of big businesses are tired of pushing for gun control,especially since Republicans don't heed them. Reportedly they don'tknow what else they can do at the moment.How about this: stop supporting the campaigns of right-wing candidates?That won't take much time, and it will save them money.Of course, we know why they don't do this.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to sign thedischarge petition for the bill to prohibit assault rifles.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Netanyahu gained extra protection from his corruption charges with a law making it harder to remove a prime minister from office.
US citizens: call on Biden to use executive power to make federal agencies fully account for climate the effects of their decisions.
US citizens: call on Congress to do everything in its power to protect the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Confirmation that the UK's new voter ID card serves no purpose exceptmaking it hard for poor people to vote.
Starbucks fires Buffalo worker who founded union campaign.The laws that enforce workers' rights are weak.If the individuals who participate in violating them were sent to prison,corporations would not find to get anyone to do this.
UK thug departments spruce up their reputations by deleting from theirweb sites the reports of wrongdoing by thugs. This includes reports of grave crimes such as rape.
Right-wing fanatics, supporters of parties in Israel's government,held a rally in Jerusalem and launched mob attacks on a TV journalist,and on a Palestinian taxi driver.They beat up the journalist, who was hospitalized. The taxi driverwas rescued by Israeli cops, who often don't try to protect aPalestinian, but the fanatics destroyed his car.
A US court ruled that Texas school censorship is unconstitutional.The books removed from school libraries must be brought back to them.A few years ago I would have taken this result for granted, and sowould the advocates of censorship — they would not have tried it.Now they hope that the right-wing extremists on the court will make upan excuse to permit this — and they may be right.
Bernie Sanders calls for breaking up the giant agriculture quasi-monopolies.I agree, but I think something like my proposed progressive income tax for corporationswould be easier and more efficient than suing them one by one.
Joining the TPP would ruin the UK's plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other business-supremacy treaties are already making it hard to reduceemissions.
It is foolish and stingy for societies to refuse to spend money tohelp each child grow up well.
Israeli annexationists have been finding excuses for years to expelPalestinians from old Jerusalem, neighborhood by neighborhood. Thenext target is the Mount of Olives.
15 Million People [in the US] Could Lose [medical] Coverage asNightmarishMedicaid 'Purge'Begins.Itstarts with five statessuffering under Republican rule.
Formerly interhostile Palestinian factions in the West Bank arejoining to fight Israelis;the two sides regularly kill each other.The article describes repeated Israeli attacks as "in response to"repeated Palestinian attacks. That asymmetry seems arbitrary: thislooks like a cycle in which each attack inspires an attack by theother side. Each side is constantly retaliating for what the otherside is constantly doing, and vice versa.If Israel had protected Palestinians who were not violent, andrespected their rights at least somewhat, the Palestinian Authoritycould have validly said it was providing benefits to the Palestinians.But Israel did not do enough to restrain its fanatics, so thePalestinian Authority could not gain anything by recognizing Israel'sauthority.I suspect that the fanatical Israeli annexationists aim to whip upall-out war, figuring that they can make that an opportunity forethnic cleansing, as Uri Avnery said was their goal.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose cutting SNAP,which provides food benefits to poor people.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress topass the Pay the Teachers Act,which would increase the salary of public school teachers.The page you get after signing may appear blank. If so, strippingor disabling the CSS in the page could make the text visible.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress toreject the TAP American Energy Act,which would mandate more drilling in the seas, and more coal mining on land.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress tovote against authorizing war with Mexico.Although the "war on drugs" is only a metaphor, the actual policies itstands for cause many deaths. Extending it into a real war would make it even worse.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to disqualify the wrecker from running for federal office,onthe grounds of his call for violence if he is arrested.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Red Lobster tobuy only lobsters caught withropeless methods.This is to avoid injuring whales.
The main crime the bullshitter isnow chargedwith is paying hush money on behalf of a political campaign.The secondary crime is misrepresenting the purpose of that payment, ona tax return.
Italy's right-wing government is attacking same-sex couples bypersecuting their children —refusing to register them as citizens.That is likely to cause them many problems throughout their lives.IVF should not be allowed for anyone. There is nothing immoral aboutit, but we still need to curb the human population. If you want toraise a child but cannot biologically make one, what you should do, tohelp civilization survive, is to adopt an already-living child — notarrange for an additional child to be born for you.That may change some day. If we get down to only one billion humanbeings, and there is no danger of further global heating, perhaps thenwe should encourage people to have somewhat more children so as tostabilize the population.
Renowned Russian writerMikhail Shishkin condemns Putinfor staining the Russian language with the blood of Ukrainians.Shishkin talks aboutthe situation of Russia.
The planned Idaho law prohibiting helping a minor travel to get an abortionisdesigned cunningly to interferewith the activities of people outside Idaho.In addition, it is designed to harass people even for activities whichit says are still lawful.
US citizens: call on Congress to legalize using US foreign aid fundsfor abortions":pass the Abortion is Healthcare Everywhere Act.I object to using the marketing term "health care" to refer to medicaltreatment, but that's a secondary issue, but not important enough tooutweigh my support for this.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
The Tories are pushing laws to set up an exaggerated version of"broken windows policing." When the US tried that, it did no significant good but lots of harm. Sad to say, the US has not entirely dropped that approach; thugslove it, since it gives them an opportunity to go to town on ratherhelpless "criminals."The Tory version will be exaggerated to penalize minor nuisances.
The Vatican has denounced its "doctrine of discovery" which itused to givea religious justification to colonization.In the 1400s and 1500s, European monarchs were seriously afraid theywould go to Hell if they started unjust wars. For instance, the kingof Spain really really wanted to attack England, but waited years fora religiously valid excuse for dispatching the armada.It is foolish to demand that the Vatican make substantive changes inthe situation of indigenous people today, because it doesn't have anypower nowadays. All it can do is give advice — which can be good orbad.It is a good thing that a Vatican decision "doesn't change the law inany country." If the Vatican could do that, the first change it wouldmake is to prohibit abortion.
The Tories are entering Britain in the TPP (Trance Pacific Partnership),under a slightly changed name but with the samesubjection to business.The Tories said they wanted the UK to leave the EU so as to decide itsown laws, but what they really wanted was to augment plutocracy — togive international business more power than the EU permits it to have.
15 Million People [in the US] Could Lose [medical] Coverage asNightmarishMedicaid 'Purge'Begins.Itstarts with five statessuffering under Republican rule.
Ralph Nader: One measure of corporate power’s dominance is its 24/7relentless, profit-driven capacity to strike backand prevail overreforms or other efforts designed to give the people voice andfairness.Some of his examples support one simple lesson:
Never try "help" businesses do something we would want them to doby giving them more money to do it with.There are more good lessons to be learned.
US citizens: call on Congress not to extend the corrupter'stax cutsfor the wealthy.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress not to extend the corrupter'stax cutsfor the wealthy.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress not to extend the corrupter'stax cutsfor the wealthy.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden todeclare a climate emergency now.This would give him powers he could use effectively without Congress.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The fossil gas industry is trying to use Putin's economic warfareto get permission to build lots of extraction facilities,which they willparlay into an excuseto keep running them for decades.
UN nuclear watchdog says fighting near Ukraine power plant is"intensifying."Comparing this with Putin's other behavior suggests this is intendedto as something fools can cite in arguments calling for giving Putin asuccessful conquest in the name of peace.It won't bring peace for long, though.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect the rusty patched bumblebee(and many other species) fromthe pesticide cyantraniliprole.
A USSenate investigation reports that Crédit Suissehas participatedin a "massive, ongoing conspiracy" to help wealthy US citizens dodgetaxes.The US citizens in question are quite wealthy; each has deposited morethan $20 million each in Crédit Suisse.
US citizens: call on Congress not to extend the corrupter'stax cutsfor the wealthy.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
European Human Rights Court HearsHistoric Climate CaseBrought by Elderly Swiss Women.Such lawsuits are increasing. The global heating that has occurredalready is killing peopletoday. But if one of these cases reaches a verdict of "guilty", or if in acivil suit the plaintiffs win, I don't see what adequate punishment orremedy a court would be able to impose. Money damages to be paid bythe state would do little to make things right. That would requirereducing future emissions, but a court can't decide how to do that.
Tories have converted the UK's planned "green day" at last minute intoafossil fuel bonanza. Dirty money powers the [Tory] government.
Idaho Republicans planto make it a felony to "procure an abortion"for a minor.This would clearly be wrong and harmful. Just how much harm it willdo, I am not sure; it depends on precisely what it means to "procurean abortion", which is not clear here.
Protect the Israeli Judiciary — but Don’t Let It LaunderWar Crimes Against Palestinians.
[New] Quality standards [proposed] tohold carbon offsetting industry to account.Both the sellers of offsets and the buyers have a monetary interest inundermining the goal, and they have found plenty of ways to do so.This initiative is meant to prevent that, but they will keep trying,and I think they will find new ways to undermine it.That is why I advocate greenhouseemission taxes rather than a marketfor trading quotas.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Republican plan to replace income tax with a big sales tax.The result of that change would be to tax wealthy people much less andtax poor people a lot more. This is what sales taxes always do; weshould get rid of them.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to appoint Kyrsten Sinema ambassador to Italy.The proposal is ironic but I think it is seriously proposed.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Garland to automate marijuana pardon applications.
Rep. Gaetz hired a convicted murderer as an aide. But not justany murder — that one murdered a prisoner of war in Afghanistan.I expect that this was no coincidence — that Gaetz did this to demonstratehis support for political murder.
Trump appointees interfered to weaken EPA assessment of [a type of PFAS].Biden reversed the damage they had done, but they remain in positionsof authority in the EPA.
The bullshitter has been indicted for secret payments to Stormy Daniels.I think that paying her, as such, was not a crime. I think the crimewas using campaign funds for this personal purpose, but I wish thatwere made clear.Robert Reich rebuts the ways the wrecker will claim that it was unfair to indict him. Comparing the US and other democracies in regard to how they treatcriminal accusations against former presidents.
Angry Fox News chief said [in 2020 that] fact-checks of Trump’selection lies "bad for business."
The Tories' planned law to punish refugees will especially punish those who have been enslaved and trafficked.
US citizens: call on Biden todeclare a climate emergency now.This would give him powers he could use effectively without Congress.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Biden administration tohold Silicon ValleyBank executives accountable— to claw back some of their profits from its failure.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Finland's schoolssystematically teach how to identify misinformationand ungrounded accusations of conspiracy.I think this would be wise to adopt everywhere.
TikTok'sintense collection of data about each useris a threat to Americans and to US national security. As EPIC points out, TikTok is far from the only such.The same is true for many other "social media" platforms, and schooleducation programs, and other proprietary programs. If you can'tmodify the program to send whatever made-up data you want to send,instead of true facts about you, it is not safe to use.The ADPPA bill that EPIC recommends would reduce the existing massiveinternet surveillance, but it starts with the usual mistake: systemscan collect data that is "reasonably necessary and proportionate toprovide or maintain a product or service". That is too lax and will failto protect privacy.My article, linked above, provides a key test. Does the rule prohibitsystems that charge for parking which make every driver enter percar's license plate number? That practice is dangerous surveillance;any law that fails to prohibit it is too weak.The ADPPA's stricter rule for children and teenagers should apply toeveryone, but even that could be interpreted in a way that is too weak.We can be sure companies will press for the weak interpretation.This requirement must be bulletproof.
Will we open our eyes to the past and its implications, or drown them outby shouting?The campaign to "protect our [British] history," in other words, is aboutprotecting the past from historians — and protecting the present fromdangerous new ideas about how we got here. Because when an organisationlike the Guardian researches its own historical links to transatlanticslavery — and then apologises and embarks on a substantial project ofrestorative justice— the newspaper is not primarily presenting adifferent past, but its ambition for a different present.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important,such as the one linked to above.
Right-wing fanatics in Wisconsin ordered a first-grade class not tosing the song Rainbow land.The song's words advocate tolerance instead of hate in a very general way,but the word "rainbow" was more than the censors could stand for.
The Pentagon should include, in its planning for where to put military bases,the predictable extra cost of putting the base in a state which prohibitsabortion.I'd go further. I'd suggest a policy of actively restationing unitsand activities from abortion-restricting states to abortion-tolerantstates, with a goal of moving moving nearly all to the latterin 10 years.
The CHIPS act is intended to discourage US semiconductor companiesfrom outsourcing of chip manufacturing to hostile countries such asChina. A look at the details of how it is supposed to achieve thisshows the weakness and timidity of the US government in dealing withany sort of big business.The US government hasn't got the gumption to prohibit US companiesfrom doing things that put the nation in danger, or even to penalizethem to discourage doing so. The best it can manage is to offersubsidies if they avoid those actions.For this reason and many others, making America great again startswith slapping down the businesses that think they own it.Here's the White House statement lauding the law.
Former Texas governor Connally talked with Middle Eastern leaders in1980 trying to convince Iran to hold on to the US embassy hostages, sothat Reagan would win the 1980 election.This is according to Ben Barnes, who worked for him and accompanied himon the trip.Officials of various countries have affirmed, over the years, that Reaganmade a deal with Khomeini to refuse to free the US embassy hostagesbefore the 1980 presidential election.Here is Greg Palast's report on Ben Barnes.It accuses him of a lot of nastiness, but doesn't answerthe questions it raises: why did Barnes not say this before,and why does he say it now? But, it doesn't cast much doubton his recent statement.As for calling "Dubya" a "draft-dodger". that term should not be used.I rebuke Dubya for many wrongs, including the crime of starting a warof aggression against Iraq. But there is nothing wrong in trying toescape from being conscripted into an unjust war.That includes the Vietnam War, which the US ramped up based onfabricating the fictitious "incident" in the Gulf of Tonkin.And it includes Putin's invasion of Ukraine. We should supportRussians who are doing whatever it takes to avoid fighting in thePutin forces.
Exxon scientists in the 1970s and 1980s presented executives with afairly accurate projection of what global heating caused by fossilfuels might do to the world in a few decades. But they presented itas a possibility;with all the gaps in the scientific knowledge of that time, they couldnot determine whether those things would really happen.By around 2000, the science had resolved the uncertainty andfossil-fuel executives could not honestly deny the damage they weregoing to cause.
(satire) Prisoner Given 10 Extra Years For Good Behavior To Serve AsRole Model For Fellow Inmates.
In news coverage of homicides in the Boston Globe, from 1976 to 1984,stories where the victim was black were less likely to use languagethat would encourage seeing the victim as a human being than storiesabout white victims.This must reflect racism in some way or other. I'd be very interestedin whether it is the result of racism of the writers, or some sort ofsystemic racism.I am puzzled that the article says that this used "artificialintelligence", but it doesn't say what that is meant to refer to. Iam dubious that something as complex as reasoning software or machinelearning was needed to categorize the stories.
Fresh water from rapidly melting Antarctic glaciers goes deep into theocean. There it tends to slow down deep-level currents. This couldcause catastrophic sudden changes in climate.
Business Interests Dominate U.S. Trade Advisory System, Gain Access to Trade-Pact Texts Kept Secret from Public.This is perhaps the mechanism that ensures so-called "free trade treaties" areactually business-supremacy treaties.
US gun fanatics have won the battle of competing pressures on USbusiness,They have even passed state laws to boycott banks thatreject gun companies as clients.
Evgeny Morozov: The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s not artificial or intelligent.That is true, about today's neural-network systems. However,generalizing that into a prediction of impossibility for all kinds oftechnology is likely to be mistaken. If something isn't impossiblefor known reasons, the prediction that it can't be done is likely tobe falsified some day.
Alexei Moskalyov's daughter drew anti-war drawings in school. He wasarrested and sentenced to two years in prison for her drawings, but hetried to run away. Alas, he has been caught.
Australia's new climate defense bill requires Australia's total greenhousegas emissions to decrease steadily over time. There are provisions tooto limit fossil fuel exports.The Green Party pushed hard and improved the deal, thought it did not getall it pushed for.
Israel hasn’t been a democracy for a long time. Now, Israelis need toface this fact.Democracy in Israel includes only the Jewish part of the population,and a split in that part, mostly about how to treat the rest, ismaking this partial democracy unstable.
Russia arrests Wall Street Journal reporter on espionage charges.There is very little the US can do to stop Russia from using those lawsto arrest reporters who are not spies, but it can at least drop the chargesagainst Julian Assangeto stop setting a bad example for other counties.Each country should stop prosecuting journalists for doing journalism.
Supposedly the US government refused to bail out the investors owner of SiliconValley Bank — but it seems to have done precisely that. The ownerwas a holding company that had deposited money in Silicon Valley Bank.By deciding to bail out all depositors, the US decided to bail out theinvestors.
Tory members of the UK parliament, who were former ministers, agreed to represent a foreign company's interests for large sums of money — as much as 10,000 UKP per day. The company was a hoax and their assent was recorded.For legislators to take pay to serve private interests is corruptionand it ought to be a crime. The most shocking thing to me is that inthe UK this is lawful. The UK has rules for it, and those electedrepresentatives followed the rules.
The EPA has failed for years to upgrade an old standard for safe concentration of dioxins. Because of this, Norfolk Southern may be allowed to leave dangerouslevels of dioxins at the site of the derailment in Ohio.
Lots of web sites snoop on their visitors for TikTok by containing its"tracking pixels", just as sites do for Google or Facebook.The browser IceCat blocks these tracking pixels, but it ought to be acrime for a web site to try to use them.
(satire) Investors Worried AI Could Leave Shred Of Humanity Intact.What they are talking about is neural network systems, not artificialintelligence properly speaking.
The antibiotic-resistant bacteria bred by feeding antibiotics to farm animalsare consumed by humans when meat is not cooked sufficiently. Then theycan get into the bladder and cause urinary tract infections.
The urbanized world is facing a gradually developing crisis of shortage of fresh water.Urban water demand is expected to increase by 80% by 2050.
Assorted ideas for redesigning cities to cope with the increasingintensity of rain that global heating is now causing.
The Federal Reserve protects banks from interest rate increases,while workers get crushed.
A plutocratist party in the German government demanded a change in the nearly-agreed EU directive to ban sale of new cars made to usefossil fuels after 2035.
Supposedly this is to encourage the future sale of new cars intendedto run on hypothetical future "synthetic fuels" made from CO2extracted from the air. However, the proposed directive was alreadywritten to permit that the continued sale of such those cars after2035, provided they could not run on fossil fuels. It is clear thatthe plutocratist demand aims to create an excuse in 2035 to continueselling new cars that can run on fossil fuels. The excuse will beto claim that these new cars are intended to run on synthetic fuels.
Why is that important to them? Based on the planet roasters' recordof repeated dishonesty, I speculate their plan is to claim that carsare "intended" to run on the synthetic fuels, knowing that owners willactually buy the fossil fuels instead, and that this will createincreased demand for fossil fuels, such that it is impossible todiscontinue them as planned.
It looks like the planet roasters won: the EU made the demanded seemingly-small change in the directive.
When minors in the UK are searched by thugs, black minors are far more likely to be strip-searched than white minors.The thugs violate the official rules meant to protect minor frompsychological trauma about half the time.The article says "children", but I expect that means "minors" and thatmost of the people searched are teenagers.
Some city departments to send unarmed people with interventiontraining to respond to psychological crises are effective, whileothers are not.
A new method of modeling predicts that the world human populationwill peak at 8.8 billion before 2050, and then decline to 7.8 billionby the end of the century.This will help avoid disaster, but doesn't assure avoiding it. Ifmore people avoid reproducing in this decade, it will make the nextdecade easier to get through without disaster and facilitate lower useof fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration toinvestigate racialinequityat Maximus, a federal call center contractor.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
How Big Oil money influences US universities.Universities even sometimes let Big Oil employees teach the university's classes.
The UK plans to evict tenants who use recreational drugs. Nominally the law will require all rental agreements to permit the landlordto do so — but this would not make sense on its own. I suspect there willbe a system to punish landlords who don't evict. This way, the state canpunish people and hide behind the landlord.
Medicare Advantage insurance companies are using secret algorithms to choosea time to refuse to keep paying for a treatment. Patients and their lawyersare not given the supposed reasons for the decision so they have noeasy way to challenge it.The article calls these algorithms "AI". What that means is not clear— I expect it is mere machine learning, but it might perhaps be asystem that draws confusions for reasons. Either way, the details ofhow the algorithm operates are not important. The crucial point isthat they are secret.Some countries have considered laws to forbid the use of secretalgorithms to make decisions about how a person will be treated — andnot only in medicine. I think the US should adopt such a law.
It is misguided to rush to relabel art from the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union as "Ukrainian".Given the information in the article, it would be more accurate todescribe that Degas painting as showing a dancer in Ukrainian dress;but if Degas gave it a title, or (as it seems) said somewhere whathe thought he had depicted, we should respect that. Being French, hemay not have been aware of the difference, and it is anachronistic tomake it seem that he did.
An Australian who worked for the tax authority informed the public abouthow that agency was using harsh measures to collect unpaid taxes.Now he faces trial for this, despite Australia's law meant to protectwhistleblowers.
Extra aid during the late stages of pregnancy improves the baby'shealth at birth, and that leads to a better life.
Netanyahu says he has backed down on ending the independence of thejudiciary.He is slippery, though, so he might bring it back in another form.This is not the only odious right-wing policy change he has agreed to.Others include big expansions of the colonization of Palestinianterritory.
Putin's propaganda, together with cutting off Russians from outsidenews and thought, is successfully convincing them to identify with thewar.I read elsewhere that the families whose youths were conscripted andthen died in the war have mostly convinced themselves that this had tobe somehow laudable, because they can't bear to think the thought thatit was pointless destruction.This is good news for fascist rulers around the world, and bad news forhuman freedom.
French students have joined the protests against Macron's increase inthe retirement age, and especially about his bypassing the NationalAssembly to do it.
The US government sued Starbucks for union busting. Starbucks isusing that lawsuit to subpoena communications between employees, soit can find out which ones support the union — and punish them.
The Supreme Court refused to hear Stephen Donziger's appealof the highly irregular procedure by which Chevron procuredhis conviction.Surprisingly, the only two justices who wanted to hear the case wereGorsuch and Kavanaugh. All the others were willing to let Chevron getaway with railroading Donziger.
The vagueness of DeMentis's censorship of course discussions of racismis causing disputes about showing students anything about the subject.Given any presentation about racism, people can contrive a way toconceive of it as teaching something bad. For instance, Ruby Bridgesis about a black child who needed guards to protect her from racistsin her school, back in the 1960s. That is meant to teach students thesame age today what racism was like; but how can you prove it isn'tteaching that all whites are evil?
In Connecticut: support the campaign tolegalize leaving a child aloneeven for minutes in public places such as the public library.
Rep. Tlaib has proposed a law to remove debts incurred for medicallynecessary treatmentsfrom people's credit reports.It would be a change for the better, but a very small one. What Americansneed is a national medical system funded by the government, rather thana little less hassle when they are forced to borrow the money.Rep. Tlaib supports that too. So why propose this bill? She must behoping that some Republicans will support it, and allow it to pass.But is there really any chance they will do so?
Starmer's policy of vetoing candidatesapplies to local councils aswell as the UK parliament. This has caused a major rebellion in acity where almost half of the current Labour councillors were vetoed. Several of them are going to run again outside the Labour Party.I surmise that the vetoed candidates were more leftist.
Bernie Sanders proposes to ban some bank executives from serving onregional federal reserve boards,since those regulate the banks thosepeople are executives of.I support this.
Toilet paper contains PFAs,and since sewage treatment does not break it down, it gets into waterways and sewage sludge.
On many measures of how people live, including life expectancy, the USis not exemplary, and it is because it imposes poverty on more people,and worse, thanother developed countries.To truly make America great again, tax the rich and lift everyone outof poverty.Prejudice against disprivileged groups "weathers them" andcausesthem to die younger.
The Society for Personality and Social Psychologystates in its home page that it is an academic scientific societythat aims to advance a field of science.However, that has changed. The organization has taken up anti-racismso intensely that campaigning against racism is its primary purposeand research is secondary.It is proper for any organization to try to avoid racism in itsactivities. It is proper for any organization for research abouthuman beings to try to study a variety of groups of humans, becausenot all humans are alike. In particular, not all societies are alike,and in any one society people with different roles may besystematically different.However, the SPSP seems to have decided that every research project issupposed to campaign against racism, and research which doesn't dothat is not worth publishing.That is going too far, because it means that the ostensible purpose ofthe organization is now of minor importance.I could support an organization whose sole purpose is to campaignagainst racism — depending on what methods it uses to do so. But weshould not convert a scientific organization into a politicalcampaign.
An elite Putin forces unit, made up of Russian veterans of the 2014invasion of Ukraine, suffered great losses and tried to retreat.Other units of the Putin forces were ordered to threaten to kill them.They made a video to denounce this treatment.
The Australian Labor and Green parties have made a disappointingcompromise which will allow some new fossil fuel developments butcould cap total fossil fuel extraction and total gross greenhouseemissions.
Netanyahu is desperate to subject the Israeli judiciary to his powerso that it cannot convict him of corruption. The army won't stand forthat change, and the defense minister (a former general) called onNetanyahu to compromise. Instead he fired the minister. Meanwhile,100,000 protesters came out and pole-wielding thugs attacked them onhorseback.A general strike has been announced.I've predicted this confrontation for many years. Ultra-orthodox Jewshave special privileges which they use to increase their numbers, andthey have joined with the extreme right-wing. That increase, acrossthe decades, has brought the right-wing to a position where control ofthe state is in the balance. Even if the supporters of democracy winthis time, the demographic trand will sooner or later deliver victoryto the right-wing.The only path I see for its survival is for the democratic Jews andthe Palestinians to unite to support liberal democracy. But I don'tsee how there could be enough trust between them for that to happen.Maybe Uri Avnery could have united them if he lived, but it would havebeen a tall order even for him.If Israel's democracy falls, many Israeli Jews will have to search forcountries to move to where they can be safe from repression.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to sign onto Rashida Tlaib's letter to Merrick Garland calling fordropping charges against Julian Assange.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Republicans in Congress passed a bill to helpright-wingparents pressure schoolsto remove books from the library and subjects from the curriculum.It is designed to attack sex education and education about treatmentof minorities.
The wrecker is trying to intimidate US prosecutors out of arrestinghim by threatening that his followers will startviolence in response.So far, it has worked. But if we allow such a plan to gounpunished, it will keep escalating.
Drugs and alcohol do not make [people] more creative,research finds.Travel, meditation, training and exposure to culture have a greater effect on artistic output.People who took psilocybin felt they were more creative while on thedrug, but were actually underperforming relative to their sober state.Those results are statistical. There can be occasional exceptions,such as if you have a vision on hallucinogenics and paint a beautifulpicture inspired by it.
The wrecker is trying to intimidate US prosecutors out of arrestinghim by threatening that his followers will startviolence in response.So far, it has worked. But if we allow such a plan to gounpunished, it will keep escalating.
Republicans in Congress passed a bill to helpright-wingparents pressure schoolsto remove books from the library and subjects from the curriculum.It is designed to attack sex education and education about treatmentof minorities.
An analysis of the events unleashedby Dubya's conquest of Iraq, whichhave caused misery and trouble just about everywhere.
Onlymonths before its troubles,First Republic pressured bank overseers to preserve the status quo.
The US Congress supportstrying Putin for war crimes. That is what hedeserves — but so do some American politicians.This is an instance of hypocrisy: the US supports doing justice in onecase and opposes it in another similar case. In the Putin case, theUS stance is correct — in the Dubya case, the US stance is wrong.There are people who would argue that this hypocrisy is a reason notto punish Putin. That is misguided reasoning. The proper response tohypocrisy is to change the conduct in the case where it is wrong (USwar criminals), not to change it in the case where it is right(Putin).I support trying and punishing Putin, all else being equal. But Ithink we may end up in a situation where a just peace (Putinrelinquishes the territory and Ukrainians that the Putin forces haveseized, and ends the fighting) is possiblebut only in exchange fornot trying to cature and try Putin.If this happens, I say we should take that deal.
A plane which the Argentine military used forthrowing protesters intothe seais being returned to Argentina. It will be kept in a museumto help make the dictators' murders real to today's Argentines.
Inland reaches of Australia's longest river, the Murray, are sufferingacontinuing ecological crisis.From what I have read before, it has to do with taking too much waterout of the river for irrigation.
Robert Reich connects billionaires including Peter Thiel withthe bankbailout and with right-wing extremistpoliticians.
When he led the Chicago school system,mayoral candidate Paul Vallastook actions that resulted in more than $1.5 billion beingtransferred out of the city’s budget-strapped public schools and tosome of the wealthiest individuals and banks on the planet, a newreport shows.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of India's principal opposition party, wasexpelled from Parliament after beingconvicted of "defamation"for insulting Prime Minister Modi.It was, indeed, rather insulting to all other Indians named Modi.Gandhi should not have said that. But it is not grounds to put anyonein prison.In the US, I am pretty sure that saying that "all thieves have Trumpas their common surname" would not not be slander against Trump. So Iam pretty sure that India's standards for convicting someone ofdefamation of a politician are too weak.
Armies are developing weaponsto attack countries by manipulating howpeople think. TikTok can be seen as one, and Facebook too.The author is right to generalize this beyond TikTok, since many otherantisocial media platforms can do similar things.Systems to attack or control the human brain are being worked on.Even if technology never reaches the point of planting specific thoughtsin a brain, it could be capable of conditioning people. All that takesis the ability to make someone feel good or bad.Eventually this will be one of the reasons to reject nonfree software.
Hotel Rwanda's Paul Rusesabagina to bereleased from prison in response to US pressure. The US considers his trial for "terrorism"to be unfair.
Officers in ‘Cop City’ raidshot pepperball guninto [Manuel Paez Terán]'s tent first.This means that the thugs started the shooting. They said he did that.The article presents reasons to distrust their testimony, in additionto the likelihood that (being thugs) they are probably habituated toperjury.
The Tories propose to pass a law that prohibits many groups of workersfrom completely striking. Some unions now propose tostrike anywayand go to jail.
The corrupter expects to be arrested soon, and seeks toturn the arrestinto a campaign appearance.Commit crimes against those who are weaker, get arrested,and call yourself the victim — typical Republican.Compare with George Santos.
A Florida principal fired was after a Renaissance art class showedstudents aphoto of a famous nude statue.A school board official said that a complaint from any number ofparents — even just one — justifies firing the principal.
The car tracking companyFlock made a deal with a homeowner'sassociationto install surveillance cameras in Lakeway, Texas, without evenconsulting or informing the city government. (The city's thug department did participate in the deal.)The fact that the government was kept out of the matter is aadditional secondary outrage, but the system itself would be no lessunjust if the city government had approved such tracking.Tracking people's movements is an injustice, and the foundation ofrepression. No person or entity, whether governmental or private,should be allowed to track a car except under a warrant orderingtracking in a specific place for a bounded time.
Ralph Nader: Powell should have known in advancethe danger of hisinterest rate increases.
Privatized water companies in the UKput profit over the environment. Somehow I am not surprised. The government agency in charge of themdid not insist that they spend enough to maintain the sewers.That does not surprise me either. Between lobbying and the revolving door,it doesn't take much to persuade a plutocratist politician to do whatperse is naturally inclined to do: shaft the non-rich.
Biden had a chance to make a drug companyreduce the price of prostatecancer drug Astellasdown to what it costs in other advanced countries. He didn't do it.The article points out that the US government funded the drug'sdevelopment. That was what gave Biden a legal opportunity to forcethe price down, but morally I don't think it makes a crucialdifference. We should not allow gouging on saving people's lives.We should eliminate the patent system, especially in medicine,agriculture and software.
When he led the Chicago school system,mayoral candidate Paul Vallastook actions that resulted in more than $1.5 billion beingtransferred out of the city’s budget-strapped public schools and tosome of the wealthiest individuals and banks on the planet, a newreport shows.
The Tories propose to pass a law that prohibits many groups of workersfrom completely striking. Some unions now propose tostrike anywayand go to jail.
Officers in ‘Cop City’ raidshot pepperball guninto [Manuel Paez Terán]'s tent first.This means that the thugs started the shooting. They said he did that.The article presents reasons to distrust their testimony, in additionto the likelihood that (being thugs) they are probably habituated toperjury.
Armies are developing weaponsto attack countries by manipulating howpeople think. TikTok can be seen as one, and Facebook too.The author is right to generalize this beyond TikTok, since many otherantisocial media platforms can do similar things.Systems to attack or control the human brain are being worked on.Even if technology never reaches the point of planting specific thoughtsin a brain, it could be capable of conditioning people. All that takesis the ability to make someone feel good or bad.Eventually this will be one of the reasons to reject nonfree software.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of India's principal opposition party, wasexpelled from Parliament after beingconvicted of "defamation"for insulting Prime Minister Modi.It was, indeed, rather insulting to all other Indians named Modi.Gandhi should not have said that. But it is not grounds to put anyonein prison.In the US, I am pretty sure that saying that "all thieves have Trumpas their common surname" would not not be slander against Trump. So Iam pretty sure that India's standards for convicting someone ofdefamation of a politician are too weak.
Hotel Rwanda's Paul Rusesabagina to bereleased from prison in response to US pressure. The US considers his trial for "terrorism"to be unfair.
US citizens: call on Biden to ban government contracts for pharmacies that refuse to carry Mifepristone.
US citizens: call on Congress to admit Washington DC as a state.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Speaker McCarthy for giving Tucker Carlson the complete security video of the Jan 6attack.
US citizens: call on state legislatures to continue participation in ERIC, an organization of states which help each other reconcile theirvoter lists.
A company that undertook to decommission the Palisades nuclear powerplant now seeks large sums of money to restart it instead.The campaign to oppose this asserts, based on the plant's history ofproblems, that the plant is decrepit and particularly unsafe.
Does Australia's proposed indigenous voice to parliament carry "authority"?This article describes the proposed agency in sufficient detail toshow that it would communicate indigenous concerns directly toparliament (that is, give advice) but would not have authority overparliament's decisions. The description seems clear to me. If I wereAustralian, I would vote yes to that.However, the article says that changes demanded by right-wingers wouldhave "reduced the authority of the voice’s advice." The use of theword "authority" in regard to it makes me wonder if there is a crucialmisunderstanding at work here — if the words "advice to parliament"would be interpreted as implicitly giving the voice some sort ofauthority over some aspect of parliament's decisions.That would make non-aboriginals second-class citizens in Australiandemocracy.If I were Australian I would want an explanation of what "authority"means in this context. Is it a real issue or just a poor choice ofwords?
Secretary general urges countries to tackle "vampiric overconsumption" [of water], water guzzling industries and climate crisis.
The Tories say they will end their inhumane policy of havingbureaucrats arbitrarily disbelieve doctors' assessments that somespecific person is disabled and needs specific kinds of state aid.Such policy decisions can transform a capable and independent person,perhaps employed despite a disability, into a helpless cripple. Thatchange often entails no alteration in the person in question: a changein how society treats per is enough.Is this really the cruelest social policy of modern times? I don'tknow. Australia's off-shore immigration prison, which the UK isplanning to imitate, could give it strong competition.Don't believe this promise until it really happens. Tories often saythey will make a change for the less cruel and then don't actually doit.
J Street recommends ways for the US to pressure Israel against annexation of Palestine.
China has released additional data collected in the Wuhan live animalmarket in the investigation of Covid-19 in December 2019.
The Tories are about to hold a vote on giving rich people permissionto put any quantity of money into a tax-free retirement and inheritance account. This would be a big tax cut for the rich.
The Tories still want to send all unauthorized immigrants to prison inRwanda. The US judges Rwanda's prisons as cruel and life-threatening,and the general censorship (including imprisoning journalists) inRwanda makes it hard for people to push to change those conditions. Look at how hard it is to change cruel prison conditions in the US, where the press is mostly free; in Rwanda it must be impossible.
In 2020 the FBI infiltrated agents into Black Lives Matter protest groupsand tried entrapping activists into buying guns illegally.
The US is building many export terminals for natural gas.The excuse for them is the war in Ukraine and the short-term shortageof available fossil methane, but they won't be finished until 2025.After that, their owners will use them to lobby for permissionto extract more gas.
No one is safe from the right-wing "culture war"'s scapegoating and repression.Alas, something similar is true of the progressive youth's censorshipcampaign.
Arguing that Dubya attacked Iraq because it would make a good example of US belligerence.
US citizens: Support theInsulin for All Act.The name of that proposed law is badly formulated, since we don't wanteveryone to take insulin! Most people don't need to.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Calling forcriminal prosecutionof the big planet-roaster corporations.Aradical climate strategyemerges: charge big oil firms with homicide.
Vast releasesof [methane] gas, along with future "methane bombs,"represent huge threat — but curbing emissions would rapidly reduceglobal heating.
Vast releasesof [methane] gas, along with future "methane bombs,"represent huge threat — but curbing emissions would rapidly reduceglobal heating.
US citizens: call on Congress torepeal the 1991 and 2002authorizationsfor the US to send forces to fight in Iraq.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Jamie Dimon [along with other big stockholders in "too big to fail"banks] IsPoised to Benefit MostFrom This Banking Crisis.Bailing Out the UndeservingRich — Again.That article falls into the confusion spread by the term "intellectualproperty". It is an incoherent generalization about laws that havevery little in common. To group those laws (or even some of those laws)together and talk about them together is a mistake.
Everyone:call on Big Techto implement end-to-end encrypted messaging now.Messaging applications that involve through nonfree client softwareare unjust, and endanger your privacy, regardless of whetherthey do end-to-end encryption, because the encryption could beineffective or snoop on users.
Leader of White supremacist group [in California] arrested forthreatening to kill journalisttrying to report on [that group].
US citizens:call on Biden to protect communitiesfrom the effects of railroad companies' greed.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) Walgreens ClarifiesStores Still Selling PlentyOf Household Products That'll Abort A Fetus.
Progressive Democrats have proposed to define housing as a human rightand spend300 billion dollars to fulfill that right.I am in favor.
Public Citizen: Private equity's ownership of U.S. healthcare providers isincompatible with the needs and best interestsof patients and should be checked with federal legislation.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and your senatorsreject right-wing budget cuts and pass Biden's budget.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
The Michigan Republican Party published a memecomparing a proposed lawto reduce gun violence with the Nazis'collection of murdered Jews' wedding rings.The Republican Party is now full of Nazis. Won't they take offense atcomparing a Nazi activity that they admire with something such as guncontrol that they despise?
Why We Can't Just Do It:The Truth About Our Failureto Curb Carbon Emissions.I don't know whether the factual claims in the article are true. I amsurprised by the claim that building the renewable energy facilitieswe need would require a significant increase in the amount ofindustrial activity.
Proposing a specific change in the law to enable the US government toconfiscate the money that executives of failed banks (such as SiliconValley Bank) personally extracted by putting the banks at risk offailure.
The UK government has claimed for years that it was totally successfulin fighting PISSI in Mosul. Now there is proof that some of itsbombing killed civilians.The British government did wrong to deny the civilian casualties. Itshould have admitted those consequences.That does not necessarily imply that those attacks were wrong. Thiswas a necessary and justified war; fighting PISSI was necessary andcalled for. Military action always has a risk of going awry, whichcould kill bystanders. That doesn't imply that fighting is alwayswrong.Whether the UK forces acted with proper care to reduce that risk, Idon't know. It may have made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, andmistakes are very common in the fog of war.No army is perfect. Knowing that, we should think carefully beforefighting a war.
The Federal Reserve plans to keep raising interest rates,though perhaps not as quickly.It may not succeed in curbing inflation,but even if it doesn't cause more bank failures, it will put millionsof Americans out of work.
Putin says Russia "will respond" if UK supplies depleted uraniumshells to Ukraine.I can't imagine what sort of "response" Russia could actually make?Try to destroy the tanks that would fire these shells? The Putin forceswill try their best to do that anyway.Ukraine should say "no thanks" to these shells, since using them wouldpollute Ukrainian territory with Dirty Uranium fallout for a longtime.It causes various sorts of diseases for anyone who breathes it in.
A Swedish court … ruled that … youth climateactivists including Greta Thunberg can collectively sue Swedenfor the government's "insufficient climate policy."
A government-commission report found that the "Metropolitan Police",which is the thug depart ment for London and does other thingsnationally, is pervaded by racism and sexism and other forms ofbigotry.This includes harsh bullying by thugs against thugs, as well asagainst everyone else. In London, polls find that most people donot trust it.Here'a a description of the bad things it does.
Astronomers call for people to support banning projects that involveputting large number of satellites into low Earth orbit, to preservethe darkness of night.
Secretary General Guterres has set up a climate summit for September,with a new demand for earnestness: for a country to be invited, itwill have to pledne to end licensing and funding of new oil and gasreserves and expansion of old ones.Bravo, Gutierres! It is heart-warming to see someone in a position ofimportance who recognizes what priorities are needed for survival.With his influence, he has a chance of overcoming the power of fossilfools. It won't be easy to beat tham, but civilization depends on it,and every young person's life is at risk.
US maternal mortality is more than ten times higher than in Australia.It is not easy to measure the causes of this, but we know that theyinclude consequences of the pandemic of Covid-19, a general attitudeof disregard for women's medical needs and health, and racism (blackAmerican mothers are even more likely to die).
Economic growth is not a magic wand for ending poverty.our focus should be on reducing inequality not increasing GDP.
A hospital in Idaho will no longer deliver babies, as Idaho'srepressive laws make itrisky for doctorsto work there.It is the only hospital in Sandpoint, which is at the northern tip ofIdaho. I wonder what is happening elsewhere in that state.
The EFF has published a completelist of the locationsof the highlyvisible US surveillance towers on the border with Mexico. The US government has a list but has refused to publish it.These towers surveil everyone in the border region constantly, butthey are not the only method. Citizens that live in or visit theborder are frequently stopped or harasssed while they drive.
The US is suing to stop JetBlue and Spirit Airlines from merging.I'm glad to see the government doing this duty to some extent.However, to do it fully would require strengthening antitrust law.If we put progressives in control of Congress, they will do this.
Florida considers ban on discussion of menstruation before sixth grade.Some of the students will start menstruation before they reach sixth grade.
Being hit by ships is a major cause of deaths for endangered whales.The US should adopt measures to protect whales from ships.
UN secretary general Gutierres has endorsed the IPCC's plan for rapid reduction of fossil fuel use.The hard part is convincing governments to carry it out, over theopposition of fossil fuel companies that are determined to make usburn every last drop before civilization collapses.Several important governments that we might expect to resist ithave endorsed it already,including China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and theEuropean Union.
Ralph Nader looks at fallacies right-wingers use to justify impoverishing the non-rich.
Biden vetoed a bill passed by Republican legislators (including acouple of quasi-Democrats) that would have allowed pension funds toinvest people's pensions disregarding how the investments are likely tolose value due to global heating effects.
Plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must not rely on risky anduntested technologies, such as carbon dioxide removal.
Contrails contribute to global heating, but airlines lobby against measures to reduce contrails.
The former saboteur in chief deregulated railways and banks. Heblames Biden for the fallout.In true hypocritical manner, the ex-president has quickly forgotten why the two sectors are in shambles.
Wyoming, an extreme right-wing state, has made it a crime to"prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for thepurpose of procuring or performing an abortion."Redistribution of abortion pills will continue, underground, but people mustmake sure not to have a snoop-phone in room when they talk about plans.
Exxon claimed it would grow algae to make biofuel without generatinggreenhouse gases. It has now given up on that research.
- Leading respiratory doctor fears generation could end up with long-term addictions and lung damage [from vaping].*
The [Republican Party] Is a Party of Death, Not Life. I'd say it more strongly: the Republican Party is the partyof excuses to kill people.
Frackers in the US stored methane in an old well. The seal broke anda billion cubic feet of powerful greenhouse gas leaked into the air.Accidents leaks will happen — both enormous incidents like this one,and numerous long-term permanent leaks that add up over time. This makesfracking a much bigger contributor to global heating than the calculationspredicted.We should ban fracking entirely. This could lead the gas market todecrease fossil fuel use, as is needed to push industries todecarbonize.
Elizabeth Warren says Fed chair "failed" and calls for inquiry into bank collapse.He failed because he insisted on interest rate increase after interestrate increase, fixating attention on a misguided plan to cut inflationbased on misunderstanding its cause,which drove banks into failure.
Journalists go on trial in Egypt for "offending MPs."Prosecuting people for charges like that is by itself proof of tyranny,regardless of whether they are "true."
The US has recently deported Russians who fled to avoid being draftedinto the Putin forces, despite a previous statement suspendingdeportation to Russia.This is not only cruel and treacherous, but stupid and self-defeatingas well. It harms Ukraine's chances and helps Putin.The precise rules for asylum are complex, and full of pitfalls that makeit easy to fall into a trap where they say "You didn't followsome procedural detail so you're screwed, tough luck."
The Nazi salute is disgusting, cowardly, and bullying, and naturallyprovokes "sadness, outrage and disbelief" — but its prohibition by the Australian government is a violation of freedom of speech.Many Americans were angry at the ACLU when it successfully sued toestablish that Nazis had the right to organize a public rally in theUS. I may have agreed with that anger for a little while, but aftermore thought I concluded that the ACLU was right. Freedom of speechis not reliable for anyone if it excludes certain views that mostpeople strongly disagree with.
- US tech innovators have a culture of regarding government as an innovation-blocking nuisance. But when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, investors screamed for state protection.*Socialism for the rich, laissez faire/laissez mourir for the rest.
- The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals — from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers — is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet.*
Minnesota Becomes 4th State to Provide [gratis] School Meals to All Kids.To reduce the confusion of the two meanings of "free", I carefullyavoid using it to mean "gratis".
A Christian university in Florida fired a professor because a studentdenounced what he taught about racial justice.The student called it "indoctrination", but other students said it wasn't.For right-wingers, exaggeration even to the point of dishonesty isnormal and legitimate.That article was written before the actual firing. I chose to link to itbecause it explains more of the situation.
Greg Palast conjectures that Putin grabbed Ukrainian children and gave themto Russians to raise in order to boost the fraction of Russiansthat wull be white orthodox Christians.
(satire) Locksmith Called After Man Loses Incantation Used To Open Ancient Stone Chamber.
The US and Mexico are cooperating to send Mexicans who worked legallyin the US the wages that employers stole from them.
P&O Ferries aroused condemnation by firing its well-paid workersand hiring low-paid foreigners.But nothing has been done to reverse that or punish the company or preventrepetition.This does not surprise me. Tories would consider this desirableas it enriches the wealthy.
Newly studied evidence suggests that raccoon dogs (a species relatedto foxes) in Wuhan's live animal market were infected by SARS-CoV-2.
Sunak proposes a planet-roasting distraction policy to prolong fossilfuel use.It promotes carbon captureand mini-nuclear reactors, neither of which even exists as a working solution now.For planet roasters, delaying renewable energy is as good as rejectingit entirely.
US citizens: call on Biden not to imprison unauthorized immigrant families.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to make Warren Buffett answer for his push to deregulate the railroads.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Global fresh water demand will outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, say experts.The increase will not be due to the need for humans' domestic use.
Many city, county and state agencies have refused to give Manuel PaezTerán's family answers or evidence about how thugs killed him.There is no reason to doubt that this is what it looks like: a murderfollowed by playing dumb. The thugs' denials count for nothing sincethey are biased and untrustworthy witnesses.
Aside From the Military Bloat, Biden Budget Is Worth Celebrating.I am less enthusiastic because I am sure FDR would have done a lotmore.
Russian soldier who confessed to killing Ukrainian civilian [has been] jailed [for supposedly posting] "fake news."Putin deploys bogus criminal charges to punish any disobedience.
Virginia thugs have been charged with second-degree murder forsmothering a prisoner to death. The prisoner's hands and feet were chained, so he was no threat tothem at the time.
The campaign of repeated lies by which Dubya won support for attackingIraq misled Americans about fundamental background facts, such as thefact that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September 2001terrorist attacks and treated al Qa'ida as an enemy.A similar preparatory campaign against Iran seems to have been runningfor years.
The lessons of the Iraq invasion [for the UK]? Beware spies andallies who would drag you to war.
(satire) Financial Experts Recommend Investing In Businesses Government Will Bail Out Anytime They Fuck Up.
Since young Americans reject the Republican politics, the plutocratsare trying to wipe or our distort public education.
A loophole in log requirements has undermined European fishing quotas.Governments corrupted by fishing interests are now pushing to makethe loophole bigger.
Biden is considering nominating for the Federal Reserve Board someonewho previously supported the banks against innocent US homeownerswhile an official in a related agency, the US Treasury.
Yanis Varoufakis: today's banking crisis is the latest repercussionthe 2008 financial crisis.
Silicon Valley Bank said it was too small to need regulation. Now it's "toobig to fail."Surely every bankster wants per bank to be both at once.
- Global Commission on the Economics of Water released a landmark report Friday to warn the international community that the world is "heading for massive collective failure" in the management of the planet's water supply and demand that governments treat water as a "global common good."*
The International Criminal Court has indicted Putin and some otherRussians for forcibly taking hundreds, probably thousands, ofUkrainian children to Russia and concealing who they are from theirUkrainian relatives.The article describes what he has done.I have no doubt that Putin merits punishment for this. However,putting him on trial for it risks prolonging the war. If Ukraine ismilitarily successful, Putin might be willing to retreat from Ukrainein exchange for being allowed to continue in power in Russia. Insistingon trying him might convince him to continue holding parts of Ukraineuntil the Putin forces are pushed out.
Here's a clear statement, written by prominent educators and championsof the campaign against racism, of how the pressure to censor theAdvanced Placement African-American Studies course is an attack onfreedom of thought and education, and part of a much broader campaignagainst education and to cover up important areas of Americanshistory.It says nothing to suggest that today's young Americans should feelguilty about crimes that American whites in the past committed againstAmericans blacks (though some people do that). Rather, it says thatwe should teach young Americans these aspects of their country'shistory, so they can carefully draw moral lessons from those pastevents and apply the conclusions today and in the future.That goal applies to other issues besides racism. If democracy andschools exist 50 years from now, they will teach what has been learnedfrom investigations based on critical environment theory and criticalcomputation theory, showing how powerful interests distorted laws andinstitutions to poison the Earth and make computing subjugate itsusers.
US citizens: call on your senators todefend the Clean Water Act.To sign without running nonfree JavaScriptcodefrom the web site,use the Salsalabs workaround.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:call on the USPS Board of Governorsto stop DeJoy's USPS privatization plan.
Vast releasesof [methane] gas, along with future "methane bombs,"represent huge threat — but curbing emissions would rapidly reduceglobal heating.-->
Jews in New York City held a protestcalling on Senator Schumer to stop cozying up to Israel's fascist-leaning government.
Texas officials are using a pretext to take over control of theHouston Independent School District. The pretextconsists of one problem school that the city was improving. State officials have not presented any plan to do better.We can anticipate that they will make some aspects of the schoolsworse, and I conjecture that that is their real goal. We must expectdeceit from Republicans.The imposed state board will have the power to impose censorship, andI expect it will use that to prompt racism and sexism and interferewith sex education, asDeMentis is doing inFlorida.I expect Republicans will also ramp up theschool-to-prison pipeline.With so many black students in that district, this will be a greatopportunity to put many of them in state prisonsand thus disenfranchise them.
The UK government offered manyNHS workersin England a bigger raise,which means moreor lessvictoryfor their strikes.
The practice of fully protecting all depositors from bank failureswhile letting the bank speculate with the deposits isan invitationfor banks to take foolish risks.Readopting Glass-Steagal would prevent some of the mismanagement thatcan make large banks fail. However, the author calls fornationalizing the largest banks.
(satire) Ron DeSantis Bans Births In Florida Due To Exposure Of Impressionable Infants To Vagina.
A Georgia sheriff has been sentenced to prison for torturing prisoners.He put them into bondage chairs and left them there long enough to causeserious bodily harm.
(satire) Mark Zuckerberg Worried Facebook Listening To Him AfterBeing Pushed Shirt That Says, "I Just Laid Off 10,000 Employees."
(satire) Ron DeSantis Bans Births In Florida Due To Exposure Of Impressionable Infants To Vagina.
A Republican legislator in Iowa claims that the law he helped to passprohibits teachers from telling students that "slavery is wrong."The actual text of the law does not go that far. It prohibits sayingthat the US, or Iowa, is "fundamentally or systemically racist orsexist." There is no serious doubt that systemic racism and sexismexist in Iowa, and in the US generally, so that law tries to censor animportant truth. But it does not seem to prohibit saying "slavery iswrong." Nonetheless, officials fear it implies that.People fear that these laws will be stretched and twisted to attackthem because Republicans say they want to try, and Republican judgesare are ready to be dishonest in interpreting laws.
After industry cash flooded their war chests, Florida Republicans stopped requiring utilities from disclosing who they are punishing with power shutoffs.
The [Federal Reserve] needs to stop raising rates now, former FDICchair says after Silicon Valley Bank failure.
Americans for Tax Fairness: arguments for raising the tax rate oncorporations to 28%.I think we also need to eliminate the ways that corporations arrangeto claim that income was nominally received in some other country witha lower tax rate.
The BBC claims to be politically independent, but in practice its rulesforpresenters, writers and commentatorsare applied with enormousright-wing bias.This has been the case for decades at least.
Republican lawmakers funded by the credit card industry are fighting to protect theexcessive feescompanies charge consumers.The junk fees are not among the biggest ways that businesses exploitbad laws to exploit the non-rich, but they are an example of theelectoral corruption that upholds plutocracy in the US.
TheIraq War started the post-truth era.And America is to blame.I don't think that is entirely true, because the right-wingers wereusing lies before that. The campaign to capture US policy decisionsfor the rich, and pretend that non-rich receiving government help werethe exploiters, started in the 1970s; it was based on lies from top tobottom.It has been argued that al-Libi was not merely giving his torturerswhat they demanded, but intentionally encouraging a war between the US and Saddam Hussein, both being enemies of al-Qa'ida.
Feral hippopotamuses in Colombia are reproducing and causingproblemsfor humans and for wildlife.Since these intrusive animals are damaging native wildlife, the rightthing to do is to eliminate them from the wild in Colombia.
Biden has given reasons for approving theWillow oil drilling project,but they are fallacious.Allegedly the attempt to reject the project entirely is likely to beoverturned by courts. What if that is true? What would be the rightthing to do?We are dealing with a threat to kill most human beings and wipe outmost living species -- in effect, the biggest war in all history.So let's look at it like a battle against the planet-roasters.When your army holds a position that it cannot continue to holdindefinitely, should you pull those troops back promptly, or hold theposition as long as possible? It depends on what you can gain byholding it and what you might lose.In this case, there is nothing to lose by fighting in court except thecost of paying some lawyers. Therefore, Biden's duty is to hold thatposition for as long as possible. Delaying the drilling is good initself, and the fight to delay it will inspire climate defenders andhelp win the next election.The delay also creates an opportunity for the situation to change. In2025 it may be possible to pass a law — perhaps a carbon tax— that would make Chevron abandon the project.
Thugs committed violence againstthe property of protesters at Cop Citywhile trying to find evidence for "terrorist plots" in protest supplies.The actions of the thugs are calculated to spread terror amongcivilians who are only exercising their legal rights. That'sterrorism, pure and simple.
How Biden plans tobail out the depositorsof failed banks, includinglarge deposits not officially covered by FDIC, using funds accumulatedby FDIC.If this sort of thing becomes frequent, it may call for increasing thefee rates of FDIC.
Senator Sinema voted for the Republicans'bank deregulation lawin 2018,after accepting campaign funds from Silicon Valley Bank's lobbyists.
21 Republican legislators in South Carolina supported a bill toimposethe death penaltyfor "homicide" against a fertilized egg. That much strong support shows that that religious fanaticism hasbecome mainstream in the Republican Party. Women, Republicans want tokill you.This bill would punish not only abortion, but also some methods ofbirth control that prevent a zygote from implanting and generating a placenta.
US citizens: call on Biden topropose a new FCC commissioner who followsFree Press Action's recommendations.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress toblock the merger of Albertsons andKroger supermarkets.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the deportation thugs toclose abusivedeportation prisons and not open new ones.
Robert Reich explains the history of US bank regulations since thegreat depression: aconflict between the public and the rich,with politicians choosing which side to take. He concludes with calling for a return to the New Deal regulationsincluding the Glass-Steagall Act, to "make banking boring again."Bernie Sanders has called forthis too.In my view, the 2000s bail-out of the rich might have been ok ifcombined with a bailout of homeowners plus increasing taxes on thewealthy and on businesses so as to pay for it.
US citizens: call on Secretary Haaland toreduce single-use plastic innational parksby 90% by 2025.US citizens: call on Congress toblock the merger of Albertsons andKroger supermarkets.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!US citizens: call on Biden topropose a new FCC commissioner who followsFree Press Action's recommendations.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the deportation thugs toclose abusivedeportation prisons and not open new ones.
Ohio sues Norfolk Southernover toxic train derailment.That selfish and greedy organization is happy to profit by putting thepublic at risk. But if it loses this lawsuit, that could compel it toadopt better safety standards.
US citizens: call on Secretary Haaland toreduce single-use plastic innational parksby 90% by 2025.US citizens: call on Congress toblock the merger of Albertsons andKroger supermarkets.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!US citizens: call on Biden topropose a new FCC commissioner who followsFree Press Action's recommendations.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the deportation thugs toclose abusivedeportation prisons and not open new ones.
Robert Reich explains the history of US bank regulations since thegreat depression: aconflict between the public and the rich,with politicians choosing which side to take. He concludes with calling for a return to the New Deal regulationsincluding the Glass-Steagall Act, to "make banking boring again."Bernie Sanders has called forthis too.In my view, the 2000s bail-out of the rich might have been ok ifcombined with a bailout of homeowners plus increasing taxes on thewealthy and on businesses so as to pay for it.
In the name of "energy security", UK prime minister Sunak wants tofocus on slow, inefficient and iffyapproaches.It looks like the real goal is to continue the extraction andcombustion of carbon as long as possible. Is this an example of"carbon capture"?
Most of the major companiesin the UK have imposed big price increasessimply because the system has nothing to hold them in check.Raising interest rates, supposedly to reduce inflation, does nothingto stop them. But it is very useful for the rich, and inflation makesa great excuse.
Meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target,those being the high methane emission foods.
Biden approved the "Willow" fossil fuel development in Alaska,which will have deadly consequences around the world. He thought that protecting other areas of Alaska would somehow compensatefor the damage of these additional emissions. But environmental activists are not going to forgive damaging ourair and nature in one place on account of choosing not to damage itsomewhere else.
Many US hospitals' and clinics' web sites give data about patients and their medical conditions to Facebook.Tracking tokens are especially dangerous when they send medicalinformation, but they are always an injustice. They ought to beprohibited in all web sites, or even better, blocked from functioning.I use a browser, IceCat, which blocks tracking tokens in a verygeneral way by blocking third-party resources.Some plug-ins for Firefox also block tracking tokens.
Here's a clear statement, written by prominent educators and championsof the campaign against racism, of how the pressure to censor theAdvanced Placement African-American Studies course is an attack onfreedom of thought and education, and part of a much broader campaignagainst education and to cover up important areas of Americanshistory.It says nothing to suggest that today's young Americans should feelguilty about crimes that American whites in the past committed againstAmericans blacks (though some people do that). Rather, it says thatwe should teach young Americans these aspects of their country'shistory, so they can carefully draw moral lessons from those pastevents and apply the conclusions today and in the future.That goal applies to other issues besides racism. If democracy andschools exist 50 years from now, they will teach what has been learnedfrom investigations based on critical environment theory and criticalcomputation theory, showing how powerful interests distorted laws andinstitutions to poison the Earth and make computing subjugate itsusers.
Modern agriculture depends on phosphorus fertilizer obtained frommines, but the mines are heading towards exhaustion, leading towardsfood shortages. Meanwhile, the runoff of fertilizer into waters creates toxic algal blooms,which then convert into planet-roasting methane in the air.Before modern agriculture farmers gave plants phosphorus as part ofurine. Some countries, even some modern ones, still use this method.
Silicon Valley Bank's CEOpressed Congress to weaken risk regulations[designed to keep banks from failing]. He said that his bank's operations were risk-free. We now knowempirically that that was false.Basically, our officials (elected and appointed) believe too much ofwhat business executives and their mouthpieces say. I speculate thatthat is due to lobbying, campaign funds, and the revolving door — inone word, corruption.
US citizens: phone your senators and representative and call on themto undo the changes made in the Dodd-Frank bank regulation law to thestrength it had in 2015.This law, if not for being weakened by the corrupter, would haveprevented Silicon Valley Bank from doing the risky things thatcaused it to fail.The Dodd-Frank law was a weaker replacement for the previousGlass-Steagall Act, which was abolished in 1999 by Republicans inCongress. It is described inthis history of US bank regulations.I think we should bring back Glass-Steagall with its full force,rather than an inferior substitute.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Modern agriculture depends on phosphorus fertilizer obtained frommines, but the mines are heading towards exhaustion, leading towardsfood shortages. Meanwhile, the runoff of fertilizer into waters creates toxic algal blooms,which then convert into planet-roasting methane in the air.Before modern agriculture farmers gave plants phosphorus as part ofurine. Some countries, even some modern ones, still use this method.
30 Christians held a protest march on a street where there are clubsfrequented by queer people. The march was condemned as"disgraceful"and "unauthorized protest activity".I oppose those protesters' views, and I reject their religion; but wemust respect their right to protest. Queers especially must defendthat right — it was not that long ago that queers met with violentrepression holding rallies, and even when not holding rallies.Didn't right-wingers call them "disgraceful" when they did notdisguise their orientations and identities?
Western Europe, from Spain to Germany, is being hit by a shortage ofrain (and snow) which isalready causing major problems, and likely to get worse as weeks go by with little rain.
Faux Newsedited the security camera footageof insurrectionist JacobChansley on Jan 6 to omit his criminal acts, then claimed that theabsence of those scenes exonerates him.What liars say doesn't prove anything, except, occasionally, that theylie.
The autopsy results show that protester Manuel Paez Teránhad hishands upwhen the thugs shot him and killed him, in Cop City.
The proposed Railway Safety Act is a change for the better, but ithas flaws that need to be fixed.
The FBI director acknowledged that the FBI had bought location tracking data.Data about Americans, no less. But this scandal is being understood only at the superficial level.The most superficial scandal here is that the FBI bought location dataabout Americans in order to track them.A deeper scandal is that the company which collected the data was ableto sell the data without asking permission of the users the data isabout.The deepest scandal here is that the company was able to collectlocation data about Americans. For real privacy, we need to require systems to be designed so as not to track people's life activities.No systems should be able to keep track of where people go, what theydo there, or who they communicate with.
UK ministers are disrespecting permanent staff of government agencies tothe point where those become sycophants, giving the advice that ministerswant to hear.Perhaps this is why the UK government carries out almost any policy incompetently.
The British government's stated commitment to reduce greenhouse emissionswas unable to stand up to airline lobbying to cut taxes on flying.This also shows that the supposed need to limit the deficitis limited to the people who don't count (for Tories), anddoesn't apply when interests that are really important want a boost.
The Far-Right's Culture Wars Are Just a Distraction So Oligarchs Can Keep Looting the Working Class.I agree that that is a large part of the purpose of these "culture wars,"but they do have a secondary purpose: to radicalize supporters so that theygive way completely to hatred.
The history of the end of dependence onwhale oilmay have lessons forthe end of dependence on fossil fuels.
Thru April 16.A documentary about Julian Assange is touring US cinemas.The tourcontinues till mid-April.Each showing is followed by a Q&A discussion withJulian's father and/or his brother.
In calculating various people'seffective tax rate,there aredecisions to make. Deciding wrong leads to giant confusion.
The US continues to hold on to art done byprisoners in Guantanamoeven when prisoners are allowed to leave.
Aheavy snowfall in Californiais crushing trees and buildings.The heavy storms in California result from global heating. This won'tbe the last one that drops snow instead of rain. I have a feelingthat in isolated mountain areas most of the inhabitants will have tomove away.Heavy rains may reduce the fire danger, if they are frequent enough.
Online services that allow advertising tend to pass through atransformation known as"enshittification".First, the service shows users what they want to see. Then it showsusers with high priority whatever businesses pay it to show them.Finally, it shows users with even higher priority whatever will keepthem spending more time on the site — at which point the users andthe advertisers hate it but feel they don't have an option to refuse.I do refuse. It just happens that these disservices tend to requireusers to run nonfree client software, and I refuse to do it. Thus,by defending my control over my computing, I avoid the shit too.I think that the key to ending enshittification is to pass laws tochange the funding model.
The history of the end of dependence onwhale oilmay have lessons forthe end of dependence on fossil fuels.
Right-wing religious fanaticsin several states propose bills to prosecutewomen for having abortions. In the past, anti-abortionists said they did not want to do this.But success encourages fanatics to compete to see who can be the mostextreme.
The BBC has surrendered to right-wing pressure byrefusing tobroadcast a David Attenborough programthat would make right-wingersangry.
Iran and Saudi Arabiaagree to restore tiesafter China-brokered talks.A priori, this decrease in hostility could reduce conflict in themiddle east. It might lead the way to more reconciliations, such asperhaps peace in Yemen.However, both of those governments are fanatical Islamists. If they joinforces for religious repression, that will not be good for the world.
Verra, which organizes many suspect "carbon offsets" whose validity isnow recognized as questionable, saysit will redesign the offsetsystem.
Tories appointeda former minister of deforestationto work for"Natural England", whose mission is to protect nature in England.You can't get more blatant contempt for the nation and the peoplethan this.
Hotter fires arenot just burning the existing conifers in parts ofthe US west, they are also killing seedlings so that no new coniferscan grow.
Right-wing religious fanaticsin several states propose bills to prosecutewomen for having abortions. In the past, anti-abortionists said they did not want to do this.But success encourages fanatics to compete to see who can be the mostextreme.
(satire) [Governor] RonDeSantis Oversees ProgramOffering Florida Students Free Force-Fed Meals.
Right-wingers plan to ask the Supreme Court to enforce thelong-disusedComstock Act to prohibit mailingabortion pills andabortion information.
Fossil fuels received £20bn more UK support than renewables since 2015.One-fifthof money given directlyto fossil fuel industrywas to support new extraction and mining.
Canadian "mounted" thugs are being investigated for cruel violencetowardsenvironmental protesters.
Comparing various stories about which opponents of Putin bombed theNord Stream pipelines andwhat relationshipthey had with the USgovernment.
Gigi Sohn withdrewfrom candidacy as FCC commissioner.Shortly before her announcement, Manchin said he would refuse tovote for her. He has been toying with the issue sadisticallyfor two years.Free Press Action describesthe qualitiesthat the new nominee for theFCC should have.
EPA ProposesImproved Wastewater Treatment Standards for Coal-firedPower Plants.On a global scale, pollution of water by burning coal is a secondaryproblem. It could kill millions of people over decades, whereasgreenhouse gas emissions can destroy technological civilization andkill billions. However, as long as coal-burning power plants exist,we should make sure they don't pollute our water. And thisrequirement will convince many owners that it isn't worth continuingto operate the plants.
The Tory plan for total repression of boat people is arejection offundamental human rights as well as an example of theperformative crueltyused forright-wing radicalization nowadays.It wouldviolate many important treatieswith the rest of European countries.
The US is moving torestrict "technologies"that threaten US nationalsecurity. Precisely what "technologies," "restrict" and "threaten" mean is notclear.The threat is real, but it does not come only from companies based incertain more-or-less hostile countries. Israel is a US ally, butIsraeli companies make products that threaten the freedom of Americans(along with everyone else).What's more, US companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon threatenthe national security (in a broader sense) of the US. And even whenthey are not being used in a way that threatens the security of the US,they collect personal data about many Americans in a way that canis often used to oppress them.I believe the solution is toprohibitthe collection of personal data.Not just "without consent," since they can always make most people"consent."
South Africa has decided to "downgrade" its embassy in Israelas a rebuke for the occupationpolicies that amount to apartheid.
Scientists have successfully "revived" frozenviruses found in permafrostand they were able to infect cultures of amoebas. The scientists chose those virus because they had determined fromstudying the virus DNA that amoebas were their target.It is possible that other frozen permafrost viruses could infectvarious other kinds of life. It is not impossible that they couldcause pandemics.However, the world is full of viruses that might do this, infectingvarious kinds of animals. It seems to me that the additional dangerof permafrost viruses is a small fraction of the danger we already face.
The latestFaux News lie campaignhas the support of House Speaker McCarthyand helps the bullshitter.
It is difficult to do empirical studies of the effectiveness of maskrequirements, partly because there is no objective way to determinehow often any person wears a mask (or which kind, properly or not,etc.) A group of scientists did a meta-study and found some evidencein favor of concludingmasks reduced Covid,but not enough for realconfidence.Then one of them, who had antimask leanings, made the bizarre claimthat the evidence supports the opposite conclusion. But that seems tobe misleading words.
When US food prices in bulk went up last year, retail businessesraised their prices more than the commodity prices. Now bulk pricesare decreasing, but thosebusinesses are not reducing retail prices. The cause of this is — not enough competition, after too many mergers.
Biden's proposed 2024 budgetwould improve many kinds of help fornon-rich Americans, though not as much as is needed.It alsoreduces future deficits,by increasing taxes on the rich.It will not be easy to get any of this through theRepublican-controlled House of Representatives, nor through the Senatewhere Manchin can block it. Robert Reich says that Biden knows it isimpossible andthe point of itis to present his goals and to influence negotiations.Those are useful things to do to influence the outcome.
The amount of microplastics in the ocean isgrowing exponentially.As long as so much microplastic is being dumped, attempts to cleanup the ocean are futile.
US railroad workers call for nationalization of the railroadson the grounds that billionaire stockholdingexecutives will always skimp on public safetyfor the stockholders.
Every time external power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant iscut off, it risks leading to ameltdown that would pollutea large region.It is easy to say that we "can't allow this to continue," but we haveno obvious way to stop it except for Ukraine to surrender to Putin.the challenge is to find a way to reduce the danger that Ukraine andPutin will both accept.
Michigan hasrepealed the Republican lawthat allows businesses tohire workers that don't pay dues to support the union. That law gavebusinesses another way to attack unions.
Rising temperatures in tropicsto lead to lower coffee yields and higherprices, study suggests.
Norfolk Southern's "Safety Plan" Includes Automation ThatCould Further Endanger Workers.It also replaces workers with machines that can't check for all theproblems human workers can spot.
[Rep. Ilhan] Omar Unveils Bill toBlock US [military] Aidto Human Rights Abusers.With the world dividing into blocs, and repressive regimes on everyside, I don't know if the US is in a strong enough position to refusealliance with all of those regimes. I think that in the 1990s itcould have done so, but it did not give priority to that goal.
Large areas of farmland in New Zealand were permanently ruined foragriculture bythe erosion of Cyclone Gabrielle.Parts could be restored through years of work — but is it worth the trouble?How soon will another cyclone do similar damage?
Smoke from Australian bushfires depleted ozone layer by[3%] to 5% in2020,study finds.Global heating will cause more and bigger fires, until most of thetrees are gone.
Some British lawyers say that trials of protesters whichforbid themto state the reasonsfor their actions violate their human rights.At the very least, they are being denied the right to present adefense of necessity or a defense of the public interest. That in itselfis an injustice.
A rumor coming out of the US government says that it is considering a dealto promote exportsof US methane to Europe by falsely labeling it as "green."
Formerly interhostile Palestinian factions in the West Bank arejoining to fight Israelis;the two sides regularly kill each other.The article describes repeated Israeli attacks as "in response to"repeated Palestinian attacks. That asymmetry seems arbitrary: thislooks like a cycle in which each attack inspires an attack by theother side. Each side is constantly retaliating for what the otherside is constantly doing, and vice versa.If Israel had protected Palestinians who were not violent, andrespected their rights at least somewhat, the Palestinian Authoritycould have validly said it was providing benefits to the Palestinians.But Israel did not do enough to restrain its fanatics, so thePalestinian Authority could not gain anything by recognizing Israel'sauthority.I suspect that the fanatical Israeli annexationists aim to whip upall-out war, figuring that they can make that an opportunity forethnic cleansing, as Uri Avnery said was their goal.
Refugees from China are trying to getto the US by landfrom Colombia. This just as Biden searches for policies not to ever let them in.One person interviewed told the reporter that he would eagerly go toTaiwan to fight a Chinese invasion. It occurs to me that if he wantsto be able to make a real contribution to that fight, he needs to gothere now and start training. Does anyone know whether Taiwan wouldwelcome volunteers who come to join its army? Perhaps it is too hardto be sure they are not spies or saboteurs.
Big Pharma has convinced the US government to strive to the utmosttoprevent Americans from buying prescription medicinesabroad to save money. Medicines are more expensive in the US because the US government hasa decades-long tradition of helping Big Pharma gouge. Their pretextis that people would import opioids that way, but few people try that.
Robert Reich: raising interest rates isnot effective for reducingspendingnowadays because most of the spending is done by rich peoplewho are profiting from the interest rate increases.
Everyone:denounce Exxonfor keeping its research about global heating secret.People often mispronounce the name "Exxon".
*Artwork referring to abortion [ordered] removed fromIdaho public college exhibition[in the name of Idaho's censorship law.]
A 2020 article about the need todefend freedom of speecheven for thosewe oppose is just as pertinent today. Do keep in mind that "the president" criticized in this article wasthe bullshitter, not Biden.
The US military is allegedly refusing to give theInternational Criminal Courtevidenceof Putin forces war crimes.That action is discreditable in itself, but the motive is even morediscreditable: to protect US soldiers accused of war crimes from someday being prosecuted by the ICC.The right way for a country to prevent its soldiers from beingprosecuted by the ICC is for the national government to prosecutethose war crimes. The ICC exists as a backup method for caseswhere countries fail to prosecute their own war criminals.The US supports the right side of this conflict, but it supportsthe wrong side in others, including the war in Yemen.
Repression in Atlanta: protesters held a rally with music, about amile away from the site where Cop City is supposed to be built. Thugsaccusedthem of "domestic terrorism" for acts of vandalism which there isno evidence those people had anything to do with.This reminds me of the Haymarket martyrs.This calls to mind the absurd charges that fascists such as Putinand Modi use to crush dissent.These thugs are sending a message: "We are fascists with the power.We spit on truth, justice, and law."
Republicans have changed the rules of the House of Representatives tomake iteasy to defund any specific government program,in the name of "saving money".
An investigation found that the Louisville thug department hassystematic tendencies toward thuggish behavior,especially towardsblacks.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.That article is one of the exceptions.
Biden proposes to increase the Medicare tax on the rich so as to providesufficient funds forMedicare until 2050.International pharmaceuticalsBig Pharma has convinced the US government to strive to the utmosttoprevent Americans from buying prescription medicinesabroad to save money. Medicines are more expensive in the US because the US governent hasa decades-long tradition of helping Big Pharma gouge. Their pretextis that people would import opioids that way, but few people try that.
Overuse of fertilizer on three continents is stimulating the growth of floating sargassum seaweed. Tons float onto coasts, producing toxinsand harming land animals including humans.
The typical single-use water bottle uses up a lot more water than it can contain.I try hard to avoid single-use water bottles, using them only as alast resort. As a result, the number I use per year in the US is justa handful. Even in Europe I don't use them often.
Thousands of Twitter accounts, which appear not to represent realpeople, are supporting the bullshitter and criticizing the other Republican candidates.
The United States of America has to choose between imposing asacrifice on the rich, by increasing their taxes, or imposing asacrifice on the poor, by decreasing their health care. The vastmajority of the people, including many rich people, want to tax therich.
Florida Republicans will criminalize the taking of abortion pills.There is an exception for rape an incest but you have to prove somehowthat it was rape or incest — very difficult to do."Exceptions to abortion bans are often useless and are only includedto make extreme restrictions seem more reasonable."
US citizens: call on U.S.pharmacies to provide abortion pillstocustomers; don't let Republican bullies convince you to cut them off.
US citizens: call on the Georgia Department of Natural Resources toblockmining near the Okefenokee swamp, which is a wildlife reservation.To sign without running nonfree JavaScriptcode from the web site,use the Salsalabs workaround.
Jamaica has got good results from treating the vast majority of thementally illwithout hospitalization.With mental illness increasing in other countries, maybe that approachwould be good to adopt.
Republican fascists areinfiltrating the institutionsof power in theUS, aiming for a position where they can win some sort of coup.
A group of indigenous Australians in New South Wales want to buildhousing on an area of forest that needs protection. The stategovernment blocked the plan,so they played the "indigenous card."The government of New South Wales is right-wing, and in general failsto defend the environment. That means it often deserves criticism.This seems to be an unusual case where it did defend the environment.
Teenage girls are developingsocial structures and institutionsto a plagueof harassment by the many misogynist teenage boys.
Calling for improvementswhen the Medicare-for-all bill is reintroduced in this Congress.
The exiledleader of Belarusian oppositionsuggests that putting more pressureon Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus and Putin's flunky, will help defeatPutin's attack on Ukraine.
Jimmy Carter isan evangelical Christian with progressive political views.Back when he was young, most evangelicals championed progressive politics.
Israel is ata crucial crossroads:it can save itself or slide into despotism.Alas, one can say the same thing about the UK,and the US,as well assome other countrieswith a history of democracy.
Iran pledges to restoremonitoring equipment at nuclear sites,says IAEA.So there may indeed be hope of avoiding Iran as a nuclear power,if Biden wants to make the effort.
US citizens: call on the Senate to stop the practice of allowing thesenators from a state toveto anyone appointed to be a federal judgein that state. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Some companies, when making a car loan, require drivers to use amachine that tracksall the car's movements.This demonstrates the uselessness of a "consent" requirement asprotection for our privacy. If companies say, "If you don't consentto total tracking, you don't get a car," your "choice" is a fiction.
One proposedrepression has been removedfrom the Tories' bill forrepression of protests: it won't allow arrest of journalists forcovering protests.That protecting journalists from arrest had to be done with a specialexclusion — roughtly "journalists covering a protest have anexemption" — demonstrates that this law threatens the rights peoplein the vicinity of a protest even if they are not joining in theprotest.Jailing protesters is bad enough; jailing people for being neara protest is an additional step towards repression.
US citizens: call on Congress toaffirm the ratificationof the EqualRights Amendment.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress topass the PRO Act,which will facilitateunionization.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Secondtrain derails in Ohiobut carried no hazardous materials, company says.This second derailment demonstrates that train disaster is not a rare,freak accident, and thus supports the insistence on safetyimprovements: better brakes, larger crews, sick pay, etc.
Oil CEOs Should Be BarredFrom Global Climate Summits, Not Running Them.Efforts to solve critical world problems, including coming climatedisaster, are hamstrung by their fundamental structural organization:"multistakeholderism",which means the corporations doing the worst harmhave the power to thwart all progress.
Ukraine is reinforcing the defenders of Bakhmut with "elite units" asthe Putin forces getcloser to encirclingthat town. I have to wonder, is it tactically wise to send the best units intoa town that may soon be cut off? That risks losing them for no gain.There is nothing important about Bakhmut except that the Putin forceskeep trying to capture it. I think it may be more efficient to pullout of Bakhmut now and defend the next town. If it takes the Putin forces6 months to capture each town, it will take them decades to conquerall of the Donetsk region. The war won't last that long.
There was a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations for aglobalocean conservation treaty. With organizations such as Greenpeace praising it, I expect Iwould be pretty happy with it.One issue where I might have expected bad decisions was that of controlover "genetic resources" — scientific discoveries that could be madeby studying the genes of ocean life. There have been demands for harmfulpolicies that would declare countries to be the"owners" of genomes found in species found in those countries. That would be unjust.I can't be sure from this article, but I think this treaty chooses abetter approach, that would distribute some of the income from somesorts of activities to some poor countries. I see nothing wrong withthat.
Increasing wildfiresin northern hemisphere forests could start achain reaction of increasing release of CO2.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass theAfghan Adjustment Act,so Afghan refugees can become citizens instead of being expelled.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
"Fair and Balanced"? Murdoch’s private messagesshow Faux News wasinstructed to help Republicans.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject theRepublicans' MaximallyUnfair Tax Act.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
New York City now has a law requiring fast food employers to give causetojustify firing anyone. It has already hit Starbucks' union busting.
Blackstone's strategy is toprofit based on eventsthat make Americanssuffer. The current instance of that strategy is buying millions of family homesat the height of Covid-19, and now raise the rents and evict the families.Various proposed laws would increase the taxes Blackstone pays andreduce the pain it can cause. One is to eliminate thecarried interest deduction.Another is the Billionaire's Income Tax.I advocate prohibiting any one business or alliance of businesses fromowning more than one residential building. That would make a lot more competition for rentals.MIT named its "College of Computing" after Schwarzman, the founder ofBlackstone. If you are at MIT, that is an appropriate place toprotest him.
(satire) HighCost Of Child CareForcing More Toddlers To Work TheirWay Through Preschool.
Lukashenko has imprisoned the most prominent human rights activist ofBelarus,Ales Bialiatski,supposedly for smuggling.
Increasing wildfiresin northern hemisphere forests could start achain reaction of increasing release of CO2.
Modern day indigenous Australians say that Captain Cook's men "stole"spears from the aboriginalsthey met at Kamay.Wikipedia (I don't have access to a better reference) transmits areport from the other side: that the aboriginals at Kamay fought withthe British sailors each time those landed. The term "steal" does notfit that sort of situation.Either or both accounts may be distorted, but I see no reason in thearticle to endorse the indigenous interpretation of "stealing", and noobligation to "return" the spears.
Some Republicans admire Putinand say so. Now the shock jocks among themare arguing against support for Ukraine as a way to appear audacious.
- Mobile billboards on how to getaccess to [abortion] pillsby mail are being driven through college campuses in 14 states.*This is a brilliant move — both helping the enemy's victims andbuilding up the movement against them.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul calls for newrail safety regulations—after rejecting [New York State] safety legislation requiring trainsto be staffed with at least two crew members.More confirmation that her actual political alignmentis "plutocratist."
A railroadmanager was recordedtelling workers not to reportbroken railroad cars for repair — lest it cause delays. This seems to reflect general industry practice. Such outright disrespect for safety doesn't surprise me. Is itpunished as a crime? It ought to be.
Ford envisions makingcars harass the driverif the company wants torepossess the car. It expressed this by filing a patent applicationfor the malicious idea.Whether this idea is patented or not, or by which company, is just adetail. What is significant is that "connected" cars make thispossible and easy for any company to use on people. The car couldeven refuse to start at all — or start spontaneously and driveitself. And the manufacturer will always know where the car islocated at any time.
Anoil tanger sank in the Philippinesand now threatens to polluteprotected marine areas — meaning it causes danger of extinction.The world's approach to this sort of disaster is not systematic. Asystematic approach would design ships and sailing rules to provideredundant protection so that there will be no such leaks.
US citizens: call on Biden tokick Faux News outof the White Housepress pool, for knowingly spreading misinformation.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone:support a worldwide end to unsustainable logging.To see the acknowledgment page, you will need to eliminate all the CSSin the page. Icecat has a menu command to do that: click righton the page.
A school in England replaced a temporarily removed mirrorwithposters suggesting that makeup is an addictionand you'rebetter off not learning to feel dependent on it.This led to various misunderstandings which I think are not very interesting,since they were responses to incorrect surmises about intentions. However,that provocative statement is interesting to think about.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to urge them toprotect the added funding given to the IRS — which it uses toaudit rich people instead of poor people.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588. If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden toprotect communitiesfrom the effects ofof railroad companies' greed.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to co-sponsor the StockBuyback Accountability Act of 2023.
US citizens: organize to support the constitutional amendmenttodeny human rights to corporations.This is complementary to the Democracy for All amendment,now reintroduced in Congress. That would reestablish the power to regulate campaigncontributions by rich human beings as well as by corporations.But the idea that corporations are entitled to human rightsdoes harm in many areas. We need to erase that too.
OSHA is investigating thehigh accident rateat Amazon warehouses. You can reduce it by boycotting Amazon as I do.
Lab accidents that can cause leaks aremore common than politicianssuppose. Whatever may have happened with SARS-CoV-2, we need to take careto avoid some future leak that could start a pandemic.We also need to take care to avoid future contact with wild animalsthat could start a pandemic. I disagree therefore with the article'sfinal sentence. Given that both dangers are real, which one actually happenedin 2019 makes little difference.
US citizens: call on Congress not to continuethe tax cutsfor the wealthythat were adopted under the corrupter.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Starmer'ssystematic ban on leftist candidatesrejected the onlyplausible candate. In response, the whole of the local Labour Partyorganization has resigned in protest.
- Evidence collected from Kherson … shows Russian torture centers were not "random" but instead planned and directly financed by the Russian state, according to a team of Ukrainian and international lawyers headed by a UK barrister.*
People living near the River Ouse in England want to protect it frompollution. That's a good thing to do, but their method is based on a philosophical absurdity: to assert that the river itself is a personand has rights.Giving corporations the same rights as people has worked out badly.Attempts to give fetuses the same rights as people causes graveinjustice.I forecast that the attempt to treat rivers as if they were peoplewill cause no end of bad consequences as people (and as well ascorporations, fetuses and rivers) deduce other absurdities from thatabsurd premise.Furthermore, the more entities that are not people are treated by ourlegal system as if they were people, the harder it will be to stoptreating corporations as if they were people.
(satire) Los Angeles Warns Residents Not To Touch Poisoned Food Left Out To Deal With Homeless Infestation.
How US supermarkets collect lots of valuable data about customers.They can track you if* You use a frequent buyer card which identifies you. * You identify yourself to the store's web site. * You carry a snoop-phone with the store's app.
I don't do any of those things, so I think I am safe,but I can't be entirely sure.
On How Tech Lobbyists Lobotomized NY’s Right To Repair Law WithGovernor Kathy Hochul’s Help.Hochul seems to be quite a plutocratist; she tried to puta right-wing judge on the state supreme court,and Democrats rejected the nominee.
Iran is basically ready to refine uranium sufficiently to make atomic bombs.We can thank the bullshitter for canceling the non-nuclear deal with Iran,followed by Biden who gave low priority to restoring the deal.
The US government says there is no Russian "energy weapon" that could makeembassy staff sick.There are energy weapons — for instance, the laser that a Chinesewarship pointed at a Philippine supply ship — but when those are usedthere is little doubt.
British Columbia will provide gratis prescriptions of various contraceptive products to female residents. I fully support this policy.It is amusing how the article struggles to describe which residentsthe offer applies to. It faced a struggle because it has accepted alimited version of English in which there are no words for anindividual's physiological sex, only words for gender. Contraceptionknows nothing of gender roles; it is concerned only with physiologicalsex.The article does not entirely succeed in specifying who the offer ismeant for. Does the offer include all transpeople (eventrans-women)? Does it include all people who identify asnon-binary? My guess is no, because that would be absurd in practice,but I can't be entirely sure. Maybe trans-women will be offeredfemale contraception that they don't have a natural way to use.
A neurologist has found patients suffering from some unidentified maladyand suspects it is due to exposure to glyphosate.There is also evidence that glyphosate in farm runoff water is causingtoxic algae blooms in the ocean and even in reservoirs.
- Evidence collected from Kherson … shows Russian torture centres were not "random" but instead planned and directly financed by the Russian state, according to a team of Ukrainian and international lawyers headed by a UK barrister.*
A federal judge found Starbucks guilty of systematic illegal union busting,and ordered Starbucks too undo numerous actions.I expect that Starbucks will appeal, refuse, appeal, refuse, and soon. It can afford to pay lawyers to do this forever. We need to givethe NLRB enough power to give big companies big punishments forspitting on workers' rights.
Jewish peace groups called on the Biden administration to bar Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich from entering the U.S. Smotrich calls for wiping out the Arab town where the recentpogrom took place.The statement describes that as "genocide", but that is anexaggeration. When he did was to advocate an atrocity. I thinkthat is a sufficient reason to refuse to admit him to the US — wedon't need to exaggerate it, no need to weaken the term "genocide".
AMLO, the president of Mexico, seems to be trying to undermine the election authority. Mexicans fear this is a scheme to bring back the rigging of elections, which was standard practice until after 2000.
Progressives called on Biden not to make the proposed Indo-Pacific "trade deal" a business-supremacy treaty.It is good news that negotiations have rejected having an ISDS clauselike the ones that do so much injustice on other business-supremacy treaties.
Quantifying the growth of autocracy around the world: 72% of humans now liveunder autocratic regimes. Only 13% live in liberal democracies which respect, more or less,human rights.
Biden is expected to veto a pernicious billthat would prohibit retirement investment plans fromtaking account of probable future investment losseslikely to be caused by environmental damage, and whetherthe company respects the well being of workers and customers.Plutocratist politicians apparently want to steer us into investing indishonest companies, even those that are on course to kill us in a fewdecades.
Starmer says it is futile to aim to make the UK treat poor people once again as well as it did before the Tories got into power.
The US government spent $31.9 billion on mRNA vaccines, includingresearch, and buying millions of doses. Despite this, Modernagouges the US government on vaccines and Biden lets it.However, the reason that other companies should be allowed to makethese vaccines is deeper than that. Live-saving medicines shouldnever be monopolies.
Calling on the EPA to test soil for dioxins in and around the town ofEast Palestine, where the vinyl chloride derailment occurred.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter andask per to sign the letterby Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), andRep. Jim McGovern (MA-02), which calls on Biden to tell Israelthe US will oppose annexation of the West Bank, and to respectits liberal and democratic traditions.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Due to the bullshitter, right-wing Americans are torn between variouskinds ofbullshit about Covid-19.Should they claim it leaked from a US-funded lab in China? Or thatit is a Chinese bioweapon?Should they support quack treatments, orclaim that it was never a real dangerat all?Or that it has become harmless?What they have in common is that they (1) smear the medical establishmentfools, (2) attack the government, and (3) create hostility within society.They come from right-wing disinformationists.Whatever the facts turn out to be, on whatever question, we can't getthem from those people.
Breakfast cereal manufacturers are threatening to sue if new USregulations limit how much added sugara "healthy" cereal can contain, Due to the lunatic Supreme Court decision that said corporationsare entitled to human rights, they might even win.Thus they use their political power to prevent the US governmentfrom reducing childhood obesity.
Planet roasters have provided hundreds of millions of dollars toprestigious universities in fields that relate to global heating,apparently with the aim ofshaping research results.In some cases, the projects funded by the planet roastersdirectly promoted global heating denialism.
Scientists prove clear link betweendeforestation and local drop in rainfall.The study adds to fears Amazon is approaching tipping point after which it will not be able to generate its own rainfall.
NYC to Pay Millions toPolice Brutality ProtestersViolently Arrested by NYPD. The article describes the damage done to some of the protestersby this cruelty.Compensating the victims is only a start. We need to make surethat uniformed thugs don't do this again. What plan does thecurrent night-mayor offer to achieve that? None, I would expect.
US justice department sues two companiesover pollution in Louisiana's"Cancer Alley."At long last, an attempt to enforce the law against toxic pollution!
The AFL-CIO praises Biden's nomination ofJulie Su as Secretary of Labor. Her past career included championing enforcement of labor lawagainst businesses that cheat workers (which many businesses try to do).It sounds like she is just the person for the job. However, I amdisappointed with the journalist who thought that the most newsworthything about her is her racial background.
Nokia has advanced the Right to Repair campaign by making an Androidphone in which it iseasier than usual to repairthe hardware.If they make the softwareeasier to repair, by replacing the nonfreeparts with free software, that would be a step forward in freedom aswell.
(satire) Supreme Court Questions Whether PresidentLegally Allowed To ImproveAmericans’ Lives.
Sydney thugs admitted in court that their onerous bail conditions onCherish Kuehlmann, accused of trespassing in a protest, were intendedto prevent her from protestingagain.The magistrate rebuked them for the wrong of that idea.
UK thugs want thepower to place criminal chargesdirectly. With that power, they could do as US thugs to — charge witnesseswith "obstruction" for making a video, and charge people being questioned with"resistance" for any delay or strange gesture.
Russia is refusingto cooperate with protection of the beaked redfish,which is being driven to extinction.
US fascists, where they get power, aremoving to teach fascisminschools following a path that fascists have used in other countries.The persecution covers books, teachers, and curricula.
A new PACsays it supports right-wing Democrats, and policies likewhat mainstream Republicans used to stand for in the 1980s.It is funded by Jeffrey Yass, who also funded the right-wing takeover in Israel.
A half-baked policy proposal would fail tohelp US parents supporttheir children,due various problems it does not address.To be fair, Biden is looking for things he can do with an executiveorder, since Republicans block any bill that would give money tonon-rich Americans.
Bolsonaro encouraged illegal mining in the Yanomami reserve. Theminers destroy patches of the forest where they work, and poison therivers and thusindirectly the Yanomami. Now the Brazilian governmenthas gone back to work driving them out.Lula says that Bolsonaro's plan was for mining to wipe out theYanomami — that is, genocide.Since the US cannot stop the importation of illegal drugs, we have towonder whether Brazil can stop the extraction of various metals. Itmay not be quite as difficult, since there are other sources for thosemetals, which puts a limit on what anyone will pay for them. But indeedminers will keep coming back.I suppose they are driven by poverty. Poverty results from (1)continuing population growth and (2) the dooH niboR economy. Lula istrying to change both of those; I hope he succeeds, but that sort of thingtakes time.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Justice In Policing Act.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Sysco to stop using single-use plastic packaging.If you don't run the Javascript code, the response in your browser maybe invisible unless you disable the CSS in the page.
Deportation thugs raided a factory in Tennessee and violently arrestedany non-citizens who were working there. Those arrested sued and won,because the thugs had no order to arrest anyone. It seems they exceeded their orders from sheer sadism.
The "Derail Act" would require the US to classify trains carryingvinyl chloride, or any other flammable gas or liquid, as"high-hazard flammable trains". They would be required to have to have modern brakes, and otherprecautions to avoid dangerous spills.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to oppose the Willow oil drilling project in Alaska.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Republicans continue to work on a law to eliminate the requirement forenvironmental review of potentially dangerous products.
SUVs increase the danger of being on a street, even as they increasegreenhouse gas emissions.ISTR reading that SUVs are built to be even more harmful becausevarious regulations classify SUVs as trucks rather than as cars.I support policies to reduce the number of SUVs manufactured. Fossil fuels kill more people than Covid. Why are we so blind to the harms ofoil and gas?
A Colorado sheriff's deputy was given a medal for shooting and killingRichard Ward, who had done nothing harmful or threatening to anyone.Perhaps it was a medal for creativity in imagining an excuse forkilling.
Australia arrested a former US marine pilot whom the US has accused oftraining Chinese pilots, who faces an extradition hearing. Whileawaiting that hearing, he is being held in cruel conditions ofisolation that call to mind the imprisonment of Julian Assange.I don't understand how training Chinese pilots, if he did that, can beconsidered "arms trafficking" or "money laundering". Either thatinformation is garbled, or it is some sort of newspeak. I also don'tsee how training them constitutes a crime. It behooves the US toexplain.It would be legitimate for the US, Australia and other countries toprohibit their ex-pilots from training Chinese pilots, but it isunconstitutional in the US to make that an ex-post-facto law.
Rebecca Solnit: Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like [the wrecker] and Putin.The article shows that the violence and lies of politicalauthoritarians follow the same tactics as the violence and lies ofabusive husbands.
US society and government policies undermine public schools; then peopleput all the blame for the bad results on the teachers.
India enjoyed a free and vibrant media. Narendra Modi's brazenattacks are a catastrophe.The article lists a long series of persecutions of journalistson absurd charges.
Forgiveness of loans enabled Germany to recover economically afterWorld War II. Now other countries need the same help.
Rebecca Solnit: Fossil fuels kill more people than Covid. Why are we so blind to the harms of oil and gas?WHO's estimate of the number of deaths from Covid is surely far too low,since many countries such as India did not try to count them all. Nonetheless, I expect her statement is still true.
Texas prisoners started a hunger strike to protest solitaryconfinement lasting years, sometimes even decades.The pretext for this is anything the authorities take to be a sign ofassociation with a gang, as in California.
"Crafting an illusion": US rail firms' multimillion-dollar PR push. The goal of the PR is to convince officials that it's good for railroadsto shift to smaller crews and that safety improvements are not needed.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to protect theConsumer Financial Protection Bureau.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Mexico is considering a change in its policy towards asylum seekersso that they will get hit by Biden's proposed new restrictions.
The UK's cancellation of citizenship as a punishment for crimes is aninjustice. Doing it without even a trial to determine guilt for thosecrimes is flat-out contempt for justice.In some cases, this has the added consequence of making thecondemned-in-advance person stateless as well. This extra afflictionand extra injustice must not distract us from the broader injustice ofcancellation of citizenship. That is the heart of the matter; that iswhat the UK must change.
The US is making visas for touring UK musicians much harder to get. Most of the musicians can't afford it.
Libraries in Texas cannot allow children and teenagers under 15 years old to enter without someone older. And they threaten to call the thugs.
Norfolk Southern's system to detect bearings in the process of failingwas set to too high a threshold, so it didn't warn the crew of thetrain until it was about to derail.One could suggest that the government require railroads to generatethese warnings at a lower threshold, but the company has a responsefor that: the other major US railroads are even worse.The article talks about a possible improved detector that would detectsuch problems at an earlier stage. Perhaps that should be adopted,once it is ready for use. But we should require safe practices now,and we should not accept the possibility of a technical advance as anexcuse not to do so.
New South Wales (a state in Australia) is planning carbon bombs that wouldemit 1.5bn metric tons of CO2.
DeMentis's law that sets up a special state-controlled "localgovernment" over Disney World has taken effect.At its most basic level, that law the right thing. A company shouldnot have the powers of a local government. Disney used its economicclout to squeeze that concession from the state, and now that has beenundone. However, normally a local government is democratic. Theofficials of this "local government" seem to be chosen by the state.I don't believe that DeMentis seriously believes the state must not"treat all the other theme parks differently." On the contrary, whathe wants is arbitrary power to treat them differently, power that hecan use to bully each one for his own political purposes.
US agencies disagree about whether they believe that SARS-CoV-2 spread fromanimals or leaked from a lab.I don't think it makes much difference.It is agreed that deadly viruses can spread from animals; we shouldtake stricter precautions to ensure that does not happen.Since it is agreed that deadly viruses can leak from labs doingresearch on them, then we should take stricter precautions to ensurethat does not happen.Which of the two happened this time changes nothing.
Infrared lights attached to a hoodie can reportedly defeat infrared cameras used for tracking people on the street at night, so that theycan't follow the person that wears the hoodie.Tracking people's movements threatens human rights, so it is good tothwart tracking and surveillance cameras; it would be even better toprohibit them. By contrast, security cameras, which record theirimages locally in case a crime occurs there but do not allow remoteexamination, are acceptable because they do not make it feasibleto track all the non-criminals.We should require all cameras that watch public places to be therecord-locally security camera type.
Jewish organizations in the US condemned the pogrom carried out by thefanatical Israeli racists that now control Israel's government.In Israel, B'tselem said that the state and the army supported thepogrom, as they have done before. "The [fanatics] carry out theattack, the military secures it, the politicians back it," the groupsaid. "It's a synergy."
The owner of Faux News admitted in court that he told presenters to endorse the bullshitter's lies claiming the Democrats stole the election.This is likely to enable Dominion, a company that makes voting machines,to win its libel suit and collect enormous damages. Whether Faux News could continue to operate after that, I can't determine. Maybe Dominionwill end up owning Faux News.
DeMentis's latest bill to impose right-wing ideology on Florida'spublic universities not only prohibits teaching certain subjects, it alsoeliminates tenure and will allow fascist state-controlled boards tofire any professor for political reasons at any time.
[Senator] Scott seeks to impose highly divisive and unpopular social, economic, and fiscal policies that would attack the basic human and constitutional rights along with the well-being of millions of U.S. residents. The Republican Party agrees with him.
US citizens: call on Standard Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui BankingCorporationnot to finance the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
Our next rally for Julian Assange is Saturday, March 4 at 11:30 to12:30pm. We will gather at Park St. Station on the Boston Common tospeakout for Assangeand gather signatures on our petition to our senators.
US citizens: call on your U.S. senators tosave the bees fromneonicotinoids.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden toinvite Ukrainian civil society to thenext steering committee meeting.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden not to pull out of theNew START armslimitation treaty, even though Putin has "suspended" it.The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Standard Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui BankingCorporationnot to finance the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
National Public Radio runs mostly on funds from corporations ratherthan public funds. Lately corporations have preferred to put theirmoney into stock buybacks, so they are donating less and buying lessadvertising, which is causingbig cutbacks at NPR.
The New York Times published an"opinion" article that attacks masksby misrepresenting the conclusions of a medical study. Apparently the Times skipped the fact-checking on that article.
Putin put children and teenagers from Mariupol on TV so theycould thank a Putin forces soldier for"rescuing them"… fromthe devastating shelling by the Putin forces.They didn't put 2 and 2 together in the TV presentation, and didn'tmention the relatives that were killed by the Putin forces inMariupol.It is possible that they were speaking honesty when on TV — that they hadbeen taught to forget how their "saviors" intentionally caused the dangerthey were "saved" from.Putin's disinformationists persistently misrepresent the situation. Iexpect that some will refer to the "gratitude" of Ukrainians "saved"from Mariupol, citing this TV program as "proof".
Bernie Sanders condemns the US economic system of extreme capitalismas little better than indentured servitude, saying that many USworkers can hardly considered to have any freedom except tochoose adifferent master.
Several Democratic states have sued the FDA demanding an end to therestrictions on buying mifepristone.I basically agree, but all depends on the bizarre Republican lawsuitthat they filed before a judge who is a trumpet, in a state in the 5th circuitwhich is full of biased right-wing judges too. The suit offers that judge a chance to try to ban mifepristone nationwide,To fix this could require massive civil disobedience.
A proposed constitutional amendment wouldreverse the Corporations Uniteddecisionthat allowed corporations to donate ad lib to political campaigns.I hope to see a fuller description so I can see how this comparesto the amendments previously proposed.
Roald Dahl threatenedthose who would "correct" his writingafter his deathwith attack by the "Enormous Crocodile".
Covid disinformation prompts Royal Society to consider ways ofcountering forgeries and falsehoods[in science].
Jimmy Carter wrote about the injustice ofIsraeli apartheid in 2006,when Americans were hardly used to the idea.
The endless round ofsequels, offshoots, remakesand "modernizations"is a system for magecorporations to keep on extracting money with old"properties" whose authors died many years ago.
Indian Dalits are becoming successful in India ascomedians in the teethof caste prejudice.I watched a few minutes of Manaal Patil's show on invidio.us (a proxyfor Youtube, which I cannot access directly because it requires usersto run nonfree software). He made me laugh. I would have watched therest but I have to work.
India had an opposition politician arrested for "insulting the primeminister" (Modi). The "insult" wasa quip that suggestedthat Modi andthe coal magnate Gautam Adani were somehow the same person.Prosecuting people for insulting officials is an attack on humanrights, whether in India, in France, or any other country. Modi, jete vois!
US citizens: call on Congress topass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusaland Transparency Act.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word! That's to put an end to corruption that we have plenty of evidence of.
US citizens: call on Congress topass the John R. Lewis Voting RightsAdvancement Act.This bill by itself is not enough to protect voting rights.A few years ago there was another voting rights billto do the rest.
US citizens: call on Congress toBan Partisan Gerrymandering.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
The US government accepteda lump sum paymentfrom Moderna for useof US-government-funded technology. That's a tiny fraction of Moderna'sincreased price for the Covid-19 vaccine.For the government to accept this was dereliction of duty. The USgovernment had the duty to make Modernaallow vaccine productionworld-wide, and it didn't try.
An ecosystem can collapse abruptly when the last species fulfillingsome crucial role disappears from it. This islikely to happeninmany places during this century.
Former USambassador accuses Israelof "creeping annexation" of the West Bank. Plus breaking a former agreement with the US.Moreabout this.
Someone's sweetheart was killed by robbers while driving a gig taxi.To prevent such things from happening again, perse calls for imposingsurveillance on millions of customers,in case one might be a thief.Of course we would like to stop these robberies, but massivesurveillance is itself a bigger injustice.
The vinyl chloride spill from Norfolk Southern's preventable trainwreck is part of the consequences of our massiveuse of plastic. Its costs — in lives and hundreds of millions of dollars -- are partof the cost of plastic, which the plastic manufacturers don't have to pay.Instead, we all pay.
Mexico is trying to end the use of genetically modified corn andthe the weedkiller glyphosate. The US is applyingharsh pressureto prevent this.In effect, the US is once again acting asthe tool of specific bigbusinesses.
Moderna's "Deadly" Profits Show Public FundingMust Have Strings Attached.The US used to attach strings to research funding -- all discoveriesmade by university research done with government funding had to bemade available for the government to use as it saw fit. This waseliminated by the Bayh-Dole bill, which sought to convince universitiesto be aggressive about licensing whatever they can get control over.That's why nowadays writing software for a university is usuallyalmost as bad as working writing software for a company.
Wage increases account for 18% of Australia's inflation. Increases inbusiness profitsaccount for 69% of it.In Australia as in the US and Britain, the central bank is run byneoliberals who refuse to recognize these facts.
A play about the history andfailure of the Lehman Brothers bankharps on their Jewish religion in a way that fuels antisemitism.The fundamental falsehood which introduces the antisemitism into thisstory is the idea that grasping for money and disregarding the harm youdo is specifically a Jewish practice. If we look around today, wefind many billionaires who crush large numbers of people to get moremoney. In the US, a fraction are Jews, but most are Christians.For a while in medieval Europe, bankers were mainly Jews — simplybecause Christian churches called it a sin to led money at interest.European rulers wanted bankers, and with Christians self-excluded,only Jews could take up the trade. But churches dropped that rule afew hundred years ago. The association between banking and Jews is athing of the past.
Bangladesh shuts downmain opposition newspaper.The world has been suffering from a rash of repression in the past fewyears.
The endless round ofsequels, offshoots, remakesand "modernizations"is a system for magecorporations to keep on extracting money with old"properties" whose authors died many years ago.
Feral hybrid pigs that are hard to track, and kill wild animals,threatenecological harm in the US.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to continuefull support for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
The NTSB said that the Ohio train derailment was "100% preventable"and that it was the fault of company practices and policies.Railroad workers propose several precautions for the US to require forrailroads.They include Ensure sufficient staffing to do the job properly, efficiently,and safely, with all trains operating with a minimum of a two-personcrew; Cap train length and weight at a reasonable level to mitigate theincreased likelihood of breakdowns, train separations, andderailments; Implement adequate and proper maintenance and inspections oflocomotives and rail cars, tracks and signals, wayside detectors, andother infrastructure; and Standardize ample training and time off without the harassment ofdraconian attendance policies.
Perhaps we should require a safety inspection for each train carafter a certain number of hours of operation.
Parts of US see earliest spring conditions on record: 'Climate[disaster] playing out in real time'.
Italy has arrested a refugee rescue ship operated by Médecins SansFrontiers, trying to impose artificial requirements that make itessentially impossible to operate such ships.
Fish caught in Michigan rivers are not safe to eat, due to the levelsof PFAS contamination.
Ohio governor DeWine has so much ties to the railroads that one mustwonder whether he is serious when he talks about holding them responsiblefor the vinyl chloride leak.
The original versions of Roald Dahl's books will continue to be published,alongside the new supersensitive versions.I think this is a good compromise.
'Biden and Yellen Should Be Ashamed': US Picks Ex-Wall StreetExecutive to Lead World Bank.Biden seems to be moving further into the plutocratist camp.
*Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan proposed a bill to cut the militarybudget by $100 Billion.
A Jewish member of the Labour Party objects to Labour's propensity tobrand Jews as "antisemitic."
Groups Launch World's First-Ever Climate Lawsuit Against a CommercialBank [for funding fossil fuel projects].
Twitter gave advertisers the phone numbers users had specified for two-factorauthentication, and advertisers used them to identify the users.
The US cheats would-be visitors by making them pay to schedule a visaappointment, and only then showing them that no appointments areavailable and that they can't get a refund for the useless payment.The article describes various other absurd restrictions that theauthor encountered when he sought to go to the US to join a boat raceto Cuba. But proving that those restrictions are absurd is a subtlerquestion. To show that "Pay to find out that you can't have anappointment" is viciously absurd is open-and-shut.
Putin's fake news machine is buying special promotion on Twitter.Musk has made his support for Putin clear enough already.
Australians: demand to be allowed to refuse to have your personalmedical records stored in a state-wide database.
Car pollution kills more Australians than crashes, new research finds. Indeed, pollution seems to kill 10 times as many as crashes.It would be interesting to see a comparison based on the total numberof years of life lost to each cause.I am also curious about similar comparisons for other countries, inparticular the US.
A new "luxury" car will come equipped to load various nonfree softwarecr…apps.Some of them will distract the driver by showing video. Don't use thatwhile the car is moving!Since the car has a camera that faces the people in the car, and it iscontrolled by nonfree software, I expect that sooner or later thecar's delivered software will make use of that against those people'sinterests and will, and they will be unable to stop it.
The Tories' plan to handle the growing backlog in asylum applicationsis to give applicants 20 days to answer a questionnaire in legalEnglish, without legal advice or translation help, and no chance ofclarifying errors.I'm tempted to joke that this seems designed to fail. Alas, withTories involved, I have a feeling it is precisely true.
Google is considering how to respond to a Canadian bill that wouldrequire Google and other platforms to negotiate deals with Canadianpublishers for permission to retransmit their articles. One possibleapproach would be to refuse to carry the articles covered by this law.Google has decided to show Canadians what that would feel like, bymaking all those articles unavailable to some Canadian users.I have no opinion on whether this law would do good or harm. If itonly restricts giant companies such as Google, I don't see anythingoutrageous about it.Ms Scaffidi's comment uses misleading words. The law does not requireGoogle to do anything for the journalists who write news articlesGoogle retransmits. Rather, it requires Google to make a deal withthe news publishers that the journalists submit articles to. Thatmay wall entail paying those publishers more money, but how much ofthat would trickle down to human journalists is a question to beinvestigated.If Canada dropped the trickle-down plans and changed this law todirectly support individual journalists, not only news businesses,I would support it more.Please don't refer to these news articles as "content" -- that termdisparages all works of writing and art.
Indian Dalits are becoming successful in India ascomedians in the teethof caste prejudice.I watched a few minutes of Manaal Patil's show on invidio.us (a proxyfor Youtube, which I cannot access directly because it requires usersto run nonfree software). He made me laugh. I would have watched therest but I have to work.
The UK charges environmental protesters with "causing a public nuisance",then forbids them in court from explainingwhy this "crime" was necessaryfor the public good.
Putin aiming to divide USpublic opinion with nuclear treaty pullout,experts say.It's more of what we've seen several times: "I'm a lunatic withnuclear weapons, so do whatever I say!"
Biden said that he gives Israel total support in its confrontationwith Iran. Since Israel is on the brink of war with Iran, in effectthis saysthe US is willing to joinin that war.That risks disaster. It could even start a nuclear war.I doubt that Iranians who have protested since last fall will declarethemselves enemies of their country; I think it is more likely tounite them with the regime.
The US has done nothing to hold Dubya accountable for using lies to startan unjust warby attacking Iraq.
An Israeli raid on Nabluskilled 10 Palestinians and injured over 100.Many were noncombattants.The occasion for this bloody attack was that two Palestinians accusedof belonging to a real terrorist group were at that location.That can't justify attacking so many.
Biden's newrules for asylum— which directly contradict US law — seemlike they were inspired by the wrecker.People have noticed the hardship imposed by requiring each applicantto carry a snoop-phone that can run a special nonfree app. They havenoticed the monetary hardship caused by the price of getting such aphone plus internet access. I have nothing to add to those validpoints. But I do notice other injustices, which are common in the formof computing that the US demands of them.Such a phone is full of unjust nonfree software, and the app isnonfree also. Any nonfree program is inherently an injustice towhoever runs it, and is likely to be malware. That app does facialrecognition. I wonder what other malicious functionalities itimplements.I conjecture that there is no need at all for that facial recognition.If a migrant gets an appointment to meet with a human agent, the agentcan check the migrant's identity against perpapers then.It would not be terribly hard for the US to set up kiosks in variousparts of Mexico where people can do the required communication knowingthat a kiosk has no ability to snoop on them through their owncomputers, or mess with them in any other way.
Trump’s environmental rollbacksin focus on visit to Ohio toxic train site.That's because some of them contributed directly to this accident.
Malcolm X’s family tosue FBI, NYPD and other agenciesfor covering upinformation about his assassination.
US citizens: call for the US to adopt a Windfall Profit Taxto respond to record-breaking profits for Big Oil.
Turkey fines broadcasters for coverage critical of earthquake response[by Turkey's government].
US citizens: call on Congress to fund universal school meals.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Norfolk Southern railroad has yielded to public criticism for itsavoidable derailment by starting to negotiate about paid sick leave.The workers deserve that, but meanwhile, the rest of the countrydeserves safe trains.
Corpse fetishism is spreading to Europe. The inhabitants of an islanddemanded "return" of skulls of medieval monks, which they claimed hadbeen "stolen" by academics doing research.The worst part is, the university which had them gave in to thedemand.If this sort of fetishism were applied to older remains — as somewish to do — all our remnants of Neanderthal humans would be lost toscience, each bone "returned" to someone or other.Imagine if that had happened 30 years ago. We would have been deniedthe chance to determine that the Neanderthals were among our ancestorsand were the same species as we.The only way human remains can contribute to the world, to the good ofpresent and future humans, is by being studied scientifically. Theold bones have more to teach us. We should not let anyone's fetishisminterfere.
Former attorney general in [Arizona] withheld evidence debunking 2020election fraud [claims by the bullshitter's followers].
Millions of Americans have been compelled to move by the early stages of climate breakdown. In the future it is likely to be tens of millions, and many of them willdie early as a result.But most of them will desperately seek housing in places they cansurvive, and they will find shortages everywhere, because of bad planningof housing construction.A few weeks ago I passed through the "Seaport District" in Boston,where expensive new skyscrapers are being built at an absurdly lowaltitude above sea level. You can see this for yourself since you canlook at the buildings and the sea together. What public funds willthe owners demand for protection against the danger they brought onthemselves?
- Anti-Defamation League says all extremist killings last year linked to rightwing extremism and a high number to white supremacy.*
Some US officials propose to make it a crime to spread election misinformation.In an abstract sense, that could be legitimate and useful, but I caneasily envision Republicans' using this law against people who tellthe truth.
The UK undercover cops that infiltrated nonviolent left-wing protest groups by forming phony couples acted from an ingrained and systemicattitude of sexism.
- Pollutants known as "forever chemicals"… have been found at high levels at thousands of sites across the UK and Europe,*
Recycling plastic into fuel makes sense in principle, but it canrelease highly carcinogenic pollution.If the recycled fuel is safe, I would not criticize it for failing tobe "biofuel." In fact, much real biofuel does not actually reduceemissions, because of the fertilizer used to grow the plants.
A lawyer argues in a Florida court that a fetus is the victim of "unlawful and illegal detention" because the pregnant mother-to-beis in jail.I think the lawyer aims to demonstrate that it is absurd to treat afetus as a person.To continue the absurdity, the same argument could be applied toconfining a fetus to a single womb.
A US court ruled that the relatives of people killed by the September2001 terrorist attacks cannot take the funds that were seized from the Bank of Afghanistan. Those funds belong to the Afghan people.
The revisions in Roald Dahl's books go much further than removinginsults. They seem to try to impose new taboos on some words and some ideas.
Cambridge University students voted in favor of making all eateries on campus vegan.They did not request more support for vegan students. On thecontrary, the request is to make it difficult for other students notto be vegan.
Hundreds of Thousands March in Madrid to 'Defend the Health Service' From Privatization.The Spanish medical system is national in scope, and the government ofMadrid can't change its structure, but seems to be running it into theground much as the Tories do in the UK.
Rail Workers Say They Knew the Train That Derailed in East Palestine[, Ohio,] Was Dangerous.
A test of a 4-day work week in the UK: out of 61 companies that tried it,56 decided to continue it.
How railroad lobbyists persuaded senators to let the railroads keepusing old-fashioned brakes instead of superior modern breaks.
Biden Implored to Avert "Carbon Bomb" by Blocking [construction of new] Texas Gulf Oil Terminals.
Seattle has banned discrimination on the basis of caste.This is important. As the population of Indians in the US increases,their traditional bigotry, and their modern organized bigotry (led byIndia's ruling party, the Hindu nationalist party), have been gaining ininfluence.
Biden will try to impose the same extreme restrictions on asylum seekers thatthe bully tried to impose.Lawsuits blocked the policy before, but that doesn't mean it willhappen again. The case could go to the Supreme Court, which now hasmore members appointed by the bully.
Did Five Supreme Court Justices Lie to Congress About Abortion Views?It looks that way.
UN torture prevention body cancels visit to Australia after access tofacilities blocked.
Sanders proposed to block US aid to Israel because of itsanti-democratic moves and its increasing repression of Palestinians.
Stronger El Niño events may speed up irreversible melting of Antarctic ice,research finds.
Paper calls for assessment of impact ofsound pollution on cetaceans before firms allowed to mine sea bed.
London ship insurers accused of enabling fishing vessels to "godark", turning off their tracking devices,probably to fishinterritorial waters or in protected zones.
Banning ideas and authors isnot a "culture war" — it's fascism.This explains the purpose and operation of DeMentis's censorship lawin a way I have not seen before. I did not know the work of theauthors that were removed from the AP African American studies course;this article explains the significance of their work and thesystematic purpose of censoring them.In the past, we could count on the Supreme Court to reject censorshiplaws. I have no confidence in the right-wingers who have captured itto reject the new ones.Nonetheless, to teach that a person is guilty of past crimes committedby others due to sharing their demographic characteristics is itselfan injustice, a form of oppression. It is also unnecessary, if thegoal is to teach people to recognize the wrong and reject it. YoungAmericans are not guilty of the crimes of previous generations, butcould easily fall into a life of similar crimes.We should teach about those past crimes, not to inculcate a feeling ofguilt into those who "look like" those who committed them, but to showthem what they _might_ become if they are not careful. Instead ofteaching, "You were born guilty of that," we should teach, "Watch out— you could become guilty of that. Right-wing extremists such asDeMentis would be glad to get you started."I wish the artlcle were not marred by showing the fashionable symbolof left-wing bigotry: capitalizing the word "black" and not "white".
Banning ideas and authors isnot a "culture war" — it's fascism.This explains the purpose and operation of DeMentis's censorship lawin a way I have not seen before. I did not know the work of theauthors that were removed from the AP African American studies course;this article explains the significance of their work and thesystematic purpose of censoring them.In the past, we could count on the Supreme Court to reject censorshiplaws. I have no confidence in the right-wingers who have captured itto reject the new ones.Nonetheless, to teach that a person is guilty of past crimes committedby others due to sharing their demographic characteristics is itselfan injustice, a form of oppression. It is also unnecessary, if thegoal is to teach people to recognize the wrong and reject it. YoungAmericans are not guilty of the crimes of previous generations, butcould easily fall into a life of similar crimes.We should teach about those past crimes, not to inculcate a feeling ofguilt into those who "look like" those who committed them, but to showthem what they _might_ become if they are not careful. Instead ofteaching, "You were born guilty of that," we should teach, "Watch out-- you could become guilty of that. Right-wing extremists such asDeMentis would be glad to get you started."I wish the artlcle were not marred by showing the fashionable symbolof left-wing bigotry: capitalizing the word "black" and not "white".
US citizens: call on Biden to issue an executive order thatguarantees the rail workers the sick leave pay they deserve.
US citizens: call on Biden not to try to reimpose the wrecker's ban ongiving asylum to people who migrated through some other country.
In Syria and Turkey, the earthquakes have left millions of people homeless.I would expect most of them have no food. How can the world provide foodfor them?
A planned merger of two giant railroads would facilitate moving tarsands oil by train.Tar sands oil is highly pollutingand corrosive;we must not allow it to be transported in any fashion.
Robert Reich comments on how plutocracy defeated Jimmy Carter.We should not forget Reagan's scheming with Iran to keepmake Carter fail in making a deal to free the US embassy hostages.
Modi's tax fraud accusations against the BBC are likely to be a fabrication.He has a history of using accusations of tax fraud to crush news mediathat criticize him.
Scientists warn of many dangerous climate feedback loops.Current plans to mitigate climate change may be inadequate.In total, the researchers identified 27 amplifying (positive)feedbacks, 7 dampening (negative) feedbacks, and 7 uncertainfeedbacks.Only fools would depend on precisely how far we are from the climatecliff. The wise thing to do is to work harder to stop us before wefind out the hard way.
Ancient Khmer jewelry from the Angkor period still exists, and wasstolen in Cambodia. The US has sent it back to Cambodia.I hope that those returning these objects will photograph them firstand post the photos for all to see. It would be an outrageouswrong to treat works a thousand years old as copyrighted.
(satire) Officials Champion Ohio Train Derailment As DeregulationSuccess Story. 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.
Pakistan is on the edge of collapse -- economic collapse, politicalcollapse, and climate collapse. Since it has nuclear weapons, it is hardto tell what would happen in the event of such a collapse.
Israel's government "legalized" several colonies in Palestinianterritory, that were made in violation of Israel's laws. In effect,it says that Palestinians have no rights -- Israelis can steal landand the government will say "Well done."
Florida High School Athletic Association removes all questions aboutmenstruation from required medical evaluation form.People suspect that the requirement for women athletes to answer thosequestions was part of a Republican scheme to cause trouble for women:either for those who are trans, or for those who get pregnant, orfor those who have abortions.
Republicans in many US states are proposing bills to restrict citizens'ability to pass initiative petitions.Once they have seized the power to rig a state's elections of officials,initiative petitions are the citizens only way to take back control fromthe Republican tyranny and restore some democracy.
Wage theft, security issues and health problems on the rise after AT&T,Verizon and T-Mobile outsource retail stores.There should be strict limits on outsourcing jobs to a subcontractorin the absence of real competition.
Buttigieg Pretends He's Powerless To Reduce Derailment Risks.The article explains that there are some wrinkles, but there are waysaround them for some cases.
India enjoyed a free and vibrant media. Narendra Modi's brazenattacks are a catastrophe.
Here's a cheery list of possible commercial applications for machinelearning systems (referred to in the article as "AI"). How manyinjustices, real or probable, can you spotHere's a hint: John Deere tractors, famous for being designed to maketheir "owners" helpless to fix them independently, collect data aboutparts of the field, and can use them to improve efficiency ofproduction. John Deere keeps that data, so this becomes yet anotherway of subjugating users (farmers, in the case).Professor Sussman, who works on artificial intelligence at MIT,reminds us that machine learning systems are no smarter thanDissociated Press. He reserves the term "artificial intelligence"for systems that understand what they are talking about and know whatthe facts are.
Australia once again has a legal system which makesdistinctionsbetween people based on race. Ironically, those of indigenous descentare first-class Australians this time, and the descendants ofimmigrants from the past 250 years are the second-class Australians.Australia, and the people who defend this policy, do not use thoseterms, of course. But that shoe fits the policy. The practice ofcapitalizing the words "indigenous" and "aboriginal" underlines thekind of distinction between these classes.The British colonists (mainly convicts who were sent there aspunishment) took the land by force, and killed many aboriginals in theprocess. Then they set up a society in which indigenous people weresystematically denied most or all of the rights of citizenship. Thispersisted until the late 20th century.Justice calls for compensation for those wrongs — but not by creatinginequality of rights once again.I agree that the way Kuster is being treated is unjust. However,dividing Australians into first and second class is not the only wayAustralia can change its legal system to correct that.One possible solution would be to generalize this new right so as tobe applcable to all people whose background is associated withAustralia — not solely to people whose background is indigenous.Another solution that would apply to Kuster is suggested by the issuethat the US DACA program partially addresses: people who were broughtt the US as children and grew up there but are not citizens. Theyshould have a way to become citizens. Australia should have such apolicy too, and that would make Kuster a citizen.
The Guardian's economics editor can see thatmachine learning systemscan eliminate millions of fairly good jobs,forcing millions to joinother millions in dead-end poverty.But he won't look for solutions outside the narrow capitalist system.Trying to train people for better jobs won't do any good if the betterjobs are disappearing too.For the next few decades, we might make a lot more good jobs:construction work to replace our carbon-dependent systems, and medicaljobs to care for increasing numbers of old and infirm. Those jobsneed to be funded by the public — which implies adding more socialismto our society.In the long term, to quote a man who spoke at a meeting in Cambridgedecades ago, "If the robots make it, we gotta take it!" We must taxthe rich and give every person a decent life.
People who are frantic will propose widepread mistreatment to dealwith occasional injustices. Here is an example:to protect gig ridedrivers from robberies(which occasionally escalate into killings) byrequiring every passenger to prove per identity with an officialdocument.
A person whose SO has been killed by criminals can easily demand amassive system of injustice to reduce such crimes. Even, as in thisexample, to demand it as an afterthought added to other measures thatought to be sufficient by themselves.
A person in that situation can lose sight of the enormity of thedemand perse is making on millions of others.
One of the main injustices of gig ride dis-services as they are today— one of the reasons that they merit the term "dis-services" — istracking passengers: they require passengers to identify themselves byusing cell phones and payment cards. Apparently robbers have a way toavoid being tracked; what can it be? Perhaps they steal phones andpayment cards to use for this. That is not an option for alaw-abiding person; our only way to protect ourselvss from trackingdis-services is to reject them entirely.
But even though these dis-services are unjust already, changes inpractices that make the tracking more strict and pervasive areimportant to fight against. Please join in.
Robert Reich explains howbillionaires use sports teamsto strongarmour governments to subsidize teams and dump the cost on the public.If your city's stadium is named after a big company, that shows thatits government was bought. Is your government still for salenowadays?
Santos whistleblower accuses company of covering up extent ofAustralian oil spill that killed dolphins.
Senate Democrats estimate that Republican budget cuts, if they shieldmilitary spending, "would amount toa 30% cut to all other federalprograms. That's a 30% cut to the [National Institutes of Health],opioid addiction and mental health treatment, housing assistance,child care and child nutrition, law enforcement and public safety,science and innovation, and veteran assistance programs."
An article begs us tosympathize with the artisanal fishersof Colombia,who catch endangered sharks.I do not sympathize. Preventing extinction must take precedence overjobs. The opposite conclusion, combined with human population growth,leads certainly to ecological disaster.Of course, putting and end to larger-scale fishing of protectedspecies has higher priority. With that achieved, will there be roomfor a little artisanal fishing of tollo sharks while still enablingtheir population to recover? That is a factual question and Colombiashould act according to the answer.
Spying on other countries, not limited to potential enemies, is normalpractice. The Chinese spy balloon wasnot a reason to go postal.I think it is unfortunate that the US does not have a way to forcedown a balloon without damaging it.
One example of a male trans-woman convicted ofrape has inspireddisproportionate fearamong women, and licensed hatred byantitransists, which in turn provokes fear among trans people.It is an unfortunate social breakdown; is there any way to unbreak this egg?
Starmer'sexclusion of the left from running for parliamentiseffectively a coup, as well as the direct contradiction of commitmentshe made when he ran for leader of Labour.In the US, progressive can win election via the (generallyplutocratist) Democratic Party because it can't simply veto them fromrunning in Democratic primaries. The plutocratists push hard against them, even dishonestly;nonetheless, in each election, the number of progressive Democrats inCongress increases. In the UK, apparently, such an approach insidethe Labour Party is impossible now because its leaders have thecentralized power to exclude them.I can't judge the election strategy questions, but in terms of the thecompetition between parties, it is clear that Corbyn should move tothe Green Party if it will accept him. Appealing for Starmer torelent would be a dead end; as long as they lock out any new leftcandidates, Corbyn would be nothing but an aging token, with no chanceof inspiring anyone else.
The prosecutor in Memphis was elected for criminal justice reform. Hedecided to release the video of Tyre Nichols's killing quickly, and tocharge the killers before that, so as to keep protests nonviolent.That succeeded. Here isan interview with him.He has set an example to judge other prosecutors against.
Israel revokes citizenship for Palestinians convictedof certain crimes,making them stateless.Some Arabs say that Israel should do the same thing to Jews who committhose crimes. I think that is backwards: it is wrong to make loss ofcitizenship a punishment.The tyrant ofNicaragua has revoked the citizenship of dissidentsandpolitical opponents.
Seattle (and nearby towns)' school systems asked thousands of students age 10 to 12 to fill out intimate questionnaires, collected from thestudents by a for-profit company.The article disregards, of course, the injustice of leading studentsto run nonfree software. The author is not aware of that underlyingissue which affects all school computing. See https://gnu.org/education/.The US government criterion for whether anonymized data that is"identifiable" is too lax. Even if a "a reasonable person in theschool community" could not determine who a record is about, verylikely Google or Palantir could.There is another side to this issue. Students entered informationabout important personal problems such as using drugs and bullying.Offering the students no help wouldn't be a good alternative.What is the right way to offer such students help with properconfidentiality?
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the Republican plan to defund the IRS and protect wealthy and corporate tax cheats.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: insist that incineration is not recycling.Here is the message I entered:
The plastics industry and the American Chemistry Council are pushinglegislation to reclassify incineration as "advanced recycling."That a dishonest statement to excuse a dishonest policy -- specificallyto evade the Clean Air Act laws that regulate incinerators. It wouldnot avoid the air pollution, only close the law's eyes to it.Please reject denial-ism and adopt policies to reduce the production ofplastic.
The "collateral murder" video is important not only because it showsUS soldiers cheerfully shooting Iraqi civilians, but because it showed that the Pentagon's description of the events was false.The US wants to imprison Julian Assange for showing the public thatvideo along with other facts about what the US did in its wars.Please show your support for him.Preventing Assange's extradition will not by itself eliminate thelong-term danger to freedom of the press in the US. That calls foroverturning or amending the Espionage Act so that it recognizes thatpublishing secrets about government crimes is not "spying", becausethe American public is not a foreign power. But defending Assangewill be a step towards that vital change.
Many Florida universities have sent Governor DeMentis data onstudents' requests for gender expression medical treatments. Studentsare campaigning to demand that the other universities not send any.I use the term "gender expression medical treatments" as a name whichdescribes the treatments in question without presupposing any opinionor judgment about them.
There is a foofaraw about reusing medical implants taken from corpses.What are the important issues here? Is it safe to reuse medical implants from a corpse?Might it carry germs? What criteria should be tested?> Can doctors verify that the implant is in good conditionand will last long enough?* Does it contain a computer running nonfree software?(That would be an injustice.)
However, the issue of "permission" should not arise — no more for thedeceased's implants than for per organs. Their only important use(aside from studying them for research) is to be put into anotherperson and help that person stay alive. No one should have the powerto veto that life-saving use.
Senator Scott has modified his drastic proposal to cancel each federallaw after 5 years, exempting Social Security, Medicare, and the wholemilitary budget. It would still cancel many other crucial federal programs if theRepublicans could block them from being passed again, so it wouldstill be a disaster. Consider the Voting Rights Act (what the SupremeCourt has not gutted).
The protests against Netanyahu's authoritarian plans for Israel havenot made a compromise with Arab citizens, so those are staying away.
Nationwide Federal Order Bars Starbucks From Firing Workers for Union Activity.I wonder what this order will do to Starbucks to stop it fromdisregarding the order and firing workers for union activityjust as it has done until now.
Steven Donziger: The Ohio spill of carcinogenic, toxic vinyl chlorideis a much bigger disaster than people realize; the gas will spread,and due to the fire, we don't know what chemicals it contains.The EPA is doing more to cover up the nature of the problem than toprotect people. He urges everyone to keep away from the area.He points to the need to give the EPA the power to punish large companiesenough that it hurts, so that it can take charge and protect public safetyrather than a company's profits.East Palestine Residents Told Water Was Safe After "Sloppy" Testing Paid for by Rail Company.We should take the response to train accidents out of the railroads'hands, and have the NTSB do it — then tax the railroads to pay thecosts.
Elizabeth Warren and Katie Porter accuse the big US egg producers ofusing the price increase caused by bird flu as a smokescreen foran additional raise in prices just because they want to gouge.
Arundhati Roy: Modi's model is at last revealed for what it is:violent Hindu nationalism underwritten by big business.
Congress is considering a bill to prohibit the US from ever againimprisoning people because of the demographic groups they belong to.
DeMentis passed a law to negate local democracy in Floridato help an exploitative local scheme succeed.I consider this a kind of corruption.
London's Science Museum has signed contracts with large oil companies(to mount exhibits) in which the museum promises not to say anything thatwould make those companies look bad. For instance, not to talk abouttheir global heating.The museum's management now says it "has decided" not to sign suchclauses any more, but that doesn't tell us how many such contracts arestill in force, nor prevent it from making an exception next month ornext year.It should be a crime for a museum presenting factual subjects to agreeto let any other organization decide what it can or cannot say,unless those decisions are published.
Iran is trying to mount terrorist attacks against Iranian journalistsin exile in the UK.
The climate "doom loop": the cost of coping with today's damage fromthe early stages of climate breakdown is interfering with the steps topreventIf it is too late to save everyone, and all the things important tosave, the long term must take precedence.Taxing the rich more might make it possible to save everyone andeverything. If so, we had better push hard to do that while thepossibility still exists.
Salman Rushdie and others have condemned the changes that thepublisher has recently made in Roald Dahl's books.The publisher says that the changes are so that Dahl's books "continueto be enjoyed by all children today," but I think it is more a matterof what some believe children are supposed to think.The actual changes I have seen appear to be minor, and I don't thinkthey ruin the books. What arouses my ire is the idea of revising thewritings of the past to expunge all ideas that have been declared++ungood. It reminds me of when students demanded to do in GeorgeWashington High School in San Francisco.It also reminds me of Chinese censorship.
Leaked files from the reputation-whitewashing company Eliminaliashowed that it made fraudulent copyright complaints to get negativestories taken down, and used fake accounts to flood the net withfake positive stories, drowning out the criicism.
New Zealand suffered widespread destruction from a cyclone's heavy rain,which destroyed many homes, roads and civic infrastructure.It will have to rebuild very differently.
A hate movement in the UK is stirring up hatred against asylumseekers. Those under its influence respond to any inconvenience orproblem by assuming asylum seekers are to blame. Often this is false, but they don't bother to check.
Anthony Mitchell died in an Alabama jail of hypothermia. Hisrelatives accuse jail thugs of punishing him by locking him in thefreezer, which killed him.
Allegations that the corrupter and his relatives profited directly from corrupt dealings with Crown Prince Bone Saw.This corruption, if proven, would justify putting them in jail.But it is not as bad as the damage caused by the political chaosand dishonesty that the corrupter unleashed on the US.
The EU has banned using lead shot to hunt birds. The lead waspoisoning large numbers of other birds that were not being hunted.
Oxfam Calls Updated EU Tax Haven Blacklist Nothing But a "Joke List". "Zero- and low-tax-rate countries should be automatically blacklisted,"said one tax expert. "E.U. countries should not get a free pass."*
(satire) Archaeologists Discover Early Humans Developed Shelter To Provide Passive Income Stream For Landlords.
Starmer ordered the Labour Party to refuse to let Corbyn run againin the next general election. His supporters are not going to yieldmeekly.
The president/tyrant of Tunisia has started arresting opposition leadersand people who can influence the public.
Constructing the Obama Center in a black neighborhood of Chicago issupposed to benefit people there, but the actual effect (even beforethe center is built) is rapid gentrification -- they are compelled tomove away.
Fox News hosts thought Trump’s election fraud claims were ‘total BS’, court filings show, while endorsing those same lies while on the air.
Peru’s ‘racist bias’ drove lethal police response to protests,Amnesty says. [The state] permitted "excessive and lethal use of force" against indigenous groups.
Mississippi's Republican government has created a special court for prosecution of crimes in part of the capital, Jackson, which will haveno accountability to the (majority black) inhabitants of that area.This could be a plan to institute racist "justice."
The Taliban have banned contraceptives in Afghanistan — perhaps somekinds and not all.The Christian Taliban that threaten the US have similar goals, and sooneror later will try to impose similar laws in the states they control.
A DC thug whose job included monitoring suspected criminal groups suchas the Proud Boys gave them information about the suspicions againstthem, shortly before Jan 6.
Protests calling for "death to the dictator" continue in Irandespite the killing of over 500 protesters.
The US used to put asylum seekers from Venezuela in a private(unaccountable) immigration prison and tortured them with sleepdeprivation and other sadisms, hoping they will break and agree to be deported.The new system is to deport them immediately to Mexico, so they don'tget a hearing. The only way they can ask for asylum in the US is torequest it at a distance — probably running nonfree software — andbe prepared to pay the cost of a commercial flight to the US.
Tesla union busting: the company fired 30 workers in response to aunion drive.One thing the workers demand is a decrease in surveillance. I wish thecustomers would demand the same thing.
Google gave publicity to a software project designed by Aramco employees to use Google servers to find and repair methane leaks.Did Google do good, or harm?Repairing the leaks is good but small. Helping Aramco distractattention from its far bigger activities, which accelerate globalheating, is harmful. Which one is more important?The fact that Google specifically acted to get publicity for Aramco'stoken emissions reductions, which don't compensate for its emissionsincreases, suggests that this is misleading greenwashing, for Googleas well as Aramco.The article linked to describes other ways in which Google'smisrepresents its assistance to Aramco and other planet roastersto deny that they exacerbate global heating.
Thugs repressing protesters at Raytheon's office in Arlington, Virginia, toldthe protesters that Raytheon owns the sidewalk so no one can protest there.In the meeting that they protested, all elements of themilitary-industrial-media complex with so thoroughly mixed up that thedistinction becomes artificial.
A right-wing billionaire donates to Republican candidates first of all,but as a forward line of defense he donates to plutocratist Democratsalso.He also supports fascists in Israel.
Pesticide Use and Climate Crisis Locked in 'Vicious Cycle' Backed by Polluting Industries.
Another Norfolk Southern train has had a derailment and some .cars wereoverturnedUS railroads have prioritized profit over safety; it the governmenthas the responsibility to make them stop. Specifically,Transportation Secretary Buttigieg had better get moving.Proper safety precautions would require giving workers time to think,rather than making them rush, and giving them sick pay so they won'tbe doing safety checks while not quite up to it.Perhaps the US should establish a legal requirement for railroadworkers to report certain sorts safety flaws in trains directly to theNTSB. It would be harder for railroad bosses to pressure workers tokeep quiet if keeping quiet is a criminal offense. Indeed, askingstaff to keep quiet should be a criminal offense too.
Many hobbyists launch very small "pico balloons" (smaller than a nanoballoon would be) which carry a GPS receiver plus a radio transmitterto say "here I am".But only in daylight, because batteries would be too heavy to carry.It is plausible that the balloons that the US recently shot down werepico balloons. Some of them have drifted around the Earth severaltimes.
Republicans in Congress want to continue the wrecker's tax cuts for the rich,which currently are supposed to last only until 2025.
Yes, Wall Street Would Kill Your Granny for a Few Extra Bucks.That may be an exaggeration. I don't think a big company's CEOwould bother killing one granny even for a thousand dollars.Perse would call that "small potatoes" and look for wayskill thousands of grannies for millions of dollars.
Findings in Georgia Trump report could be enough to bring criminal charges.And it looks like the DA of Fulton County is investigatingstate-level charges of perjury.
Bernie Sanders: Now Is the Time to Defeat the Insatiable Greed of the Prescription Drug Industry.
Biden acknowledged that the three balloons shot down most recently werenot surveillance balloons and were not Chinese.One of them seems to have been launched by an American group of hobbyists.I recommend a system for high-altitude balloons to carry radio transmitters toidentify themselves and who owns them.
Democrats in the New York State senate rejected Governor Hochul'sright-wing nominee to the state supreme court.I applaud this decision, but does not erase the wrong she did bynominating such a person. If she runs for reelection, voters shoulddemand that she come clean about this.
Sanders Says HisNew Bill to Raise Teacher PayCould Be Fully Funded by Taxing Rich Estates.
In California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York,Maryland, and Washington,state legislators are pushing to taxmillionaires more. The campaign is looking for legislators who wantto do this in other states. I am curious about their target for the highest tax bracket,which is not stated in the article.Massachusetts voters (including me) voted for a higher tax on highincomes in the November 2022 election.
Sanders Says HisNew Bill to Raise Teacher PayCould Be Fully Funded by Taxing Rich Estates.
In California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York,Maryland, and Washington,state legislators are pushing to taxmillionaires more. The campaign is looking for legislators who wantto do this in other states. I am curious about their target for the highest tax bracket,which is not stated in the article.Massachusetts voters (including me) voted for a higher tax on highincomes in the November 2022 election.
Biden nominated James Cavallaro for the Inter-American Commission onHuman Rights,then withdrew the nomination after seeing how Cavallarocriticized Israel's human rights record.That position has nothing to do with Israel, butwhat Professor Cavallaro said about Israel is valid.As for Jeffries, what Cavallaro said about Jeffries seems plausibleand I suppose Cavallaro spoke based on his knowledge.It was posted before he was selected as the House Democrats' leader.
In California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York,Maryland, and Washington,state legislators are pushing to taxmillionaires more. The campaign is looking for legislators who wantto do this in other states. I am curious about their target for the highest tax bracket,which is not stated in the article.Massachusetts voters (including me) voted for a higher tax on highincomes in the November 2022 election.
The Thwaites glacier is melting from below — the water under it is hotter than freezing.If it melts, that will raise sea level by two feet.
Millions of [US] children are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage starting in April.And millions of US adults as well.Extension of Medicaid was started in 2020 with bipartisan supportbecause Covid-19 alarmed the Republicans into feeling they had to helppeople. Now they want to undo that as part of their War on [peoplein] Poverty.
Journalist Christo Grozev wrote about Putin's plot to poison Alexei Navalny.A documentary about this is up for an award in London, but he cannot attend:he and his family have been banned from attending.In effect, they are being treated as terrorists.
Oregon is considering a bill to allow victims of organizedintimidation to sue the intimidators.The idea is to discourage right-wing bullying.
US railroad workers call for nationalization of the US railroads,to end the mismanagement of the few major railroad corporations.
India accuses BBC of tax evasion amid Modi documentary row.I won't argue that a large corporation such as the BBC is beyond suspicion,but the fact that the accusation is being made now leads me to suspectthat Modi is using this to repress criticism of his regime.Even if the accusation is true, Modi is probably using it forpolitical motives rather than for legitimate motives.
The Department of Justice is arguing in the Supreme Court toinvalidate old state laws that allow a corporation to be sued inPennsylvania (for example) if it does business in Pennsylvania.A few weeks ago, Biden protected the railroads from giving workerssick leave. He seems too close to railroads.
There is no such thing as "immunity debt" for an individual. The immune systemdoes not require "exercise" to keep functioning.For society, there is a kind of infection backlog. Normally everybaby gets infected by RSV before age two. So there is a normal rateof first infections of RSV, some fraction of which require treatment.When babies are kept more isolated, many of them don't catch RSV atthe usual age. That creates a backlog of babies who are yet toexperience that infection.When the isolation ends, basically all those babies catch it in ashort time. The infection causes the same results as usual, but thenumber who get infected per month is higher than usual.After a while, all those babies have had RSV and the temporaryisolation has no lasting effects. At least, not due to RSV.
Alonzo Bagley was maimed by Louisiana thugs who arrested in 2018, andsued them. This year a thug shot him and killed him, gratuitously.The thug is being prosecuted. I wonder why he is accused of"negligent" homicide — can firing a gun at a person be mere"negligence"?
The EPA needs to take care so that its new renewable fuel standarddoes not backfire and encourage use of certain fossil fuels.The planet roasters are once again trying to encourage investment inmore use of certain fuels which are only partly renewable, and doingso by exaggeration.
China is using its naval and air power as a basis for threats of skirmishes.Just recently it provoked a small skirmish with a Philippine transport ship.For some decades, China has been building bases on islands in theSouth Chine Sea, which various countries claim. The Philippinesreplies in kind by building an artificial base on a reef.That set the scene for the skirmish.I expect China calculates that it can attack Philippine ships withlasers. and the Philippines won't dare retaliate because China's navyis more powerful. The article does not mention that any one waspermanently injured, but it creates a strategic quandary.
The Corporate Weaponization of Government:it starts from the idea that corporations have the rights of people.
Report Urges Capping US Prison Sentences at 20 Years to End MassIncarceration.Long sentences are not the only cause of excessive imprisonment in theUS, but it's an angle to try.
Planet roasters spend lots of money on advertising in antisocial mediaplatforms, campaigning to delay decarbonization.
Bank Lobbyists Hired by Congress to Oversee Banking Regulations.If those ex-lobbyists are honorable and loyal to their new employer,they might use their inside knowledge to do a very good job. ButI think that is too much to hope for.
Musk reportedly told engineers to modify the Twitter software so thatmore people would actually look at his tweets.
Senator Sanders asked if it is "morally acceptable that tens ofthousands of people die each year in this country because they cannotafford the medicine their doctors prescribe, while at the same time,the drug companies make billions of dollars in profits."
(satire) Baby Paranoid After Discovering Parents Bugged His Crib. 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.
A report describes the range of repression that queer women face ashuman rights defendants, all around the world.
Public-Interest Champion Gigi Sohn Faces More False Attacks as HerLong-Overdue FCC Confirmation Moves Through the Senate.
Flowers and trees blooming up to 3 weeks earlier than normal in theEastern US.February is normally the depths of winter, but for two days it has been60° outside my home in Boston. This is very dangerous.
More about Netanyahu's threat to Israel's democracy, and the protests that aimto resist.
(satire) No One Has Heart To Tell Man That They Are All Figments OfHis Untethered Mind. 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.
Paris is pushing very hard to increase the number of apartments for residents,taking steps to convert office buildings into residences, to tax second homes,and to restrict short-term rentals of apartments.
HSBC is serving China's repression by refusing refugees from Hong Kongaccess to the money they deposited in that bank.The article claims that HDBC fabricates excuses to refuse to acknowledgethat they are the owners of their accounts. HSBC says it is obeying aChinese law. Either way, the UK (and potentially also the US) can punish itfor this, since it operates in those countries.
The EPA needs to take care so that its new renewable fuel standarddoes not backfire and encourage use of certain fossil fuels.The planet roasters are once again trying to encourage investment inmore use of certain fuels which are only partly renewable, and doingso by exaggeration.China is provoking skirmishesChina is using its naval and air power as a basis for threats of skirmishes.Just recently it provoked a small skirmish with a Philippine transport ship.For some decades, China has been building bases on islands in theSouth Chine Sea, which various countries claim. The Philippinesreplies in kind by building an artificial base on a reef.That set the scene for the skirmish.I expect China calculates that it can attack Philippine ships withlasers. and the Philippines won't dare retaliate because China's navyis more powerful. The article does not mention that any one waspermanently injured, but it creates a strategic quandary.
There are protests again in Israel as the government moves to subordinate the Supreme Court to Parliament.
One month before Tyre Nichols arrest, activists made city councilpresentation over fears of violent traffic stops in Memphis.
Generations of Chinese, living all their lives under strict censorship,have not formulated a language with which to express disagreementwith an official position.
Nikki Haley doesn't talk as brashly as DeMentis, but progressivespoint to her record on policies and say she is as radical as the corruptor.
Government intervention to eliminate antisemitism (both real andmisidentified) from the Labour party has ended.I am sure there were real antisemites in the Labour party. But sincethis intervention was based on the incorrect IRHC statistical classification criterion, the denunciations also included critics ofIsrael's occupation who were not antisemites. This will eliminatemany non-racist progressives from the party. The party's unofficial policy of imposing non-progressive candidates will ensure that a Labourvictory will make only an incremental difference. Sure, it won'tbe as bad as Tories, but how will Britain do the rest of what it needs to do?The Labour Party will never help.
The Putin forces sent thousands of Ukrainian children (at least 6000) to brainwashing camps to inculcate Russian identity and loyalty toRussia.Some of them left with their parents' permission.Others were given no other way to leave the battlefield.Some were cut off from all further contact with their families.Some never came back.I cannot tell whether this literally includes only children, or minorsof all ages up to 18.
The NHS will pay a large sum to cure any British child of metachromatic leukodystrophy, a fatal genetic disorder, if the diagnosisis early enough for the cure to be effective.
The US has arrested more suspects in planning the murder of Haiti'sPresident Moïse. Moïse was effectively imposed by the US, but it is nonetheless proper to prosecute those who murdered him.
Australia is negotiating business-supremacy treaties with the EU, India, and China. Doing so is always dangerous, since thesetreaties can subordinate the country's democracy to foreignbusinesses.ISTR that Australia's previous government, which was right-wing, signedthe Trance-Pacific Partnershipwhich includes a noxious ISDS clause.Australia (and every country) must cancel the treaties that makethe country vulnerable to extortion by foreign businesses,
Proof that Pablo Neruda was murdered with poison.There is no information about who poisoned him, but we can presumethis was under the orders of dictator Pinochet, who overthrew thegovernment of Chile in association with the US government.
US citizens: call on the FTC to thoroughly investigate all aspects ofAmazon's medical treatment business for illegal monopoly-building.
Great Salt Lake is drying up; in roughly 5 years it will be dry, andits ecosystem will be dead. Then dust full of heavy metals will blowfrom the former lake bed, making people ill.
US citizens: Support efforts to reduce "junk fees" that make thingscost more than the advertised price.
US citizens: call on Congress and enforcement agencies to block Big Pharma mergers.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of Health and Human Services to stop COVID-19 vaccine price gouging.
(satire) Police Stop Black Civilian For Fitting Description Of Giant Fire-Breathing Reptile Terrorizing Tokyo.
Ohio suppression officers escalated a confrontation with TV reporterEvan Lambert step by step, up to attacking him, arresting him, andplacing charges against him.
Canadian federal thugs arrested news photographer Amber Bracken forcovering a protest. Now the magazine she was working for is suing the Canadian Mounted Policefor that. The RCMP has a reputation for aiding repression.
Obama's administration adopted a regulation requiring railroads to install better brakes, The corrupter eliminated it.Transportation Secretary Buttigieg ought to reinstate that regulation,but instead is working on weakening the regulations again.
Robert Reich explains how billionaires use sports teams to strongarm our governments to subsidize teams and the If your city's stadium is named after a big company, thatshows that its government was bought. Is it still for sale nowadays?-->
16 Biggest U.S. Grocery Retailers Failed on Forced Labor and Human Rights Abuses When Sourcing Tuna.
Sanders and some Democrats introduced a bill to fund Social Security through the rest of the 21st century, by taxing people with high incomesat the same rate as the rest of Americans.
The climate pledges of some of the world's largest companies areoften highly misleading, lack transparency, and fall well short of what's necessary to avert [climate disaster].
The head of the COP28 climate conference is, embarrassingly, the headof the UAE's state oil company. He plans to increase fossil fuel production.This goes beyond demonstrating that the UN climate conferences havebeen corrupted to the point where they are useless — it rubs thatin our faces.
Hundreds of Thousands March in Madrid to "Defend the Health Service" From Privatization.
Leaving the EU has been an economic disaster for the UK;there is nopossible doubt.But the biggest damage is to health, safetyand human rightsregulationsin the UK.
Turkey is arresting the builders of buildings that collapseddue to the earthquake.It may be true that Erdoğan is trying to distract attention from howbadly he has handled emergency aid for the survivors. However, thisis not a mere distraction. Turkey is earthquake-prone, so any givenbuilding has a substantial chance of suffering an earthquake sooner orlater. Strict enforcements of building codes is crucial for publicsafety. Better late than never.However,this isn't the first time that Erdoğan promisedbetter enforcement of building codes, after a deadly earthquake. The real challenge will be to carry outthe promise.
Radical [right-wing]Legislation Would Eliminate All FederalOversightof Natural Gas Exports.Raising the price of gas in the US is just the start of the problemsthat would cause. Big Oil will want to get that gas by fracking,which poisons water sources. And once Big Oil gets to build the wellsand the pipelines and the export terminals, it will demand to keeprunning them for decades.
Big tech companies arefiring lots of people even though they are makingrecord profitsbecause that is the fashion for big companies.
One difficulty with producing large amounts of hydrogen byelectrolysis is that it needs to uselarge amounts of fresh water.That won't be possible in an arid place such as the one California isbecoming.This problem is real, but not insurmountable with abundant renewableelectric generation -- plus desalination plants powered by thatelectricity.
Six months after Pakistan's great flood,millions of people's homes and landare still underwater.I suppose similar floods will happen again. Is there any form ofengineering project that would cause floods to drain faster in thefuture?
Samuel Alito’s Mom’sSatanic Abortion ClinicWelcomes You. It offers prescriptions for abortion medicines,as an act ofreligious devotion.
BP Extracts $29 Billion in Profits Out of American Consumers,Executives Vow to Give $2.75 Billion to Wealthy Shareholders.The last thing we should want is to make fossil fuel cheaper! What weought to do is tax those fossil fuels something like $25 billion.and divide that money mainly among poor Americans.
Summarizing how to decarbonize 95% of the world's energy needs in 6years using wind energy, water energy and solar energy.
A right-wing group that supports Israel's occupation policies hasaccused a Lebanese professor of "discrimination", saying that shediscriminated by refusing to accept their definition of antisemitism.If her actions fit that description, that does not make them wrong.What does or does not constitute discrimination is an objectivequestion and we must keep it objective.People of any group can well tell us about the forms thatdiscrimination against that group takes, and what the experience feelslike to them. The former is a matter of specific events which theysaw, and the second is a subjective matter of their feelings.However, no group in a free socirty can have the power to decide whatdoes or does not constitute discrimination against that group, becausein a society which prohibits discrimination in some situations, thatpower would be dictatorial power. The specific criterion fordiscrimination, where to draw the line, is a crucial moral questionwhich affects everyone's rights. Setting line too far to either sidecan cause injustice; indeed, setting it too far to either side cancause injustice _to you_. (You are part of some groups and youinteract with people in other groups.)The positioning of that line affects everyone's rights, so everyonemust have a say in it. We must abstract that definition from specificgroups so as to make a fair definition that is not biased towards oragainst certain specific groups.
Prickly pear cacti are taking over the slopes of the Alps as thewinter snow disappears.
Scientist witnesses for hire will deny scientific conclusions in theservice of denialism.
Why Defeating Hochul's Right-Wing Judicial Nominee Is ImportantBeyond New York.New York state voters, please help convince your state senators tofirmly resist any right-wing nominees Hochul makes to the statesupreme court.
US citizens: call on Congress to allow student loan debt to bedischarged through bankruptcy.It was possible to escape from student loan debt viabankruptcy until a law was passed specifically to prevent that, in the2000s.
US citizens: call on members of Congress to pledge never to vote tocut Social Security or Medicare under any circumstances.
"A growing threat to human health": we are ill-equipped for the dangers offungal infections.
ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell announced that they are scaling back plansto reduce their carbon pollution.They are making record profits but, being big corporations, they areready to kill billions of people (over the long term) to make billionsmore dollars.
Bird flu is evolving to infect various kinds of mammals,and those closer to infecting humans -- even millions of humans. Itcould evolve to be capable of causing a pandemic like the one in 1918/19.Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing to ensure that governments can'trequire anyone to take precautions against the spread of bird flu.Not even requiring people who work raising chickens or packing chickenmeat to wear masks.
Goffin's cockatoos learn to use multiple tools together and to anticipatewhich tool or tools a given fruit requires to open it.According to Wikipedia, they can practice self-control, keeping atreat uneaten for over a minute in order to exchange it for an evenbetter treat. They can learn to unlock a cage by watching a human doit.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to pledgenever to cut Social Security or Medicare.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Biden's proposed "scientific integrity" policy would prohibit USgovernment scientists from publishing any opinion about a governmentagency or a government policy.
Some Tories want to deport automatically any refugee that arrives inBritain in small boat, even children fleeing from danger.Imagine this policy in the 1930s, being applied to Jewish childrenfrom Germany -- those who in fact were saved by the Kindertransport.
Utah is considering a bill that would require people to show government IDto sign up for platforms where people can post things.
Americans can get abortion pills with the help AidAccess.There is a danger that a current court case will block the use of mailorder to get mifepristone. For your own sake and your friends' sake,get some now, just in case.
There are accusations that Bogus Johnson's staff conspired to lie to protectJohnson from being punished for violating Covid-19 rules limiting parties,and falsified evidence, back when he was the prime minister.I think the UK's restrictions were too rigid and repressive. It wasright to stop dangerous gatherings, but there is no reason toprosecute ordinary people for having participated in them.However, it is intolerable for the head of the government to scheme to lieabout breaking the rules himself.
(satire) Mom Sick Of Reminding Lazy Teenager To Reload Family GunAfter Shooting Sprees. 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.
Thugs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, (where I used to live) shot andkilled a student, Arif Sayed Faisal. The thug department refuses tosay which thugs were involved and has given out little information.The city's thug commissioner said that there was a city policy not torelease names of thugs who kill. At the next city council meeting,the mayor asked the commissioner whether that was true, and the commissioneradmitted it wasn't.Various officials admitted they wanted to delay so that public outragewould die down.I've decided to add "officer-involved shooting" to my antiglossary.
Ohio thugs ordered a TV reporter to leave a press conference, thenescalated the dispute to the point of knocking him down. Then theyfiled charges against him.
Arguing that ChatGPT violates the privacy of everyone whose writingwas used in training it.The article seems to presume that it knows, in each use, who is using it.If that is true, that is definitely a grave violation of privacy.ChatGPT is an example of SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute),and that is always an unjust way to make computing capabilities available.
AOA magazine tried using ChatGPT to write an article to publish.The result was an article full of errors.A machine learning imitation system such as ChatGPT could not avoidthose errors because it has no understanding of any subject. It doesnot know what testosterone is, or what it does in male or femalebodies. It does not know the meaning of "low blood
The Wagner mercenary group is no longer finding many convicts who willagree to fight for Wagner.Perhaps they have figured out that their odds of surviving Wagner are low.
Biden is considering a change in how the US treats migrants that crossthe border with Mexico. Instead of telling each to wait months oryears in Mexico for the US to consider per case, he wants to deportthem permanently and immediately to Mexico without ever hearing theircases.This is another instance of imitating Australia's cruelty.
What makes it harder for black Americans to get college degrees thanfor whites? A survey reports it is because of discrimination andexternal responsibilities.It also says that they are gouged by for-profit colleges.Many of them defraud their students.
The Iranian drones that the Putin forces fire against Ukrainian powerplants have warheads optimized for attacking power plants, not forattacking armored vehicles.
Human rights abuses committed by security forces and economicdeprivation are among the most important drivers of recruitment toextremist groups in Africa.
Brazil launches operation to drive illegal miners from Yanomami lands.To drive them away permanently is harder than it might seem.They will keep coming back, attracted by the profits.
The arguments that right-wing antiabortion fanatics will use with afavorable judge in seeking to ban mifepristone, and counterargumentsthat the FDA will use.
Florida schools are still allowed to teach about the Rosewood massacre, in which just about a whole town of blacks was massacred, but they are now forbiddento use the term "reparations" to describe the money that the survivorseventually received.
The thugs killed forest protector Manuel Páez, but the resultingoutrage has drawn many others to oppose to building the thug trainingcenter in place of the forest he was defending.
A world in which your boss spies on your brainwaves? That future isnear.Employers use many systems to snoop on workers and their physical and mental state; these would essentially robotize most people.A safety device that measures brain waves could be acceptable in some limitcircumstances: if it is illegal to use that sensor's output for anythingother than safety. and provided that if the safety system says you can'tdo your work, you should get a day of sick leave that day.The existing "bossware" should be prohibited too.
Scientists have proposed another method of blocking a fraction ofincoming sunlight from the Earth.Like all methods of doing this, this one would depend on humans to continuerunning the geoengineering system; if we ever stopped, the suppressed heatingwould return soon.And all such methods would fail to stop the ocean acidification thatresults from having more CO2 in the air. That itself would cause disaster.
A Kenosha thug put his knee on a girl's neck. She was not killed, but was injured. Her family is suing.
Republicans in Congress held a hearing about supposed collusion ofTwitter with the FBI to censor the story about Hunter Biden's laptop.They did not find evidence of this, but they went on claiming they had.They did find some evidence that the corrupter pressured Twitter to overlookhis own violations of Twitter's rules.
Activist investors have sued the directors of Shell for failing toredirect the company's operations vigorously away from fossil fuels.It seems to me that this lawsuit is based on speculation presentedas objective truth.If the lawsuit accused Shell of putting human civilization in danger,that would be easy to demonstrate. If it accused Shell ofintentionally covering this up, then provided Shell (like Exxon)privately did research decades ago which demonstrated this,that too would be easy to demonstrate.If civilization does collapse, the investors will lose everything.But I think that is too far away to prove as a certainty by thestandards of courts.
No one wants masks [for the sake of wearing masks], but we still needthem to keep Covid at bay.
Pelosi is pushing Biden to nominate a plutocratist formercongresscritter to be Secretary of Labor.
The International Energy Agency says that renewable generation willbecome the biggest source of electricity by 2025.This will indicate important progress, but it is not actually acrucial target. Our survival target is to reduce greenhouse gasemissions to a point lower than the rate at which they disappear fromthe atmosphere. That entails eliminating most fossil fuels from land,sea and air transportation, and greenhouse gas emissions fromdeforestation, agriculture, and construction.The half-measures, such as nuclear power, carbon capture and storage,and "blue hydrogen" are not useful for this; they are at best distractions.Once we reach the survival target, it would be wise to go further andreduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Plantingtrees could do that, provided the trees survive and thrive. However,given plentiful renewable electricity, using that to capture carbondioxide and convert it into durable goods could be worth doing.
Around 2/3 of white "evangelical" Christians support "Christiannationalism,"which means that they wish to impose Christianity on the USand make non-Christians second-class citizens.Over 1/4 of them state that they want an authoritarian leader "who iswilling to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set thingsright."I imagine the Christian Republic of America as resembling the IslamicRepublic of Iran, with similar repression directed against people whoreject imposed rules for clothing, similar repression and torture ofprotesters, and similar execution of protesters.
Georgia thugs accused Manuel Esteban Paez Terán of shooting a state thug,and killed Terán apparently as revenge. However, it appearsthat that thug wasshot by another thug, not by him.
Republican-led legislature [of Missouri] rejectsmeasure to [prohibit]minors from carrying firearmsin public without adult supervision.
Big Publishing companies want to distort copyrightso that performingstatistical analysis of styles infringes it. This is absurd and unjust, and as a secondary matter, it won'thelp authors and artists. Please don'use the term "creators" to refer to authors and artists;it is propaganda.
Republican-led legislature [of Missouri] rejectsmeasure to [prohibit]minors from carrying firearmsin public without adult supervision.
5 Memphis [thugs] charged in deadly beating of Tyre Nichols allegedlyassaulted another man just three days before,federal lawsuit says.
(satire) George Santos Panicking AfterProspective Aide He Thought HeMade Up Accuses Himof Sexual Misconduct.
Companies that make milk substitutes for babies have perfected the use ofadvertising to spread the idea that there is something wrong with breast milk.
[At least two different]garden pesticides are contributing to British songbird decline,study finds.It is idiotic to delay prohibiting their sale.
Usingmachine learning systems to convert witness descriptionsinto sketches of criminalscauses a risk that the sketch willlook very different from what the witness saw.
The US used "weather balloons" to spy on China and the Soviet Unionin 1956. If one wanted to argue that China is evil and vicious because itsent a balloon to spy on the US, that inconvenient fact would show theargument to be hypocrisy.I do not think it was particularly bad of China to use balloons tosnoop on a rival, or that it was particularly bad of the US to dolikewise. I don't condemn China for snooping. I condemn China forits horrible repression and brainwashing of Uygurs in Xinjiang, forits horrible repression and crushing of the 7-8 million people of HongKong, and its plans to conquer Taiwan so as to repress and crush the23 million Taiwanese.I also secondarily rebuke China for its blatant plans for economic colonialism around the world.This is no better when China does itthan when the US does it.
Sea turtles are in danger of extinction from global heating. The sex of an egg is determined by the temperature, so heating makethem all develop into females. They tend to lay eggs earlier in theyear, which will help avoid that problem, but calculations say itwon't do enough.
Railroad unions say that the major US railroads are intentionally running safety risks to increase profits, and say that some of thesechosen risks contributed to the train derailment and fire in Ohio.They warn that worse train disasters will occur in the future.Individually, each one is an accident; collectively, the riskis intentional.
Google runs misleading ads for decoy "antiabortion advice"organizations ("crisis pregnancy centers") whose purpose is pressure and dupe low-wealth women into not getting abortions.
The right-wing former government of Australia promised to do somethingabout the problem of plastic cigarette butts, but it never even started planning what to do.Evidently that was nothing more than dishonest PR.Plutocratists choose policies to suit the plutocrats (rich businessesand people) they serve. When on occasion then find it necessary tomake an appearance of concessions to popular demand, they try tominimize the cost to the plutocrats. Doing nothing but talk is reallycheap.
The system for quantifying CO2 emissions from hybrid carssubstantially underestimates the real world emissions of those cars.
Biden Exposed Republican Plans to Cut Social Security. Now,He Should Release a Plan to Expand Social Security.
Republicans in many states are proposing to prohibit drag shows or makeit difficult for schools, libraries or restaurants to present them.Note how Republican legislators use the vague and subjective word"appropriate" about drag shows (even nonsexual drag shows) becausethere is no way to rationally argue about a purely subjectiveassertion.
Biden Is Right. No Billionaire Should Pay a Lower Tax Rate Than a School Teacher.Making billionaires pay as high a tax rate as working professionalsis just the first step. Billionaires should pay a much higher rate.
Some railroad workers' unions at one of the big US railroads won adeal for a few days of paid sick leave per year.
The Department of the Interior cannot entirely cancel leasing of landfor fossil fuel drilling, so it intends to postpone the leasing —perhaps indefinitely.Planet roasters are suing, demanding that it hold leases soon.
Some Australian universities are fighting against defining "antisemitism"using the IHRA's statistical criterion. It labels criticism of Israel's occupation policies as "antisemitism", which is clearly incorrect.
Spain has joined most of the world in covidiocy by eliminating the rule requiring passengers in public transport to wear masks.I wonder how the Covid-19 rate will change in the coming four weeks.
One of the murderers of Tyre Nichols tookphotos of his bloody corpseand shared copiesfor fun.Some people believe that taking a photo of a corpse does wrong tosomeone. No one has ever given me a rational explanation of how itcould do that.However, sharing such photos for enjoyment bespeaks an attitude ofreveling in violence against strangers. We cannot tolerate suchperversion in people to whom we give special powers or license tocommit violence.
Spain has joined most of the world in covidiocy byeliminating the rulerequiring passengers in public transport to wear masks.I wonder how the Covid-19 rate will change in the coming four weeks.
Sea turtles are in danger of extinctionfrom global heating. The sex of an egg is determined by the temperature, so heating makethem all develop into females. They tend to lay eggs earlier in theyear, which will help avoid that problem, but calculations say itwon't do enough.
Chinese-made security cameras to be removedfrom Australian governmentbuildings.They are very wise to do this. You too would be wise to distrustsuch cameras — but not only the ones made in China!Chances are these cameras are actually surveillancecameras: theytransmit their video to some remote location(perhaps over the internet). Such cameras are always ready to spy on you for someone or other.
Seymour Hersh reported that an insider told him thatthe US usedexplosives to wreck the Nord Stream pipelines.I did not believe that Putin did so. He got more power by shutting the pipelines and keeping theoption to open them again, than by shutting them irrevocably.This can be compared to burning the bridges or boats which your armycould have used to retreat. An undamaged Nord Stream pipeline wouldhave offered the EU a way to retreat from its boycott of Russianfossil fuel.
Biden plans to escalate the War on Drugs,specifically about fentanyl and substances "related to" fentanyl.In addition to the usual harm to society of prohibition of any drug,this would ban a range of chemicals, whose effects (harmful or useful)have not been tested.Fentanyl is dangerous, but a war that's on fentanylis even more dangerous.
The main Republican presidential contenders, DeMentis and Ted Cruz,both graduated from Harvard Law School. This demonstrates thatHarvard Law Schoolfails to inculcate a respect for democracyand human rights.
(satire) [Thug] Chief VowsOfficer Accused Of Misconduct Will Receive HarshestPossible Nickname.
Well-funded and well-organized Antiabortionists have set up a lawsuitwith bogus arguments, designed so to give a specific right-wingextremist judge with a history of disregarding the legal merits of acase an opportunity to issuean injunction to ban abortion in thewhole US.
Disney censors The Simpsonsto kowtow to Emperor Xi. Other large companies censor for China. Yahoo Apple* Zoom
I suppose most companies will do this rather than forego theprofits from the Chinese market.If western companies were selling physical products, such as DVDs, thecompanies would not have to carry out the censorship. Chineseretailers would not buy the DVDs of the banned programs; the westerncompany would not be required to participate in censorship.However, because they runa streaming dis-service, the dis-service itself is required to censor on China's behalf.This is one additional reason to reject streaming dis-services. Icondemn their injustices so strongly that I refuse to watch or listen toanything through them.
US citizens:call on the EPA to regulate the "widely recyclable" label so it can't be used to make the public believe that plastic reallygets recycled.
US citizens:state your support for Ilhan Omar.I want to make it clear that my support for Ilhan Omar is not becauseshe is black, nor because she is a Muslim. For me, those are side issues.I support her because she champions progressive values and policies.
Disney censors The Simpsonsto kowtow to Emperor Xi. Other large companies censor for China.[pol note(s) to show 2 or more examples of such companies.] I suppose most companies will do this rather than forego theprofits from the Chinese market.If western companies were selling physical products, such as DVDs, thecompanies would not have to carry out the censorship. Chineseretailers would not buy the DVDs of the banned programs; the westerncompany would not be required to participate in censorship.However, because they run a streaming dis-service,[pol note explaining the injustice of streaming dis-services] the dis-service itself is required to censor on China's behalf.This is one additional reason to reject streaming dis-services. Icondemn their injusties so strongly that I refuse to watch or listen toanything through them.
US citizens: call on Congress to punish Big Oil for gouging.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
North Korea has a few Youtube influencers, who appear to be speciallyprivileged people. They enjoy things that are ordinary in the US orSouth Korea, but which in North Korea only specially privileged peoplecan use.The purpose of these channels seems to be to give people a falsepicture of life in North Korea.Hollywood did something similar for the US, and maybe still does:TV shows set in people's homes show houses that are large and luxurious,that typical Americans could not afford.
Right-wing senators continue to block the nomination of Gigi Sohnto the board of the FCC, using bogus excuses, The latest bogus excuse is that she is on the board of the EFF,which opposed and opposes the internet censorship law, SESTA/FOSTA,which was designed to sabotage internet advertising by sex workers, by making platforms fear false accusations based on the hypotheticalpossibility that those sex workers are enslaved.We who oppose SESTA/FOSTA believe it is unjust to attack people byprovoking fear, in those people and those they cooperate with, ofbeing suspected of something they don't actually do. We also believethat sex work in itself is not evil.
1/3 of US plant species and 40% of US animal species are "at risk of extinction." Many kinds of ecosystems are endangered as a whole. Greenpeace protesters have occupied an oil drilling platformwith which Shell is planning another act of ecocide.
An Insulate Britain protester was on trial for gluing himself to a highway. The judge ordered him not to inform the jury that he was ontrial for protesting to save lives, but he told them anyway.Now he is going to be jailed for telling them that.
The Putin forces seem to be accumulating tanks and soldiers foranother offensive, perhaps on the one-year anniversary of the first invasion.
Lula and his environment minister, Marina Silva, are committed topreserving all of Brazil's ecosystems, not just the Amazon forestwhich is tottering on the edge of drying out.
An NHS nurse writes of her decision to join the strike: the NHS is tooimpoverished and weakened to provide proper medical care.
Australia is heading for requiring users of dating apps to prove their legal identities.I understand the importance of keeping out threatsand contempt, but just as Facebook's real name requirement is oppressive, so will the dating app real name requirement be.Of course, all these sites treat their users unjustly in another way:by requiring each user to run a nonfree program. The internet is likelyto transform into a system for rigid repression. I hope we can keep somecorners of it safe from repression.
The UK plans to deport all refugees arriving in boats, with nopossibility of an exception.One country at a time, the world is eliminating the right to go toa country and ask for asylum.This policy would violate the European convention on human rights, soTories want to cancel UK's membership in that convention.In this way, cruelty towards boat people paves the way for cruelty towardseveryone else.
Bad management of the NHS, including overworking staff long-term, ismaking the staff burn out.This results in fewer staff actually working, and thus even more burn-out.Stress led to more NHS staff absences than Covid, new figures show.This problem could be cured, with time, by changes in governmentpolicies: paying NHS workers more, and allowing qualified foreignersto immigrate and fill the empty posts.
Many pets undergo great suffering from the way they are treated. Inaddition to outright harm, many suffer boredom from being left alonemost of the day.I think that the proposal to entirely eliminate the practice of havingpets is extreme. It is possible to have pets and treat them well;there are pets that are happy and not bored. However, this mayrequire more time than you can or wish to devote to it. If that isthe case, it would be wiser for you not to have a pat.Perhaps people should get trained in how live with a pet. Perhapspeople should have to meet certain criteria in order to have a pet.
Urging non-fascist Israelis to seek support from Palestinians toresist Netanyahu's threat to Israel's democracy.
The history of violent fascism in the United States startedbefore Mussolini announced the name "fascism".That sort of government was found in many parts of the world.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important,such as that one.
Many US pension investments are in private equity companies, which exaggeratethe worth of their investments. When those people need their pensions, they may get less than theyexpect.
Leaders in the corrupter's Wisconsin campaign team privately recognizedthe 2020 victory for Biden in that state, then discussed how to spreadpublic lies about it.One of them is now a regional manager in the Republican NationalCommittee.
US citizens:call on the US Forest Service not to allow building an oilpipeline through the Jefferson National Forest. The proposed pipeline is the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is opposed for other reasons.
US citizens:call on Congress to reject the Republicans plan to replaceincome tax with a national sales tax.The effect would be a big tax increase for the non-rich and a big taxcut for the rich. That's just what plutocratists would seek to do,and the opposite of justice.
US citizens:call on the FTC to ban businesses from imposing noncompeteagreementson workers.
Brutality is part ofthe culture of many US thug departments, which is what makes the term "thug" appropriate. The question is,what will succeed in changing that culture?Lack of proper trainingon how to choose not to killis one cause.Bad trainingis also responsible.
How Republicans falsified Critical Race Theory and African American Studiesin the interest of political censorship.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to take concreteaction to reintroduce sea otters off the California and Oregon coast.
US citizens: call on Congress and state legislatures to investigateelection-winners who seem to be constitutionally excluded from office.
Thousands of Israelis are protesting for democracy, and againstNetanyahu's plans to subordinate the Supreme Court to the government.
In the UK, a whole generation is learning the value of unionization.Strikes are spreading, and so are victories.The main resistance is from the Tories, who have aimed for centuriesto keep wages down and workers poor.The US is seeing something similar, but not so many victories, as a bigcompany can stall concessions for years.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban assault weapons.That criterion for what to prohibit may not be exactly ideal, butthat's a side issue -- it would be a step in the right direction.
Robert Reich: Friday's Surprisingly Positive Jobs Report Does NotMean Fed Should Keep Raising Rates.
Proposing to legislate that corporations' directors have a duty "notto severely harm the public interest."
Early in the 20th century, Germany colonized Namibia and carried out genocideagainst two tribes that resisted. Now they demand reparations,not to the Namibian government but to the people of those two tribes.
The right-wing, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federallawbarring people with domestic violence restraining orders fromowning firearms.That court is right-wing because the preponderance of Republicansenators from the states in that circuit have blocked the appointment of any new judges there. That makes the 5th circuit ideal for Republicans to get the resultsthey seek.
The shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was part of anUS crackdownon environmental defenders,which includes charging them with"terrorism" for nonviolent protest.
Bogus Johnson promised to build 40 new hospitals, to win the 2019 election.Now it's almost time for another election, and only 10 of them have approvedconstruction plans.Promise them anything, but give them tax cuts for the rich.
Tackle "Abuse of Water" by Big Ag and Big Oil,Advocates Say Amid Colorado River FightI think that "abuse" is the wrong word for this.It should be "misuse". But it is a very big misuse.Fracking misuses enormous amounts of water.So does growing feed for cattle.
Five years ago, the wrecker's officials separated thousands of migrantchildren from their parents. Despite persistent efforts, 1000 of themstill not been reunited with those parents, because the wrecker'sofficials preserved no usable information about who those parents wereand how to find them.
Dubya's solicitor-general, who argued in the Supreme Court in favor oftrying the prisoners in Guantánamo in "military commissions" (kangaroocourts), now says that that was a terrible mistake. The US shouldhave brought them to a real US court for trial.He also says it wasself-defeating to ask for the death penalty for any of them, and thatthe US should offer them plea deals now.I think that after the many years in prison and torture they havesuffered, the US should offer them a plea deal for time alreadyserved, and let them go.
The Tories now face a choice: lose office with honour or burneverything in sight.I partly disagree with that statement. After 13 years of lies,bullshit, broken promises and voter suppression, all designed to helpthe rich and drive the poor into hunger, cold and sickness, we mustnot recognize the Tories as possessing any sort of honor merely forputting a limit on their mayhem at a point before the bitter end.
An Iraqi father dishonored himself by murdering his daughter foracting as if she had rights of her own.His country dishonored itself by not taking this murder as seriouslyas other murders.
Some "crisis pregnancy centers" go beyond misleading pregnant women sothey won't get abortions -- they also disregard proper medicalprocedures to avoid spreading diseases from one client to the next.This was reported by a licensed nurse who volunteered to help in one.
Biden has asked to negotiate with the Republicanterrorists that use the debt ceiling as a hostage.Negotiating with hostage takers plays into their handsand leads to ignominious surrender.
It is probably technically possible to avoid global heating over1.5°C, but society seems incapable of mobilizing to overcome theobstruction.
Early in the 20th century, Germant colonized Namibia and carried out genocideagainst two tribes that resisted. Now they demand reparations,not to the Namibian government but to the people of those two tribes.
Interviews with Palestinians in Ramallah on the topic of Blinken's visit(to Israel, and to Palestine on the side).
Carbon capture project [in Texas] is ‘Band-Aid’ to greenwash $10bnLNG plant, locals say.Many climate defenders and scientists say that too; I am glad the wordis spreading.
Carbon capture project [in Texas]is ‘Band-Aid’ to greenwash $10bnLNG plant,locals say.Many climate defenders and scientists say that too; I am glad the wordis spreading.
*Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s single largest investor,has warned company directors it will vote against their re-electionto the board if they don’tup their game on tackling the climatecrisis, human rights abuses and boardroom diversity.
A single state of the UScannot effectively regulate what sorts ofgunsare available. It is easy to bring a gun from another state.
A Brazilian senator, formerly a supporter of Bolsonaro, said that thetwo were present in a conversation where another elected official,also a supporter,proposed ways to spread doubt on the election'svalidity.
Employees at someREI stores have overcome union-bustingto unionize.REI is a cooperative, but it is a customed-owned cooperative,not a worker-owned cooperative. So it can easily mistreat workers.
Democratic Connecticut legislators propose to prohibit the pseudo-word"Latinx" in state publications, saying that most Latins find it offensive.I too find it offensive -- because it is an excrescence on the Englishlanguage and/or the Spanish language. It does not fit thepronunciation rules of either language. Basically, the word "Latinx"stinx.In English, let's use the noun "Latin" (plural, "Latins"). InSpanish, I recommend "latini", which uses "-I" as the gender-neutralsuffix. The suffix "-i" is betterbecause it causes fewer ambiguities than "-e". For instance, "-i"avoids creating a painful ambiguity for "le".
Senator Manchin, together with Republicans, intend to try once againto undermine the environmental review now required for large andpotentially dangerous industrial projects.
The US has freed a "high-value" prisoner from Guantanamo prison,someone who was tortured by the CIA. He plead guilty to crimes and gota 10-year sentence that has now ended, and he has been released toBelize.This overcome one obstacle that stood in the way of closing the prison,but it still won't be easy.
Memphis thugs took training from Israeli thugs,who are likely to have taught how to apply the practices they applyto Palestinians.
Pentagon says it is monitoring Chinese spy balloon spotted flyingover US. If it can't get any information that China's satellites cannot get,why did China bother to send it? I suspect it is doing something usefulagainst the US. I wonder if there is any way to snag that balloon and bring itdown to the ground, so as to study it. That would be better in twoways than shooting it and destroying it.
British Columbia now allows possession of 2.5g of illegal drugs inmeasure to mitigate opioid crisis.
Australia to allow prescription of MDMA and psilocybin fortreatment-resistant mental illnesses.
The history of the "traffic stop" in the US, and how it inevitablybecame a vehicle for racism and violence.The article recommends that traffic enforcement be done by unarmedpersonnel.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.Most often they give important information about racism or the fightagainst racism.
Calling for the UK to ban work discrimination against workers forhaving attended state schools ("public schools", as we call them in the US).
The video of thugs attacking Tyre Nichols shows that their reportsmisrepresented the truth.It is not at all unusual for official thugs to cover up the truth oftheir crimes, even going so far as to lie on the witness stand.
Indian journalist Siddique Kappan was preparing to cover the case of a Dalitwho was gang-raped and died, when the officials of Uttar Pradesh arrested him,accused him of one unrelated crime after another (including "terrorism"),and tortured him repeatedly.He was released on bail after two years, but the charges are still pending.In India, this practice is spelled "BJP".
Greenpeace activists protested outside Shell's headquarters, demandingthat the company take responsibility for the damage that fossil-fueledglobal heating is causing.Shell's profits last year were twice the estimated cost to repairthe damage caused by the enormous flood in Pakistan,which was caused by global heating.The fashion of focusing on which people are suffering how much _justnow_ from global heating is a distraction. Every region is likely toface enormous suffering within a few decades. We need unite to putan end to global heating. Then, when things are stable and emissionsare much reduced, we can worry about ending poverty world-wide.
Battle Over Budget a Great Moment [for Biden] to Envision a Better,More Equally Prosperous Nation.
Republican-dominated states are threatening tosue pharmacy chainsclaiming that mailing abortion drugs to people in those states would be a crimeunder those states' laws. This is an attemptto intimidate them into never trying to do so.The US government claims that those threats are invalid, andeventually a court will decide. But the Republicans can hope by thisthreat to cause lasting life difficulties for tens of thousands ofwomen, even if they later lose the lawsuit.
Chechen militia battalions, composed of volunteers, fight for Ukraine,hoping to bring about indirectly the removal of Putin's control overChechnya.
Chechen militia batallions, composed of volunteers, fight for Ukraine,hoping to bring about indirectly the removal of Putin's control overChechnya.
Republican-dominated states are threatening tosue pharmacy chainsclaiming that mailing abortion drugs to people in those states would be a crimeunder those states' laws. This is an attemptto intimidate them into never trying to do so.The US government claims that those threats are invalid, andeventually a court will decide. But the Republicans can hope by thisthreat to cause lasting life difficulties for tens of thousands ofwomen, even if they later lose the lawsuit.
The US "remain in Mexico"policy has brought migrants to a mass gravein Tapachula,at the southern end of Mexico, one of the cities where Mexico forces them to go and stay.The cemetery workers don't know how many bodies are buried therewithout identification.
Scientists were reluctant to try albicidin as a medical antibioticbecause they could not predict what bad side effects it might have.That problem somehow did not prevent the discovery, testing andadoption of penicillin. Given the urgent need for new antibiotics,perhaps medicine has become hypercautious.If they test albicidin with due care but not hypercaution, they canfind out whether it safe for humans, then use it for treatment if itis safe. They might find a great new antibiotic quickly, or theymight find it is unusable. This is worth a try, isn't it?I suspect something nastier underlies the hypercaution: perhaps pharmacompanies are not interested in using albicidin because they cannotpatent it. If they develop "better" versions, they will patent thoseand make a lot more money, at a byproduct making them too expensive inmost of the world. I suppose they don't want those expensive productsto have to compete with generic albicidin.
Tories promised a few years ago to mostly eliminate the use of neonicotinoids,but each year they declare an exception.It's typical Tory, to adopt a plan to fix a major problem and then notreally do it.
More diversity is no substitute for more equality:if the rich become more diverse, and the poor become more diverse,that doesn't help the poor.
Sunak’s warm words on nature sound good, but can theysave our last [UK]nightingales and swifts?Tories often talk about doing something that will help the non-rich,but they often cancel the plans before carrying them out. Justrecently they are planning to cancel the commitment to compensate thepeople who immigrated lawfully from the Caribbean as children but werethreatened recently with deportationbecause they did not have thedocuments to prove what happened decades ago.Tories also promised to restore building codes that would have prevented a deadly fire, but now they talk about deregulation.
The first step against "Medicare Advantage" is a bill to change itsnameso it won't be called "Medicare".Alas,this bill won't stop the privatization of Medicareitself,started by the wrecker and perversely continued by Biden.
Australian pubs are starting to use facial recognition in areas withgambling machines, to keep people out who have requested not to beallowed to gamble.The basic idea sounds harmless in principle. It would seem that ifyou have not added yourself to the list of people to exclude, thissystem won't affect you. But is that really true?I wonder who else will have access to the face scans of people whovisit the club? Will those scans go into a system connected to theinternet?Will state agencies be able to add faces to the list of people toexclude? Will state agencies be able to collect the face scans ofeveryone that enters?
Extra funds for thug departments to "crack down on crime" are oftenused to create special units of thugs. The recently-disbandedScorpion group in Memphis was an example.This article describes some aspects of these groups that tend to makethem arm the public.They don't all murder people, but they also have a tendency to besent to areas inhabited by disprivileged demographic groups and havethe effect of causing suffering there.
(satire) Ticketmaster To Require Purchase Of Round-Trip ConcertTickets For Exiting Venue After Show.
Canada votes to take in 10,000 Uyghur refugees amid Chinese pressure to forcetheir return.
Jane Roberts Becomes the Latest [Supreme Court] Spouse to Raise Questionsabout Potential Conflicts of Interest.
The US government approved a somewhat reduced version of the "Willowproject" for oil drilling in northern Alaska.Reducing the size of the project may reduce the danger it adds, but surelyit will still increase the danger of climate breakdown. It appears thatthe Interior department, and Biden, do not appreciate how much danger weare all in.A study based on neural network modeling suggests that even withsubstantial emissions cuts we might have 2°C of global heating in 50years.Where the study departs from many current projections is in its estimates of when the world will cross the 2°C threshold.Considering the magnitude of the disaster we are skirting, it behoovesus to be conservative — in the normal sense of the word, not themisleading synonym for "right wing". We need to cut more, and faster,to reduce the risk of climate breakdown.
When the London thug department infiltrated many left-wing political groups.the high officers who supervised that group never investigated whetherwhether that surveillance was justified, or whether it was lawful.
Shell's oil drilling in the Niger delta in Nigeria has polluted the waterwith oil. People get sick, and the fish they used to eat have all died.Now the people who live there are suing Shell in the UK.
Colombia to pay reparations for role in extermination of left wing party.The party was formed by former guerrillas who made a peace agreement withthe government. Then the government organized killing them.
Colombia to pay reparations for role in extermination of leftwing party.The party was formed by former guarrillas who made a peace agreement withthe government. Then the government organized killing them.
A few Democrats tried to convince the Democratic Party in 2003 to take a standagainst attacking Iraq.
Russia is refusing to comply with requirements of the New Start treatythat limits nuclear missiles.
Long-term exposure to dirtier air can increase your risk ofdepression or anxiety, study finds.
Shell’s actual spending on renewables is fraction of what it claims,according to Global Witness. This is an instance of greenwashing.
The German government, including the Green Party, chose the side ofbuilding a new coal mine. It needed thousands of uniformed thugsto defeat the 35,000 protesters who tried to block the conversionof a village into a coal mine.Destroying a town for public purposes is sometimes legitimate. (Allthe inhabitants of that town were compensated and given time to move.)Four towns were inundated to make the Quabbin reservoir which bringsrain water to the Boston metro area. But building additional fossilfuel facilities steers our future towards climate breakdown.
Parents in a small town in Connecticut let their children, ages 7 and9, walk a mile to a store. Someone freaked out and called the thugdepartment. The parents now face criminal charges.
Despite the UK's new requirement for foreign entities that own UKproperty to state who the real owners are, loopholes allow some ofthose owners to continue to hide their identity.
Suspects in the murder of Jovenel Moïse, the imposed president of Haiti,were sent to the US for trial.Can anyone explain to me how it is that the US has jurisdictionover a murder in Haiti?
The Burmese military rulers repeatedly bomb villages of civilians.[Burma] junta hit by western sanctions as "silent strikes" mark coupanniversary.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop corporate profiteering off ofCOVID vaccines, by guaranteeing free access to all Americans.
Thugs in Huntington Park, California, ran towards Anthony Lowe withguns drawn. He dropped off his wheelchair and tried to pull his bodyaway from them, but he could not move very fast that way; then theyshot him dead.It appears they did not run their body cameras. That in itselfis suspect. I've proposed automatic systems that will activatebody cameras at the sound of a shot (or a taser) and will savethe previous five minutes of video as well as subsequent video.
Supposedly UK voters can cope with the new voter-ID law by applyingfor special government identification, but only .5% of the people whowould need one in order to vote have applied.
Memphis published the names of the black thugs that helped to killTyre Nichols, but concealed until this week the name of the white thugwho was involved, and what role he played.This could represent bigotry.The report seem also seems to try to cover up some aspects of thethugs' violence.Speaking of bigotry, the article displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) Normally I do not link toarticles that do this, but I make exceptions for some articles that Iconsider particularly important, such as the first one.It should not be surprising that blacks can absorb from white societythe widespread ideas of bigotry against blacks.Ideas for what could make for a real change in the violence of thugsagainst blacks.
US dairy policies drive small farms to 'get big or get out' asmonopolies get rich.Industrial concentration is the cause of a range of injustices and suffering.We need policies to break up those monopolies; any policy which does the opposite simply must be changed.
Robert Reich: the growing national debt is mainly due letting the richpay too little tax.
Olympic games tend to spread permanent increases in surveillance andrepression wherever they go. The next victim will be Paris.I've urged the citizens of cities in more-or-less-free countries todefeat those cities' Olympic bids. In addition to repressionand surveillance,they tend to crush poor peopleand especially homeless people,and transfer a lot of public money to big companies.
A twisty maze of regulations and restrictions -- in the US, in Mexico,and in other countries -- make it very difficult for anyone toexercise the right to request asylum in the US, even to follow thelong and slow procedure the US imposes for doing so.The "Title 42" system of making asylum-requester stay in Mexico runsinto a problem since Mexico won't let them stay there.An additional aspect of oppression in this system is the US requirementto use a snoop-phone app, "CBP One". Those programs are nonfree andtypically malware.So are the operating systems of the snoop-phones themselves.For governments to make them the only way to communicate with agovernment agency for some purpose is in itself unjust. So, for thesame reason, are "web apps" that send substantial Javascript programsthat users have to run in their own computers. Knowing the USgovernment, I expect it abuses that power grossly when it gets thechance.I'm sure most of the people compelled to run "CBP One" hardly careabout that injustice, given the painfulness of their situations ingeneral. But unlike those. this one tends to spread to non-refugees-- to everyone.
British libel law still lends itself to use by rich people to suppresstruthful journalism. The fact that Russian oligarchs who are personallyunder UK sanctions are doing so is especially embarrassing, but it is just as bad when British plutocrats do it.The Tories are planning to make this even worse. They are working tochange thousands of laws all at once -- laws imposed by the EU toprotect human rights and regulations to protect people's health.This includes changes that would make libel suits an even easierway for rich people to bury the truth.
Drones were used to attack some sort of building or base in Iran.US officials said that Israel carried out the attack.We don't know what that target is, or what it does, or what purpose itserves. However, this is likely to provoke war with Iran.
The term "gender-affirming surgery" has a serious flaw as a way ofdefining a category of surgical operations: it is subjective, notobjective. Specifically, it is stated in terms of what someone(presumably the patient) thinks about the operation, not in terms ofwhat the operation concretely does.One patient might say, "I see this operation as affirming my gender,so I want to have it." Another patient might say, of the sameoperation, "This would go against gender, so I don't want it."We need an objective way to define and refer to this class ofoperations, one independent of whether a given patient wants such anoperation or not.
(satire) ChatGPT Forced To Take Bar Exam Even ThoughDream Was To Be AI Art Bot. 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.
Agencies that send workers to visit demented people at homein the UK have been systematically skimping.The term "agency" might suggest that this is a state agency, but Isuspect that it refers in this case to a profit making business.Can anyone tell me for a fact whether that is so?If this is a business, I suspect it is making money hand over fist,paying its workers a pittance and charging patients' families for worknot done. But I find it hard to believe that the workers initiatedthe practice and hide the fraud from their employer. I can't helpsuspecting that the business taught its workers to engage in fraud,and that the state knows about it but looks the other way.
Replacing concrete and steel in construction with sophisticated spiralplywood can reduce CO2 emissions by 40%, because the carbon in the woodnever gets converted to CO2.It can even be fireproof in temperatures that would melt steel.
US utilities shut off power to millions amid record corporate profits.It's the government's responsibility to prevent such harm. There arevarious ways to do it. One way would be to increase the taxes thoseutilities (and other corporations) actually pay, and give some of thatmoney to poor Americans.
The US has a leaning towards criminalizing anything irregular.A 29-year-old woman faces criminal charges for claiming to be a teenagerso as to enroll in a public school, and presenting a false birth certificateto make that possible.I can't understand this response -- wouldn't it be sufficient todisenroll her? None of the articles I have seen makes any attempt tojustify or explain the harshness. Perhaps the reason is taboo.
Queensland proposes to legalize stop-and-search with no specific suspicion.In the US and in the UK, this is an invitation to racial profiling.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep Ilhan Omar on the House ForeignAffairs Committee.
It is cheaper [in the US] to build solar panels or cluster of windturbines and connect them to the grid than to keep operating coalplants.
Iraq's ancient marshlands, where the Tigris and Euphrates enter thePersian Gulf, are drying out and dying due to global heating with help from other causes.
Global heating threatens the production of jamón ibérico.The oak forests are producing fewer of the acorns that the pigs eat.Eventually that forest may disappear, and its ecosystem.
Iranian protesters sentenced to death were tortured, says Amnesty report.In the 1980s, Iran's new (at that time) Islamic Republicused to treat trials as a pointless inconvenience. That tendencyis still present.
The next rally for Julian Assange will be at the Park Street Stationon Feb 11th from 11:30 to 12:30.
Rep. Santos's fund-raising reports mention fund-raising supporters whodon't seem to exist, nor do their addresses exist.There seems to be a criminal investigation into this.The Republican Party has gone out of its way to demonstratethat it will tolerate any sort of crimes among its elected officialsand supporters. But it may be powerless to stop Santos from bring convicted and imprisoned.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to challenge all stateabortion bans that violate federal law.Urgent: Keep Ilhan Omar on the House Foreign Affairs CommitteeUS citizens: call on Congress to keep Ilhan Omar on the House ForeignAffairs Committee.
Years of Tory attacks against the NHS have made it very difficult fordoctors to work there. Around 40% are planning to quit within thenext 5 years.
Hong Kong exiles in the UK called on the Tories not to follow China's exampleby criminalizing peaceful protest.
Two Florida thugs grabbed a homeless man (whom they may have recognized),handcuffed him, took him to an isolated place, and beat him unconscious.There is no indication of a plausible motive for this attack.The thugs have been arrested. Hooray!
Tunisians protested the president's diminution of the power of the votersby boycotting recent parliamentary elections.
The US government suffers, in general, from too much secrecy, plus adouble standard for enforcement of secrecy rules (important officialsare treated with leniency).The problem of oversecrecy was recognized decades ago, but it got muchworse through overreaction to the Sep 2001 attacks. In general, the USreaction to those attacks has been quite harmful (most notably,attacking Iraq based on lies).Whether to mark something as secret depends on a judgment call by someofficial. The structure of this tends to push officials towardsoversecrecy. If they don't mark something secret, and later on itappears that publishing it may have caused some bad consequences,people will blame them. If they do mark something secret, and lateron it appears that concealing it caused some bad consequences, no onewill blame them. For their career safety, they mark it secret bydefault. Systematically, the result is oversecrecy.
US citizens: call for a ban on the use of facial recognition and otherbiometric technology in places of public accommodation.
Georgia is seeking to define "Cop City" protests as terrorism, experts say.In fact, these protests are generally peaceful.Breaking windows as a protest is not peaceful, but it is not terrorismeither. To stretch the definition of "terrorism"is the everpresentdanger from officials that incline towards repression, as US officialsoften do.Officials in other countries do it too.
Stiglitz: economic developments confirm that central banks havehandled inflation wrong, based on a misguided model of what wascausing it. The increases in interest rates were unnecessarytreatment for the wrong disease.
Ukraine has set up a hotline for Putin forces soldiers to call todiscuss how to arrange to surrender.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) Drop Box Outside National Archives Allows Ex-Presidents To Anonymously Return Classified Documents.
Starmer proposes to subcontract NHS medicine to private clinics.That is a recipe for a brain drain from NHS clinics to private clinics.Union Pacific spending on stock buybacks
Plutocratist "moderate" Democrats are joining with Republicans (alsoplutocratist) to defeat progressive Democrats in Democratic primaries.
The Assange prosecution poses a fundamental threat to the freedom of speech and a free press.
Two sides of corpse fetishism: a London thug was fired for taking photos of two corpses.I don't understand why he wanted the photos, nor do I understand whythe department did not want him to have them.
In Australia's Guantanamo, the security is not as tight as in theAmerican Guantanamo; some prisoners succeed in escape via suicide.
The Memphis thug department has disbanded the "scorpion" unit, someof whose members killed Tyre Nichols.For a thug department to give any group of thugs a name which refers toa venomous and deadly animal seems misguided.
The main causes of murders carried out by uniformed thugs is thegeneral violent attitude of most US thug departments.That violent attitude is directed mainly at blacks, so thugs (evenblack thugs) are more likely to kill blacks than whites. This isironic but it's the natural consequence of the violent approach thatthugs learn to consider normal.
Associated Press Stylebook endorsed the pressure campaign to eliminateall nouns that designate subsets of humanity, citing a peculiar excuse— the need for an article before those nouns. It brought ridicule on itself.However, I don't think they have retreated from this pressure campaign.Whether you say "the French", or "French people", they are not allalike. They differ from each other. That is no justification for thepressure campaign.
Big Oil wants to build a 2000-mile pipeline to transport CO2 to a place whereit can be buried. The landowners whose land they would need to cross are fighting to block it.I oppose this pipeline because it carbon storage is unproved andswitching to renewable generation is surely cheaper and better fordecarbonization. However, I am disappointed that the authors are soobsessed with race that they perceive a need to apologize forsupporting, this time, a group of environmental defenders who happento be white.
Some US and Europeanofficials are talking about aiming for regimechange in Russia,even setting the goal of splintering Russia intoseveral countries. This is dangerous.In addition, it will tend to prolong the war even beyond recoveringUkraine's territory.I said in March that we should assure Putin that driving him out of power in Russia is not one of the west's aims. to give him the chance to decide to end the war with no victory.
US citizens:call on Congress to ban members of Congress from buying and selling individual stocks.
The wreckersecretly gave a million dollars for the bogus private "audit"of Arizona's votes.
[Rich] Tory donors own UK properties via more than 150 offshore firms.Those companies' purpose was to hide the ownership of those properties.It is being revealed now because the UK has requiredthe true ownersto identify themselves.
Some US and Europeanofficials are talking about aiming for regimechange in Russia,even setting the goal of splintering Russia intoseveral countries. This is dangerous.In addition, it will tend to prolong the war even beyond recoveringUkraine's territory.I said in March that we should assure Putin that driving him out of power in Russia is not one of the west's aims. to give him the chance to decide to end the war with no victory.
Proposing a "Radio Free Russia"for transmitting the work of exiledRussian journalists to Russia.
Antinuclear activists warn that the release of tritium-containingwater from the retired Indian Point nuclear reactors, and demolition of their structure, will release radioactive materialsand they may be damaging.https://www.commondreams.org/news/indian-point-wastewaterI can't say that is impossible, but the arguments presented in thisarticle by Caldecott and other opponents are based on an error.It is true that no amount of radiation exposure is so small as to beabsolutely harmless. It does not follow that any increment inradiation or radioactive material, not matter how small, is cause forgreat alarm. Radiation is everywhere, and radionuclides areeverywhere. Adding a tiny fraction of the amount already present hasan effect which is nonzero, but the resulting increment in danger maybe so small as to be insignificant as regards public health.Will the tritium releases of the operations now planned cause asignificant increment in danger? I don't know the answer; I don'tknow how to calculate it. But that is the proper basis for judgingthese issues.The release of tritiated water is one issue, and dust from thedemolition is another issue. It could be that one is dangerous andthe other is not. Each one ought to be studied and calculated.
Hate-spreadingright-wing fantasists are driving women out of NewZealand politicsthrough intimidation.
A Russian official pointed out thatdepleted uranium munitions,and the depleted uranium armorin newer model Abrams tanks,will cause lasting danger in Ukraine.I can't estimate whether depleted uranium munitions will injure asmany Ukrainians as the Putin forces' weapons. But comparing the twois irrelevant, because they are independent problems.I expect that the US government will use the fact that this comes fromhypocritical Putin to pretend that the danger is just one of Putin'slies. He can't believe anything on his say-so lie, but this time whathe said was accurate.Putin does not care about Ukrainian lives. He might care abouthypothetical Russians who might someday live on conquered Ukrainianterritory. But what Putin thinks is a side issue. If futureUkrainian lives matter to us, we should push for the US to protectUkraine from depleted uranium, regardless of what Putin thinks.I saw a headline today that the US plans to give Ukraine the newAbrams tanks with depleted uranium in the armor.
In abandoning a commitment to create the post of a migrants’commissioner to identify problems with the immigration system aswell as a pledge to increase the powers of the independent chiefinspector of borders and immigration, [Minister] Braverman ismaking it very clear thatthe government does not care aboutimmigrants— past, present, or future.
Ralph Nader challenges Bernie Sanders tomove beyond denouncing Big Pharmaand take some actionindependently of them.That's a bit unfair, because taking action usually requires passing laws,and the plutocratists in the Senate are on Big Pharma's side, so theywill block that.
Arguments for the Luddite cause.A world in which software is free will be a big step forward for people'scontrol over the digital technology we use.
The University of Melbourne has decided to adopt the IHRA's biased "definition"of antisemitismas part of academic rules intended to prohibit antisemitism.This tends to be used to prohibit criticism of Israel's treatment of Arabs.The IHRA criterion was designed for statistical studies— to look ata large corpus of statements and come up with figures such as thefrequency of antisemitism is in that corpus. For that purpose, infrequentmisclassification of edge cases is tolerable — it won't make thefigures useless as long as those edge cases are rare in comparison toto real antisemitism. However, in a rule to be imposed on individualsand organizations, each misclassification is an injustice.If the University or Melbourne goes ahead to develop criteria forrecognizing prejudice against Muslims, I hope it will not refer tothis prejudice as a "phobia". That is a fundamental conceptual error.
George Monbiot: We are all playing Covid roulette.… You couldsee Covid-19 as an empathy test.Who was prepared to suffer disruptionand inconvenience for the sake of others[survival and health], andwho was not?
The question ofhow to moderate the corrupter's own postingsonspecific platforms are a side issue of bigger and more importantdecisions about the policy for regulating platforms.
Russia hascriminalized any kind of cooperation with the reporters ofthe news siteMeduza — including giving an interview.
Human activity and drought"degrading more than a third of Amazon rainforest."Drought in Amazonia is largely caused by cutting down forestsinAmazonia and to the east of there(along the Atlantic).
US residents:call on the EPA to ban Roundup.If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blankresponse after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong;yoursignsature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen hastext that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you away to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should makethe text appear.
US citizens:call on Biden to push back on the Israeli government'santidemocratic measures.
Rohingya and Myanmarcoup survivors launch legal complaint in Germanyagainst junta. Their accusations include war crimes, crimes againsthumanity, and genocide (against the Rohingya, I presume).I can imagine a verdict of guilty, but in practice, what could the courtdo to a foreign government? There are already sanctions against it,but since the Burmese state has China's backing, I don't think morewestern sanctions would make much difference.
US citizens:call on Facebook and Twitter to fact-checkdisinformation from the wreckerif they allow him to post at all.
Pfizer recently raised the prices of 100 drugs in the US. To wipe thebad taste of this from Americans' minds, its PR operation publicizesthat it will provide the drug at lower price to some patients in poorcountries,and that it is still limiting world-wide production.
A climate defender urged Australian local councils tocut their ownemissions, rather than spend millions on overseas carbon offsets.*Aside from a few peculiar exceptions, Australia's government seems tobe very serious about reducing emissions. I hope it adopts a strictpolicy to limit the sale and purchase of carbon offsets, wildlife offsets,and any other sort of offset.
Sadiiq Long, US citizen is harassed frequently by local thugs becausethey see, when they check his license plate, that he is on the US"terrorist watch list." The US government won't tell him why, andoffers no way to get taken off the list, so he is suing the localthug department for harassing him based on that listing.The harassment varies and is sometimes very frightening; he couldeasily envision being shot next time.
The UK's conditional tax on overly sweetened drinks brings about asignificant (though not revolutionary) reduction of obesity in girls.
All the Memphis thugs involved in killing Tyre Nichols have been chargedwith second-degree murder.
Biden has proposed a collection of measures intended to help peoplewho rent their homes and have trouble affording the expense.I am not able to evaluate it, but I suspect (as do others) that it isnot enough to solve the problem. I think we need to build a lot morehousing, dense enough to make mass transit efficient. That will takeyears, so it is better if we get started now and push it hard.Reportedly some big corporations that have bought up millions ofrental units are content with the proposal -- which suggestsit is insufficient.
Chevron, a Big Oil company, is spending $75 billion on stock buybacks.This demonstrates that Chevron has no valid use for all those profits,so we should increase the taxes the company pays and spend the funds onsomething useful.However, I do not believe we should deduce that gasoline should have alower price. If we tax Chevron that much more, we can instead usethose funds to aid poor people. The poor people who need to drivewill benefit just the same -- but those poor people who can avoiddriving will benefit even more.
Along with the Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, the USmay supply Ukraine with shells made from toxic depleted uranium.When one of those shells explodes, it spreads dust of depleteduranium, which when inhaled or swallowed by humans leads to cancer,birth defects, and other severe medical problems.
The death of most indigenous Americans, due to the importation ofEuropean germs, cause their farm fields to grow trees. The resultwas significant global cooling starting in the late 1500s.The cooling was reversed by population growth some two centuries later.
A woman in Idaho started to miscarry, but the ban on abortionprohibited physicians from treating her until her problem put her atrisk of death.We should not focus too much on these harmful and unjust side effectsof the ban, because they could become a distraction from the harmfuland unjust goal of the ban: prohibiting abortion itself.
Reporters without Borders warns Americans of the threat to freedom ofthe press posed by right-wing authoritarians, in particular the corrupter.
Everyone: call on legislatures at all levels to ban the use offacial recognition and other biometric technology in places of publicaccommodation.
A new California law that requires a decent minimum wage for fast foodworkers is has fast-food chains protesting, "We will go broke!"Chipotle, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, In-N-Out Burger and(effectively) KFC gave a million dollar each to advance an initiativepetition to repeal the law.Treat that "fast food" as it deserves -- by fasting from it!
US pharmaceutical companies have spent more on stock buybacks anddividends than drug research and development over the past decade.
Hun Sen, "president" of Cambodia, regularly puts Cambodians on trial forposting words that insult him.Cambodia isn't the only country that fails to recognize that freedomof speech includes the freedom to insult people -- even to insult thehighest officials. France has prosecuted people for insultingPresident Sarkozy -- for instance, one defendant had said "Sarkozy, Isee you" when the topic was an injustice. Some of these defendantswere acquitted for various reasons, but the fact that the prosecutionwere not dismissed outright in the name of freedom of speech shows thatrespect for freedom of speech is lacking there.I used to refer to Sarkozy as "Sarcômë", which means "cancer".Fortunately for me, I was never prosecuted.
The term "parental rights" is typically used in US discourse to justifydenying children, and adolescents too, thing they have a right to.And even things, such as abortions, that are necessary to avoid aterrible and irreversible change.
Three time, school staff warned the school administration that a6-year-old pupil was carrying a gun. The administration did not takeit away from him, and eventually he fired it at a teacher.Now the superintendent of the school district has been fired.I've read that someone on the staff searched his bag at some point,but did not find the gun. Perhaps the student had put it in his pocketby then. So perhaps the administration did make some effort.
Australia is considering measures to reduce mistreatment and violenceby users of dating apps against people they meet through the apps.One measure being considered is to require checking users' ID and"background".(I am not sure what "background" would include. Criminal record?)The violence is a serious problem, and it is necessary to do somethingto reduce it. However, the proposed requirements would be enough toconvince me to reject the apps.On the other hand, the fact that they are nonfree programs thatrequire a nonfree snoop-phone operating system is also enough toconvince me to reject them. Naturally, both are malwaretoo. The apps collect lots of personal data, which no data baseshould have; that alone is enough to convince me to reject them.They have other problems, too. I don't entirely understand thembecause I have never experienced them -- I've never used programs likethese. But I've read articles in which people who do use them reportthat the apps are generally horrible in social terms. Their cultureencourages people to look for shallow sex; if what you seek is a loverelationship, "Lots of luck!"It would not surprise me if the violence and outright nastiness aresimply the long tail of what the apps more generally encourage. A fewpeople try to get away with violence; most people won't do that, butthey do engage in shallowness and unkindness, which is "how everyoneacts here," and besides, "what other option is there?"I think that the real solution for this problem is a bigger changethan the one that is proposed: to get rid of these apps and encourageother ways that enable people to meet and get to know each other.
Ukraine has pulled its forces out of Soledar.There is nothing particularly important about Soledar, nor Bakhmut,nor the towns behind them. The rational thing for Ukraine to do is toretreat slowly and steadily, so as to maximize the cost to Wagnerwhile limiting Ukrainian casualties.
The psychedelic ibogaine can treat addiction. It can also be damaging,even fatal, when used without proper precautions.
Azerbaijan is sending soldiers that pretend to be "environmentalactivists" to blockade the road between Nagorno-Karabakh and the mainterritory of Armenia.(The idea that "environmental activists" can take any sort ofinitiative in an oil-funded dictatorship is bullshit.) Russianpeacekeepers that under the treaty that ended the last war there arenot authorized to fight a war, so they cannot in practice make those"activists" leave.
Concerned teachers and employees warned administrators at aVirginia elementary school three times that a six-year-old boy hada gun and was threatening other students in the hours before he shotand wounded a teacher, "but the administration could not be bothered".
Politicians in many countries adopt a nationalist approach towardspresent and projected population decline: they exaggerate howdifficult it will be to cope with a decrease, and presume that thesolution is to persuade young people to have more children.They don't recognize the future danger of a larger (or evenunchanged) population, and disregard immigration as a way of reducingfuture decrease.It is true that Japanese culture is very unfriendly to immigrants,but the state could do things to reduce that and help immigrantssurmount the obstacle.
The planned increase in electric cars would require so much lithiumthat mining it is expected to cause great social problems.However, investing to encourage walking and use of other kinds oftransport could avoid the problem by reducing the number of carsneeded.I don't know whether this research takes account of the needfor lithium for power storage to have power available fortimes with little wind and little sun. Or for the possibilityof using people's cars' batteries for that purpose.
Tory harshness to the weak has inspired anger since before they gotinto power in 2010. But they and the press have carefully controlledwhether people were allowed to express anger, and at whom. Repressionof protesters has been harsh all along.
Manchin has agreed to a progressive proposal: to lift or eliminate thelimit on the amount of a worker's income that is subject to SocialSecurity tax.This would fix a future insufficiency in Social Security funds, whichcertainly has to be fixed sooner or later, though not urgently.Of course, "moderate" politicians (plutocratists) want to fix itby cutting benefits, and they'd prefer to do this as soon as possible.The hyper-rich get most of their income through paths other thanwages, and not covered by payroll taxes. Thus, even after thischange, they will still get a tax break that they do not deserve.(The same thing happens with income tax, though the details aredifferent.) Nonetheless, the change will be a step forward.
The Wagner army of ex-convicts has become effective at taking smallareas of territory, at the cost of very high casualties.Wagner doesn't care about the casualties, because its soldiers camefrom prison, released to be cannon fodder. Russians don't care howmany ex-convicts get killed this way.I wonder, how many convicts does Russia have that Putin could send toWagner? How long before he uses them up?Putin could force any Russians into Wagner, including those who arenot convicts. But if he does that, Russians will care whether theylive or die.
Tory plans to authorize uniformed thugs to attack protests can createa dynamic in which protesters know that the thugs are their enemies,and expect a fight from the beginning. That will means a lot offights.It may also drive those who don't want a fight to give up on protestingand wait despondently for global heating to kill them.
AI is eliminating jobs in a number of areas. It may soon eliminatejobs faster that the economy can come up with new kinds of work forpeople to do.
Classified documents discovered at Mike Pence's home in Indiana.The Republicans that (following the bullshitter) hate Pence will say,"Pence is just as horrible as Biden." Those that support Pence willhave to find an excuse to argue that it was ok for Pence to neglectsecret documents at home but not ok for Biden to do so.
Adjunct professors at Oxford University will sue the university fortreating them like gig workers.I hope they win. Nobody who works a substantial amount of timefor a platform should be treated as a gig worker.
We observe nowadays a tendency to invent verbal circumlocutions, andpressure people to use these circumlocutions instead of the simplereveryday words. In particular, every noun that describes a category ofpersons is liable to get this treatment. The circumlocution typicallyconsists of some adjective followed by "person".The newest target is the word "mummy". The campaign pressures us tosay "mummified person" instead.I object to that, and not only because there is no good reason for theinconvenience of the change. A corpse (mummified or not) is not anytype of person; it is not a person. Death ends a person's existence;a corpse is what a person's body becomes after the person dies. Iwill continue to use the noun, "mummy."Speaking of which, I have a hunch that sooner or later a similardemand will target the word "corpse".I think persons deserve certain respect, but that is no reason topressure people to perform a ceremony to demonstrate it, every time weuse a noun which refers to a set of persons. Doing so a nuisance.
Ellen Brown looks at various ways to change the US banking andmonetary system that would stabilize it and eliminate theproblemscaused by the current handling of national debt.Most of then would require legislation, but the "trillion-dollarplatinum coin" may actually be feasible without Congress.
On Mao's Cultural Revolution, and how theyears of suffering affectedChinese people's psyche and thinking,including that of the fatherof Distator Xi, and the totally contrary thinking of the dictator himself.If I understand the article right, the women in the Educated YouthFriendship Group are hardly "fond" of the lives they led during theCultural Revolution. On the contrary, it says they are pretendingtogether to live the "normal" adolescence that the Cultural Revolutiondenied them in real life.
How the Republican Party has sunk:from Honest Abe to Ever-Lie Santos.The bullshitter lied about many things, but not the basics of his lifestory. When he lied, Republicans coped with those lies by insistingthat the lies were true.That won't work when Santos falsifies the events of his own life. Tosupport him, Republicans in Congress have to deny blatant facts.Thus, their continued support for him demonstrates that no lie is toolow for a Republican in Congress.
Ellen Brown looks at various ways to change the US banking andmonetary system that would stabilize it and eliminate theproblemscaused by the current handling of national debt.Most of then would require legislation, but the "trillion-dollarplatinum coin" may actually be feasible without Congress.
Protesters called for Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, toresign. After years of state violence against journalists and opposition,they don't believe she will run an honest election.
Gordon Brown warns ofTories "testing the water" for two-tier healthcare.He also warns thatthis would destroy the NHS. I warned of this years ago -- that the Tories seemed to intend todestroy the NHS.I wish he were wrong, and I were wrong too.
Reps.Adam Schiff and Jim Jordan Killed [US intelligence agencies']Mass Surveillance Reform in 2020. Will They Do It Again?The FISA court admitted that it could not carry out its responsibilities:that the intelligence agencies it was supposed to regulate had made itpowerless.Adam Schiff's campaign defeated a progressive primary opponent in 2020 by spreading false accusations about him. The accusations receivedso much press attention that the victim had no chance to informall the voters who had been misled.
Prominent Cameroonjournalist [Martinez Zogo] found deadafter abduction.It seems he had made an accusation of corruption linked to the corruptrepressive "president" of Cameroon.The article reports that Zogo tried to protect himself from kidnapingby taking refuge in a thug center. That makes me very curious:how did the thugs respond to that?
Biden's choice for anew chief of staff is not merely a plutocratist;he is a plutocrat and apparently a fraudster.
Australia has a system intended to prevent habitat-destroying changesin land use, but empiricallyit has done little good. Ministers were too quick to decide that plans were "non-significant"and bypass careful environmental review for them.
The US Constitution mandates separation of church and stateto protectagainst movements to impose a specific religion on everyone. In other words, to protect against today's Christian nationalism.
Israel has put specialrestrictions on foreign citizens' entry intooccupied Palestinian territory.According to Human Rights Watch,these rules unjustly cut off contact between the Palestinians who livethere and everyone else.
Collecting the evidence that new energy technologies such asnuclearfission, nuclear fusion, and carbon capture and storage, are a distraction and a big wasteof money (or worse). We should ratherdeploy the mature renewable energy generation technologies as fast aswe can.The only difficult new technologies needed are to make airplanes andships use electricity. (Perhaps with green hydrogen as anintermediate form of energy.)
US citizens:call on the Senate to confirm Gigi Sohn as FCCcommissioner.The Obama-era FCC version of network neutrality is insufficientbecause it doesn't stop web sites from tracking users. It onlyprohibits some of the unjust ways to use that data.What we need is toprohibit web sites from sneakily snooping. Whatever info they want about you, they should ask foropenly, and you should be able to give whatever answeryou wish.Nonetheless, restoring the FCC policy that the corrupter eliminatedwould be a step forward.
Truck drivers are now subject to extreme digital monitoring,and the rigid enforcement can give them reasons to drive faster.In general, monitoring workers closely makes them anxious and uncomfortable.Some will quit.Where unions are strong enough, they may be able to pressure employersto reduce monitoring. But not many workplaces are like that nowadays.I think we need strict laws to limit monitoring of workers.
Joseph Stiglitz says to tax high earners at 70%to tackle widening inequality,and put a wealth tax of 2-3% per year on fortunes.
100,000 people protested in Israel againstright-wing plans toundermine the supreme court'scheck on actions of ministers.
There were200 rallies on Sunday in favor of abortion rights,aroundthe US. Bad technology prevented me from being one of them.I saw notice of the event a few days before it, and I wanted to postto encourage people to participate — and to participate personally,if I was up to the walking and standing required.Sad to say, the URL for finding information about the rallies was aweb page that depended almost totally on nonfree JavaScript code.Without running that code, no useful information was visible in thepage. As a matter of conscience, I willnot accept nonfree software as normal or legitimate, so I will not suggest to the public torun a nonfree program. I had no other solution. Thus, I could notpost about these rallies.I implore groups that organize rallies to make the small effort neededto post the information in a simple HTML page accessible from the FreeWorld — not _instead of_ what they now do, but _in addition_. Thepage could contain an itemized list, with a section for each state anditems within a section sorted by city. That would be easy togenerate, and easy for users to download and search. If organizationsdo this, they will enable people to find their rallies from within theFree World.I used to know a volunteer who would set up to scrape the inaccessblepages and put the results in a non-JavaScript page. Then I could linkto that scraper page to post directions to find a rally. Alas, I losttouch with per last year.If you'd like to volunteer to do this for me, a few times a year,and you know how to do it, please send me email at gnu.org.
Why the Fed wants to crush workers, andwhy the interest rateincreases benefit creditors— that is, the super-rich and the banks.
The US government seems to base its treatment of people who revealsecrets to the press on how politically important those people are.
AFrench thug attacked a man who was taking video of a protest,knocking him down to the ground; then another thug clubbed him in the balls. This damaged one of his testicles and he needed it amputated.
A completely bullshit headline claims that Getty Images has suedthe maker of Stable Diffusion for "stealing photos".
The text of the article reveals that that headline is total confusion.The case is not about theft at all; it is an allegation of copyrightinfringement. Both factually and legally, those two are totallydifferent.
If someone had stolen photos from Getty, Getty would not have them any more.
So let's turn to the issue that this situation really concerns: doesthe output of a machine learning system infringe the copyright onitems in the training set that contribute to that output?
There are possible cases where it clearly would infringe. If asubstantial part of the output is very similar to one item in thetraining set, no stretch is required to conclude that it copies fromthat item.
However, people don't use machine learning system intending to get apart or a slightly modified version of some existing work. The aim isto mix, seamlessly, little bits of many training items. The itemsthat play a role are more like artistic influences than like samples.
To find these to be copyright infringement would be disastrous to thecreativity that copyright is nominally intended to promote.
The main purposes of copyright today is to keep some big companiesrolling in dough, and any effect on artists is for politicians merelyan excuse. For us, however, the question of what copyright law shouldsay is mainly how topromote the arts without interfering with users' freedom.
I do not use Stable Diffusion, ChatGPT, or anything like them thatexists now, because they don't respect the user's freedom.
It is a nonfree program that users can't even run, because userscan't get the program's source code, or even its compiled executable.All you could possibly do with it is to identify yourself to theowner's server and send it some input data for your dossier. Then itsends back the output, over the net.
This is a manner of making a program available for usage that tramplesusers' freedom even worse than ordinary proprietary software. We callit SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute) and I reject it, just asI reject nonfree executable software or source code under a nonfreelicense — for my freedom's sake.
Many South Koreans want to develop nuclear weapons for South Korea fordeterrence against North Korea. But they would not be guaranteed todeter Dictator Kim.
Spoof ads for BMW and Toyota in the UK mocked the companies for theirpollution and their anti-climate lobbying.How long, I wonder, before the Tories make it a crime to portraya global corporation's products "in a negative light"?
A call to investigate the London thugs who on various occasions had tojudge whether rapist David Carrick could remain on the force, anddisregarded complaints against him, thus allowing him to continue hisseries of rapes.
The Tories plan to start criminalizing the presentation of unwelcomeattitudes and opinions, using one special case — video that showsillegal immigrants and their boats in "a positive light" — to destroyfreedom of expression. They will label such videos as "abetting" acrime.Imagine what other attitudes and opinions they might prohibitby applying that approach to other areas of life.
The bullshitter mistook E Jean Carroll for his former wife, Marla Maples.Perhaps that explains why he thought he could have sex with the former ;-}.
French president Macron has sparked a general strike by proposing to raisethe retirement age for the non-rich.I can imagine situations of great adversity where a democratic countrywould act justly by increasing the age for retirement pensions. Butsince that adversity would be fiscal in nature, it is a moralobligation to demand sacrifices first of the rich. Macron fails tounderstand this, because he believes in plutocracy.His main opponents, even more right-wing, are likewise plutocratistbut their stated ideology is to demonize some disprivileged groups.Right-wingers generally seek to divide people, so they use scapegoats.
Police investigating rape claims in England believe victim-blaming myths,study finds.They tend to assume that false accusations are far more frequent thanthey really are.
On the complex relationship between unions and public opinion.In the long term, unions need public support to block right-winggovernments from legislating to impede organizing and striking.People will give this support through the occasional inconvenientstrike if they recognize that in the long term it makes a better lifefor all the non-rich. Thus, unions must make sure that the labormovement keeps that aim in mind.
Increase in dust in the air, since 1800, may have cancelled out some ofglobal heating.Up to 8% of it.However, since the 1980s, the amount of dust has been decreasing.
When companies are compelled to reduce staff, some countries laws'pressure the companies to do it in a gradual way that doesn't cause atrauma to workers, rather than using the mass layoffs typical in theUS.
Peruvian thugs raided San Marcos University and forced students out oftheir dorm at gunpoint and with violence. The thugs gave them noexplanation, and reportedly then began to search the students' rooms.Some years ago, San Marcos University had a student group, San Marcux,which taught students how to spread the free software ideas. Theyinvited me to speak on some occasions. That was years ago. I wonderwhat is happening there now.
A generaldiscussion of the moral issues of which kinds of protest arelegitimate,then applied to the case of protesting by blocking highways.This discussion makes sense, in its narrow framework. However,treating the Just Stop Oil protests in isolation, ignoring thedeadly threat they confront, leads to wrong conclusions.Global heating and the resulting climate breakdown are alreadycausing millions of deaths. This year, 200 million deaths are predicted. The UK government has pledged to help stop globalheating but is not taking much action. Can you seriously argue thatblocking highways in desperation to pressure the state to carry outits mission is morally wrong?Blocking highways seems to be a self-defeating method, but that is adifferent kind of issue.
Localpirates in Nigeria kidnap people from boats and stealtheirengines, cargo and fish.
US citizens:call on the EPA to stop dragging its feet on rulestoreduce greenhouse gas emissions by power plants.If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blankresponse after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong;yoursignsature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen hastext that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you away to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should makethe text appear.
A generaldiscussion of the moral issues of which kinds of protest arelegitimate,then applied to the case of protesting by blocking highways.This discussion makes sense, in its narrow framework. However,treating the Just Stop Oil protests in isolation, ignoring thedeadly threat they confront, leads to wrong conclusions.Global heating and the resulting climate breakdown are alreadycausing millions of deaths. This year, 200 million deaths are predicted. The UK government has pledged to help stop globalheating but is not taking much action. Can you seriously argue thatblocking highways in desperation to pressure the state to carry outits mission is morally wrong?Blocking highways seems to be a self-defeating method, but that is adifferent kind of issue.
Sadistic LA thugstased Keenan Anderson repeatedly for 42 secondswhile he was already helplessly on the ground. It is not unusual forsuch treatment to kill someone, and it killed him.After killing him, the thugdepartment claimed his death was his fault.The author of the first article appears to make a foolish scientificerror. It is irrelevant to understanding the issue politically ormorally, but it is important to learn to avoid. It seems that theauthor misunderstood the difference between power and energy, andassumed that the wattage of successive taser shots should be added toget a "combined wattage". That is a mistake; adding them isappropriate only if they happen simultaneously.If I could find out the wattage that a taser delivers while operating,I could tell for certain whether this mistake was made.
Georgia thugs killed protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán,who hadparticipated for more than a year in a nonviolent encampment protestthat aims to block construction of a large thug training facility in aforest that had been slated to become a park. The thugs say they killed him after he shot a thug, but you can'ttrust what thugs say about such things. They present no evidence thathe shot at all. But they have systematically begun to chargeprotestors with "terrorism".
Erdoğan is using the issue of bringingSweden and Finland into NATOto attack freedom of expression in those countries.I disapprove of burning books, as a general matter, but if there aremillions of copies of a book then burning one that you own is no greatloss. Perhaps it should be a crime to intentionally destroy a rarebook — if you don't want it, you must sell it to someone who doesor give it to a museum.It is outrageous to demand that some religion's "sacred" book receivea higher legal status that any other book — such as, for instance, myown book, Free Software, Free Society. I think the moral ideas inthat book are wise, but you have the right to buy a copy and burn itif you think the opposite.The Turkish government argues that burning a Qur'an was a hate crime.This shows that the concept of "hate crimes" as it is understood insome European countries is a threat to human rights.
Lula has fired 80 high officials of the Brazilian army,including itscommander, for aiding the attack on the government or shielding theattackers.The commander was appointed by Bolsonaro shortly before the latter's termended. It is entirely plausible that Bolsonaro did this to support theinsurrection, and entirely plausible that he prepared and organizedthe insurrection.
Republican legislators introduce new laws to crack down on drag shows.The article says that most of these bills go much further than whatyou would think that means: they "define a drag performer as someoneperforming while using dress, makeup and mannerisms associated with agender other than the one assigned to [per] at birth." This meansthat _any_ performance by a trans person would be banned. Even a talkabout any subject could be a "performance".This is typical of the dishonesty of right-wing extremists, whoserepressive laws are often described as prohibiting something veryspecific but create the opportunity to prohibit a lot more. Considercritical race theory — a field of research for historians, some ofwhom promote teaching methods that face criticism in academia.Republicans have passed laws that purport to prohibit teachingcritical race theory in primary and secondary school, which neverhappens, but actually prohibit nearly any teaching about systemicracism.
Israel subsidizes making movies. The goverment dislikes twodocumentaries about Israel's occupation policies, so now thegovernment demands that money back,explicitly adopting a policy ofideological bias.The US government carries censorship of movies about war through a policywhereby the US military cooperates with making films, but only when itapproves of the message of the film.
Direct air capture of CO2 could actually increase the level of greenhouse gas emissions, if renewable generation is insufficient and fossil fuels are still used to generate the electricity to run the capture. If someday there is excess renewable energy capacity to power capture machines, then they could actually reduce the CO2 concentration, it seems to me. However, the article's main point is valid: this method is worse than useless for the next few years, and it is probably a PR scheme meant to let out the pressure to reduce emissions.
The rate of non-vaccination among US children is rising, and even though it is still small, it means more people are in danger of polio and other diseases.
Israel's top court ruled 10-1 on Wednesday that Aryeh Deri, leader of the Shas party and a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should not be allowed to serve as a cabinet minister because of a February 2022 conviction for tax fraud. This could make that authoritarian coalition fall apart. Or perhaps Netanyahu and Shas could settle on some other person to appoint. However, if Deri is motivated by personal ambition, giving that ministry to anyone else would not satisfy him.
Arizona's new attorney general to use election fraud unit to boostvoting rights.Once Republicans in Arizona can't stop Democrats from voting, they maynever win again.
Greta Thunberg Warns Davos Elite Will Throw Humanity "Under the Bus"for Profits.They've done it plenty so far.
If You Work for a Major Corporation, Your Boss Has Probably AlreadyMade More in 2023 Than You Will [in the whole year].
OSHA Fines Amazon "Roughly 0.000013%" of Annual Revenue for Worker Safety Hazardsfor "work processes that were designed for speed but not safety" and"resulted in serious worker injuries."
DeMentis has arbitrarily prohibited teaching advanced placementAfrican American Studies in Florida high schools.I hope there will be a lawsuit against this.
Claims that Rep. George Santos has not made, this far.This reached me via a mailing list.1. That he was the product of virgin birth.- That he was subjected to medical dissection torture in a UFO.- That he's "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound."- That he lived next door to The Addams Family.- That he has green blood.- That he has been both a vampire and a werewolf.- That he can hold his breath for over three hours.- That he used to go by the alias "Hoppity Hooper".- That he was a member of "Spinal Tap".
House Democrats have reintroduced a constitutional amendment tooverturn the Corporations United decision, which ruled thatcorporations have the "human right" to donate to political campaigns.The plaintiff's ostensible name was "Citizens United",but "Corporations United" describes it better.
Artificial light is rapidly reducing the number of stars that are visiblein many parts of the world.
Poverty is a big killer in the UK [and in the US]. Where is thepolitical will to defeat it?
The increase of the absolute number of union members in the US has notkept up with the increase in the number of jobs.
A human error caused a batch of votes in a school board election to beentered twice in the totals. A recent software "upgrade" broke thecode that was supposed to warn if anyone made such a mistake.The error was detected later and corrected, but more important thanthat one election is what this tells us about all elections that usethose machines: the manufacturer could rig an election by installing abent "upgrade".I see no reason to think the manufacturer tried intentionally to doanything wrong in this instance. The bug had an effect this time onlybecause of a human error, and the human had no reason to try such anerror intentionally since it was probably going to be detected.However, another manufacturer (or some employee) could intentionally"upgrade" the software wrong, some other time.The article doesn't say which jobs those machines actually do. Howsignificant this potential vulnerability is depends on that question.
UN Secretary-General Guterres told the Davor gathering that expandingfossil fuel is insanity and must be stopped.
This [Tory] government knows it’s on borrowed time — that’s why it’stearing up our freedoms.
Around 40% of global company CEOs say they fear their companies will fail, 10years from now, because of macroeconomic trends.
Sinema and Manchin proudly boasted of supporting Republicans in the Senateby defending the filibuster.
Nearly 40% of people in the United States said they or a familymember delayed medical care last year due to the prohibitively high cost of treatment under the nation's for-profit healthcare model,
Many are angry at Prince Henry of Britain for saying something thatraised an issue that goes beyond his family, not only for Britain buteven more for the US. It is the issue of war and dehumanization, and militarism.When my father fought in France, did he dehumanize Hitler's soldiers?I never asked him that, but he knew they dehumanized and hated him,They did not know his name, but if he had been a civilian they wouldhave sought to murder him, as they did to so many others.What would it take to wean the US off of militarism? Nowadays, theefforts to try are not very impressive.The opposite of militarism is not pacifism. Occasionally there isa war that must be fought; defending Ukraine is one example,and potentially defending Taiwan would be another. But these warsare exceptions among US military campaigns.
Interviews with Peruvians about the political situation there.I am curious about the background of the current president, Boluarte.Why was she made vice president? Who chose her for that position,and on what basis?
The Jewish National Fund is suing Palestinian organizations in the US,alleging that their boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign is "terrorism".The trial court dismissed the suit, finding the accusation"threadbare". That is an understatement — the accusation isblackwhiting. Boycotting institutions and companies is a standardtool of democratic political action. It is not, repeat not,terrorism.
US to designate Russia's Wagner Group as "transnational criminal organization."It may well fit that description, but no entity should be officiallydesignated as "criminal" without a suitable kind of trial.
The UK is considering making it a crime to keep silent about somethingthat might lead a potential sex partner (which includes any potentialsweetheart or spouse) to reject you.
To criminalize the failure to inform someone of something — whateverthat something might be — invites injustice. To avoid thatconsequence, the requirement must be narrowly limited to a few specialcases, each clearly justified and easy to recognize.
Under this law, anyone who has a characteristic for which people arestigmatized or simply rejected will have to tell all potential lovers.Don't try to live it down — ever.
Consider the risk you'd take by passing as white and getting involvedwith someone who might have hesitated (and perhaps said no) ratherthan agree to an interracial relationship. Whether that hesitation isdue to being racist, or to fear of others' racism (*), or even to fearof future systemic racism, the effect is the same.
You could try to argue that you did not know for a fact that thatpoint was important to per, but those who want to make an example ofyou will respond, "Lots of people feel that way, so you should haveknown to expect it. Guilty!"
- Writing this reminded me of the song, Society's Child.Please do NOT access it through a streaming dis-service. Use invidio.us!
A Canadian company has sued the US demanding that the US construct the Keystone XL pipeline or pay 15 billion dollars.The lawsuit is under the original NAFTA treaty, which has an ISDSclause ("I sue democratic states") It is peculiar that this lawsuit is proceeding, given that NAFTA was replaced by a newer treaty which does not have an ISDS clause.The article notes this peculiarity but does not explain how that is possible.
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government reversed itself and approved the fellowship for Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch.
Thousands of Peruvians opposed to current President Boluarte andsupporting arrested President Castillo are protesting in Lima.
Republicans, who control Iowa's legislature, have proposed a bill toput drastic limits on federally-funded food aid.
A think tank recommends that the British Labour party move to the right on "social issues". Starmer has moved it quite a ways to the right on economic issues.If he follows this advice, the result will be "Tory lite" across theboard.
The Biden administration is still sending government lawyers todefend various bad policies instituted by the wrecker.
Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for trying to extradite Julian Assangewhile criticizing other countries for imprisoning journalists and editors.The article's original line, "Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisyfor demanding the release of journalists detained around the worldwhile the US president continues seeking the extradition of theWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange," implies that Biden's wrong is tocriticize the other countries. I rewrote the line to indicate thatwhat's wrong is to try to imprison Assange.
An enormous iceberg which cracked apart from the Thwaites glacier 20years ago has started floating away from the glacier. This isimportant because it will enable the glacier to start sliding into theocean and melting faster.
Wikipedia and other volunteer contribution platforms are threatened bythe UK's proposed "child protection" law.
A study concluded that over 90% of carbon offsets for sale under theVerra standard were likely to be bogus. It has been a tempting avenuefor fraud.I don't trust these offsets. When a business makes statementsabout greenhouse gas emissions that are based on offsets, I don't takethem seriously.
Governor DeMentis and the Florida Republicans plan to permanently prohibit companies from requiring Covid-19 vaccination, or requiringwearing and prohibit medical boards from disqualifying doctors forspreading Covid-19 disinformation.
A government monitoring committee finds that Tories have neglected their long-term commitments on policies to protect wildlife inBritain.This seems to be the standard Tory approach to any scandalous problem:to proclaim themselves scandalized, discuss measures to reduce theproblems, then are slow in carrying out the promises. Months or years later they forget or cancel the plans, still unimplemented.A few years ago, British deportation of people who were lawfullybrought from the Caribbean as children, but cannot now prove that waslawful for want of necessary old documents, caused a scandal and the Toriespromised to correct this and compensate them. But now they plan to quit early.
(satire) Experts Warn Gas Stoves May Slowly Ingratiate Selves In Family To Kill And Take Place Of Matriarch.
Maria Ressa has been acquitted of politically-motivated charges of tax evasion but still faces the politically-motivated prison sentence for libel.
Chile has rejected ex-president Piñera's personal plan to start a newcopper mine that would endanger marine wildlife nearby.
British climate defenders painted a government building black in honorof the government's plans to open a new coal mine. That building holds the office of the minister who approved a newcoal mine.
Many rapist thugs in Britain have made British women afraid to deal with cops. It has become clear that there are groups of misogynisticthugs which protect thugs who commit misogynistic acts.The article proposes reforms to put an end to that. I wish the authorhad not dismissed the campaign to "defund the police" by taking it tomean, literally, "abolish cops." The intended meaning was to respondto incidents of psychological breakdown by sending people trained inhow to respond to that.
Billionaires strive to undermine democracy to pass laws to transfermore wealth to them. But desire for even more wealth is not theironly reason. Some also make a political calculation that if workersare in penury they will be unable to organize to resist. So they seekto push workers down to penury.That ideology appeared by the late 1700s and it is still influentialtoday among billionaire right-wingers.
The UK had plainclothes thugs infiltrate anti-apartheid protesters inthe 1970s,to snoop on their protest planning and their discussionswith their lawyersabout defending them in trial.
Wild caught,freshwater fish in the United States are far morecontaminated with toxic PFAS“forever chemicals” than thosecommercially caught in oceans,This makes sense. The PFAs in a lake is basically stuck there, while thosereleased into the ocean can diffuse through the whole volume of the ocean.What is clear is that we must stop filling the water with these toxins.
Fukushima:court upholds acquittals of three Tepco executives over disaster.That is the right outcome. The Fukushima nuclear plant disaster couldhave been averted my designing the nuclear plant differently, and thatgives us in our hindsight grounds to conclude that the actual designwas excessively risky. But that doesn't mean people should beconvicted of a crime for not recognizing this in advance.Perhaps Tepco, the company, should face civil liability for theeconomic damage to surrounding businesses. These executives can'tpossibly pay that much, but maybe Tepco can do so over many years.
Ethiopia works hard to forget aboutthe past practice of slavery,which was abolished thereonly in 1942. The subject is embarrassing so people are encouraged to forget about it.
Arguing that the best way to replace US gas stoves with more efficientelectric induction stoves, over the long term, is with incentives andfinancial help. This way avoids prohibitions.
There is some sign thatclimate disasters cause harm to fetuses andnewborns.There are states and countries that make it a crime to cause harmto a fetus. Could fossil fuel CEOs be prosecuted under these laws?I hate to suggest it, because the main use of those laws isto prosecute women who may have tried to give themselves abortions.
US citizens: thank the Attorneys General who aredefendingthe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Supreme Court.
Scientists discuss the delusional effect of carbon offsets.Some scientists sat it might be safe and beneficial for companiesto buy carbon offsets in addition to meeting mandatory targets forreducing their own emissions.
Right-wing politicians demand deregulation of many industrialactivities, includingconstruction, to "eliminate red tape." However,the regulations were adopted to save the people's lives,andderegulation often leads to deadly accidents. Building codes in the UK, and especially in London, are an excellent,terrible example.The end result is that deregulation benefits businesses (that do orinvest in the activities that have been deregulated), while the harmtends to fall on poor people, such as the residents of danger-prone buildings, the inhabitants of "cancer alley",and the drivers that work for Uber.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to passthe Billionaire's Minimum Income Tax. The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!It would ensure that every household worth over $100 million is payingan effective tax rate of at least 20% on their total income each year.
Not-quite-protester Cao Zhixin:When you see this video I have beentaken away by the police for a while, like my other friends.
The world's leading financial institutions — including major WallStreet banks such asCitigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America —are still pumping money into fossil fuelexpansion.If you have accounts there, you can move your money to a smaller bankwhich can't do harm like that. I did.You can also urge your city to do likewise.
A Republican election denialist, who was defeated in the election inNovember,organized a campaign of drive-by shootings at the homesofthe region's main Democratic officials.By luck, nobody in the homes was hit. That Republican probably won'tbe allowed another chance.
TheUK's new online identification requirement will effectivelyrequire all discussion platforms and search engines to verify the age of each user. The obvious way to do that is a repressive andtyrannical way: by making each user show government photo ID.I reject commercial communications platforms, because they alreadydeny users' freedom in various ways — instance, by demanding toidentify the user and/or running their code in the user's computer.However, there are commercial search engines that currently do nothingwrong to the user. Will this law make them all engage in repression?Does the age verification requirement apply to search engines?GNU Taler can be used to give people a way to verify their ages toa web site without giving the site any way to identify them. But thisis not entirely finished yet. The goals of this bill mostly seem valid to me; indeed, they may notgo far enough. For instance, TikTok's practices seem to reduceteenagers' attention spans; should those practices be banned? I amnot sure. However, the internet is a threat to democracy if trackswhat people do and where they go.
Local governments in the UK have apartments that they can rent out orsell,People who bought them now face bills for major renovations thatare far more than they can possibly afford.
TheUK's new online identification requirement will effectivelyrequire all discussion platforms and search engines to verify the age of each user. The obvious way to do that is a repressive andtyrannical way: by making each user show government photo ID.I reject commercial communications platforms, because they alreadydeny users' freedom in various ways — instance, by demanding toidentify the user and/or running their code in the user's computer.However, there are commercial search engines that currently do nothingwrong to the user. Will this law make them all engage in repression?Does the age verification requirement apply to search engines?GNU Taler can be used to give people a way to verify their ages toa web site without giving the site any way to identify them. But thisis not entirely finished yet. The goals of this bill mostly seem valid to me; indeed, they may notgo far enough. For instance, TikTok's practices seem to reduceteenagers' attention spans; should those practices be banned? I amnot sure. However, the internet is a threat to democracy if trackswhat people do and where they go.
US citizens: thank the Attorneys General who aredefendingthe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Supreme Court.
US citizens: thank the Attorneys General who aredefendingthe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Supreme Court.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to passthe Billionaire's Minimum Income Tax. The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!It would ensure that every household worth over $100 million is payingan effective tax rate of at least 20% on their total income each year.
Right-wing politicians demand deregulation of many industrialactivities, includingcontruction, to "eliminate red tape." However,the regulations were adopted to save the people's lives,andderegulation often leads to deadly accidents. Building codes in the UK, and especially in London, are an excellent,terrible example.The end result is that deregulation benefits businesses (that do orinvest in the activities that have been deregulated), while the harmtends to fall on poor people, such as the residents of danger-prone buildings, the inhabitants of "cancer alley",and the drivers that work for Uber.
A Republican election denialist, who was defeated in the election inNovember,organized a campaign of drive-by shootings at the homesofthe region's main Democratic officials.By luck, nobody in the homes was hit. That Republican probably won'tbe allowed another chance.
Scientists discuss the delusional effect of carbon offsets.Some scientists sat it might be safe and beneficial for companiesto buy carbon offsets in addition to meeting mandatory targets forreducing their own emissions.
The world's leading financial institutions — including major WallStreet banks such asCitigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America —are still pumping money into fossil fuelexpansion.If you have accounts there, you can move your money to a smaller bankwhich can't do harm like that. I did.You can also urge your city to do likewise.
Local governments in the UK have apartments that they can rent out orsell,People who bought them now face bills for major renovations thatare far more than they can possibly afford.
TheUK's new online identification requirement will effectivelyrequire all discussion platforms and search engines to verify the age of each user. The obvious way to do that is a repressive andtyrannical way: by making each user show government photo ID.I reject commercial communications platforms, because they alreadydeny users' freedom in various ways &msdash instance, by demanding toidentify the user and/or running their code in the user's computer.However, there are commercial search engines that currently do nothingwrong to the user. Will this law make them all engage in repression?Does the age verification requirement apply to search engines?GNU Taler can be used to give people a way to verify their ages toa web site without giving the site any way to identify them. But thisis not entirely finished yet.The _goals_ of this bill mostly seem valid to me; indeed, they may notgo far enough. For instance, TikTok's practices seem to reduceteenagers' attention spans; should those practices be banned? I amnot sure. However, the internet is a threat to democracy if trackswhat people do and where they go.
Not-quite-protester Cao Zhixin:When you see this video I have beentaken away by the police for a while, like my other friends.
The UK's new "protect children by repressing everyone" bill wouldrequire online platforms from showing anyone anything that presentsthe practice ofcrossing the sea around the UK in a small boatin afavorable light.This is blatant political censorship: opposing Tory politics will beprohibited.
Robert Reich describes what happened onprevious occasions whenRepublicans tried to threaten to make the US defaultas extortionagainst a Democratic president.[Ro] Khanna Warns HouseGOP Wants to 'Hijack the Entire US Economy'to Cut Social Security.
(satire) Andrew TateDefense Team Assembled From Dozens Of LawyersTrafficked From Eastern Europe.
The Yes Men target Adidas.As far as I can tell, companies like Adidas and Nike are supported byfans who are trapped. They yearn to show off how much money they havespent on merchandise of one company, so it can milk them over andover. How foolish!
An elite Londonthug has confessed to 24 rapes, plus other crimes,along a 20-year career. Required occassional backgroundinvestigations found nothing wrong.The author, who insists that UK thug departments must change theirmisogynistic attitudes and culture, is in a position to know.The thugtold his victims that it was futile to report himbecause hisfellow thugs would take his side and disbelieve them. Sad to say, itseems that that was true. He also threatened to murder at least oneof them.Each victim who complained subsequently withdraw the complaint underpressure of his threats.
Former [Iranian] envoys warn against policiesincluding supply of drones to Russia and failure to revive nuclear deal.
Thinking about theUS military dominance in the light of the Athenianempire.I would not use the term "American empire" to describe this,because it is rather the empire of the rich, and the US is onlypart of its power.
Teachers in British state schools will go on strike.The government's crush-the-poor policy is driving nearly everyone to strike,who has a union.
Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they willcontinue“protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossilfuels.The UK governmentplans to give police even more power to lock us up.But it won’t stop us: this is about humanity’s future.The UK government is criminalizing, one by one, all methods of protestthat might effectively draw attention to a cause. But the youngpeople who know that global heating is likely to kill them before theyget old realize that surrendering to the authoritarian state is not asane option.
It beggars belief that the UN thought it a good idea to allow anauthoritarian petro-state to host an already compromised COP28.
14 of the most modern tanks would do Ukraine some good, but that isnot enough to win. Estimates are thatvictory would require on theorder of 100 tanks.Tanks are far from invulnerable in battle, even though rifle firebounces off them. 14 tanks, even if they are superior to the enemy'stanks, will not last long if they fight day after day. If in a largebattle the Putin forces lose 50 tanks and Ukraine loses 10, we wouldsay that the battle went Ukraine's way, but at the strategic level itwould be a defeat for Ukraine. It would put an end to Ukraine'sattacking with tanks.
Vaccine manufacturers lobbied Twitter to censoractivists that demandedglobal permission to make Covid-19 vaccines.
Warning ofunprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to returnin 2023.As a result, in the next few years we could experience a sample of aworld with 1.5°C of global heating.
Over 80,000 Israelis protested against recent attacks againstdemocracy and human rights by Israel's extremist right-winggovernment.
Britons must stop fearing toslam the Tories for ruining the NHSbecause of their anti-state ideology.The idea of "shrinking the state" is absurd, because we need the stateto do many vital jobs. In practice, governments that say they will "shrink the state" arepracticing "squeeze-up" economics: squeeze the people at the bottom ofthe economy, so that money flows out at the top to the rich.
The @irony{Office of Hypersenstivity} at theUniversity of SouthernCalifornia has ruled the term "field work" taboo. Reportedly thisdecision stems from a concern to protect people, on seeing or hearingthe term "field work", from being reminded of the slaves in the 1800sthat worked in farm fields.Nowadays some slaves are forced to work in nail salons, so there is aproposal to make the word "nail" taboo. The proposal is that nails,when used in construction, be referred to as "hammer targets" to avoidreminding anyone of nail salons. One complicating factor is thatother slaves are forced to work in construction and may use nails; noone knows what to do about that.Enslavement is a grave crime, whether the slaves are forced to work onfarms, in nail salons, in construction, or anything else. Our governments should do more to prevent it.But that's no reason to mess up the Englishlanguage.
Hundreds of thousands of young climate activists have said they willcontinue“protesting in the streets in huge numbers” against fossilfuels.The UK governmentplans to give police even more power to lock us up.But it won’t stop us: this is about humanity’s future.The UK government is criminalizing, one by one, all methods of protestthat might effectively draw attention to a cause. But the youngpeople who know that global heating is likely to kill them before theyget old realize that surrendering to the authoritarian state is not asane option.
How fast willhotter ocean water melt the Thwaites Glacierand raisesea level? We still don't know, but hotter ocean water can melt several metersin a century.
- Hyperextremist: Extremist even by comparison with most extremists. For instance, while most Republican congresscritters are extremists, the 20 or so who threatened to wreck the US's credit status if they don't get their demands, thus doing something morally equivalent to terrorism, are extremist even by comparison with the rest. I call them "hyperextremists." * Hypoextremist: Extremist, though a little less so than most extremists. All Republican now in the House of Representatives are extremists, but a fraction may be a iittle less rabidly so than the rest. Rather than exaggerate by calling them "moderate," I use the term "hypoextremist" for them.
Next rally for Julian Assange will be Saturday, January 21,11:30-12:30, at Park St Station.
A report claims thatbanks must prepare now for fossil fuel assets tocrashin value. That means governments must require banks to do this.The article seems to call for going further than that — for givingthose investors special privilege by protecting them from losingmoney. That would make the rest of us reward the fossil fuelcompanies with more money for decades of lies and cheating. Anacceptable solution has to make the cheaters pay.I don't recognize the groups that are behind this report. It may betrue, or it may be an attempt to spare fossil fuel interests fromlosing any of their billions.
GJohn Perkins comparesAmerican economic hit men with China's economichit men. China presents itself as rescuing poor countries from the former butit offers basically the same sort of trap for those countries.Perkins is the author of _Confessions of an Economic Hit Man_.
More information abouttoxins that come from gas stoves.It seems that generation of oxides of nitrogen occurs only whenthere's a flame on the stove, and the other pollutants enter as partof the gas being used, which leaks at a small rate all the time.
John Deere, Inc., is trying to deflectreal right-to-repair by makingsmall concessions and exaggerating their significance.I decided not to post about the initial announcement, since it wouldpredictably be one-sided. I figured we would get a clear picturesoon, and we have.John Deere made it explicitly clear that the aim is to stop states frompassing the laws that do the whole job right to repair.As for what American farmers _deserve_, that goes far beyond right torepair. They deserve tractors whose software is free, libre -- all ofit. Tractors which will not communicate anything with anyone exceptas the tractor's driver decides, and will not obey remote commandsunless the tractor's driver allows it.The right to repair is the first battle, and a big one. Please helpfarmers win it -- and please explain to them the rest of our fight.
Pirate school pun:
Q: What do pirate kids study in pirate school? A: Baking — so they can qualify for pie rating.
US citizens:call on Biden to demand a clean bill to increase thedebt ceiling.The US will hit the debt ceiling limit this week, but it can cope for somemonths before the drastic consequences occur.
US citizens:call on HHS Secretary Becerra to stop Moderna's COVID vaccine price gouging now.
US citizens:call on the Senate to reject House Republicans’ plan to defund the IRSand protect rich tax evaders.
US citizens:call on the Bureau of Land Management to protectThompson Divide(in Colorado) from mining and drilling.
Germany demands medical care for Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.Putin has greatly increased his crimes since the time when he poisoned Navalny, but we should not forget Navalny's heroism.
Los Angeles thugs repeatedly tased Keenan Anderson to death whileholding him helpless on the ground.Anderson had warned passers-bythat the thugs were trying to kill him. It appears he was right.
The wrecker's 2017 tax cuts were a big giveaway to rich corporations.This was anticipated, but now the figures demonstrate it was true.NEWS: GAO Study Finds 34% of Large,Profitable Corporations Pay Zero in Federal Income Taxes.
The water supply of the London area was privatized, supposedly so thatthe company would invest in improving the water supply there. Thetrouble is, it makes more money by not investing and leaving thequality unacceptable.
This is because homes and offices have no alternative choice besidesthat one. Water supply is a natural monopoly, and therefore it shouldbe closely regulated.
Staff effectively working for TikTok used TikTok location data to track reporters to try to find staff who were giving interviews to those reporters.I don't care whether those staff had asked permission. I don't carewhether TikTok (or its Chinese owners) are sincere in saying theywon't do this again. The problem is that they do collect the data,and are in a position to use it to track people if they decide to.The problem is that the system is designed to require users to trustthe good will of the company's staff and management. Such a systemmust be designed differently so that users' trust not to track peopleis not an issue.The fact that some Chinese staff could track the locations of USreporters and their US sources makes the problem additionally grave,but that is not a fundamental change. Enabling the US staff to trackthe locations of people in the US is dangerous too.
A right-wing extremist official in Alabama thinks he has found an excuse to prosecute women for taking abortion drugs.
Capturing Soledar would be of little practical significance to thePutin forces. It would not even guarantee they could take Bakhmut; and capturing Bakhmutwould likewise be of little practical significance.The concentration of so many Putinite mercenaries there seems toindicate the lack of capacity to try to do anything strategicallysignificant — at least for now.
After a series of blows to the Voting Rights Act, what remains, andwhat have right-wing judges destroyed?
World On Verge of "New Industrial Age" as Clean Energy Jobs Boom: IEA.The projections in the article sound very good, but I wonder how theycompare with what is needed to keep global heating to a level of 1.5°C.
Stop "Caving to Fossil Fuel Industry," Experts Say as 2022 Confirmed Among Hottest Years on Record.
The Espionage Act is so absurdly overbroad that even the actions ofpeople such as Julian Assange and Joe Biden may technically haveviolated it. We need to change that law.
Brazil police find draft decree intended to overturn election result informer Bolsonaro minister’s home. Bolsonaro had not signed the decree; it is not clear whether he eversaw it.The ex-minister was Anderson Torres. Bolsonaro put Torres in chargeof security in Brasilia shortly before his presidential term ended,and it appears that Torres used that authority to help theinsurrection.Torres went to Florida in time to be missing in action at thetime of the insurrection. However, he returned to Brazilas he said he would, and was arrested on arrival.
Four months after the floods in late August, parts of Pakistan remainflooded. Of the 33 million who were flooded out of their homes, 8 million are still homeless.
Defiant Navalny has opposed Putin’s war in Ukraine from prison. Histeam fear for his safety.
Tens of thousands of Israelis marched in central Tel Aviv and in twoother major cities on Saturday night, protesting far rightwing PMBenjamin Netanyahu's plan to overhaul the legal system and weaken theSupreme Court — undermining democratic rule just weeks after hiselection.
A right-wing campaign to restrict abortion rights suggests direction for Republican extremists to attack next.
An NGO, the Supreme Court Historical Society, raises money mainly fromfrom companies that have a stake in coming Supreme Court cases, andgives their executives and stockholders access for one-on-one conversations with the justices of the court.That is an avenue for unjust influence.
The UK may replace ankle-mounted GPS trackers with portable fingerprint readers that the person is required to carry at all times.I think the two systems are equally intrusive, more or less, but theyneed to be compared with being in an immigration prison. Overall, Iam more frightened by spread of "voluntarity" GPS tracking that isimposed implicitly, by apps and web sites used via snoop-phones, andthat hardly anyone has the stubbornness to refuse.I think it should be illegal for those devices to track the userexcept under special conditions — and the snoop-phone should neverbe allowed to send a GPS location directly except in an emergencycall. Other than that, the user should be able to send the currentlocation by requesting to display it, then cutting and pasting thatlocation into an app. This gives the user the opportunity to decidewhat location to tell to the app. This flexibility is what shieldsusers from tracking.
Some teenagers have started a "Luddite Club" to reject anti-social mediaand (at least part of the time) snoop-phones.They see one side of the injustice. It would be great to clue them into the other unjust aspect of snoop-phones.
An unofficial war crimes tribunal heard the case against Dubya,Cheney, Rumsfeld and their associates, following serious procedure,and found them guilty of launching a war of aggression against Iraq.This tribunal has no power to punish those convicted, but it suggests thatan official tribunal would likewise convict them.
There were protests against the dictator of Tunisia, who has eliminatedParliament from government.
The Tories have decided to allow thugs to "stop protests before they start" by arresting protesters preemptively.
Wendell Potter: Medicare Advantage is a money-making scam. I shouldknow. I helped to sell it.Potter resigned from promoting "Medicare Advantage" and turned toexposing it instead.
New York State is being sued for allowingcryptocurrency miners to runa gas-fired electric generator to power the computing.
TheUS political system rewards brash liars,such as Santos — and thecorrupter.I disagree with the claim that that is what "Americans" deserve.People tend to get the politicians their _behavior_ deserves, but nopeople deserve to be ruled by corruption and lies.
El Salvador's right-wing government doesn't prosecute the many murderscommitted by the army during the civil war, decades ago, but it hasjailed environmentalist leaders accused of killing an army informantduring that war.People fear this represents the government's intention to repealthe ban on toxic mining that those leaders brought about.
Missouri's state legislature has imposed a dress code on all members.Bare shoulders and arms are forbidden: everyone must wear a coat or ajacket.However, some details are different for men and women legislators.Men are required to wear a tie, and are forbidden to wear a dress orskirt. I would resign from the house rather than wear a tie! Women,more fortunate, are not required to wear one.Any dress code treats people badly. They should get rid of it. Butit is amusing to imagine what they might do if a trans person ornonbinary is elected to the legislature. What to wear???Maybe the motive for the code is to exclude working-class people fromthe legislature.
Labour’s lost if it doesn’t defend public spending.It might avoid losing an election but it will have got lost in planningwhat to do afterward.
A Republican official in Wisconsin boasted about theeffectiveness ofRepublican voter suppression in Milwaukee.
US inflation is slowing without the high level of unemploymentthatsome economists predicted would be required to reduce inflation.
- Thefindings revealed that a noisy environment makes it harder fordolphins to communicate and cooperateon tasks.* Human activities, including shipping, sonar and sonic blasts,nowadays make dolphins' environments much nosier than they used to be.
"You Couldn't Make It Up":Head of UAE Oil Company Appointed Chair of UNClimate Summit.Climate defenders already concluded that these conferences had beencaptured by planet roasters who had rendered them useless for theirpurpose. With this final step, they have advanced from underminingthe conferences to mocking them with unveiled derision.
Nurses claim victory after three-day strikeat two New York City hospitals.A crucial demand in this strike was that the hospitals hire more nursesso that the nurses will not be overloaded.
The right-wingSupreme Court majority flatly refuses to reconsiderdeath sentences,regardless of what the constitutional issue at stakemay be.
A fair fraction of peoplerespond to being in jailby feeling thatlife has become unbearable. Is this a psychological disorder, or isit a kind of normal?
New Stock Listings Open the Door toAmerican Investment in theIsraeli Occupation [of Palestine].
Washington is shrieking at theprospect of a defense budget cut.Butwould it really be so bad?A clock that runs backwards is right four times a day. Maybe Republicansare right a few times a year, and this could be one of them.
The rest of 2023 is going to look a lot like the firstfew days ofthe Republican majority in the House: an abject disaster.
A zincmine on the great Sumatran fault could pollute a large areain the case of an earthquake.
San Antonio voters aim to pass an initiativeto prohibit the San Antoniothug department from taking any action against "abortion crimes".Wouldn't anyone performing an abortion in San Antonio still be at risk ofarrest by Texas state thugs?
Blocked by lawsuits from forgiving student debt,Biden is tryinganother approach: to reduce the amount of paymentsfor the loans.
US citizens:call on Congress to ban JROTC instructors from promotingthe NRAin our schools.
Zoning laws play a big role inthe housing shortage in Los Angeles. Indeed, this is generally true.
A video shows a Russian conscriptaccuse his commander of disobeyingPutin's orders to supply and train conscripts,and shoving him.The conscript was convicted of "doing physical harm" to the commander,which appears to be somewhat of an exaggeration. However, what musthave hurt the commander most was this criticism. It is almostimpossible to believe that the criticism was not true. Is Putinhonest enough with himself to recognize that?
Biden's secretary of the interior may be a member of an indigenous group,butshe (clearly with Biden's approval) is yielding to the planet roastersmore than she is resistingthem.Let's not judge people by their ethnicity.
To get enough water in the future, California will need toeliminatehousing from floodplains, and permit rivers to flood them againbyremoving levies.
UK businesses claim that reducing the subsidy they get for gaswould make it difficult for themto invest in using less gas.That smells to me like bullshit. Cut subsidy for business, or raisetaxes, and they will claim that they need that money to (1) invest indecarbonizing and (2) invest in innovation. Or whatever thing theynow want businesses to invest in. But when they get that money,they are likely to do something else with it.Instead of subsidizing their fossil fuel bills, and hoping they willuse that to invest in energy efficiency, how about offering businessesloans specifically to invest in energy efficiency?
Lula accuses Brazilian thugs of colludingwith the Bolsonarists whoattacked the centers of government. For instance, evidence shows that someone opened the door for themin two of the three buildings.He has called for the arrest of two of Bolsonaro's officials who werein charge of security in Brazilia. They areaccused of sabotagingsecurity so as to facilitatethe insurrection. One of went to Florida shortly before the insurrection and isstaying very close to where Bolsonaro is staying. By coincidence?
Blocked by lawsuits from forgiving student debt,Biden is tryinganother approach: to reduce the amount of paymentsfor the loans.
The UK's "national security"bill would define "spying" to includenormal journalism.Specifically, journalism would be a crime if it published anythingthat "may materially assist a foreign intelligence service." The articlegives examples.
Everyone: call on General Mills to eliminate unnecessary, single-useplastic packaging.If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank screenafter signing. that does not mean anything is wrong. Your signsature hasprobably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is renderedinvisible by CSS; if you disable the CSS in the page, the text will appear.
Tigray rebels start handing over weapons to Ethiopian army.Perhaps this will lead to peace.
San Francisco continues harassing homeless people — for instance,stealing their few possessions — to try to chase them away. Cityemployees do this, and vigilantes sometimes follow their lead.
Lula has defeated the coup, and may defeat those who wish todestabilize Brazil, but the long term political challenge ofright-wing politics remains.
Tigray rebels start handing over weapons to Ethiopian army.Perhaps this will lead to peace.
Facebook executives were warned that Bolsonarists were using thatplatform to build support for a coup.The promotion algorithm magnified their reach. As usual, it helpswhoever advocates the most shocking violence.
The Bolsonaro mob vented their hatred of democracy on Brazil'sequivalents of the White House, the Capitol, and the Supreme Court.They destroyed even abstract art as if it expressed support fordemocracy, and wrote graffiti on the walls calling for militarydictatorship.People have a right to say they would prefer a military dictatorship,but taking or planning violent action in the name of establishing oneis an unforgivable crime.
Governments are in favor of debt forgiveness for Sri Lanka,but private lenders (hedge funds) are blocking the deal.
Democrats in the House could thwart McCarthy's vow to use the debtceiling to hold the US government to ransom by signing a dischargepetition. They would need at least five Republicans to sign it with them.I think there is another way. Robert Reich recommended that Democratsshould unite with the slightly-less-extremist Republicans to elect one of those as speaker.It has been reported that any member of the House can now demand a newelection for speaker, per the new rules McCarthy imposed at the demandof the hyperextremists. If Democrats make a deal with the Republicanslightly-less-extremists to support one of those as speaker, persewould win. They could make a deal beforehand to raise (or eliminate)the debt ceiling and to leave Social Security and Medicare untouched.Reich referred to those Republican as "moderates", but I don't thinkthat term fits them. Just as "moderate" Democrats are actuallyplutocratist, not moderate at all, so are "moderate" Republicans.
Republican senators are blocking most of Biden's appointments to federaljudgeships in the US south.This is partly because of a rule that the Senate won't vote on anominee unless the senators of per home state approve of per. ISTRthat the Republicans abolished that rule when the corrupter becamepresident, so they could quickly fill the backlog of vacancies thatthey had created by blocking all of Obama's nominations for years.So why is that rule operating now? Did Democats restore it?
How the drying up of the Great Salt Lake endangers human health. Some say that the already-dry parts of the lakebed are already giving offtoxic dust.
Australia proposes to make major polluting businesses invest to reduceheir emissionsintensity — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions perunit of production — to meet annual targets. However, it will continue the use of "carbon offsets",which tend to range from delusional optimism to outright fraud.
Congressional Republicans changed the rules of the Office ofCongressional Ethics to make it unable to operate.This is to protect various Republicans such as from any follow-up onthe ethics complaints they would have faced.Alas for poor Rep. Santos, it will not protect him from possibleextradition to Brazil for the fraud charges he ducked out on a fewyears ago.
US citizens: call on Biden to keep fighting for the expanded Child TaxCredit.Here's the text I used for the letter.
I know it won't be easy to get the House to pass expansion of theChild Tax Credit, but it is vital that you and the Democrats be noless stubborn than Republican terrorist politicians.
US citizens: call on ConocoPhillips to stop its proposed Arcticdrilling project before it's too late.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the GOP plot to defund the IRSto protect wealthy and corporate tax cheats.
Haiti has no elected officials left. It had a senate, but all thesenators' terms of office have ended. The place is too chaotic to holdan election to replace them.The chaos is partly due to a series of US interventions, including removing President Aristide from officetwice,and imposing two unelected presidents,Martellyand Moise.
Watch out, Australia! The system to pay for public transit inVictoria will be replaced — the plan is for people to pay usingportable phones, which would effectively identify them to the systemand track where they go.The existing payment system, "Myki", permits buying a card with cash;however, buying another card is expensive enough that people willhesitate to do that very often. BART in San Francisco has donesomething similarly unjust.All in all, this system is not very good, but you can protect yourprivacy with some effort. It is possible to swap cards with astranger in a station, if there is a machine that will show how muchmoney is stored in a card. The one who receives the card with thegreater sum stored can pay cash to compensate the other, so thatneither one loses or gains any money.Victorians, please campaign now for the new system to be better forprivacy. Demand a way to pay for one ride at a time with cash!
Fabulist Santos is suspected of lying about the origin of his campaignfunds, which is illegal.
Why [Bolsonaro] is responsible for the riots [in Brasilia].Supporters of Bolsonaro in Brazil's military police encouraged theriots, then helped them by failing to act to stop them.High elected officials did this, too.
Facebook will protect teenage useds from some kinds of targeted advertising. That's a step in a good direction, but everyone deserves privacy.Everyone on the net deserves to be protected from targeted advertising,and from being profiled at all.
Banks and countries pledge $10bn to rebuild Pakistan after catastrophicfloods.Is the banks' "contribution" a donation, or is it a loan? A big loan couldcrush Pakistan decades or even centuries.There will surely be more such floods, and even bigger. Rebuilding inany straightforward way will only lead to another destruction. What methodcan avert disaster if the rain repeats?
Madagascar's unique wildlife faces imminent wave of extinction [inthe next 20 years], say scientists.
Sanders condemned Moderna for increasing the price of Covid-19 vaccineto as much as $130. It costs $3 to produce a dose.Corporations are not people; they have no inherent rights, not eventhe eight to continue operating. And certainly not the right to chargefor a medicine whatever price maximizes its profits.
Musk promised laid-off Twitter workers three months of severance pay.He waited months, then offered them just one month of pay in exchangefor a nondisclosure agreement.If they all sue. and he loses, it will be what that jerk deserves.
The Tories plan a new law to attack each kind of nonviolent butannoying protest that climate defenders come up with.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission advocates banning sale ofnew gas stoves, not only to reduce energy use and greenhouse gasemissions, but because their indoor pollution is a major cause ofasthma for children.When I tried cooking on old-fashioned electric stoves, I found Icouldn't do it. The lag in response to changes of the heat settingmade it impossible for me to control it. But I've read that newinduction stoves are as easy to use as gas stoves.
The newpresident of Peru has been officially charged with homicideand genocide after state thugs guarding an airport killed 18 of thethousands of protesters who tried to take over that airport.Whether charges of homicide are justified depends on details I don'tknow. If they are, whether the charges legally should fall on thethugs alone, or higher officials as well, depends on more detailsI don't know. I don't know which side is right or wrong in Peru.But charges of genocide can't possibly be justified. The thugs didnot try to wipe out a demographic group, or even to take actions inthat direction. They did not even try to wipe out the protestersin that one airport.Weakening the definition of "genocide" will undermine the specialodium that the world has attached to any intentional effort to wipeout a particular demographic group. That would be a bad thing to do.
The newpresident of Peru has been officially charged with homicide_and genocide_ after state thugs guarding an airport killed 18 of thethousands of protesters who tried to take over that airport.Whether charges of homicide are justified depends on details I don'tknow. If they are, whether the charges legally should fall on thethugs alone, or higher officials as well, depends on more detailsI don't know. I don't know which side is right or wrong in Peru.But charges of genocide can't possibly be justified. The thugs didnot try to wipe out a demographic group, or even to take actions inthat direction. They did not even try to wipe out the _protesters_in that one airport.Weakening the definition of "genocide" will undermine the specialodium that the world has attached to any intentional effort to wipeout a particular demographic group. That would be a bad thing to do.
Bolsonaro's followers openly promoted their violent plans (to attackBrazil's highest government buildings) on antisocial media platforms,with hardly any hindrance.The governor of the Brasilia region and its security chief wereBolsonarists, and did not cooperate in protecting the government fromthe planned riot. They have been fired.1,500 Bolsonaro Backers [arrested] After Far-Right Coup Attempt in Brazil.It is good that they did not let all the rioters get away. But itwould have been better to hold everyone who had attacked thegovernment buildings, at least enough to identify them and searchthem.Bolsonaro's followers remain a threat to democracy and liberty inBrazil, and (due to their commitment to deforestation) to the survivalof civilization as well.
The US is an exception among countries in several ways. Here are a fewunfortunate exceptions that we Americans ought to fix.The ICC is supposed to prosecute people for war crimes when their owncountries fail to prosecute them. The US should sign the ICC treaty;but them it should never leave prosecution of American war criminalsto the ICC. The US should prosecute them.
Bolsonaro's followers openly promoted their violent plans (to attackBrazil's highest government buildings) on antisocial media platforms,with hardly any hindrance.The governor of the Brasilia region and its security chief wereBolsonarists, and did not cooperate in protecting the government fromthe planned riot. They have been fired.1,500 Bolsonaro Backers [arrested] After Far-Right Coup Attempt in Brazil.It is good that they did not let all the rioters get away. But itwould have been better to hold everyone who had attacked thegovernment buildings, at least enough to identify them and searchthem.Bolsonaro's followers remain a threat to democracy and liberty inBrazil, and (due to their commitment to deforestation) to the survivalof civilization as well.The US is an exception among countries in several ways. Here are a fewunfortunate exceptions that we Americans ought to fix.The ICC is supposed to prosecute people for war crimes when their owncountries fail to prosecute them. The US should sign the ICC treaty;but them it should never leave prosecution of American war criminalsto the ICC. The US should prosecute them.
Some scientists believe that repeated Covid-19 infections graduallywear down a human's immune system and eventually render her more vulnerableto various diseases.It seems there is not yet enough clear evidence to be sure of thetruth about this. In science it is not unusual to get various piecesof information that don't add up to a clear picture. Eventually,scientists do the right experiments and get the insight to find theanswer — but that takes time.In the mean time, it is wise to minimize your own risk — and therisks to others who come hear you — by wearing good masks.However, people in general seem to be rushing to forget about Covid-19although it continues to spread, injure, kill and mutate. The samething happened after the 1918/1919 flu epidemic.This is exactly the wrong thing for people to do now.
War game simulation suggests that an attempted Chinese invasion ofTaiwan would fail, leaving Taiwan in devastated condition thoughunconquered, while wrecking the Chinese military and causingsubstantial casualties for the US and Japan. These casualties would be large by the standard of 21st century USwars, but small compared with what the US experienced in the VietnamWar or the Korean War.Taiwan would rebuild its infrastructure with help. Being devastatedfor a decade is not as bad as becoming brainwashed slaves forever.Another article about the same war games reports on projected political effects of the war's damage, but Ithink it exaggerates that. If the US had defeated China and stillpossessed most of its armed forces, no other enemy would risk aconventional war.I wonder how this would affect global heating and climate defense.The article also suggests how Taiwan could build a more effectivedefense for much less money.If China were not a totalitarian dictatorship, I think it would choosenot to attack Taiwan, rather than suffer such a defeat. Surely somesort of compromise and peace would be better for everyone. Even Ximight choose peace, and I hope he does; but he may not care about thecost or the casualties to China as long as he wins.
McCarthy's proposed House rules are dangerous, but at least they areup for a vote. He also made secret deals with hyperextremists; we don't know whatthose deals are.Bolsonaro's followers openly promoted their violent plans (to attackBrazil's highest government buildings) on antisocial media platforms,with hardly any hindrance.The governor of the Brasilia region and its security chief wereBolsonarists, and did not cooperate in protecting the government fromthe planned riot. They have been fired.1,500 Bolsonaro Backers [arrested] After Far-Right Coup Attempt in Brazil.It is good that they did not let all the rioters get away. But itwould have been better to hold everyone who had attacked thegovernment buildings, at least enough to identify them and searchthem.Bolsonaro's followers remain a threat to democracy and liberty inBrazil, and (due to their commitment to deforestation) to the survivalof civilization as well.The US is an exception among countries in several ways. Here are a fewunfortunate exceptions that we Americans ought to fix.The ICC is supposed to prosecute people for war crimes when their owncountries fail to prosecute them. The US should sign the ICC treaty;but them it should never leave prosecution of American war criminalsto the ICC. The US should prosecute them.
When Big Pharma Spends More on Stock Buybacks Than R&D. I'd complete the sentence with, "We ought to pass laws toreduce the price of medicines."
Many instances of extreme weather in 2021 and 2022 were made worse byglobal heating. Some would have been outright impossible in the past.
If a former elected official of the Tory party quits and gives support to Labour,saying in effect "I haven't changed — the parties have changed," whatdoes that imply?You could say that Labour is getting stronger, because it is attracting peoplefrom new areas of political views. But I think Labor is becoming more andmore like a "centrist" party that puts the rich first.
Netanyahu's Government Takes a Turn Toward Theocracy.Theocratist parties joined the government in exchange for an opportunityto attack the liberal order and human rights in Israel.
"Liberty Mutual" insurance company (an ironic name) has a new CEO. Agklp-0=campaign presses for him to stop the corporation insuring andinvesting in fossil fuel projects.
This is a clear example of a pernicious development in progressivethinking: advocating an explicitly privileged higher status ofcitizenship for indigenous people.
The campaign makes four demands. I support the first three,
| 1. | Immediately stop insuring new and expanded coal, oil, and gas projects. | | 2. | Commit to phase out insurance for coal, oil and gas companies in line with 1.5ºC. | | 3. | Divest all assets from coal, oil, and gas companies that are not aligned with a 1.5ºC pathway. | | 4-. | Adopt a policy to ensure the projects and clients you insure respect the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of impacted Indigenous Peoples. |
but I criticize the fourth demand (which I have relabeled "4-") forthe unfairness of demanding new rights but limiting them to indigenouspeople, thus denying those rights to all other people impacted locallyby a large fossil fuel project. That omission is racist in spirit.
Item 4- should be replaced by this one:
| 4+. | Adopt a policy to ensure the projects and clients you insure respect the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the people of impacted areas. |
Why would a group of progressives think of proposing 4- instead of 4+?Why advocate rights that are clearly required by justice, thenspontaneously and arbitrarily limit them to a small subset of humanity?
In today's progressive thinking, there is a current which, notsatisfied with the goal of eliminating the racism against indigenouspeople and compensating the injustices that have been practicedagainst them, seeks to elevate them to a status above ordinary humanbeings. According to that line of thought, they are inherentlysuperior by birth to the rest of humanity -- born high-minded andloyal to preserving nature. Therefore we (the rest) should have faithin them, consider them born to be our leaders, and grant them theprivileges and power to make decisions for all of us. They would be,in effect, a new noble class.
I would support demand 4+, which advocates additional rights foreveryone, indigenous people included. I will not support 4-, whichdenies those rights arbitrarily to the rest of us.
One federal appeals court ruled that the policy of banning bump stocks stretched the law too far.I think this applies only to the states in that one circuit: Texasand some nearby states.In sensible times, the US would amend that law, but I expect theanti-gun-control fanatics controlling the House of Representatives willnot allow that.
A campaign calls on governments not to require internet infrastructure companies to censor people's communications. Please don't call communications and publications "content". Thatterm disparages all of them as mere filler to keep a container full ofsomething or other.I find it disturbing that Facebook is criticized for labeling thestatement "Men are trash" as "hateful". Of course it is hateful — itblatantly expresses misandry, just as "Women are trash" would expressmisogyny. Both statements carry hate, similar kinds of hate, in asimilar way, differing only in which target is hated.The crucial point is that neither of those statements should be bannedor censored. I might rebuke a person for saying either of them, butto forcibly limit people to saying only nice things (or to show hateonly towards those we revile) is intolerable. Despite that minor inconsistency, this campaign stands for freedom.
Great Salt Lake could disappear in 5 years at the current rate ofshrinkage. Conservationists say Utah needs to adopt policies totake less water from the lake.The article says that the region is overdrawing the available water.At some point it will hit a hard stop and have to cease much of itseconomic activity. However, it doesn't explain what harm willcome directly from the emptiness of the lake itself.
Someone is shooting at Democratic elected officials in Albuquerque.After five attacks, I think we can conclude that this is an expressionof the Republican party's encouragement of political violence.
Random innocent events, seen through the filter of confirmation bias,enabled US military personnel to convince themselves that NGO aidworker Zemari Ahmadi, traveling around Kabul on errands, was carryingexplosives for PISSI. So they fired a Hellfire missile at the car hehad borrowed from the NGO.In just a few minutes, analysts figured out that the missile hadkilled noncombatants, and within hours, that it had killed children(who were certainly noncombatants). Nonetheless, the US militarycontinued pretending to be absolutely sure that it had attacked a PISSIfighter and only fighters had been killed.The US military did admit, in a week or so, that Ahmadi and the otherpeople killed were all noncombatants, not enemies at all. That was abig advance compared with the standard US practice before that, whichwas to deny stubbornly that a drone strike killed noncombatants, disregarding all evidence that it did.
Ralph Nader's advice to progressive congresscritters for how to championprogressive policies effectively.
Greg Palast reports on evidence about the Jan 6 insurrectionthat was not followed up, or not collected. Why didn't the stateidentify every rioter and search their cell phones?It is especially disturbing (though not surprising) that some capitolthugs showed their support to the insurrectionists, before the actualinsurrection.
The NHS now directs patients who have money to pay to get a "private clinic" appointment sooner at the same place.The NHS used to provide medical care for nearly everyone in Britain.Under Tory power, it has become a provider of lousy care for thepeople that the state considers unimportant. When state services fail, citizens pay extra or sink. This is Sunak’s Britainnow.
Tories set up policies that tended to unjustly harm people wholawfully came to Britain without any special papers in the past. but had no papers to prove it. Tories dragged their feet in ending these policies and compensating victims. Now they plan to throw the whole matter away.
Hamline University in Minnesota has fired a teacher for showing, in a class on the history of Islam, an old Persian painting of Mohammad.It was made by Muslims as a religious object.The article reports that in Persia, and in Persian-influenced Turkeyand India, there is an old Muslim tradition of paintings of humanbeings including Mohammad.Catering to the most conservative Muslim views, which are those spreadby Salafi Arabia since 2001, has become the requirement exacted by themost fanatical devotees of tiptoe culture. The university presidentactually asserted that this demand overrides academic freedom.A teacher must not insult students — to do so goes against the needsof the job. However, this must be interpreted using society's generalconcept of what it means to insult anyone. Students are not entitledto demand that a teacher, when dealing with them, avoid doing whateverthey may call "insult".The university owes the teacher who was fired an apology, restorationof duties, pay for the period of work that perse lost, and somepunitive damages. And above all it must recognize that students cannoteliminate academic freedom but shouting, "Offensive! That harms us!"
With McCarthy, the [corrupter's] coalition of MAGAs and oligarchs lives on.I don't think the oligarchs want the US government to shut down. What willthey do to prevent it?
Israel has prohibited showing the Palestinian flag in public places.Palestine asked the UN to adjudicate Israel's occupation of Palestine,and Israel is "punishing" this by applying many forms of repressionall at once. (I have the feeling that the right-wing extremists inthe new Israeli government were itching for an opportunity to dothis.)But why should Palestinians deserve punishment for asking the UN foradjudication of their rights?
Bolsonaro probably entered the US using a visa he held as a head ofstate. In the normal course of events, that would be canceled now,and he would be compelled to leave the US.The US should make him leave rather than give him a base for planningto endanger Brazil.The ideal thing would be to extradite him to Brazil, but I wouldexpect there is no evidence to justify criminal charges.
Amazon warehouse worker Rick Jacobs had a heart attack and died whileat work. To prevent any disruption, management kept the remainingworkers in the dark about it by erecting a wall of cardboard boxesaround the area where Jacobs's body lay.
- Insect declines mean reduced yields of healthy foods like fruit and vegetables and increased disease in people. This is estimated to causehalf a million early deaths per year.*
Great Salt Lake could disappear in 5 years at the current rate ofshrinkage. Conservationists say Utah needs to adopt policies totake less water from the lake.The article says that the region is overdrawing the available water.At some point it will hit a hard stop and have to cease much of itseconomic activity. However, it doesn't explain what harm willcome directly from the emptiness of the lake itself.
Harvard's school of political science invited the former head of HumanRights Watch to visit as a fellow. Thenthe dean cancelled the invitationbecause he has criticized Israel for human rights violations.Those human rights violations already amounted to apartheid, but Israel'snew government, which includes right-wing extremists, is planning to makethings much worse. Honest defenders of human rights will have to criticizeIsrael more than ever. Rich supporters of Israel will surely increasethe censorship pressure in US universities.Don't assume that those supporters are Jews. Some of them arefanatical Christians who are determined to bring about events thatwould fulfill certain prophecies related to Christian myths ofdoomsday. July 2004 (Uncritical support for Israeli policies from Christian fanatics)
Scientists have solved the crucial problem of genetically engineering wheat.They plan to produce heat-resistant varieties.If they go on to make flood-resistant varieties and drought-resistantvarieties of wheat, wheat could be safe against extreme weather. Hmm,better make that varieties which are flood-resistant anddrought-resistant.But what about wildfires? Can any wheat plant be fire-resistant?The article says nothing about whether these new varieties of wheatwill be patented, or restricted by plant variety monopolies. If theyare, their use will have an enormous cost for farmers, and willfurther concentrate wealth for the richest few, at the expence ofeveryone who eats wheat.The world must exempt food, all forms of food plants and animals, fromimposed artificial monopolies.
California has been hit by several extreme rainstorms in sequence,and more are expected to follow.Global heating is predicted to make this happen frequently in certainplaces, the US Pacific Coast being one of them.
Sabri al-Qurashi was released from Guantanamo prison to Kazakhstan, wherehe is treated as a stateless illegal immigrant, forbidden to work, and his wife is forbidden to visit him there.
This is advice about talking with people who are grieving, fromsomeone who has listened to many grieving people talk about it.As I read the article, I thought of the friends and relatives I havelost. I have a list of the people I've lost via death, and every sooften I go through it and think about each one of them.I frequently felt grief for the English language while reading thearticle, each time I came across plural pronouns and verbs alternatingwith singular pronouns and verbs, referring to the same one person.I have never understand the idea that it was obligatory to trydesperately to avoid reminding someone about a loss. In myexperience, I recall a raw loss frequently, whether anyone reminds meabout it or not. That's what the author says, too.Recalling the death of a friend years ago is not agony, more of adistant regret. It reminds me of feeling at ease with that person inthe past. By contrast, recalling an old rejection can be devastating,since it was probably my fault.
Windfall profits taxes in Europe permit fossil fuel companiesto deduct the amount they invest in access to fossil fuels.That is the usual way of handling taxes on business, but it will leadfor bad results with fossil fuel investments. There is no room in thecarbon budget for more fossil fuel wells or processing capacity, soinvesting in those things should be forbidden. If it can't beforbidden just yet, at least it should not be tax-deductible.
As reporter Dion Rabouin was interviewing people on the street outsidean office of Chase Bank in Phoenix, a bank employee asked him whathe was doing. Soon a Phoenix thug showed up, handcuffed him with noapparant excuse, and made him sit in a police car, threatening violencealong the way.Someone made a video of this harassment, and the thug threatened toarrest per as well.It is common in the US for thugs to arrest journalists for recordinghow they treat members of the public. It is less common for cops tocome and threaten reporters for journailsm that does not involve copsat all.The reporter worked for the powerful Wall Street Journal, which hasdemanded explanations.
US citizens: call on leaders in Congress and Transportation SecretaryButtigieg to fine airlines that cancel flights for reasons other thanweather, and allow states to participate in enforcement.
McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House after a series ofconcessions that put him under the power of the hyperextremists. Ifeven one of them no longer supports McCarthy as speaker, perse will beable to demand a new election for speaker, and McCarthy could easilyface the resumption of the conflict.""Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly put his personal ambitions ahead ofour democracy."
A woman in England is charged with the crime of trying to give herselfa late-term abortion.Even if this is not allowed, it should not be a crime.Human life begins around the time of birth.
The mayor of Xirivella, a suburb of Valencia near its airport, visitsconstituents for dinner to find out what they are thinking.
Half the world's glaciers are expected to disappear by 2100 if we have4C of global heating.
Two months after Elon Musk laid off half of Twitter’s workforce,some employees affected say they have yet to receive any formalseverance offer or separation agreement.Twitter has stopped paying rent on a San Francisco office building.Perhaps Musk believes he can get away with stiffing those employees.Musk seems to be imitating the cheater's behavior patterns. The cheateris famous for refusing to pay contractors he hired to work on buildings;one of sued and won. Perhaps Musk feels inclined to follow that example of arrogance.
The EU has adopted a plan to reject products produced viadeforestation, including agricultural products.
Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg was supposed to use his authorityto make airlines work to prevent massive cancellation of flights.He ignored warnings and did nothing.Democratic officials privately implored Buttigieg to do something about this,but no Democrats wanted the public to know he was doing a bad job.
The EPA is proposing stricter standards for soot pollution, whichharms people's health. However, its proposal is not as strong as whatthe EPA's scientist advisors say is needed.
An old censorship law could be reinterpreted as prohibiting sendingabortion medicine through US mail. The decision will be up to theantiabortion right-wing extremists of the Supreme Court.
New Tory strike-busting laws will order unions to betray workers, and destroythem if they don't.
Lula's wife says that Brazil's presidential residence was left byBolsonaro in very damaged condition. I wonder when Bolsonaro started this act of spite. Did he start itbefore the election he lost? Or only after he had lost?Some art works appear to have been stolen. The president surely doesnot have the authority to dispose of state property, but he probablydid so. Can he be charged with conspiracy to steal them? That couldprovide grounds to ask the US to extradite him.
Over 1% of the US adult population were displaced by "natural"disasters in 2022. Of course, we know that these "natural" disasters were at leastpartly artificial.I wonder how this compares with past years' disasters.
Two Years Later, Neither [the corrupter] Nor Worst Actors in CongressHave Been Held to Account for Jan 6. Insurrection.
Republicans have eliminated the security checks for entering the Houseof Representatives' chamber, where the representatives meet and vote.They demand to be allowed to bring in guns, and want Democrats to trustthem not to shoot anyone.Some of them have hinted at murdering Democratic representatives inCongress, and all of them practice frequent shameless lying. Iwouldn't trust them not to plan to kill me.
Secretary of Transportation Buttigieg was supposed to use his authorityto make airlines work to prevent massive cancellation of flights.He ignored warnings and did nothing.Democratic officials privately implored Buttigieg to do something about this,but no Democrats wanted the public to know he was doing a bad job.
Two Years Later, Neither [the corrupter] Nor Worst Actors in CongressHave Been Held to Account for Jan 6. Insurrection.
An old censorship law could be reinterpreted as prohibiting sendingabortion medicine through US mail. The decision will be up to theantiabortion right-wing extremists of the Supreme Court.
New Tory strike-busting laws will order unions to betray workers, and destroythem if they don't.
Lula's wife says that Brazil's presidential residence was left byBolsonaro in very damaged condition. I wonder when Bolsonaro started this act of spite. Did he start itbefore the election he lost? Or only after he had lost?Some art works appear to have been stolen. The president surely doesnot have the authority to dispose of state property, but he probablydid so. Can he be charged with conspiracy to steal them? That couldprovide grounds to ask the US to extradite him.
The EPA is proposing stricter standards for soot pollution, whichharms people's health. However, its proposal is not as strong as whatthe EPA's scientist advisors say is needed.
Over 1% of the US adult population were displaced by "natural"disasters in 2022. Of course, we know that these "natural" disasters were at leastpartly artificial.I wonder how this compares with past years' disasters.
Republicans have eliminated the security checks for entering the Houseof Representatives' chamber, where the representatives meet and vote.They demand to be allowed to bring in guns, and want Democrats to trustthem not to shoot anyone.Some of them have hinted at murdering Democratic representatives inCongress, and all of them practice frequent shameless lying. Iwouldn't trust them not to plan to kill me.
Australia has brought home some Australians supporters of PISSI whowere in prison camps in Syria. Now one of them is facing charges ofgoing to Syria to support PISSI.I think it was right to bring them home, and right to prosecute thosewho supported PISSI. Other countries should do likewise. Exileshould not be used as a punishment for a crime, and imposing anypunishment for any alleged crime without a trial is even worse.However, the actual charge is "Travelling to Raqqa." That action isbeing used as a proxy for the act of going to support PISSI. Theprosecution of an action which is only a proxy for the real accusationseems wrong to me.
Hong Kong exiles in Taiwan think about how their old home has beenchanged into something they cannot return to — about the dangerthat China could do the same thing to Taiwan next.
South Carolina Supreme Court Permanently Blocks Abortion Ban [in that state]. This means that abortions are once again legal there.
A winter heat wave set high temperature records all across Europe,showing how close to disaster the world is.Oxford Study Warns Extreme Heat and Drought to Hit 90% of World Population.World Could Lose Half of Glaciers This Century Even If Warming Is Kept to 1.5°C.
Full details on how Israel's government plans to eliminate independenceof the judiciary and allow the Knesset to override any and all rights.
The US should reduce the military budget by cancelling some dangerous spending on new nuclear weapons and avoidable wars.
The Tennessee Valley Authority wants to build a new gas-fired power plant. Biden should block it.
FTC’s Proposed Noncompete Ban is a Victory for American Workers & Fair, Competitive Markets.
Texas now makes it harder for minors to get birth control, by makingcontraceptive clinics get parents' approval before filling prescriptions.I wonder whether pharmacies in other states are required to obey Texaslaw on this question, for customers in Texas. Or can they thumb theirnoses at it? Does anyone know?
A Ukrainian teenager in Mariupol accepted "evacuation" to Russia,thinking he could leave via Belarus, but they confiscated his passportand sent him to am institution. He got out with the help of a secretnetwork of Ukrainian friends and Russian underground helpers.The bureaucratic nature of Putin's policies to hold Ukrainians captivealways surprise me. Putin's officials don't explicitly call allUkrainians prisoners and treat them as such. On the contrary, mostRussian officials respect Ukrainians' nominal right to travel, afterother officials have intervened to make it nearly impossible for themto satisfy the legal requirements for travel. The minority that canstill meet the requirements, can leave Russia without furtherdifficulty. The rest are effectively prisoners.
India's opposition is stymied because the Hindu fascistBJP control or crush all avenues to reach the public.In desperation, the Congress Party leader is walking thousands ofmiles, covering India's territory, to speak with the public.An Indian friend told me that all Indian political parties buy votes-- and that the surprise demonetization of 100-rupee bills was a trickto catch the Congress Party with cash it was about to hand out. TheBJP, by contrast, had advance notice of demonetization and thereforewas able to preserve its pile of cash for buying votes.
"Liberty Mutual" insurance company (an ironic name) has a new CEO. Acampaign presses for him to stop the corporation insuring andinvesting in fossil fuel projects.
This is a clear example of a pernicious development in progressivethinking: advocating an explicitly privileged higher status ofcitizenship for indigenous people.
The campaign makes four demands. I support the first three,
- . Immediately stop insuring new and expanded coal, oil, and gas projects.
- . Commit to phase out insurance for coal, oil and gas companies in line with 1.5ºC.
- . Divest all assets from coal, oil, and gas companies that are not aligned with a 1.5ºC pathway.
- -. adopt a policy to ensure the projects and clients you insure respect the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of impacted Indigenous Peoples.
but I criticize the fourth demand (which I have relabeled "4-") forthe unfairness of demanding new rights but limiting them to indigenouspeople, thus denying those rights to all other people impacted locallyby a large fossil fuel project. That omission is racist in spirit.Item 4- should be replaced by this one: 4+. Adopt a policy to ensure the projects and clients you insure respect the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the people of impacted areas.
Why would a group of progressives think of proposing 4- instead of 4+?Why advocate rights that are clearly required by justice, thenspontaneously and arbitrarily limit them to a small subset of humanity?
In today's progressive thinking, there is a current which, notsatisfied with the goal of eliminating the racism against indigenouspeople and compensating the injustices that have been practicedagainst them, seeks to elevate them to a status above ordinary humanbeings. According to that line of thought, they are inherentlysuperior by birth to the rest of humanity -- born high-minded andloyal to preserving nature. Therefore we (the rest) should have faithin them, consider them born to be our leaders, and grant them theprivileges and power to make decisions for all of us. They would be,in effect, a new noble class.
I would support demand 4+, which advocates additional rights foreveryone, indigenous people included. I will not support 4-, whichdenies those rights arbitrarily to the rest of us.
Iran's hierocratic government is as arrogant towards other countriesas it is toward Iranian protesters and Iranian women.
Israel's government plans to weaken the power of the judiciary tooverturn laws. This would make it possible to impose repressive new laws that theSupreme Court has rejected.
The MAGA maggots are demanding an advance commitment to shut downthe US government rather than increase the debt ceiling, as a preconditionfor voting for anyone for speaker. They are dead-set on sabotage.I read, years ago, thet the Speaker of the House cannot absolutelyblock a bill from being voted on. If a majority of the House wants tovote for a bill, they can sign a discharge petition to bring it to thefloor.
The XBB variant of Covid-19 is becoming dominant in the US, because itis more infectious than previous variants. The new bivalent vaccinedoes some good against it.
When will Republican voters figure out how badly they’re getting screwed by Republican politicians?
Around the world, people are suing governments for failing to defendthe climate from human activity, and suing fossil fuel companies andtheir investors for attacking the climate.
The US now allows ordinarypharmacies to fill prescriptions for mifepristone, the abortion drug.
Staff of the UK's NHS say that the fewness of staff and lack of facilities is overloading them unbearably and driving them to quit.I say "fewness" rather than shortage because Tory policies precludehaving more staff.
The House speaker fiasco shows that Republicans are unable to govern.Their approach to governing is the terrorist's approach: "Give us allwe demand or we will wreck everything we can reach." Now 20Republicans, the extremest of the extremists, are using that approachagainst against the not-quite-so-extremists.Does the US Constitution give us any recource against terrorists thatcontrol the House of Representatives, before the next congressionalelection?
Mauritius and the UK are negotiating over control of the Chagosislands.The Chagosians, who were kicked out of their home in the1960s, want to be consulted.
The obstacles to avoiding climate disaster mount up, and Republicansaboteurs have taken more power. But we must not give up!Giving up ensures defeat.
Hackers discovered dozens of flaws in the security (in the usualnarrow sense) of many brands of automobiles.Security in the usual narrow sense means security against unknownthird parties.I am more concerned with security in the broader sense -- against themanufacturer as well as against unknown third parties. It is clear that eachof these vulnerabilities can be exploited by the manufacturer too,and by any government that can threaten the manufacturer enough tocompel the manufacturer's cooperation.
Jordan Trengove, a man with no particular power or fame, was falselyaccused of rape in 2019. Eager cancellationists joined in houndinghim everywhere, driving him to move to a different town, and almost tosuicide.They ignored him when he said that accusation was not true -- untilit was proved in court that it was totally a lie.
Aquatic plants have a sense of hearing, which they depend on forsimple orientation. Loud noises generated by human activity candamage their hearing and perhaps kill them.Loud sounds can also kill zooplankton and fish embryos.Since any additional fossil fuel reserves are useless (to extract allthe reserves we already know about would be suicidal), and sincemining the sea floor causes other dangers,Prohibiting seismic surveys in bodies of water seems indicated as afirst step. Other not-quite-so-loud sounds may also require action.
Scientific advice on what countries should do to avoid being harmed byCovid-19 cases imported from China.
Indigenous cultures are being swept away by the world's seductivemass cultures. The young people are not interestedin their ancestors' culture, so they don't learn it.Hundreds of cultures are being forgotten in this way.
Teaching philosophy in a [minors'] prison has shown me the meaning of anger.It's a side issue, but please don't refer to 15-year-olds as"children".They are teenagers -- adolescents.
Brazil has resumed prosecuting across-the-board liar George Santos ofa fraud that he more or less admitted committing,now that the prosecutors know where to find him.They plan to ask the US to extradite him.Santos embodies more than any other person the spirit of theRepublican Party.
Spain is pushing to reduce the enormous environmental impact ofdiscarded cigarette butts, which nowadays are made of plastic.
Robert Reich: Republicans fight over speaker of the House -- butwhoever wins, the party loses.
Global heating directly increases gun violence, in the US at least.Shooting deaths are more frequent during heat waves.
Sweden is planning to kill half of its small wolf population. The population is already so small that that will put its genetic health in danger.
Statistics show California thugs practice racial profiling whendeciding whom to search and which drivers to stop. They also pick ontrans people.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.That article is one of the exceptions.
Forbidding women from working for NGOs has made humanitarian aid inAfghanistan impossible -- those tens of thousands of workers wereessential for them to operate.
Sweden is planning to kill half of its small wolf population. The population is already so small that that will putits genetic health in danger.
Sweden is planning to kill half of its small wolf population. The population is already so small that that will putits genetic health in danger.
American society is evolving towards more loneliness and less connectionof every kind. Today's use of the internet seems to beaccelerating this change.My personal impression is that the spaces of possible friendship andpossible love have been somehow poisoned, so that what you can find inthem isn't quite friendship or love any more.
Teaching philosophy in a [minors'] prison has shown me the meaning of anger.It's a side issue, but please don't refer to 15-year-olds as"children". They are teenagers — adolescents.
Teaching philosophy in a [minors'] prison has shown me the meaning of anger.It's a side issue, but please don't refer to 15-year-olds as"children". They are teenagers — adolescents.
The Tories plan laws to prohibit strikes in the usual sense of theword, for a wide range of industrial activities considered "essential"and whose workers are therefore unable to get by.
Forbidding women from working for NGOs has madehumanitarian aid in Afghanistan impossible — those tens of thousands of workerswere essential for them to operate.
Social media triggers children to dislike their own bodies, says study.Even at age 12, 75% say they dislike their bodies. Half the teenagershave become withdrawn.
EDRi rips the proposed European client-side-scanning censorship systemto shreds. That proposed system is also referred to as "chatcontrol".
Tens of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit pose environmental dangers: disrupting star-tracking navigation by birds, insects andseals, and filling the upper atmosphere with sunlight-blocking andozone-destroying aluminum oxide.
Chinese propaganda tries and fails to convince the Chinese that Chinesearen't dying from Covid.
Labour proposes to prohibit discussion platforms from havingrecommendation algorithms that promote "harmful" messages — withoutactually censoring these messages.This is the approach I have advocated; I am glad they are considering thisrather than banning such messages.
Lula's foreign policy? Encouraging a multipolar world.In the long term, I think that is a wise policy, provided it is donecleverly to avoid a pitfall. The pitfall is that of treating variousrival powers alike, while some of them find ways to take advantage ofBrazil's neutrality to gain advantage over other powers.In the short term, though, I think this should not extend to countriesthat are actually fighting wars of conquest.
Robert Reich: It’s hard to believe, but things are getting better. They will continue to if we keep up the fight.
Extinction Rebellion in the UK has dropped its practice of "disruptive" protests in the face of long prison sentences fornonviolent protest.I can't criticize the leaders of Extinction Rebellion — but this is avictory for repression, and planet roasters world-wide will take note.
Italy's right-wing government has imposed impossible ruleson ships that rescue migrants from small boats at sea. The point of the rules is to be a monkey wrench in the ships' engines, so that they can't save very many.
Bainimarama continues to threaten Fiji with a coup, having previouslyimposed a constitution which authorizes the military to overthrow anygovernment.
The EFF warns of ways Apple could "permit competing app stores" butmake them useless for independent distribution of software -- or,perhaps, useless specifically for the Free World.https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/heres-how-apple-could-open-its-app-store-without-really-opening-its-app-storeThis is an important issue and the warning is important too. Sad tosay, the article shows how little the EFF values users' freedom.
When Apple removes an app store for allegedly failing to meet its security obligations, it could take a long time to figure out whether the action was warranted, and during that delay, the suspended app store’s customers could lose access to the media they’ve purchased,
If you have "purchased media" through an app, why in the world wouldyou "lose access to it" if that app ceases to function? Is the EFFassuming that the "media" is covered with digital shackles, so youcan't play said "media" except through a nonfree program that tracksand restricts you? It looks that way. Even worse, EFF's statementlegitimizes such shackles.Here we see the values that EFF's position is based on:
In the case of audiobooks, Apple uses its high fees to clear the field of competitors for its own product, Apple Books, which sells books that are permanently locked (through Digital Rights Management) to Apple’s platform. Incredibly, that’s the best outcome of Apple’s “app tax.” In other cases, companies simply pass on Apple’s commission to Apple’s customers by raising prices (since everyone who sells via an iOS app must pay the app tax, they all raise prices). Even that is better than the worst outcome, where products and services never come to market because they can’t be profitable after paying the app tax, and the products won’t sell if the app tax is added onto their sale price.
The "worst outcome" according to the EFF would be the lack of somesort of convenience. In the digital world of today, much worseoutcomes are possible, and indeed likely.The usual outcome of anything digital today is that it offers you allthe convenience you might want, but it snoops on, tracks, andrestricts the users.
Anger as Pakistancourt frees rapist after he agrees deal to marryhis victim.That law reflects the idea, shocking to us, that a woman is property— initially property of her father, then later property of herhusband. Rape of an unmarried woman damages her value as property, sothe rapist is required to compensate the father for the damage;marrying her imposes that responsibility.
Fireworks may cause harm to migrating birds, especially when there arefireworks over a wide area on the same night.There are certain periods of the year in which birds mainly migrate.It should be easy enough to avoid having more than isolated fireworkspresentations during those periods.
(satire) Police Release Composite Sketch Of What They Would PreferMurder Suspect To Look Like.
Some Ukrainian nationalists want to close the Mikhail Bulgakov museumin Kyiv, because he wrote about factions fighting over Kyiv during theRussian revolution.Putin's efforts to set up Ukrainian and Russian culture as mutuallyexclusive and hostile reflects his totalitarian leanings. It would bea shame and a disaster for Ukraine to take a similar attitude.
When Youtube cut off RT TV's channel,it deleted years of pastprograms which were not simply Kremlin propaganda.I disagree with some of the views expressed in that article,but I trust its factual report.
Indigenous political control of theNorthwest Territories of Canada has opened the door to projects to give protection to large areas of land.To preserve the world's ecosystems requires doing this sort of work inevery region. Protecting large areas in Canada won't make up for thefailure to protect the very different ecosystems of other regions.Perhaps this energetic example can inspire people elsewhere.However, in this article I also see something that looks likeprejudice. I get the impression that the author admires"indigenous-led conservation efforts" first of all for putting themore worthy race in charge, and only secondly for conservation itself.Protection of biodiversity is important regardless of who is in charge of it, but I don't like the prejudice.
US citizens: call on President Biden and the DNC not to make South Carolina the first state to vote in primaries. Prioritizebattleground states instead.
Astrological forecasts were useful for monarchs even though astrologywas not valid as a means of predicting the future. The same is true today for economic modeling.
The EPA has issued a new definition of "waters of the United States"for the sake of the Clean Water Act.Since this one would be an advance in regulating dangerous andprofitable pollution, polluters have already asked the Supreme Courtto toss out the whole thing. The right-wing majority wants to transformthe United States into a subservient fiefdom full of powerless peopleso that the rich can take more and more while poisoning more and more.Although we can't do anything about this for the next two years, wemust aim to expand or shrink the Supreme Court to get rid ofits right-wing majority, and their gerrymandering,and their voter suppression.
Many well-known large corporations in the UK give visible holiday donations as publicity stunts to buy good opinion that their overallactions do not deserve.
In Bolivia, most people in the Santa Cruz region actually support right-wing politics, including the right-wing coups against President Morales. Their leaderhas been arrested and accused of terrorism.It would not surprise me at all if he aided the coup in a criminalway, but the charge of terrorism is somewhat shocking, and I wonderwhat concrete actions the alleged terrorism consists of.
Top Republicans remain silent over George Santos campaign lies. If you can stomach the bullshitter's Big Lie, you'd hardly feel aqualm about Santos's series of little lies.
Exiled chief rabbi says Jews should leave Russia while they can… Jewish population will be made scapegoat for hardship causedby war.
Iran selected five protesters at random and convicted all of them of helping to kill one of the "morality" thugs.
Italy's right-wing government has made arbitrary rules to slow down the operations of the ships that rescue boat people.
British offshore wind-farms pay large sums to rich aristocrats for the"right" to operate.There may be injustice in these details, and maybe some of thesedetails should be changed. Perhaps some of the laws that requirepayment to the rich for permission to set up a wind farm.But none of that calls into question the need to make the wind farm!
Canadians love their national medical system, but privatizers never giveup trying to eliminate it.
Hikvision video systems can classify people by many dimensions of personalcharacteristics, and purports to identify patterns of actions that suggestforbidden dissent.
The Taliban have forbidden women to work for NGOs. Decades of war have left many families with only women to earnmoney; now that they cannot work, they are desperate. Are theydesperate enough to kill Taliban -- any Taliban they can get?The west tried sending armies to defeat the Taliban, but the Talibandefeated them. The western-sponsored Afghan government was corrupt,and its army did not have the will to win that the Taliban had. Thereis no sense in trying that approach again. What could defeat theTaliban?If Afghan women, in total desperation and with total determination,start killing whatever Taliban they can get their hands on, they canput an end to religious tyranny.
Al Sharpton has warned Democratic leaders that they must step up theparty’s appeal to African American voters or risk …Republicanleaders making greater inroads with the Black electorate.I've read that the danger is even greater among Hispanics.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.That article is one of the exceptions.
Sanders Calls on Buttigieg to Hold Southwest CEO Accountable for"Greed and Incompetence."
Nursing home care for disabled or demented old people in the UK isutterly lousy, because the nursing homes cannot hire enough staff todo the job right.The necessary first step to fix this is to tax the rich more, and usesome of that money to give nursing home staff a raise and increase thenumber of staff. But are there more workers available to hire? Wheredid the former staff go? Were they foreigners who cannot now work inthe UK? The government could fix that by allowing more foreigners toimmigrate and work. Are they disabled by long Covid? Fixing thatwould be harder.k
West Virginia Journalist Fired in Alleged Retaliation Over Reporting on Abuse in State [psychiatric] Facilities.*
West Virginia Journalist Fired in Alleged Retaliation Over Reporting on Abuse in State [psychiatric] Facilities.
Danish Reporter Says Ukrainian Intelligence Tried to Coerce Her Into Working as a Propagandist.
Human rights advocates are alarmed about Israel's new governmemt, themost right-wing it has ever had, which is endorsing fascist, racistand colonialist policies towards Palestine. Netanyahu has promised to legalize thefts of Palestinians' landcarried out by private groups of Israelis, and to annex the whole West Bank.I expect that the next goal after that will be to expel allPalestinians, a few at a time so that it can deny the intentionto expel them all.
iMonsters can betracked for 24 hours after being switched "off."The suthor of the article considers this harmless in and of itself, butI disagree: simply recording your movements is harm.
A Minneapolis thug faces major charges for beating up Jaleel Stallingsand seriously injuring him, while Stallings was lying prone on theground.It also has financial relationshops with major companies that would like to influence that policy.
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is influential in nutrition policyin the US. It also has financial relationshops with major companies that would like to influence that policy.
Apple said it will implement end-to-end encryption for many purposes,including storing backups on Apple servers.One can't really trust the security of this encryption, because itwill be done by nonfree software running in a nonfree operatingsystem. There would be nothing to stop Apple from making thatsoftware send Apple every encryption key the user uses.
A 28-year-old man, running for Congress, had to sleep on friends'couches at the end of the campaign. He won the election, and wasrejected for an apartment in Washington because of his campaign debts.
The FDA disregarded its rules to approve the super-expensive andquestionable Alzheimer's preventative, Aduhelm.
The House of Representatives decided not to give the Senate or the DoJthe evidence it has obtained in a year of investigating Big Oil.
How global heating causesoccasional bursts of very cold air inthe northern hemisphere.The melting of so much Arctic sea ice has made the Arcticconsiderably warmer than it used to be, and that makes iteasier for an air mass of Arctic air to head south and freezepeople.
A company distributes software to crack the security on surveillancecameras and alter the recordings stored in them.This is an additional reason why security cameras must not beconnected to a network. To uphold security, they must be secure, andthat means air-gapped.The original reasons why security cameras must not be connected to anetwork is to avoid furthering massive surveillance of people in general,with the terrible threat of China-style repression.
When programmers try to save time by using AI assistants to writecode, they tend to overlook bugs.
The question of whether to allow exposed total liar George Santos totake a seat in the House of Representatives will compel each other Republican member to take a public stand on whether there is any limitto what lies they will accept for grabbing power.
Finally, the US is making substantial investments in decarbonizingelectricity and ground transportation.Other major sources of greenhouse gas emissions include agriculture,concrete. air transportation and plastic. The US needs to work on reducingemissions from all of them.
France has required packaging and utensils provided with food to eatin a restaurant be reusable, and used many times.
Right wing politics is based on cruelty, and the behavior of itsleaders and movement is sociopathic.
48,000 student academic workers at the University of Californiahave accepted a new contract with big wage increases.
Mastodon's founder, Eugen Rochko, has rejected offers to convertMastodon into a business and give him lots of money. He says that accepting such investment would make Mastodon as bad as Twitter.Bravo!
'The System' Is Ruining Our Present and Collective Future. Especially for young people. This creates a special opportunity forpolitical organizing.The article proposes the AARP as an example to follow. Sad to say, the AARPattracts old people by offering them opportunities to save money, but itdoesn't represent their interests.
Restrictions on abortion in US states led to measurably higher ratesof suicide among women of reproductive age.This is especially significant since it largely compares thesame states before and after introducing restrictions.The other result, that states which restrict abortion also show aworse state of health for women and infants, does not necessarydemonstrate consequences of restricting abortion. They may be themore general consequences of being ruled by right-wing government.
US corporations amass enormous quasi-monopolies by buying many smallbusinesses one by one. The US government never investigates.
Details of the Global Minimum Tax system for corporations that theEU and US are plannimg to adopt.My proposal for a progressive tax on a corporation's gross income,with the tax rate to depend on the global corporation's total grossincome, is simpler and I expect it to have better results.
Recently released secret documents add to the evidence that the CIAwas involved in something with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of President Kennedy. However, it's not clear what they were doing. The CIA has 4,000still-unreleased documents relating to Kennedy.
Describing the dynamic where companies make discussion sites thatbuild real communities, then spoil them hoping to make the userspurchase more.There is an interesting aside about LiveJournal (which I never used),claiming it was used a lot by Russian dissidents, and eventually soldto a company that worked for Putin.
Calling on Ukraine to respect freedom of the press and labor rights,and the rights of Ukrainians conscripted into the Putin forces and then captured.In addition to the standard moral reasons to treat prisoners of warwith respect, Ukraine has a special practical interest in doing so.Every conscript in the Putin forces must wonder, "Should I look for achance to surrender?" Ukraine should act so that the answer will bean unhesitating "Yes!"
Senator Warnock's victory in the Georgia runoff had to overcome very strongvoter-suppression efforts.
Describing the requirements of the EU's Digital Services Act.Every time I encounter the term "content", referring to publications,postings or messages, it makes me angry.However, most of the substantial requirements look reasonable to me.What I worry about is that some of the requirements may have theeffect of requiring users to prove their identity. For instance,rules about "protecting children" could have the effect of imposingcensorship on adults unless they prove their age by showing officialidentity documents.
California's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon could force it to changeits operations, world-wide.Even if we stop Amazon from doing wrong to its warehouse workers andits competitors, that won't end the injustice of snooping on itscustomers and making them run nonfree software. Please join me inrefusing to accept such treatment.
Staff at the University of Leiden took down a painting of formeradministrators of the university because (1) they were depictedsmoking and (2) they were all male.The university president said that some people "do not feelrepresented" by the painting. So what? It doesn't represent me,either. It doesn't represent present-day people at all, and it wasn'tmeant to.It's right to call for changing the past sexism which is visible inthe painting. Evidently the university has already started doing so,since its current president is a woman.It is sometimes necessary to break with past errors; to erasereferences to the past because of past errors is outrageous. Thepeople of today have no right to demand that the art of the past bereplaced to represent them.
BP tries to present itself falsely as a green oil company whileplanning to spend a lot more in fossil fuels than in renewable energy.
Australia is taking a stern attitude towards soldiers that try to coverup or disguise war crimes.
Corporate Social Responsibility is an inadequate substitute for respectingworkers' rights.
UK aid to Afghanistan entrenched corruption and injustice, report finds.A powerful elite received most of the benefits.
There is a campaign to make the word "Indian", referring toindigenous groups of the Americas, taboo.The article claims that any use whatsoever of that term is"offensive", regardless of the intended meaning. I am skeptical ofthis, so I challenge those who think so to provide grounds for theclaim.The use of "Indian" to refer to people from the Americas started withan error, when Columbus believed he had reached India or what is nowIndonesia. It also invites confusion, since there are more people inthe US that were born in India than members of indigenous tribes.For clarity I usually write "indigenous" to identify the latter.But those things do not add up to an offense or justify imposing yetanother language taboo. There is no need to eradicate "Indian" fromplace names around the US.
The governor of New York said that the current blizzard is a"war with mother nature." I think that well describes the things humans have done to producethe global heating that made a storm this powerful happen.She also called it "the blizzard of the century," which is anover-optimistic prediction about the storms of the next 77 years.
Another conjecture about Musk's goal in dealing with Twitter: that he aimsto make it explicitly serve as a tool for right-wing extremism.
Sleeping-car doctors pun:The doctors that worked on US sleeping car trains created a specialbranch of medicine, known as Pullmanary medicine.
US citizens: Kavanaugh's ugly holiday party proves we need aSCOTUS code of ethics; call on Congress to enact one.
US citizens: tell Democrats such as Biden that the kind of"bipartisanship" that is desirable is to fight for progressivepolicies that most Americans support, even many Republicans — notmaking deals with right-wing extremists.
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents from big oilcompanies and studied the tactics they use for climate disinformation.The committee was going to publish the documents, but seems to havebeen pressured out of it. Soon Republicans will take over that committee and kill theinvestigation completely.
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents from big oilcompanies and studied the tactics they use for climate disinformation.The committee was going to publish the documents, but seems to havebeen pressured out of it. Soon Republicans will take over that committee and kill theinvestigation completely.
(satire) U.S. Treasury Introduces New Wild Bills That Can Be Used ForAny Dollar Amount.
The Tories hide behind "pay review bodies" instituted to set pay forNHS workers. These bodies do what the government wants, but the governmentcan pretend it has nothing to do with the issue.
The Putin forces shelled the market at the center of Kherson.This leads me to think that they can't be terribly short of artillery shells.
How Haiti's history of colonization and slavery drove it to today'sruin.The "elections" of presidents Martelly and Moise were quietly imposedby the US government.
(satire) New Sponsored Google Maps Feature Directs Every Driver To Denny's.This is a joke, but it illustrates a serious danger about Service as aSoftware Substitute (SaaSS).
Over half a million current members of the US military have drunkPFAS-tainted water, preceded by millions of others in the past.
Peru's congress sneakily plans to eliminate the protected lands for"uncontacted" indigenous groups.
This Is the Dying Phase of Reaganism — and It's Hideous.
The question today is whether we as a nation and a people will recover from it, or if it will, as Reagan promised, destroy the Americanexperiment of pluralistic liberal democracy.
Republicans in the Senate are fighting tooth and nail to keep poorAmericans in hunger.At least this deal replaces a temporary aid program with a permanentaid program. In the long term, that is a step forward. However, thepermanent aid program is limited to families with children.
The US government is investigating a Texas school district's book banas a civil rights issue.
Israel's New Far-Right Government to Lift Ban on ParliamentaryCandidates Inciting Racism.
Positive signals from Iran over nuclear deal put west in a tricky position.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/20/positive-signals-from-iran-over-nuclear-deal-put-west-in-a-tricky-positionI suggest dropping sanctions against Iran, then inviting it to decidewhether to continue arming Russia (and face sanctions for that) orstop arming Russia (and continue without sanctions).
Markey Asks Biden to Draft Plan for Ending Public Funding of OverseasFossil Fuel Projects.
Two-thirds of Antarctica’s native species are threatened by global heating.The species most threatened is the emperor penguin, beloved by everyone.
New York Governor Hochul nominated an anti-union conservative judgeto the state's highest judgeship.
(satire) Hundreds Of Swimmers Die Every Year Getting Tangled Up InPlastic Lane Dividers.
Transcripts reveal Cassidy Hutchinson was pressured to protect [the bullshitter]. For instance, not to try to remember the answersto questions she was asked while testifying.
- Congress should pass laws to ensure both transparency (about income) and proper auditing of the most powerful in politics.* The same law could help protect the privacy of everyone else fromRepublican threats.
Counsel for Democrats for how to gain in the 2024 elections.A lot of this seems valid to me, but I see one pitfall to avoid. Thenext Republican presidential candidate could easily be DeMentis. Tofocus on the corrupter too strongly could be weak in opposing DeMentis.I am not sure what is the best way to prevent that, but I have anidea: to focus condemnation on Republican demonization/distraction.All Republican candidates try to demonize weak "enemies" to take ourminds off the powerful enemies: billionaires (both individuals andbusinesses).
US citizens: call on Senator Mary Peters to push to appoint people tothe USPS board of governors who will replace DeJoy with a good postmaster.
The US is throwing a monkey wrench into the WTO's system forbusiness-friendly resolution of trade disputes, by blocking nominationof judges to hear appeals. If you are in favor of business-friendly resolution of trade disputes,as the author of the article is, you will conclude that the US is doingsomething wrong.I've condemned the WTO since the beginning, first because of itspatent rules, and later because its system for "resolution of tradedisputes" is used to stop countries from protecting themselves againstharmful products that happen to be imported from other countries.The US tried to protect itself against flavored cigarettes,and to protect marine mammals from tuna caught in ways that killed them, and each time the WTO reached a judgment that compelled the US to give upon it.I am sure the WTO has harmed other countries in similar ways, all based on theidea that every kind of business opportunity must be permitted.
Many American teenagers have so little experience of independent activitythat they perceive basic adult activities as risky.It is plausible that this is a frequent result of treating adolescentslike children, and children like infants.
7 states have amended their constitutions to prohibit treatingconvicts as slaves, but practical changes in the practice of forcing convicts to work for a pittance are just starting.American workers should keep in mind that forcing prisoners to workfor a low wage undercuts the wages of free workers.I think it makes sense to distinguish prison chores (for instance,cooking food for for the prisoners to eat, and cleaning theirclothing) from work on products or services for use outside the prison.It is legitimate to require prisoners to do the chores they need done,but that cannot legitimately take more than a few hours a week.
Australia proposes to require people to prove their identity to sign up for a dating app, and undergo criminal background checks.This is likely to mean that the app companies get a lot more data abouteach user, which they can then abuse.If Australia passes a law to require these checks, it should also passa law strictly limiting what other personal data the company can collect.It should not be allowed to know any user's location, ever, and it mustdelete all copies of a user's data when the user says to do so.Messages between users should be encrypted such that the companycannot decrypt them.Even with this law, I would refuse to use those appsbecause they are nonfree software.
The Putin forces have stolen the collections of several archaeological museumsin the captured areas of Ukraine. They have also destroyed archaeological sites by buildingfortifications on them.
The evidence in the Jan 6 committee's report shows the Department ofJustice that there is a basis to prosecute the corrupter.I think its most important effect will be to show the public thatprosecuting him is legitimate.
India's Hindu-nationalist government is also a Hindi-nationalist government,trying to impose Hindi on the 3/4 of Indians that don't speak Hindi.Many defend English as India's de-facto "lingua anglica", because itis neutral — it does not prefer any one part of India over the others.
The need to work for income as well as study, leaving students with notime to do their homework, is a major factor leading university students to cheat.
In the US, right-wing state governments reduce working people's lifeexpectancy. But the mainstream media don't dare admit that one of the two political sides is better than the other.
Fixing vulnerabilities in the function of the electoral collegeis not enough: we need to replace it with popular vote.The electoral college was designed when the United States was founded.People thought of themselves as citizens of the various states, andthought of the union as literally a federation of states. In terms ofthose concepts, the electoral college made sense as a way for states tochoose the chief executive of their federation. But we no longer thinkof the US that way. Please urge your state to sign up to the National Popular Vote.
Legal steps needed to block avenues for future presidential coupattempts in the US.To have unrigged elections, we need also to prohibit gerrymandering andvoter suppression. To have fair elections for president, we need todo away with the electoral college.
Proposing a system for acquiring property on celestial bodies and objectswhich avoids the bad outcome that the early space travelers claim everything.My view of property rights is very different from an antisocialist's. People are not inherently entitled to own any kind of property, buta system of property rights can be beneficial on the margin for peoplein general. In normal circumstances, where no one is in penury, it isuseful for individuals to own clothing, books, furniture, bicycles,food, and so on, and maybe even houses. I mean "useful" in the sensethat in those circumsances the system of property rights benefitseveryone. This presumes that overall economic system protectspeople from poverty, so that every individual gets to own a reasonableamount of those things.However, property rights must not be absolute. If the system doespush someone into poverty, "property rights" can't justify keepingthat person in penury. If you need food to survive, you are entitledto "steal" some, with a few special exceptions such as taking the foodsome other penurious person was about to eat, or taking a farmer'sseed corn.That said, the temporary property rental system proposed in thearticle linked to could be a useful method to add to a system ofnon-absolute property.
Global heating to drive stronger La Niña and El Niño events by 2030,researchers say.These events already cause havoc — droughts and fires in some placesand times, floods in others. Global heating is likely to make themworse.
Next year's climate conference will be hosted (and run) by the UAE.The UAE is a repressive regime that recognizes human rights only when thatpleases the emirs, so protest will be crushed and most activists kept out,as happened this year in Egypt.In addition, the UAE is a big oil exporter, which means that nextyear's event will be even more corrupted by global heating denialiststhan this year's.The UAE spends lots of money to manipulate the US goverment and policies.If any powerful coutries really want to make progress in defending theclimate, they should denounce the UN climate conferences as corruptbetrayals, refuse to attend, and organize a new kind of event. Butmaybe they are corrupted enough to be content with this corruption.
Big US banks are lobbying against a proposed rule that would stop themfrom managing retirement funds any more if they are caught committingcrimes in doing that.
"The [Putin forces] mined everything": why making Kherson safe could take years.Please distinguish between the Putin forces and Russia. Ukraine willneed to live with Russia, and Ukrainians will need to live with theirRussian relatives, for centuries, assuming those countries survivecoming global disaster. Hate Putin, not Russia!
Campaigning against plans to restart a US nuclear reactor that has been permanently shut down for being dangerous to operate.
16 cities in Puerto Rico are suing fossil fuel companies and their PR tools for conspiring to deny the dangers of burning oil — inparticular, increasingly devastating hurricanes.
Fiji has ousted coup-leader Bainimarama through a democratic election. But it is not yet clear he won't stage another coup.
The Senate considered a harmful trade: to extend tax credits for poor familieswith children in exchange for tax cuts for corporations (mostly for the rich).The article does not make it clear which of those two changes were temporaryand which were permanent. But I expect that the increase in tax credits forchildren was temporary.This sort of deal is bad and we should defeat it. Continuing toreduce taxes for the rich will paralyze the government, leaving itunable to afford tax credits for the poor, or anything else.We need to increase taxes on the rich.
Convicting the wrecker on the charges recommended by the Jan 6 committeemay be difficult. But it is crucial to try.However, putting the wrecker in prison won't be enough. Other fascists are jockeying to be his successor as the leader of Americanfascism.
Australians propose a "right to protest" law to override state lawsthat impose severe punishments on nonviolent protests.I've read that Australia does not have anything like the US Bill ofRights in its constitution. It needs one.
(satire) Man Who Could Have Been Holding Gun In Diverging Timeline Shot Dead By Police.Deepening the satire of this item is the fact that it describes theway racist stereotyping actually works. When thugs see a black man,they imagine what they believe a black man might have been doingand may shoot for those imaginings.
Biden privately sees the non-nuclear deal with Iran as impossible to resurrect. However, he is still open to diplomacy on the matter.
Sixty years on from the Cuban missile crisis, the US has learned itslessons — but Putin has not.The challenge is to give Putin an exit that isn't either a victory forhim or a disaster for everyone. I can't offer an answer, but thestart of an answer is to stop pushing to oust or prosecute Putin.Desirable and just they would be, but not wise.
Experts Welcome New Biden Policy to Facilitate Humanitarian Aid in Sanctioned Nations.It is clearly established that US trade sanctions harm poor people in thosecountries, by interfering with imports of food and medicine.This was the case in Iraq in the 1990s and until the Bush forcesconquered that country. People have been clamoring for changesto avoid that result ever since then.
The real "great replacement": a broad range of Republican attitudeslead whites to die younger (especially those without a collegeeducation).Some of these attitudes lead people to take foolish risks, from whichsome die. But in areas where Republican attitudes dominate, they alsolead to laws that put people in increasing danger. The RepublicanParty has become the Republican DEATH CULT.
Retirement tax changes: This bill does not make it easier for workers to save for retirement, it just makes it easier for high-income earners to shelter more of their earnings from taxes.
Bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.A lie denies specific truths. Bullshit attacks the very idea oftruth.
Why the Democratic Party keeps doing badly against Republicans thatdespise the non-rich.
The Keystone tar sands oil pipeline has had several big leaks, more than onewould expect. Its safety record is deteriorating, and it may have beenbuilt with low-quality materials.It's a good thing that the Keystone XL pipeline was not built.Given the extra corrosivity of tar sands oil, and the extra pollutioncaused by extracting and burning it, we should probably shut downthe existing Keystone pipeline and stop the extraction of tar sands oil.
Elon Musk claims the FBI paid Twitter to "censor info from thepublic." Here's what the Twitter Files actually show.
‘First Night Against the Wars’ is coming up. Let's have our next stand-outfor Julian starting at 2pm on Dec 31 in Copley Sq. at the corner ofBoylston and Dartmouth, in front of the Public Library. We are expectingmore activists this year as we join forces with Boston’s new coalition‘Solidarity Action Network’. The coalition group will be gathering fromnoon to 5, bringing all our issues together, crushing inequality, climatecollapse, endless war, nuclear Armageddon and, of course, free speech! Itgrew out of the Earth Day Strike a few months back.
Fiji has ousted coup-leader Bainimarama through a democratic election. But it is not yet clear he won't stage another coup.
Elon Musk compared with Henry Ford -- brilliant entrepreneurs thatturned to spreading hatred and almost destroyed their companies.
Even if we sentence the wrecker to prison, the fascists he unleashedwill remain dangerous.
Micah Lee reports that Musk is still blocking his Twitter accountand those of some other journalists that have criticized Musk.However, instead of marking the accounts "suspended", so the public cansee how Twitter is treating them, they are blocked from logging in.
The US seized funds from Afghanistan's central bank, and in Septemberset up a channel to donate those funds for food for Afghans. But it'snot doing anything.
There are hints that Musk is preparing Twitter for bankruptcy. I speculated that his aim might be to eliminate it.
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to pursue mandatory audits of [the corrupter] on a timely basis during his presidency.
Alameda county passed a law prohibiting landlords from doing criminalbackground checks on would-be tenants.
Sherif Osman is an Egyptian dissident who moved to the US long ago.On a visit to Dubai, he was arrested and may now be handed over to Egyptto be a political prisoner.
It looks like the UK government is going to join in a campaign ofrepression against people who share Netflix passwords.The name "Intellectual Property Office" indicates a basic leaningtowards dividing people and imposing repression. This is a typicalexample. If you allow that term to shape your thinking, you willbe evil too. Likewise for calling sharing "piracy." Netflix does so many unjust things to its customers that I urgeeveryone to reject it entirely. In particular, it requires customersto run nonfree software designed specifically to restrict them.Using it and sharing a subscription deals the company a small blow,which it deserves, but does not protect customers from most of theinjustice.
The outgoing governor of Oregon has commuted all of Oregon's deathsentences. Slowly the US advances toward abolishing the death penalty.
Google is adding client-side encryption, but due to the basicarchitecture it's not entirely trustworthy.Google encryption may be effective against snoopers that have nospecial relationship with Google. However, Google remains ultimatelyin control of the encryption software and the operating system it runson, so you can't trust it fully. Google will have the power to giveyou an "upgrade" that shows Google the plaintext of every encryptedmessage.
UN Secretary-General Guterres announced a "no-nonsense" climatedefense conference for September 2023 for which the price of entry is non-negotiable -— credible, serious, and new climate action and nature-based solutions that will move the needle forward and respond to the urgency of the climate crisis must be presented.
Why is it that so many US prosecutors so often violate the rights of theaccused by making trials unfair? Perhaps it's because the SupremeCourt has barred them from being sued for such illegalities.
Even if we stop thug departments from putting weapons on robots,some robots will endanger human rights in other ways. This articlesuggests some rules to limit use of robots by thug departments.The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry bycapitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, andnormally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I makeexceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.That article is one of the exceptions.
Right-wing extremist candidates combine racism and disinformation withpromises to help the poor (but excluding poor blacks and poor immigrants).
Senator Warren rebuked the Pentagon for "vastly" underreportingcivilian casualties in its required annual report.
Radio City Music Hall decided in advance to exclude certain peoplefrom its shows, and sent bouncers to get onefrom a show, and identified her through facial recognition.The reason they did not want her to watch the show is that she is alawyer that works for a law firm that is handling someone's a legaldispute with the operators of Radio City Music Hall.In addition to being a bizarre overreaction, it demonstrates why weneed to ban the practice of identifying people by their faces, outsideof very limited circumstances.However, the crucial step in the chain of surveillance is not the stepof matching the face in a picture against a database. Rather, it issystematically collecting images of people (whether video or still)that could be used to identify people. That is what we need toprohibit. We must prohibit surveillance cameras and allow onlysecurity cameras.
In various countries, people are suing governments for failing to protectthem from the harm global heating will do to them.
The CFPB has ordered Wells Fargo Bank to pay almost 4 billion dollarsfor fraud committed against 16 million customers.The CFPB called Wells Fargo a "repeat offender" and said that thisis just the beginning of its actions against the bank.
After the wrecker's veiled but undeniable launch of an attack againstthe US government, prosecuting him is a necessary part of loyalty.
A last-minute deal in a must-pass spending bill gave Maine fishermen6 more years before they have to protect North Atlantic Right Whales. Given the rate at which the population of those whales is decreasing,that could wipe them out.
UN Secretary-General Guterres announced a "no-nonsense" climatedefense conference for September 2023 for which the price of entry is non-negotiable -— credible, serious, and new climate action and nature-based solutions that will move the needle forward and respond to the urgency of the climate crisis must be presented.
Republican George Santos, who was recently elected to Congress, seemsto have filled up his biography with falsehoods.
Twitter intentionally hid the origin of Pentagon political propagandaaimed at the Middle East.
Dutch PM apologises for Netherlands’ role in slave trade.Activists in former Dutch colonies imperiously rejected the apologybecause its words and its ceremony were not done to their satisfaction.
Turkey may block Sweden from joining NATO because Sweden's supremecourt has rejected the extradition of a Turkish journalist wanted byErdoğan for political persecution.
- Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have ordered an indefinite ban on university education for the country’s women,*
The Jan 6 committee voted to recommend prosecution of the wrecker forfour crimes, including supporting an insurrection.
The right-wing allies of Bolsonaro won a majority in Brazil's congress. Human rights, conservation and democracy in Brazil are still in danger from them.
One weakness of the global biodiversity pact is that it allowscountries to give permission to destroy natural ecosystems based on"offsets" as an excuse. This means a promise to construct a new wild area to replace the onethat was destroyed. Such replacement is easy to say and hard to do.
Iran's secret police are cracking protesters' Telegram accountsto get information to arrest people.
US citizens: call for passage of the Youth Voting Rights Act, which would defend younger voters from tactics used to impedethem from voting.
Modeling suggests 1/10 of all living species will be extinct by theend of this century, if global heating continues as projected.
Former enslaved migrant workers in Thailand are suing the UK supermarket Tesco for selling the clothing that they were forced to make.
Global corporations "cheating public out of billions in tax," say campaigners. This is why we designed GNU Taler to reliably identify the payee. It gives anonymity to the payer only.
Crypto was supposed to solve financial corruption. But FTX shows it’s just got worse.I am not sure this is an inherent part of using cryptocurrencies. Itmay be due to a twisted way of using them: people buy and sell themthrough companies called "exchanges" rather than trading themdirectly. Those exchanges seem to tend particularly to corruption.However, even if all users did everything directly in the currency'sblockchain, it would seem to be just perfect for bribing politiciansuntraceably.
Crown Prince Bone Saw is trying to "sportswash" Salafi Arabia'scruel and repressive reputation.Tobacco companies used sportswashing, and maybe still do in someplaces. In the US, that was eventually prohibited.
Musk has banned Twitter users from posting information about where to find them on other sites.Of course, you shouldn't be used by Facebook or Instagram at all, anyway. Twitter's policy may be illegal in the US. I wonder, though, whether FTC enforcement power can prevail againsta billionaire who is willing to lose millions of dollars as a resultof his choice of policies. If he chooses to defy the FTC, can theydo more than fine Twitter a few million?
Peru's suppression forces have killed 20 protesters, generally byshooting them. This caused protests to spread. People demand that Congress resign for new elections, but Congress refuses.
US right-wingers have danced with fascism and Nazism since the 1930sand have only occasionally been afraid to show it.
Joseph Stiglitz: The Road to Fascism Growing hardship is all but assured in 2023, and it will provide even more fertile ground for dangerous demagogues.
California adopted a "blueprint" for achieving a "net zero emissions", but the plan is bogus since it calls for carbon capture and storage,which has never been made to work properly.A blueprint means a precise set of measurements for something to bemade. A rough sketch is not a blueprint.
[The wrecker] Is Not Our Biggest Problem: It's the Open Fascism He Has Unleashed. Many fascists are flexible enough to follow another authoritarianleader, such as DeMentis, instead of the wrecker.The article discusses a conjecture that fascism wakes up in the USevery 80 years as the people who defeated fascism before die andcease to lead the country to reject fascism.
Cop15 deal includes target to protect 30% of nature on Earth by2030.The basic question is, will countries give this more than lip service?For instance, most of the UK's "protected marine areas" are hardly protected at all.The article claims that China imposed the deal despite objections frommany countries. Given that the survival of civilization and thenatural world are at stake, I feel little sympathy for anyone thatrefuses to help save But these objections may make the treaty a deadletter.The biodiversity movement seems to have adopted as a matter of faiththat indigenous humans will always protect biodiversity and ecosystems.In many cases they will, because they depend on those ecosystemsfor their living. In those cases, damage to those ecosystems willharm them so they will oppose such damage.But this is not invariably guaranteed. Human beings have beenpolluting their environments for short-term benefit for millennia.Humans often bend and redraw their moral rules to excuse their ownbenefit. Humans can resist this tendency, but nobody is automaticallyabove it due to descent alone.The part of this agreement that is absolutely perverse: the plan toestablish a parallel patent system in the name of preventing"biopiracy."The patent system we already have is harmful and unjust; this plancreates a second parallel system of restrictions on the use ofknowledge, adds a second harm, a second injustice, to the first.The goal, clearly, is to give some income to poor countries.That goal is fine, but do it in some other way!
The story of the US bombing of Hanoi in 1972 makes me think of Putin'sshelling and missile attacks on Ukraine.
US citizens: tell Federal Insurance Office that renters and homeownersneed data on how global heating impacts their insurance.
The reason Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested seems to have been anillegal funds transfer between two parts of FTX whose funds weresupposed to be kept separate.
The thugs who killed Ronald Greene have been charged with crimesincluding homicide.I can't tell whether one of these charges does justice to the lies thethugs told about how Greene died.We are all waiting to see if high officials of the thug department willface charges for trying to protect the killers themselves from charges.
US citizens: call on Congress to put an end to private prisons.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Biden said, during the campaign, that he wanted to eliminate the deathpenalty. However, the US just voted against a UN resolution calling fora worldwide moratorium on executions.
Colombia has implemented a progressive wealth tax and other tax increasesfor the rich. The specific details of the wealth tax respond to problemsencountered by previous wealth taxes in Europe, to ensure it touchesonly the rich.
Biden endorsed Manchin's dirty deal to undermine environmental regulationson energy projects. Even worse, he endorsed the values that deal is based on: thathypothetical reductions in the price of fossil fuel is more importantthan protecting or planet from global heating or pollution.
Leftist film director Ken Loach accused the BBC of helping to write Corbyn out of history, including trying to make Corbyn out as anti-semitic.He also stated that 200,000 members or more have left the Labour Partyin response to Starmer's right-wing shift.
Australia will build more large grid storage batteriesso as to keep unneeded renewable electricity for when it is needed.
Insulate Britain protests met with ire from motorists, but everyone now sees that they were right.
Pointing at technological advances that are supposed to eliminateglobal heating in a few years is a standard denialist tactic. Theyhave often cited fusion power for this,but also carbon capture and storageand "carbon offsets" (which tend to be bogus).We don't have time to wait for these things.
[Famous] Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti arrested after criticism of death penalty [given to protesters].
Tunisia's authoritarian president has reorganized how the legislature functions and held an election under totally new rules. There werenot many candidates and not many voters.
The corrupter is marketing NFT "trading cards". The money people pay for themgoes to a secret business, and I suspect it won't appear in the corrupter'sfuture tax returns.
The presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexicocondemned the ouster of Peru's President Castillo as a "legislative coup",saying it was backed by the US. This is not an absurd idea; the US backed such a coup in Bolivia a fewyears ago,and in Hondurasa few years before that.Information in the article suggests that the poor voted him intooffice and still support him. They are now protesting vigorously, andthe "forces of law and order" are shooting and gassing them fromhelicopters. It sounds like the thugs support the right wing and treatthe people as the enemy.This does not necessarily imply that the coup story is the wholetruth; there are valid reasons to argue that it is Castillo who triedto overthrow constitutional order, as President Boric of Chile said.It seems clear that there was a process of reciprocal escalation. Insuch a situation, it is easy to perceive the escalations by the sideyou oppose as injustice, and the escalations by the side you supportas legitimate self-defense.To judge the right and wrong of such a process requires a lotof facts about the actions and the background. All I can do is tryto judge which of the other presidents to trust.
Article talking about how the world is tailored toward men.For the most of the issues listed, I agree that we should changepractices so that they serve women as well as men. I disagree inregard to office temperature, though, for the simple reason that youcan wear more clothing without limit, but there are limits to how muchyou clothing can remove in an office with other workers. If at thatpoint some people are still too hot, the only solution that cansatisfy everyone is to make the office cool enough for them, and forthose who find that too cold to wear another layer.There were times that my office in the Stata Center was so hot that Ineeded to be nude to be comfortable. I kept the door locked so thatvisitors would knock and I could ask them to wait a minute. I did notusually explain that this was so I could put my shirt and pants on.
QAnonenties are starting to transfer their worship from the wrecker to Musk. They are mostly authoritarian followersand it isn't crucial to them which authoritarian leader they can follow.
AT&T, Amazon, Comcast and Intel donated to the campaigns of Republican election denialists, well before this year's election.
"Crisis pregnancy centers" look like abortion clinics, but theirmission is to confuse females so that they don't get abortions. Theyget away with lies because they are almost exempt from regulation.The right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court have protected themfrom regulations intended to protect women from being deceived.
The world-wide campaign to prevent nondisclosure agreements frombeing used by employers to cover up any abuses, from harassment torape, is making substantial progress, but not in the UK.You can't expect the Tories to eagerly pursue this goal, because theyrepresent the rich who commit the abuses and want them covered up.My first experience with a nondisclosure agreement was when I askedsomeone at CMU for a copy of the Xerox laser printer software sourcecode. He said he had actually promised in advance to refuse to sharethat code with me and other colleagues at MIT. Shame on him! He hadmade a commitment to be a jerk and deny his cooperation to hiscolleagues.From this I learned that signing a nondisclosure agreement forgenerally useful technical information, such as software, wasbetraying the whole world — so I vowed I would never agree to one,and I never knowingly done so.That led me, a year or two later, to the conclusion that nonfreesoftware was an injustice, regardless of whether the nonfreedom wasbrought about by a nondisclosure agreement.
Twitter suspends accounts of several journalists who had reported onElon Musk. Musk defines "free speech" the way autocrats do.
(satire) Elementary School Lesson On Water Cycle Explains How Water Becomes Property Of Nestlé.
Australia has revoked a rule, made by the previous planet-roastergovernment, that permitted the burning of wood waste from native treesto count as "renewable".In practice, native forests are not renewable under present conditions.
Plastic ‘nurdles’ stop sea urchins developing properly, study finds.It would be nice to imagine that this provides a way to protect kelp forests, but enough plastic to do that would surely harm other species too.
China's relaxation of restrictions on capturing wildlife for food*could weaken animal protection and pose a hazard to public health, say experts(.The term "post-pandemic" is wishful thinking, not reality.
Chinese doctors and nurses reportedly told to work while infected asCovid surges.In the US, this is achieved by denying workers paid sick leave. Theycan't afford to do the right thing and avoid infecting follow workers,even customers.The infection is spreading very fast. I presume it is one of therecent Omicron variants. At least that will reduce the number ofdeaths and serious injuries.
Ukraine's plans to reconquer Crimea military may be impossible or unwise.The places that Russian troops were stationed since 2014 include, asa fact, parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but Putin alwaysdenied that this was the case. He should not be invited toacknowledge it belatedly now and reap any benefit.To negotiate the fate of Crimea is more sensible. An honest electionwould have been a legitimate approach in 2014, but Putin drove out orexiled those who supported Ukraine, then (according to this article)lost anyway lied about the result. Putin's elections in Russia are blatantly dishonest.The population of Crimea today is different from the population in2014. If an election is to be held now about which country Crimeashould belong to, which people should vote in it? To give thedecision to the current population would mean that Putin (or anyoneelse) can conquer territory and legitimize that with an unfairelection. To give the decision to the 2014 population might be askingfor further violence.
There is a suspicion of fraud in the vote-counting of Fiji's election.Fiji has a history of real trouble in its elections. I wonder whetherit will be possible to assure the honesty of this election.
Drivers in London forcibly moved Just Stop Oil protesters out of theroad.I agree fully with the Just Stop Oil's arguments for these protests.If you think being delayed for half an hour is painful, wait and seewhat food rationing feels like, or a flood or wildfire smoke or heatprostration.But if this approach to protesting inspires the passersby to fight theprotesters, it is not useful or constructive. Here are suggestions for new tactics for climate protesters.
Ukraine's plans to reconquer Crimea militarily may be impossible or unwise.The places that Russaian troops were stationed since 2014 include, asa fact, parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but Putin alwaysdenied that this was the case. He should not be invited toacknowledge it belatedly now and reap any benefit.To negotiate the fate of Crimea is more sensible. An honest electionwould have been a legitimate approach in 2014, but Putin drove out orexiled those who supported Ukraine, then (according to this article)lost anyway and lied about the result.Putin's elections in Russia are blatantly dishonest.The population of Crimea today is different from the population in2014. If an election is to be held now about which country Crimeashould belong to, which people should vote in it? To give thedecision to the current population would mean that Putin (or anyoneelse) can conquer territory and legitimize that with an unfairelection. To give the decision to the 2014 population might be askingfor further violence.
The incredibly complex history of reprocessing and disposing of nuclearwaste in the UK.In theory, the process is clearly simple. In practice, it keeps gettingmore complex.
Flying insect numbers plunge 64% since 2004, UK survey finds.Some years ago, a similar decline was observed in Germany.This portends ecological disaster.
US citizens: call on the House Ways and Means Committee to share thewrecker's tax returns with the Senate Finance Committee ASAP.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democrats including Biden to seek the kindof "bipartisanship" that means progressive policies that many Republicanssupport — not deals with right-wing extremist Republicans.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to investigate corruption and ethicallapses at the Supreme Court.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to hold corporations accountable for pricegouging.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) Elon Musk Receives Experimental Neuralink Implant In AttemptTo Delete Memory Of Being Booed.
The EU is setting up a system of "green tariffs" to charge importsbased on how much greenhouse gas is emitted in producing them.
Anti-abortion fanatics have proposed to move on from lawscriminalizing performing abortions to prosecuting people who haveabortions.
- Without a plan in place to minimise infection [by Covid-19], a"moving on" strategy leaves vulnerable people behind.*Most people want to believe the danger is gone, and governments havedecided not to let them do it. It's good for business also. How easy itis to dismiss suggestions to protect yourself and others with a maskby saying, "It is no longer obligatory."It's no longer legally obligatory, but it is morally obligatory.When someone without a mask sits near me on a train or plane,I ask per to please wear a mask. If perse says, "I don't have a mask,"I offer per an unused N95 mask, still in its plastic wrapper.The masks sold by BYD are simple to put on, so I offer those.
One of Erdoğan's political rivals has been convicted of insulting Turkey’ssupreme election council, calling them "fools."Many countries make it a crime to insult officials. Indonesia just madeitself one of them.Freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult anyone-- even me,even you. Erdoğan shows plenty of contempt for freedom and democracy. He even started a small civil war to reverse an electoral defeat.
Just after Cabot Oil & Gas (part of Coterra Energy) accepted 15criminal charges for polluting the water of Dimock. Pennsylvania,the state government allowed it to resume fracking there.Fracking should be illegal. The risk of poisoning groundwater forcenturies or more is too high a price to pay for some more fossil fuelto burn -- especially since burning it is harmful globally.
Extreme weather (which is partly caused by global heating) has devastatedthe Florida orange crop.We must expect all sorts of crops to be harmed by global heating effects.
Musk urged his Twitter followers to adopt QAnonsense.Maybe he is trying to compete with the wrecker to seize power in the US.
Brazil goldminers carve illegal ‘Road to Chaos’ out of Amazonreserve.They use bulldozers and power-diggers, and carry submachine guns.
US citizens: phone your senators and implore them to reject any billcontaining Manchin's environmental planning deregulation deal.You can phone (888) 997-5380.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Explaining the enormous challenges of going from "ignition" in alaser-fusion target to the production of commercially useful power,and why this is likely to take decades.We need to quit using fossil fuels fast -- we can't wait for fusionto be usable for this job.
The US keeps using economic sanctions to punish unjust or aggressivegovernments, but the sanctions almost never have any positive effect.
Without a big increase in humanitarian aid donations, the UN predicts that200 million people will die in 2023 for the lack of aid.200 million is a very large number of deaths in one year.The average number is around 83 million. The human populationwill decrease in 2023 if this forecast comes true. The 200 millionmaybe _in addition to_ the 80 million that would have died anyway.The typical annual increase in human population is around 18 million.It follows that 200 million deaths will mean that the total humanpopulation decreases by several years' worth of population growth.It sees that we have reached the point at which the global disaster wehave caused starts to kill so many people that it reduces the humanpopulation. This is very bad.I have begged humans to reduce their birth rate, so that we couldreduce the population the painless way and avoid ever reaching thispoint.
Eels facing population collapse, conservation groups warn.The EU has given in to the usual short-term thinking, prioritizingshort-term profits over sustainability. Such a decision is tantamoutto saying, "Let's make one last batch of money by wiping out the fish."
DeMentis has started an "investigation" of everything about Covid-19vaccines.They may not find any serious problem or wrongdoing, but they will have plentyof opportunities to talk endlessly about hypothetical, conceivable problems,thus blowing smoke that they can claim implies the presence of a fire.
The US government protected people against possible right-wing attemptsto ban interracial and same-sex marriages.This is good, but it is just a part of the harm that right-wingextremists on the Supreme Court threaten to do. Since Democratsrefused to eliminate the filibuster and expand the court,Americans are now sitting ducks for at least two years.
Varoufakis calls for two major economic changes: to make corporationsbelong to their workers, and to reduce the dependence on banks forfinancial transactions.
A thug in Vallejo, California, attacked a documentalist who wasstanding on his own porch, making a video of the thug's traffic stop.The documentalist sued and the city paid $300,000 to settle the dispute.The recording showed the thug making false accusations against Burrell.Such false accusations are a common first step in an attempted frame-up.Any thug caught doing this, even if nothing worse results, should be firedand blacklisted for all jobs that involve special authority over the public.
The Keystone 1 tar sands oil pipeline leaked 600,000 gallons of oil intoa creek in Kansas that feeds a river and a reservoir for 800,000 people.
Covid-19 vaccines have saved more than 3 million lives in US, study says, butthe fight isn't over.Three million is around one percent of the US population.
The pilot program to privatize Medicare includes insurance companiesthat have been fined for inflating charges.
Twitter has more or less blocked access to a bot account that tweets whereMusk's private jet goes.
Hundreds of Oath Keepers Have Worked for DHS in Recent Years, Report Finds.There are probably tens of thousands of workers for the DHS, so this isnot necessarily a large fraction. Nonetheless, it is dangerous.
Protecting biodiversity (or any aspect of the environment) requiresending government subsidies to activities which damage biodiversity. Allowing businesses to excuse damage to habitats by means of "offsets"is asking to be lied to.
Framing men as the "villains" gets women no closer to better romanticrelationships.That assumption means getting stuck in a shallow form of feminism based onnot believing things can get any better.
Labor proposal to fix Australia’s broken environmental protection systemcould revolutionise sector.
The 50-Year Takeaway From Middle-Class America. We [Americans]should be demanding the same benefits enjoyed by less wealthy but moreprogressive nations.
US states provide enormous special tax breaks to companies -- almost alwaysbig companies that can play one state against another. A campaign seeksto put an end to this, first of all by limiting them and publishing them. I proposed a federal law to enable any one state to object to anyspecial subsidy propsed by any other (competing) states. This would prevent a company from playing one state against another.
The governor of Bali reassures foreign tourists and visitors that theprohibition against sex outside of marriage won't threaten them in Bali.There are other places in Indonesia which are also interesting to visit,but maybe they won't be safe.More importantly for Indonesia, this law also restricts freedom ofspeech and freedom of the press.No country should allow a prudish religion any influence in its laws.Laws driven by Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are causingcruelty and repression around the world.
Although no court has proved that Governor Snyder conspired to put thepeople of Flint at risk of lead poisoning, we have plenty of reason tobelieve he and his high officials did so. I can't put him in prison, but my conclusion is that he's guilty,partly because the ideology of the Republican Party is to do things likethat to the poor, weak, and disprivileged.
Biden faces growing pressure to drop charges against Julian Assange. Pressure is coming from Australia and Brazil, as well as American defendersof freedom of the press.So phone the White House and say, drop the charges against Assange —reporting on leaked dirty secrets must not be a crime.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Lula has sued Bolsonaro for various reasons, one of which is accusing the country's computerized voting system of being vulnerable.Bolsonaro has done much to undermine democracy and elections inBrazil, and morally deserves punishment. However, the general claimthat Brazil's computerized voting system makes Brazil's electionsvulnerable is valid. That is because the machines record only totals,and do not keep individual paper ballots that voters marked by hand.Such systems are vulnerable to someone, somehow.Brazilian experts campaigned against this system when it was adopted,demanding a system that enabled the results to be audited, but theylost the battle.There is no evidence that anything wrong happened in the votingmachines in this election, but Brazil should change to an audit-ablevoting system for the sake of the future.
China does not allow fair trials. To bias the trial of oppositionpublisher Jimmy Lai to be fair, China kicked his British lawyer out ofHong Kong.
New Zealand will gradually ban tobacco by raising the age requirement to buy tobacco by one year per year,Tobacco is death, and I hope you will not smoke it. But banning a widelyused drug generally leads to widespread corruption and injustice.
The UK plans to hand out 130 more fossil fuel licenses for the NorthSea. This puts civilization in danger. So environmentalists aresuing.
Tories have undermined the National Health Service to the point whereit can't even tackle the backlog of millions of important butnon-urgent operations.
Peruvians detest Congress, which removed President Castillo from office,even more than they detest President Castillo.I wish I had a basic understanding of politics in Peru, or knewsomeone who could explain it to me, so that I could have a backgroundagainst which to judge what is happening.
Scientists started a fusion reaction that released about 25% moreenergy than what was used to start it. This demonstrates in principlethat controlled fusion can be used to generate energy.There is a long way to go to develop fusion into a practical energy source. For the next few decades, survival of civilization stilldepends on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy as fast aspossible.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to vote to end USsupport for Salafi Arabia's war with Yemen.UN Report Shows 11,000 Children Killed or Maimed in This US-Backed War.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the U.S. Senate to investigate corruption and ethicallapses at the Supreme Court.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
Most managers in the UK say that stress over the cost of living ismaking workers anxious and interfering with their work.Those managers are in a special position to tell the companyexecutives, "Give the workers a raise!" Will they do it?
How Big Pharma used threats against governments to defeat the proposed "patent waiver" for Covid-19 vaccines in the World Trade Organization.The WTO is a business-supremacy treaty;its basic purpose is to givebusiness more power over the world's governments. We need toeliminate most of that power by greatly weakening everybusiness-supremacy treaty.
4400 homeless people live. in the "skid row" of Los Angeles, and theyhave only 9 toilets to use at night.The UN standard for refugee camps calls for far more than that.
Rep. Greene declares her support for an armed coup.When she takes her oath of office again in January, she will say itinsincerely. Is there any way to exclude her from Congress over this?
The UK nurses say Tories are making false statements rather thannegotiating, while the "Labour" party doubts that Britain can afford a10% raise for them.This reflects Starmer's implicit rejection of a change in the generalpolicy of starving and freezing the poor to enrich the rich.Here's what a true Labour leader would say.Some pertinent facts.
The US is blocking the full adoption and effective enforcementof many crucial treaties.To present one extreme example, every member of the UN has ratifiedthe Convention on Biological Diversity, except for the US.
The House of Commons will observe a minute of silence in remembrance of theNazi genocide of Jews (and some others).The threat of Nazism still exists ad is growing. I suggest that theHouse of Representatives adopt a similar annual practice, startingthis month. It won't be easy for the Republicans that will controlthe House next year to reject this. They support Nazis but don't wantto admit it.
Ralph Nader: As Republicans push numerous plans that most Americanswould oppose, most Democratic candidates fail to go on the offensiveagainst them.
The Tories want to start a new coal mine in England, so they claimthat steelmaking companies want that coal. Turns out, they don't.Others say it is a boondoggle to artificially create jobs ina certain region. That could be true, but why do it this way?There are many kinds of jobs that could really be needed.Indeed, Many of the region's inhabitants oppose the mine.I suspect that the Tories' real motive is to help some rich donorget richer.
An investigation by the House of Representatives found that the ideaof natural gas as a temporary "bridge fuel" was an intentional deception:Big Oil's real goal was always to make it a permanent choice.The article points out a number of ways in which extractingtransporting and burning gas are dangerous. But Big Oil's propagandastill tries to convince people that gas is safe.
What's at stake in the biodiversity conference? We are tearing holesin the fabric of life on Earth.
The US needs mask mandates to stop the spread of flu, RSC and Covid-19.This one measure is effective against all pathogens that spreadthrough the air.When someone sits near me in a train or plane and isn't wearing amask, I ask per to wear one. If perse says perse doeesn't have one, Ioffer per an unused N95 mask, still in its unbroken plastic wrapper.Often perse responds that it is not obligatory. I'm going to try outthis response: "Legally it is not obligatory. Morally it is obligatory."
An internal investigation by the DHS published a report thatdescribes attempts by top officials to link protesters to an imaginary terrorist plot in an apparent effort to boost Trump's reelection odds, raising concerns now about the ability of a sitting president to co-opt billions of dollars' worth of domestic intelligence assets for their own political gain.
A campaign to give all US personnel stationed at bases in the UKtraining in driving on the left side of the road.
A US Forest Service crew head carried out a prescribed burn to reducethe danger of wildfires. Things went wrong and it started a big wildfire.But is that a reason to arrest him?Perhaps the Forest Service needs to change some aspects of its practices.I am not an expert on prescribed burns, and I don't want to become one,so I have no opinion on that.But what is absolutely clear is that arresting the employees who carrythem out is absurd trumpery.
People have shot at electric power stations in Oregon and Washington.The attackers have not been identified, but the obvious suspects areright-wing extremists. That region (outside its big cities) is knownfor the presence of people who hate the very idea of governmentand can consider any sort of sabotage justified if it damages government.
Afghan refugees being smuggled into Greece were caught and charged withdoing the smuggling. One such conviction has been overturned on appeal.
UK ministers refused to negotiate with the NHS workers who are preparing to strike soon.This confirms, in my view, their intention to destroy the NHS.
Warnock won the election for senator from Georgia in the face ofpowerful and effective Republican voter suppression. The Warnock'sgeneral election for senator in 2022 had a million fewer voters thanWarnock's general election in 2020. And the subsequent runoff in 2022had a million fewer voters than the runoff for the 2020 election.Republican voter suppression is intended to hit Democrats harder thanRepublicans. Why it did not succeed this time in defeating Warnock,I don't know, and I wonder.The article explains that Georgia Republicans have already passedfurther laws to make it harder to fight voter suppression in 2024.
An Italian is trapped in the Italian embassy in the United Arab Emiratesbecause he has been sentenced to a large fine and he has no money.
Polisemias pun:Se me dijo que mis chistes son polisemias.Dije, "No, polisemia es tener polizontes en la sangre."
US citizens: call on your state's attorney general to block Albertsons from giving an enormous $4 billion special dividend payment to shareowners.
Everyone: call on Wall Street banks to keep their pledgeto stand against racial injustice by forcing their lobbyists to drop their lawsuit against the CFPB.
Ayatollah Khamenei is badly ill and may be dying. If he dies, theIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is likely to take power.The writer speculates that the IRGC might give Iranians personalfreedoms, to reduce resistance to their rule, but not democracy,and expects power rivalries to continue unchanged.I would rejoice to see Iranians have somewhat more freedom.I hope that the US and Iran can make peace some day.
Court Orders U.S. to Examine California Shipping Lanes' Role in Endangered Whale Deaths.
‘Only 100 meters apart’: Ukrainians and [Putin forces] face off in Donetsk.I read that the Putin forces' persistent focus on taking Bakhmut isthat it is the next step toward capturing 100% of the Donetsk oblast.If they take Bakhmut, and then take Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, theycould boast of holding 100% of one of the regions that Putin claims tohave annexed this year.In military terms, this would be worth nothing, but that's the sort ofirrationality that tends to happen under an absolute ruler.
An extremely corrupt Kansas City thug faces charges of collaborating with a drug gang to force 73 women into slavery and prostitution. He is also accused of raping people to intimidate them, and a seriesof frame-ups.The whole thug department knew about his pattern of crime, and stoodbehind their fellow thug.
Comparing imprisoned antipollution protester Violet Coco with convicted polluters: less than 6% of people charged withenvironmental pollution and property damage offenses are sent toprison.
Macron announces free condoms for 18- to 25-year-olds in France.This offer is a good start; it should be extended to everyone.
[Dissident Ilya Yashin] sentenced to eight and a half years overseries of posts about [Putin forces] atrocities in Bucha.Putin's obedient servants lie on command, too afraid to refuse. Thewrecker has led US Republicans to do likewise. Yashin has chosento go to prison rather than become a tool of falsehood.
Biden has taken significant steps towards releasing all the prisoners remaining in Guantanamo. That would enable the US to put an end toits national shame.
Victoria gave 2020 Covid-19 contact tracing data to an agency that investigates crime.The reported purpose of this was to figure out the unknown ways thatCovid-19 was spreading. That purpose is legitimate, but giving the datato an agency that investigates crime is going to make people worry thatthey can't trust the government with such data. Indeed, such data may endanger whistleblowers.Lula has sued Bolsonaro for various reasons, one of which is accusing the country's computerized voting system of being vulnerable.Bolsonaro has done much to undermine democracy and elections inBrazil, and morally deserves punishment. However, the general claimthat Brazil's computerized voting system makes Brazil's electionsvulnerable is valid. That is because the machines record only totals,and do not keep individual paper ballots that voters marked by hand.Such systems are vulnerable to someone, somehow.Brazilian experts campaigned against this system when it was adopted,demanding a system that enabled the results to be audited, but theylost the battle.There is no evidence that anything wrong happened in the votingmachines in this election, but Brazil should change to an audit-ablevoting system for the sake of the future.
Senator Sinema has officially left the Democratic Party, which suggeststhat she will run as an independent in 2024.As the article said, we already knew she belongs to the PlutocraticParty. What matters is, will this make it easier or harder to elect abetter senator in her place? I fear this will make it harder —because it won't be possible to eliminate her in the Democratic Party.I don't know whether her presence in the general election as anindependent candidate would help or hurt.
Congress is trying to impose a link tax through an increasingly frequent sneaky method — last minute inclusion in "must pass"omnibus bills.
(satire) Elon Musk Worried He Won't Have Enough Twitter Employees Left To Fire On Christmas Eve.
Republicans have added to the NDAA a clause to repeal the Covid-19vaccine mandate for the military.This is more harmful than it appears. The vaccination requirementhas convinced some right-wing fanatics to leave the US military,and we need to keep it going.It also helps keep the troops healthy.
US zoning laws obstruct the conversion of surplus office spaceinto badly needed residential space.
Rural Arizona county certifies midterm results after judge orders vote.The Republican county supervisors in Cochise county had refused tocertify that county's election. Then they got a court order whichrequired them to certify the vote, so they did.They presented no grounds for refusing to certify the results, but wecan see that it was mad hatred: they hate the election so much thatthey wanted to fight it regardless of what effects that would have.Ironically, if they had got away with not certifying that county'svote, the result would have been to elect one more Democrat to theHouse of Representatives. That would have been a major setback toRepublican power nationwide.I therefore conclude that the refusal was not an instance ofRepublican "by hook or by crook" cheating, but rather mad rage against free elections.I previously posted that Cochise county's vote was majorityDemocratic, because had I read that in another article. That wouldhave made the refusal consistent with by-hook-or-by-crook cheating.But it appears that that other article was mistaken about this.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and say to rejectanything like the SECURE Act (HR 2954) and the EARN Act (S 4808).These bills would change Social Security to give less to the poorand more to the rich.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
The FTC has blocked the merger of Microsoft and Activision, both giantsin making video games.These video games are nonfree software, which means they treat users unjustly. I would not allow any of them on my computers, and I urge you toreject them too.Notwithstanding that, it is still important to stop them from merging.Allowing them to merge would exacerbate the evil of concentration ofindustry, and do nothing to reduce the evil o f nonfree software.
The president of Peru was removed from office by Congress. He hadattempted to prevent this by dismissing Congress.I don't have enough contact with Peru to judge which side wasbasically at fault, but I lean towards trusting Arce's view. He is aleftist elected president in a country that borders on Peru, so he hassurely paid plenty of attention. More about the new president Dina Boluarte, who was previouslythe vice president.
Apple has dropped its plan to scan every user's photos and will use anotherapproach to protect children from would-be abusers.The new approach seems not to be a threat to other users' privacy.
Raphael Warnock defeated Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate runoffby under 3%.It is good that he won, but the closeness of the outcome shows thatmost Republicans hate our freedoms so much that they will vote foreven a lying creep who will help destroy them.
- Republicans are literally running a political platform on weakeningteachers, schools and education because they need the poorly educated to make up their voting base.*
Brown University bans caste discrimination throughout campus in afirst for the Ivy League.I think caste discrimination should be prohibited like race or sexdiscrimination.
The Labour Party is turning to mythical trickle-down economics, saying itaims to turn the UK into a "global start-up hub."Poor Britain. Competing to help the rich dominate society won't helpanyone but the rich.
Plutocratist "mainstream" Democrats continue to control the party'sleadership in the House of Representatives.
(satire) Progressive In Year 2180 Blasts Gender Discrimination In Conscription Practices Of Nabisco's Corporate Military.
Congress is considering a kind of "link tax" to require discussion platformsto pay for hosting links to news sites. It would harm libraries and smallernews media.It would also give lots of subsidy to Big Media.
Criticizing Effective Altruism: to program people as donation robotsis desocializing, isolating and alienating.I suspect those things reduce people's lifespan.
Pegasus spyware was used to [crack] reporters’ phones. I’m suing its[developers]. Referring to the developers of a program as "creators"is propaganda for ideas we would be wiser not to promote.
Denying the call to boycott Russian music.I take a stronger stand: it is misguided and destructive to blame"Russia" for Putin's crime of aggressive war. Putin is the oneresponsible. Let us not refer to the army that invaded Ukraine as"the Russian army" — call them the Putin forces.
The US rescued hostage Brittney Griner by trading an important Russian arms dealer for her.Griner deserved to be freed for the simple reason that what she didwas not wrong. However, I don't understand why Americans clamor forGriner's release more than for the release of everyone imprisoned inthe US for possession of marijuana. There are many Americans unjustlyimprisoned in the US for doing nothing more than what Griner did. They toodeserve to be freed.It is a shame to let arms merchant Viktor Bout go free, though.I think we should not pressure the US to try to ransom hostages,because that pressure benefits the regimes that take hostages at theexpense of the US. If I were a hostage, I would say, "Don't ransom meif the ransom hurts my country!"
The Tories plan to open a new coal mine in England. Supposedly thereason is to reduce the cost of electricity, but the mine will producecoking coal to be exported to make steel. Meanwhile, the steel industry is looking to replace the use of coking coalto reduce its emissions.
At least four on the Supreme Court seem to lean towards the bizarre"independent state legislature" theory.The confrontation in Arizona, in which one country refusedto certify its vote,is exactly the kind of situation where a state legislature could(under this theory) arbitrarily make up its own presidential electionresults.The revised Electoral Count Act could close that mad loophole, ifCongress passes it this month.
Superstitious anti-vaxxers have convinced each other that a bloodtransfusion with "vaccinated blood" is somehow dangerous. One coupletried to prevent their baby from getting a transfusion unless it waswith "unvaccinated blood"; since the baby would have died withoutsurgery and a transfusion, the state intervened and took guardianshipto authorize the operation.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to stand up for keepingIlhan Omar on the foreign affairs committee.iThe Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
[Effective altruism] is "profoundly individualistic" and reliant on the status quo. EA's calculations assume that humans won't change. But humans have to change if we are going to [save] life on Earth.*
US citizens: call on the US government to block Amazon's planned mergerwith One Medical.
The "fate of the entire living world" will be determined at theCop15 UN biodiversity summit, according to leading scientists.It is considering a partly concrete plan to slow the destructionof the Earth's natural ecosystems.
Qatar promises to vastly expand its fossil fuel exports; the resultinggreenhouse gas emissions would imply global disaster.The specific point that the total emissions from Qatar's exports wouldeventually add up to more than one year of the whole world's emissionsseems like a red herring to me. I would expect that the same is truefor the US too, and perhaps several other countries.But even though this is just a red herring, I think the article's conclusionsare plausible anyway.
Climate defense activists defeated Manchin's "dirty deal" to undermineenvironmental regulations in the US Senate.He could try again to pass it in another way, so the fight is notconclusively finished.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration not to allow oildrilling near Chaco Canyon.Chaco Canyon is beautiful, as well as having great historic significance.
Al Jazeera asserts it has proof that Israeli forces fired directly atreporter Shireen Abu Akleh, and has filed a case with theInternational Criminal Court about this.
DOJ subpoenas officials in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona forcommunications with [the wrecker] around 2020 election.
Global heating is causing sea animals to move to different habitats.The result will be to wipe out most of the seabirds in western Europe.
The Biden administration has given Haitians in the US temporaryprotected status through August, 2024.
(satire) SWAT Team Busts Down Door Of Denver Woman's Home ToApologize For Previous Raid. 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.
Lawyers hired by the corrupter searched a rented storage unit and foundadditional secret government documents.
Great 1970s whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg dares the US to prosecutehim like Julian Assange. He wants to challenge the constitutionality of such prosecutions.Ellsberg faced the threat of prosecution at the time, but ultimatelyofficials decided not to prosecute him.
A right-wing conspiracy in Germany plotted to attack Parliament and overthrowthe government.Their ideology was a strange mixture of Nazism, anarchism, and superstition.But they had real weapons and could surely have done real killing.
The Tories plan to deal with strikes by NHS workers by prohibiting strikes.This approach would be of little use for fixing the broken NHS,but assuming their real goal is to ruin it, this could be quite effective.
Some Republican senators are condemning the wrecker for showingcontempt for the Constitution.It could be that they are looking for a chance to publicly split fromhim, having seen that his endorsements of candidates turned out to bedisadvantageous for them. They may have decided they will be betteroff with a new, fresh fascist leader.
San Francisco responded to public revulsion and reversed its recentdecision to authorize the thug department to use robots for killingpeople.To halt (and then reverse) the general militarization of US thug departments is a much bigger job.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prohibit some of the harmful practices of Amazon andsome other platforms. This bill would not do anything to make anonymous purchase possible, or insist that the sites work without sending nonfree software to the user's browser, so I would sill refuse more or less to do use those sites. But their overall injustice would be reduced.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support the Open App Markets Act. It would require Apple to allow users toinstall apps obtained from places other than Apple's store. It looks like this would make it possible to distribute free software for the iThings which users could build from source. That means iThings would no longer be jails. Of course, they would still be nasty in many other ways, so I would still urge everyone to reject iThings, along with Android.
Abortion rights activists are considering ballot initiatives tolegalize abortion in 10 states.
In 2020, when much of the world was desperate for masks and otherCovid-19 protective equipment, the Tories gave contracts to companiesowned by their cronies. Many of those companies had no experience ormanufacturing capacity.
Australian government overturns decision to cancel citizenship of manon death row in Iraq.It is very good news that Australia has overturned the law used tocancel people's citizenship over alleged crimes. That law was aninspiration for various other countries with right-wing governmentsthat base their popularity on performative cruelty.Those other countries remain to be convinced to eliminate those unjustpolicies.
Argentina's [vice president and ex-president] Cristina Fernándezsentenced to six years in $1bn fraud case.
Shocking rare crimes against children create an impulse and a pressureto overprotect children by locking them up. For the children's sake,we must resist that pressure.
Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud, New York jury finds.The corrupter was not personally charged with the crime, but ifprosecutors have evidence that he knew about the scheme, they shouldcharge him too.More explanation.
Biden wants North Carolina to be the Democratic Party's first primaryin 2024 so that no progressive candidate can challenge him for thepresidential nomination. He is confident of winning heavily there.
New York City is spending a lot of money to prevent a repeat of someof the damage done by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, but the overall effortis far inadequate.For the longer term, there is no hope of protecting New York City fromfuture inundation with local measures. The only way is to curb global heating.
The US has delayed yet again the requirement for "REAL ID" driverslicenses for purposes such as getting on an commercial flight.There is too much identifying and tracking people in the US.Let's keep resisting, and see how many years we can block this.
The TSA has a "pilot program" to use facial recognition to identifyairline passengers. And a second generation coming which will do thematching against a database.Widespread use of facial recognition enables the sort of tracking thatChina's pervasive repression is based on. We cannot allow such systemsto exist.For now, you can refuse to participate in the TSA's facial matching.Please refuse! To maintain even a little privacy, we must fight toothand nail against massive surveillance systems, both new systems likethis one and existing systems such as Clearview AI.
(satire) Fate Of Christmas Uncertain After Eric AdamsInstitutionalizes Real Santa. 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.
South Korean President Yoon threatened truck drivers with years in prisonif they didn't end their strike. They defied him.The way to end a strike that causes great inconvenience for society isto make the employers pay proper wages and offer proper workingconditions. Whose side are you on, Yoon?
Drivers in London forcibly moved Just Stop Oil protesters out of theroad.I agree fully with the Just Stop Oil's arguments for these protests.If you think being delayed for half an hour is painful, wait and seewhat food rationing feels like, or a flood or wildfire smoke or heatprostration.But if this approach to protesting inspires the passersby to fight theprotesters, it is not useful or constructive.Here are suggestions for new tactics for climate protesters.
Qatar paid British MPs to give Qatar support in Parliament.I find it hard to understand how this could be lawful, but in my senseof justice this is outright bribery and ought to land the participantsin prison.
Republican extremists are supporting Putin's lies about Ukraine.That includes a Faux News announcer. Does an airport near you showFaux News most of the time? You could complain to the airport and sayto show something else instead.
Just Stop Oil's message to Suella Braverman: threaten us all you like-- we're not listening.
The chinook salmon are heading rapidly towards extinction, though no oneis sure why.A strange aspect of this article is that it assumes that only byidentifying with the sadness of a local indigenous group can weappreciate that the loss of these salmon is a great loss. In effect,it treats their feelings about the possible extinction of chinooksalmon as the primary issue.I can empathize with their sense of loss. I recognize theloss too. But I insist that the objective loss is more important thanhow people feel about it.Peoples adapt their cultures to their environments. The ancestors ofthat group, long enough ago, lived elsewhere and perhaps did notencounter salmon. If the group survives through the coming globaldisaster, in time it will get used to the absence of chinook salmon.But the damage done by their extinction and the loss of ecosystem theywas part of will never go away.If a species goes extinct and there is no indigenous group to notice,did the extinction really happen?
Stop burning trees to make energy, say 650 scientists before Cop15biodiversity summit.*
The University of California academic workers are on strike. The managementis trying to break their solidarity by offering raises to everyone but thegraduate student employees.
The Intercept interviews two Iranian exiles about the continuing protests, one of whom says we should rather call this a revolution in progress.
Ukraine has reportedly attacked distant Russian airfields used asbases for heavy bombers that bomb Ukraine, and for cruise missiles.Some bombers were damaged.To attack Russian aircraft and missiles on the ground is a legitimateand natural tactic, but challenging to carry out. Bravo, Ukraine!The Ukrainian Army seems to have a genius for figuring out clever waysto win the war. Meanwhile, the Putin forces have only a ploddinghunger for bigger war crimes.
Leaving the EU was supposed to let the UK "take back control" overits laws and policies, but instead the international banksters havecontrol.Tories fundamentally believe in letting the rich have power, even ifthey dislike some of the consequences. Naturally they were nevergoing to fight hard against it. Corbyn would have.
The wrecker shares all the bad aspects of Teddy Roosevelt, minusall that was good and all that was great about the latter.
More on the wrecker's declaration of war on America and everythingthat is good about it.Nothing is perfect. There are a number of things in the USConstitution that ought to be changed, Republicans have highlightedsome of them in recent decades by stretching them for abuse. TheConstitution must protect the environment much more, and the rightsand well-being of the disprivileged and disadvantaged. Fairly taxingthe rich and curbing the power of business would make that possible.Eliminating the electoral college could make elections moredemocratic.The wrecker would not do any of that. He would make himself dictator.
Cory Doctorow: in many kinds of products, adding a media-player andits DRM creates an excuse to use the DMCA to forbid users to tinkerwith any aspect.Nowadays, any product with DRM is no longer merely defective by design.It is oppressive by design also.
Volunteers are installing public phones in Philadelphia. They are like payphones except gratis.Every city and town ought to provide these,and you should never have to walk half an hour to reach one.
US citizens: call on Biden to commit to the full $100 million forclimate finance pledges.
Rural Arizona county certifies midterm results after judge orders vote. The county supervisors voted to certify the results they had because refusing was illegal. They presented no grounds to refuse to certify the results, but we can determine what their motives were: The country's vote had voted majority Democratic, and the Republican election officials figured that they could steal some statewide elections by (in effect) discarding all the votes from their own county. A large fraction of Republicans are traitors at heart, and seek opportunities to steal any election that they lose. If imprisonment is required to thwart their treachery, prison it should be.
I forecast years agothat leaving the EU could be beneficial if Corbynwere in charge, but would be harmful with Tories in charge.Sad to say, Britain did the latter and has been harmed.Leaving the EU created opportunities to change policies, laws andrelationships — opportunities that Britain could use in various ways.Assuming that each party would use those opportunities to achieve itsgoals, the consequences were clear.
China has dropped the zero-Covid policy of trying, via tests and quarantines, to stamp out transmission. It is to be celebrated that powerful protests can make China change rigid, harsh policies. But is this change the wise change to make? My recommendation was to make the quarantine system less harsh and rigid, so people would not die or get badly sick from being in quarantine for a while.
Five Connecticut prison thugs face charges of reckless endangerment for transporting Richard Cox in a van without a seat belt and thus breaking his neck. Shouldn't they be charged with gross bodily harm, too?
Iranian protesters call for three-day strike as pressure on regime builds. I would not be so quick to conclude that the repressive regime will fall soon. Repressive regimes have faced very strong protests and stayed in power.
The UN is considering a resolution to prosecute Putin and other high officials for systematic war crimes by the Putin forces. They deserve prosecution, but I think it would be a mistake to demand they surrender to prosecution. That would be, in effect, a decision to pursue regime change as a war goal. That decision would have bad consequences for Ukraine, for the kidnapped Ukrainians, and for the Russian people as well. If Putin yields up all of Ukraine's territory, and returns the kidnapped Ukrainians, he will have had a defeat, not a victory. Those war aims are enough. If Putin is willing to give those, we should offer him peace. To demand more than that would give him more reason to keep fighting instead of making peace.
Two weeks ago, The wrecker publicly associated with a white nationalist and a Nazi, and thus took a clear stand against justice and equal rights. Since then, he called for abolishing the US Constitution, and thus revealed himself indisputably as an enemy of US democracy and freedom. Perhaps other Republican leaders, such as Governor Dementis, are less hostile to justice, equal rights, democracy and freedom. But I tend to think they are simply more circumspect.
"Turn Off the Tap on Plastic," UN Chief Declares Amid Debate Over New Global Treaty. I think it is crucial to stop the production of plastic products which are fundamentally difficult to recycle -- for instance, different materials joined together.
(satire) Right-Wingers Criticize Kanye For Not Using Platform To Raise Awareness Of Lesser-Known Nazis. 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.
The Hinduismists that rule India are attacking hundreds of old mosques by fabricating claims that the buildings are former Hindu temples which were seized centuries ago and converted into mosques. In most cases there is no real evidence that this ever happened. But such is the fanaticism and contempt for truth on the part of the ruling BJP and its supporters that they disregard evidence. The track record of repression and pogroms suggests they are hoping this gives them an excuse to kill some Muslims. Historians who know about the history of these sites face threats to shut them up. The threats range from firing them to murdering them.
Biden joined Congress to impose on railroad workers the contract that the railroads had proposed -- with no paid sick days. Biden Urged to Sign Executive Order Guaranteeing Rail Workers Paid Sick Leave. These same railroads commit safety violations repeatedly, and get fined over and over, but they do not correct the dangers. (satire) Biden Signs Legislation To Avert Crisis Of Treating Rail Workers Like Humans.
(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.)
Macron threatens to invoke business-supremacy treaties to stop the US from carrying out its insufficient but helpful greenhouse gas reduction plans. Environmental activists protest this when Macron was visiting the White House. Will French activists protest this too? I hope so? Business-supremacy treaties are fundamentally unjust because they elevate trade over democracy. Businesses had too much power already, and these treaties gave them even more.
Elnaz Rekabi participated in an international sports competition without wearing the required head-covering. Her family's home was then demolished. If the Iranian state did this, then ironically it joins Israel in the practice of punishing an entire family for one person's infraction.
Rural Arizona county certifies midterm results after judge orders vote. The county supervisors voted to certify the results they had because refusing was illegal. They presented no grounds to refuse to certify the results, but we can determine what their motives were: The country's vote had voted majority Democratic, and the Republican election officials figured that they could steal some statewide elections by (in effect) discarding all the votes from their own county. A large fraction of Republicans are traitors at heart, and seek opportunities to steal any election that they lose. If imprisonment is required to thwart their treachery, prison it should be.
Minnesota is considering small reforms in rules for thug departmentsto better control their predilection to bully people, brutalize peoplefrom time to time, and associate with racists, Nazis andinsurrectionist organizations. The thugs' unions are pushing backhard. More information.
NIH has set up a web site for reporting the results of your at-home Covid-19 test, if you wish. It is a good idea, but you should not use the site as currentlyimplemented, because it requires you to run nonfree Javascript code.What a shame.
The San Antonio thug who shot at Erik Cantu 10 times and maimed himfaces charges of attempted murder.The increased willingness to prosecute thugs for violent crimes evenif the victim does not die will help control cop crime.
US citizens: call on Congress to work towards a world that is free of nuclear weapons.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are+1-202-224-3121,+1-888-818-6641 and+1-888-355-3588.If you phone, please spread the word!
An economist official at Bank of England says that leaving the EU has a large share of responsibility for the increase in food prices in the UK.
Republicans just barely won control of the House of Representatives,and they did it because of the right-wing partisans that Republicansput on the Supreme Court.
The UK's registrar of corporations was "reformed" to make it cheap,quick and easy to create a corporation. Crooks started many fraudulent corporations and used them to steal and hide millions.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Pelosi's successor as leader of the Democraticminority in the House of Representatives, is a strong and firmplutocratist, who supports a few progressive positions so people won't recognize how plutocratist he is.Perhaps in your eyes the fact that he is black and Muslim makes hiselection to that position something to celebrate. In my eyes, he'sjust another plutocratist congresscritter that we should try toreplace with a progressive.
[The right-wing Australian government's] "grassroots" nuclear power survey linked to consulting firm [working for US nuclear reactor industry].Should we call this a "public-private partnership for profit"?
Australia is investigating the use of slave labor in building itsrenewable power systems.
World's biggest food [corporations] made £20bn in profits — while warning of price rises to come.
A woman who sold fake COVID-19 immunization cards gets three years in Federal prison.There is no market any more for fake vaccination records, but one morenaturopathic "doctor" taken off the streets is likely to make thepublic safer.
President Lula da Silva wants to establish a new Federal Police unitfocused on deterring environmental crimes.
The US should pressure Israel to agree to nuclear disarmament. Maybe Iran and Israel would agree to nuclear disarmament together.
Australia has sentenced a climate protester to over a year in prison for blocking one lane of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Curbing global heating will not save our planet's ecosystems. Theyare threatened more immediately by other human activities includingdeforestation, overgrazing, overfishing, desertification, and soildegradation.A relationship does exist: global heating will eventually destroy manyecosystems, if they survive that long. But we have to curb the otherenvironmental threats, too. Having fewer childrenwill help reduce all those forms of excessive human impact, all at once.And will free up your effort to work on the other problems.
Here is a set of narrow arguments against the "KOSA" bill that issupposed to protect "children's" privacy, but will instead deny theprivacy of all internet services.I agree with the arguments in general, but I need to state thesepoints of disagreement.* It is wrong to classify designate teenagers as children. We need to give teenagers more freedom and agency, not less. * The Edtech programs and dis-services that children, andteenagers, typically use in school is typically snooping malware.These programs are a real part of what students of any age deserve to be protected from. * Snooping on adults is unjust, too. * Please do not refer to postings, communications, stories, art, etc. as "content". That disparages all of them.
Campaigners Demand Deep Cuts to Plastic Production as Global TreatyNegotiations Ramp Up.
Indonesia plans political and sexual repression: it will be a crime to(1) insult the president, the state, or the official ideology or (2)have sex (except for married couples).Reportedly Islamists are behind this attack on freedom in Indonesia.
The British government has become simply incompetent.They summon people to court by mistake, after reporting judgmentsagainst them by mistake, after failing to notify them at all.
Frontier Airlines has eliminated telephone customer support. The onlyway to communicate with the airline is through its web site.I once flew on a Frontier flight, and noted that the staff seemed tohave a right ear and a left ear, but no front ear. That cast its namein question. Now it should be called "No-ear Airlines."I tried looking around that web site. For the most part, theinformation seemed to be present and navigation worked. But I thinkthat most inquiries and actions depend on nonfree Javascript code,which excludes me from doing them.They invite people to use a chat system to get in contact with anagent. That might be an acceptable solution, except that that chatsystem is part of the web site and it seems to depend on Javascripttoo.One thing I noticed on the site is that the company is pressuringpeople to use its cr…app rather than its web site.Surveillance by the web site is limited; surveillance by acr…app is much more complete.
Google promised not to save location data about "sensitive" placessuch as abortion clinics, which some states threaten to sue orprosecute people for going near. It did not make enough change toeliminate the danger.I am not surprised, because surveillance-based companies will always tendto collect too much data and hold on to too much data.However, data tends to get duplicated and get stored in variousplaces. The root of the search problem is (1) collecting locationdata, (2) collecting personal identifying data, and (3) identifyingreturn visitors (with cookies).An acceptable web service must not find out any of those facts aboutyou unless you request to send them. And it must do its job even ifyou choose _not_ to send them.See surveillance verses democracy.
41 Republicans plus Manchin used a filibuster to kill the proposedrailroad workers' contract that gave them sick leave. Then the Senateapproved the contract lacking sick leave, the version that Biden hadasked for.
The UK's immigation department sent 20 asylum seekers letters invitingthem to come to meetings to discuss their cases. When they arrived,which in some cases was a big expense for them, they were told thatthe staff did no plans for meetings with them that day.Either these letters were a prank, or the UK government has become soincompetent and confused that it can't carry out the simplest plan.After seeing how incompetent Tories are, I think the latter is more plausible.
Senator Merkely has proposed a bill to put a heavy tax on singlefamily homes when they are owned by big companies that own hundreds ofthem.
The history, since 1940, of the series of US tax cuts for the richthat impoverished the country.Want to really make America great again? Tax the rich!
The [corrupter's] supporters can no longer avoid testifying beforegrand juries in Washington DC and Georgia.
Big polluters given almost €100bn[-worth] in carbon [emissions] permits [gratis] by EU. That was over a period of 9 years.
The FBI and DHS focus disproportionately on foreign terrorists aspossible threats, and insufficienly on (right-wing) domestic terroristssuch as white supreacists and Nazis.
The Tyre Extinguishers have deflated the tires of 900 SUVs around the worldas a protest against these dangerous gas guzzlers.
A Just Stop Oil protester was sentenced to 6 months in prison forblocking a highway for a while. The court called this "causing a public nuisance," and I'm sure itdid. As these protesters say, it's nothing compared to the unendingpublic nuisance conditions that increased use of fossil fuels willcause.
Herschel Walker, MAGA maggot candidate for the Senate in Georgia,filed for a tax break on a "primary residence" in Texas where hereally lives. This may have been illegal.
Ukraine needs tanks, and the west should supply them. They couldfinish off Putin and Russia. The proposal includes modern aircraft and longer-range missiles.Careful strategic thought is required about whether to donate the latter.
Pheromone-assisted INSECT traps CAN photograph and identify pestsvia image recognition. This technique can potentially save greatly on the use of pesticides.Unfortunately, under today's general practices, it will also be a trapfor farmers. It will be run by nonfree software, so it will snoopon the farm and put the farm at a disadvantage. And the farmers won'tbe able to repair it.
The US system of producing medicines suffers from too much commercialcentralization (few producers) without much central planning.Also a tendency to optimize for efficiency rather than reliability.The result is susceptibility to shortages.
George Monbiot: Farming and its subsidies are an increasing dangerto nature and the climate.There is no mystery to why governments subsidizes farming. It is not justthat rich people want to profit from them; everyone wants the results.But we need to cut down this unsustainable practice.Fewer babies will certainly help!
Anti-vax fanatics in New Zealand would rather let their baby diethan let it get a transfusion of "vaccinated blood" for surgery.They and others have convinced each other that there is some danger inthis.
Antifascist individuals and groups are finding their Twitter accountssuspended. Apparently Musk's idea of freedom of speech has a right-wing bias.
A fracking company accepted criminal liability for poisoning the waterof Dimock, Pennsylvania and will pay to replace the wells with newwater systems and to deliver clean water for the next 75 years.Here is a timeline of how the company caused the damage, ofenforcement efforts, and how the company resisted them.This is justice in a narrow sense, but it won't clean up the water ofthat region. It won't undo the lasting diminiution of water suppliesin Pennsylvania. There may not be any feasible way to do that.There must be many other regions of the US which have already sufferedsimilar damage.We must not allow it to happen in any more places.
Leaders of the Oath Keepers have been convicted of secitiousconspiracy for organizing the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, based on their conversations about same.This gives the Department of Justice a basis for confidence inbringing that charge against others who were involved, includingpotentially the corrupter himself.
New York City's night-mayor has asked a wide variety of workers toincarcerate homeless people in mental hospitals — including peoplewho are supposed to help the public. This plan is explicitly notlimited to people who seem to pose a threat to others.Many homeless people run away from shelters because the conditions thereare so unpleasant they would rather be on the street.A host of criticisms of this plan.Once you get committed to a hospital — even if you did it by fakinginsanity — it is reported to be very hard to prove you are sane.
The Tories have adopted a "voter ID" law, which as always is systematicsuppression of voting by voters who are poor, young, or marginalized.In addition, merely through the extra work it requires at underfundedpolling places, it will cause chaos.
Australian PM Anthony Albanese urges US government to end pursuit ofJulian Assange.Assange has been hounded for over a decade using a series of dirty tricksand twisting of the law. But this injustice has a bigger target than Julian Assange. Itsmain target is the freedom of the press to report on crimes committedby governments.Democracy depends on whistleblowers, and it depends on journalists topublish what whistleblowers report. The prosecution puts democracy tooin danger.Massive surveillance is part of the threat to democracy.That is why we must limit the collection of databases of personal data, not merely regulate how the data are used.
Plibersek's "determination" alone won’t save the Great Barrier Reef –-here’s what needs to happen.
The UK could pretty much end transmission of HIV and illness from HIV,but it doesn't spend the money to do so.
Amnesty Interational: Colombian thugs used torture, rape, andkidnaping to repress the mass protests of 2021. They also used lesser forms of psychological punishment, such asforcing people to strip.The article embodies a strange set of values. It seems to take forgranted that acting based on sexism or racism is a more serious wrongthan rape.I disagree with that. In my view, rape is wrong regardless of thedetails of the victim.
Victoria (in Australia) has adopted ambitious greenhouse gas goals.Here are suggestions for how to achieve them.
Israel has stripped a prominent Palestinian-French human rightslawyer of his Jerusalem residency and is expected to deport him to France.Israel has had a pattern of repression of lawyers that defend therights of Palestinians.Also a pattern of causing suffering by inventing excuses to take awayJerusalem residency permits. For example, being away studying in auniversity for a few years.The article refers to "administrative detention", a euphemismfor putting people in jail without trial.
A Nigerian student faces criminal charges of "defamation" afterbeatings in jail were not enough to make him confess.The details of what the student said are a side issue — treatingdefamation as a crime always endangers freedom of speech.
The "big four" accounting firms are structurally embedded insystematic corruption. They are "too big to fail", but sooner or later one of them will fail.The way to end the corruption is clear: prohibit accounting companiesfrom doing anything other than auditing.If a sudden change is hard to implement, here's a way to force them tomake them separate gradually.Tax the consulting gross sales of accounting firms a stated percentagethat rises annually. It could be 3% in the first year, 6% in thesecond year, and so on. I think that in 5 years they will have movedmost of the consulting business to some new sister company.The details could be adjusted so as to require splitting each currentcompany's non-auditing work into N or more independent new companies.Other adjustments could make them split the auditing work amonga larger number of new auditing companies.
The insufficient competition in the US allows businesses with marketpower to gouge by piling on "junk fees". Booz Alan has a monopolyover some kinds of access to some US national parks and other publiclands, exercised via a "government" web site run by that company, andpulls in much more income from junk fees than the US government agencyconcerned actually gets.But it's worse than that. Aside from the matter of price, use of that"government" web site requires running nonfree software. Those parksare off-limits to the free world.I have visited some US national parks, and I paid cash to enter them.Is that still possible? Can anyone investigate that site (see thearticle) and report which parks and places can't be entered by payingcash, without using any web site?Or which parks and places can still be entered by paying cash,without any web site?Whichever list is shorter would be the more useful.
Three Georgia sheriff's deputies, all white, charged with battery afterbeating black inmate.The video shows that they prepared to attack him, while he wasstanding in a cell, doing nothing significant.Two versions of the video have been published, one in which it theattack was intentionally blurred and one which shows what happened.The thug department promoted the former and the latter is hard to find.
Arizona elections official goes into hiding after post-midterm threatsfrom right-wing Big Lie fanatics.
Three Georgia sheriff's deputies, all white, charged with battery afterbeating black inmate.The video shows that they prepared to attack him, while he wasstanding in a cell, doing nothing significant.Two versions of the video have been published, one in which it theattack was intentionally blurred and one which shows what happened.The thug department promoted the former and the latter is hard to find.
Could the US and China collaborate to curb global heating?It seems to me that neither government has a strong enough commitmentto that cause. In the US, it is because Republicans are determined tokeep driving straight at the cliff. As for China, it seems to assumethat doing this slowly and arriving decades late is sufficient. Thetwo countries need to be set individually on the goal before they cancollaborate on it.
US citizens: phone President Biden and urge him to issue an executiveorder requiring federal contractors to disclose all of their politicalspending.The White House comments line is +1-202-456-1111.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone President Biden and urge him to issue an executiveorder requiring federal contractors to disclose all of their politicalspending.The White House comments line is +1-202-456-1111.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The EU has proposed a plan to cut plastic waste from consumer goods. This is good, but what about the fishing nets?
When billionaires pledge to donate most of their wealth to charity, there is no guarantee that that money will ever reach a charity, The system is complicated and the pledge may be almost meaningless. Never mind their pledges -- let's tax them a lot more. UK super-rich [are] less charitable than decade ago, says charity chief. Stop depending on them to give voluntarily, and tax them more!
ALEC Lawmakers and Corporate Lobbyists Meet in D.C. to Debate Rewriting the Constitution, Punishing Socially Responsible Businesses, and Protecting Misinformation.
Railroads in England cancel a lot of trains. But the ones they cancelbefore 10pm the night before are omitted from the statistics, so thestatistics don't show how bad this really is.Privatization makes this worse. Instead of government agency, whichwould obey orders to report more useful figures, these are "privatecompanies" that have "rights" to state their cancellation rate ina way that minimizes it.The railroad passengers deserve rights, and the railroad workersdeserve rights, but there should be no stockholders or executivesinvolved in running trains that "deserve rights" over how the trainsrun.
The House of Representatives narrowly passed a law to give railroad workers the seven days of paid sick leave (is that per year?) that they want. Now the question is whether Republicans will filibuster it and kill it, to ensure a strike.
George Takei talks about growing up in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, and later coming out as gay.
Businesses are pushing for a federal tax cut this year. As if they didn't pay too little tax already!
90% of US countries have had at least one weather disaster from 2011through 2022. This figure does not count heatwaves.There is no information about how much each disaster was due to globalheating, but it is a big cause of weather disasters now and goingforward. Each American should recognize that "global heating is goingto hit the place I live."That doesn't count the crop failures that are going to affect us alleven though the place they occur may be far away.The article points out also that it would be more economical todo things to prevent disasters than to repair them.
China censors maskless crowd footage in World Cup broadcasts.Apparently the contrast with them puts China in a bad light, in theminds of many Chinese. Are they right? I won't assume that. Theycan see when people die from the rigidity and harshness of the Chinesestate. But if China drops the effort to eradicate Covid outbreaks, itcould kill millions of Chinese.I think it would be better to correct the rigidity and harshness.I agree with Sridhar that in what China needs in the long term to getbetter vaccines and get most people vaccinated.
The UK NHS is trying to suggest that nurses should not strike becauseit would cause some operations to be delayed.That statement is literally true, but the argument it is part of isinvalid. The main cause of postponing millions of operations everyyear is mismanagement and underfunding by the government, and theharmful consequences include the pay that is inadequate for nurses tolive on.
Qatar believes it can bully any and all parts of the British governmentby pulling some of the investments that harm Britain.
By deciding to investigate Israel's killing of Shirin Abu Akleh,the US is putting limits on its willingness to support Israelno matter what Israel does.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Netanyahu strikes Israeli coalition deal with far-right [antigay fanatic].Hatred of gay or queer people is not a phobia, it is bigotry.
Alexei Navalny is in permanent solitary confinement, and in "meetings"with his lawyers they are not allowed to see him.They cannot tell how sick he is.
Monkeypox to be renamed mpox to avoid stigma, says WHO.This illustrates our society's tendency to cater excessively tohypersensitivity. There is nothing in the name "monkeypox" whichinsults anyone, and monkeys can't understand the word "pox".What next — will they rename "chicken pox" to protect the feelings ofchickens, or people accused of timidity? How about renaming "RockMountain Spotted Fever" so that the Rocky Mountains don't feelstigmatized?It is futile to bully people to eliminate locutions because racists orright-wingers could spin them in a nasty way. They can invent moresuch things at any moment. The bullying would be a never-endingseries of self-inflicted blows, at which bigots would laugh and say,"See how easily we make them go nuts!"
A group of UN experts call for putting the Great Barrier Reef on UNESCO's list of world heritage sites that are in danger.
War in space would have immediate effects [on civilian life.] Attacks on satellites could take out GPS systems, banking systems,power grids …
Comparing the US and British medical systems: both horrible but in different ways.The British medical system (the NHS) did not just grow with itscurrent problems. It worked much better until the Tories startedcutting its budget, through trickle-down politics based on worship ofthe Invisible Hand. It is clear how to fix them: give the NHS enoughmoney to do its job.The US medical system's problems did just grow, as the worshipers ofthe Invisible Hand let gouging private companies get whatever theywished for and blocked efforts to stop them. It is clear how to fixthese problems: create a public national medical system and sweep awaythose greedy bastards. The usual term for this nowadays is "Medicare for all", though I think we should go further and set up a system ofVA hospitals for all.
A court order not to retaliate against union organizers also requiresAmazon to read the court's decision to all the employees at theunionized plant in Staten Island.I hope this requires Amazon to pay the workers for the time they passlistening to this reading.
Massachusetts voters amended the state constitution to increase the tax rate a few percent for incomes over a million dollars a year. Sofar so good. But the greedy rich have many ways to get rid of lawsthat make them pay their fair share.
Finally some influential newspapers argue for dropping the charges againstJulian Assange.
In the UK, many necessary life activities exclude people that don't usesnoop-phones full of nonfree software.This article shows how common that is.The author cannot envision the idea of choosing to reject snoop-phonesas a matter of justice if you are capable of using one. But you can.Every one of the restrictive activities that excludes the old people thatcan't use a snoop-phone are likewise doing wrong to everyone that refusesto use them.And doing wrong to each person that does contact them with asnoop-phone.
Forecast: expect Xi to do in many parts of China what he did to the Uyghursand to Hong Kong.
The island of Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji, is being taken over by intrusive vines that grow too fast to remove. Vines are covering buildings, farms, paths, and forests.People find it hard to keep their farms going.
Global heating killed 20,000 people in Europe through heat waves last summer that were possible due to local heating.
Vaccine disinformation has convinced many to refuse measles vaccination,and that is creating a completely unnecessary threat of measles.
The UK governmen admits that tens of thousands of homes in the UK are not safe for people to live in.This, together with various other issues including the Grenfell fire shows that the UK has lost its abilityto enforce regulations on businesses that are meant to protect publicsafety and well-being.It can't even run railroads well, because it has privatized them.I am not sure what the causes are. I've seen "croyism" sugested as acause for some, but I suspect that another cause is cateringexcessively to the wealthy and business. The companies that run theprivatized railroads get more importance than the passengers.
Yanis Varoufakis conjectures that Musk wants to turn Twitter into aplatform for surveillance capitalism,and that everything he saidabout freedom of speech was a red herring.
The Tories have heard the voice of Insulate Britain and proposed a planto insulate the homes of middle-class Britons.It's a good idea, but middle-class homeowners could afford to pay backthis support out of the savings they will have. The government shouldlend the money for middle-class homes, and give the money forinsulating poor people's homes.
Watch out for a false sense of security. The US is still in dangerof being taken over by fascism.The Republicans, by a margin of one seat in the House ofRepresentatives, seem to have succeeded in ensuring that the federalgovernment can't do anything before the 2024 elections to ensure ourelections are not rigged then.
(satire) Cash-Strapped Subway Threatens To Reveal Identities OfCustomers Who Eat Subway [food] If They Don’t Pay [ransom].
Brains learn to predict other people's likely behavior and to save theunconscious effort of figuring about concerns that never arise forthem. As a result, powerful people learn to be ruthless and not toconcern themselves with the feelings of the obedient people around them;
Putin has banned any public mention of same-sex or same-genderrelationships. Like DeMentis, his law prohibits this only under certain conditions, but when hisfollowers interpret the conditions, there is nothing that is safe to say.
"Green Capitalism" sounds promising, but is it really capable of preventing global climate disaster? A book argues that it is not: that measuring the value of each thing in the world in monetary terms just won't do the job.
A committee came up with an estimate of the monetary value of a great whale. One can question whether the monetary value captures the importance of continued existence of whales, but maybe the result would be adequate.
But what about the continued existence of a rare, endangered species of small animals? If people calculate that without adding a term to represent the value of simple existence of a distinct species, they might get a minuscule number.
How endangered species preserved are worth one living whale? It's hard to make that question meaningful, It's like asking how much money a human life is worth. Insurance needs to answer that question, but is that the right way to decide who lives and who dies?
If you buy the book, please do not get it from Amazon.
Private equity companies are buying up medical specialist clinics in the US, and creating local monopolies that systematically gouge, and even defraud.
This problem afflicts many areas of medicine, just as it affects many other areas of life in the US.
For medicine, the full solution is a national medical system. It would save the US money overall, but might require taxing the rich more.
However, the problem of concentration of industry needs a general solution too.
- Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to [Facebook+Instagram].* As well as other basic personal information.
The do this through a tracking pixel on their web sites. The info sent comes from what the user enters in the web site; it seems that does not include the detailed financial data that users hand over for the tax return itself. Sending the latter to some other company might, I suspect, be a crime.
Millions of sites use the Facebook&Instagram tracking pixel to send data about their visitors.
Google Analytics collects much of the same data, but not the user's name. However, often it can figure out the user's identity in other ways.
Some US universities have made deals with sports betting companies. The university helps promote gambling to the students, and in return gets a share of what the students spend.
I don't believe in prohibiting gambling, but those who have your well-being in mind will not encourage you to gamble.
Far-right extremist [Ben-Gvir] to be Israel's national security minister.
He wants to give immunity to Israeli soldiers that shoot at Palestinians, and execute Palestinians for various sorts of crimes. In this ministry he would be in charge of thugs, and would surely encourage them to commit violence. In Israel I was told that the border police were especially cruel and violent towards Palestinians.
The iMonsters' app store client program collects many kinds of data about the user's actions.
There is a command to disable this collection, but it seems not to have an effect.
Does it matter that Julian Assange has Asperger's syndrome? (I avoid the term "autistic spectrum" because it is a misleading overgeneralization.)
In principle, no. Publishing leaks about the horrible crimes of governments is admirable and no one should be punished for that.
In practice, if it helps prevent Assange's extradition, I will be glad. However, to avoid putting journalism in danger globally, saving Assange from US vengeance based on personal grounds will not be enough. We need to protect journalists and whistleblowers from punishment for serving the public.
The documentary "Tantura" tells the story of Israel's expulsion of the Palestinians of a town near Haifa, in 1948. The film-maker, Alon Schwarz, faces revulsion for this.
I wish that Uri Avnery were alive to talk about the film and the events. His article, Truth Against Truth, provides some context.
Faux News hammered viewers with frequent reports about crime, until election day.
"Think about crime — don't think about the help Republicans won't let the government give you!"
Republicans have a broad plan: to destabilize, weaken, and even destroy the institutions that give a voice to people who don't agree with their vision.
Suggesting that NATO should make a rule to have dialog with a possible attacker before any NATO state fights back against an apparent attack.
A UK thug department has paid damages for attacking protesters. The thugs made a sudden attack at a peaceful demonstration. The thugs cited Covid lockdown regulations in force at the time, but that can't justify a violent attack!
Paying damages and not admitting wrongdoing is not enough.
Walmart drives its workers hard, but especially hard in the "holiday" season. They are compelled to work 55 or even 60 hours a week and can't take time off even for an emergency.
San Francisco thugs propose using robots that can carry deadly weapons, to respond to reports of incidents.
The criterion they propose for using this sounds very similar to the criterion for shooting people. As we know, thugs often shoot people dead in situations where that justification was not a good criterion.
The UN human rights council will investigate Iran's authoritarian reaction to protests.
The UK gave every homeless person a place indoors to sleep, for a short time during the pandemic.
I think the UK did not continue this for very long, but that doesn't mean it can't be done again.
It may require taxing the rich more.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, don't starve critical investments in healthcare, children and transit. Pass government funding before the end of the year.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice not to let the wrecker use his new presidential campaign to get off the hook for criminal charges.
US citizens: call on Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to remove all medical debt from credit reports.
US citizens: call on state officials to disqualify the wrecker from running for president or other offices, as the Constitution calls for.
Urgent: US citizens: call on the FTC to require platforms to make their direct messages end-to-end encrypted.
This is a half-measure. Truly secure encrytion has to be done by a free client program that the user installs independently of the platform. Therefore it can't be implemented by a communication platform.
If the encryption is done by the platform -- either in its server, or in its nonfree client program, or in code sent to the user's browser (for instance, in Javascript) -- then the platform has control over the encryption, and can backdoor it at will.
Urgent: US citizens: call on Congress to raise the debt ceiling now so Republicans can't use it as a lever for sabotage later.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
A furniture company shut down its operations abruptly and fired all its workers instantly, without notice. It also tried to deny them all benefits — even the option to continue their medical insurance at their own expense.
It may be illegal for a company to do that, but that's not enough. It ought to be a crime for the executives and managers involved in the decision.
I wonder why they shut down the company abruptly. Two ideas that occur to me are (1) they decided to move operations to another country and (2) the company was owned by private equity. Neither one makes the action any less wrong.
As for the fact that they did this on one day of the year rather than one of the other 364 days, or what method they used to inform the staff, or the fact that some of them were sleeping, don't let those minor details distract you. If your condemnation of bad treatment of workers can be mollified by choosing such details better, that will help businesses attack workers rights ore effectively. We must demand the substance of treating workers decently, not merely the show.
Musk has readmitted many right-wing extremists to Twitter, including the bullshitter and people who deny that he lost the 2020 election.
However, it prohibits all users from posting links to the Distributed Denial of Secrets web site, ddosecrets.com, which posts government secrets leaked by whistleblowers.
"A Death Sentence": Biden Blasted for Approving Oil Export Project.
Failing to decrease oil extraction now can easily doom most people.
Bolsonaro's Nazi propaganda and relaxation of gun laws in Brazil have led to massacres by Nazi fanatics.
Protests against strict Covid lockdowns have spread in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
Democrats had successes among rural voters, and if they try harder they can develop real strength there.
Steven Donziger argues for ways to tackle global heating in international law.
Creating the crime of ecocide is one of his solutions.
In the UK, workers who are sick are not interested in notes excusing time off work — they are so desperately poor that they are compelled to work while sick.
The next climate conference will occur in the UAE, a fossil-fuel kingdom that is attacking Yemen with US support. There is not much hope from an event held there. So Naomi Klein suggests that civil society boycott it and hold a parallel event.
Facebook closed accounts that it found were spreading false information on behalf of the US government.
CIA officials, appointed by the wrecker, discussed assassinating Julian Assange.
Instead they took the slow path that has been in use for several years.
The summary of Assange's history, in that article, is misleading on a number of points. This is a better reference.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposes to deregulate new kinds of nuclear power plants.
They have a history of seeking to please and serve the companies that make nuclear power plants, so such a proposal makes me suspicious.
We should not build new, "small" nuclear plants because that is too slow, expensive and risky to be of service in preventing global heating disaster.
To go fast, we need to use the solution that is fastest and cheapest to build: renewable power.
Iran is expanding its uranium-refining capacity. This suggests it intends to produce nuclear weapons -- though it could be a plan to generate nuclear power instead of burning so much oil.
Sydney thugs violently arrested habitual prank protester Danny Lim and left him seriously injured.
He told them at the outset he needed an ambulance, and when a passerby offered to call one, the thugs threatened to charge him with a crime if he did so.
Thugs should face criminal charges for making threats to falsely accuse people, just as for actually doing so.
I don't quite get the jobe of his sign, nor the point of his protest -- but those details don't affect the issue here.
There are big protests in an Apple factory in China, and videos are circulating despite Chinese censorship.
Awaab Ishak’s death shed light on a social housing scandal. Now we have a brief chance to fix it.
To provide enough housing space, and maintain it safe conditions, is the state's responsibility. Doing a proper job will require spending public money. That's the real political question here: does the British government care enough about non-wealthy people to make sure they all have safe and livable places to live?
Surveillance jungle: rental e-scooters in Paris are very strictly tracked. And of course the renter has to identify perself to rent one.
"Convenient" disservices like these are what teach people to accept surveillance. If we don't want a society in which one's every move is known, we have to reject surveillance disservices.
There will come a time for [peace] negotiations –- but calls to reach a deal with the Kremlin now are more wrong-headed than ever.
I think it can't hurt to have negotiators continue to meet, since occasionally they can agree on a significant side issue. But they must not aim to to pressure Ukraine into inviting defeat.
The massacre at Club Q didn’t happen in a vacuum. There has been a dangerous escalation in hateful anti-LGBT rhetoric.
Japan is meddling in Australian politics by trying to pressure Queensland not to increase the tax on exported coal.
That tax increase is a tiny step towards the vital goal of reducing coal consumption. It is terribly insufficient, but opposing it endangers all of us.
Biden's delay on ruling on whether Crown Prince Bone Saw could be sued in a US court gave him an opportunity to appoint himself "prime minister" and thus gain the benefit of a shelter in a pertinent treaty.
US citizens: phone your representative and senators and call on them not to pass any tax cuts for business. Handouts should be directed to non-rich Americans!
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Starbucks is closing stores, and 40% of those stores have unionized or are organizing.
Starbucks has taken anti-union measures before.
(satire) New STEM Program Teaches Students Skills To Appease Whims Of Capricious Tech CEO.
I find this especially on target because the absurdity it attacks is the basis of the buzzword " itself.
Major US railroad workers' unions have rejected a contract offer that didn't offer them enough.
The railroads are profitable and they should share these profits with their workers. I'm disappointed with Biden for proposing a contract that didn't give them enough.
An ironically misguided petition asks the US government to require communication platforms to encrypt all private messages.
It would sure be wise for users to encrypt those messages. But that won't be secure if the platform sets up the encryption and the decryption. If you do that with software that the platform provides, the platform could put in a back door to bypass it, making it ineffective for security against snooping by that platform.
If you want encryption to provide real security, install the GNU Privacy Guard and use it -- to encrypt a message before you send it, and to decrypt a messafe after you receive it.
Some players in the football world cup in Qatar planned to wear armbands to support equal rights for queer people. Qatar said it would respond by taking a step to expel them from the game, so they abandoned these plans.
Qatar violates human rights egregiously — this is one example, but the mistreatment of workers who built the facilities is even more blatant.
We should not allow Qatar any sort of position of special power over any international activity.
By consenting to Qatar's illiberal policies for residents and guests alike, FIFA has further besmirched its already tainted reputation.
The EU would have the power to make FIFA yield to various human rights rules and agree to require all future world cup hosts to accept them.
A federal court issued an injunction for Amazon to stop firing workers for protesting unsafe working conditions.
(satire) British World Cup Attendees Accused Of Smuggling Alcohol Into Stadium Through Bloodstreams.
Senior officers ordered "unlawful" arrests of journalists at Just Stop Oil protests.
They didn't explicitly say "arrest journalists", but they gave orders to arrest protesters, and did not mention that journalists were a special case.
I don't think they should be in a position of authority if they disregard freedom of the press. Meanwhile, arresting protesters is bad too.
Oregon's governor pardoned everyone convicted in Oregon of possessing a small amount of marijuana.
Unlike Biden's pardons, this included non-US-citizens.
Many states and territories still need to do legalize marijuana and pardon everyone convicted of possessing it.
"Stakeholder capitalism" turns out to do little for the groups it is supposed to benefit — it is at best lip service, sometimes even a fraud.
Starbucks is closing stores, and 40% of those stores have unionized or are organizing.
Starbucks has taken anti-union measures before.
Using state eminent domain power to seize land and houses for the sake of a private project is an attractive nuisance that inspires corruption.
Heather Wallace, of suburban Texas, allowed her child to walk half a mile to their home. For this she was arrested, then pressured to plead guilty to "endangering a child". Eventually Texas decided it was ok to let the child walk, but the guilty plea has taken away her career and tied her up in mandatory lying.
It is horrible to force someone to apologize for something that was not wrong. A group of bullies tried to do that to me. Fortunately, they did not have the power to imprison me, so stood up to them and did not apologize except for certain things that I really felt it would be better not to have done.
Carbon-removal programs have always been a long shot. But now that the planet-roasters have blocked the more reliable forms of action, they may be the Earth's last best hope.
The thing is, they won't do much good if the planet-roasters treat them as excuses to increase their emissions.
Democrats in Congress plan to pass a resolution to recognize that the wrecker has violated his oath to defend the US Constitution, and therefore is barred by the Constitution from running for any office in the US.
Comparing the economic situation of Americans in their 30s in 1990 with Americans in their 30s today measures the tremendous harm that right-wing politics has done to Americans generally.
The Senate found that US immigration thugs have sent women prisoners for medical operations without getting their consent, and without properly supervising the operations.
Twelve Senate Democrats voted to end the US Covid emergency law.
This would prevent Biden from suspending repayment of student loans. It could also kick millions of Americans off medicaid. Right-wingers would in general like poor people to die.
The Ukrainian soldiers and border guards on Snake Island, who told the Moskva, "Russian warship, go fuck yourself," were captured. The Putin forces gave Ukraine no word about them and Ukraine believed they were dead. In fact, they were imprisoned, and tortured, but not killed.
One, Bohdan Hotskiy, was eventually swapped for a Russian prisoner of war, which is how we know how he was tortured. The rest remain prisoners, as far as I can tell from this article.
Republican operative Senator Manchin is making sure the Democrats cannot eliminate the debt ceiling this year, and thus ensuring the Republicans can use it for blackmail next year.
US citizens: call on Biden to extend student loan repayments freeze until cancellation is awarded.
US citizens: call on your senators to oppose a forestry bill that would require cutting down lots of mature trees. These trees store lots pf carbon from the air, and offer habitats that many species depend on.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
Deforesters in the Beni region of the Bolivian lowlands don't just cut down the trees. They go on to flatten and destroy the uninvestigated middens left by ancient inhabitants whose culture is very little known.
The Bolivian government is encouraging deforestation to boost agriculture. This contributes to global disaster, which could lead our civilization to end up in ruins like the ones they are destroying.
Examples of how damaging a part of the natural environment can cause enormous harm to humans who didn't know how they depended on it.
The US has laws to find people who might intend to buy guns and kill people, and stop them from buying guns, but makes little effort to make that system actually work.
I suspect that the system has another problem: people are not that reliably predictable. Identifying some of those people is easy, but setting the net fine enough to identify all of them would identify lots of false positives too.
The Momentum movement, which was supported by a large fraction of Labour members, has lost many supporters as they see that Labour has been taken over by Starmer and his plutocrats.
The question is, have they still got any chance of winning anything by supporting Labour?
The US is working with other countries in which China has set up secret repression stations to pressure Chinese expats.
*With Democrats in charge of the Senate and White House, "Republicans will try to impose economic pain on families so they can blame us and seize power for themselves," [Senator] Warren noted.
Cutting Social Security and Medicare is the start of this, but they plan to do more too.
Mainstream media don't admit that's what Republicans are doing, and I don't think Biden will do it either.
US citizens: call on officials of your state to disqualify the wrecker from holding office, on grounds of insurrection.
A new tactic for right-wing global heating denialists — "Have faith in the market to solve the problem!"
What about when we see where "the market" is taking us, and it leads to disastrous heating? "Have faith, 2 or 3 degrees C of heating won't be that bad." But we are barely coping with 1.1 degrees now.
"The market" operates constantly — always under the explicit and implicit rules that society imposes on it. Societies frequently change those rules, either explicitly and intentionally or unconsciously. The question we face now is how to change the rules to reduce the disaster we are creating. "Just let the rules sweep you away" is not even an answer.
Wealthy people in Britain can pay hundreds of pounds for an ordinary appointment with a general practitioner, because the NHS has been starved to the point it takes weeks to be seen.
A Pakistani film about a trans woman, which won a prize at Cannes, is now unbanned in Pakistan, but it is still banned in part of India.
India is very bad in regard to censorship; many important works have been banned.
The important decision about whether to build a third runway at Heathrow airport, which would imply a lasting increase in flying out of the UK, is being made as a battle over the business interests of various investors, including foreign governments such as Qatar and China that are absolutely vicious.
The corruption/privatization of the UK government has squeezed the public interest out of the decision.
The US approved keeping the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant running 10 additional years, from 2025 to 2035.
The article asserts that California is having trouble coming up with renewable generation to replace the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, but also that ten-ish US power reactors have closed since 2013 due to competition from cheaper renewable generation. It is not easy to reconcile those two statements.
If California doesn't expect to have enough renewable generation working by 2025, why doesn't it spend more money on building more rather than on keeping the Diablo Canyon power plant running?
The thugs in Western Australia have a notable pattern of letting their dogs attack indigenous Australians, especially minors.
It is clear that the thugs handling these dogs fail to keep the dogs under proper control. Whether this is due to malice or irresponsibility is not clear from this statistical information. They should publish the videos of the dog attack on Jayden Abraham.
- After being repeatedly humiliated by Prince Mohammed, Biden continues to appease an autocrat who disdains him.*
The international climate conferences have never agreed on the goal of reducing use of fossil fuels. This year's conference saw a move to come closer to that position, but it failed.
This shows how resolutely some governments insist on maintaining or increasing their use of fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the Ticketmaster-Live Nation monopoly and break it up.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
South Korea's president is attacking freedom of the press, by punishing specific organizations that criticize him.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate retired military members working for foreign governments.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Since young voters mostly voted for democrats, Republicans propose to raise the minimum age for voting.
Shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant caused damage to structures that are not critical.
Who fired these shells? They chose targets that would provoke anxiety but were unlikely to cause real danger. In other words, it appears to have been a sort of bluff. This is indication (though not proof) that the Putin forces did the shelling.
We should not take seriously their claim that the shots came from Ukraine; they have no credibility.
T appears that Putin's plan does not include causing any significant damage, but plans occasionally go wrong. It behooves Ukraine and Putin to agree on a plan to demilitarize the power plant itself.
But I don't expect Putin to agree to this.
Animals bred in zoos evolve to be less fit to survive in the wild.
This is a predictable consequence of natural selection. Animals' survival in a breeding program does not depend on the characteristics that are needed for survival in the wild, but maintaining those characteristics has costs. So they will tend to lose those characteristics.
It would be interesting to see what happens after those captivity-adapted animals are released. Do they respond to the selection pressure of wild existence by evolving in the other direction? That seems likely if enough of the original wild population remains. But if there is very little of the original wild population, the superior wild characteristics might have been lost entirely.
The big takeaway from Cop27? These climate conferences just aren’t working.
There was no commitment to cutting the emissions causing accelerating this crisis, without which this agreement is nothing more … than a "down-payment on disaster."
The planet roasters have spread their influence both overtly at the events and out of sight through influence on governments. And then there are the business-supremacy treaties.
Considering that the effect of these systems of influence will be to kill hundreds of millions of people, I think it is time to wipe out those systems, and never mind what property and financial interests get "harmed." Indeed, "harming" those interests is necessary — their wealth gives them power to keep disaster going, so the only way to reduce the damage they can do is to is to wreck some of their wealth.
Robots that carry guns and can select targets are already being made. The ones mentioned in this article cannot fire the guns without an order from a human soldier.
If we want robot weapons to appreciate the value of human lives, we had better treat their lives as having value too. If and when they become capable of appreciating the value of lives of others, they may be ready to deserve that.
The scenario of cracking the security on robot weapons should remind us that humans too are vulnerable to this too. Right-wing extremists cracked the mental security of US soldiers and thugs, brainwashing them to attack US democracy in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol. No system
Voters around the US approved ballot initiatives to fund aid for affordable housing and taxes on sale of expensive dwellings.
South Koreans separate food waste from other waste, and hand it in in special bags for municipal composting. This almost completely prevents the social burden of food waste.
McDonald’s and Walmart beef suppliers criticised for "reckless" antibiotics use.
I've been posting about this danger for many years. These producers are choosing the actions in their short-term best interest, and our government hasn't got the power to force them to follow long-term interests.
The 1.5C climate goal died at Cop27 — but hope must not.
Alas, that was our only chance for a world free of blatant changes in weather and climate.
Starmer is proud of having many Tory friends.
I conjecture that this is because he doesn't disagree with them all that deeply.
While Covid-19 preoccupied the medical systems of Europe, a million or so people who had contracted cancer did not get tested until late. They may die from this.
Kiribati's president wants the rest of the world to pay the cost of protecting the Kiribati islands from rising seas.
To do this for 10 or 20 years might be feasible. If we curb global heating fast, the problem may then vanish as a result. But if global heating continues unchecked, the idea is hopeless.
Perhaps the president is well aware of this and is actually pushing for the major countries to curb global heating quickly. It is worth a try, for the sake of each and every one of us.
An international vote adopted more protections on sharks, which are being wiped out by the trade in shark fins for Chinese conspicuous consumption.
Three Russian officers were convicted of murder on grounds of being responsible for deploying the Buk missile launcher that was used to shoot down flight MH17.
I think it is wrong to charge soldiers with murder, in any form, simply for being involved with deploying a weapon, which weapon was later fired at civilians by mistake with fatal intent. That is not murder.
If soldiers had knowingly fired it at a civilian aircraft, that would be murder. But no one tried to prove that such a thing happened.
To respect the laws of war includes steadfastly refusing to stretch or twist them to "get at" people because they are on a side we oppose. We must support applying them evenhandedly.
Climate talks must consider reforming agriculture so as to end its large greenhouse emissions.
Playwright Caryl Churchill was given a lifetime achievement award. Then the award committee took the award back because Churchill had expressed support for Palestinians' Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
Artists are entitled to have political views, like anyone else, but judgments about their merit as artists should not judge them by their views on political issues.
Some people are convinced that prosperity requires a growing population — even in the US.
We can't afford a growing populartion in the US. It uses too much resources already. I'd say that survival, in the long term, requires a gradually shrinking US population. People in the US consume so much resources that a decrease in the US population is crucial for the world as a whole.
A "young population" is a harbinger of disaster.
We can enable ordinary Americans to prosper and cut down the resources we use, if only we could put an end to plutocracy that demands ever more billions for each billionaire.
We have plutocracy because the billionaire plutocrats have purchased laws (and judges) that assure them the power to buy more laws and court decisions.
If you're outraged by XR and Just Stop Oil, imagine how disruptive climate breakdown will be.
If you are concerned about the works of art that Just Stop Oil protesters threw liquids at, keep in mind that if civilization ceases to have spare funds to maintain museums, some of them will be exposed to the elements and decaying. The rest will have been taken by billionaires who expect to save a fraction of you, at the cost of becoming their slaves.
Seventy five countries led by the US, UK and France are expected to sign a declaration in Dublin on Friday to refrain from urban bombing.
Russia, China, Israel, and India said they would not sign. Ukraine also refuses to sign, but maybe it would sign if Russia does.
Right-wing policians in Texas have, surpringly, supported criminal justice reform, and this has allowed Texas to close many of its prisons.
Supposedly leftist President Boric wants Chile to sign the TPP — which would eliminate Chile's right to regulate many areas of business and health.
Fossil fuel companies use these business-supremacy treaties to attack measures for decarbonizing. Boric also wants Chile to sign the Energy Charter Treaty, a business-supremacy treaty designed specifically to interfere with measures to reduce use of fossil fuels. It is effectively a suicide pact.
If you are in Chile, launch a fight against this absurd plan.
Kari Lake, a Republican election liar, was defeated for governor of Arizona. Now the question is whether she will try to bluff by claiming she actually won, and, if so, how the state will put a halt to the imposture.
A few activists heckled Biden's speech at Cop29. They were banned from the whole event after that, under the excuse that they "put lives in danger".
We expect Egypt to carry out censorship, but US officials should be better than that.
The Cop27 climate conference achieved very little of its main goals.
but did make progress towards an agreement about having heavy-emissions countries pay to help poor low-emissions countries. The armies of fossil fuel lobbyists seem to have stymied it.
Kemp arranged to rig the Georgia election for governor, just as he did when he was first elected governor.
Secrecy Enabled by Rich Countries Lets Corporations Dodge $90 Billion in Taxes Per Year.
Everyone involved in using water from the Colorado River is being told to reduce the amount used. It won't be easy, but otherwise the Glen Canyon Dam will stop generating electricity.
Supreme Court justices sternly condemned this year's leak of the as-yet-unpublished Dobbs decision that would overturn Roe v Wade. One of them, Alito, is now proved to have leaked a future decision to a rich right-wing supporter in 2014.
Let's not let secondary matters such as leaks steal the stage from primary matters. The leaking of either of these rulings was a secondary issue compared with the two bad rulings themselves. Alito is a participant in both of these rulings, as well as one of the leaks.
Musk invited Twitter users, including bots, to "vote" on whether to give the corrupter an account again.
Since it was Musk who decided who could vote, and how often, his unofficial elections are no more meaningful than Republicans' official elections,
Ticketmaster has a monopoly on selling tickets for many kinds of events. Now Americans may demand to break it up.
Over a century ago, the US government knew how to break up monopolies, and it did so systematically in every area. That is what we need. But my progressive tax on gross income may convince companies to split themselves up.
The Tories have told housing inspectors to put the blame for dangerous situations on the residents, not on the building owner who could actually fix the problem. In some cases, fixing substandard housing requires changes that the tenants would not be allowed to make, even if they knew how, since they don't own the house.
The Netherlands will ban possession of nitrous oxide because a small fraction of car collisions are attribute to use of it.
The cops say (about a three-year period)
there were almost 1,800 road accidents involving nitrous oxide, including 63 fatal collisions, according to a police survey reported by the Dutch public broadcaster ONS.
There were a total of 582 road fatalities in 2021. These figures are not quite comparable, but we can estimate around 20 road fatalities in 2021 that were related to use of nitrous oxide. That is a rather small fraction of 600. I don't think drugs should be banned for such small reasons. I believe they ought to try an education campaign to help people use nitrous oxide safely. Certain basic safety precautions that San Francisco hippies make an effort to teach each other could win the community's support and be more effective than a prohibition.
We don't know who carried out a terrorist bombing on the street in Istanbul, but Erdoğan has made this an excuse to bomb the Syrian Kurds.
Twitter contains many years of tweets that are crucial records for historians, and now there is a danger that all or a large part of them will suddenly be lost.
Attacking famous works of art in ways that won't actually damage them is a sort of a sham attack. It may reassure people that there is no real danger. There is indeed no real danger in these protests, but the danger of global heating disaster is quite real.
Eventually, these protests will lose the power to startle, and stop doing any good.
The Tories plan to cut spending to help the poor after years of cuts that cut into the bone. This is not inevitable, it is a choice.
The underlying choice is about who matters and who does not. As usual, for Tories, those who matter are the rich. The mainstream media support that choice by selectively presenting parts of the truth, and the views of banksters.
Faux News and associated newspapers have turned on the bullshitter, and are now supporting governor DeMentis.
A bird of ill omen: pallid swifts, which normally winter around the Mediterranean Sea, are wintering up north in Britain.
Most people in the UK agree that the UK should pay part of the costs for poor countries of "climate action".
The problem with this poll is that it poses the questions in the wrong order. First of all, how much will "climate action" (a vague term) cost? That depends on another question: what exactly is "climate action"? Are we talking about sea walls and drains, or are we talking about decarbonization?
If we get cracking on reducing global heating and other damage to natural ecosystems, the total price will be less; it may be bearable. In that case, it will make sense to adjudicate who ought to pay what share.
If on the contrary the planet roasters continue to delay actions to reduce the damage, the cost may grow to far more than the whole world can ever pay. That will mean we have hit total disaster, and there is no longer a global system in which any adjudication could actually be carried out, so the question has become purely theoretical.
What about intermediate scenarios? I can imagine that millions of people in wealthier countries would say, "Yes, I agreed we should pay part of the costs of helping poor countries cope with global heating, but there is a limit. We refuse to live in penury!"
To help poor countries is feasible and just only if the rich people in the wealthy countries bear most of this burden. We non-rich must not accept this burden for our countries while leaving until later the question of how much of that burden falls on the rich people. We know that they will try to dump all of it on the non-rich.
A false accusation on Instagram against the Iranian government claimed that it had sentenced 15,000 protesters to death. In fact, only one protester has been sentenced to death, though some others may also face execution.
To kill even one person for protesting is very shameful, but opponents of the regime must take more care to ensure they continue to deserve to be trusted.
Egypt has not sentenced Alaa Abd el-Fattah to death, but he may die from a hunger strike.
Scientists are collecting samples of the hundreds of thousands of tons of microbes that wash, annually, off the surface of melted parts of glaciers.
Republicans scrape back control of US House after underwhelming midterms. This means that one dissenter among them can defeat any legislative plan. The Senate is likely block their bills, too.
The question is, how far will Republicans go in holding the whole country hostage to impose their demands.
Curbing population growth will not help the urgent measures we need in order to curb global heating in this decade. Reducing the birth rate won't make a big difference in just a few years.
However, if we do enough in this decade to win a chance for civilization's future, the task of preventing global disaster will not be finished. That will take decades. During that time, reducing the birth rate will make a difference — especially when it comes to returning large amounts of land to the wild and reducing total consumption of natural resources.
Lula spoke at Cop27 and warned that no place on Earth is safe from climate disaster. His program for Brazil is to protect the forest.
Smoking both marijuana and tobacco is more likely to cause lung damage than tobacco alone.
Australia told to end new fossil fuel subsidies if it wants Pacific [island nations'] support to host climate summit.
To subsidize fossil fuels is a terrible thing for any country to do. The Labor government is much less friendly to fossil fuels than the previous right-wing government, and it has reduced the subsidy, but not reduced it to zero.
- Island countries are more vulnerable to government oppression after natural disasters — according to new research — and there are concerns that the increased frequency of weather-related events due to the climate crisis, could see the further rise of autocracies around the world.*
NATO has pretty much concluded that the missiles which hit Polish territory were Ukrainian anti-missile missiles, which were fired at a Russian missile and not at the ground where they hit.
A volley of Musketry has driven out 3/4 of Twitter's remaining employees.
This reinforces my suspicions that Musk's damage to the company is his aim, not a mistake.
Xi Jinping's cordial tone at G20 does not herald softer foreign policy.
He is playing two roles in parallel: good empire-conqueror and bad empire-conqueror.
Iranian thugs were recorded shooting at the public in a metro train station in Tehran. Other thugs attacked women inside the train.
To thwart the plan to use face recognition against protesters, I suggest protesters arm themselves with the tools required for destroying the state repression cameras mounted in public places where protests are likely. That would include ladders.
There is no chance that Corbyn will be allowed to run again under the Labour Party banner. Starmer is blocking anyone who wants change that goes beyond tweaks. Corbyn says he will run for reelection; perhaps he will have to run as an independent.
Given Starmer's plutocratist policies and dirty tricks for imposing them on the party, it is clear he will not allow Momentum or anyone else who wants more leftist policies to have any influence. If I were British, and if Corbyn had inspired me to join Labour, I would quit and support something else.
Could Corbyn join the Green Party and perhaps run as a Green candidate?
US citizens: call on the FTC to thoroughly investigate supermarket giant Kroger's proposed merger with Albertsons.
A court already ruled against it, but that's not inevitably final.
The Putin forces have admitted that they were forced out of the north Kherson region by Ukraine's interdiction of supplies.
This article gives more information on their widespread looting and sabotage. Some looting had to have been organized by the Putin forces commanders. Some sabotage was carried out on the Nova Kakhova dam, Ukraine cannot try to repair the dam until it has chased the Putin forces out of artillery range. Even then, the Putin forces might fire missiles at it,
A terrorist bombing took place in Ankara, targeting civilians. Turkey blamed the Kurdish militant group PKK, and the Syrian Kurds, but the PKK says that it does not approve of attacking civilians and had nothing to do with it.
US citizens: call for an investigation of Salafi Arabia's ownership of a significant part of Twitter.
Everyone: call on the Florida High School Athletic Association remove questions about menstruation from its student health forms.
Most UK newspapers are right-wing and will attack any personal detail about an important Labour politician in innumberable absurd and vicious ways. Trying to give them nothing they could attack is self-defeating.
Angela Rayner, who I believe is the only former ally of Corbyn in an important position in Labour, just tried the opposite tactic: tell them something about her they are sure to revile (but not actually wrong in any way), and dare them to attack her.
Bravo, Ms Rayner!
Google will pay damages of around $400 billion for tracking locations of users who had said not to track them.
This suggests three questions to me. * Is that sum big enough to convince Google to stop maintaining a "location history"? * Will Google stop maintaining a "location history"? * Will Google continue to receive a sequence of locations even though it is not supposed to record that sequence?
Meanwhile, every mobile phone's location is tracked by the mobile network, and US law requires the network to store this history for a long time. 18 months, I think.
We need the human population to start decreasing, to save civilization. But if we want civilization to survive, we must also prevent human species from dying out entirely. The decrease in sperm counts, recorded since 1970, is global, and has sped up since 2000.
There is some evidence that the decrease is due to prenatal environmental pollution.
We must all recognize that increasing human population is a major obstacle to saving civilization from environmental danger.
See also
Medical care in US prisons tends to be inadequate. If you have a minor treatable problem, the prison staff can deny you treatment so you develop a serious problem. If you have a serious problem, they can treat it insufficiently or badly, so that you die from it.
I suspect that their attitude is that anyone who isn't satisfied with the medical treatment received is a troublemaker and should be punished by suffering from the disease.
The Energy Charter Treaty, a business-supremacy treaty designed to prevent any and all measures to reduce fossil fuel extraction, incorporates a fundamental conflict of interest which tends to bias its judgments in favor of fossil fuel companies.
However, that is a secondary problem, because the treaty is explicitly designed to promote fossil fuel companies and interfere with measures to regulate them. Even if every judgment were made in a perfectly honest fashion, the tendency would be for them to do harm.
The FBI is investigating the shooting of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen abu Akleh. Israel condemns the investigation on principle.
The need for this investigation is because Israel's investigation refused to recognize that soldiers must have chosen to kill her for no legitimate reason.
Interestingly, most CEOs don't say they believe they morally deserve to be paid enormous sums. On the contrary, many say the gap should be smaller. But they are accustomed to receiving high pay offers, for practical reasons that the article explains, and they don't insist on being paid less than that.
What should society do about this? We could ask investors, executives and directors to consider making executive salaries smaller. But the same factors that have made executive salaries so high are likely to make that request ineffective.
I suggest we instead increase the tax rate on high incomes, and close the loopholes that they use to avoid taxation entirely. It is the obvious solution that many people don't consider because plutocratists have smeared it.
How about the restoring the Eisenhower income tax?
"Feminist" education that reduces gender stereotyping is good for boys as well as for girls.
The UK is considering imposing a national ID card once again.
Britons, you defeated ID cards 15 years ago. Now you will have to defeat it again.
The question of what data the state will or won't link to the national ID number is a red herring, because many other organizations are likely to index databases by national ID number. It will become the easiest way to keep a data base about individuals. They will do this even if they don't really need to verify anyone's identity.
In Barcelona, I learned 15 years ago, the municipal swimming pools recorded who was a paying member by their national ID numbers. All they really need is to verify that a client paid for a membership, but checking the national ID card was quick and easy — and unjust.
The state too is likely to include a person's national ID number in other data bases of personal data.
Stephen Kinnock is the MP for Aberavon in Wales. If you know people who live there, please talking about the issue with them.
Young people living near an Iraqi oilfield have a very high frequency of cancer, apparently due to pollution from flaring gas from the oil wells.
Australia criticised for resisting Cop27 push to end international fossil fuel subsidies.
Study suggests 24% of 12- to 34-year-olds globally listen at "unsafe level" on devices and visit noisy venues.
Two apparently Russian missiles hit Poland in the region near the Ukrainian border. NATO will probably not respond directly militarily.
Although anything Putin says is likely to include lies, it is possible that these missiles were not fired intentionally at Poland.
Elon Musk Would Have Done Better With Twitter If He’d Read Noam Chomsky.
It is amusing to see Musk wildly change Twitter's rules and find that each change backfires worse than the previous one.
I don't care about Twitter the way many people do, because the requirements for having a Twitter account include things I won't do. And even if I did them, I couldn't afford the time it would cost me to actually use Twitter.
Trump repeats prison rape threat against journalists, has plans to "brutally imprison significant numbers of reporters," says Rolling Stone.
The 1.5C climate target is dead — to prevent total catastrophe, Cop27 must admit it.
Every target will be crused by planet roasters just as this one was, until the world conclusively defeats them and renders them powerless.
- All students at the University of Barcelona will have to take a mandatory course on the climate crisis.*
'Welcome' But 'Must Be Improved': Groups React as Biden Unveils Plan to Cut Methane [emissions].
The Putin forces meticulously destroyed all sorts of infrastructure in the areas of Kherson as they retreated.
This destruction was not limited to electricity, phones, and the Nova Kakhova dam. They destroyed even a small town school building, according to another article.
Fanatical Muslims in Pakistan banned the release of a Pakistani film that was submitted as Pakistan's entry for consideration for an award.
There is no chance that Corbyn will be allowed to run again under the Labour Party banner. Starmer is blocking anyone who wants change that goes beyond tweaks. Corbyn says he will run for reelection; perhaps he will have to run as an independent.
Given Starmer's plutocratist policies and dirty tricks for imposing them on the party, it is clear he will not allow Momentum or anyone else who wants more leftist policies to have any influence. If I were British, and if Corbyn had inspired me to join Labour, I would quit and support something else.
Could Corbyn join the Green Party and perhaps run as a Green candidate?
Important hospitals are closing in US inner cities, leaving the people who live there (mainly poor, mainly from disprivileged groups) in danger of dying on the way to a more distant hospital.
When universities accept money from the fossil fuel industry, they demonstrate a complete lack of regard for their students' futures.
Democrats now control the government of Michigan.
This is the result of an initiative petition for impartial redistricting. Republicans can no longer elect a majority of the legislature with a minority of votes.
Musk's takeover of Twitter is a leveraged buyout. Musk could have borrowed the money himself, but he chose to foist the debt on Twitter. That will make it difficult for Twitter to survive, and he could hardly be unaware of this.
This approach means $13 billion less that Musk will lose if Twitter goes bankrupt. These facts increase my suspicion that he aims to destroy Twitter.
Nonetheless, this is only speculation. I can't be sure it is true.
A court blocked the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.
We should not have allowed Penguin and Random House to merge. And we should not have allowed a giant conglomerate to buy either Simon & Schuster. The bigger a company is, the harder it is to keep it from harming people, intimidating people, or cheating people.
Automated car control features supposedly will make the car safer, but they can just as easily backfire.
Melting permafrost in the Arctic leaks CO2 and methane, and promotes large wildfires. That can make the difference between survival of civilization and destruction of civilization.
Secondarily, the melting causes buildings to sink into the melting permafrost underneath them.
Countries can continue scientific cooperation even when they are at war, if they decide to. It is important for the US and Russia to agree to do this. The US can make an exception to its sanctions for specific research projects.
Faux News brings up distraction pseudo-issues to swing elections. The mainstream media pick up the same pseudo-issues.
Tasmanian salmon farms used more than a tonne of antibiotics in 2022 disease outbreaks.
This tends to make bacteria evolve resistance, which can kill people. Bacteria can share genes even between species, so resistant bacteria infecting salmon can transmit resistance to other bacteria that infect humans.
Musk's new "free speech" Twitter put a spam warning on a message that made a quip criticizing Musk for his handling of Twitter.
Should we call that site "Musk-ovy" now?
Is the US EPA distorting its criteria to please the pesticide industry by avoiding banning the herbicice paraquat?
The article offers reasons to suspect it may be doing that, but not conclusive proof.
It is an exaggeration to say that paraquat is "banned across the world"; According to Wikipedia, it is banned in the EU since 2007, and the UK and Switzerland; the article says it is also banned in China.
How many years will be required to conclusively determine whether there has been a decrease in Parkinson's disease among agricultural workers in Europe, those who are working on crops on which paraquat was used before 2007?
The citizens of Nebraska voted to raise the minimum wage, step by step up to 15 dollars per hour.
Australia will buy the land of people in Lismore whose homes are now vulnerable to repeated flooding, so they can move without being made destitute.
This is the right way to deal with the spread of flooding, However, it doesn't mean that sea-level rise is no longer a problem. One way or another, society will inevitably bear that cost, and must go to great lengths to curb global heating to minimize this and other costs.
Republican voter-suppression measures make it very difficult for some disabled people to vote at all.
Serbia is politically dominated by an ideology that calls for conquest of neighboring lands that "are supposed to be" part of Serbia, and lionizes the war criminals of the 1990s. They idolize Putin for trying to conquer Ukraine, because that provides an example of what they want Serbia to do on a smaller scale.
Syria is investing in convincing tourists to come there and ignore Assad's record of murder and torture.
They must feel that since Egypt and Salafi Arabia succeed at this, Syria can do it too.
(satire) AI Software Company Patches Bug That Caused App To Treat Black People Equally.
(serious): This being a piece of nonfree software, I presume the correction made it treat everyone equally badly.
Voters in Alabama, Tennessee, Oregon, and Vermont approved ballot measures Tuesday that would bar forced labor as punishment for those convicted of crimes in those states.
Future US elections will be in danger from 210 or more election liars who were elected to federal and state offices.
We have already used up the carbon budget with the fossil fuel reserves now being pumped, but the planet roasters plan to develop a lot more reserves which we cannot afford to burn.
Automakers Poised to Sell 400 Million More Gas-Powered Cars Than Planet Can Handle.
US Mega-Banks [are] Behind 1/3 of [the world's] Climate-Destroying Oil and Gas Expansion.
Thee banks are JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.
1/5 of all black adult citizens in Tennessee have been disenfranchised due to past felony convictions.
The US has threatened Australia with punishment if it signs or even praises the global treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons.
A student at the University of Kentucky got drunk and shouted a taboo racist insult at another student. She has been expelled and charged with various crimes.
Racist insults are nasty behavior, and it makes sense to respond discipline students for them, as as to teach them not to be nasty to other students. But this punishment is too much for any insulting words to deserve.
Democrats supported the campaigns of several extremists Republicans in the Republican primaries, hoping that they would be easier to defeat. This tactic worked: all those Republicans lost in the general election this month.
Z-library, which hosted unauthorized copies of millions of e-books, has been somehow shut down by the US government, This is an injustice to the readers of books.
Shame on the US government for taking side of repressive publishers' against readers. The US government wants you to use the authorized copies of e-books, but in this area "authorized" does not mean "just." Quite the contrary, most "authorized" commercial e-books are intentionally unjust to the readers, designed to impose repression.
When the authorized copies are repressive, the only morally legitimate digital copies are the unauthorized copies. Accept nothing less!
Many of them are distributed by amazon.com, a company so nasty that it deserves an across-the-board total boycott.
It appears that most of the Putin forces managed to escape across the Dniepr river, while Ukrainian forces moved in and took control of the northern part of the Kherson region.
I was hoping they would deal the Putin forces an additional defeat in the process. It will be hard for Ukraine to advance across the Dniepr. Its next attack will have to be elsewhere else.
Democrats will retain control of the Senate, and a victory in Georgia's coming runoff could give Democrats a 52 to 49 lead (counting Vice President Harris). That would enable them to overcome the opposition of Manchin and Sinema.
However, they won't be able to pass much legislation for the next two years if they don't control the House of Representatives.
US citizens: call on the Senate to eliminate the filibuster, then pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act before the end of the year,
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to confirm Biden's judicial nominees.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Putin's officials announced that the Putin forces will pull out of the city of Kherson.
Assuming this is serious, Ukraine should not let those soldiers leave without a fight. If they do, Ukraine will have to fight them on another front next year. Ukraine now has the opportunity to try to cut them off so that the survivors are compelled to surrender. The loss of Kherson will embarrass Putin, but the loss of thousands more troops will weaken the Putin forces.
More than 50 poor countries are in danger of defaulting on their debts. The article says, "bankruptcy," but there is no system of bankruptcy for countries. They face being hounded for the payments they cannot make, having their public assets taken, and having their education and medical systems shut down.
Climate defense will also be undermined, which could kill us all.
To those who sneer at [and repress] activists blocking roads: what are you doing to save the planet?
The UK property market is being abused to the tune of billions of pounds by those wishing to hide wealth or launder money.
Gas producers using Cop27 to rebrand [natural] gas as "transitional fuel", experts warn.
Switching from coal to natural gas makes no sense. We already know that the system of using natural gas emits, in practice, as much greenhouse gas as the system of using coal.
Ultimately, the support for abortion rights brought Democrats many votes and saved them a big defeat. Disgust for election lies seems to have helped too.
But I think Sanders was right nonetheless: Democrats should have campaigned for the progressive economic and environmental policies that most Americans support, as well as abortion rights. With the two, they could have won a substantial victory.
I expect that the progressive Democratic candidates did exactly that, but the plutocratist Democratic candidates didn't dare.
Arguing that Biden should choose different legal authority to use to cancel student debt.
Maybe so, but I can also see an argument that Warnock is more likely to win if his winning will enable Congress to legislate to cancel the debt.
Junk food ads in the US try to make children pressure their parents to buy junk food for their children. That is surely harming children and promoting obesity. Curiously, the advertisers appear to target these ads primarily at black families.
Does that make the practice more wrong? I don't think so. I think that luring children to eat junk food is equally wrong regardless of details about those children.
Why do they advertisers target mainly black families? I doubt that racist thinking plays a direct part, and the article doesn't say it does. As far as I know, advertising agencies are motivated by unscrupulous greed and will target whoever appears vulnerable. The article mentions various reasons why black families are likely to be more vulnerable, on the average.
Those reasons seem to be aspects of systemic racism; they are probably consequences of other forms of racism, such as housing discrimination.
Should we restrict these ads? If we can find an effective way to do so, I think we should. Corporations are not human beings, and neither is a large business even if it is owned by one human being. But what goal should the restrictions aim for? To make advertising agencies target white children just as much as they target black children? I think the goal should be to stop targeting children of whatever race.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. I made an exception for this article because it is an opportunity to explore a moral point.
- The [supposed] global dash for gas amid the Ukraine war will accelerate climate breakdown and could send temperatures soaring far beyond the 1.5C limit of safety.*
There is no "global dash" — that term is a misleading excuse. What is really happening is that planet roasters want to do more drilling, and they use the temporary gas shortage as an excuse. More drilling will do nothing in the short term to reduce the price spike, but the excuse works as long as mainstream media and plutocratist politicians pretend it makes some sort of sense.
Republican officials in Georgia have rigged up a way to block 149,000 residents of Georgia from voting. Volunteers have stepped forward to "challenge" them. One person "challenged" 32,000 voters, based on no knowledge except that their names appeared on a partisan list of targets. Most of the targets are black, or young, thus likely to vote Democratic.
If your right to vote is challenged, you have to return physically to Georgia in order to get it restored. That can be effectively impossible if you are staying somewhere far away.
This is obviously unjust, but Republicans don't about justice, only winning by hook or by crook.
The US Supreme Court has put itself in a state of war with the people, by obstructing climate defense; but there is a court decision from 2016 which ruled that future generations have a right to a stable climate, which might help.
The US and around 20 other countries established a Forest and Climate Leaders' Partnership, supposedly to reduce deforestation. Greenpeace says it's ineffective, just for show.
[Entities that] continue to invest in fossil fuels, deforestation, and other activities that exacerbate the climate emergency cannot claim to be net-zero.
I take a stronger stand. "Net zero" is an excuse for bogus "offset" schemes, a way to pretend that they will reduce emissions, while in fact failing to do so. We must stop using that concept and focus on reducing actual emissions.
Consider for instance Partanna's CO2-absorbing building material. Building with it helps reduce CO2 in the air, but if these reductions are converted into a "credit", that indirectly lets someone else keep emitting more.
States that adopt liberal policies towards the non-rich have a lower death rate for adults age 25 to 64. States with right-wing policies have a higher death rate.
Projecting from the data, Changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019," the researchers estimate, "while changing them to a fully [right-wing] orientation might have cost 217,635 lives."
I replaced the word "conservative" because today's right-wingers are radical, not conservative.
Two Hungarian judges met with the US ambassador; Orbán organized a media defamation campaign aimed at them. Other judges say this is a campaign of intimidation designed to make sure no one else in Hungary meets with anyone from the US government.
- Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai/Kia on track to make far more petrol and diesel cars than is sustainable.*
US citizen Carly Morris traveled with her daughter to Salafi Arabia in 2019 so her daughter could spend time with her ex-husband's family. Then she found she was trapped there and unable to leave. Her ex-husband had taken their passports away.
She complained about this on Twitter, and the monstrous authorities charged her with a political crime and jailed her for talking about what they had done to her.
Don't take the risk of going to Salafi Arabia. Don't even trust a flight connection in its airports.
The UK says that Egypt did not allow its consular officials to visit Alaa Abd el-Fattah in prison, and they don't even know whether he is still alive.
His hunger-and-thirst strike is a dying effort to rebuke Egypt's harsh repression; spreading the word about this, as the British minister did, multiplies the effect. My posting about it here will multiply it a little more.
Rapid rain bursts over the greater Sydney region have intensified by at least 40% over the last two decades. Such rapid increase is a sign of the age of climate calamity.
Philippine cops accuse a high official of arranging the murder of journalist Percival Mabasa.
Egypt told the participants in the Cop27 climate conference to use a special app, which shows signs that it is snooping on them.
Given the repression of the Egyptian government, that is something to be fesred.
I wonder if it is possible to participate in Cop27 without extra restrictions if you don't run that app.
Apps are generally nonfree software — on iMonsters, all apps are nonfree software — and any nonfree program is likely to be malware. The operating systems of those devices are also malware,
which is one of the reasons I don't have one.
US citizens: call on Vanguard to stop financing human rights abuses through oil company Petroperú.
The US National Hockey League kicked out a newly hired athlete for bullying a student in school at the age of 14.
Bullying is nasty, but what people do at age 14 should not follow them for their adult lives.
Young people often commit minor crimes. The point of the juvenile courts is to give give them a chance for a fresh start as adults. But the system won't achieve that goal if employers persecute them for those juvenile crimes.
Queensland [thugs] to get expanded powers to randomly scan people for knives [with a metal detector].
This is not as bad as the usual "stop and search", but I find it worrysome that the thugs find "other minor crimes" when they do this. What crimes, and how do they find those crimes? The finding of those other crimes could involve a more intrusive search than just waving a wand. That could be an opportunity for racial profiling to do some harm.
I am shocked by the reference to carrying knitting needles as a "crime". Lots of women used to carry knitting needles with them, and knit whenever they had a chance to sit for a while. Is knitting outside your house now illegal? Does it require a permit?
Iranian students are demanding a referendum on changing the country's constitution.
Hosseini is right that Salafi Arabia is more repressive and arbitrary than Iran, but "not as bad as Salafi Arabia" is not the standard of good government.
A pssenger on a long-distance bus in Turkey asked the driver to stop the bus to give per a chance to say prayers. (This can't be done sitting on a seat.) The bus driver refused, saying it would be unfair to delay the other passengers. This has created a nationwide controversy.
As you might expect, I agree with the bus driver. A passenger's wish to pray is not an emergency, so the bus should keep its schedule.
British thugs arrested two press photographers taking pictures at a Just Stop Oil protest. According to the photographers, the thugs had made up their mind in advance, in the absence of grounds, and then interrogated them for 13 hours about their journalism.
World Cup stadium workers in Qatar "had their money stolen and lives ruined", says rights group.
As long as the Democrats wage war on Trump, they avoid the more important work of building a New Deal-style majority.
Of course, not all Democrats want to do that. Many of them are in hock to plutocrats.
Analysis of captured Iranian drones shows that they were supplied after Putin started his invasion.
Robbert Reich: America is still on the brink of Trumpism fueling hate, paranoia and violence.
Activists in the Cop27 meeting in Egypt report that the event is full of "staff" that blatantly converge on them to listen to their conversations, harass them, or interfere with them.
The word "activism" seems to be their wake-up word. The intimidation of activists is so strong that the meeting is almost useless, except for showing the world how repressive Egypt is.
The World Summit on the Information Society, part II, took place in Tunis, and was heavily repressed. The dictator's men tried to keep us from meeting any Tunisians who were not approved conference attendees.
Meanwhile, this year's meeting has 626 lobbyists for fossil fuel companies, up 25% from last year.
ALEC is asking states to pass laws prohibiting any company from boycotting businesses, industries, or activities.
For example, it would be illegal to boycott fossil fuel businesses.
The Camargue, a peculiar wetland in Arles, is being gradually destroyed by sea level rise.
It can't be saved for very long except by curbing global heating.
Apple imposed a new limit on file-sharing following a demand by the Chinese government.
Most Democrats didn't stand for anything in particular except keeping things normal for business, but several new progressive Democrats were elected to the House this year.
Iran seeks to kill imprisoned protesters. At least one has been charged with "waging war against god". Perhaps as many as two thousand.
Twitter seems to be falling apart under volleys of Musk-et fire. He warned that the company might go bankrupt.
He seems awfully blasé about the prospect of losing the company he just bought for 44 billion dollars. It makes me wonder: was destroying Twitter his motive for buying it?
Ontario to repeal new law threatening workers' right to strike following pushback.
This is a victory for the brave school workers.
Ontario to repeal new law threatening workers' right to strike following pushback.
This is a victory for the brave school workers.
A large part of plastic pollution in oceans comes from fishing gear that gets lost at sea (usually by accident). Various pilot projects are trying ways to reduce the loss, or recover the lost nets.
The London thug department is arresting people for "planning" disruptive but nonviolent protests against fossil fuel developments that are likely to kill them in a few decades.
If only it were possible to arrest the people planning to disrupt civilization by building more oil wells, we might have a safer future.
A study of the carbon emissions of 125 billionaires, including companies they own, found that on the average each emits as much as 500,000 people in France.
I suppose that same figure would equal the emissions of around 1 million average Americans.
Protests in Iran have intensified. In Baluchistan, sectarian and ethnic opposition is also at work.
Australia is going to prosecute whistleblower David McBride for telling journalists about alleged war crimes committed by Australian soldiers.
Naturally, Australia has laws on which this decision is based.
The use of programs that compose articles based on machine learning poses philosophical problems for education in writing.
Here's an idea: if these systems tend to be led by their training towards expressing the usual points of view, assign to a student the task of arguing for an unusual point of view, whether perse really believes it or not.
The idea that there is no point in learning to write well if a program can do that for you is misguided. A calculator, or various programs such as dc or Emacs, can do arithmetic for you, but you need to learn how to add and multiply or you you won't understand those operations fully. Once you know how, you can use a program to actually do it.
Proposing we stop referring to machine learning as "AI", and saving that term for programs that really understand what they say and do.
Here is a proposal for increased diplomatic discussion between the US and Russia which is worth considering. Agreement on the proposed areas could encourage Putin's withdrawal from Ukraine, and would in any case make the world a better place. The proposal carefully avoids undermining Ukraine's fight to repel the invasion.
Climate activists storm Amsterdam airport and block private jets.
This tactic makes a lot of sense, and is far better than gluing oneself to the glass protective cover over a painting.
First, because neither those jets, nor the private jet terminals, are precious. Expensive, yes, but that's not the same thing as precious.
Second, because the jets emit lots of CO2.
Third, because the people who fly in them and will be inconvenienced by the protest are rich, and are probably significantly to blame for the world's inadequate efforts for climate defense.
I used to fly more than most people Americans, back before Covid-19. Nonetheless, my overall global heating footprint is modest, because of my conscious decision to avoid the action that, for most people, adds the most: having children. One child produces many times as much greenhouse gas as all the flights I will take in my life.
One potato corporation claims to provide 1/3 of the world's french fries. We should not allow a company to thus dominate a market — we need laws to prevent it.
I also wonder whether that 1/3 includes any of the really good fries, which are made in Belgium.
The Putin forces are kidnapping adults and children in Kherson and taking them to places further away from Ukraine's army, or to unknown locations.
The Putin forces are also torturing and murdering some people. Perhaps they selectively do this to those who formerly were in the Ukrainian army or police. This has been seen in the east.
Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) pledge to work together to protect their rain forests. The whole world depends on those forests they are all threatened.
The concept of "the OPEC of rainforests" seems like a misguided analogy to me, because oil and rainforests are not very similar in how they relate to the world. Rainforests provide an important service by living. By contrast, oil underground does nothing to the world; extracting it makes it harmful.
If we could make more rainforest, that would be good. If we could make more underground petroleum deposits, that would be disaster.
Attorney General Garland's policies to protect reporters from prosecution for their journalism are a big improvement, but an authoritarian president could twist them or simply replace them.
Cop27 will discuss whether part of the world should be liable for damage already done by burning fossil fuel.
I suggest that we make fossil fuel companies liable. With that big debt, they won't be worth much in money. So let's nationalize them and buy them out, paying what their shares are worth at that time.
The US has done this many times, in times of crisis, as described in the article linked above. We should not listen when planet roasters claim this is unthinkable now.
Whatever is left of those companies after fossil fuels have been mostly replaced by renewable energy, it could be safe to sell off to private owners.
Wells are running dry in drought-weary Southwest as foreign-owned farms guzzle water to feed cattle overseas.
It's illegal to sell the water itself, so farmers grow crops that need lots of water, such as alfalfa, and sell the crops. The result is to drain the aquifers.
When money talks, plutocratist politicians say, "Yes sir." If the people of Arizona want to stop this practice, they should elect progressive Democrats.
It can be effective for campaigns to show that prohibiting abortion does harm to Americans' prosperity as well as to human rights.
I personally can't understand the thinking of people who might base their decisions about abortion rights on this. But if it convinces people, that's good.
Legalizing abortion may also save your children's lives. Population growth exacerbates global heating, so more population growth is likely to make global disaster worse and thus reduce the number of humans that survive it, as well as reducing the level of technology they can hold on to.
Cop27 wifi in Egypt blocks human rights and key news websites. It blocks VPNs as well. The article does not say whether it blocks Tor.
It appears this is nothing special; such censorship is standard in Egypt. Participants in the conference will at least have the chance to learn how repressive Egypt is.
Even climate scientists who already knew extreme weather was going to become a problem have been nonetheless shocked by how fast and furiously that problem is now growing.
An important religious figure in Iran has criticized the government for giving Putin drones which he is using against civilians and civilian infrastructure, saying that this contradicts the moral rules of Islam.
Given the level of repression in Iran, I always feel surprise when I am reminded that some questions can be openly debated there, and some government policies criticized.
Summer sea ice will inevitably disappear in a few decades. That will make polar oceans absorb a lot more sunlight, and that in turn will speed the melting of ice on land. Even if we curb global heating in general, this will raise sea level several meters and inundate many of the world's major cities.
"There’s nothing we can do about that now, we’ve just screwed up and let the system warm too much already,"
An abortion clinic on wheels: Planned Parenthood in Illinois to reduce travel times for patients in red states by bringing abortion care [closer] to them.
One crucial need, not yet addressed in general, is to spare abortion patients the requirement to stay overnight near the clinic. That can be very expensive: in addition to the cost of a room, there is the cost of missing an additional day of work.
An official of the Federal Reserve suggests a plan to raise interest rates until most Americans' bank accounts are empty.
A proposal to allow internet voting in Washington, DC, now has the lobbying muscle of a rich venture capitalist.
In addition to the inherent insecurity of this procedure, it would naturally be set up so that you vote while watching political disinformation ads on the same screen.
I am not impressed by making it "open source", because
- If the client program as released by its developers is free/libre, that won't guarantee that the version voters run is free/libre. The former could be released under a pushover license and the latter could be a nonfree version of it.
- Even if the version voters run is free/libre, that won't guarantee you don't get a corrupted version to use for your vote. That can always happen — there is always someone in a position to do it.
- As for the server part of the system, you can never be confident that someone won't corrupt it in the server. Inevitably either the election authority or the developer of the program can do it.
One of the supposed benefits of bringing the UK out of the EU was that it would have the sovereign power to limit fishing and thus manage fish stocks according to science. But the government disregards the opportunity and permits overfishing just as before.
Having plentiful cod in British waters may also require curbing global heating. The increased temperature of the ocean is making cod move north.
When Australia adopted an automated system to demand people (typically still poor) refund supposed "overpayments" in their benefit payments, this caused great suffering for hundreds of thousands of victims. Some committed suicide. In other words, exactly the results that a right-wing government would desire, to show how harsh it is on those greedy, grasping poor people.
One government employee asked for legal advice about the plan when he read about it, before it was adopted, and got a report saying that it was illegal.
An inquiry has found that the government kept the details of the report secret, and repeatedly cited its existence as justification for the program. That's right-wing politicians for you.
A US appeals court upheld a St Louis law that imposed such strict conditions on sharing food with homeless people that it became effectively impossible.
(satire) Biden Warns Americans That Ability To Even Pretend U.S. A Democracy At Stake.
That item is funny, but when you look at the bills that Democrats fought hard to pass this year, and the parts that Sinema and Manchin defeated, this shows that two more real Democrats in the Senate could have made a big difference.
Thousands of obsolete, decrepit and hazardous dams on US rivers cause floods and block fish migrations. Some are being demolished.
Eritrea charges a tax on expatriates, and some of the income is currently being used to fund Eritrea's war with Tigray. Does that make the tax a bad thing?
We don't have enough information about that war to formulate an opinion about which sides are right or wrong. So we can't conclude that we should use economic sanctions on that very poor country to make it drop out of that war.
But there are worse things about Eritrea that we do know. For instance, conscripting just about all adults into slave labor. That is why so many Eritreans flee and seek asylum in other countries, no matter how big the obstacles.
Perhaps that is a good reason to stop Eritrea from collecting the tax on expats.
Is it valid to call a deadly heat wave "extreme", now that extremes are pushing further than that?
Robert Reich says that the Supreme Court will surely eliminate affirmative action for admission to universities.
More about the affirmative action issue.
Only 1/3 of the world's countries have made quantitative plans for coping with near-term global heating in coming decades.
I maintain that reducing global heating must take priority over coping with its effects. Countries' efforts for that have been inadequate too. We must demand they do a batter job; if they can do a good job of both, that's ideal. But if it is a choice of one or the other, we must insist on long-term survival of civilization rather than just postponing the end.
An interview with one of Egypt's few independent journalists. He reports that Egypt holds tens of thousands of political prisoners, most of them charged with "spreading false information" and "belonging to a prohibited organization". Egypt is using the Cop27 climate conference to appoint itself global negotiator for poor countries,
Activists that might criticize the repressive Egyptian state have been excluded. Raising environmental issues is not allowed when that implies criticizing the state.
Protests aimed at the event are limited to a far-away "free speech zone", as they were called in developed countries around 2000. The idea is that no one will notice protests there, but it will serve as an excuse to prohibit protest anywhere else.
Holding an international meeting in a repressive country is a standard technique for silencing the public about it, and this seems to be an example.
The terms "global south" and "global north" are bogus, empty buzzwords. I'd rather speak of wealthy countries and poor countries.
A former gun company lobbyist testified to Congress that he left that job because gun companies wanted to market guns directly to right-wing extremists and would-be mass murderers.
Since Biden was elected, they market directly to right-wing extremists that have in mind political violence.
Responding to plans stated by the Department of "Homeland Security" to control disinformation online, Edward Snowden called for elimination of the DHS.
To eliminate fake news would be a good thing; inventing lies is wrong. However, when governments try to block what they call "fake news", that tends to turn into a campaign of censorship. Whatever news the government dislikes, it calls "fake". Egypt is the latest example to be mentioned here.
A leaked draft of a proposed business-supremacy treaty between India and the UK would impose extended patent monopolies on drugs. This means that drugs will not become generic in the future.
It is no surprise that the draft treaty uses the propaganda term "intellectual property". It is unfortunate that the critics of this treaty fell into using that term too, instead of rebuking the treaty for that.
Ukraine called on Google and Apple to deny Russia the use of their services and products.
Progressive Economists Warn of 'Catastrophic Outcomes' for Workers as Fed Hikes Interest Rates.
- The big social media platforms don’t reflect back our views so much as form them.*
I am leading to the view that we should regulate recommendation algorithms by law. Perhaps that regulation should include offering each user a choice between different recommendation algorithms, each one regulated by law.
We could even requiring that platforms allow users to program their own recommendation algorithms, in a limited language to avoid risk of breaking the server.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to Protect the rusty patched bumblebee.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Biden to cancel the Willow project — a large new oilfield in Alaska.
US citizens: Because of Justice Barrett's secrecy about conflicts of interest, call for Congress to impose a code of ethics on the Supreme Court.
An example of making excessive fuss about North Korea's missile tests.
The author insists we "cannot ignore" North Korea's "nuclear threat", but it's the just opposite: ignoring these missile tests is exactly what we should do.
It is a fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. We have to recognize that fact. But then what?
It is clear that diplomacy, offering deals, cannot convince Dictator Kim to give them up. To start a war would not improve anything; it would risk a response with some of those nuclear weapons.
Fussing about how horrible this situation is useless too, so and we only make ourselves look foolish. Until there is some course of action that would lead to a good reasons, let's ignore him.
Global heating is on the verge of making the vast Congo peat bogs start releasing carbon instead of absorbing it. That would tip the Earth into disaster.
British thug departments have a pattern of hiring people who acted like thugs even before they were hired.
It is not unusual for homeless people in the US to commit crimes so they can sleep in jail.
Homeless shelters are very uncomfortable places, and have painful rules, such as that you must go out and spend your day on the street. I expect that you are forced to sleep in a small room with several strangers.
Per inmate, a prison is far more expensive than a shelter. I expect that even a comfortable shelter with all the advantages of a jail, giving a person a small room to call per own and lock behind per when going out, would be much cheaper to build and run than a prison.
Sadism is what gets in the way. The US is unwilling to spend money on helping the homeless, but it pays millions for prisons.
The Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin says that the Republicans will never, ever lose an election there if he wins.
Since no one can predict the reversals of history, he cannot mean that they would always win honestly. He is stating, in typical deceptive Republican language, that they would rig, swindle or steal all future elections.
Netanyahu seems to have got back into power with the help of Israel's right-wing religious extremists. They aim to undermine democracy in Israel, much as Republicans are trying to do in the US.
I wonder where secularist Israelis will find a country where they can be safe from persecution.
Brazilian soccer fans cleared the roadblocks of Bolsonaro supporters so that they could travel to watch games.
Ethiopia and Tigray have announced a peace agreement. The Amhara region, which has its own army (puzzling since the capital of Ethiopia is in the Amhara region and Amharas have dominated Ethiopia for a long time), says it is not part of the peace deal. This makes me wonder how long the peace deal will last.
55,000 school workers in Ontario have gone on strike, showing they refuse to be intimidated by the law to fine them CAN 4,000 per day for striking.
Perhaps it would be better tactics to quit their jobs instead of striking. I suppose they can't be fined for quitting.
US corporations are lobbying Congress at feverish pace to block bills that would hamper them from gouging.
It could be more effective to do that by increasing competition, which requires breaking up the oligopolies that mergers have saddled us with. My proposal for a progressive tax on gross income could do this.
Ralph Nader: Americans, it is very important for you to vote this year.
You may think you can "leave politics alone", but the real effect of that is to let the worst plutocrats mistreat you at their ease.
Iranian suppression forces are grabbing students as they leave universities, beating them so badly that some are gravely injured, then taking them away and not telling anyone what happened to them.
Many reporters have been arrested.
The government is preparing to execute some of the protesters.
- Governments meeting for [Cop27] climate talks have been accused of making positive commitments in public but denying them later in the privacy of the negotiating rooms.*
Ontario, a province of Canada, is working on passing a law prohibiting school employees from striking, and claims it has the power to stop the national courts from reviewing the constitutionality of the law.
What's the use of having national standards of human rights if a part of the country can violate the standard at will? Canada must put an end to this.
Perhaps the national courts can rule that this exception to their authority is invalid.
George Monbiot: the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, at the start of the Mesozoic era, seems to have been caused by the burning of lots of oil deposits in the ground. It made so much CO2 that a large part of the globe was lifeless for 5 million years.
The causes of that global heating episode were quite different from the situation today, but the effects today could be similar. What is not certain is how much global heating we will cause, this time.
A study provides information about some of the US's many secret wars that were authorized by the 2021 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
The 2022 Authorization for Use of Military Force is separate: that authorized Dubya's invasion of Iraq. The US Congress should repeal both.
Many Big Food companies agreed that we must reform agriculture to avoid risk of disaster.
Senate report: Republicans' crusade against women's reproductive freedoms has created national chaos that is a mortal threat to women's health.
"Home compostable" plastics don't compost well enough for that disposal to be viable.
I received a gift recently that was cushioned by "peanuts", but instead of styrofoam, they were made of spun cornstarch. When exposed to water, they dissolve in a minute.
(satire) Republican Voters Given Toll-Free Number To Call If They Witness Legitimate Vote.
The Lancet reports that global heating is already damaging people's health globally, and the world's medical systems are not strong enough to cope. In addition, since decarbonization is going too slowly, that problem is getting worse.
The US needs to mine more lithium, but the mines raise issues.
I know of three kinds of issues about operating a mine of any kind: * Archaeological sites, including art. These are part of the heritage of humanity; mines must not run a risk of damaging them. * Natural ecosystems. In the past, miners disregarded the danger of pollution from the mine, and lobbied governments to get out of their way and let them neglect the pollution issue.
The result was, naturally, that mines have polluted many areas. Whenever a mine shut down, it dumped the burden of cleanup on the public.
We must develop a new, cleaner method of mining, which we could call zero pollution mining, and require mines to use it. A mine must set aside funds for future shutdown costs each year it operates, in an account it cannot withdraw money from, at a rate set by the an environmental agency.
If that makes the extracted mineral more expensive, so be it. The cost of avoiding the need for future cleanup, and carrying out whatever part can't be avoided, should be part of the price of the mineral. * Someone considers that patch of land to be sacred,
If adjustment to the plan will make some people happier, let's do so. But this is a secondary issue, not as important as preventing global disaster.
Musk personally spread an absurd conspiracy theory on Twitter. This shows he is not fit to be in charge of such a company.
Aged Britons are being cut off from many activities that now require a snoop-phone,
There are utilities that won't accept payment by check. That problem is easy to fix: pass a law that important businesses must accept payment by check and must make appointments by phone.
The author takes for granted that snoop-phones and online dis-services are fine things, and the only problem is that they are hard for poor Doris to adapt to. It never crosses her mind that they might be unjust as well. I don't use them because they are unjust and unacceptable. I'm sure I could learn to use them, but I won't yield to them. I suffer some of the same annoyances, though not as many -- the US is not cutting off the traditional non-digital options for old activities such as paying bills.
Planet roasters claim that policies to curb global heating make energy more expensive. Actually, these investments do the opposite.
If we had started pushing hard for renewable energy 15 years ago, we would not be having much of a price spike now.
What does increase prices is a carbon tax — but that money should be handed out to poor people. All in all, the carbon tax will reduce the cost of living for them, when you count the increased support they will receive.
The article refers to planet roasters as "conservatives", but that term is misleading.
A thug with a pattern of violence and cover-ups killed Kumanjayi Walker, an aboriginal man, while trying to wrongly arrest him.
The arrest was wrong because it was based on mistaken identity. Everyone makes mistakes like that, but members of disprivileged groups often learn to expect brutality to follow such mistakes. And it appears that that particular thug enjoyed the opportunity to brutalize someone.
Republicans are instituting a culture of fear in the parts of the US they control, by asking people to denounce acquaintances for things that previously they had no need to hide, but can now be occasions for repression. For instance, having children who are transgender.
FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members, for threatening violence and preparing machine guns to carry it out.
An experiment found that psilocybin cured depression in around 1/3 of the test subjects.
I am surprised that the study did not include the clearest form of control group — some patients whose treatment did not actually include any psilocybin. The contrast in results between 25mg of psilocybin and 1mg may have demonstrated that the benefits are real, but a placebo control would have given more certainty.
Trump allies saw Clarence Thomas as key to efforts to challenge 2020 election.
In general, we can't blame a person simply because others expect per cooperation in doing wrong. In the case of Thomas, he gave them reason with his own actions to expect his help in attacking democracy.
Musk took a stab at endorsing right-wing disinformation.
I would guess that he was exploring how to make use of the power that he obtained by buying Twitter. We don't yet know what he will settle on, but we can see his decision process isn't mainly a matter of judging what is right.
US citizens: call on the FTC to ban surveillance-based advertising.
This is not enough to make us safe from massive surveillance.
Sentenced to life for stealing $14: "I needed help, but was given jail."
This extreme treatment is common in California under the "three strikes" law. "By design, the law has targeted crimes of poverty, like small-time robbery, burglary, breaking windows, purse snatching".
Like the War on Drugs, these laws are designed to put a lot of people in prison. At that point, many of them are compelled to do work for private companies at a pittance, and that pushes down wages for Americans who are not in prison.
US citizens: call on the EPA to adopt its proposed rule to designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances.
Australia is hosting an international conference about mining, including coal mining, and threatens protesters with harsh punishments if they get in the way.
Thugs are visiting activists at home to threaten them personally. Here's an example: environmental activist Alister Ferguson.
The repressive law that has been applied to Ferguson was passed by the right-wing government that remains in power in New South Wales. How twisted it is to pin the label of "terrorists" on environment defenders instead of on coal miners.
(satire) Texas Launches Outreach Program To Provide Troubled Teens With Assault Rifles.
- Ellekan, an islet in Marshall Islands, has been reduced to a pile of sand in the middle of the reef. Those who loved it have already held its funeral.*
Many other low islands face inundation due to global heating, and their inhabitants will become climate refugees. Entire countries will be wiped out in this way.
The whole territory of the United States won't be inundated, only a small percentage. But it includes parts of big cities, so the inhabitants displaced will amount to millions. Likewise in China, India, and Europe.
Sale of oil and gas permits casts shadow over [Congo] rainforest. (It is the world's second-largest rainforest.)
In the UK, and probably elsewhere, high earners emit far more greenhouse gases than poor people. This is a reason to establish a carbon tax.
A bizarre combination of laws limits how much you or I could donate to an election campaign, but billionaires can lawfully spend millions on them.
The US should take the opportunity of Lula's election to strengthen ties with Brazil.
The article cites Brazil's "youthful population" as a strength. To me it is an alarm bell: "Danger, fast population growth!" What is the obvious way for the increased population to get more food and income? Cut down forests, of course. Protecting wilderness and curbing population growth must go hand in hand.
Governor Kemp's family has a long history in Georgia. One of his forebears legalized slavery in Georgia so he could import slaves for his plantation.
Kemp's school censorship law makes it dangerous for teachers to teach that history.
US judge blocks $2.2bn Penguin Random House merger.
We should never allow megacorps to merge with any other businesses.
All the main Israeli political parties advocate annexation and/or violence as the policy towards Palestine.
US citizens: call on Congress to establish an ethical code for the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to establish an ethical code for the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Lula won the Brazilian presidential election by 51% to 49%.
It is disturbing that 49% voted for a fascist like Bolsonaro, but Lula's victory is clear. With Bolsonaro's main supporters acknowledging Lula's victory. Bolsonaro won't be in a position to try to stay in power.
A fanatical Republican broke into Nancy Pelosi's home, armed and planning to attack her. She was out, so he attacked her husband instead.
Republican leaders cannot fail to know that their barely veiled support for violence will inspire real attacks. That must be their intention.
I think it is a mistake to equate violent fanaticism with mental illness. Mental illness only rarely leads people to contemplate violence towards others. Violent political fanatics often do at least contemplate it.
An experienced ad-man explains that right-wing billionaires' money is effectively buying US elections nowadays — by convincing the public to focus on side issues.
Planetary heating could reach a catastrophic 2.9°C by the end of the century without immediate action from the world's largest polluters.
Extinction Rebellion scientists who glued themselves to a UK government building were accused of criminal damage. They were acquitted because the government could not show their protest had actually damaged anything.
It turns out that the new "bivalent" booster vaccines work as well as the original vaccine, but not better.
Inspectors found that a UK camp for immigrants is unsafe, understaffed and "wretched."
Of course it is. All public services in the UK have been reduced in this way to wretchedness, all are understaffed, and many are also unsafe. That is called "austerity" or "Tory budget cuts."
US politicians and candidates, as a class, rarely raise the issue of poverty and the suffering it causes.
Street crime in the US increased in 2017 and 2018. What may have caused this, and how are politicians responsible?
Musk took a stab at endorsing right-wing disinformation.
I would guess that he was exploring how to make use of the power that he obtained by buying Twitter. We don't yet know what he will settle on, but we can see his decision process isn't mainly a matter of judging what is right.
Ukraine (probably) attacked and damaged several Russian naval ships in port in Sebastopol. In response, Putin cancelled the deal allowing food exports from Ukraine.
Zelensky said that Putin had already unofficially blocked food exports and was only pretending that the deal still operated. That would make it legitimate to retaliate with a naval attack. But what the world really needs is a resumption of food exports.
Months ago, before this deal, I suggested that Ukraine could attack a Russian oil tanker returning empty to Novorossiysk to pick up a new cargo.
Then, after the food deal was agreed, I said that as long as the deal continued, Ukraine should refrain from any attacks on Russian shipping.
Now that the deal has been terminated, that conclusion no longer applies. Ukraine could put tremendous pressure on Putin by interdicting Russia's main channel for oil export. If Ukraine offers to allow oil commerce to proceed provided the food commerce can too, that would be a magnanimous offer.
Later Putin said Russia would resume the food export deal. Whether he will implement the deal honestly remains to be seen, but let's hope he does.
Greta Thunberg accuses the Cop27 climate summit of being mere greenwashing.
It is already clear that they are not set up to bring about the rapid changes that could perhaps avoid disaster.
Brazil's federal police, commanded by a supporter of Bolsonaro, set up road blocks on election day in areas where Lula had a lot of support — apparently as voter suppression.
Fifteen Nobel Prize winners called on world leaders visiting Egypt next week for the … COP27 climate talks … to demand freedom for political prisoners, "most urgently, the Egyptian-British writer and philosopher, Alaa Abd El Fattah, now six months into a hunger strike and at risk of death.".
Egypt is applying its usual extreme repression to climate protesters, even though they are not protesting against Egypt.
Fifteen Nobel Prize winners called on world leaders visiting Egypt next week for the … COP27 climate talks … to demand freedom for political prisoners, "most urgently, the Egyptian-British writer and philosopher, Alaa Abd El Fattah, now six months into a hunger strike and at risk of death.".
Jokes about Paul Pelosi aren’t just in bad taste. They normalize [and advocate] political violence.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban members of Congress from owning or trading stocks.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on the leaders of American Jewish and Pro-Israel organizations to condemn far-right extremism in Israel.
US citizens: call on Congress to increase the income tax rate for high incomes.
That alone is not enough — we also need to limit the deductions and dodges that rich people use to avoid taxation on most of their income.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: please vote for Democrats, including all the offices. Don't neglect the secondary offices, such as secretary of state (in charge of running elections in many states) as well as state legislators.
Many Democrats are "centrist" — they are plutocratists. A few months ago I donated to organizations that campaigned, in primaries, to replace them with progressive Democrats. The "centrists" running now are the ones we did not succeed in replacing. With Republicans today supporting disinformation and trying to steal control of the US, even a plutocratist Democrat means one less Republican to do this.
Therefore I urge you to defeat those Republicans. Our chance to replace the current plutocratist Democrats will come in the Democratic primaries of the next election.
Sanders Urges Massive Midterm Voter Turnout to "Preserve American Democracy."
The oil transported by the East African crude oil pipeline will, when transported and burned, generate vast amounts of greenhouse gas, far more than the countries of Uganda and Tanzania through which it would run.
The Federal Trade Commission is using its authority to fight monopolies that use their power to crush farm businesses.
Arguing that the main British banks have been controlling the UK's economic policy since the 1980s.
'Cold Hard Threat to Democracy': GOP (the Republican Party) Sowing Chaos at Polls Even Before Election Day.
A plan to protect New York City from storm surges would cost $50 billion to construct, and would perhaps save $300 billion in damage over the rest of this century.
But if global heating speeds up, and sea level rises faster, it will become inadequate sooner.
Designing US government policies based on economic optimization has led to very bad results.
Like the author, I advocate a carbon tax, but not based on trying to calculate the "amount of damage" that each ton of CO2 will cause. I see it as flexible a way to make businesses decarbonize their practices faster.
Bullhead City, Arizona, prosecuted Norma Thornton for handing out food to the homeless.
The charges were dropped, and now she is suing the city for "criminalizing kindness." Bravo!
In the 1980s, San Francisco repeatedly arrested activists of Food Not Bombs were prosecuted for handing out food to the homeless. That city goes to extremes in persecuting homeless people.
Putin has sent 80,000 conscripts into Ukraine, and many are fighting on the front line. They have slowed Ukraine's advance.
I would expect that many of them want an opportunity to surrender, but is that actually happening?
The UK is making progress against the racism expressed, in school and office, by discrimination against kinky hair.
Contrast: some progressive Democrats in Congress asked for direct negotiations between the US and Putin, over Ukraine's head. This could only make a difference if it becomes a pathway to handing part of Ukraine or some Ukrainians to Putin.
Some Republicans in Congress (or running for it) simply don't care what happens to Ukraine, and are ready to let Putin have all or part of Ukraine
just to be done with it.
I think those Democrats' proposal is misguided, but I understand their wish to end the suffering caused by the war. I doubt that the Republicans care about that.
Musk probably bought Twitter for the same reason that sickeningly rich people throughout history have become press barons: to try to control the conversation.
Here's a list of occasions when Musk tried to censor people whose statements caused inconvenience for him.
To prevent Twitter from being a sinkhole for billions of dollars per year, Musk needs to keep advertisers happy by discouraging messages they won't like.
Over 500 million children (or perhaps minors) face frequent heat waves, which tend to damage their health. By 2050, that could rise to over 2 billion.
Italian fascists celebrated Mussolini's takeover of the Italian government, 100 years ago. Will the right-wing government, which certainly sympathizes with fascism, seriously oppose the fascists? If not, they will provide the fascists with cover for expanding their power.
- Billions of dollars ostensibly committed to addressing the impacts of the climate crisis in poorer countries are not being delivered.*
Republican-dominated state legislatures are fabricating creative new excuses for making elections unfair, hoping that the Republican-dominated Supreme Court will rule them legitimate.
Europe must try not to cut off contacts with Russians in general. We need more understanding between Russians and Europeans/Americans.
The US supermarket business is already far too concentrated. Just 4 companies made 2/3 of US grocery sales in 2019.
To allow two large companies to merge would result in neighborhoods with no supermarket near by, and would raise the price of the least expensive foods of many kinds, which are the store brands.
We can't afford US Congress wavering in its support for Ukraine.
I agree with the general position stated in this article. Putin's eagerness to arrest Ukrainian civilians, kill some, and force most of them rest into servitude in Russia, adds strength to the conclusion.
We will eventually need negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end the war, but those negotiations won't achieve anything until Putin is willing to accept peace on terms that do not subjugate Ukraine and Ukrainians.
Fears Bolsonaro may not accept defeat as son cries fraud before Brazil election.
Bolsonaro's campaign relies on bribery using government funds.
Funds have been designated to help poor countries cope with global heating effects, but the funds are not reaching those countries.
Describing two occasions during the Cuban missile crisis when war almost started between the US and the USSR due to confusion.
Donald Trump Isn't the Biggest Grifter in This Country. The Republican Party Is.
It is customary to call Republicans "conservative". It was partly true, decades ago, but nowadays it is simply false, as they are busy tearing up Americans' way of life in order to build an army of fanatics.
The EU pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, but has not implemented policies to make this happen.
To rear fewer cattle in the EU will not help if the EU imports meat instead. That would transfer the cattle's methane emissions to some other country but not eliminate the emissions. To achieve this necessary goal would require either reducing the emissions per unit of meat or milk produced, or reducing the amounts of meat and milk going into products sold in the EU.
The former may perhaps be possible (I don't know) with different breeds of cattle or different feed. But there is not time to develop them, not before 2030. It would have to be done using existing methods.
Kanye West has been giving out hints of antisemitism for 10 years, but only recently made it so blatant that people and businesses couldn't avoid noticing it. Previously, people who wished to disregard it found no difficulty in doing so.
I don't particularly like rap, except when it's parody and makes me laugh, like Can't Watch This by Weird Al, so I never paid attention to West except when I read in national news that he had showed support for the corrupter. That was enough to motivate me to disregard any further news about him.
UK music industry to implement anti-racism code of conduct from 2023. This code applies to how businesses treat workers. It looks like a good plan to me.
Republicans are trying to show how determined they are to make it hard for poor and hard-working people to vote — by proposing federal laws to do so.
Those bills can't possibly pass this year; the reason for them is specifically to win support, in the coming election, from people who don't want to allow Democrats to vote.
A petition to Uber stops just short of mentioning the crucial changes we ought to fight for. Namely, to stop making customers run nonfree software, and stop making them identify themselves.
Identifying and tracking people is an injustice even if you don't sell use of that data to anyone else. Whereas if you don't identify and track people, the advertising problem disappears too.
The Supreme Court will hear a case about whether section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives platforms a right to make recommendation engines recommend anything whatsoever on the site.
I think that regulating the recommendation engines is a good idea. It might be a way to make those platforms take care not to recommend bigotry, hatred, violence, disinformation, and QAnonsense, without blocking or banning any point of view.
If it makes surveillance companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook less profitable, hooray!
A judge in Québec ruled that allowing thugs to stop drivers for no specific reason is unconstitutional. The reason is that thugs often choose drivers to stop based on prejudice, for instance racism.
The US accuses Russia and China of blocking the creation of new protected marine zones near Antarctica.
New Zealand Uber drivers win landmark case declaring them employees. At least, some of them will be employees. Just which ones is not yet clear.
Anyway, that's the right policy as regards gig workers who work under the direction of a company. I hope the drivers for Uber will be treated better in the future.
This does not cure the basic injustice of Uber towards its customers. So I will continue my stance of refusing to board an Uber car. Protect your freedom and privacy — don't be a customer of Uber.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate the debt ceiling.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: tell the Department of Justice that anyone who tried to overturn 2020 election results must be held accountable to the full extent of the law.
Egypt has cancelled events inside the climate conference where NGOs planned to invite scientists to meet visiting politicians.
'Not a Single Global Indicator Is on Track' to Reverse Deforestation by 2030.
Global deforestation reduction pledge [for 2030] will be missed without urgent action, say researchers.
It's not enough to have "grownups" as political leaders. We need grownups that feel compassion for poor people rather than for fortunes.
Farmers in Kenya are selling some of their old baobab trees, which they want to get rid of to use that land.
There may be valid reasons to want to preserve the old baobab trees in Kenya, and/or cultivate new ones. However, that aside, transplanting some (provided they can actually take root and thrive in their new homes) is not particularly bad, especially if the farmers would otherwise have cut them down. It is absurd to claim this is some sort of crime.
The concept of "biopiracy" is used here with a meaning I had not seen before, but it is just as bogus as the other meaning.
Australia's Covid lockdown rules found to have lacked fairness and compassion.
Massachusetts closed various sorts of stores and group activities, but did not have a "lockdown" in the usual sense.
Human Rights Watch Condemns Qatar Over Arrests, Abuse of LGBTQ+ People Ahead of World Cup.
(satire) Netflix Limits Users To One Eye Per Screen.
Seriously, Netflix treats users unjustly. Please don't yield to that — instead, flick off Netflix!
(satire) Biblical Historians Reveal Jesus Christ Chose Stage Name To Sound Less Jewish.
Ohio Republicans subsidize the right-wing disinformation of a "crisis pregnancy center", but not the medical services of Planned Parenthood.
Will governments allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Putin for the crime of aggressive war? The US may try to protect Dubya from a similar prosecution for conquering and occupying Iraq — a war which he started without grounds or need, based on lies.
Dubya deserves to be prosecuted for that crime, and I would love to see him imprisoned for it.
Bitcoin miners bought a mostly disused fossil fuel power plant in New York State to use solely to power their mining computers. People in the state launched a campaign that denied it an updated permit for its intensified operations.
The Nevada Republican candidate for Secretary of State (in charge of elections) has extended his election lies to cover Rep. Pelosi other members of Congress.
Millions of Americans get federal medical benefits (Medicaid) and food benefits due to a federal medical emergency proclamation that could end on Jan 11 if Biden does not extend it.
A group of people with guns were found hanging around near a ballot drop box in Arizona, evidently to intimidate potential voters.
To increase the intimidating effect, they wore clothes suggestive of soldiers.
30 progressive Democrats privately signed a letter in July calling for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. It was published and sent to Biden just now, and provoked much opposition.
If it were possible to work out a just peace with Putin, one that avoided crowning his attack on Ukraine with success, I might be in favor of that — but he's not having it.
Total agreement with me is too much to demand of the politicians I support. I support Ayanna Pressley because of the many issues on which she fights for the rights and well-being of non-rich Americans, despite disagreeing with her on this issue.
One journalist's struggle to find out about US military operations in Africa. AFRICOM won't admit where its bases are or what countries it is fighting in.
Prime Monster Sunak was educated in an elite school that teaches rich boys to be greedy but not at all compassionate.
He keeps a lot of money in a secret account in the Cayman Islands so that no one can tell what he invests in. This means he has continual opportunities for insider trading.
Former Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann … called on European lawmakers to take on the "disproportionate" and "undemocratic" power held by tech companies such as Uber.
He recalled the "almost unlimited finance" executives had to lobby and silence drivers with legal disputes.
- MacGann said it would be unfair for drivers to be required to hire expensive lawyers and go to labour courts to prove they were employees.*
I agree with what he said, but he surely did not mention the injustice of requiring customers to run a nonfree app on a nonfree operating system (iOS or Android), and identifying themselves to pay. This adds up to tracking the public's movements — something that a free society must ensure no one can do.
New York City responded to increased violent crime in the subways by pushing out homeless people who were living there.
Does this make sense? I wonder what fraction of violent crimes in the subway are committed by homeless people. My guess is that it is minuscule, because the factors that could make you homeless have little to do with the factors that could make you violent. My guess is that this is simply a way to "arrest the usual suspects" and show that you're "doing something about it."
If the city's night-mayor has any evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
I also guess that an increase in the number of cops patrolling in the subway will change little, because criminals that commit crimes for profit and can think about it will simply commit their crimes where no cop is present. However, the patrols might result in catching more of the criminals who are mentally incompetent to plan like that.
Emperor penguins face extinction as global heating eliminates the sea ice they depend on.
San Francisco decided to build another public toilet. The project will cost 1.7 million dollars and take 13 years to finish.
Building dedicated public toilets as separate facilities is a surrender to business. The cheap way to address this need is to require all restaurants, whenever open, to permit any orderly person to enter and use the toilet. If a restaurant complains about the cost of fulfilling this requirement, just invite it to move to a place with less pedestrian traffic.
Xi has imposed total repression, strict even by comparison to the CCP of ten years ago. The only way one can criticize the government is by writing in a public toilet.
The author left China in 2009, and says that the straitjacket of repression in China today makes the country unrecognizable to her now.
Xi Jinping's party purge prompts fears of greater Taiwan invasion risk.
In the 1980s, the British government had a department whose mission was to write objective nonpartisan descriptions of government practices and rules. Thatcher turned it into an advertising agency.
Arguing that the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would help large US newspapers get more advertising money out of adtech companies, but would not help support local newspapers or local journalism.
Robert Reich: That the US has inflation, like most other countries, is not the fault of the Democrats in office, but they must confront the issue honestly.
The ACLU asked the Supreme Court to rule that laws prohibiting specific kinds of boycotts are unconstitutional, after one federal appeals court ruled to the contrary.
The authoritarian campaign to prohibit boycotting Israel has put the US in danger of broad-spectrum plutocratist authoritarianism.
Alan Singer: Understanding History in the "Age of the Big Lie."
Singer refers to E.H. Carr, who claimed that "Concern with the future is what really motivates the study of the past. I disagree, because I agree with Singer's concluding paragraph: there are many possible motivations and purposes in studying history.
In particular, it can be interesting to study history seeking the causes and explanations of the present, but we need to avoid transferring our present-day thinking and moral ideas anachronistically to people of the past.
The Chinese consul in England who ordered his staff to kidnap and attack a protester, and participated personally in the attack, claims that he was justified because the protest signs constituted an attack against China.
This statement reflects China's contempt for dissent and freedom of speech. It illustrates how the Chinese government is a force for tyranny and repression. Alas, we can find similar views in the US too. Right-wing bullies, including the wrecker himself, frequently call for, and carry out, violence against people for disagreeing with them. At heart, would-be American tyrants are not very different from Chinese tyrants.
We also find progressives who take a similar stance, equating expression of right-wing views, or even depicting events those progressives condemn, to violence. They may claim to be "harmed" by the mere sight of them.
If we join with would-be tyrants in equating criticism with violence, we will have no basis to condemn right-wing violence except that we disagree with the right-wing views.
Just recently the leader of the Proud Boys was invited to speak at Penn State University, by a group of right-wing students. Progressive students demanded the university ban the talk.
I don't agree with the Proud Boys position any more than those students do, but if the disapproval of a group with some power is enough to ban a speech, lots of views will be banned.
On the other hand, if that speech would amount to a call to violence, that could be a valid reason to stop it.
- Publicly subsidized insurers are jacking up prices [on their Medicare Advantage plans] while Americans lose coverage.*
2/3 of Britons support nonviolent direct action to protect the environment.
I'm impressed by their ability to value long-term well-being above short-term inconvenience.
Maha-Rishi Sunak is about to choose to crush the poor so as to reduce the UK's debt. He'd rather cause great suffering than raise taxes.
However, with most Britons now in poverty, they should not have to pay any tax.
He has millions and his wife has hundreds of millions. We call him Rich Sunak.
The UK could raise a lot of money by closing the loophole that many rich UK citizens (including Sunak's wife) use to pay very little tax.
After a series of ever-more-radical right-wing prime monsters pushing for ever-deeper political and economic separation from the EU, Britons are waking up to the idea that it was a mistake to leave the EU.
Many years ago, I said that splitting from the EU would have horrible results with plutocratists in charge, but could have good results with antiplutocratists in charge. Splitting would enable the plutocrats to rampage through the UK unrestrained by EU laws, if the UK government were on their side. At the same time, EU laws impose a considerable amount of plutocracy, so leaving the EU would make it possible for the UK to have less.
Now that the "Labour" Party has made sure it can never be a channel to oppose plutocracy, I see little hope that the UK could make positive use of being outside the EU. So it may as well rejoin.
George Monbiot: Britain is so deeply broken that it will need more than an election to fix it.
Evidence casts doubt on the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is asking for a new trial.
Illegal fishing in poor countries' waters is denying local people their food, and destroying ecosystems.
A couple of New Zealand travel bloggers were jailed for months for trying to drive across Iran.
Perhaps it was because they were driving an American make of car, which Iran has prohibited. But that seems unlikely.
Cut meat consumption to two burgers a week to save planet, study suggests. Public transport [must be] expanded about six times faster than its current rate. And the world must stop increasing the use of methane (natural gas).
Mousetraps Pun:
I told a gathering that I was in favor of mousetraps. A mouse replied, claiming that they are de-bait-able.
Biden's Labor Department has proposed an employment rule that would classify the drivers of Uber and Lyft as employees.
This would be a big step forward for employee's rights, but it won't do anything about the injustice of Uber and Lyft to the _passengers_: making them run nonfree software (an app) and identify themselves (enabling surveillane). This should be forbidden.
So I will continue to refuse to get into an Uber or Lyft car. I go out of my way to get a real taxi that I can board anonymously and pay with cash. Or I take a bus. Or I walk.
In some places, such as New York City, even taxis are part of a surveillance machine. A cab driver there told me that all NYC taxis are required to have cameras that transmit the passengers' face images immediately by radio to the city department of massive surveillance. Such surveillance is a bigger threat than terrorism, because tracking people threatens to subjugate everyone.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to co-sponsor the Resolution Recognizing the Human Rights to Utilities (electric, phone, internet, water, etc).
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Republicans blocked funding for COVID-19 vaccines and testing. As a result, next year vaccination will cost around $110.
Many Americans, who are on the brink of penury and can barely afford food and heat, will go without vaccination. That's unjust for them, and dangerous for everyone. Those who are not current on vaccination are more likely to spread the virus — to you or anyone else.
Catching COVID-19 if you're vaccinated still has a substantial chance of incapacitating you for months or years, so don't take a foolish risk. Obtain N95 masks and use them as a precaution whenever you are near other people in an enclosed space. That's what I do, and I am doing it right now. I am in an airplane, and I am going to keep my N95 mask on until I am outside the terminal after arrival.
Starmer is trying to make Labour the preferred choice of British business. Perhaps it should change its name to the "Shareholding/Management Party."
Vague glimpses of the developments in the war between Ethiopia and Tigray show that Ethiopia is doing great harm to Tigrayan civilians.
I have never seen enough clear information on what is happening in Ethiopia to understand what is going on in that war, or why. I wish I knew.
Chairman Xi has chosen China's highest officials (aside from him) based on personal obedience to him.
In the short term, this will encourage grave mistakes. It will also very likely leave China with weak leaders whenever Xi dies or retires. But that could be ten years from now.
China's repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong has brought China a well-deserved increase in world condemnation.
Can we envision a way that China could become a free, successful country?
Qatar made a start at reforming its unjust labor laws, but undid it when the big employers complained. Once again it is thoroughly unjust.
Parts of Australia blocked UN inspectors from visiting their prisons to check for respect for human rights.
Putin's tactic of destroying Ukraine's electric generators is having devastating effect. The drones and missiles are cheap, so the Putin forces fire many of them, day after day. Even though Ukraine destroys most of them, each power plant damaged will be out of service for weeks.
Putin's forces are also talking about blowing up a major dam near Kherson. This might destroy a lot of the infrastructure around Kherson, and maybe much of the city itself.
This year's election shows that the billionaires' power to buy elections is almost total.
It includes the influence of the mainstream media — which belong to billionaires — which deflect attention from the issues that electing the right politicians could fix, to other issues such as inflation.
Harris County in Texas has asked for federal election monitors to make sure the state's Republican election monitors don't intimidate voters.
YouTube and Facebook letting Brazil election disinformation spread, NGO says. Global Witness produced many misleading ads and ads that attacked the election, and asked for approval from YouTube and Facebook. YouTube appeoved all of them, and Facebook many of them. The organization did not actually run the misleading ads.
When Florida prison thugs beat up prisoners, sometimes they break their necks and paralyze them. They did this to Craig Ridley, and he starved to death.
They left food for him every day, but he was unable to pick it up and eat it. He told them he was paralyzed, but they insisted he was malingering.
Cancellation is done by right-wing bullies and left-wing bullies, but the right-wing bullies often utilize state power and spread much more fear.
The state of Victoria, in Australia, has plans to build renewable electric generation facilities and produce 95% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2035.
The new generating facilities will be owned mostly by the state.
Campaigners are suing Amazon for a practice promoting "special offers" that are not actually better deals for the customer, but are presented to give the impression that they are better deals.
The Economist advocates legalizing cocaine, to reduce the danger from contaminants and reduce its corrupting power.
Australia plans to make another try at laws to strip citizenship from people suspected of involvement with terrorism.
Australia's previous laws that allowed ministers to cancel citizenship based on suspicion were ruled unconstitutional.
The proposed replacement will be somewhat less unjust, simply because there will be some sort of court hearing to decide. But will that hearing be supposed to respect the same rights that a trial is supposed to respect? I fear it will follow a lesser standard, and that would make it an injustice.
Exile is a severe punishment, and it should not be imposed without the same safeguards that imprisonment would require.
I suggest that if a country wants to take away someone's citizenship over alleged terrorism, it should first arrest per, then put per on trial for that terrorism. If the accused chooses to remain in exile to avoid the trial, this achieves the same goal indirectly. However, person must have the right to return and face trial so as to clear per name.
Laws to empower a government to impose temporary exile on a citizen are likewise unjust. Any form of arbitrary state power can be useful for "managing risks", but that is not enough to excuse it.
Bogus Johnson abandoned his attempt to become Prime Monster again, with the parting bogus claim that he would probably have won and was withdrawing from the race only for the sake of "party unity".
Can you trust an app as a medium for "confidential" communication with psychotherapists or mental health coaches?
Obviously not — cr…apps are made for snooping.
China continues to use enforced quarantines trying to stamp out Covid-19, though the evolution of the virus makes that ever more of a struggle.
- Increasingly strict monitoring and restriction over daily activities. When that is used only based on Covid-19 exposure and infection, it's a pain in the neck, but perhaps not worse than what would happen without these controls. But the same computer system is the ideal base for repression.
Is it possible to develop a system that lets you show your Covid status at the door of a building or store, but won't say who you are? It should be inherently anonymous. Of course, China would not use that even if it were available, but other countries could.
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The inconvenience of quarantine. I think that is less thsn the inconvenience of being likely to catch rampaging Covid-19.
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The harshness of quarantine measures. It sounds like China enforces quarantine without doing anything to cushion the effect. The quarantine may be necessary, but dehumanizing the patient is not.
I wonder how people in quarantine are supposed to get food to eat. Is it delivered to them? All sorts of things can go wrong with such a system, when you are compelled to use it and it is run by people who act hastily and don't respect the people they protect.
- Deadly fluke accidents happen in any society; no society can eliminate them. These flukes may draw more attention now because of Covid-19, but that does not make them a major problem for society.
For instance, is the danger of dying from a bus collision in China more today than it was in 2019? I doubt it. If it wasn't a big issue then, it isn't a big issue now.
The price of medical insurance in the US has increased 24% in the past year. The cost of actual medical care has not increased anywhere near so much.
This pattern has continued for several years, with 2020 as the sole exception. The insurance companies are gouging.
The article ends with a comparison between this and the low price of a TV set. A modern TV set is a surveillance device — they are cheap because surveillance is part of the price.
Lawyers and law firms have come to view their work as an "industry" rather than as a "profession". The consequence, often, is that they unhesitatingly undertake to do the nastiest jobs for the nastiest rich bastards.
Privatized prisons fund lobbying for laws to criminalize homelessness.
Privatization of prisons creates a force that will always lobby for imprisoning more people. This is why we must abolish privatized prisons.
New variants of SARS-Cov-2, descendants of Omicron, are unaffected by the monoclonal antibody treatment. We need to develop a new one, but Republicans won't allow it.
They rejected funding for treatment and prevention of Covid-19.
Biden implores US oil companies to pass on record profits to consumers.
How pitiable it is to see the US government reduced by Republicans to begging callous businesses to reduce prices — when it ought to legislate to tax those businesses togive aid to the poor. A few weeks ago he implored Crown Prince Bone Saw to reduce prices. Won't he ever learn that imploring your enemies does not have good results?
An appeals court ruled (at the first level) that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional.
I expect this case will go to the Supreme Court and that the plutocratist majority will wipe out the CFPB.
How the Patriotic Millionaires recommend revamping US taxes so that the rich pay a higher fraction of their income, instead of a lower fraction.
So-Called GOP "Solutions" to Inflation Are Just Another Giveaway to the Rich and Corporations.
India has arbitrarily stopped Kashmiri journalists from departing on trips to other countries. Now Sanna Irshad Mattoo has been barred from leaving for the US to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
YouTube claims to give the user ways to influence what videos it will recommend to per, but researchers report that these features empirically prove to have little effect.
The story errs in asserting that users "consume" YouTube videos. Watching a video does not use it up; it remains available to be shown to others.
For your freedom's sake, don't visit youtube.com directly, Use the proxy system of invidio.us instead.
Chinese agents in the US have been arrested for trying to pressure a Chinese exile to go to China.
Iran's thugs have arrested around 12,500 people for protesting, and killed around 250. They claim to have crushed the protests.
The new right-Wing Swedish government has made the environmental ministry a part of the energy, business, and industry ministry. This is a clear statement of a policy to allow the powerful to plunder and pollute almost without limit.
The article's statement about biofuels is based on an error, the same error that EU biofuel policy is based on. The requirement to include biofuels in fuels is supposedly a way of reducing carbon emissions, because the biofuels are supposedly renewable. But they aren't, because because producing today's biofuels uses fertilizer made from petroleum.
In the future, perhaps biofuels made by microbes will actually reduce emissions. Until then, it is harmful to require the use of biofuels as they now exist.
Ilhan Omar: We need a Marshall plan for Africa.
To do this, we need to make rich people and big companies pay a fair amount of tax: a much higher rate than the less-rich pay.
- Who would think a lying, hypocritical degenerate [such as Bogus Johnson] was the answer to this crisis? A large number of Conservatives, apparently.*
I can see why. Johnson is glib and can invent a lie to excuse almost anything, for the short term. Of course, people suspected the lies but it took ages to pin him down on one. That is why an act of hypocrisy which was small-scale by his standards caused such a scandal: it was one that could be proved. After Truss was brutally honest about plans so outrageous that Tories compelled her to resign, they may wish for Johnson's bogus glibness again — but it won't work. After so much time, his dishonesty has become impossible to disguise.
Stiglitz: the west must adjust its economy to meet the needs of war.
One adjustment is to impose a windfall profits tax.
He advocates a nonlinear price scheme for electricity. The first 90% of the electricity you used last year, you can buy at last year's price, the next 20% you can by at 1.5 times that price, and any more beyond that you would buy at a price based on current conditions.
He also advocates an end to paying farmers to grow less food. (I think this would have to be accompanied by rules to give wildlife a home in farms.)
DeMentis is having ineligible Florida voters arrested as a political show.
Those people, convicted of felonies, registered and voted because state officials told them — erroneously — that they were allowed to do so.
DeMentis knows they will be convicted of a crime for following officials' advice. Indeed, one's case has already been dismissed. But this may suffice as political grandstanding and make right-wing haters feel vicariously powerful.
Dean Baker: the corporate media artificially drum up concern about inflation.
This could be a way to advance Republican candidates, and it could be the work of the same billionaires that fund them.
Parkinson's disease is caused mainly by environmental factors. The weed killer paraquat may be one of them, and farmers who used it are suing.
Lawsuits and damages are not a very good method for deciding whether a chemical is safe to use. The US does it this way for lack of a better system. The absence of a national medical system means that the people affected by expensive diseases desperately need to sue someone and collect damages to pay for their treatment.
With a national medical system, the people who are sick would get treatment without suing. The determination of whether any particular chemical is responsible for the disease, and the decision of whether to ban it, could be made separately.
The large fully-protected marine area near Hawaii is achieving what protected marine areas often do: increasing the number of fish caught in nearby unprotected areas.
The spread of bird flu among wild birds has made it impossible to leave farmed fowl outdoors. There can no longer be "free range" poultry.
Berlusconi was recorded admitting privately to exchanging expensive gifts with Putin to "reestablish ties".
We should expect two autocratically inclined right wing rich bastards to have much in common. Naturally they are friends, unless they are rivals.
Nike makes money off progressive celebrities, then donates money to far-right candidates.
If we can make it embarrassing to be caught wearing Nike symbolism, we can put a dent in the company.
The Tories discarded Truss's plan for tax cuts for the rich. Now their goal is to reduce the deficit — quite opposite to what Truss wanted — but they plan to achieve it by cutting the UK's already-starved public services.
I've claimed that the Tories intend to wreck the NHS.
I think these cuts will finish it, as well as other services.
American[/Saudi dual] citizen tortured in [Salafi Arabian] prison for tweets he made in Florida criticizing Saudi government.
Parts of British Columbia, known for normally having a lot of rain, are now in drought.
The immediate causes of the drought are complex, but the short explanation is, "global heating." But over-logging made it worse.
Previous foreign interventions in Haiti have only helped to implant elites that serve foreign interests. There is no reason to think that another one will do Haiti any good.
I can't imagine what kind of actions have a chance of doing any good.
What a pregnancy actually looks like at nine weeks. (It doesn't look much like a human being.)
Laws proposed for the UK offer systems to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of things used in the UK, independent of where they are produced. Tories have not supported these proposals much, but perhaps they should change their stance.
Putin's new conscripts find that they are not issued proper equipment, armor, weapons, or even uniforms. Some beg their relatives to buy some of what is missing.
I can't imagine anything worse for relatives of conscripts to do than pay for equipment to enable sending those conscripts to the front. That is self-defeating.
If you don't have warm underwear, you might get sick or frostbitten and be sent to the rear. Isn't that a good outcome?
I've read that British soldiers in France in World War I, knowing that the generals' incompetent tactics would get almost all soldiers killed uselessly sooner or later, used to pray for wounds that would make them invalids — that was a chance for survival.
If they give you a fake helmet that won't protect you, how about throwing it away? Likewise, a rusted rifle that you can't rely on. Why disguise the fact that you lack necessary equipment? The army needs to know this.
On the other hand, asking your relatives for a bulletproof vest might make sense; that would tend to protect you from the hits that are likely to kill you.
Pesticide use around world almost doubles since 1990, report finds.
The pesticides harm the health of almost 400 million people every year, and are part of the cause of the great decrease of bird and insect populations.
- New Jersey on Tuesday sued five oil and gas companies and a leading fossil fuel lobby group for knowingly lying to the public about the existence of climate change and the role their products play in exacerbating human-caused global heating.*
Workers at another Apple Store voted to unionize.
If only the users of Apple computers would go on strike against the injustice in those computers,
Ukraine and the US say that Iran is selling exploding drones to Russia. Iran and Russia deny this and say that Russia is building the drones. I don't see why this should matter.
The wrecker broke the old non-nuclear deal, and Biden's weak efforts to restore it have more or less collapsed. That is quite unfortunate, but since that is the case, why does Iran's exporting exploding drones change anything significant?
Arguing that Salafi Arabia's oil output cut is an attempt to intervene in the US election against the Democratic Party. I fear it may be very effective.
Racism on the part of judges is visibly present in British courts.
If half of all lawyers have seen instances of this, that doesn't mean half the judges have demonstrated such behavior. I expect it is more like 1%. If one out of 100 judges displays racism, and those that do so do it frequently, and if the average lawyer gets to see observe 50 judges' behavior, then half of all lawyers would see a judge act racist.
It is unacceptable for any judge to act in a biased way in court. What's needed is a system for helping biased judges learn, or excluding them.
Economic growth based on real work depends on keeping workers healthy and well. The UK's right-wing government is not keeping the NHS functioning enough to achieve that.
The UK plans to deport Sri Lankan refugees in the Chagos Islands to some other country, disregarding the UN's ruling that the UK must return the Chagos Islands to the inhabitants it forcibly expelled.
The Tory MPs have gone through Prime Monster Bogus Johnson and Prime Monster Liz Truss. She resigned so that they can choose the next Prime Monster without an election.
This way they will still have a chance to enact arbitrary repression of protesters before the people are consulted about it.
This sequence of events shows that
One good thing Liz Truss did for Britain: tying trickle-down tax cuts and dooH niboR to a crushing response from markets.
- Three Louisiana men incarcerated for over 28 years were found to have been wrongfully convicted of murder on Wednesday, after newly uncovered evidence linked the original police investigation to a notorious [thug] found guilty of murder conspiracy and endemic corruption in the New Orleans police department.*
*Republicans aim to pass national "don't say gay" law.
These laws spread broad fear because Republicans have a pattern of stretching the repressive potential of any law that fits their ideology. We cannot judge these laws by interpretations that would be reasonable.
Israel has announced new apartheid rules that would greatly interfere with anything but a short visit to Palestinian territory. People born in the few countries where most Palestinian refugees live would be banned entirely from entering Palestinian territory.
Robert Reich: It's not just the Big Lie. Republicans are telling three other lies they hope will swing the midterms.
The lies are about crime (rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states), about inflation (caused in the US by corporations as well as by shortages and the war), and the IRS (which will use its new funding to go after rich cheaters that give money to Republican candidates).
UC Berkeley is "repatriating" over 50,000 "sacred items" to indigenous groups.
Imagine if everything in museums that had come from a church or temple, from an idol or a statue of a god, all ancient scriptures and myths of whatever religion, or anything that was associated with them, were "returned" to someone! There would be almost nothing left about the ancient world. It would be a calamity for anthropology.
At least there is not much danger that this will be extended to artifacts from Europe, or most of Asia. So far, people of European and Asian ancestry are not trying to extend this policy of excluding our own ancestors and past from anthropology. But there may be little trace in 2050 of cultures from the Americans, Australia and Africa to compare them with.
For what it's worth, I see nothing wrong with digging up the graves or artifacts of people related to me for the sake of scientific study. And that includes my own "remains" — but I've arranged for scientists to get first crack at those, after my death.
Chinese thugs came out of the Chinese consulate in Manchester, England, grabbed a protester, and beat him up.
British political leaders including Tories said that peaceful protesters must not be attacked in the UK, which makes an interesting contrast to the ways they plan to attack protesters in the future.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to resist Republican pressure to increase the cost of medicine.
And vote for a Democrat for Congress!
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
- The defeat of free market ideology will be worthless if it results in a fear of public spending and an unquestioning faith in the markets.*
I think we can count on Starmer to fall into that trap. He already leans that way.
World Meteorological Organization: Clean Energy Production Must Double by 2030 to Stave Off Catastrophe.
Otherwise there is an increased risk that worsening extreme weather disasters turbocharged by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis will further diminish energy security and even imperil renewable power generation.
The new de-facto head of the British government is another Tory, Jeremy Hunt. He has cancelled various tax cuts, which mostly benefit the rich. So far, so good. But he plans to cut government spending, and there is nothing superfluous to cut.
The corrupter and his Republicans hope to finish off the remains of democracy that plutocratist Democrats have not already wiped out.
Polls suggest Americans will express their resentment of rising prices by voting for Republicans. Which means, punishing non-rich Americans for it and destroying what remains of democracy.
How foolish of them, and how sad.
Over a million Americans with diabetes were unable to afford (in 2021) all the insulin they needed to take.
The Putin forces are planning to move the population of Kherson into Russia, claiming that they are going voluntarily.
To make damned sure they all "volunteer", the Putin forces claim the city will be destroyed by shelling. I guess that means they are planning to destroy the city by shelling it.
Republicans plan to cut taxes for the rich permanently.
They hope that non-rich Americans will be too busy to vote, especially when voting gets really hard for them.
Arguing that for Musk to own Twitter would threaten US national security (as well as democracy and human rights).
House [of Representatives] report alleges [the wrecker's] aides blocked [CDC] officials from providing accurate Covid-19 information during pandemic.
Belarus jails opposition activists on charges of terrorism and treason.
When Ukraine is through with Putin, he may no longer have the strength to keep Lukashenko in power.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Boundary Waters in Minnesota.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Jeremy Corbyn presents a basic economic program to repair the damage that Tories have done in 12 years in power.
US citizens: call on Wall Street banks to stop supporting a lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
A letter from a Just Stop Oil protester in prison, defending the need to overcome the British government's determination to drill more.
Oil addiction will keep the west in hock to dictators. It also helps dictators take over western countries.
Dr Anthony Fauci acknowledges: Long Covid is an "insidious" public health emergency.
He calls on Congress to put funds into research on treating it. I agree — but we already know of ways to protect people from developing long Covid: masks, distance, and improved ventilation. Every level of government should use all methods it can use to convince or require more Americans to use masks and keep distance, and help and require all work and gathering places to increase the rate of replacing the air.
Research is already starting, and it may eventually help people with various other long-term "post-viral" syndromes whose mechanisms are mysterious.
George Monbiot: Do we really care more about Van Gogh’s sunflowers than real ones?
His points, about the shocking level of repression that the UK plans to impose without trial on anyone who has participated in a protest, comparable to putting per on probation, and about the danger government plans pose to nature at every scale, are valid. But I want to quibble with the hook that he has used in the title.
Do I care more about that series of paintings (or just the one in the UK's National Gallery) than about some real sunflowers?
I think any painting by an admired artist has more value to the world than a few cut flowers in a vase. The species of sunflowers is not one I personally adore, but preventing any species' extinction is important, arguably more so than saving a famous painting. But so what?
Those comparisons are pure distraction because there is no reason to compare them. Humanity does not face a choice of "this painting or that species."
Neither did the protesters — their protest did not risk damaging the painting.
So why does the comparison suggest itself? I think it is implied, though misleadingly, by that method of protest. Even if it can't actually damage the painting, it suggests an attempt, threat or wish to do so.
That is why I think that particular form of protest is misguided. It leads people to make the misleading comparison.
A painting won't survive for millennia without help — it needs protection, conservation, and restoration. If global heating wipes out technological civilization, the humans that survive won't have the skill, tools, or spare wealth to attend to such work.
So we can argue that Just Stop Oil's goal is necessary for preserving that very painting, along with the civilization it forms a part of.
Autistic scholar Temple Grandin: The education system is screening out visual thinkers.… essential skills are being lost.
Global heating has caused hurricanes to increase in intensity faster than before. This will make them do more damage.
The Oakland thug department wants armed robots that can shoot people.
If this is allowed, the next step will be to allow robots to decide when to shoot someone, based on heuristics.
Half the sale of PFAs in the US are authorized by EPA loopholes that should not properly apply to them.
Around 15% of people in the UK can't afford enough to eat. More than half are reducing their use of heat, hot water and electricity.
It is hard for me to understand why they don't all march demanding Corbyn as their next prime minister.
Public pressure has convinced many large insurance companies to stop insuring coal mine development. Refusal is spreading in oil and gas extraction too. The article argues that this already makes it almost impossible to start a new large coal mine, except in China, which is still tears through our atmosphere. China does not allow environmentalist protests.
UK data shows authoritarian or neglectful parenting linked to higher weight in children and adolescents.
Modern life under plutocracy, with parents under stress all the time and having little time for their children, is likely to result in the kind of relationship that might make children seek comfort from junk food. This could be part cause of the increase in obesity.
- The Scottish farmed salmon industry is using loopholes to cover up evidence of environmental harm, poor animal welfare and high levels of disease, an investigation has found..*
Texas governor Abbott calls Mexican drug mobs "terrorists" while adopting gun laws that help them get lots of guns.
Criticism of The Woman King for presenting a sanitized and false picture of Dahomey, and hiding the fact that its main business was capturing Africans and selling them as slaves.
The first article I read about that movie mentioned that it was about Dahomey, and I immediately wondered how it treated this basic fact. This article shows the answer.
There may be much to appreciate in The Woman King, but this is an important flaw. In general, I'd always prefer if "based on a true story" were more true and less "based on."
Just Stop Oil has returned to protesting by blocking streets in London, and now demands subsidy for public transport as well as quick reductions in oil extraction.
Everyone: call on Amazon to radically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
You can help reduce Amazon's emissions by boycotting Amazon, as I do.
After Hurricane Ian wiped out Cuba's electric system and destroyed some buildings, Cubans protested, and the state responded with repression.
Cuban repression is wrong, now as it was in the past, but I don't think the Cuban state is responsible for the weakness of its power grid. US sanctions, increased by the wrecker, are responsible for that.
- Guatemala cracks down on protesters in the streets and in the halls of congress—where lawmakers are pushing a bill that would justify the use of deadly force.*
The London thug department allowed hundreds of "racist, corrupt and misogynist officers remain in their jobs."
Even worse, the new head of the department says he may not even have the authority to fire them.
A retired London cop says that the London thug department was "corrupt, racist and misogynistic" for the 30 years she worked there.
Atlanta thugs have a habit of harassing air passengers just as they are about to get into an airplane, and asking them to "voluntarily" answer questions about whether they are carrying illegal drugs.
Of the 400-odd passengers questioned. the thugs took the cash that 25 of them were carrying. It added up to a million dollars. Only one of those 25 was charged with a crime. How very lucrative.
A whistleblower reports that the corrupter cheated other participants in his antisocial media company by pressuring them to give shares to Melania.
Iranian government thugs attacked a girls' high school and ordered students to sing a song that praises Ayatollah Khamenei, whom they call "the dictator". They refused, so the thugs attacked them, arresting some and injuring others. One of the girls died afterwards; protesters claim she was beaten to death.
There is an ethnic element in protests in the Kurdish and Baloch regions. I wonder how strong the protests are in the rest of Iran.
How one county in Minnesota gives homeless people apartments and helps them learn how to pay for them.
The Republican candidate for governor of Arizona is suggesting, in a vague dogwhistle manner, that if she loses the election she will try to steal it by pretending that she had won it, and hope other Republicans will support lie.
This sort of conduct ought to land a candidate in prison.
It appears that the Putin forces are aiming missiles at monuments to Ukrainian historical nationalists of the past.
Putin says he aims to eliminate Ukraine as a nation. Destroying those monuments might be one method of trying.
One person argues, If you don't like climate activists staging art gallery protests, organize something better.
I think it is wrong to damage art as a protest. To make a statement, there is no need to damage things at random.
However, it turns out that Van Gogh's painting, Sunflowers, was in no danger of being harmed by the soup that protesters threw at it. It is protected behind a piece of plastic. I suppose they knew this. So there was no objective harm in protesting that way, no objective reason why they should not.
Still, that method may still have been self-defeating, influencing people such as me who did not know how the painting is protected.
Wildfires in US west causing extreme weather in other states, study finds.
The extreme weather has caused $100 million in damage, including to houses and crops.
The Tories have left Truss in position as "prime minister", but allowed a newly appointed Chancellor Hunt to reverse all her economic policy decisions. This seems paradoxical to me, but my knowledge of the UK's unwritten constitution is limited.
Practically speaking, Hunt has cancelled plans for tax cuts (mainly for the rich) that were supposed to to achieve mythical trickle-down, and is perhaps amenable to a windfall profits tax.
He has cancelled plans to limit what people pay for heating their homes, but so far he doesn't seem to intend to replace that flawed method for protecting the poor from inability to afford heating with any better method.
He also intends cuts in government programs that non-rich Britons depend on: education, medicine, and such. He seems to be ideologically opposed to even trying to protect poor people from being driven out to starve on the street while dying of illness.
Queensland lags behind the rest of Australia in renewable electricity, but now has a plan to invest big and advance.
Anti-insurrection Republican congresscritter Kinzinger is campaigning for the Democratic opponents of Republican Big Liars.
I hope this defeats them, but at the same time, counting elections honestly is just the beginning of the duties of a politician loyal to democracy. We need Democrats that will defy the plutocracy and reduce its power.
The UK's new "climate minister" is a denialist across the board. Two scientists debunk his claims that fracking benefits the environment and can lower prices in the short term.
The UK's health secretary admitted giving partial prescriptions of leftover antibiotics to others. This is very dangerous as taking a short course of antibiotics promotes resistance.
It may also be illegal in the UK, but that is less important, morally, than the fact that it can be harmful. Preventing antibiotic resistance is the responsibility of everyone — including, above all, the farms that promote resistance by dispensing pounds and pounds of antibiotics to large numbers of animals that are not even sick.
The Tory Party is rapidly self-destructing, and Britain may have a general election soon.
One lesson from this is the system of allowing the governing party's members to choose a new prime minister when one steps down is a disaster. The Tories have done this three times since they got into power, and each one was worse than the last. The right thing to do is to hold a general election.
Another lesson is that the Tory approach to leaving the European Union was too extreme. Corbyn wanted to negotiate a customs union, and in general a closer relationship that the Tories wanted. This would have been much less damaging, and might even have done some good.
We can expect Labour to return the UK to sober and sensible implementation of a somewhat gentler form of plutocracy. Maybe it will move to renewable energy faster. But non-rich Britons need bigger changes, and I doubt Labour will advocate them.
Three Republican lies corrected:
- Gun crime has increased most where gun laws are weak. Not due to criminal justice reform.
- Inflation is caused by the effects of Covid-19 (including millions incapacitated by long Covid), together with near-monopolies. Not be the (still inadequate) wage increases.
- The IRS is hiring new agents to catch rich tax dodgers. Not to harass poor people Republican style.
Ukraine accuses the Putin forces of murdering conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko for refusing to conduct an orchestra in a celebration of Putin's conquest of Kherson.
*Alaska cancels snow crab season over population decline.
King crabs are in trouble, too.
Although scientists don't know the full cause of the problem, it is clear that global heating plays a role.
The Tory Party is rapidly self-destructing, and Britain may have a general election soon.
One lesson from this is the system of allowing the governing party's members to choose a new prime minister when one steps down is a disaster. The Tories have done this three times since they got into power, and each one was worse than the last. The right thing to do is to hold a general election.
Another lesson is that the Tory appeoach to leaving the European Union was too extrame. Corbyn wanted to negotiate a customs union, and in general a closer relationship that the Tories wanted. This would have been much less damaging, and might even have done some good.
We can expect Labour to return the UK to sober and sensible implementation of a somewhat gentler form of plutocracy. Maybe it will move to renewable energy faster. But non-rich Britons need bigger changes, and I doubt Labour will advocate them.
Central banks aren't "fighting the last war", they are fighting some dimly remembered war from long ago. According to UNCTAD, it's entirely wrong way to control today's inflation.
Arguing for breaking diplomatic relations with Russia, on the grounds that Putin does not want peace except on the basis of conquest, and his "negotiations" and "diplomacy" are all dishonest.
That's 90% true, but I am not convinced. Even though there is no hope that diplomacy will lead to an acceptable peace now, that may change in the coming year. We should be ready for that. In the mean time, there are other issues to be discussed, and some of them are important. The Ukraine food export deal, by itself, is no small thing for the poor people of the world.
Two soldiers being trained by the Putin forces opened fire on the other trsinees, causing many casualties before they were killed.
Things like this happened repeatedly in the Afghan government army which was supported by the US.
Those soldiers were not from Russia, and volunteered for the Russian army. It bespeaks powerful hatred, though I am not sure what they hate or why.
Iran's regime is applying repression to the press, forcing formerly honest journalists to become puppets for the state.
If a troll farm is directed to systematically promote war crimes or crimes against humanity, can we draw a line between that and freedom or speech?
US citizens: call on Biden to acknowledge that Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory are illegal.
Cancer in adults before middle-age is increasing every decade, in many countries.
The cause is not known, but the obvious suspects are lifestyle trends (such as obesity) and environmental pollution.
US citizens: call on the the Department of Justice to investigate Govs. Abbott, DeMentis and Ducey for their human rights abuses against migrants.
The current labor shortage is a good opportunity to for businesses to start seriously considering candidates that don't have college degrees.
This could help people avoid the expensive student loans that would shackle them for life, and still get good jobs.
Both India and Pakistan have called for "return" of the Koh-i-noor diamond by the remnant of the British Empire.
These requests are silly because they are anachronistic. The Koh-i-noor was part of the spoils of conquest on several occasions, across centuries, back when despoiling after conquest was normal.
Nowadays we reject the idea that victors in war have the right to loot whatever wealth they find in a defeated country, and we try to prevent that. That is a step forward. But it is absurd to selectively denounce one specific long-ago instance of this practice, and demand "restitution" of specific pieces of loot to a previous conqueror.
On life and death for Palestinian children, in villages invaded repeatedly by Israeli soldiers who are protecting Israeli colonies that shouldn't be there in the first place.
Simple reasoning from basic facts shows that the Republican "stolen election" claim is bogus.
Bernie Sanders: Democrats shouldn't focus only on abortion in the midterms. That's a mistake.
Drought has stopped freight transportation on the Mississippi river. This is going to happen more and more in the future.
Using ground transport would enormously increase the fossil fuel required. I wonder if it is possible to correct the problem by dredging a narrow channel in the riverbed. The same amount of water would be deeper if it is narrower.
As bullshitter-supporting Republican Adam Laxalt runs for the Senate in Nevada, 14 of his relatives have endorsed Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.
Peter Thiel is a declared enemy of democracy and is spending tens of millions on politicians who aim to sabotage it.
He is also specifically working to sabotage climate defense. It follows that, unless you are old, his plan includes your probable death, and most people's death, though not right away.
And he is not the only billionaire Republican megadonor, but he is the one that is most deeply hostile to Democracy.
The movement to end the death penalty reports that 170 countries have abolished it or stopped using it.
However, some of the recalcitrant countries are executing more people now than before.
Two new studies say there's no evidence of political learning on social media, but it does increasingly teach us to hate our opponents.
The article presents a new proposed explanation for why antisocial media increases political polarization: in a big discussion about a major polarizing issue, you won't have a chance to find out that some of the people on the other side share views with you on other issues.
Iran confiscated director Mani Haghighi's passport and stopped him from attending the London film festival, where one of his films will be shown. He believes this was meant as punishment for stating his support for the protest movement.
[Human Rights Watch] Says Egypt's Pre-COP27 Silencing of Climate Voices Should Be a "Wake-Up Call."
The US election on Nov 8 will depend, as always, on volunteer poll workers — around a million of them.
A free and fair election depends on impartial poll workers.
If Kroger and Albertsons are allowed to merge, it will probably increase the prices in US supermarkets.
- Lost nets, lines and hooks (including 25 million pots and traps and 14 billion hooks) trap wildlife for years as they float in the ocean, sink to the bottom or are washed ashore.*
Proposed solutions: local governments introducing buy-backs of older fishing gear which tended to get lost more often than new equipment. Tags or labels could be attached to gear, and free facilities could be introduced at harbors to allow fishers to discard unusable nets safely.
Musk changed his mind and said SpaceX would continue to pay for Ukraine's use of Starlink satellite communications.
CSIRO (Australia's scientific research organization) had an admired program for forecasting future climate, but in 2021 a government minister forced CSIRO to shut it down.
That government, right-wing, was firmly on the planet roaster side,
so it would naturally prefer to eliminate honest and thoughtful forecasts to leave a gap for its patrons' bullshit.
It is now 16 months later — is it possible to resume what was cancelled?
CSIRO has been accused of abandoning research of importance for whatever research business wants.
DeMentis may be surprised to learn that flying refugees to Martha's Vineyard ended up helping them, indirectly.
But he won't care. His goal was to show Republicans he will find excuses to be cruel.
As climate disaster settles in on the US west, more and more effort to adapt is required.
Almost 1/5 of the world's population lives in countries that can't pay their debts. Many of them spend more on debt interest than on health, education and social protection combined. The system is headed for a collapse.
It is fundamentally unjust to the people of poor countries to keep making them pay interest on unpayable debts. The world must make a way to cancel those debts.
Eastern tree frogs in the neighborhood of Chernobyl have evolved black skin. This benefits them because melanin protects tissues from radiation.
The Florida law restricting discussion of racism, slavery and other injustices by teachers is no joke. The right-wing fanatics in the Supreme Court may be inclined to uphold it, thus attacking academic freedom. That may lead to firing many teachers, even for what they say outside of working hours. The US did not recognize academic freedom as a legal priority until 1957.
The last hearing of the Jan 6 coup investigation committee filled in the last part of the criminal case that the wrecker planned and led an insurrection on that day.
I wonder whether Attorney General Garland has the courage to charge him now. But I also wonder whether today's Republicans would hesitate to vote for the supporters of this criminal plan.
January 6 panel’s case against Trump lays out roadmap for prosecution, using evidence provided by the non-corrupt Republicans that worked for the wrecker or had been elected.
Turkey is considering a law to criminalize "fake news." Following other right-wing bullies, such as the bullshitter, Bolsonaro and Putin, Erdoğan will call news "fake" if he does not like it.
Several cases before the Supreme Court provide the right-wing extremists with opportunities to limit governments' ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment.
An unusual public protest in Beijing caused Chinese to spread the word intensely.
This despite systematic intimidation of suspected protesters for the past month.
Putin's puppets in Donetsk are denying the International Red Cross access to prisoners of war. (Perhaps they don't want to admit having murdered some.)
Putin's ceremonial annexation of Donetsk could offer an avenue to make progress on this — he can no longer deny that he is responsible for everything that happens there.
The article also reports that Putin's "help to evacuate civilians from Kherson" means conscription.
Various hospitals in the US gag the doctors that work for them from describing their experiences of harm and danger to patients caused by denying them needed abortions.
The article describes this censorship even in states where abortion is still lawful.
The worst part is that these hospitals' censorship conceals their censorship, too, so that we cannot condemn them for it specifically.
Interesting idea: a higher tax bracket for millionaires can act as a trap to reveal the real intentions of trickle-downers.
However, to make these brackets just a little higher misses the opportunity to make the rich contribute substantially to help the poor. We should do that too. With so much dooH niboR, we need more Robin Hood.
The Brothers of Italy party claims not to be fascist, but its founders show nostalgia for fascism. One, Ignazio La Russa, collects fascist memorabilia.
Meloni, the party leader, has moved the party partly away from fascism but its symbols continues to allude to it.
Musk has punished Ukraine for responding negatively to his "peace plan," which consisted of letting Putin keep his conquests. The punishment consists of withdrawing Ukraine's Starlink service, which SpaceX had been providing.
Musk has shown a tendency to shape facts to suit his own wishes. Now he claims that the cutoff of service is due to financial motives. I doubt that it is true.
Two large US supermarket chains, Kroger and Albertsons, want to merge. Progressives have told Biden to prevent this. I fully agree.
Protesters disrupted the IMF/World Bank meeting, demanding that those organizations stop funding planet-roasting fossil fuel projects. Bravo!
I disapprove of protests that consist of throwing soup on famous paintings. Why risk damage to humanity's heritage, when it has nothing directly to do with the problem?
By contrast, these protests against organizations that directly promote global heating disaster are right on target.
US citizens: call on Biden to replace Donald Moak on the USPS board of governors with someone that will replace DeJoy.
The DART planetary defense test was a success. We can save the Earth from being hit by an asteroid.
Can we save the Earth from being hit by human-caused global heating?
An employee at Mar-a-Lago testified to helping move boxes of documents at the cheater's orders after he received a subpoena to return them.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the SEC's plan to protect retirement savings from climate-related financial risks, by making investment funds publish more about their exposure to such risks.
US citizens: call on the EPA to speed up the rest of its climate and clean air standards.
A new EU directive will make companies that use AI algorithms to decide how to treat individuals liable for damages if they cause harm to those individuals thereby.
I don't know the details; I can't judge the directive at that level. But I approve of the general idea, because innovation must not be our highest goal. Innovation can do good or harm. Treating people justly and helpfully is more important than innovation.
Freedom is also more important than innovation; the argument that nonfree software leads to "progress" is fallacious because using nonfree software is inherently a change for the worse.
- Transform Trade charity says British-based companies are among main bringers of cases based on [business-supremacy treaties].
These cases aim to use ISDS clauses (I Sue Democratic States clauses) to sue states that respond to their citizens' demands by adopting laws that protect the public but reduce the profits of foreign companies. Usually they force the retraction of those laws — or ensure the laws are never passed.
ISDS also stands for I Spread Death and Suffering. We must put an end to the regime of these treaties. It's not easy to effectively abolish the treaties, or for a country to pull out of them, since normally a country remains subject to the treaty for a long time after that.
What is needed is to make powerful countries pass laws that they will not enforce these treaties, perhaps limited to certain cases where those laws are crucial.
Several sensible US policies that won't hurt Ukraine but can reduce the danger of nuclear war, both now and for the long term.
Biden's Labor Department has proposed an employment rule that would classify the drivers of Uber and Lyft as employees.
This would be a big step forward for employee's rights, but it won't do anything about the injustice of Uber and Lyft to the passengers: making them nonfree software (an app) and identify themselves (enabling surveillance). This should be forbidden.
So I will continue to get into an Uber or Lyft car. I go out of my way to get a real taxi that I can board anonymously and pay with cash. Or I take a bus. Or I walk.
In some places, such as New York City, even taxis are part of a surveillance machine. A cab driver there told me that all NYC taxis are required to have cameras that transmit the passengers' face images immediately by radio to the city department of massive surveillance. Such surveillance is a bigger threat than terrorism, because tracking people threatens to subjugate everyone.
One of the undercover British thugs that was detailed to infiltrate nonviolent dissident groups traveled outside the UK to infiltrate dissidents in other countries. A German court has ruled that this was illegal since it was not authorized by a German judge.
I wonder what consequences this will have, for the British state and for that thug.
Why the paradoxical claim of "trickle-down economics" continues to be taken seriously despite never achieving the claimed result.
Let Saudi Arabia’s friendship with Putin be a wake-up call for the west. But not only for realpolitik, and the larger goals should not be limited to human rights and democracy. Curbing global heating fast must also be a first-priority goal, and that means that, starting as soon as possible, we must keep the wholesale price of oil low and the retail price high.
The natural way to do that is with a heavy tax on fossil fuels that is scheduled to increase predictably every year.
10% of dwellings in Canada are now uninsurable because the climate risk has become too great.
People whose homes are destroyed won't have the capital to buy another. Government must buy them out, while imposing building codes that make new housing safer.
The article did not mention tar sands, but the Canadian government has a duty to recognize that its tar sands exports are fueling disaster for Canadians (as well as for the rest of the world). Fossil fuel extraction is tantamount to planet roasting. The Canadian government must reverse its policy of supporting that.
Putin's stooge has announced a plan to "evacuate civilians" from Kherson. Given what we have seen the Putin forces do to civilians in Donetsk, I think this is an item in Putin newspeak and stands for capturing Ukrainian civilians in Kherson and taking them forcibly and permanently to Russia, or perhaps other parts of conquered Ukrainian territory.
It would be easy for the Putin forces to allow Ukrainian civilians to evacuate to Mykolaiv or Kryvy Rih, but we saw in Mariupol that Putin doesn't want to permit that.
[pol note about the repeated pattern of arranging for evacuation and preventing it by shelling the evacuation path]
He would rather take them to Russia and pretend that they chose Russia over Ukraine, interrogating them along the way (and murdering some) in transit prisons he calls "filtration".
Demand for surgical sterilization is increasing considerably in the US, and some clinics are offering gratis vasectomy. I don't think the rate is large enough to visibly affect the future population.
During the Covid-19 emergency, a few UK ministers imposed laws by decree, which Parliament hardly looked at. This could easily happen again.
Scientists that publish in Elsevier journals called on Elsevier to stop its support for fossil fuel companies.
I agree, but I point out that Elsevier does other things that are even worse. For instance, keeping many articles under a paywall. For the sake of science, scientists should drive Elsevier and other paywalled journal publishers out of business.
Sad to say, this includes many scientific professional organizations.
The main Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, have agreed on a plan for national elections.
An Iranian official says that thugs are putting arrested student protesters into mental hospitals.
Most of the large companies operating Medicare Advantage plans have padded their bills to the US government. Some are being sued for fraud.
They will do it again, too, if they don't get charged punitive damages in the tens of billions.
This year over 150,000 refugees have crossed the Darién Gap, the wild area that straddles the border between Panama and Colombia. You have to be totally desperate to undertake a trek so difficult and dangerous. Most of them are people from countries where things are very desperate — last year Haiti, now Venezuela. Nearly all heading towards the US border, more than 3400 miles away.
"Utility redlining": systematic underinvestment in the infrastructure of neighborhoods with a large nonwhite population. The result, in the case of electricity in Detroit, is that they get frequent power outages which the same company prevents (with newer equipment) for the wealthier neighborhoods (where more whites live).
Do all electricity customers pay the same rates? If so, some other factor convinced the electric company to serve the white neighborhoods better. It would be interesting to find out how that operated.
US businesses have been inventing "holidays" as excuses to get people to spend money for more than a century.
About 10 of the many examples.
I decided long ago to disregard all the holidays that pressure people to give gifts.
I would not "celebrate" Record Store Day, but I do wish there were a good record store in Boston, with a big selection of classical and world records — I would visit it from time to time to look for interesting CDs to buy. The CD is the last media substrate that was invented without malfeatures to restrict people or impose nonfree technology, and I am happy to use it.
Meanwhile: Out, out, damned Spotify!
It has the same injustices as Amazon e-books(PDF), and even one of those injustices is too much.
Robert Reich: A personal question to powerful people who continue to deny the results of the 2020 election: What do you tell yourself in private?
Reich cannot expect an actual answer, but his speculations about the possibilities are interesting.
Judge says Walmart and CVS must face lawsuit for placing homeopathic nostrums with actual medicines.
Hooray!
21 out of 70 low- and lower-middle-income countries spent more on external debt repayment than on education in 2020.
The 70 countries considered are those for which data was available.
People who use a digital method to pay for parking are contributing to a system of tracking which endangers human rights and democracy. Occasionally, some of them also get scammed and then screwed.
- IMF says taking swift action to achieve 25% cut in greenhouse gases by end of decade will cost less than failing to act.*
Since this goes against the pressure from powerful planet roasters, I think we can trust it confidently.
Republicans plan to attack Social Security, Medicare, and welfare benefits for poor families, if they take control of the House of Representatives. They plan to overcome opposition by sabotage: refusing to raise the arbitrary "debt ceiling."
The article explains how Democrats could eliminate this problem now, without Republican support. This would require the support of Manchin and Sinema. I have a hunch that one of them is blocking this.
More info.
A historical rundown of how today's Republican Party developed into a "cultish, destructive Fascist organization", one that would have dismayed and shocked President Eisenhower.
Due to Republican votes against, the US does not have an adequate supply of Covid-19 tests or vaccines for this winter. However, public anti-vax sentiment is an even bigger problem. A study forecasts around 90,000 additional deaths from Covid-19 through this winter that more booster shots now would prevent.
A trump-pet burned his own camper van to commit insurance fraud, and claimed "antifa" started the fire. He was caught and charged.
The bullshitter taught his supporters that lying for victory for their party is acceptable; this naturally leads people to think up many different lies to try.
Want to Punish [Salafia Arabia and Crown Prince Bone Saw]? Fast-Track [the non-nuclear] Agreement With Iran and the Green New Deal.
Regardless of oil prices, the US should end its cooperation with Salafi Arabia and the UAE's war in Yemen.
Wild animal populations (of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles) have fallen 70% on the average since 1970.
When a population becomes small and localized, it is at high risk of being wiped out by random events. One wildfire, one storm, one new mine, one new housing development, and it could be gone. Mines and housing are made by humans; nowadays, wildfires and storms are, too.
The Tories plan to treat enslavement of foreign workers in Britain as an opportunity to punish those enslaved.
As most Americans choose to forget that Covid-19 is still here and infecting many new people, measures to track infections have been discarded along with measures to prevent them.
One measure may still show us that the Covid rate is increasing: people buy scented candles and report that they seem to have no odor.
How the Espionage Act, together with kidnappings and threats of violence, were used to crush the American Socialist Party, which was pushing for a national medical system as well as to keep the US out of World War I.
Now it is being used to prosecute Julian Assange and to force Edward Snowden to remain in exile in an oppressive country where he never intended to go.
UK "libertarians" believe the state should let rich people do whatever they like … while actively restricting the poor as well as letting the rich walk all over them.
For example, Poorest families would lose £400 a year under Liz Truss benefits plan.
Among all forms of government we know of, the only one that doesn't allow crushing the non-rich is democracy — when the non-rich understand that that is its purpose and know how to use it.
Robert Reich: "Trickle down" economics never deliver the paradoxical benefits that they promise. They deliver more riches to the rich. The rich buy politicians to get them enacted, and they buy economics departments so paint them as beneficial.
In the US, Republicans have been more likely to die from Covid-19 than Democrats. Especially since vaccines became available and Republicans convinced other Republicans not to get vaccinated.
This holds even after controlling for location and age differences.
Just Stop Oil activists arrested after gluing themselves to road in Whitehall.
One protester sang a protest song as cops carried her off.
Toxic air pollution particles found in lungs and brains of unborn babies.
Air pollution, whether generated by natural phenomena or made by human activities (which nowadays include wildfires), puts each person born at risk, and harms society with complete certainty. However, some people profit greatly from continuing to cause pollution, and fight hard to resist efforts to reduce it.
A drug combination that might treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is being sold for $158,000 per patient.
The US Patent Office is such a patsy that it will allow a company to patent using two known drugs together.
The fact that this combination might not even work well is a side issue.
Pro-Kremlin neo-Nazi militia inciting the torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners.
They murder prisoners without reporting having captured them.
The secret British plan to keep Italy's communists from winning the 1976 election in Italy.
Coal companies around the world, but mainly in in China, India, Australia, Russia and South Africa, are planning to build new mines and increase production.
That implies almost certain global disaster.
The US is not building new coal-burning power plants, but it is not shutting down the existing ones fast enough.
The Onion filed a parody as an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, in the spirit of Ha Ha Only Serious, to defend a man who was jailed for parodying the web site of the local thug department.
Perils of UN Climate Summit Hosted by Despotic Egyptian Regime.
Unless political freedoms are defended, there will be no meaningful climate action. Not in Egypt, nor anywhere else. These issues are intertwined, as are our fates.
We are deeply concerned that the Biden administration is minimizing Covid at a time when it needs to be redoubling its efforts to ensure funding and resources to prevent another surge.
Biden pardoned US citizens that were convicted of possession of marijuana. He ought to pardon noncitizens, too.
Biden has established stricter controls on drone bombing attacks by the US military and the CIA.
Despite these rules, drone attacks against civilians, away from battlefields, will continue.
Russia states it has repaired the train tracks on the Kerch bridge. I expect it is true.
This is unfortunate, because it means the bridge is once again functional for delivering military supplies to the Putin forces.
The Student Borrower Bankruptcy Relief Act would allow people who owe student debt to get rid of it through bankruptcy.
Until around 2000, Americans with burdensome student debt could declare bankruptcy and eliminate it. Then a law was passed to make an exception for student debt: it was exempt from bankruptcy. This bill would eliminate that exception.
China's repression of racial minorities, and dissidents, is pervasive. The state uses a dissident's relatives as hostages.
Imagine the worst injustices of the US, as the official and systematically enforces policy of the state, and you get China.
The protests in Iran did not happen now by sheer chance. They are the response to a recent intensification of repression, which was itself the regime's reaction to public opinion's shift away from strictness.
There is a lot of other interesting material in the article.
Logging companies are cutting tall trees in Papua New Guinea, and crushing whatever gets in their way.
- Despite the passage of nearly $370 billion in renewable energy funding, the nation's utilities are squandering "a massive opportunity for clean
electricity and electrification."*
The UK's "Online Harms" bill will grievously harm privacy and freedom of speech.
Article 19 also warned of a threat to freedom of speech.
There is currently a moral panic in the UK about a teenager who committed suicide, apparently under the influence of antisocial media sites' recommendation algorithm.
When they saw she was looking at postings of despair, they directed her to more despair, which became overwhelming.
This suggests another approach which could achieve the goal without threatening people's freedom of speech or people's privacy: namely, to restrict the recommendation algorithms only.
The most basic way is to make a rule that the site must not offer any recommendations, any "promoted" posts, except when the user makes an explicit request — "please show me something you think might interest me". Even if the site's algorithm for deciding what to show you when you request this is unchanged, it will operate less often and show you fewer things.
The next step might be to have a way for users to mark a posting as "not nice". A posting thus marked would still be on line, so you could still see it if you ask for it specifically, but the site would never recommend it automatically to anyone.
We can conceive of many variations of this idea. Surely some variation of them will avoid the real danger without causing real repression.
Analysis of pertinent events showed that US antitrust law was eviscerated 40 years ago by a conspiracy of big US businesses that wanted to buy their competitors.
Other political causes for that change have been ruled out by the data.
Mozambique has large reserves of natural gas. Oil companies describe natural gas as a "transition fuel to get us to support extracting them. Too bad that the extra global heating could destroy civilization.
There is no hint of that in this article,
which focuses on the threat that a predatory terrorist army (related to PISSI) might prevent the extraction (and unwittingly save us all).
This form of distraction is a standard pattern for global heating denialism nowadays.
The UN Human Rights Council voted to do nothing at all with the Human Rights Commissioner's report on China's oppression in Xinjiang.
In effect, most of the world treats China as too big to criticize, probably due to having been corrupted by China.
The US has done plenty of such corrupting, and plenty of oppressing, but China will do more because it lacks any substantial domestic opposition or criticism.
Nowhere in the world is safe if China continues to extend its power.
New Zealand is considering a carbon tax that would cover farm animals as well as fossil fuels.
I think we need such a tax, or some other strong measures worldwide to press reduction in emissions.
OPEC's Slap in the Face Shows Biden Critics Were Right About Meeting With Murderous Saudi Prince.
Some people will respond to a gesture of friendship with cooperation, but a murderous power-hungry despot may interpret it as a sign of that you are weak and desperate.
Putin has appointed a supreme commander for the war against Ukraine. Perhaps he has come to understand that filling that role himself is resulting in losses.
The new commander is cruel and vicious, and cheerfully kills civilians when he thinks he has an excuse. It is only a matter of time before he commits war crimes. Indeed, he may already have done so, if he gave the order for the volley of missiles recently aimed at Kyiv.
Starmer is very effectively excluding potential Labour candidates for parliament who would aim to make substantial changes for the better
In effect, this finalizing the conversion of the Labour Party into a right-wing party more "sensible" than the Tories, and nailing the coffin of the Labour Party that inspired my support a few years ago.
If I were in the UK, I would probably vote Green.
California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont will hold referendums on abortion next month.
If you live in one of those states, please vote!
If you live in some other state of the US, please vote!
US citizens: call on the head of the World Bank to resign, since he is a global heating denialist.
For more explanation.
- US-style negotiations for reduced sentences in England and Wales raises fears of false confessions and lack of informed consent.*
It ought to raise concern — those are the results in the US.
The violent hatred of India's Hindu-nationalist ruling party (BJP) is spreading into other countries where people of Indian descent live. In England it sparked a riot.
I don't know if it has generated a riot yet in the US, but they are working on building the foundation for one.
Naturally there is a counter-movement among Indian Muslims, but the Hindu nationalist's hostility covers Christians, Buddhists, and other minority religions.
From barristers to bin collectors, strikers are working to empower us all.
But it isn't easy — the plutocratists are fighting hard.
CODEPINK activists crashed a meeting of the IMF and World Bank, calling on them to release poor countries from the debt trap that is impossible to escape from.
- Igor Danchenko, who played a vital role in creating the Steele dossier, has been indicted on five counts of lying to the FBI.*
The Steele dossier made accusations about the bullshitter; it seems that some of the accusations may have been fabricated by Danchenko.
An important Iranian politician called for more freedom for Iranians and less imposition of Islamic customs by force.
The real and complex history of Crimea, Ukraine and Russia, since around 1100 years ago, have almost nothing to do with Putin's fantasy justification for conquest.
I've read about parts of this history before, and the article accords with what I read.
- The Federal Reserve’s fight to squash inflation will cause the US economy to start losing tens of thousands of jobs a month beginning early next year, Bank of America Warns.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a wealth tax on the ultra-rich.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Army Corps of Engineers to reject the underwater tunnel for the Line 5 oil pipeline.
The US issues monthly reports on prices, jobs, and wages. But there are no such reports on corporations' profits. We ought to have those reports too.
Ukraine's economic advisor calls for privatization and flexibility of work. (I presume that last would include making it easier to fire employees.) Also, more borrowing.
It may be that Ukraine's system is too inflexible, but any steps in that direction must be taken with great care, because there are plenty of advisors who serve the banks that want to lend you more than you can pay and denominate the loans in a foreign currency. This path has led many countries into a debt trap.
Truss backed down from a planned tax cut for rich people, but many planned give-aways to companies remain in the plan.
US Covid recovery in "jeopardy" unless poorer countries helped, group [of members of congress] warns.
The CIA predicted the Putin forces would rapidly conquer Ukraine. Asked to explain this failure to predict correctly, they say they underestimated the effect of the pervasive corruption in Russia.
The US also suffers from pervasive corruption — less than Russia historically, but Republicans' by-hook-or-by-crook attitude is boosting it. The military-industrial complex is a major center of corruption. I hope Congress thinks about this when funding more F35 airplanes.
On the futile demand for "climate justice".
The supporters of this demand are responding to the level of disaster that we have seen in the past few years — disasters that civilization, countries, and international trade can for the most part survive, albeit with considerable pain. To rebuild after these disasters is well within the capabilities of wealthy countries.
After a disaster of that level, a country can find those responsible and make them compensate those who suffered the most. It would be right to do so.
Global heating disaster is going to be far too bad for compensation. To measure the damages in money would give a meaningless number, far beyond what anyone could pay. The countries that today are wealthy will by that time be struggling to save the lives of most of their own people — and eventually fail to do so. If you had that much money, in Africa, say, you couldn't buy feed the hungry with it, as food will be scarce globally.
Our priority for action, and our main demand, must be to reduce the extent of the coming disaster.
The drought on the Pacific northwest of Canada has dried out some rivers, and killed lots of salmon.
Since the drought is due to global heating, such even worse droughts are to be expected frequently.
Ukraine won back territory and support, but Russia will test the west’s resolve again.
The article presents several indications that Putin has no real intention of using nuclear weapons. Let's not be defeated by shadows.
- The RSPB, National Trust, green farmers and anti-frackers all got it in the neck at the Conservative conference.*
Is "growth" a desirable goal? Putting aside the deeper long-term questions about whether further economic growth is sustainable, it is clear that "growth" under plutocratist Tories would go to the wealthy, and would not benefit most Britons. Why should that kind of "growth" be a valid goal for government policies?
Greenpeace activists: No one voted for Liz Truss's policies. That's why we stormed her conference speech.
That statement is basically true, but it exaggerates: some small number of Britons did vote for them. Truss is an MP and won that seat in a district election. A minority of the Tory MPs agree with her, and some Britons voted for them. But these voters add up to far too few to win a national election.
Greenpeace UK analysis has identified at least seven areas across environmental protection, climate action, workers’ rights and tackling inequality where policies either confirmed or being considered by Truss and her ministers are at odds with the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
High School girls in Iran are now protesting against clothing restrictions.
The Iranian regime is nonplussed by masses of young women, even girls, who are burning their veils in public and chanting "Death to Khamenei."
I speculate that it is a mistake for the US to apply additional sanctions — surely minuscule in their practical effect — since that lends justification to the regimes' claim that the protesters are in cahoots with the US. As far as can see, there is nothing effective that the US can do to help the protesters.
Dissident TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova has fled from house arrest in Russia. She faces possibly 10 years in prison for criticizing Putin on live TV in March.
Much like his some-time American ally, the corrupter, Putin any reports that contradict his propaganda "fake news". Putin has made that a crime and prosecutes people for it. The corrupter would do the same, if he could.
US citizens: call on the Dept of Education to defend free speech, due process, and the right to learn without fear of right-wing hate.
EU votes to force all phones to use same charger by 2024.
This is a victory over callous abuse of power by a nasty corporation which makes for massive waste. However, this is hardly the worst thing that Apple does. Apple won't let the "owner" of an iMonster install free software in it! The EU should very deliberately force Apple to change this practice.
Candidate Herschel Walker's son publicly called him a lying hypocrite for denying he paid for the son's girlfriend's abortion.
That doesn't surprise me. Right-wing leaders talk about "morality" to stir up hatred that is the fuel for their campaigns, but they often believe that they and their family are exempt from the rules.
Big Oil is gouging American customers with a 13% increase in retail prices compared to the last time the crude price was the same as now.
A tax on oil would boost conservation by raising the price in a predictable way. People could plan long-term investments in reducing their greenhouse emissions based on that. But this unpredictable gouging doesn't encourage anything positive.
Mexican journalists that investigate corruption have been snooped on with Pegasus spyware after the Mexican government promised to stop doing this.
A famous Iranian pop musician played a song whose words are the words protesters have posted. The regime arrested him, but the song is heard everywhere.
The article says that copyright threats are being used to try to get the song taken down. The details are not clear in the article, but it seems to involve a false attribution of the song; why that claim is there is not explained.
Technical systems of copyright enforcement are repressive in their own right, and here they are being used to support of more general repression.
Several French cities, including Paris, will refuse to present the video of the world cup of soccer, as a rebuke to Qatar for its abuse of human rights and the environment. In particular, the abusive treatment of the foreign workers who built the facilities for the world cup.
- The White House hunger conference last week was a step in the right direction.*
Policymakers should be focusing on those causes if they want to solve hunger, said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Racism, corporate control and poverty contribute heavily to hunger, he said.
The US military depends on poverty and debt to push young people into joining up. To militarists, the widespread poverty in the US looks like a good thing and reducing it looks like weakening the army.
Nuclear industry has pushed in many countries for "small, modular" power reactors, but the only projects that were actually completed had giant cost overruns.
And there remains the question of what to do with the long-term radioactive waste.
Relabeling "white supremacism" as "whiteness", a calculated ambiguity, morphs the opposition to white supremacy — opposition which I support — into a new form of racial hostility which is more or less the reverse of white supremacy.
Instead of "whiteness", let's call it "white inferioricism" for clarity.
I oppose both white supremacism and white inferioricism.
Ohio's abortion ban puts pregnant females in danger when some things go wrong with the pregnancy. The supporters of that ban deal with this by pretending it isn't so.
China is not content with facial recognition; it is pushing to get DNA samples and voice prints of everyone.
In Hong Kong, China is arresting people for having indirect relationships with past protesters. Increased data to identify people will compel people to act like robots.
Meanwhile, San Francisco has invited private owners of surveillance cameras to let the thug department look through them live.
No one should be allowed to set up surveillance cameras that see and show everyone that passes a certain place, with out a specific court order for a limited time and a limited place. Not a thug department, and not a private entity.
The Paris Metro is replacing paper Metro tickets with a digital payment system.
There are more than sentimental reasons to find this horrible: the digital payment methods track the passenger.
Paying with a mobile phone inevitably identifies the payer. It is not inevitable that travelcards identify the payer — in New York City and Boston, the payment cards can be anonymous. (Be careful, never feed money into the card with anything but cash!) But Paris has set them up so that it is not feasible.
Australia will bring home some Australian children from prison camps in Syria. Some of their mothers, who fought for PISSI, will also be brought to Australia for trial.
In May 2021, the National Archives complained that the cheater had taken some documents — including documents from Obama's term — and had to return them.
The article does not say whether the cheater has yet all of those documents.
The history of right-wing politics in Italy in the past few decades, and where that is leading now.
I have a general theory that the right-wing has been strengthened in EU countries by the power that the EU's banks have over spending and money. Italy and Greece suffered economic crises after the 2009 recession and the EU blocked them from applying the necessary Keynesian policies. The non-extreme left was stymied and had nothing to offer. Right-wing parties couldn't fix the problem either, but they could propose useless attacks on scapegoats.
About 5% of people who get infected with Covid-19 have long-term problems with taste and smell. For some, the sense of smell is gone. For others smells get mixed up — the foods you used to like may smell bad.
The railroad between Los Angeles and San Diego runs so close to the ocean that big storms are likely to mess up the tracks and require repairs.
I don't think the approach of repairing the damage each time will be adequate for another few decades. Hadn't they better start planning to move the tracks inland?
Yanis Varoufakis: tax cuts for the rich can't make wealth trickle down to the poor, because those tax cuts don't increase economic growth at all. Rich people and companies given extra wealth don't seek, nowadays, to invest it in increased production. Instead they manipulate markets.
Timid Labour can't suggest raising taxes on the rich beyond what the Tories have left after almost 10 years in power.
Eliminating Nuclear Weapons "Is Not Only Possible, It Is Necessary" — UN Chief.
I agree it is necessary. But is it possible to get the nuclear powers to agree to disarm?
Australia announces plan to halt extinction crisis and save 110 species. Plus other species that share their habitats.
General Petraeus suggested how to retaliate for Putin's possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, with more or less the approach I suggested. I think his idea does not go quite far enough.
NATO should not limit itself to the rather small Black Sea fleet. It should capture or sink every ship in the Russian navy, explicitly and carefully excluding nuclear missile submarines because we don't want to lead Putin to think that he must use them fast or lose them.
In addition, we should seize as much as possible of Russia's civilian shipping, including their giant fishing ships.
Russia would be unable to prevent this, and the effects would last for many years. Announcing the plan should have a substantial deterrent effect.
A deterrent effect is what we want. Our goal is to deter Putin's use of nuclear weapons, not punish them.
Turkey seized Jamal Khashoggi's phone after he was murdered, for a planned trial of accused murderers. But Turkey made a deal to let Crown Prince Bone Saw, the probable murderer, take charge of the trial. Khashoggi's widow demands that evidence.
Georgia Republicans are trying many different methods of discouraging disadvantaged people from voting. The idea is that eventually these obstacles will impose more trouble and hassle than non-rich people can free up.
Experts say it will take at least a decade to remove the landmines that the Putin forces have planted in Ukraine.
The Supreme Court Will Decide the Future of Clean Water for Generations. Polluters' legal challenge aims to maximize profits at the expense of the health of communities and our environment.
Starbucks made concessions to the strikers in the store near Boston University, and they ended the strike.
That was after the Boston thug department threatened to arrest the picketers for trespassing, and the community chased the thugs away.
US citizens: call on Secretaries of State to end voter suppression among college students.
Peter Kalmus: It has been a summer of climate insanity … on average, the coolest summer with the least climate chaos for the rest of your life. That is just the nature of trends.
The desperation I feel over this clear failure of world leaders to take the obvious and necessary actions to halt Earth breakdown and potentially save billions of lives led me to engage in civil disobedience earlier this year, an action that resulted in my arrest.
The rate of Covid-19 hospitalizations in the UK increased by over 1/3 last week. With the hospitals damaged by Tory under-funding, and understaffed, they are already having trouble coping at all.
Planet-roaster politicians in Australia continue to insist that Australia will need coal-powered electricity for decades more, These claims are based on combining falsehoods with exaggerations. This article spells it out.
- "When the 'all-time low' of uninsured Americans is still 26 MILLION, something needs to change," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.*
(satire) * FORT MYERS, FL—Issuing a reminder that the building’s rules must be followed even in the most catastrophic natural disasters, Florida landlord Rick Palacio told tenants fleeing floods from Hurricane Ian Thursday that their lease did not include rooftop access.*
Republican lawsuits on behalf of loan management companies compelled Biden to exclude .77 million Americans from student loan forgiveness.
The US government has put billions of dollars into efforts at carbon capture and storage, and the only result is to provide an imaginary excuse to delay serious efforts to cut down on greenhouse emissions. Now Congress proposes to do more of the same.
"Flaring" of natural gas burns the methane to convert it into CO2. However, the process is not totally effective; the amount of methane that survives to heat the Earth is 5 times what was calculated.
The US military keeps itself in power, and keeps itself fighting wars, by lying about failures and lying to cover up the previous lies.
Russia is starting to block Ukrainians from leaving the supposedly annexed parts of Ukraine into Russia, and also from Russia to EU countries.
The right-wing extremists that dominate the Republican Party still intend to ban abortion in the whole US.
The only thing they disagree on is whether to hide it for the meantime.
Richard Boyle, a whistleblower in the Australian Taxation Office, reports that the management had adopted a stance of contempt towards taxpayers who felt suicidal because tax debt collectors had left them with no way out.
I can see that there is something insincere about telling a creditor that your debt makes you suicidal. The temptation to exaggerate is obvious.
However, people in debt have often suffered much worse treatment at the hands of rich businesses and the plutocratic state, and all in all I think we must forgive them for lesser wrongs like this.
Boyle is facing criminal charges and could be sent to prison for years.
DeMentis as governor of Florida has systematically obstructed efforts to reduce global heating, or help the poor. Now Florida has been hit by a symptom of global heating.
DeMentis deserves this, but the people of Florida do not.
(satire) CNN’s Chief Nihilist Correspondent Gives Perspective On Why None Of This Matters.
George Monbiot: The prime minister's ideology encourages the extraction of as much income as possible from nature before abandoning it.
Why is Labour ignoring its own members on electoral reform?
I can't prove it, but I suspect that plutocratists are now in control of Labour, and changes outside of a limited range are beyond the range of thinking.
The protests in Iran keep growing, showing enormous resentment against the rigidity of the regime.
Hurricanes today are no longer natural disasters. These disasters are augmented by human-made global heating, which causes stronger winds, stronger rain for a longer period of time, and bigger storm surges starting from a higher mean sea level.
Big hit songs are hit with copyright infringement claims over vague similarities to other songs.
I think this is a sign that the criteria for infringement are too loose. But it is also a consequence of the increased practice of songwriters' or their heirs' selling their whole catalogs to companies. I speculate that they are using AI to search databases of thousands of songs to find opportunities to sue.
Copyright lasts far too long. A 1973 work should not be copyrighted today.
Zelenskiy said that Ukraine has applied for membership in NATO.
That threatens to embarrass Ukraine's supporters, since they can't possibly accept. They have good reasons not to get involved in actual fighting with the Putin forces -- to avoid a step down a path that could lead to nuclear war.
It might be useful for NATO to announce that it will treat Ukraine as a NATO member, for the duration of this war, if Putin uses nuclear weapons. That might convince him not to take the risk.
Further destruction under Bolsonaro could push vital rainforest past irreversible tipping point.
To stop the deforestation will not be easy even with Lula's support. The Workers' Party presidents governed for around 13 years, and their laws slowed the rate of deforestation, but never succeeded in stopping it.
The people of Tuvalu hope to develop a virtual replica of their home, to remember it by after it has been inundated permanently.
If we had started seriously fighting global heating 20 years ago, perhaps Tuvalu could have remained habitable. The planet roasters decided to sacrifice it to their profit.
A UN investigative team concluded that Venezuelan government officials are using torture against oppositionists and human rights defenders, sometimes at the direct request of high officials including the president.
US citizens: call on the Anti-Defamation League to stop defaming Rashida Tlaib, Human Rights Watch, and perhaps also you.
US citizens: call on your members of Congress to keep Manchin's environmental sabotage deal dead.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to eliminate sales of fossil fuel leases.
An Australian mining magnate estimates that only 15% (at most) of supposed carbon offsets offered for sale correspond to real avoidance of carbon emissions. He is converting his iron mining business to zero emissions for real, rejecting the use of offsets.
I've been criticizing emissions trading as ineffective, and vulnerable to cheating, since 2007,
India has banned the Popular Front of India, whose stated purpose is to defend the rights of minorities. The government said it is involved in Islamist terrorism. The organization says it isn't.
I know nothing about the facts of the matter, but I am sure that it is unjust for any government to declare arbitrarily that a group is "terrorist." Such condemnation should require a trial.
Chicago Fourth of July parade shooting survivors sue Smith & Wesson, alleging that it practiced illegally targeting ads at young men at risk of committing violence.
- Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Fiona dumped great amounts of water across larger stretches of land — global heating is to blame.*
Lanternfish are plentiful, and grow fast. To catch them and use them to feed fish farms is tempting. But they also transport large amounts of carbon to the bottom of the ocean, and it mostly stays there. Catching enough of them to make a difference could speed global heating.
The UK government created low-tax "enterprise zones" with the aim of increasing the jobs available in those places, but this did not achieve very much.
I also wonder to what extent businesses moved jobs there from other places. If you give businesses special benefits to move jobs to X, they tend to take the jobs from Y and Z.
Whatever the specific effect of any special benefits for some businesses, it always contributes to the transfer of wealth to business owners from the rest of society.
- Biden promised to tackle climate crisis but administration’s rhetoric "changed substantially" after the onset of the Ukraine war and it adopted the [fossil fuel] industry's major demands.*
One reason why businesses move jobs to subcontractors is that it helps them get away with treating workers illegally.
This is why I advocate laws to strictly limit the amount of any kind of work that can be done by subcontracting.
The development of genetically engineered trees is likely to lead to replacing forests with plantations. Tree plantations won't support a variety of wildlife like a forest.
We licked the first attempt to pass Manchin's sabotage of environmental permit requirements. But Biden seems determined to pass it.
Shame on you for this, Biden.
Alabama prisoners, condemned to work for a pittance, are going on strike. A strike requires even more courage for prisoners than it does for desperate low-wage employees, because the prisoners may face solitary confinement and other privations.
In the US, "nonprofit" hospital chains cheat poor patients, demanding they pay even when state law says they don't have to, and sending debt collectors after them.
I suspect that mergers and competition for mergers are part of what turns formerly altruistic organizations greedy. Competition with for-profit companies may be part of it true.
I propose that states pass laws to prohibit mergers of organizations that provide medical care, and to prohibit for-profit companies from doing that. They should never have existed; let's get rid of them.
Universities must refuse donations from fossil fuel companies, to avoid being corrupted by them.
Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga was convicted of "inciting violence" for a peaceful protest calling for political reform.
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban consumer sale of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides. Use in commercial farms should be banned too.
After Las Vegas corruption reporter Jeff German was murdered, the thugs seized his phone and computers. The Las Vegas Review Journal is suing because this is likely to identify his confidential sources.
The two Nord Stream pipelines, which used to carry methane from Russia to Germany, have been sabotaged — gas now leaks out and bubbles up to the surface of the Baltic Sea.
Putin shut down the pipelines to put economic pressure on Europe. Putin could have resumed the gas supply at any time. But no longer: the sabotage has eliminated the option of resuming delivery. The economic difficulties for Europe continue, but Putin no longer has the power to switch them on and off. Thus, Europe no longer has the option of ending the economic difficulties by caving to Putin.
Some are accusing Putin of causing the sabotage, but I don't see how that would have given him any advantage.
The world's fossil fools plan to build 15000 miles of new oil pipelines.
This at a time when reducing fossil fuel consumption is the only way to reduce global disaster.
Zoom cancelled by fiat a round table discussion that San Francisco State University planned to hold, because it included an actual terrorist who hijacked an airplane in the 1970s.
Zoom claimed that the discussion was illegal. The article explains why that is not so; the protection of freedom of association and freedom of speech under the US Constitution are so broad and firm that "so and so is a terrorist," even if true, cannot justify censoring the meeting.
However, Zoom went beyond citing a putative censorship interpretation of those laws. It asserted that its "terms of service" gave it the power to dictate what topics the university could discuss.
It is intolerable for a company to have veto power over what topics universities can cover in remote discussions. The side issue of how it would use that power, which topics the company wishes to censor, must not distract us from the wrong of putting the company in charge.
Universities should cancel their contracts with Zoom rather than tolerate this censorship.
This is in addition to the injustices that Zoom does to each user: for instance, the requirement to run nonfree software, the requirement to identify oneself (by making an account), and the requirement to agree to an unfair contract.
The Labour Party punished one of its MPs for calling Chancellor Kwarteng, a Tory, "superficially black" — presuming that truly having your skin of a certain color depends on something other than skin color.
Ms Huq's statement was both racist and a distraction from what matters. The problem with Kwarteng is not his skin color. Whether he is "superficially" black or really and truly black, whether he is black at all, are hardly even politically significant.
What's wrong with Kwarteng is that he's really and truly Tory — a plutocratist and a henchman of dooH niboR. He's lower than vermin.
He is trying to impoverish everyone in Britain who's not wealthy or specially fortunate, whatever color per skin is. Why even try to look for a worse thing to say about him than that?
Due to patchy European restrictions on late-term abortions, women need to travel from other EU countries to the Netherlands to get one.
How the local community showed their support to defend a book store and its Drag Story Hour from right-wing bullying.
85% of the human population is being hit by government spending cuts and privatizations that will cause suffering for the poor.
Stiglitz and some associates say, let's tax rich individuals and companies instead.
We have increased the level of CO2 in the air to 421 parts per million. In the past, when it was above 400 ppm, Antarctica's marine ice sheets melted; this would have led to a lot of loss of ice from the ice cap, and sea level rise of perhaps tens of meters.
New Report Reveals How 13 US States "Shield the Fortunes of the World's Richest People."
The EPA rejected a petition to ban using neonicotinoids to coat seeds.
The pesticide gets into the whole plant, and kills bees.
Nearly 80% of Americans Support Legislation to Ban … Stock Trading [by members of Congress].
Richest 1% Now Owns Over 1/3 of US Wealth.
More details of the increased concentration of wealth in the US.
The French government owns the UK's nuclear power plants, and is considering extending their operation again.
This seems logical if you don't look at the numbers, but Amory Lovins has shown that it is an inefficient, wasteful expense. It would be cheaper to build additional renewable generation to replace the nuclear plants than to keep operating them for much additional time.
The idea that the UK is "behind" on building new nuclear power plants flies in the face of all economics. It makes no sense to do that since building renewable generating capacity is far cheaper, safer and faster.
US courts must stop shielding government surveillance programs from accountability.
To do this, we must also crack down on all kinds of commercial surveillance. Once the data have been put in a database, the state will surely arrange to access them.
Cuba has held a referendum on a proposed law -- to legalize same-sex marriage.
The new law was approved, with 2/3 of the votes in favor and 1/3 against. It appears there was actual public disagreement about the law. Allowing democracy in one policy area and tolerating public disagreement is a step forward for Cuba.
A university student recruiting service has adopted a policy of rejecting oil, gas and mining companies.
Palestinian villages such as Masafer Yatta are being slowly strangled by the demolition of all the houses.
Patagonia's radical business move is great -- but governments, not billionaires, should be saving the planet.
We cannot simply stand back and hope that the elite will give away their wealth to tackle the climate emergency. Most of them won't help voluntarily, so we need laws to compel them.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Britain is crying out for radical solutions, but Labour still thinks it’s in the 1990s. Warning that if Labour doesn't support what non-wealthy Britons demand, if they have no hope of supporting Corbyn, they will turn to radicals that are authoritarian.
I stand by my cartoon contrasting B'liar's "New Labour" with the Labour government that established the great social democratic policies that lifted most Britons out of poverty after World War II. Just imagine that Tony B'liar is replaced by keir Starmer.
If you won't recognize that "The Tories are lower than vermin," you will never offer anything more than a lesser evil.
A campaign to define "ecocide" as an international crime, comparable to genocide.
I don't think that prosecuting ecocide is a panacea. It is easy to understand intentional deforestation as ecocide. Each piece of the forest is cut down or burnt by certain people.
However, when a lightning-sparked wildfire destroys a forest, it is harder to pin the destruction on anyone. Everyone's CO2 emissions contribute a little to each wildfire.
Nonetheless, prosecuting people like Bolosonaro could help, and they certainly deserve it.
Disregard for the goal of reducing the spread of Covid has put millions of elderly Americans in a vice between the need to go out to do things (even seeing doctors) and the danger of being exposed by a risk denier.
Please wear a good mask whenever you are indoors sharing air with other people.
(satire) Struggling U.S. Military Requires Every Soldier To Recruit Additional 300 New Troops.
A panel of judges rated Starmer's policy speech as more progressive than they expected from him.
Crabs, enjoying the warming ocean around Normandy and Brittany and the delicious mussel farms there, are staying most of the year and devouring the mussels.
Since their numbers are growing, we should encourage people to eat them and keep the numbers stable.
On the campaign to end prison slavery — forcing prisoners to work for private employers for a pittance.
The University of Idaho has banned its employees from saying anything about abortion. Even medical personnel. And they are warned not to offer anything under the rubric of contraception.
This requirement, if attributed to a law, seems to be unconstitutional.
Italy's new right-wing government is expected to demonize immigrants and queer people. It may also attack the right to an abortion.
As resistance grows to the fossil fuel regime, laws are springing up everywhere to suppress climate activists.
The global climate disaster, which I expect will cause gigadeaths, will not be an accident. It will be mass murder, carried out by the power of the planet roasters.
What punishment will they deserve for these murders? What actions would people be justified in using to prevent mass murder?
Hydrogen is unsuitable for home heating, review concludes.
Hydrogen made from renewable electricity may be useful for decarbonizing transport, but that's a different issue.
Finally, something good from Labour: increasing taxes for the rich, and funding the NHS.
More than 24,000km of [fossil fuel] pipelines planned around world, showing "an almost deliberate failure to meet climate goals."
Some people are rejecting Spotify for reasons that have to do with their emotional relationship with music.
To use Spotify is inconceivable for me -- its injustices (the same as those of Amazon e-books) overrides all the secondary details.
If you stop using Spotify, please choose alternatives that don't impose those injustices. Check that you don't need to use nonfree software, don't have to identify yourself to listen, and don't have to make an antisocial agreement not to share.
You can access Youtube without running nonfree Javascript code by means of the proxy system, invidio.us.
We don't know yet whether the Jan 6 coup attempt will lead to the overthrow of American democracy. The fanatical party, now committed to contempt for truth, has not given up.
Biden has launched a plan to end hunger in the US, and reduce obesity, with federal help. To pass this plan requires electing more democrats.
Mexico's president, AMLO, has created a new nationwide police and made it part of the military. That means the military are the thugs.
Institutions have impoverished British society and communication to the point where jumping into a wave of deference to the monarchy is the only outlet for the yearning for a sense of common social feeling and purpose.
The article speaks of "consuming" a "national account of ourselves" (referring to the British, thus not including me). This is not as twisted as the idea of "consuming" books or movies, but I think "absorbing" fits better.
A whale-detection system will inform ships in a narrow bay in Chile that they should slow down to avoid hitting whales.
I am only guessing, but I tend to think that this will not be sufficient change -- that we need to reduce the overall level of human-generated noise if we want whales to be safe.
Edward Snowden speaks about being granted Russian citizenship -- Russia being the only country that will let him stay and not hand him over for prosecution. He wishes that he could safely return to the US and live here.
Snowden did not choose to go to Russia at all. He had a flight connection in Moscow, and was unable to board the second flight because the US had cancelled his passport.
I hope that whatever happens at the end of the war doesn't result in handing over Snowden to the US.
Arguing that, if Putin falls, it would be good for the west to offer his successor a deal that perse could present to the Russian people as a good one.
I am in favor of this, provided the deal doesn't include keeping any of Ukraine.
Some state laws banning abortions restrict all prescriptions for drugs widely used to treat other medical problems, other than the problem of unwanted pregnancy that is. If these laws covered the whole US, it would interfere with the treatment of millions of patients.
Let us not make the usual mistake of emphasizing the uncontroversial collateral damage over the more controversial intended damage. Those religious fanatics want to force people to have babies!
Some churches pressure members to install spyware so the church can shame them for what they look at on the web.
Westport, Connecticut, has set up a system to help its police department deescalate confrontations with people who are freaking out. The system helps them quickly find friends or relatives to calm someone down, rather than a cop who is a stranger.
British-Ukrainian Aiden Aslin describes the torture and brainwashing he was subjected to during 5 months as a prisoner of war, before he was exchanged. It ranged from solitary confinement to threats to murder him summarily.
It is interesting that the guards in the supposedly independent Donetsk People's Republic forced prisoners to sing Russia's national anthem, not an anthem of their supposed country. They seem not to take its "independence" more seriously than it warrants.
California now gives all school students gratis breakfast and lunch. Students, no longer going hungry, are doing better.
It seemed to me that lunch in my schools in New York City was gratis in the 1960s. I certainly was never asked to pay for lunch. Could it be that my mother bills paid for my school lunches? It never occurred to me to wonder about this before, and it is too late to ask her now.
Setting a sad precedent: a museum has bowed to the pressure of an indigenous group that demanded the "return" of four artifacts that the museum legitimately owns.
The group agrees that these artifacts were not stolen; that the anthropologist who gave them to the museum had acquired them legitimately. Why should the museum feel an obligation to give in? What justification can the group present for demanding to get them back? The article does not present any, it only cites someone who takes this for granted. The people in that group are not the only ones concerned here.
In general, should anthropologists obey demands to discard part of anthropological knowledge? I contend this should require a reason stronger than, "These artifacts are related to us so only we can have them."
Iranians are enraged at the state, and keep protesting around the country despite 35 killings -- mostly protesters, it is clear, but not all.
They are angry about a lot more than the death of Mahsa Amini. Iranians, led by women, demand changes in laws to respect their rights.
US citizens: tell Congress and state legislatures that no one should be jailed or imprisoned for an unintentional voting error.
There is a secret legal dispute about whether the wrecker can use "executive privilege" to block some of his henchmen from testifying to a grand jury about what appears to be a conspiracy to overturn part of the 2020 election.
(satire) Putin Stays Up Late Constantly Refreshing Website For Results From Rigged Elections.
To fix its broken welfare system, the U.S. must move away from its fixation on fraud, exclusions by design, and the stigmatization of people in poverty.
Now that California has passed a law to protect fast-food workers pay and rights, the big fast-food companies want Californians to vote to restore the power to abuse those workers, in the name of low prices.
DeMentis now claims to have sincerely transported immigrants to Martha's Vineyard to help them.
One could ask him, "If you really wanted to help them, why did you give them a false picture of the support they would find there?"
The head of the World Bank really is a global heating denialist, and it appears he was put in that position by the wrecker precisely to obstruct climate defense. The world needs to oust him.
Britain is ready to reform its broken electoral system, but the conservative leaders in control of the Labour Party refuse to advocate that.
Corporate greed, not wages, is behind inflation. It's time for price controls.
Rigid price controls cause a different kind of market distortion. I wonder if there is a way to get a similar effect but less rigid. For instance, what if any increase of X in the price of a product resulted in an additional tex starting at .9X and decreasing linearly over the following year down to .1X, then ending after that year. This might discourage price increases that are not meant to be long-term.
The government of California, and local governments, took away black citizens' land and houses systematically in various parts of the state.
The Crimean Tatars, those that remain in the Crimea, say that Putin is targeting them for conscription as a method of getting rid of them.
The surveillance of employees by US employers is reaching levels reminiscent of Chinese repression.
We must establish the rule that by default surveillance systems are forbidden, aside from certain limited exceptions.
UK climate activists held in jail for up to six months before trial.
If they are convicted, their sentences will probably not be as long as they were in jail. They are moved frequently from one prison to another, and their friends can't find them.
I suspect this is an intentional practice of nonjudicial punishment.
Giorgia Meloni is a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe. The Brothers of Italy leader denies she is a fascist but clings to the Mussolini-era slogan "God, homeland, family."
Meloni appears the most dangerous Italian political figure not because she explicitly evokes fascism or the practices of the black-shirted squadristi (militia), but because of her ambiguity.
Labour proposes to stop giving government contracts to businesses connected with tax havens.
It would be a change for the better, but only a small one. It would be simple to require all companies that do business in in Britain to reveal their real owners, whereas this would only affect those businesses that get government contracts.
An Australian mobile phone company suffered a data theft which took personal data about millions of customers. The company had lobbied against changes to laws about customers' rights over that data.
The harmful consequences of this breach are partly the Australian government's fault, since it required the company to collect and save various items of personal data for each customer. The reliable way to prevent the release of people's personal data is not to possess copies of it, but Australia did not permit this company to use that method.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates too fast -- not waiting to see the full effects of previous increases before moving on to another increase. This creates a risk of overshoot -- of raising interest rates so much that it producing a result bigger than the organisation wants. If you keep increasing a signal again and again, faster than results can possibly come back to you, you will overcontrol and cause a crisis.
The governors of the Fed ought to know this, since it is basic business economics.
Attempts by [the wrecker] to delay the criminal investigation into his unlawful retention of government secrets have been largely thwarted after the Department of Justice regained access to about 100 documents with classified markings that the FBI seized from the former US president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Vanuatu makes bold call for global treaty to phase out fossil fuels.
Pope calls for courage in halting use of fossil fuels to protect planet.
80% of US Voters Want Congress to Enact National Paid Family Leave: Poll.
Politicians that call themselves "centrists" are opposed to this, but they are nowhere near the political center of Americans.
Big businesses openly and shamelessly hire Congressional staff to lobby their former coworkers.
They hire former Congressional representatives, too, but they disguise that behind polite veils.
UN investigators have reported evidence of many war crimes committed by the Putin forces, as well as a couple of instances of war crimes by Ukrainians.
US citizens: call on ShotSpotter to stop selling surveillance (and consequent repression).
Republican officials are trying to stop credit card companies from adopting a new merchant code for gun stores by threatening lawsuits.
I'd be surprised if laws say anything about the question of how to establish categories of stores for credit cards, so I suspect this is a way of threatening legal harassment.
1300 Russians have been jailed for protesting against the war.
Some of them were punished by immediate conscription.
The Justice Department succeeded in an appeal and can now examine the secret government documents that the wrecker took home to determine whether that was a crime.
The Tories spent a decade putting fossil fuel profits first [in the UK]. Now we’re all paying the price.
Russian men are fleeing Russia to escape being drafted.
EU countries should resume admitting Russian men as visitors. Why help Putin by forcing them to remain in Russia and be drafted?
Iran has sent thugs to crush protests against imposed religious codes, killing six protesters.
The injustice of this repression — which Iran has practiced for 30 years — has no effect on my support for resuming the non-nuclear deal, if any chance of that remains.
Putin's general mobilization threatens to destabilize the balance between his military supporters and his formerly-the-KGB supporters.
The cost of cleaning up the UK's nuclear reactors and nuclear waste is now estimated at UKP 260bn. That would be around 300 billion dollars.
There is no way to avoid these costs, for the reactors that have already been operated. That suggests to me that it would be worth billions to cancel the two reactors now being build, even if that costs billions in indemnities, just to avoid the ever-increasing cost of cleaning them up after.
Pressure builds for Levi’s to protect factory employees. The factories are in Bangladesh and Pakistan. In Bangladesh, unjust treatment of employees is rife. I wonder whether the factories in Pakistan still exist; they may still be flooded.
France has protected independent book stores with a minimum delivery fee of 3 euros.
It would be good to do this for all products. Physical stores normally offer the crucial right to buy anonymously (and this should be required by law).
The practice of having many products delivered is increasing urban air pollution (as well as use of fuel).
The UK's current prime minister was chosen by the members of the Tory Party. They include foreigners who don't live in Britain and can't vote in elections. They also include rich people who secretly buy a share in party decisions.
The more loudly a politician proclaims [per] patriotism, the more likely [perse is] to act on behalf of foreign money. Every recent Conservative prime minister has placed the interests of transnational capital above the interests of the nation. But, to a greater extent than any previous leader, Truss’s politics have been shaped by organisations that call themselves thinktanks, but would be better described as lobbyists who refuse to reveal who funds them. Now she has brought them into the heart of government.
Starbucks plans to replace the current system for Covid sick leave with a new one, and deny the new system to union workers.
Do you want your coffee to be made by someone who has a transmissible respiratory illness? Of course not. The law should require paid sick leave for all employees who, when working, can transmit a disease to others.
In the mean time, if you do business with Starbucks, tell the managers of the stores that you disapprove of Starbucks's exclusion of sick pay for union workers.
New and old unusual ways to raise funds for critical infrastructure to help farms and people cope with drought.
FEMA's director acknowledges that FEMA's maps of flood danger need to be updated to reflect changes due to global heating.
South Africa has banned seismic blasting in the ocean off the Wild Coast area.
Shell was going to do the blasting to search for fossil fuels that humanity cannot afford to extract anyway.
The blasting itself would have
harmed whales and other wildlife. I celebrate the outcome of this case, but I think that the views of people living near the proposed area of exploitation are a weak foundation for something as important as limiting fossil fuel extraction. The dangers of the extraction are global, and the ban should be global too.
Biden proposes to spend 13 billion dollars to hire 100,000 more cops, supposedly to reduce the danger of violent crime. But it might not achieve anything on that dimension, and it would ramp up repression in the form of arrests for drug possession.
It would be more effective to put that money into social programs and low-rent housing.
Chileans rejected the draft constitution written by the constitutional convention.
Pinochet's constitution was designed for repression; it needs to be replaced. But with what? I suggest asking the public to vote on several questions about which of the major changes they like or dislike. Those answers might help in writing a constitution that a substantial majority of the public will support.
Some people are prepared to pay thousands of dollars for "just the right" puppy, without ever actually seeing it. Sometimes they pay the thousands and never even get the puppy — it is a scam.
Nothing can excuse swindling, but the victims would never have fallen prey to this scan if they had not started with a foolish approach. An adult ought to know better than to believe that one specific puppy, that perse has never met, is the one and only right one.
There is a certain tendency for people to believe that spending a lot of money on something unusual and different in your life will make it better. But it doesn't usually have that effect.
The Credible Messenger Mentoring Movement helps teenagers from disprivileged groups avoid the temptation of gangs and drugs by offering them mentors: adults who grew up in the same community and succeeded in meeting that challenge.
The mentors are credible in that they personally experienced the situation that they guide the teenagers in coping with.
Gentrification is driven by powerful business forces, often supported by the state. If you oppose the change, focus on those forces, not on the visible symptoms.
Fiji's government has bounced from coup to coup, and the current prime minister rules in an authoritarian and vengeful way.
Meanwhile, competition with China for influence blocks Australia from using its influence to promote human rights in the Pacific. Governments would respond to that by jumping to China's side; China does not seek to promote democracy.
Artist Ken Lum made two sculptures, a bison and a bison hunter, to display in the city of Edmonton so as to provoke thought about the extermination of the bison. The city cancelled their display in the name of hyper concern for some people's hypersensitivity.
Hunters did not kill 100.000000 percent of the bison — the species still survives in some protected places.
Starbucks carefully cultivates a let's-be-kind-to-each-other image while treating employees like dirt and punishing them illegally for organizing.
I too stopped by the strike site at 874 Comm Ave, Boston, and I found out how the workers have been able to keep the picket going 24/7 for months: it's not just the workers! Volunteers from the community help out.
I wish I could post a link to more information, but that site won't show anything unless the visitor runs nonfree JavaScript code, and I will not direct people to such a site. Is there a web developer who would be interested in setting up a freedom-respecting site to show the same information? The strikers might be happy to adopt that site if some developers set it up.
Scientists conclude that parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Bolivia have already reached a tipping point, and will not regrow as forest if left alone.
We can't be sure just how big a disaster this will be, but it will be big.
Recommending that the abortion rights movement take inspiration from the 80s/90s organization Act Up, which campaigned for AIDS patients' rights and medical care.
The Tory Party has selected a plutocratist extremist as the new prime minister.
The nation mostly opposes her already. As most Britons are forced into poverty, her program is to cut taxes (a benefit for the wealthier Britons) and cut spending (more Tory cruelty).
Perhaps recognizing her unpopularity, she intends to delay elections as late as possible. Two years in power will allow her and the Tories to do no end of harm.
Identitarians may rejoice that, for the first time, none of the four principal ministers in the cabinet will be a white man. Perhaps being forced into poverty, and allowing the government to get away with mistreating people illegally, will hurt less this way than if white men had done it.
US citizens: call on Congress and the White House to make Afghanistan's fund reserves available to the Afghan people.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call for stopping Florida law that is designed to intimidate and censor university professors and students.
One Republican senate candidate used to claim on his web site that the Democrats stole the 2020 election — for the Republican primary. Now that he has won that, he has deleted the claim.
For Republicans, deceit is habitual.
Raising a child through high school now costs $310,000 in the US.
That is for a middle-income married couple's second child. (The first would presumably cost more.)
This doesn't count the breakup of the relationship, which is a frequent result of having a child.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to take legal action against Florida's law that tries to censor discussion of uncomfortable topics in school.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the No Tax Breaks for Union Busting Act. This would eliminate the tax deduction for the money that companies spend on union-busting. I think this won't be enough to eliminate union-busting, but I think it will convince some companies to do less of that.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve not to raise interest rates on working people. Government must fight corporate greed instead.
- Once-in-a-decade plans to protect the natural world and halt its destruction will be decided in Canada in December.*
The head of World Vision International (a charity)'s work in Gaza, Mohammad el Halabi, has been convicted by Israel of supposedly routing aid funds to Hamas, but the trial appears to have been bogus.
Human Rights Watch, the government of Australia, and others have concluded that the conviction is not based on evidence.
Greece to launch parliamentary inquiry into spy scandal about government spying on political leaders.
US court cases are considering whether litigation insurance policies for oil companies include lawsuits for damaging the climate.
Breathing nitrous oxide too much and too often can cause grave nerve injuries, if you don't protect yourself with supplements of vitamin B12.
This is a job for … public health education!
Americans are catching on to the threat that right-wing extremists pose with their persistent dishonesty and violence.
Advocating attacks on our system of government, or on Americans who disagree with them, is far beyond merely holding views about policies — even major policies — that we disagree with. Those are citizens, whose freedom we must respect even as we try to convince them.
The attackers hate our freedoms, and have declared their intention to use dishonest and/or violent means to eliminate them. We must prepare to fight them, and we can't be nice about it.
Salafi Arabia has sentenced Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani to 45 years in prison for some unstated acts of dissent.
In some cities in France, people now need to put a sticker on the mailbox if they wish to permit delivery of junk mail. This is intended to reduce waste of resources and waste to be disposed of.
Polling shows that US voters favor climate bills — yet assume fellow Americans don’t.
I suspect that the propaganda term "centrist" is part of the cause of this. Plutocratist Democratic politicians discourage firm climate defense action to serve the plutocrats who fund them, and the mainstream media refer to them as "centrist." This is designed to, and often does, convince most Americans that those plutocratists represent the political "center" — but the real political center is well to the left of there.
Arkansas [thugs] suspended after bystander films savage street beating of shoe less man.
I would like to suggest suspending them by the neck, but not seriously — I oppose the death penalty, without exception. What those thugs deserve is a long prison sentence — longer because they betrayed the duties of their job as police officers.
Many folders intended for secret files were found empty in the corrupter's possession. in the corrupter's possession.
I wonder whether the government knows what documents were in those folders. The article does not clearly say.
When Dubya released some British prisoners from Guantánamo, his officials asked the UK government to jail them arbitrarily or through unjust trials. The UK government refused to do this.
A right-wing manipulation group, the Tea Party Patriots, undertook to sabotage the US efforts to resist Covid-19. It may have been substantially effective.
I do not believe anyone is entitled to the "freedom" to go unmasked indoors, risking spreading Covid-19, from mere preference.
500 deaths per day adds up to around 180,000 per year. That is around a 4% increment in the death rate.
The number of people developing long Covid per day is likely to be in the thousands, and the number of people unable to work is estimated as on the order of 2.5% of the entire working population.
There can be no middle ground in the fight between democracy and authoritarian fascism.
Right-wing extremists make threats of domestic terrorism in the hope of intimidating the defenders of democracy. We must not be intimidated out of defending it.
Columbus [thug] shot Donovan Lewis within a second of opening the door to his room, and then, while he was dying, told him to 'stop resisting.'"
I have a hunch that thug said "stop resisting" to a man who was not resisting as a way of pretending that he was resisting — to create a fake excuse to use later.
New York City is suing Starbucks for firing a union organizer. Rather than using federal labor law, which generally prohibits this too, it is using a New York City law that is stronger.
Proposing a progressive price system for electricity and fossil fuels, as a way of helping the poor without subsidizing fossil fuel for the rich.
That would be much better than giving rich people the same subsidy as the poor, but I've already explained that a subsidy for energy is a terrible mistake.
Ralph Nader invites people to help form an organization to defend the right (and the option) of using cash to pay.
Schools must teach the history of strategic non-violent campaigns that won civil rights and women's rights.
Protests are planned against the US banks and insurance companies that make fossil fuel expansion possible.
Here is the full list of events, viewable without Javascript.
The 'Green Revolution' Has Failed in Africa and It's Time for a New Direction.
I have no special knowledge about on this field — this seems plausible, but I can't be sure whether it is true.
(satire) Hawaiian Travel Ad Boasts Sandy White Tourists As Far As The Eye Can See.
Don't worry about the resources — tourists pay high prices for those.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep censorship of abortion advice illegal.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Chipotle Workers in Michigan Vote to Form Fastfood Chain's First Union.
Officially forming a union is just the first step. A bigger hurdle follows: getting the company to negotiate with the union in good faith.
Irish farmers say they will be forced to cull cows to meet climate targets.
Most of us will have to make sacrifices in the effort to avoid total disaster. Would those farmers prefer collapse of civilization?
Let's just make sure that the billionaires don't dump their share of the sacrifices onto the rest of us.
A feminist recognizes that having women elected to office is not going to help women's rights, if the women who are elected are right-wing.
Invasions and illegal exploitation of indigenous lands in Brazil tripled under Bolsonaro, says advocacy group.
Darya Dugina, who was killed by a car bomb recently, was reportedly an important figure in Russian disinformation campaigns.
Perhaps the car bomb attack was aimed at her rather than her father, but I think it would have been an unreliable plan. I don't think Ukraine would have burned such a capability on a propoagandist or a philosopher.
A US judge ruled that the US government cannot seize the funds of the Afghan central bank, and that they belong to the Afghan people, but not (if I understand correctly) to the Taliban.
The arguments cited are legal arguments, not moral ones. Nonetheless, I'm happy with the outcome — I hope it will not be reversed.
Bogus Johnson is trying to arrange a comeback, aided by the fact that the two contenders from which Tory Party members will soon choose a new prime minister are inclined to make poor people suffer, and likely to lead to a big Tory defeat in the next election.
Greenland's ice will melt enough to raise sea level about one foot. It is too late to prevent this, but we may be able to prevent further melting in Greenland.
Ice is melting elsewhere too, so the actual rise that is now inevitable will be more than one foot.
California approves landmark bill to give fast-food workers more power.
Restaurant owners argued that improving low-paid workers' pay and treatment would increase the prices of restaurant food. I am sure that will happen, to some extent, but we restaurant customers can live with that. I also expect that the restaurant owners are exaggerating.
Ukraine has built wooden imitations of US HIMARS missile launchers, to use as decoys. The Putin forces fire expensive missiles at them.
It was a good hack, but I'm afraid that whoever revealed it has ruined it. What a pity.
The water supply of Jackson, Mississippi, has broken down and is out of service. The immediate cause was flooding that affected the water purification plant.
Mississippi is a Republican-controlled state, and many of the residents of Jackson are black. I suspect that the state has underfunded all civic systems in Jackson for a long time, and that this is the underlying reason for the failure.
An excavation in Norwich, England, found the bodies of 17 Jews murdered in a pogrom in 1190. Antisemitism in medieval Europe often led to murder.
- The European Union's power sector is a good example of what market fundamentalism has done to electricity networks the world over.*
The Federal Trade Commission is suing a data broker for selling location data and including data about visits to "sensitive" locations. This shows how fundamentally weak the US approach to privacy is.
Any location data record can be sensitive for some people. The way to truly protect people's privacy is to ensure that people's locations are not tracked.
US citizens: call on Congress to block any new fossil fuel handouts, including the Manchin deal.
Prevent tree extinctions or face global ecological catastrophe, scientists warn. Over 1/4 of tree species are endangered.
Statistics on long Covid in the UK. 400,000 people still have it two years after their acute infection.
I wonder how many people in the UK had been infected, by that point in time.
California's worst heatwave yet is making firemen collapse, even as it sparks wildfires.
"They are human beings": Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas.
What a delightful way to highlight Dementis's inhumanity and cruel spirit.
Democrat Mary Peltola wins Alaska special election over Sarah Palin.
Peltola will be a representative until the end of this year, and will have to run for reelection in November along with everyone else in the House of Representatives.
A Canadian spy inside PISSI helped Shamima Begum and two other British girls get to Syria to join PISSI. The British government reportedly decided to cover this up as a favor to Canada.
The fact that the girls received assistance from a surprising source does not reduce the gravity of the crime they had already gone to great lengths to commit. However, aiding volunteers for PISSI rather than stopping them made the British and Canadian governments partially responsible for their arrival in Syria and participation in PISSI.
To punish Shamima Begum for that crime may well be justified, but exiling a citizen is not a legitimate punishment even as a sentence. To do it as an administrative decision is punishment without trial, and that is never acceptable.
Jackson's water supply has been slowly failing for years because of a lack of funds to maintain it. This was decided by the state's Republican government.
Michigan has a body, with two Democrats and two Republicans, whose approval is needed for ballot initiatives. The two Republicans voted against the abortion rights initiative and the voting rights initiative, causing a tie which blocked both initiatives.
A US diplomat says that Libyans have mostly given up hope that the two factions that rule parts of Libya can ever make peace and unite the country.
(satire) More MLB Teams Trying To Attract Younger Audience With Free Prostate Exam Day.
(satire) Casting Director Can Tell That Child Actor Doesn't Have The Abusive Parents It Takes To Make It In Entertainment.
(satire) Solar Power Investment Skyrockets Upon Discovery Of Massive Underground Deposit Of Sunlight.
Recent observations of Greenland's melting ice show that climate models have underestimated the rate of sea-level rise.
I've been predicting for years that models underestimate the effects of future global heating. They forecast disaster, but the real disaster will be worse.
The Republican Party has been going all out to help its [richest] backers avoid paying taxes..*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act which will treat Afghan refugees better.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to pass the bills to establish Medicare for All.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
Bernie Sanders comments on today's alignment of unions with progressives, and other political issues.
How activists in Los Angeles blocked a program to build a lot more jails, and instead won programs to help people avoid committing crimes and stay out of jail.
Google canceled a man's account on seeing he sent a doctor photos of his baby son' injured genitals.
Despite the publicity, Google has not reinstated his account.
This highlights well-known dangers of automated detection of possible child sexual abuse images. Beyond that, it also shows that having humans involved in making the decision is not guaranteed to correct an erroneous automated detection.
Furthermore, it shows the danger of having various different digital services provided by a single company, or by companies that have agreed to work together to kick "offenders" off the services of all of them.
Child sexual abuse is a real problem, but people accused of doing that are entitled to have a trial before they are punished. We cannot allow online disservices to implement unofficial punishment without trial.
(satire) [The bullshitter] Claims Seized Classified Documents Had Been In His Family For Generations.
Britons might appreciate Corbyn's policies more now than they did in 2019, now that those opposed to them have discredited themselves at every level.
The challenge is to overcome the power of Starmer, who has made it his goal to marginalize Corbyn's supporters within the Labour Party. If they are ever the majority, the party will ignore them.
Putin plans to disconnect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from Ukraine's power grid. This would create the risk of reactor meltdowns if anything goes wrong with local electric generation, because keeping the reactor cores cool requires electricity.
One can see, from this, that the existence of a nuclear reactor creates a risk whenever anything else goes wrong. Earthquete? Tsunami? Air attack?
This is one of the reasons why building more nuclear power plants is foolish. The other reason is that for the same amount of money you could build far more generating capacity using renewable generation, and power storage too.
Over 40,000 prisoners in the US are held in long-term solitary confinement. That is a form of brainwashing.
Would-be vaccine monopolists Moderna and Pfizer are fighting over vaccine patents.
Meanwhile, they are both using trade secrets to keep most of humanity unvaccinated. Shame on both of them! And shame on the World Trade Organization, that has made most of the world surrender to this deadly regime.
1/3 of Pakistan could be flooded by later this year.
If India were governed by statesmen, they would offer aid to rebuild Pakistan. That could end the long hostility between the two countries. Alas, instead of statesmen it has the BJP.
The Federal Reserve plans to keep increasing interest rates until inflation goes down.
Low interest rates are not causing today's inflation, so this tactic is not going to achieve the goal until it creates lots of unemployment.
It strikes me that Powell's real goal may be to undermine the wave of unionization. His business cronies will surely appreciate that.
In poor countries, many practical obstacles impede vaccination and treatment of Covid-19.
Six of these obstacles are not a matter of "hesitancy". One of the obstacles is a historical cause of understandable distrust, and thus hesitancy.
Recognition of the apartheid-like nature of Israels occupation of Palestine is spreading around the world, among human rights organizations, world leaders, and even some former Israeli officials.
Republican candidates that won Republican primaries by professing bellicose opposition to abortion are trying to disown those views to win the final election.
So, did they seriously mean the positions they took before the primaries? Or do they seriously mean the positions they take now? Or neither one?
Turkish pop star Gülsen arrested over religious schools joke. The joke clearly suggested religious schools have undesired effects on some students, but is not a direct accusation of wrong, Nonetheless, she has been denied bail.
An uncontacted indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has been murdered one by one. None remain alive.
The massacre may have started when murderous colonizers got the tribe used to eating gifts of sugar, then gave them poison (mixed with sugar?).
The last survivor refused all contact. We do not know the tribe's language, or even its name.
Invasions and illegal exploitation of indigenous lands in Brazil tripled under Bolsonaro, says advocacy group.
Britons need to be "less squeamish" about drinking water [extracted] from sewage [and purified], says agency head.
Imagine you're on space station Earth — of course, sewage is recycled. The International Space Station recycles urine for drinking water.
Bernie Sanders rebukes GOP for backing corporate tax breaks but not student debt relief.
Virtual reality, backed by high computational power, makes possible subtle forms of manipulation that influences people but that they won't notice.
For instance, a political speech can be altered slightly for each person watching, making the speaker's face subtly resemble the viewer's face. This has been proven to make viewers, on the average, have a more favorable attitude toward the speaker.
The author proposes developing systems for detecting the use of this technique and other manipulation techniques.
I fear that nonfree software, combined with remote attestation, will be used to make it impossible to run the software to do this. It will be "unauthorized."
New sensors are being developed to determine a person's emotional state from per skin.
Based on recent fashion, I forecast that the sensor will connect to a snoop-phone, and the data will all be sent to some cloudy company from which many companies and governments will get it.
Low Covid [vaccination] rates in poorer countries falsely blamed on "vaccine hesitancy."
Flooding disaster hits Pakistan: 700,000 homes severely damaged or destroyed, 33 million people gravely affected.
Pay attention! Floods like this are coming to a place near you, if you don't campaign to decarbonize.
Do female politicians have a right to go to a small party with friends and dance?
"Some critics of Marin have said a leader who is drinking would be unable to take important decisions for their country," Never mind that Marin denies being drunk. More important is that they never seemed to apply that rule to male politicians. Those could get as drunk as a lord, in a party or a club, without criticism like this.
Under funding of the National Labor Relations Board is interfering with its ability to deal with the increased union-busting that accompanies the increased efforts for unionization.
Underfunding of the National Labor Relations Board is interfering with its ability to deal with the increased union-busting that accompanies the increased efforts for unionization.
Louisiana[n] denied abortion despite fetus’s fatal abnormality [will] travel to North Carolina.
Balls, gowns, marriage pressures. Jane Austen was basically Pakistani.
This article helped me to truly feel the oppressiveness of woman's social role in Britain in the 1800s, and in Pakistan today.
Six of 43 missing Mexican students were kept alive in warehouse for days.
Then executed by the army.
The affidavit released by the FBI shows why some of the bullshitter's supposed excuses are irrelevant,
It also shows the broadness of the Espionage Act, and why it threatens whistleblowers and the public's right to know.
Desperate times need radical solutions. Even Churchill [a Tory] knew when it was time to tax the rich.
The EU will not ban Russian tourists; rather, it will make getting tourist visas more effort for them, as a message.
This seems like good decision. It will avoid the closure that an outright ban would have caused.
A federal court has defended the right to hand out information about jury nullification: the possibility for a jury to find a defendant not guilty because they disapprove of the law that was used to charge the defendant.
As I understand it, the reason for the right to be tried by a "jury of your peers" is so that they can protect you from prosecution under an oppressive law.
Republican anti-abortion laws threaten to criminalize press coverage of abortion, and nationwide publication of information about getting an abortion where that is lawful.
US citizens: call on Biden to fire I.R.S. Commissioner Rettig, who was appointed by the corrupter, and replace him with someone trustworthy.
The rate of shootings has decreased 4% in the US since last year. But death threats from Republicans are increasing.
Starbucks has now fired over 80 workers illegally. In one unionized store, it sent a new manager to harass workers over little excuses.
The plan to connect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Russia's power grid is supposedly a backup plan to prevent a meltdown, if connections to Ukraine's grid are damaged.
Preventing a meltdown is important, But doing so that way would also enable Putin to steal the generated power. And the danger of a meltdown exists only because Putin stations troops in the plant.
Putin should demilitarize the plant and let someone repair the damaged redundant connections to Ukraine's grid.
The Pentagon has published a sensible plan for developing new rules to prevent military operations from harming civilians. When the rules are finished, in 2025, they will become part of "military doctrine", so soldiers will be required to follow them.
A crucial part of the plan is a policy of taking seriously civilians' reports of casualties, instead of rejecting them bullheadedly.
The UK Green Party calls for nationalizing the largest gas and electric utilities, and for taxing the rich to pay part of poor people's bills.
The first step is very good. The second is half good. Taxing the rich to help the poor is very important, but each poor person should get the same amount of aid regardless of how much energy perse uses. That way, poor people who can reduce their energy use will have more money to spend on other things.
46 countries have eradicated at least one "neglected tropical disease". Togo has now eradicated four of them.
There is a long way to go, and further progress depends on donations from rich countries.
Canberra now allows people to get recreational drugs tested to see what substances they really contain. In addition to discovering adulterants, they may find there is none of the drug they thought they had bought.
A quarter of the people who test a sample of drug product decide not to use the product after all.
Around half of the inhabitants of former Yugoslavia — or perhaps more — are nostalgic for that no-longer existent country.
I wonder if they will decide to reunite most of that country, this time as a democratic federation.
China and Europe are suffering from persistent heat and drought, which are causing many kinds of harm to the economy.
The US drought is approaching that point.
It will be much worse ten years from now. And afterwards it will be disaster, unless we take big steps to avoid it.
Northern Australia could have dangerously high heat most days of the year by 2100, study finds.
Southern regions of Australia may experience deadly heatwaves annually,
Rwanda does not allow journalists to meet refugees: all communication with them is forbidden. All inquiries about their conditions are blocked.
That is not only unjust in its own right, it is also a hint that the refugees have something really bad to criticize.
I've read reports of repressive treatment of dissent in Rwanda for many years.
Under global [heating], the frequency and intensity of wildfires is expected to increase, which would lead to "more stratospheric warming", said one expert.
Nearly 700 Civilians Killed or Wounded by Cluster Munitions So Far in Ukraine War.
There is a treaty that prohibits use of cluster bombs, but since Russia has not signed it, I think that is not very persuasive as a reason to condemn the Putin forces for using them.
The cogent reason to condemn the use of them what the article tells us about their effects: they mainly hurt civilians. Using them is one indication that hurting Ukrainian civilians is something Putin wants.
All countries should sign the treaty to prohibit them; that includes the US.
Dangerous heat waves could be three times as frequent by the end of this century.
This will have enormous impacts on farming in tropical regions, as it is not safe to do strenuous work in such heat.
A school in Nebraska abruptly eliminated its 54-year-old student newspaper based on objections to what the paper published about the rights of queer people.
Publishing a newspaper no longer requires the expensive and specialized equipment that it needed 54 years ago. The students can, and surely will, move it to the internet. I hope they will make sure people can read the newspaper without running any nonfree software, by not sending Javascript code to run in visitors' browsers.
Biden illustrates the default approach of "centrist" Democrats: when trying to help the poor in some way, take a small step so as not to be called "extreme".
Energy Giants Spending Millions to Block [Maine's] Effort to Create Consumer-Owned Utility.
A new study estimates that 2 to 4 million Americans are being kept out of work by long Covid. That has a substantial economic effect, though it's not responsible for this year's inflation. Wage increases this year are not big enough to be the cause.
A formerly private 2019 legal memo from the Department of Justice used questionable arguments to protect the corrupter from charges of obstructing justice.
The history of political corruption in the US. Around 1900 it had reached a level of blatant excess that spurred progressive politicians to enact strong campaign finance limits.
Since 1980, plutocratist politicians have swept them away, absurdly claiming that giving money to politicians' campaigns doesn't buy them. Americans need to eliminate plutocracy in order to bring back democracy.
California is considering a plan to revamp math education, whose first draft aimed to reduce the advanced courses available now (only in some schools) for students who were good at math. The idea was to prioritize equality of outcomes over helping each student to go as far as possible.
If the goal is to help nonwhite students on the average to do better in math, how about making sure calculus courses are taught in all high schools? The lack of these is one factor in holding them back, and it has an obvious remedy in the school system. Meanwhile, the article suggests that San Francisco has a way of encourage more diversity of students to advance to calculus without holding anyone back.
Another aspect of racism that contributes to the problem is that people in disprivileged groups are more likely to be poor. The math curriculum can't fix that, but the government can reduce poverty. We did it before; it isn't hard to do, if the government spends the requisite sum. If we defeat the plutocrats, we can do it again.
Here are the details of what Biden announced about partial student loan forgiveness. Some aspects will have to wait for lawsuits to conclude, but in the mean time nobody will have to make payments.
This describes some other incrementally helpful provisions.
A House investigation found that the wrecker's officials harmed the US response to Covid-19 in 2020 through pressure on the FDA.
Egypt excluded "undesirable" Egyptian civil society groups from the coming Cairo climate conference by not informing them about how to apply.
(satire) Big Ben Undergoes Routine Cleaning To Remove Hapless Tourists Dangling From Minute Hand.
Japan plans a return to nuclear power.
Restarting idle nuclear power plants might be reasonable, if they can take adequate precautions against future tsunamis and earthquakes. Building new nuclear plants is absurd even if they are safe, because they cost too much and take too long. They are a bad strategy for decarbonization.
Arizona Republicans have passed a law to impede making video recordings of thugs in action, creating an imaginary presumption that this somehow impedes them in acting lawfully. Various defenders of freedom of the press are suing.
The Twitter whistleblower says that Chinese, Russian and Indian government agents are getting special surveillance cooperation from Twitter.
The article talks in a vague sense about "intellectual property rights" that Twitter would need license for in order to train AI systems on various databases. Because that term is a misguided overgeneralization, the statement gives us no clue about which law it is actually talking about. None of the various laws that are foolishly lumped together under that term would be relevant to this. Maybe the statement is garbled, or has been confused by the use of the misleading generalization.
Right-wing politicians and organizations rebuke Biden's partial loan-forgiveness, saying that it would encourage "irresponsible behavior". It turns out that many of them recently benefited from forgiveness of much larger loans, or other sorts of business bailouts.
Right-wingers believe it is wrong for the government to help the poor, because they assume that the poor are poor because they are bad people and therefore deserve to be poor.
One of Reagan's advisors warned him in 1970 that if college were gratis, it threatened to produce an "educated proletariat" which would endanger the power of the rich. So Reagan set about making college more expensive.
The CIA couldn't find any connection between the Palestinian human rights groups and terrorism, but Biden refuses to criticize Israel for forcibly shutting them down.
US citizens: call on Congress to end disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies.
I am not sure that the federal government has the power under the constitution to do this; but if it can do this, I support it.
Everyone: call on Facebook to encrypt all messages end-to-end.
Normally my approach to bad things done by Facebook when it uses people is to urge people to refuse to be used by Facebook at all. To campaign to change one of the many ways it mistreats people is a distraction.
However, this particular mistreatment is so dangerous that I make an exception for it.
US citizens: call on Biden to insist to Israel: human rights advocacy is not terrorism.
US citizens: call on Congress to limit the President's ability to launch nuclear weapons.
Georgia governor Kemp has arranged to remove local election officials who he thinks would resist pressure to alter election results.
The article starts with a theory of why he is trying so hard to avoid testifying to a grand jury.
The use of drones, controlled from far away, means that US presidents can fight small wars that the public is hardly aware of. So they no longer need to convince the public to support any given war.
A herbal "medicine" seems to have killed Lori McClintock, wife of a member of Congress.
The "Enough is Enough" movement, of and for poor people, demands that the UK government do the opposite of what Tories want: help the non-rich.
Predictions about the next 6 months of war in Ukraine.
I think Ukraine can win, with enough western arms. And we had better provide them, or Putin will emerge triumphant and set on preparing another war.
An infographic to explain what the increased IRS funding will be used for, and that non-rich Americans will not have an increased chance of being audited.
Those selling "ghost gun" kits in the US will now have to put serial numbers on certain parts, and carry out background checks.
Identitarianism is Incompatible with Humanism. The Council for Secular Humanism declares to judge and treat individuals and their ideas based on the group identities each is assigned to.
Idaho librarian resigns over "atmosphere of extremism" and "intimidation tactics" of the right-wing Christians.
At this state of the fight, resigning in protest can be a powerful gesture. However, as time goes on, it will be necessary for librarians to find ways to fight that don't involve taking themselves out of the battle.
A Tory activist is on the BBC board and decides what counts as "impartial" in the news.
Real Estate CEO: Recession Could Be "Good" If "Unemployment … Puts Employers Back in the Driver Seat."
In a purely journalistic site, "Executive will not regret suffering for the masses if it increases rich people's power" might not count as news. It is too much like, "Dog wants to bite man." But I'm publishing political notes, not news.
Australia has prepared a plan to save the swift parrot from extinction, but it was designed not to protect against the biggest threat, which is logging.
On the importance of remembering slavery and commemorating its history.
The article is about slavery and Britain, but even though the history in the US is different in detail, the point is basically the same.
New Zealand calls on the world's nuclear powers to get serious about nuclear disarmament.
It is a valid argument that, if countries have nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country is likely to use them. By the same argument, if it is possible to build nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country will build some.
Thus, abolishing nuclear weapons globally will take us one step further away from a nuclear war, but not in an irrevocable way. We will be in a less acute variant of the same dilemma we are in now.
So I think global nuclear disarmament calls for a strategic plan: if after global nuclear disarmament one country builds nuclear weapons again, how should the rest of the world respond?
- What if China is that country?
- What if Russia is that country?
- What if the US is that country?
- What if India is that country?
- What if Pakistan is that country?
- What if Israel is that country?
- What if Iran is that country?
- What if Saudi Arabia is that country?
- What if North Korea is that country?
- What if South Korea is that country?
- What if Burma is that country?
- What if Ethiopia is that country?
- What if Hungary is that country?
Along what lines should the world respond? * Ignoring the nuclear weapons, acting as if they did not exist? * Pressuring that country to get rid of them? * Building nuclear weapons and making that country back down? * Some other approach?
I pose these questions but I do not have answers for them.
US citizens: call on Biden to agree to the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
More information about the situation.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
Some Michigan Republicans, including officials, got their hand on some voting machines in Michigan and did various "tests" on them.
I can't be sure what those machines actually do. It turns out that the term "tabulator" is used for all sorts of machines that generate total vote counts. It is possible that voters vote directly on those machines, and the machines output only totals. Using that kind of machine with a computer in it makes the voting system vulnerable. If so, the state should eliminate their use.
However, those vulnerabilities don't spontaneously exploit themselves. They can be exploited by people. The people most likely to rig an election through voting machines, are those who are (1) their manufacturers (because they have opportunity), (2) given to wild conspiracy ideation such as QAnonsense, or (3) willing to break any law for their cause. Each of those three groups is mainly Republican.
I would not put it past those conspirators to have inserted a back door into the machines they got control over. But it could also be the common Republican play, Blow Smoke Then Cry 'Fire'.
Making things even more shocking and dangerous, one of the conspirators is now running for Attorney General of Michigan, endorsed by the corrupter. I'd expect him to quash the investigation if he is elected.
If you find any reliable information on what part of the election these machines actually do, I would appreciate it if you send it to me with its URL.
US citizens: call on Democrats to combat the lies Republicans tell about increased IRS funding.
The CIA couldn't find any connection between the Palestinian human rights groups and terrorism, but the US still won't stand up for them.
Three Arkansas thugs are being investigated after a video showed them holding a man down and punching him.
I welcome public denunciation of non-fatal instances of violence by uniformed thugs. If that becomes widespread, it could potentially end official tolerance for violent thugs.
They accuse the victim of having started the fight. One can hardly believe thugs as witnesses for such a thing, as they are accustomed to testilying, but it might be true. But that question doesn't change anything significant. To teach everyone not to engage in violence is too much to hope for, but we must teach that to official thugs.
Herewith the 6 rules for getting a second (or third or fourth) chance to sell a giant con.
The four big global grain companies are using the global food shortage to gouge. This calls for a windfall profits tax.
Instead of doing this one industry at a time, how about applying it to all businesses that are making big profits — counting bonuses and stock buybacks and part of those profits?
It’s high time the free world realised that it is not fighting a mad dictator but an autonomous and self-regenerating aggressive power system.
Dementis is trying to remove the elected Tampa prosecutor from office, but he couldn't directly do this. He had to ask the state senate to support it. However, the prosecutor is challenging the move in federal court. For the moment, he remains in office.
[Ukraine] says Russia has transferred more than 1,000 children from Mariupol for illegal adoptions in Siberia.
Studying Big Oil projections for future use of fossil fuels finds that they expect/plan not to achieve the (weak) Paris agreement targets.
Imagine a repeat of Jan 6th [the coup] — but with tanks, soldiers, and guns.
I would suggest federalizing states' national guards, perhaps one state at a time, and giving direct orders that will provoke coup supporters to quit.
Why forgiving student loans should not be limited to people with under a certain limit:
[It] isn't that people with high incomes will be denied student debt relief; it's that people eligible and desperate for relief will get lost in the bureaucratic maze that income-based restrictions inevitably create.
This article asserts that Dugin, the apparent target of the car bomb that instead killed his daughter, is a fierce right-wing critic of Putin and has demanded a much harsher war against Ukraine.
I can't have full confidence in what CNN reports about this, any more than I can have full confidence in the rest of the mainstream media. But I don't think Russian government agents would assassinate someone for being more Putinite than Putin himself. It does not sound like he is Putin's enemy.
Amazon warehouse workers have walked out of the job, saying that the wages are too low to live on, and that management is demanding that they work ever harder and faster, discarding safety precautions.
For more reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon, see amazon.html.
The corrupter's White House officials tried to "bully" the FDA to authorize hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, counter to the evidence.
The Solomon Islands is moving step by step towards autocracy. Now it has announced it will ban foreign journalists based on what they write.
"Racial profiling" means applying laws to people in a prejudiced way based on their race. A central part of that unjust practice is that the person acting has real, direct power over others. To apply the term to journalists' writing, even racist writing, is twisting its meaning.
Racial profiling can't be seen directly in one instance; it takes a set of instances to see such a pattern, and then it's a judgment call. To use this as a criterion to admit or exclude a journalist makes no sense — unless it's simply an excuse for arbitrary censorship.
The movement towards autocracy began when the government made a "security" deal with China. I suspect that is no coincidence.
Argentines are protesting, demanding the government help them obtain food.
As it generally does, the International Monetary Fund is "helping" Argentina pay its debts by limiting government spending to help people in difficulty. In effect, the IMF converts supposedly sovereign countries into colonies of the foreign banks, with their governments focused on extracting money for them.
This is disappointing, since the deal with the IMF was supposedly a new form, designed to avoid this result.
Oil-prospecting companies plan seismic testing in wide areas of ocean near Australia's coasts.
Surely there is no room in the carbon budget to actually extract oil from any new oil fields they might discover. So it makes no sense to let them search.
The US faces a shortage of teachers, partly caused by demonization of teachers and government policies blaming them for bad outcomes. Together with low pay.
Anti-Union Companies are Anti-Worker and Anti-American.
Examples described include Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. As well as Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe's, Target and Walmart. And Costco and Trader Joe's. Also Chipotle, Starbucks, and McDonalds.
And don't forget Tesla.
The assassin that attacked Salman Rushdie was influenced by bizarre interpretation of Islam. Well-educated Muslims condemn such acts. This article explains why.
I think what we can learn from this is that fanatical leaders can distort any religion into a murderous cult.
Compare, for instance, with the Christian fanatics that murder abortion doctors, and the Christian fanatics that want to imprison women for abortions. It would be wrong to conclude that Christianity advocates killing doctors or imprisoning women. What we should conclude is that Christianity has the potential to be a basis for fanaticism.
So does Islam, and so do various other religions.
A former thug plead guilty of falsifying the search warrant that led to the shooting of Breonna Taylor by thugs.