Site original : Richard Stallman's Political Notes
The UK now has a policy forbidding undercover thugs from having intimate sexual relationships with people in the groups they are infiltrating.
That's good, but what about the question of whether to send thugs to infiltrate dissidents?
The spread of "failed states" may be related to neoliberalism and its weakening of states in general.
7 years after the US-supported coup in Honduras, the harm continues to propagate.
It is not enough to make Volkswagen pay money for its emissions fraud. That crime must be prosecuted.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-888-894-1033 to oppose the bill to defeat state requirements for labeling GMOs in food. The Senate seems about to approve it, and the House already did.
The Center for Food Safety suggests saying something like this:
I urge you to reject the fake GMO labeling bill from Senators Stabenow and Roberts, a substitution amendment to Senate bill 764. This bill takes away the rights of states to label GE foods and sticks consumers with QR code technology for smartphones or 1-800 numbers instead of clear, simple, on-package labeling. But a substantial majority of Americans would be deprived of their right to know if GE labeling were done through QR codes. Don't hide information behind high-tech codes and phone numbers. Please oppose this bill and support mandatory on-package labeling that clearly states-in words-whether a food product is genetically engineered.Here's how senators voted on a test vote — you can see how yours voted. If they voted for it, tell them you insist they represent the people instead of business (but don't curse them out, as that would inspire them to oppose you).
They further said:
Why is the Stabenow-Roberts bill so bad?
Instead of providing consumers with simple, on-package labeling of genetically engineered foods, the Stabenow-Roberts bill:
Facebook silently changed its search system to expose the existence of hidden accounts.
In addition, Facebook goes to great lengths to hide some privacy settings. Apparently it wants to claim users have that option while making it so hard to find that people won't use it.
If anything suggests to you that you "must" have a Facebook account, that is proof of the importance of your duty to refuse to have a Facebook account.
Apple has conceived of making phones and cameras cease working when they receive a special infrared code.
This would be like building DRM into physical spaces. As with any DRM, it is conceivable only because of proprietary software.
College loans in the US have made thousands of students into permanent debt slaves. They can barely survive, and their debt keeps increasing.
Don't take the risk of borrowing to go to college under today's terms. Instead, study something that might be useful, such as political activism.
Australia: Tragic Lack of Leadership Puts Red Hot [Global Heating] out in the Cold.
Around the world, people who want democracy think that democracy is working badly. Perhaps because we have focused it too narrowly on elections.
However, any analysis of why democracy is working badly must cope with the issue of plutocracy. A clique including rich people with influence over unions and media manipulated the contest between Clinton and Sanders. An effective reform of democracy needs to address this.
Google now offers a way for account holders to find out what data Google keeps about them. Or at least part of that, since there is no guarantee that Google shows all it has.
The data you see ought to be a warning. If you use this data to draw specific detailed conclusions about how to get the ads you want, I think you've missed the point.
Look at the cowardly excuses and stratagems that Harvard uses to duck the issue of what its fossil fuel investments do to the world.
If you are a Harvard alumnum (*), when Harvard asks for a donation and you would otherwise have donated, I suggest you respond, "I gave to 350.org instead."
* That is the Latin neuter version of alumnus or alumna.
Most Labour MPs belong to B'liar's Tory Lite wing, and they are trying to force Corbyn out of the party leadership to which he was elected by the party members. Since the party rules do not give them that authority, they are trying in effect to go on strike against him and the party members, until the latter vote them out of office.
It shows how hard plutocratists fight any movement against plutocracy.
How Candy Crush Saga is tuned to be addictive.
I am safe from it because, on principle, I won't install a nonfree program on my computer. (And it doesn't run on GNU/Linux anyway.) Nothing prevents a free (libre) game from being tuned to be addictive, but it appears not to happen.
This is one additional secondary reason you should run only free software. The main reason is that you deserve control over your computing.
Many governments don't want climate scientists to say how bad things are going to get. The scientists themselves figure they need to present some hope, so that people will keep fighting rather than give up. Continuing the fight could make the disaster less complete.
I think that young people today should know that global heating could cause collapse of civilization, which would kill most of humanity and reduce most of the rest to destitution. The planet roasters are planning to kill you. Nothing personal about it: the planet roasters want more money, and if the way to get it happens to kill billions of people and extinguish hundreds of thousands of species, they don't see a problem in that.
Apple funds Paul Ryan's campaigns, hoping that it is buying a tax cut.
I call that corruption.
Solar electric installations in the US are booming; alas, not enough, since coal and gas-fired plants are still being installed. We need to have less of them than now, a lot less.
The US should start paying for home batteries, so as to create a sufficient market to make the price drop soon.
Almost 20 million Americans get water from systems with high levels of lead.
Clinton's solution for the crushing loans of US college students: aid for the founders of startups.
How pitifully small.
As Clinton ensures the Democratic Party won't try to end plutocratic rule, she shows she is not the president we need.
Exxon's puppets in the US Congress are harassing Greenpeace, 350.org and several state governments with pointless investigations.
French President Hollande says he will veto the TTIP.
A university department in Israel was going to give an award to Breaking the Silence, but the president of the university caved in to pressure and vetoed it.
Breaking the Silence encourages occupation soldiers to state the things they did and witnessed — things that the government does not want us to know about.
When Palestinians get medical treatment in Israel, such as chemotherapy for cancer, Israeli checkpoints make it impossible to get there. A group of Israelis volunteer to drive these patients to the hospital.
Israeli drivers don't get stopped at the checkpoints on Israelis-only roads.
Israeli "Settlers" Set Fire to Palestinian Agricultural Lands Near Nablus.
Liberman crushed a plan for cooperation between Israeli mayors and the Palestinian Authority, by barring the Palestinian representative from entering Israel to meet with them.
The ostensible reason was that the representative had engaged in "subversion". In other words, an all purpose excuse that they can always make and never need to justify.
Everyone: call on the Pentagon to give Mustafa al Hawsawi the medical care he needs to cope with the lasting damage done by US torture.
He also deserves to be given a fair trial or released.
Internet-connected devices with bad security are just great for botnets.
Anders Kompass explains why the persistent corruption and human rights violations he saw in the UN led him to feel obliged to resign.
When Facebook sees two useds are in the same physical location, it may suggest that the two "friend" each other.
This can cause lots of trouble for people in certain circumstances. But remember that the NSA is doing the same thing, and doesn't let you opt out — except the way I do, by not carrying a mobile phone.
Christy Sheats was a gun nut who claimed she needed lots of guns to keep her family safe. Then she shot her daughters dead, and was killed by a thug when she wouldn't drop her gun.
In general, you're safer if you do not have a gun at home.
Some of the anti-EU voters were grasping at a chance to rebel against the politician system, and didn't really want that choice to win.
Serious consideration of arguments was undermined by a general sense of vague distrust of logical reasoning, which made wishful thinking seem as valid as sober thinking.
The "Vote Leave" campaign promised great practical benefits. After winning, it deleted them from its web site.
US cities with a large percentage of black residents tend to make a practice of fining people to raise money.
Tyrannical bullies of the world, unite! Erdoğan is trying to mend relations with Putin.
At the same time, Erdoğan has made a positive achievement by gaining permission from Israel to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. But that good is small in comparison with the evil of his repression in Turkey itself. There are a lot more Turks than Gazans. Erdoğan could surely have got permission to help Gaza without repressing Turks.
Germany is planning to restrict cooperation between its spy agency and the NSA. The NSA was using it to spy on European officials.
2/3 of Americans in a poll said that the economy is rigged against them.
Most of them were not impressed by Trump or Clinton. It is too bad they didn't get Sanders nominated.
The Democratic Party platform will oppose Sanders's universal single payer medical care program, obeying Clinton.
The US will give all federal thugs and prosecutors training to try to curb implicit bias.
I don't know whether there is a demonstrated method for doing this job, but it is good that they are trying.
Thugs in Oaxaca massacred teachers protesting the government's preparations for privatizing schools, but the teachers are not cowed.
Denouncing Violent Tactics of 'Political Mafia,' Tens of Thousands March in Mexico City.
This sort of state terrorism, visible in US in the CIA torture and Guantanamo prison, is more dangerous than foreign-organized or underground terrorism. The measures that are proposed to block the latter are exactly what enables the former.
Reckless domestic violence has been ruled grounds for denying someone the right to buy or own guns, just like flat-out deliberate violence.
If this law had been enforced, it would have prevented the Orlando massacre.
A journalist working in a CCA private prison reports that the way CCA extracts a profit is through low pay and understaffing. The guards can't stop prisoners from stabbing other prisoners.
His training class explicitly taught him not to try to stop prisoners from attacking other prisoners.
Perdue says it will pay the cost of improving conditions for chickens that are raised for it to sell.
The UK political situation reflects the fact that politicians almost completely ignored the people, as well as the serious political issues that affect them.
It is not an accident that this has become the norm there, and in the US. It is a result of plutocracy, which uses the media to spread the idea that resisting the actions of the plutocracy is "unrealistic".
India is imposing biometric identification on the whole population, including fingerprinting and iris scans.
It may be possible, or it may become possible, to recognize people on the street by iris scanning from a distance, turning this into a horrible orwellian system.
We tried to resist this.
Chen Yunfei, survivor of the Tiananmen protests in 1989, has tried to spread awareness of them in China. He is now being tried on charges of saying what the State wants people to forget.
Labour MPs from B'liar's "New Labour" sellout era demand that Corbyn resign as the party leader, but don't dare face him in a vote of the membership. Corbyn and his backers have threatened to replace them in the next election, which could be this year of four years from now.
A Chilean officer of the 1970s was found liable in a civil suit for the murder of singer Victor Jara. If he is convicted in a criminal trial, that would be really something to cheer.
The US was behind the military coup after this murder took place.
The Obama regime is pressing the Senate to pass a bill to "protect" Puerto Rico from default.
However, I've read elsewhere that this bill would give Puerto Rico the same nondemocratic treatment as Greece, and Detroit and Flint.
Google is trying to "help" cities provide public transport. The threat is that public buses will be eliminated and replaced by Guber, which tramples passengers' freedom.
It sure looks that way. The Democratic Party just rejected a proposal to rule out a "no fly" zone in Syria. Such a zone would be a direct confrontation with Russia.
Last time the neocons had a president on their side, they started the gratuitous war that engulfed Iraq and created PISSI. They also gave the US torture and imprisonment without trial: that is, national shame.
If we prosecute the neocons responsible for these crimes against humanity, we can turn them into cons, and eventually into ex-cons.
We need to convert the neocons into ex-cons.
Fake fingerprints make it easy to avoid using your real fingerprints to authenticate.
To make sure you can dispose of them quickly, they need to be edible and digestible.
The US plans to ask visitors to declare the locations of their "online presence".
This seems dangerous to me, since there will be no limits to the pressure for self-censorship. Even if the US applies this only to keep out terrorists, other governments will follow the same approach to exclude human rights defenders.
Systematically some will be led to give their passwords too, by mistake.
The UK's departure from the EU would remove one obstacle to reforming it.
To take advantage of this opportunity would require electing parties committed to such reform in many EU countries.
A users sued Microsoft and collected $10,000 damages over the imposed installation of Windows 10.
Disney "princess" marketing teaches girls a limiting gender image and is bad for their self-esteem.
US citizens: Phone Rep. Pelosi to oppose a lame-duck vote on the TPP.
Australia's right-wing government wants tax cuts for business, heavily oriented towards foreign investors.
What this shows is that the right-wing parties are functioning as a government of occupation for the plutocrats.
A CEO of privatized prisons says his company will do just fine with either Clinton or Trump in the White House.
Sanders would have tried to put a crimp in their business.
Egyptian Authorities Ban Feminist Mozn Hassan from Travelling to Beirut.
To stop someone from leaving a country is in itself a mark of tyranny.
Airbnb and similar services have caused a big drop in NYC's rentak vacancies.
This must be driving rents up for people who live in the city, adding to the effect of other pressures.
South African journalists have been fired for covering protests.
Everyone: call on CNN not to hire Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager.
"Austerity is the cause of our economic woes. Itâs nothing to do with the EU."
The EU is also a force for austerity, but mainly in the euro zone. This did not touch the UK because the pound is independent of the euro.
Most British campaigners either for or against the EU focused on short-term superficial effects.
A former San Francisco thug chief proposes policies to curb violence by thugs in San Francisco.
The US Supreme Court overturned the Texas abortion law that tried to impose pointless restrictions only so that clinics would be unable to comply.
The decision is broad, and constitutes a big setback for fanatical Christians that want to deny women the right to an abortion by hook or by crook.
Clinton's recent speech indicates she plans to give the multinational corporations a big tax cut.
Eastern Europeans in Britain now face the danger of violence by bigots.
US citizens: call for legalizing federal support for research about gun violence.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act and extend civil rights legislation to genderqueer people.
"In pushing for Brexit, the powerful have exploited marginalised peopleâs fears and needs. The left must help them to take back control."
US citizens: call on the Democratic Party to take a stand against expansion of Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to adopt several gun control measures.
I support this version of the "suspected terrorist" provision because it calls for giving suspects due process, rather than the arbitrary watch list used now. If this passes, maybe it could provide a basis to insert due process to the no-fly list, which is currently a system of punishment without trial.
The bills actually proposed are well-meant but unjust.
The UK government is going to great lengths to shut down a civil suit by Libyan dissidents about its participation in handing them over to Qadhafi for torture.
The British working class, deindustrialized and impoverished, seized on the EU referendum to attack an elite that had demonstrated decades of not caring about them.
However, bollixing some of the elite will not result by itself in defeating the plutocratic elite. What they need is a party that stands for them.
The EU is getting paid back for its lack of democracy.
Not only the European Commission is undemocratic; so are the banks that the euro zone has elevated to cruel and tyrannical power as seen in Greece.
The bombastic former London mayor is likely to be the next PM of the UK.
The other likely candidate is the chief advocate of massive surveillance.
I can't judge which is worse.
How progressives in Britain could respond to the UK's leaving the EU.
A million Britons have already asked for another referendum.
Nazanin Zaghari is a prisoner in Iran, and her daughter is effectively a prisoner too. She can't return home except with her father, and he dares not go, fearing he too might be arrested.
Nazanin is charged with helping design a web site for protesters.
Oakland Proposes Ban On Coal Handling.
The military regime in Thailand has arrested people for handing out leaflets urging people to vote no in the referendum on the military's proposed unjust constitution.
Small oil spills keep happening in California and surely in other places that oil pipelines run. While a small spill like this is not a regional disaster like the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the damage of their small spills accumulates over time. And if the spill gets into a river, it can ruin drinking water for a region.
Internal data from Guber show that it really pays drivers peanuts.
Transcanada, the company that was going to build the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline, has sued the US under NAFTA for 15 billion dollars for denying it the profit it "expected" to get from the pipeline.
This one of the "investor-state" lawsuits that the TPP would extend to many other countries. That's exactly why we must defeat the TPP and cancel NAFTA.
In general we must abolish the business supremacy treaties.
The Democratic Party rejected a platform statement against the TPP.
Leftover "New Labour" MPs took the referendum outcome as the opportunity for their long-planned attempt to oust Corbyn as head of the Labour Party. Corbyn has responded vigorously.
The Labour rebels are part of the elites whose disregard for British working people led many of them to give up on the party and scapegoat immigrants.
PISSI has lost Falluja; even more important, it may soon lose Manbij, the border city that anchors its line of communication to Turkey.
Without the Manbij corridor, PISSI won't be able to bring in recruits via Turkey, or trade arms and oil with Turkey. Recall that Turkish journalists have been prosecuted for revealing how Turkey delivered arms to PISSI.
I expect PISSI to collapse within a year if it loses Manbij.
I hope we will get more news of the civilians of Falluja. PISSI killed those that tried to flee, and some of those who succeeded in fleeing were imprisoned and abused by Iraqi forces.
Sanders said he will vote for Clinton, to stop Trump.
It would take more than that for me ignore the bad things about Clinton.
The daughter of a murdered man is a leader in the campaign to keep the death penalty abolished in Nebraska.
Snowden's lawyer will launch a new campaign for Obama to pardon Snowden.
Turkish [Thugs] Use Teargas Against Gay Activists in Istanbul.
The prime responsibility of the state is to plan and manage, but plutocratic states refuse to face the responsibility.
Australians have privately organized a mass battery purchase to advance home battery technology. The state should have done this. In fact, I proposed such a thing in a legislative hearing in Massachusetts a year ago. Ten years ago, states were doing the same sort of thing for solar power cells.
The neoliberal ideology is both an excuse for this refusal and a way of covering up contrary actions. Every market is regulated; a market can't exist without some regulations or other. The market mechanism could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if regulated with a carbon tax. If the state instead subsidizes fossil fuels, then it's managing society so as to run off the carbon cliff; but it can pretend that "the invisible hand is doing this -- we are only watching."
Neoliberal ideology is also an excuse to cut taxes to the point where all spending projects are impossible, again denying responsibility for the policies that are adopted.
The US already has a law that could be used to stop domestic abusers from buying or keeping guns. We have failed to enforce it.
Researchers have broken a watermarking code for e-books. Here's the developers' statement.
Watermarking used as a scheme to stop people from sharing is wrong because its goal is wrong. Sharing is good, and ought to be legal. However, the scheme presupposes another injustice: making people identify themselves to buy a copy. To defend my privacy, I refuse to identify myself to a bookseller. I pay cash and only cash.
The FBI stretches the unjust PAT RIOT Act, and small companies often don't know how to resist. Meanwhile, bills in Congress threaten to give the FBI more power.
If the UK leaves the EU, Scotland is likely to secede from the UK and rejoin the EU.
Ironically, both the Scottish nationalist movement and the movement to take the UK out of the EU are similar false revolts. People who had been dumped on by the rich elites signed up for a rebellion aimed at something else.
The government of Nicaragua is crushing the opposition and criticism.
Russia's congress has approved a law to require phone companies and ISPs to record a person's calls and communication, and to hand over encryption keys to the state on demand.
This is what the FBI and the NSA want in the US. They are the enemies of American's freedom; they are Putin.
Everyone: call on Senator Reed to drop his support for cluster bombs, and specifically for exporting them to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens: call on Congress to adopt public funding for elections.
US citizens: Call on Congress to ban trade in shark fins.
US citizens: call on Congress not to permit drug test requirements for food stamps.
Are these idiots trying to make addicts quit by starving them? Or punish their children?
The UK voters voted 52%-48% in favor of taking the UK out of the EU, but actually doing so will be very difficult.
The referendum has no direct legal effect; it is just a recommendation. I tend to think that Parliament will ultimately decide to disregard the recommendation, because the small margin was not a real mandate.
The vote reflects a broad level of dissatisfaction with the EU all across its territory.
It is a shame that the dissatisfaction is being mobilized by right-wing nationalists playing on racism, with a fake revolt, rather than by progressives who would instead aim to free the EU from control by business and plutocrats.
The Fraudulent Case for a Syrian Escalation: US war hawks are wallowing in wishful thinking, and hoping that Clinton will give them a chance to test it against reality.
The NYC thug department's inspector general concluded that the "broken windows" theory of policing, famously applied by those thugs, has no empirical basis and that its harshness is gratuitous.
Republicans are still trying to win in November through voter suppression. By requiring expensive ID cards based on expensive birth certificates, they have effectively brought back the "poll tax" that once stopped poor people from voting.
Some graphics cards manufacturers have been tricking reviewers by changing the clock parameters in the products they send to reviewers.
The ACLU has sued to stop the US from contracting medical care for underage refugees to religious organizations that deny them access to contraception and abortion.
Right on, ACLU!
Tina Louise Rothery joined an anti-fracking protest and was ordered to pay 55,000 pounds to the fracking company. She refuses to pay, and challenges the British state to jail her.
Germany has banned fracking.
The Dispossessed [in the UK] Voted For Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn Offers Real Change.
Fear of Immigration Drove the "Leave" Victory — Not Immigration Itself.
Dramatic House Sit-In on Guns Is Undercut By Focus on Secret, Racist Watchlist.
The ACLU's statement opposing use of arbitrary "watch lists" to decide who can buy a gun.
Trump's cruelty and vindictiveness are highlighted by his actions in Scotland.
"Here he intimidate[d] ordinary people; he made outrageous promises to hoodwink the gullible; and he showed a breathtaking disdain for the environmental toll..."
Satellite surveillance can now report illegal logging "almost in real time".
Sanders: his political revolution is "just getting started".
Thugs have been visiting dissidents in Cleveland to ask them about planned protests for the Republican Convention, apparently for intimidation.
Nauru says it welcomes "respectful, objective" journalists but not "extreme left activist" journalists. In two years, only two groups have been sufficiently "respectful" to get approval. The visa fee is enough to convince most journalists not to ask.
Nauru is "sovereignty" makes it a convenient and deniable proxy for Australia.
The Real Threat to Britain's Borders Is the Flow of Dirty Money.
Elif Shafak: "Turkeyâs LGBT community is fighting for freedom. Thatâs why Erdogan targets it."
One of the thugs involved in killing Freddie Gray was acquitted. It was impossible to prove that the treatment which caused Gray's death was an intentional attempt to kill or injure him.
Of course, the thugs and their allies present this as a personal failing of DA Mosby, rather than as their own success in maintaining impunity.
Putin plans to exclude opposition parties totally from Russia's legislature, through repression.
Dissidents face repression too.
Clinton says she opposes the TPP, but she refuses to take action to prevent it from being adopted later this year.
Establishment delegates gagged the Sanders delegates inside a Democratic Party meeting in New York State, and physically attacked one of them.
Apple is planning to eliminate headphone jacks from new iThings so as to impose DRM. A secondary benefit for Apple is that it would make users buy additional hardware.
As Quietly as Possible, the Government is Renewing Its Assault on Your Privacy.
"Privacy" is an understatement. What Big Brother's men are trying to do is reinterpret the fourth amendment into nullity.
Some US states use secret, proprietary algorithms to decide on sentences for convicted criminals.
This illustrates the general point that the use of nonfree software by the state violates sovereignty and human rights. Using an algorithm for this purpose could be legitimate if it is published so that people can judge whether it is just.
US citizens: Phone both your senators to oppose S. 2609, which would override state laws to require labeling of foods with GMOs. The senate will vote some time next week.
866-772-3843
The UK seems to have disenfranchised many British expatriates from the EU referendum by sending their ballot papers late.
Student protesters at UC Irvine are the latest to face persecution for protesting Israel's occupation policies.
Their protest did not disrupt anything, but the university called the thugs, who referred them for prosecution.
The Democratic Party now has a debate about changing its unquestioning support for the occupation.
A Turkish cartoonist has been convicted of insulting Erdoğan.
Shame on Turkey for having laws that make insults a crime. Shame on Erdoğan for applying them.
US citizens: call for government measures to reduce the price of pharmaceuticals.
US citizens: tell the DNC: Gov. Malloy must stand up to the insurance industry now.
Canada has a law requiring any online service to give you whatever data it has about you.
This is a good law, in that it helps users find out how much they are being snooped on. But it is not enough. Important services must be required to offer you a mode that doesn't surveil or track you. For instance, Guber must allow people to request a ride anonymously and pay anonymously.
Cleveland's strict restrictions on protests near the Republican Convention prohibit anything people could stand on, but allow guns.
This is what the ACLU has sued about.
Hillary Clintonâs Likely Pentagon Chief Already Advocating for More Bombing and Intervention.
Imposing a "no-fly" zone in Syria would mean a direct confrontation with Russia.
The only party in Syria that is not monstrous is that of the Kurds. But Arabs tend to distrust them, so they directly can't become a government of Syria. For the rest, there is no one to support.
The FARC and the Colombian government have agreed on a cease-fire.
The FARC started out as a left-wing rebellion after the assassination of a presidential candidate showed that the elite-controlled system would never allow itself to be replaced by mere voting. However, they degenerated over the decades into a criminal gang.
Colombia's even nastier criminal gang, the paramilitares, is tightly associated with the government. It will not be so easily convinced to stop its violence.
Israel's new "anti-terrorism" law will criminalize wearing a t-shirt or chanting a slogan as "terrorism".
"A stone-throwing Arab will become a terrorist, while a stone-throwing ultra-Orthodox Jew will not."
This law includes some of the injustices applied in the US, such as prosecuting humanitarian charities despite their making every careful attempt to comply with US laws.
The law also perversely defines fighting the army of occupation as "terrorism".
Americans, do you think the Minutemen were "terrorists"?
US citizens: support the Stop Mass Cracking Act to block the FBI's plan to facilitate authorization to crack people's computers.
Actually, the bill uses the word "Hacking", but its substance deserves our support.
US citizens: call on various corporations (including Google and Facebook) not to sponsor the Republican National Convention.
Everyone: tell 13 Republican attorneys general not to campaign to protect Exxon's dishonest global heating denialism.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state representative to support S.2138 (confidential health care for teenagers covered by their parent's family insurance plans).
US citizens: call on your representative to cosponsor HR 5474, the Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act.
The UN is about to celebrate War on Drugs Day (not its official name). It should take its own advice, and start listening to the reasons why that war is futile and destructive.
The quiet gradual privatization of nursing homes in the UK has been bad for the workers and the patients. It must be good for the owners of those businesses.
UK spy agencies have been given total secrecy and total impunity from torture; the government obstructs all attempts to hold them accountable for the most gruesome crimes.
The EU pays a subsidy to anyone who owns land and clears the wildlife off it.
Strange to say, those who want to take Britain out of the EU say they won't take advantage of that by ending this subsidy.
The Global Commission on Internet Governance report includes many admirable principles.
However, it fails to include two principles that are necessary for a freedom-respecting internet:
Users must have control over the software that does their computing (it is free software).
Systems must collect the minimum possible data about users.
The Pakistani Taliban assassinated a prized Sufi singer. They are intolerant of any version of Islam that isn't cruel and hard.
"An organisation that judges women on how attractive they are to men has publicly humiliated its own winner for going on a TV show all about being attractive to men."
The House of Representatives rejected an attack on the "lifeline" program that enables poor people to have telephones.
Due to global heating, beetles have killed 66 million pine trees in California. These dead trees, together with drought and heat, could lead to giant wildfires.
Supreme Court Says Illegal Police Stops Are OK as Long as They Find an Outstanding Warrant Afterward.
The Tamil refugees that Indonesia proposes to return to Sri Lanka were tortured there before.
Demand for Abortions Soars in Countries Hit by Zika Outbreak. Unfortunately, these abortions are in many cases illegal.
US citizens: call on Clinton to choose non-hawk Larry Korb to head the Pentagon, instead of belligerent Michele Flournoy.
US citizens: oppose the DARK Act yet again.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose SCROTUS' 6 different campaigns to attack communications freedom and access, and push media concentration.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Plutocratist Democrats are once again using "lesser evil" to claim we owe them our votes.
I won't vote for an evil candidate. Whoever I vote for need not be perfect, but must at least be good.
That means either Sanders (as a write-in) or the Green candidate.
IMF Warns that US Needs to 'Urgently' Tackle Poverty.
Oakland's Latest Top Cop Was Reportedly Ousted From His Last Job After 11 Months, for his "military style of leadership."
Clinton has returned to right-wing deficit FUD.
Another success for the ICC: Congolese militia commander Bemba has been convicted of allowing his troops to systematically commit rape.
Another reason industrial concentration is bad: it stifles new competitors.
This is in addition to giving the companies lobbying power so that we can't pass laws to stop them from mistreating the public.
Talking with non-fanatical gun owners: they point out that only a tiny fraction of guns are misused.
Nonetheless, that fraction adds up to a measurable increment in danger for those living in a house with a gun. They are right that background checks would not stop all gun killings, but background checks would not do much harm.
I think people should need to get a license to own a gun. All the checking would be done when you apply for a license; then the check at the time of buying a gun would only be to verify that your license is still valid. The license could require training in safety practices.
If substantial evidence appears that you are connected with terrorism, a court could cancel your license.
The head of the UK's doctors' association accuses the Tories of planning to destroy the NHS: "The agenda of the Tory party is to wash its hands of the NHS".
The Unidos Podemos party in Spain sets an example of opposing plutocratic policies instead of blaming immigrants.
Spain's right-wing Minister of the Interior, whose portfolio includes thug departments, was caught plotting against politicians that advocate independence for Catalonia.
I do not support independence for Catalonia. The advocates of independence say it is unfair for Catalonia to subsidize development of other parts of Spain. I think that's exactly what the wealthiest regions of a country should do for the poorer regions.
The US Senate just barely defeated a proposal to give the FBI increased power to track Americans' internet usage.
Venezuela is suffering from devastating shortages of all sorts of commodities including food.
Chavez decided to subsidize food for poor people, which the US does too, but his method operated at the store level and offered low prices to everyone for unlimited quantities. This led naturally to shortages.
The US food stamp program, by contrast, applies only to poor people and only to a limited amount of purchases. Its main problem is that not all poor people are included, but it does not cause distort the markets for the food products, so it does not cause shortages.
The NSA is investigating how it will spy on internet-connected "smart" gadgets and appliances in the homes of people who make the mistake of having such things.
If the device has proprietary software in it, it does not deserve to be trusted. The software's proprietor might design it to snoop on you or mislead you. However, even if the proprietor doesn't put in a malicious feature, the software is likely to have security flaws, and users won't be allowed to release corrected versions for you to install.
A considerable number of college students in London are homeless. Some were given state housing in a place so far away they can't get to their classes.
I can't for the life of me understand why students, or other people with imposed disadvantages, interpret this as their own personal failing. That is very convenient for the ones whose moral failing is really responsible.
A failing school in England became a great school with real actors teaching performance of Shakespeare's plays.
I really like the way the history class teaches students to question Shakespeare's bias, too.
Russia plans to require a back door in all messaging applications. They could easily enforce this on proprietary apps offered in Russia.
The article doesn't make it clear whether this law would forbid individuals to install and use trustworthy free software applications.
We should tell the US politicians that want to impose such laws to "go to Russia".
Some want to use a small Universal Basic Income as an excuse to eliminate other forms of support for the poor, or to encourage people to work for a pittance.
I would support a UBI if the money comes from taxing the rich and supports people at more than a rudimentary standard of living.
Perhaps the UBI should be tied to having no children.
Australia's 1996 gun laws, introduced to stop mass shootings, greatly reduced all gun killings and gun suicides.
For Americans with chronic pain, the crackdown on narcotic painkillers potentially threatens to drive them to death.
Palestinian officials propose compromises on the right of refugees to return to territory that is now Israel.
Israel attacked Palestinian fishermen, captured them, didn't treat their wounds, and took their boats.
US air power has proved to be ineffective for winning wars.
The Endangered Species Act has been very successful for birds: 85% of the protected birds have maintained or increased their populations.
I wonder what is causing the failures with the other 15% of birds.
Wall Street vultures are suing Puerto Rico, asking the US to make Puerto Rico prioritize paying them over caring for its citizens.
However, the "PROMESA" bill is not a solution. It is repression as seen in Detroit and Greece.
A defector from the Honduran army says that a US-trained unit was ordered to kill Berta Cáceres.
This is not unusual for US-trained Latin American military. US-trained officers participated in torture and murder of dissidents in the 1970s.
Presidential candidates don't talk about cutting military spending, but that is essential for the US to do other more necessary things.
Mexican Police Unleash Deadly Violence Against Protesting Teachers.
Some fracking waste is radioactive enough to set off alarms at landfills.
Marginalised Tunisian Youth Encouraged to Choose Graffiti over [PISSI].
PISSI = Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq
Erdoğan's men have arrested journalists, including the Turkish representative of Reporters Without Borders, on charges of participating in a campaign to defend a pro-Kurdish magazine from legal repression.
Sounds a lot like China to me.
A model forecasts that, with 4C of global heating, the coast of the Persian Gulf will have fatal heatwaves every decade or two, starting in 2070. "Fatal" means that all humans exposed to the outside air conditions will die.
Humans could survive using air conditioning, but if they had a power failure they would die in hours. These heat waves could last for many days.
A large underground chamber might be more reliable.
Hong Kong publisher Lam Wing-kee tells about how he was imprisoned, and that his jailers seem to be trying to learn where the publishers got information about Xi Jinping's attempts to subvert the internal political process of the Communist Party.
Brexit Is a Fake Revolt — Working-Class Culture Is Being Hijacked to Help the Elite.
The British mogul that removed around $800 million from his company and wrecked it has spent around $200 million of that on a yacht and a private plane.
Plastic microfibers, released by clothing, abound in seas, rivers and lakes, and poison aquatic life.
A new fatal kidney disease seems to be caused by hard work in high temperatures. Global heating will make it spread.
Conservationists will move 500 elephants from a place where numbers are growing to a sanctuary for eventual repopulation of other areas.
The head of the CIA agrees: bombing PISSI has not reduced its ability to inspire terrorism, and probably can't do so.
Fortunately, terrorism is not a big threat to anyone in the US, except right-wing terrorism against abortion doctors. We can cope with the danger by treating it like other street crime (just as long as we don't wink at it the way Obama winks at foreclosure fraud).
We should not panic and surrender civil liberties because of terrorism.
The Liberal Democrats will try to reduce the danger of the UK's new surveillance powers.
China aims to cut the level of meat consumption in half, both for health and to avoid global heating.
Trump and Thiel are blatant in attacking the free press in the US, but they are part of something much bigger and broader.
France now requires companies to give food to poor people rather than throw it away. Other countries could do it too.
Democratsâ War on Due Process and Terrorist Fear-Mongering Long Pre-Dates Orlando.
US parents should relax: kidnaping of children by stranger remains just as unlikely as always, and nearly all of those few children are returned safe.
The banksters told Clinton: no money if you pick Senator Warren as your running mate.
Mainstream media often print anonymous insults about Senator Warren.
I phoned Senator Warren's office to implore her not to run for Vice President. I said that she'd have less influence to resist Clinton's plutocratism as VP than she has now in the Senate.
You might want to call also.
When women and men work together on engineering projects,
the men tend to hog the exciting parts of the job and dump the less exciting parts on the women.
Billion-Dollar Brain Training Industry a Sham -â Nothing But Placebo, Study Suggests.
PISSI's forces are withdrawing from Falluja, and lots of civilians have been freed, but Iraq has not done enough so far to feed them.
"Does [Clinton] think that [former] Secretary of Defense Gates was
wrong when he said creating a no-fly zone
starts
with going to war? Or does she think going to war against Russia
is just fine?"
The head of the CIA agrees: bombing PISSI
has
not reduced its ability to inspire terrorism, and probably can't
do so.
Fortunately, terrorism is not a big threat to anyone in the US, except
right-wing terrorism against abortion doctors. We can cope with the
danger by treating it like other street crime (just as long as we
don't wink at it the way Obama winks at
foreclosure
fraud).
We should not panic and surrender civil liberties because of
terrorism.
In a victory for Assange, the Swedish prosecutors say they want to
accept
the invitation to question him inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
They have had this option ever since he sought asylum there,
but didn't take it.
The Growing Case for Massive Taxes on the Rich.
Plutocrats are so brash that they pay Congress to cut IRS
investigators so they can cheat more.
A Brexit Won't Stop Cheap Labour Coming to Britain.
US citizens: call on the EPA to
ban
neurotoxic pesticides.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bill to
treat Puerto Rico like
Greece.
US citizens: call for an
action
plan for reducing ocean noise that harms marine mammals.
Various forms of evidence support the claim that Sri Lanka dropped cluster bombs on civilians in rebel Tamil areas.
A theoretical NASA model suggests that modern civilization could easily collapse.
Other studies suggest that a major survival crisis could happen in 15
years.
In Oakland, California: rally on June 25 against coal export through
Oakland.
A report from Norway, where American-style paranoid parenting has not
arrived.
Funds can preserve the disused houses of St Kilda, but nothing can
protect the seabirds that are dying off due to effects of global heating.
An extensive empirical study of racist behavior by thugs
leads to measures to reduce their racism.
The Failure to Stop Orlando Shooter Was Not a Surveillance Gap, So Reject
Calls for More.
US citizens: call on Rep. Pelosi to resist approval of the TPP
in a lame-duck congressional session.
Many US newspapers and news sites have supported Freedom of the Press
Foundation's lawsuit demanding to know the rules for secretly
demanding information from journalists with "National Security Letters".
This is one of the tyrannical aspects of the U SAP AT RIOT Act.
Current Intel processors are completely untrustworthy because
of the "management engine" back door designed into them.
Here's an explanation of why people trying to write free software
to run in the management engine are totally stymied.
Well-paid Americans are compelled to work painfully heavy hours, while
Americans with low wages can't get enough hours to make a living.
Google Fibre has followed the evil practice of AT&T and Comcast by
making customers agree to mandatory arbitration instead of lawsuits.
This calls for state laws to bar the practice.
Britons decided to send supplies to immigrants parked in Calais (not
allowed into Britain), and France blocked the convoy from entering, citing incredible grounds of "security".
A few dozen activists tried to hold a forbidden Gay Pride march in Istanbul. Hundreds of thugs attacked them.
Chewing helps people resist the effect of advertising.
The supermarket system is designed to cause food waste at home as well
waste food directly. And digital ordering tends to make it worse.
As often happens, the people who participate in the system are less
responsible for its behavior than the large, concentrated actors that
more or less buy the regulations they operate under.
The politicians who want to take Britain out of the EU are bare-faced trumpish bullshitters.
Immigration causes problems in neighborhoods where poor Britons live
because of cruel plutocratic policies that force all the marginal people to compete with each other. Rationally, they should unite against their real enemies, the plutocrats.
The EU is also to a large extent a tool of the plutocrats. A Britain ready
to crush the banksters might do well to get out of the EU.
Right-wing Catholics are campaigning against rights for queer
people, and for women in general, at organizations such as the OAS.
Released documents show CIA torturers knew they were committing crimes,
and that they tortured people harder for protesting that torture violated
their rights.
Limiting global heating to 1.5C might prevent the permanent loss of all
Arctic ice, and might prevent the melting of the Arctic tundra which would cause a lot more global heating.
It might also save the Amazon rainforest from drying up.
Everyone:
call on big banks
to stop financing fossil fool projects.
US citizens: phone senators McConnell and Grassley to
oppose
the DARK act.
US citizens:
call for continued protection of Yellowstone's grizzly bears.
Descriptions of some people being
prosecuted
by the FBI for aiding PISSI.
Some of these people were entrapped by the FBI. (If the legal
definition of entrapment does not apply, it is too narrow.) However,
others were not entrapped, at least according to the facts in the
article.
That is a step up for the FBI. I congratulate the FBI for starting to
catch people who really did provide material support to PISSI, or
really tried to do so, without the FBI's guidance.
13
months in a row have broken heat records.
Other
temperature and related records have been set this year.
What will it take to enable us to overcome the planet roasters?
US banksters
seek
to continue falsifying documents for illegal, fraudulent
foreclosures.
Indonesia has apparently
arrested
1000 protesters who were supporting independence for West Papua,
which Indonesia conquered by force.
Indonesia has a long history of repression there, as well as bring
colonists from Java.
Robotic trucks could
eliminate
the jobs of millions of truck drivers in the US, and millions of
others that serve truck drivers food and coffee.
There is no inherent merit in a more advanced technology; technology
is good or bad depending on how it affects people. If the principal
effect of robotic trucks is massive unemployment, we should not allow
robotic trucks. As for the bosses that want to save money by not
employing people, they can jump in the lake.
The purpose of democracy is to allow us to decide together about
issues that affect us, such as this one.
David Eggers waited three hours in line for a Trump rally along with
thousands of others, to find that the audience was
interested
in Trump mainly for entertainment value and left before he
finished speaking.
US citizens: stand with queer community against violence and hate.
US citizens: call on Sanders to continue his campaign till the convention.
China shows how far TV camera surveillance can go: outside dissidents' doors, in classrooms, in the halls of college dormitories.
Americans are not safe from this.
The US tends to follow China in issues of human rights.
Pregnant 12-year-olds in Queensland have to obtain a court order in
order to get an abortion.
The law has this exactly backwards. If 12-year-olds are not quite
prepared to have an abortion, they are far from prepared to raise a
baby.
The FBI has face photos of over 170 million Americans from drivers' licenses,
and others from other sources, and uses this for face recognition with no regulation.
While the article says that it does this matching for criminal
suspects, that could be stretched to include everyone. Does anything
stop the FBI or state thugs from doing this to photos of everyone walking
down the street?
Illegal Abortions Are Killing Women And Aid Restrictions Are Just Making It Worse.
Politicians exploited the attack in Orlando dishonestly in order
to defeat a plan to limit massive surveillance.
Islamist bullies attacked Radiohead fans in a record store in Istanbul.
These bullies believe they are entitled to impose their religion on
others.
How Politicians Helped Create a Climate of Hate for LGBT People.
The climate of repeated abusive statements against female politicians is pervasive, and can inspire physical violence.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say one hates a person, or a
group. (Among sensible people, those who say they hate a group will
tend to discredit themselves.) But it doesn't include threatening
violence. If you see people threaten violence against someone online,
please show that this impresses you negatively.
The US should follow Australia by banning the guns that are handy for
killing lots of people, and instituting thorough background checks for people that want to buy guns.
On the other hand, renting an apartment or enrolling in a school
should not require such a background check. You can do fine
without a gun, but you're really handicapped if you can't get education
or a place to live.
Cornel West discusses Sanders, Clinton and Trump.
Charter school money joined fossil fuel money to elect right-wing Democrats in California primaries.
Segregation in the US makes it easy for whites to tell themselves that blacks get a fair shake.
Amnesty International says that Indonesia must allow Sri Lankan
boat people to request asylum, rather than forcing them back.
Oakland Loses Third Police Chief in a Week Amid Scandals.
The thug department has a "toxic, macho culture" which includes
racism. This most likely leads to serious wrongs against non-thugs.
However, having sex with a 17-year-old prostitute is not one of them.
The article says that thugs "took advantage" of her.
Perhaps that was the case, if they pressured her.
But if she did this by choice, perhaps wanting extra money,
it is wrong to blame her customers.
It is possible that she was raped; it is possible she was
trafficked. But when the law claims that being her customer
constitutes "rape" or "human trafficking", it lies. We must
not let these lies pass as truth.
Istanbul banned a gay pride march because right-wing extremists threatened violence against the marchers.
In effect, the city government made itself an accessory to the extremists.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to release his tax returns.
US citizens:
call on the Democratic Party to adopt a platform plank to
legalize US support for organizations that do abortion.
The US
cannot
protect itself from violent Islamist fanatics by fighting wars in
Muslim countries.
California legislators are
trying
again to stop thugs from taking people's money without a trial.
US pesticide companies are lobbying effectively to
block
efforts to protect pollinators.
US citizens:
call for
reforming the way coal companies arrange to pay for cleanup, so
that they can't evade the obligation.
Here's what I said.
The likelihood that coal mining will decline, as we put a stop to the
air pollution it causes, will increase the temptation for coal
businesses to adopt a short-term attitude that encourages cheating.
A secondary benefit of this change will be to discourage coal mining
and coal burning. We need to make coal mining decline faster, for
public health (coal emissions are toxic) and to help curb global
heating.
US citizens: urge Sanders to
continue his
campaign till the Democratic Convention.
Secularists in Bangladesh are threatened by imprisonment by the Islamist state
as well as murder by Islamist fanatics.
The ACLU is suing to allow visible protests at the Republican National
Convention.
US history teaching assumes the civil rights movement was finished,
victorious, in 1965.
This disregards subsequent desegregation and resegregation
and today's racism.
The US Chamber of Commerce lobbies for tobacco and for global heating,
while getting its funds from companies that say they don't support
those campaigns.
Microsoft wants medical marijuana dispensaries to use its servers.
I suspect it intends to collect data about all the patients.
Whatever commitments Microsoft makes about how it will use the data
are not worth paying attention to; the data, once collected,
will be misused. They will be misused by Microsoft (using
loopholes in the misleading assurances), by rogue employees, by
crackers that steal the data, and by the state (which will demand
access to it all).
I hope people will campaign for dispensaries not to use this or any
similar system.
Another coup-installed minister in Brazil has resigned for corruption, because a politician turned state's evidence and testified against him
and various other politicians.
SCROTUS helped Obama continue providing cluster bombs to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens: phone your senators to support gun control measures but
not
based on a rumor mill such as a watch list.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The US has placed so many obstacles in the way of employment for
ex-cons and people convicted of felonies that it amounts to a
substantial
drag on the economy.
The EU has taken a
baby
step to prepare to regulate endocrine disruptors.
Facebook exposes lovers to lots of information about each other
which can
stimulate
jealousy.
Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee describes his imprisonment in China
and how he was
forced
to recite a scripted confession for a video.
China sent him back to Hong Kong to return with records about
customers who bought their books (which accused important Chinese
politicians of corruption). He says he will not do this; I suppose he
or his family will face some sort of reprisals for his non-return,
which makes it a heroic act.
Never let a book store know your name! Especially,
don't buy books from
Amazon.
A judge in Kenya ruled that requiring an anal exam
to
see if two men had been penetrated anally was not torture, and a
required blood test for two sexually transmitted diseases was not
degrading.
I agree with this ruling. I had a colonoscopy and it was not bad.
I've also had blood tests, and they don't actually hurt. I don't
feel degraded by either of them.
The real injustice here is the criminalization of homosexual sex.
The great internet swindle: powerful monopoly intermediaries that
suck
the wealth out people while accumulating personal data about them.
My simple rule of paying cash, which I adopted to protect my privacy,
mostly means I don't deal with those companies at all. And that's how
I want it.
Abuse or maltreatment of children tends to have specific effects on
the
development
of the brain. It is also known to make later mental illness more
likely.
Many government programs can help protect children from the stress
that can hurt their development. Welfare funds for families, good
funding for public schools, shelters for victims of domestic violence,
as well as providing contraception and abortion (you shouldn't have a
child if you feel unready to take care of one).
Apple
lobbies
against "right to repair" laws.
Why
being
on a "watch list" should not disqualify a person from buying guns
(or anything else).
However, there would be no such problem with barring those convicted for
domestic abuse from buying guns, or continuing to own guns. That
would
have disqualified the Orlando murderer. It would also save lots
of women from being
shot
by their spouses or lovers.
Ignoring People for Phones Is the New Normal.
I sometimes ignore people for my laptop, but never for a phone (since,
to resist surveillance and nonfree software, I refuse to carry one).
We should reject the proposal to reinstate the House Un-american
Activities Committee, as well as other injustices such as imprisonment
without trial, torture, the no-fly list, and massive surveillance.
US citizens:
Tell
Congress: "Oppose House Republicans' attempt to block the
designation of a new national monument in the Maine woods."
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 to say to
support
the Conyers amendment to ban the transfer of cluster bombs to
Salafi Arabia.
Is it right or wrong to publish voter registration lists —
including their addresses —
on
the internet?
I expect that companies can afford to scrape the physical copies that
were traditionally published, so the real question I think is whether
to publish addresses and party affiliations.
Democrats Embrace
Secretive,
Flawed Terror Watchlist in Fight Against Gun Violence.
If there is concrete evidence that a person sympathizes with a
terrorist group, it could be legitimate to deny per the right to own
guns for that. However, doing so based on rumors is wrong.
As for the no-fly list, that is punishment without trial and
must be abolished.
The CIA's Office of Medical Staff
provided
detailed advice for torture. The doctors who provided this advice
betrayed their oath as physicians.
The American Psychological Association
changed
its professional standards to rule out such participation by its
members.
Some Catholic orders (of monks or nuns) in Australia have
publicly
announced divestment from fossil fuels.
Both of the major Australian parties are
too
close to the planet roasters and fail to propose sufficient
actions to curb global heating.
Clinton says she
would
give her husband another chance to manage the US economy for the
rich.
Dupont is merging and splitting, and that
may
be a scheme to bury its liability for past environmental poisoning
in places from which no one can collect.
The way a non-plutocratist government could block this loophole is
pretty obvious.
Thugs in Scotland have for years enjoyed access to bulk surveillance
data through a surveillance station that the government of Scotland
says
it did not know about.
Biologist E. O. Wilson proposes that we
set
aside half of Earth for nature, to avoid mass extinction.
That goal requires that we also curb
global
heating and
ocean
acidification. In practice, we also need to curb the human
birth
rate.
Switzerland is prosecuting someone who works for Mossack Fonseca,
apparently accused of being the one who leaked the data.
With oil now cheap, recycling of plastic in the US is almost dead.
A heavy tax on petroleum -- which we need to do anyway -- would solve this
problem.
Norway has decided to aim to be carbon-neutral by 2030. However, that plan is based on using carbon offsets to cancel out emissions.
These schemes are in many cases somewhere between fraud and self-delusion.
The decision does not include reducing exports of fossil fuels.
Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng wrote an account of his imprisonment and
torture, and smuggled it out for publication.
The Orlando killer worked for G4S, a company that operates private prisons
among other things. The company helped him buy weapons, and ignored
reports from coworkers associating him with bigotry and Islamism.
A service called "Tenant Assured" wants to help landlords demand and
get all the private data in a potential tenant's social media
accounts, including private messages.
It should be illegal for landlords or employers to ask for such
access, directly or indirectly.
Brazil's Giant Dams Risk Destroying Heart of the Amazon, Says Greenpeace.
Surveillance agencies prefer to present the Orlando murders as
Islamist terrorism rather than as an anti-gay hate crime,
because the former suits their agenda of control.
WHO concluded that the Olympics probably won't cause Zika to spread more than it would otherwise have done.
The British elite call on Britons to reject the "European elite" so that the
British elite can have full power over them.
A threat to leave the EU might be useful for Britain if done by a government
led by Corbyn.
George Monbiot: the UK's plutocratic system is even worse than the EU's plutocratic system.
Tens of thousands protested the new "labor flexibility" law in Paris.
Once a state begins trying to compete with other countries to woo
companies by allowing them "flexibility" to treat workers worse, it
joins those countries in a race to the bottom -- exactly what
plutocrats want.
This
article expresses why I dislike video.
I won't even try to watch a video unless I am very very interested in
seeing it — for instance, at rare intervals a movie I expect to
like.
The Orlando killer had
visited
gay bars and gay dating apps for quite a while, and he had shown
sympathy for Islamist terror attacks as early as 2001.
US Republicans have resolved their dilemma about the Orlando murders
by
taking
the side of the gay men (who they habitually mistreat) in order to
condemn Muslims.
Hundreds of people and companies that Trump hired to do work have
sued
him for not paying them. Even hourly workers have sued him for
not paying them.
The article cleverly states that if Trump's claim that they all did
bad work is true, he must be incompetent in business.
Alternatively, his "competence" in business is really a great skill in
using his wealth to shaft people that work for them.
"Security" measures for the Olympic Games have
turned
Rio de Janeiro into a panopticon. Quite handy for crushing
protests against the pseudo-coup.
Other Olympic measures
oppress
the poor residents of favelas on various pretexts.
For-profit school companies from the US and Europe are
drooling
about Africa.
African countries funds for education are insufficient, but these
companies would like to divert some of that to their profits.
1/6 of all workers in England and Wales (most of the UK) are in
insecure work, such as
zero-hours
contracts. They cannot count on enough hours to make money to
live on.
The FCC's network neutrality rules
stood
up to a legal challenge in federal appeals court. However, the
major ISPs are rich and will surely try to appeal further.
In addition, they are lobbying for a law to roll back the FCC's
policies.
The FCC's neutrality policies are not strong enough. The ISP should
not be allowed to examine the packet in any way, only to transmit it.
The UK is
moving
to decriminalize sexting for teenagers.
The article contributes, however, to the general practice of
infantilizing them by calling them "children".
Some Brazilian journalists have been gagged after they
revealed
that some judges are paid an illegally high salary.
This May set
another
heat record.
Each month this year has set a heat record.
Both Trump and Clinton propose to respond to the Orlando murders by
bombing
Syria.
Defeating PISSI is a desirable goal, but bombing other than on
battlefields tends to kill civilians rather than enemies.
As the article points out, this won't prevent individuals from
carrying out attacks, especially if their real motivation is personal
and the religious "cause" is only an excuse they make to themselves.
Stanford Sexual Assault: Records Show
Judge's
Logic Behind Light Sentence.
Some of these reasons seem valid to me, but I see a general injustice
in the policy of giving privileged people lighter sentences for a
whole range of crimes. What it means is that the legal system is
intentionally biased here against the poor. Of course, it's biased
against them in other ways, too: many have to
spend
months or years in jail awaiting trial, and their public defenders
are
overloaded
and can't put much time into each case.
A new kind achievement for humanity: we have caused the extinction of
a mammalian species indirectly through global heating alone.
When the other ways we destroy species are included, our record
includes over 450 species of vertebrates extinguished by human action
since 1900.
Scientists estimate that 1/6 of the existing species face extinction due to global heating.
The Orlando killer apparently had closeted homosexual leanings.
Perhaps he was taught a strong stigma about that, such that he hated
himself for his sexual orientation; murder could have been his twisted
way out.
It wouldn't be the first time a person's life was crushed by that
stigma, nor the first time it inflicted great suffering on others.
Plutocracy at work: the UK is very strict toward poor who refuse to
pay a little tax, but lets the rich get away with major rip-offs.
Everyone: Oppose government-imposed internet shutdowns.
Giving up Beef Will Reduce Carbon Footprint More Than Cars.
This isn't all-or-nothing. I had beef today, but not Thursday,
Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
An influential Muslim legal group in Pakistan made a fatwa against
killing women for marrying freely.
When officials demand encryption back doors, their reasons are bullshit.
US citizens: call on the EPA to reduce air pollution in national parks.
Repression against queer people has been
inspired
by Christianity and Judaism as well as Islam.
Paris summit carbon pledges 'are
not
enough to stop temperature rise'.
Thousands
of Germans protested US drone bombings outside Ramstein air base,
which relays the drone control data.
Chelsea Manning: We
must
not let the Orlando nightclub terror further strangle our civil
liberties.
Peabody Energy funded
dozens
of global heating denialist front groups.
SCROTUS have now been
paid
to take a stand against the carbon tax that is necessary to slow
global heating.
It is a mistake to make the carbon tax revenue-neutral, because the US
needs to spend more money on many things. We should provide increased
help to people with low incomes, so that they can cope with the new
tax, but we should aim to tax the rich a lot more.
How America's Mass Shooters
Now
Use Weapons of War.
Here is
what
Australia must do to save the Great Barrier Reef.
Greenpeace accuses palm oil company IOI of illegally converting
protected
peatland into plantations.
It is not unusual for companies'
"social
responsibility" policies to be
meaningless
noises.
A Dutch woman visiting Qatar reported that she was drugged and raped.
In accord with Shari'a law, she now faces
charges
of adultery.
Shari'a law is especially cruel to women, but it is
unjust
to men as well. To advocate Islamic law is to oppose human
rights, which is why Salafi Arabia opposed the universal declaration
of human rights.
We must respect people's right to advocate that system, but they
deserve our disgust as well as our opposition.
The EFF campaigns for laws to restrain face recognition surveillance, but what we need is to ban systematic face recognition of people
in public places, except under a specific court order.
A thug gratuitously tased Bryce Masters 5 times in a row, causing him
a heart attack (not usual at age 18) which led to permanent brain
damage. To make things worse, the thug then dropped him on his face,
breaking lots of his teeth.
Afterwards he falsified records to create an excuse.
That thug was sentenced to 4 years in prison, but many others
get away with it.
But there is another factor: thugs have been taught that tasers are so safe
that they don't need to hesitate before using them.
A UN human rights committee ruled that Ireland's ban on abortion violated
the rights of a woman who had a nonviable pregnancy.
US citizens: tell Congress to reject the TPP as it is an environmental
disaster.
House [of Representatives] Poised to Advance Privacy and Defend Encryptionâ¦If Allowed to Vote.
Opinion: Your Data Needs More Protection from Shady Debt Collectors.
Buying groceries from Amazon is a bad road for society to go down.
UK (and US business) aims to take money by hook or by crook, from citizens or from the public.
"Business ethics" has become an oxymoron.
I distrust the idea of addressing the problem with the help
of hypothetical less-greedy business owners. I doubt they can
be relied on, and they may not exist.
Bangladesh has arrested thousands of people accused of killing nonconformists.
The massacre at a gay bar in Orlando should not be used as an excuse to promote hatred or attack human rights.
The killer had a firearms license, but a ban on large magazines might have hampered him from killing so many people.
Right-wing bigots must be rather perplexed now, trying to decide whether to side with the victims (gays) or the killer (a Muslim).
Perhaps we could use this event to teach a lesson against judging
people based on such categories.
Assange points out that the FBI might blackmail a President Clinton
to get more concessions against our constitutional rights.
The [Sanders] Revolution Isn't Over: Hereâs How It Can Be Sustained â-
and Why It Must Be.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on the state legislature to ban fracking.
Constituents of Nancy Pelosi:
phone
her office to demand no lame-duck vote on the TPP.
Everyone:
call
on Illinois to allow prescriptions for 12 months of birth control
pills.
US citizens:
Call
on your senators to reject the House-passed substitute to the
Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 (S.2012)
The war on predatory debt collectors
may
come to resemble the "war on drugs".
I think the underlying problem is that we make it too tough
to get by, as a poor people. Various progressive policies
would reduce their need to borrow just to get by. Eliminating
the paranoid "protective" regulation of children would also help.
The US is
delaying
publication of Clinton's TPP-related emails until after the
election.
Germany demands information about UK undercover thugs that
infiltrated
political groups in Germany.
Google supports the TPP because of
three
mostly-evil provisions that would benefit Google.
Shame on Google!
The reason why so many patent suits are filed in a particular court in
Texas may be
a
judge who was corrupt through family ties.
A woman who
left
two children safely in a parked car for 10 minutes was arrested
and charged with an absurd "crime" and made to post $25,000 bail.
Theoretically, when you post bail, you eventually get it back.
However, she probably did not have $25,000 on hand for this. So she
probably had to pay $2,500 to a bail bonds company, and she will never
get that back.
For a typical American family, an unexpected expense of $2,500 can
mean bankruptcy and homelessness. Arresting struggling parents is
therefore far more dangerous than leaving kids in a car.
Nearly all oil companies have
abandoned
their leases for drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
So why not put an end to it?
If the US allows offshore drilling, the monetary costs for the public
could be as much as
180
billion dollars.
Obama ordered US troops in Afghanistan
to
increase their direct participation in combat.
The corrupt Afghan government can't inspire soldiers to fight hard to
defeat the Taliban. The US can keep propping it up, but the Taliban
will remain, so the US will have to prop it up ad infinitem, or else
stop at some point and let the Taliban win. Sooner or later, the US
will have to do that.
I think Clinton would not feel bad about keeping this war going for 4
or 8 more years. But this achieves nothing except to continue the
deaths.
US companies use severance pay to
coerce
employees to train their own replacements and to shut up about it
after they are fired.
I think it should be a felony for managers or executives to
participate in such schemes (either of the two kinds), and employees
that testify publicly about such felonies should be given a large
reward.
Internet-connected
mobile devices may be interfering with people's capacity for
reflecting about what they are doing.
The
coming
anthropogenic mass extinction will be different from the six
previous mass extinctions.
If technological civilization survives the coming disaster, the human
population will probably be less than half what it is now (the rest
having perished). Humanity could allow half of today's farmland to
become wild again. It will be possible to remove the excess carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere using solar energy.
It won't be possible to repair the extinction, or the effects of
flooding the world's coastal cities, toxic factories, and
archaeological sites.
Start
School Day at 11am to Let Students Sleep In.
I sure wish they had done that when I was young.
1/4
of the population of Yemen is starving as a result of the
persistent civil war.
The civil war drags on because of Salafi Arabia's intervention, which
is possible because of
US
support.
Clinton won the California primary, and
will
probably get the Democratic Party nomination.
She will not get my vote, however. I consider her a Republican, based
on her support for banksters, welfare cuts, business-supremacy
treaties and wars of aggression.
I will decide later whether to write in Sanders' name or vote Green.
As for the fact that the US has now nominated a woman to represent a
major party, I think it is good that the US can do that.
If
in addition she were a progressive, I'd vote for her. However,
her sex is no milestone for me: I have already voted for a woman for
president
(Jill
Stein, Green Party, 2012).
I felt the same thing when the US nominated a black man for president
for the first time: he was
clearly
no progressive so I did not vote for him.
200
retired Israeli army officers called for accepting the Arab peace
plan.
That
plan is reasonable one, so it makes sense for them to agree.
What's surprising is that support for it comes from that direction.
But it is not really so surprising. Soldiers that have fought in war
have a basis to understand how bad war is, and soldiers who have
actually fought understand how occupation duty damages an army for
fighting a real enemy.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
support
the bill to give people medical confidentiality from their
parents.
The UN says Britain's welfare cuts
violate
children's rights.
Muhammad Ali shows by contrast the
vacuousness
of celebrities which are adulated today where in the past people
admired heroes who had really done something.
This change was one of many pointed out by Daniel Boorstin's book, The
Image.
The Drug Repression Agency wants to collect massive amounts of
prescription records in order to place
charges
against people taking too many painkillers.
Some of them are suffering from horrible pain. Some of them are
addicts, but prosecuting them is not going to help at all.
The Koch Brothers are
lobbying
to stop adoption of electric cars.
Citigroup Is Suing AT&T For
Using
the Word "Thanks"
Trade marks are basically a useful system, but the US implements them
without taking proper care of public interests.
The article foolishly uses the term "intellectual property" which
confuses several unrelated laws and treats them as a single subject.
Please
don't ever generalize
about these laws.
UN Head Admits He
Caved
to Threats in Removing Saudi Coalition From Blacklist.
Chemicals meant to kill slugs
get
into drinking water for humans and poison pets.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of Justice to require all thug departments to report
when they kill people.
Everyone:
call
on California Governor Brown to pardon Jasmine Richards.
Racism is demonstrated in some UK universities'
admission
policies.
In 2010, UK massive snoopers warned that they were
collecting
so much data that real terrorists were needles in the haystack.
UK thugs were
closely
involved with murders committed by paramilitaries in Ulster in the
90s, including one case which today would be called an act of
terrorism.
Alaska is suffering from
record
heat, and drought.
Tesla is reportedly making customers sign nondisclosures about a
dangerous
technical fault.
The plan to establish a conservation zone in the Ross Sea, off
Antarctica, is
being
blocked only by Russia.
I would sign the petition in favor of this conservation zone, if only
Avaaz made it possible to sign without running nonfree Javascript
code. I asked Avaaz to do this, but I alone was not influential
enough. How about if you too ask them?
Does
immediate
delivery train people not to develop the ability to defer
gratification?
Clinton has a past history of raising money "for other candidates"
and
using
it on her own campaign.
The enemies of abortion rights don't scruple at
mixing
flat-out falsehoods with their religious hooey.
At the heart of the Democratic Party apparatus are some elected
officials that are in the
habit
of giving businesses what they want.
Brazil's corrupt new rulers have been
plagued
by leaked tapes showing their corruption. Their response is to
plan a law to prohibit publication of these leaks.
The NSA wants to use people's internet-connected pacemakers to
spy
on them.
Secret US documents suggest that Ayatollah Khomeini
asked
for US help in returning to Iran, and received it.
Netanyahu and even Lieberman are
talking
like Uri Avnery in 1969. Alas, says Avnery, they don't mean it
— it is only a trick.
Gawker has been forced into bankruptcy by the
lawsuit
funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel says his goal is to
prevent further disclosures. It seems that billionaires want to make
sure no one dares publish what they don't like.
The acceptance of Trump's shameless unending lies makes a
strange
contrast with the politicians whose careers were ended when they
were caught in minor lies.
But then, some of their lies were about sex. Americans seem to go
nuts about politicians' sex lives.
Jill Stein urged Sanders to
run
in the Green Party.
Apple
opposes
right-to-repair laws that could reduce e-waste.
Released NSA internal documents show how Snowden
tried
to raise concerns about illegal snooping inside the organization,
and was rebuffed.
They also belie the official efforts to smear him falsely.
Global heating made the recent floods in Paris
twice
as likely to occur.
An art auction business in San Francisco sprayed water on the
sidewalk,
wetting
homeless people's belongings. Let's hope the company gets fined
for wasting water.
'Gene-Drive' Organisms
Require
Far More Research, because of danger to various wildlife.
Schemes for biological control of pests have often backfired.
Gene drives raise issues beyond the danger of extinctions. There are
also
militarization,
food security, and commercial power.
You may like cats, but don't let them outdoors! Cats kill
millions
of wild birds.
"It isn't lack of drugs preventing us eradicating AIDS, but
inequality."
The UN talks of seeking to eliminate HIV, but
refuses
to acknowledge groups such as gay men, sex workers and intravenous
drug users which it would have to support so as to achieve that
goal.
The Register of Copyrights is supporting Hollywood's worldwide
campaign to impose something even worse than the censorship-ridden
DMCA takedown system. This would require computers to
block
fair use on internet platforms, even though nominally people would
still have that right.
Fifteen years ago there was a strong campaign to pin back the wrongs
of the DMCA, with some supporters in Congress. This campaign has
fizzled
away. The lack of a campaign for improvement weakens our
resistance to this attempt to make it worse.
Two Palestinians shot at Israelis in a mall, killing some and wounding
some. Cops
shot
them to disarm them, then arrested them.
Bystanders urged the cops to murder the killers, but they refused and
did their duty instead. It seems these cops were police officers, not
thugs. The killers will presumably stand trial.
Iran has imprisoned another visiting expatriate,
Professor
Homa Hoodfar.
Her family speculate that the mullahs' special thug force is using her
as a pawn against president Rouhani.
Although I am not an Iranian expatriate, I still consider Iran too
dangerous a place to visit. It is one of the countries I refuse to
enter.
Paul Ryan says he has a new plan for poverty in the US:
making
more of it. Except that it isn't really new. It's the same as
before.
The US is making an unwise choice in prosecuting a defector from PISSI.
Oklahoma thugs
can
take money from people's bank accounts on mere suspicion.
This may work only with debit cards.
Libya's western-created government says it has taken all the territory that PISSI held.
However, some PISSI soldiers are still fortified in parts of Sirte,
and others may have melted away, guerrilla-style.
The Los Angeles School Thug Department has acknowledged, after a long
campaign, that having armored vehicles to launch tear gas, and
carrying automatic rifles, is fundamentally a bad idea.
That is a change for the better, but I suspect that most students that
on the school-to-prison pipeline got there through an arrest in a
school by a single thug. Will the school district recognize that having
thugs in schools is dangerous for the students?
Urgent action is needed to reduce air pollution, which is expected to kill 9 million people per year over the next few decades if not reduced.
This danger dwarfs that of terrorists and jihadis.
Even PISSI in Syria can't kill people like that.
Former dictator Hissène Habré of Chad, recently
convicted of crimes against humanity, was installed and supported by
the US. The US leaders that supported him
are not
on trial.
The UK officials behind kidnaping Libyan dissidents and handing them
over for torture will enjoy total impunity.
Trump inspires school bullies all across the US.
Trump is a school bully that never grew out of it.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to limit arms for Salafi Arabia and Syrian rebels (in
different ways).
US citizens:
call
on Congress to provide aid for civilians fleeing Falluja.
Everyone: please write to
AddUp@sierraclub.org and
webmaster@sierraclub.org
to request in a respectful tone that the Sierra Club make
sure that people can sign its petitions without running Javascript
code.
That used to work. It could certainly work again, if they decide
to make it work.
If, as is the case with me, you support some of their petitions and
would sign them if you didn't have to pay with your freedom to sign,
I suggest telling them so.
Israeli soldiers attacked several different Palestinian protests, and
nine
protesters were shot.
New Traceability Rule
Doesnât
Go Far Enough to Stop Seafood Fraud in US.
It only affects certain cases, and those are not the majority of
fraud.
Report Details How US-Backed Coup
Unleashed
Wave of Abuses in Honduras.
Specifically, it was Secretary of State Clinton who
winked
at that coup.
The UK's blanket spying law has
passed
the House of Commons. It gives legal permission for the illegal
snooping that GCHQ has been doing.
It's
not
really accurate to call addiction a disease. However, that's a
lot better than calling it a moral weakness.
A bill being considered by the Senate
would
give the FBI additional power to snoop on most Americans secretly.
This is the opposite of what we need. The US has too much power to
track people, and for democracy's sake, we need to knock down the
surveillance, across the board.
The UN removed Salafi Arabia and its allies from the list of countries
that maim and kill children, apparently
as
a political decision.
US citizens: phone the White House at (888) 848-4824
and call on Obama to make an executive order requiring
federal contractors to announce their political spending.
China systematically erases history or replaces it with a modern
imitation. Many "old" temples and monuments are modern replicas.
Lancôme cancelled a concert in a store in Hong Kong, bowing to
pressure from China. People in Hong Kong protested this, and the
company
shut
its stores.
I hope they protest until Lancôme learns a lesson. Western
businesses that sell in China often betray human rights globally to
cater to China.
EFF Urges Senate Not to Expand FBIâs Controversial National Security Letter Authority.
Last weekend, before the AP's premature announcement that Clinton had won the nomination, the Clinton campaign was already arranging what it would say about that announcement.
Well-known and previously respected US universities are outsourcing their online remote education to companies, making them in effect almost
equivalent to for-profit colleges.
This goes with adopting some of the sleazy practices of those.
Salafi Arabia organized allies through the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation to pressure the UN to remove it from the list of countries that are killing children.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted a law that
requires "law enforcement agencies" to get approval for their purchases of surveillance technology.
This is not strong enough, but it is a good step.
A Russian performance artist who set fire to the door of the spy agency FSB has been freed with a fine.
I wish the US could be counted on respect dissent this way.
Erdoğan can now
prosecute
and remove opposition MPs. With them gone, he will be able to
change the constitution and make himself effectively dictator.
In 2015, estimated human greenhouse gas emissions decreased.
This is like learning that the car you're riding in, which is heading
for a cliff you can't see, has stopped accelerating. Now we need to slow
it down and turn it around.
Something Ainât Right About Bill Clinton Eulogizing Muhammad Ali.
I don't care about athletics or people's success in them.
But I admire Muhammad Ali for refusing to join the US Army
to help one dictator fight another dictator for power in Vietnam.
"Papua New Guinea's students have a point. [Prime Minister] Peter O'Neill
should talk to them, not send police."
When Chinese human rights lawyers are disappeared, they go into a smaller prison.
A mother reports how she has to expose her children to danger every
day in a parking lot, because she fears to be prosecuted if she leaves
one of them alone in the car for a couple of minutes.
Some reptiles grow up female if their eggs are in a warm nest.
Maybe this means global heating could make them all female, resulting
in extinction of the species.
Many companies adopt "diversity programs" to overcome bias in hiring,
but they don't reduce the bias, they
only
convince the staff that there is no bias.
Burma's military still impose injustice: a
protest
march of students was attacked by thugs.
Governor Cuomo
imposed
a New York State boycott of all companies that boycott Israel,
even if they do so to demand Israel change its occupation policies.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli soldiers
murdered
two Palestinians in Hebron on March, but one killing happened so
suddenly they were unable to record video of it.
As a Worker on the Great Barrier Reef I'm
Ashamed
to Look My Children in the Eye.
The sounds of the natural world are
being
silenced as human activity destroys habitats and eliminates
species.
Don't Fear
Pig-Human
Embryos — They Could Revolutionise Our Old Age.
Iran has imprisoned musicians
for
expressing forbidden sentiments.
Mossack Fonseca did more than shell companies; it
helped
some Americans disguise income.
We need to be able to recognize a tragic accident where there is no
one to be blamed, so we
don't
blame parents whose children suffer such accidents, and oppress
all the other parents.
Why
Should We Not Be Allowed to Choose When We Die?
Closing
the Louvre as floods approach it demonstrates that culture is in
direct danger from climate mayhem.
French thugs have attacked protesters in France recently, much as US thugs attack protesters here.
Four leaders of the party of Brazil's acting president are to be arrested
on corruption charges.
The UK's kafkaesque system for testing disabled people is a disaster, leaving them stuck in their apartments without the ability to move, or making them work when they are falling down.
The dictator of Burundi has arrested students for writing something on photos of him.
If civilians in Falluja escape being killed by PISSI, they face
getting tortured or killed by Shi'ite militias.
The Associated Press prematurely declared the Democratic nomination race over, one day before the California primary.
This looks like an attempt to convince voters not to bother to show up and
vote for Sanders.
The Associated Press was counting how superdelegates have said they
will vote; but they are free to change their minds until the
convention.
'Free Trade' Will Kill Climate Movement, Hundreds of Groups Warn Congress.
Three Years Later, the Snowden Leaks Have Changed How the World Sees NSA
Surveillance.
The Clinton Foundation serves as an opaque fund-raising arm for the Clinton campaign.
Violent Islamists in Bangladesh have now murdered a Hindu priest.
They are making it clear they want to kill anyone that disagrees with
their views. Other Islamists don't go in for murder, but they too
seek to convict and punish anyone that disagrees with or disobeys
their religion.
Before you think of them as an "oppressed group", remember that their
intention is to oppress everyone else.
Requiring men to wear ties is nasty enough, but women's dress codes are far, far nastier.
For the Free Software Foundation staff, we have a very simple dress code:
a propeller beanie is required, but all other clothing is optional.
However, we never enforce this code.
Fictitious medical "cures" benefit from endorsements from real celebrities (for pay, I presume); here are endorsements for real cures from fictitious celebrities.
For additional ridicule of homeopathy, see my song, Poppycock.
US citizens:
Call
on the Democratic Party to adopt a platform against fracking.
US citizens:
call on the
EPA to ban neonicotinoid pesticides before its too late for bees
and the plants they pollinate.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic National Committee to support Sanders's
progressive agenda.
Religiously
inspired irrational fear of making genetically modified human
embryos threatens to intimidate scientists out of doing important
research.
There are no real ethical issues at stake here. An embryo is not a
human being, and neither is a fetus. It could grow into one, and if
it did it would deserve human rights; but that will not happen in
these experiments.
Gene editing on real human beings raises real issues, because it could
go wrong and lead to humans with various medical problems. However,
one issue we probably need not worry about is that these problems
would be inherited. By the time such a person is old enough to have
children, we will have no difficulty making a corrective change for
those children.
Direct
proof that neonicotionoids kill honeybee colonies.
Other causes such as the
varroa
mite may contribute to the problem,
but that changes nothing. We have no choice about whether the varroa
mite exists. On the contrary, we can get rid of the neonicotionoids,
though it will take time for the amounts
accumulated
in the soil to wash away.
"Open source" gun plans test the boundary between
freedom
of speech and gun control.
I support freedom of speech, and gun control. Thus, I believe it
should be lawful to publish these plans, but making a gun from them
can be regulated as appropriate.
A gun is a dangerous thing to own. Overall, you're
safer
if you don't have a gun in your house.
Music stars generally advertise the products that
make
people (especially young people) fat.
I lose respect for people that advertise products (any products) for
pay.
Brazilians are
marching
for the ouster of corrupt acting president Temer, who has just
been sentenced to 8 years exclusion from running for office.
What
If Trade Agreements Helped People, Not Corporations. (A list of
suggestions towards that end.)
Germany has "reformed" its electricity laws so as to
slow
the installation of home solar generation.
This is the
same
"reform" that has been imposed through lobbying in some US states.
It is true that utilising and buying the surplus solar electricity
that buildings generate imposes costs on the utility. The utility
should charge those costs to customers buying electricity.
I wonder if someone can design an electric-powered device to store
chemical energy. For instance, to make ethanol and oxygen out of
water and CO2.
More
info about the government's snooping on defense counsel activities
in Florida. The lawyers charge that this was standard practice for
ten years.
Tory cuts in welfare benefits for the unemployed
make
it less likely they will find work.
The Tories will find some other excuse to keep on driving poor people
down.
Judge Curiel
has
given Trump great leeway so he can have a fair trial. He has
grounds to declare Trump in contempt of court, but doesn't.
SCROTUS are
trying
to remove funding for US science programs that study the details
and causes of global heating.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Chiquita corporation in Colombia supported the government-supported
right-wing paramilitares;
relatives
of the people they killed are now suing Chiquita in the US.
Sanders to Clinton: Yes, Trump's Foreign Policy Ideas Are Scary.
But
So Are Yours.
Clinton, meanwhile,
misrepresents
her own foreign policy to hide the really bad parts.
Thailand's famous "tiger temple" was a node for
smuggling
tigers and tiger parts to fools in China.
Reportedly other tiger farms and "sanctuaries" do the same thing.
I find it surprising that the farms are unable to pass off cultivated
tiger parts as "wild". Clearly they do not mind lying. Is there
anything that could help them do this?
The European Union has
recruited
internet communication companies to delete "hate speech".
I disapprove of this policy, for different reasons
from those of EDRI.
It is legitimate to prosecute incitement to violence,
and this is a crime in the US, although inexplicably
Trump is allowed to get away with it.
However, people have a right to hate, and to say so, even when it is
irrational, unjustified and foolish (for instance, based on race,
color, etc.) When Europe's laws against "hate speech" prohibit this,
they go to far. The US does not prosecute people for this, when it
doesn't go as far as inciting violence.
What does it mean, then, for US companies to agree to a policy
of quickly deleting such statements? I fear it means censorship
imposed on the to satisfy an EU law.
Everyone: call on Walmart to
give employees decent
pay, full-time hours and proper working conditions.
Residents of California:
call
on Governor Brown to block coal trains to the port of Oakland.
call
on Congress to sign the Conyers-Love letter which calls on the UN
to take the necessary steps to eliminate cholera in Haiti.
It was the UN's uncalled-for intervention in Haiti that
brought
cholera there.
Google Voice Search
Records
And Keeps Conversations People Have round Their Phones.
The user can order deletion of the files, but this surely won't delete
any copies Big Brother has already saved.
Reagan got himself elected president using
dishonesty
somewhat like Trump's.
Trump has been involved in an
unusual
number of lawsuits for a rich real estate developer, and they show
his tendency to bully with his money.
Putin is
imprisoning
people in Russia for posting criticism of Russia, even in abstract
and nonviolent ways.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz
put
an MPAA lobbyist on the Democratic Party platform committee, where
he will certainly campaign to attack us.
The "vulnerable 20" countries, which
will
suffer the most and soonest from climate mayhem, have organized to
try to stop it.
Brad Birkenfeld reported to the IRS 19000 Americans' bank accounts at
the Swiss bank UBS, which they had not reported to the IRS.
Secretary of State Clinton directly negotiated a settlement with UBS,
which
allowed
it to keep most of the profit and conceal most of the names,
including the "politically exposed people".
Then Birkenfeld was imprisoned for reporting the crimes to the US
government, and UBS increased its donations to the Clinton Foundation.
Another study says that medical error in the US causes
only
around 1% of deaths.
This disagrees with
another
recent study. If this one is correct, the problem is not
tremendously grave.
US citizens:
tell Trump
to release his tax returns.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic Party to oppose expansion of Israel's colonies
in Palestine.
Everyone:
call
Amazon executives and say, don't sponsor Trump's convention.
SCROTUS
demanded
that Greenpeace, 350.org and the Union of Concerned Scientists hand
over privileged legal communications about investigating Exxon's
global heating fraud.
They demanded this in the name of a bogus "Congressional
investigation" which is just as fraudulent as Exxon's denial.
At an anti-Trump protest in San Jose, some of the protesters
attacked
Trump supporters who were leaving.
It was foolish to physically attack the Trump supporters, and wrong,
but Trump is also responsible through his preaching hatred and
violence.
Philadelphia Water Department
Faces
Class Action Lawsuit over Water Testing. (The tests were done
wrong so as to underestimate the amount of lead in the water.)
Harvard is has
made
new investments in fracking companies in the past two years.
The Australian government and an NGO
dispute
how to present how much coral in the Great Barrier Reef has died.
But they might agree that the deaths amount to 25% of the coral in the
whole reef, concentrated closer to the equator.
After 20 years more heating, the subsequent el Niño event will leave
much less coral alive.
The Democratic Party is
illegally
trying to give some primary voters in California "provisional
ballots" that probably won't be counted.
A prisoner in New York's Rikers Island jail has been waiting 6 years
for trial.
New Jersey needs Bernie Sanders's political revolution so it can end
the extreme inequality that has made 1/3 of the population struggle.
Microplastics Killing Fish Before They Reach Reproductive Age, Study Finds.
The US continues to protect the Chilean officer accused of murdering
Victor Jara, but he faces a civil suit.
Chomsky evaluates Obama's presidency.
Federal prosecutors in Florida are accused of persistently snooping on
a defendant's privileged legal communications
Specific subsidies for corporations in the US amount to $250 billion since
2010, and that doesn't include the general loopholes that they all use.
Plutocratist politicians are helping companies pay so little that the
workers need public assistance, then bashing them for receiving it.
We need to recognize that they have chosen the side of the enemies
of our country.
Robot milkers are much more comfortable for cows, but the result of
advancing farm automation (not limited to dairy farms) will be to eliminate
most of the jobs that remain there.
There will indeed be a need for people to repair robots, but I'd
expect to see only one repair job for dozens of today's milker jobs.
And jobs reprogramming robots will be fewer still.
Add this to the automation of other kinds of work, and it leads to
economic disaster.
Eventually most of the automated farms will cease to be needed,
because the people who still have an income won't need a lot
of farm products.
China and several other states (including Vietnam and the Philippines,
which are US allies) dispute control of the sea between them. Part of
what makes the dispute hot is that the area contains lots of oil.
In other words, lots of opportunities to risk local disasters (oil
spills) in order to contribute to global heating disaster.
If these countries sign a treaty to leave that oil in the sea bottom,
perhaps it will become easier for them to agree on how to divide up
the sovereignty.
The US International Trade Commission predicts that the economic "benefits"
of the TPP will be so small as not to matter.
Even if these "benefits" were larger, they would not be significant for
US workers, since they would mostly be for the rich.
Ralph Nader: call him "Cheating Donald" since he has cheated so many.
I like "Treacherous Trump" better, because of the alliteration.
India is considering a censorship law that would imprison people for
publishing maps that disagree with India's disputed territorial
claims.
An honest map would describe disputed territory as disputed, and also
show where the actual boundaries of physical control lie.
The Canadian post office has given up on trying to use copyright to
block the distribution of an independently compiled list of the
geography of postal codes.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the term "intellectual
property" since that term confuses the issue. It is a mistake
to generalize about copyright law and those other laws, since
each one is more different from the others than similar.
In the US, this database would be uncopyrightable since it is a mere
statement of facts rather than a creative choice of details. Canada
should adopt the same principle.
Journalists covering a protest in Caracas say that people stole their
equipment and the thugs refused to intervene.
An oil train in Oregon derailed and caught fire, fortunately not near
a town, but rather near the Columbia River.
Will the river be polluted, or will all the oil burn?
The fact that a slow train derailed suggests that the line was badly
maintained. Either that was illegal, or the legal standards are
inadequate to assure safety of oil trains.
Investigation Shows GCHQ Using US Companies, NSA To Route Around
Domestic Surveillance Restrictions.
Specifically, it can collect the emails of members of Parliament
this way, because they pass it through Microsoft.
Tattoo Recognition Research Threatens Free Speech and Privacy.
Here are some ways these computerized systems could be used, and why that
could be harmful.
Face recognition technology is dangerous in many of the same ways.
What's more, many of us have no tattoos, or none that would generally
be visible, but everyone has a face.
Trump's 100-million debt to Deutsche Bank would be a giant conflict of interest
if he were president.
Environmental crime costs the world at least 90 billion dollars a
year, perhaps 3 times that.
Addictions Are Harder to Kick When You're Poor.
The EU was going to legislate to reduce air pollution. The UK
government, working as usual for business against people, weakened the
directive.
This is expected to mean 14,000 additional deaths per year by 2030,
when the reductions will have been implemented.
Some pranksters make videos of saying things to women that annoy them
or simply confuse them.
Some of the pranks are not particularly bad in themselves, but the
nasty messages that the women receive afterward are inexcusable.
In England, 1 in 5 young children is reported to a state agency by
someone who suspects the child is being neglected or abused.
This creates a reign of terror for parents.
Uri Avnery: the extreme right wing is forcing all parts of the Israeli
state and all other influential institutions into line.
Thank Sanders for forcing Obama to endorse expanding Social Security.
A Canadian of Libyan origin, held for two years and tortured in the
UAE, < a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/02/salim-alaradi-freed-uae-canada">has now been allowed to leave the country
A few others have been freed from prison, but still remain in the
greater prison of the UAE.
James Hansen's paper, now transparently peer-reviewed, presents a
process that would cause several meters of global heating over the
next century, together with much more powerful storms in the North
Atlantic
Essentially all coastal cities would be destroyed.
Natural gas export from southern Peru has been a disaster for the indigenous
people that live in the Camisea region.
If that's not bad enough, think of what it is doing to Earth's whole
biosphere. This gas export terminal isn't needed if we take the
required steps to prevent global disaster — so it should be shut
down.
Trump's response to the evidence that his "university" cheated students
is to say the judge is biased because of his Mexican ancestry.
This is the standard Trump response to anyone he can't buy.
He has already bought off the attorneys general of Florida, Texas
and other states.
Médecins sans Frontières
condemns
several governments for systematically bombing hospitals or
supporting the states that do.
Make
Building Standards Top Priority for Tackling [Global Heating],
Says IEA Chief.
The term "climate change" was chosen by Dubya's officials to downplay
the danger; we should not keep following his choice.
After Clinton stopped giving expensive speeches for companies in order to
run for president, her husband Bill Clinton continued, and took funds
even from the lowest of the low: an
asset-stripping
"vulture fund".
Flint had a way to cheat on tests of lead in the water:
doing
the tests in areas which don't have lead pipes.
Even with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new rules,
payday loans continue to carry
very
heavy interest.
The real causes of the problem include (1) too low pay for workers in
the US, and (2) insufficient government help (because the rich and
businesses have escaped from paying tax), and (3) banks' sending
credit cards to young adults, encouraging them to get deep in debt.
One of the reasons not to pay by credit card is that people tend to
spend more money that way.
A Syrian Arab says he wants to fight PISSI,
but
not under coercion from Kurds.
Ukraine has put sanctions on Russian journalists which it accuses of
"stirring hatred",
banning
them from entering Ukraine or owning property there.
One of them is actually a Ukrainian citizen, and plans to challenge
the sanctions legally.
I wish the US would stop making journalists apply for
special
visas to report on the US.
Google Maps
collects
a history of everywhere the user has been, and calculates the
locations with several methods to make them extremely accurate.
Catching some criminals is a good thing. Ten years ago I would have
said that catching a bank robber was good. Now that banks have stolen
so many billions from people around the world, and the US government
has
let
them get away with it, I hesitate to condemn someone for stealing
from banks. Nonetheless, there are other crimes for which I would
support catching the perpetrators.
But this method can be used for all sorts of reasons, including
catching whistleblowers. It is
dangerous
to allow the existence of
any system which tracks people's movements.
The OECD now
recognizes
that governments should end austerity and spend more on public
works.
Increased benefits for the poor would help too. They would spend the
money on food, transportation and medicine.
Poland Gets
Official
Warning from EU over Constitutional Court Changes.
More information about the changes and how they
endanger
rule of law.
Everyone:
call
on Walmart to stop selling tuna caught in ways that kill
threatened sea life or caught by enslaved workers.
Germany has officially recognized the genocide of the Armenians,
so
Turkish
officials are freaking out and threatening "bad relations".
I approve of this resolution because its statement is true; that it
irritates Erdoğan is a bonus.
33
US cities cheated in lead tests to hide excessive levels of lead
in their drinking water.
They have
agreed
to stop.
Tajikistan's "president" for life has
jailed
the leaders of the opposition, hammering the lid on any chance of
democracy there.
Students at Brooklyn College who took the microphone at a faculty
meeting to talk briefly about Palestinians' rights have
vanquished
false accusations of antisemitism.
In three years since the Rana Plaza factory collapse, work safety
conditions for garment workers in Bangladesh
have
not substantially improved.
People tried to put pressure on the western middleman companies that
control the garment trade, and some companies promised to vet their
supply chains, but they are doing it so lackadaisically that it has
not changed much.
Sweden
Should
Keep Coal in the Ground, Not Sell It Off.
Statesmen serve their countries by making the necessary investments in
the future rather than spending on today's pleasures. The most
important investment today is in cutting down greenhouse gas
emissions.
Street lights
attract
moths to fly high, out of reach of the flowers they should be
pollinating.
A
25-year
plan to clean up the oil spills in the Niger delta has begun.
It is a lot cheaper to avoid polluting an area than to clean it up.
Fires in Alaska, caused by global heating, add to global heating.
This is one of the positive feedbacks that scientists have warned about.
If enough of these feedbacks start, the planet roasters will have won
a final victory.
Syrian Troops Are Looting Ancient Palmyra, Says Archaeologist.
A study of long term marijuana use found only one tiny physical health effect:
a small increase in the chance of having gum disease.
When US soldiers attacked a friendly family's celebration and killed
seven of them, perhaps it was a mistake. A military investigation says so.
The "fog of war" frequently leads to mistakes.
However, nothing could excuse the cover up that followed.
The investigation arbitrarily ignored this.
A US appeals court ruled that thugs can collect people's cell phone
location data for any length of time from the phone company without
a court order.
The other decision would not be enough to respect people's privacy.
The phone company should not be allowed even to record your
location data without a specific court order about you. Tracking
everyone's movements is a threat to democracy as well as each person.
The European Commission seems to want to change copyright law
to benefit publishers at the expense of authors and the public.
When the article says "editors", it means "publishers". This
could be a mistranslation from the French.
It also seems to be hostile to the freedom to take and use photos on
the street with buildings in view ("freedom of panorama").
The two governments in Libya are introducing different forms of paper
money.
This is not, in itself, a problem. The UK has various kind of paper money
made by different banks. But the US wants to make it out to be a problem.
Reusing water through fish tanks enables agriculture to use much less
water and produces useful fish.
The 'Avon Ladies' of Pakistan Selling Contraception Door to Door.
Some US women, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have used dangerous
abortion methods because they were barred from safe legal abortion.
If this amounts to 2% of all US women, which is the lower bound the
researcher suggests, that would amount to millions.
Foreigners can donate to US election campaigns via US-based front
corporations. It's not a crime, but it ought to be.
The world installed 147 GW of renewable energy capacity in 2015, despite the bigger subsidies for fossil fuels.
This would be good news if we had decades to wait, but we don't.
President Obama, Pardon Edward Snowden And Chelsea Manning.
"Biodiesel" fuel in Europe now includes palm oil.
Instead of CO2 from burning petroleum, it emits CO2 from burning
tropical forests.
Anti-gentrification protesters in Montreal set off smoke bombs in a
grocery for the rich, as well as swiping fancy food.
In principle, I don't see anything wrong with gentrification. The
problem is when the former residents of the area have to move
someplace lousy and far away.
It appears Chinese thugs occasionally kill prisoners and lie about it, much like thugs in the US.
Digital newspapers spy on readers, tracking how much time a reader
spends reading the paper.
They have no right to collect such data about readers. Please join me
in rejecting digital systems that give anyone the power to track what
you read.
Many prisoners in the UK take hallucinatory addictive drugs to make
the months pass in a blur.
The drugs are bad for them, but they can't resist.
Mothers of students killed by China in 1989 at Tiananmen Square
continue to rebuke the state.
The deputy thug that killed Eric Harris has been sentenced to four
years in prison for manslaughter.
Trump University (not a real university) was Trump's dry run for the
dishonest practices he is now using in his campaign.
Trump University's predatory business practices lured students to
pay thousands with their credit cards based on exaggerated promises of
future riches. A personal message from Trump poured on the pressure.
No wonder New York State and students are suing.
Here are some details of the dirty sales methods that the company used.
Former staff say that the company was a "total lie".
The parents of a child that climbed into a zoo's gorilla enclosure
are being investigated by thugs.
The thugs seem to demand that children be kept on leash at all times.
Congressâ Treachery, the FBIâs Double-Crossing and the American
Citizenryâs Cluelessness: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
US citizens:
support
a permanent ban on providing cluster bombs to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to close the carried interest loophole that lets hedge
funds pay little or no tax.
Three gun control measures would greatly reduce the rate of killings
with
guns: universal
background checks in buying guns and ammunition, and ballistic
fingerprinting of guns.
However, this won't prevent your toddlers from killing you or
themselves unintentionally with your gun. Especially if you follow
the NRA's
cockeyed
advice to keep a gun in your child's room.
I expect people will still be safer with no guns in the house,
as
is the case now.
Two giant beer companies are merging. The combination will be
much
larger than any of its competitors.
Mergers so large should be absolutely blocked.
Digital payments carry an
increasing
likelihood that you'll be the victim of fraud, as well as a
certainty that you'll be the victim of snooping.
Extending women's reproductive rights world-wide is an
effective
way to reduce global heating.
New York State has sued Domino's Pizza (and its franchisees) for
systematic
theft of employees' wages.
Belgium now gives people the right to
force
newspaper archives to delete articles about them.
This is terribly dangerous censorship.
Former Attorney General Holder
admits
that Snowden's revelations were a service to the nation, but wants
him to meekly submit to imprisonment for it.
He is not such a fool as to put himself totally at the mercy of
officials that persecute whistleblowers and only then
negotiate a deal.
Scientists Say Canada's Proposed LNG Port
Threatens
Paris Climate Accord.
Censorship in the UK
extends
to harsh opinions. A man has been charged with the "crime" of
saying good riddance about the 96 soccer fans killed by UK thugs.
Even the name of the crime he is charged with is a vicious smear,
since it uses the word "threatening" and "harassment", but the words
he said contained no threat or harassment. Imagine making it a crime
to "kill or tickle" someone, and charging a tickler with "killing or
tickling".
The UK spits on freedom of expression
in
many other ways, too.
When people talk about punishing "hate speech", they advocate
censorship of opinions. Censorship is dangerous to society and
democracy.
That is why I see danger in the recent agreement by three
multinational companies to work harder to
delete
"hate speech".
If Facebook respects journalism, it will
disconnect
from Peter Thiel.
Mohammed Sheikh Mohammed's lawyers accuse the military kangaroo court
of destroying evidence in its favor, then
pretending
to have ordered its preservation.
Each of the prisoners in Guantanamo has a right to a fair trial
or to be released.
The IMF's researchers acknowledge that neoliberal economic policy exists,
and that it's
lousy.
Using facial examination to guess people's character traits is
dangerous
when it is unreliable, and unjust when it is reliable.
In Loomis Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef,
nearly
all the coral has bleached and half of it is dead. The fish that
used to live there are now gone.
The extractionists that rule Australia might respond, "Since the coral
is doomed anyway, and the billion people who depend on it will soon
starve, so why not burn all the coal?"
But it is not too late to prevent this act of mass murder, if we curb
fossil fuel use with dispatch.
The Thai military government has given itself the
power
to spy on all internet traffic in the country.
Leaks suggest that it intends to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks
to spy on use of foreign web sites through https.
Several "US" companies have
signed
a pledge to censor "hate speech", which is a crime in many
European countries.
This includes statements of views that are protected in the US.
We must not ban expression of opinions just because we find them
disgusting.
Erdoğan has
officially
labeled Gülen's movement as "terrorist". (Apparently they
tried to explode Erdoğan's overinflated ego.)
This is meant to try to pressure the US government to hand Gülen
over to Turkey, but I expect it will be an excuse for more persecution
in Turkey.
President-elect Duterte of the Philippines
advocates
murdering "corrupt" journalists. It appears that "corrupt", in
his mouth, means anyone that criticizes him.
Thugs in the Philippines have already started a wave of murders, with
his encouragement. They are killing suspected drug dealers. If they
kill some suspected dissidents too, maybe those will be lost among the
suspected drug dealers.
A German court has
approved
a form of fair use for short music samples.
Good news — and shame on Kraftwerk for opposing this!
Assad's air force
bombed
a hospital in Idlib.
They have bombed quite a few hospitals.
The UK's ban on nearly all psychoactive drugs
will
drive people to more dangerous drugs such as alcohol. It is the
result of a misguided choice of goal: promoting abstinence, rather
than reducing harm.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to block the sneak attack on Net
Neutrality.
US citizens:
call on everyone
to reject China's future puppet Dalai Lama.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on the legislator to vote on GMO Food labelling bill and pass it.
With Javascript disabled, the signing process won't work all the way
through automatically. Instead, it will terminate showing you a long
URL with [URL] in place of the domain name.
If you replace [URL] with http://salsa3.salsalabs.com, and visit the
resulting URL, that will finish signing.
The worst possible argument for talking Britain out of the EU:
reducing
tax on heating oil.
It would be easy for the state to help poor people cope with these
costs: increase welfare benefits for the poor, to an extent that
covers what the poor pay in VAT on oil. (Or even more, why not?)
For the poor, this would be equivalent; meanwhile, the wealthier
would still pay the tax, and the poor would still have an incentive
to use less fossil fuel.
The idea of cutting taxes on fossil fuels, instead of cutting their
subsidies, reflects a planet roaster.
Azeri journalist Khadija Ismayilova, freed from 18 months as a
political prisoner,
will
resume investigating government corruption.
The "transparency, monitoring and control" minister of Brazil has quit
after a
leaked
recording tied him to plotting to end the "lava jato" corruption
investigation.
The whole point of the legal coup, as we now know, was to end that
investigation and protect the
extremely
corrupt officials who plotted it.
In the US, poor and middle-class families' incomes
dropped
(on the average) from 1999 to 2014.
In addition, the middle class shrank, with a few of the departing
families becoming wealthy and most of them becoming poor.
The study analyzed the
229
metropolitan areas for which data were available, and perforce
omitted 152 other areas for which it wasn't.
Here's the
full
report.
India asked YouTube and Facebook to take down a
satirical
video that mocks two Indian celebrities.
The UK made a
secret
agreement about dealing with the nuclear waste from its absurdly
expensive planned new nuclear power plant.
It seems that frequent viewing of porn
often
leads men to sexual difficulty, but it could be a matter of how
and how often they masturbate.
A universal basic income
would
not solve all of society's problems. We would still need
democratic control over important social issues.
However, I don't think this means that the universal basic income is a
bad idea. And even though plutocracy and business-dominated
globalization have an important role in inequality, that doesn't mean
there is no technological unemployment.
Women in general
frequently
need to de-escalate confrontations with pushy men, and most men
don't even know about the problem.
I agree with the writer's position except on one point: about being
looked at. No matter what the reason, you don't have a right to
demand that people not look at you. Just being too young to have a
driver's license doesn't entitle you to tell people where to point
their eyes.
Hissène Habré, former dictator of Chad, has been
convicted
of crimes against humanity including torture and summary
execution.
Now we need to put Dubya on trial for torture, in Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo, and someone (Obama?) on trial for the summary execution of
Osama bin Laden (who deserved a trial for the murders he was accused
of).
The UK referendum about whether to leave the European Union is a
dispute about
"which
is the better way for citizens to be ripped off, as part of the EU
or as an independent UK?"
Like many other referendums, it is a recognition that democracy has
been corrupted so much by the elite that we can't trust it to work for
the public good.
I love the last sentence: "Whether you back red or black in the
tawdry, crumbling casino of neoliberalism, and whatever the slimy
croupiers of the mainstream media urge, it's the house that invariably
wins."
We the People need to take control of our house. Any politician that
the plutocrats are happy with is not on our side.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
on Governor Baker to sign the public records reform bill.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections
Act.
CETA the Canadian Sea Monster would impose essentially the
same
injustice as the TTIP on Europe. All the regulations that protect
the public from dangerous actions of business would be vulnerable to
being swept away.
El Niño Is Over — But It
Leaves
Nearly 100 Million People Short of Food.
Companies such as Fitbit and
trying
to scare parents into paying the companies to collect data about
their babies.
These devices should cause parents lots of anxiety about how that data
will be used.
A product to monitor a baby's health might be a reasonable thing to
use if it is run by free software and all the data remains under the
control of the parent.
Australians: see how projected sea-level rise will affect
cities,
beaches, famous buildings, and your home (or the home you might be
thinking of buying).
To understand why the TPP is bad,
stop
believing that it's a "free trade agreement".
Why Sanders's economic policies
make
sense.
As world temperatures set record after record,
society
and the state seem hardly to notice.
Bill
Would Expand FBI's Warrantless Access to Online Records, Senators
Warn.
The US government seems to have been coordinating with the architects
of the coup in Brazil
while
they were setting it up.
When a US drone bomber killed the leader of the Taliban, he was riding
in a taxi. The bomb
killed
the taxi driver, who did not know who his passenger was.
The French finance minister says France
will
make Google and McDonalds pay all the tax they owe.
"Software audits", checking small or medium size businesses for
unauthorized copies of user-subjugating software are a form of
organized
bullying. They demand gigantic penalties in order to make the
users collapse in fear.
The author of the article endorses the official position that
proprietary software is legitimate and using unauthorized copies of
proprietary software is doing wrong to the developer. He even calls
that practice by the smear term,
"piracy".
I think all that is mistaken. It is foolish to use proprietary
software, whether authorized copies or not; but making and using
unauthorized copies of proprietary software is not wrong. Rather, the
wrong is in trying to STOP people from sharing and using software. In
other words, the wrong is proprietary software.
These audits are just a part of
the injustice
of nonfree software. Your business can be safe by rejecting
nonfree software.
The US Trade Representative
threatened
Colombia with cuts in support for peace with the guerrillas if it
went ahead with licensing generic versions of a cancer drug.
If not for the murderous World Trade Organization, Colombia could
simply legislate that there are
no
patents on medicines.
Here is
more information about
this issue.
It is disappointing that KEI uses the spin term "protection" to
describe what patents do. There is no reason to use that word except
propaganda for the drug companies.
Raising taxes on the rich
does
not lead most of them to move somewhere else for lower taxes.
A subgroup of Anonymous
digs
up financial dirt on some big companies.
Some of the boat people set to Nauru by Australia have attempted
suicide, and the usual fraction of them are homosexual. For their
sake, Nauru has
decriminalized
homosexuality and suicide. Some other positive reforms have been
made.
This doesn't correct the basic wrong, though.
If you buy tropical fish, think about
which
species to get. Some are wild-caught, which is harmful, and some
will get too big for your tank and will be physically maimed.
Florida Brewery Creates
Edible
Beer Holders to Save Marine Life.
Unlike ordinary
"biodegradable"
plastics, these really do degrade in a reasonable time, floating
in the ocean.
Some in Spain are
starting
to talk about the mass murders committed after the civil war by
dictator Franco and his army.
People in Spain told me, ten years ago, that Franquistas still
held positions of power and that they blocked efforts to remember
their crimes.
Australia silenced the UN report to
cover
up danger to Kakadu and Tasmanian forests as well as the Great Barrier
Reef.
There is no cure for Tas-mania, but at least the sufferers can apply
for Addle-aid.
Clinton's
changes
in the paperback edition of her memoirs are illuminating,
especially about the TPP.
The UK
blocked
EU regulations on fracking.
The Tories are lower than vermin, and they plague all of Europe.
One factor that makes oxycontin dangerous is that its manufacturer
claims its effect lasts for 12 hours, and
refuses to
recognize evidence that people need it more often.
Instead, the company wants patients to take bigger doses every 12
hours. These bigger doses are dangerous.
US citizens:
call
on the IRS to publish how much tax money the US loses through the
carried interest loophole.
US citizens:
oppose
plans to convert US national parks into promotion for companies.
We should get funds from these companies for upkeep of parks —
by taxing them!
SCROTUS are blocking the Federal Election Commission from
investigating a case where a
company
owner ordered employees to contribute to the company's PAC.
In general, the FEC has become useless because Republicans protect
all abuses by the rich and powerful. In effect, the Republican
Party has become the Crush Democracy Party.
21
questions for Donald Trump. Some of them point at possible
involvement with organized crime gangs.
Chinese may face the loss of
hundreds
of thousands of jobs as factories replace workers with robots.
The jobs being lost are grueling, and we should have stopped companies
such as Apple from moving to this sort of manufacturing. Having the
jobs automated, in a world of spreading poverty, is not a solution.
US governments use algorithms to predict which arrested people are
likely to commit crimes again. The algorithms are secret, but they
appear to be
biased
against blacks.
The government should be required to publish these algorithms.
The Niger Delta Avengers are
blowing
up oil facilities to demand compensation for the harm done by oil
extraction and pipelines in Nigeria.
The "US" Trade Representative was
working
closely with Goldman Sachs in the TPP.
That official officially represents the US, but in fact represents
the banksters and other plutocrats instead.
G7
Wants
to Kill Fossil Fuel Subsidies by 2025, But We Could Do It 'Twice
as Fast'.
Governments could end them this year, if they were not dominated
by the planet roasters.
Verizon workers have
tentative
agreement on a contract that they are happy with.
Portable phones make people helpless and dependent, and they
lose
the concept of making plans.
I've seen that when people get used to depending on GPS navigators,
they lose the ability to keep track of where they are.
IMF economists criticized the neoliberal policy of
spending
cuts to reduce deficit.
Even they see it!
Facebook will compete to target ads on other web sites
even
to visitors that are not useds of Facebook, based on other ways of
tracking people on the net.
This includes "Like" buttons. If you see a "Like" button in a page,
Facebook knows that your computer visited that page. This is why
we made the GNU Browser IceCat block the "Like" buttons.
The
rigid
rules for protests at the Republican National Convention keep
protesters far away from the convention, from the delegates, and
mostly from the public as well.
PISSI is attacking Syrian rebel groups that have been
weakened
by Russian attacks.
Technology billionaires buy lots of privacy for themselves
using
the money that they got from snooping on millions of others.
The EU decided to
require
research it funds to publish results without paywall.
I don't know whether this means it will be published under a free
license, but unpaywalled papers usually do that.
The ACLU wants to know
whether
the US government is asking Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to
censor people.
UK Weapons Sales to Oppressive Regimes Top
$3bn
a Year.
Uber
Knows
Too Much About You. And so do many other companies.
Many billionaires believe
"real
journalism" means praising them, and that they are entitled to
crush the press when it doesn't do that.
Billionaires have several methods to hush up media criticism.
They can
pay
someone to sue a media outlet, or they can
buy
it.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC to adopt real privacy rules for ISPs.
In my message, I said that the ISP should not be allowed even to
keep any records of what a customer has connected to, except
based on a warrant issued about a specific customer for a specific
reasonable period of time.
Everyone:
call on some
companies to cancel their support for Trump's convention.
US citizens:
call on the
Pentagon to free Mohamedou Slahi.
US citizens:
support
the WATER Act.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
on Governor Baker to sign the new public records access law.
House Republicans Again Target Net Neutrality With
Budget
Attack.
Justin Shafer found medical patient data available on the internet and
reported it to the government. So the company that was leaking the
data (on an anonymous FTP server)
SWATted
him.
Facebook and Google are
trying
to weaken Illinois' law on collection of face data.
The fungus in the air vents in the Rikers Island jail makes the air so
sickness-provoking that a guard
begged
a prisoner to file a complaint. The guard was afraid of being
punished for complaining.
Similar problems are found in many US jails and prisons. The fungus
can cause permanent illness.
Here's
Why Our [US] Infrastructure Is Crumbling and Our Recovery Is So
Weak.
Everyone:
call
on the governor of Missouri to veto the "stand your ground" law.
The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has
given
up complaining to military courts about the crimes of occupation
soldiers. These courts are so biased that reporting crimes to
them is useless.
Millions of girls live in cultures where menstruation is taboo, and
they
don't
understand what is happening or what is best to do. Some have to
sell sex in order to get pads to wear.
Some skip school while menstruating, because they would be sneered at
in class.
This is patriarchy at work, aided by its faithful servant, religion.
Abul Kamal Azad was lured into borrowing thousands of dollars to get a
job in London. There his sponsor
enslaved
him. He couldn't refuse, because his sponsor could have him
deported at any time.
After he and his fellow slaves testified against their enslaver, they
were threatened with deportation. But if they went back to Bangladesh
without paying their debts, the money lenders might kill their
families.
That threat is the other key to the situation, as it makes almost
any resolution hopeless.
Other injustices appear in the background. What enabled him to sell
his wife's jewelry — was he trampling her rights so he could
lose her money as well as his own?
In an overpopulated place like Bangladesh, circumstances will
inevitably put many people into desperate situations where they feel
impelled to take bad risks. Some will end up destitute; the only
uncertainty is whom and how. To have children in such a situation is
simply wrong. What Bangladesh needs most is a lot
fewer
children.
French people are still protesting and striking against a
proposed
law to reduce workers' rights.
The president has adopted a standard right-wing position and justifies
it with standard right-wing arguments: he claims this will benefit
workers by giving employers the "flexibility" (i.e., more power over
the workers). How could that be? Implicitly, he assumes France is
competing with other countries to attract businesses by letting them
mistreat workers more.
Millions of US teenagers live in places that have a permanent curfew.
They
can
be arrested just for being outside.
Aside from being repressive, selective enforcement creates a way
to direct minority group children into a life of legal difficulties
even when they don't commit any real crimes.
British dissidents jailed for their acts of protest describe the
repression
and dishonesty they encountered in prison.
Typically their "offenses" are not real, just excuses the state finds
convenient.
Some found their resolve strengthened by the experience.
A UK teacher writes about being
threatened
with dismissal for violating an unwritten requirement to wear a
tie.
I reject ties both as a matter of comfort and as an act of rebellion.
If it were just a matter of personal preference, I wouldn't need to
talk about it, I'd just do it. However, many men are forced to wear
ties, basically as a symbol of submission, and that makes it an
ethical issue.
I hope that my refusal to wear a tie will help clear the path for
others to refuse.
Trump
chickened
out of debating Sanders after Sanders accepted the challenge.
Trump was apparently bluffing, and did not know what to do when
Sanders called his bluff.
Trump
claimed
that there is no drought in California.
Sunscreen
Contributing
to Decline of Coral Reefs, Study Shows.
This could explain why massive tourism tends to harm reefs.
The US is
wasting
its stockpile of helium, and ought to start charging a lot of
money for it.
A court in Argentina has sentenced various various military murderers
who participated in Operation Condor, and found that this
collaboration
in repression between 6 different countries in South America
really did occur.
Of course, it was organized by the US.
US citizens:
call on Congress to support
the Take On Wall Street agenda.
Everyone:
call
on Washington State to cancel the Millennium coal export terminal.
Australia convinced the UN to drop Australia from a report on
environmental damage, so as not to highlight how Australia is
destroying the Great Barrier Reef. A draft of the report has been
leaked,
and it is bleak.
Meteorologists Are Seeing Global [Heating]'s
Effect
on the Weather.
It is becoming more common for weather patterns to get "stuck" in one
spot, which could mean a lot of rain, a lot of snow, a long heat wave,
a long fire, whatever.
Women
as well as men join in storms of tweets and use misogynistic
insults against women who are being criticized.
Since Clinton refuses to debate Sanders before the California Primary,
he may
debate
Trump instead.
But Trump seems to be
trying
to create an excuse not to do it.
The environment minister of France warns that
hundreds
of millions of people will be forced to try to migrate by global
heating.
If we consider late in this century, I think that is an underestimate.
Even
in the Supreme Court, men tend to interrupt women.
Chile is considering a copyright law that
would
prohibit any sort of sharing license for audiovisual works.
The FBI massively collects data about millions people. A legal action
directed specifically at
biometric
data, including photos of non-suspects going about their daily
lives, demands the FBI follow standard US government privacy
rules.
A victory in this would be just a small first step towards making the
US government respect our freedom. For democracy's sake, we need to
prevent
even the accumulation of most of that data.
The proposed Trade in Services Agreement would give businesses
broad
and detailed power over over countries and people. For instance,
a town would not even be allowed to impose a limit on the size of
stores.
The proposed reform of US chemical safety law is just a
small
step towards what really ought to be done.
A
report
on the prevalence of sex trafficking of minors in Ohio is not only
a series of exaggerations and worst-case assumptions, it is also based
on false concepts: equating "engaging in prostitution" with "being a
victim of trafficking".
The result is to scare parents in a way that encourages unjust laws.
Here's another example: Canadian parents are supposed to be terrified
because
three
girls per year are kidnaped and killed.
Those murders are grave crimes, like any murder, but the danger they
amount to is insignificant compared to life's other dangers.
Illinois thugs seized
$72
million worth of property without official criminal charges during two
years, and $50 million has not even been legally adjudicated.
The military tyranny in Thailand now
intends to
imprison people if they take note of criticism of the state without
denouncing it.
Christian extremists in the US are
using
surveillance-advertising networks to harass women in Planned
Parenthood clinics through their phones.
They send ads for one of the phony abortion counseling services that
claim to offer help but really distribute misleading information.
They also find out enough information, in many cases, to identify
the person.
I think this is an instance of the general injustice of the
surveillance-advertising system.
Chelsea Clinton's husband's investment fund got a
big
investment from the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
I suspect the CEO doesn't mind that the fund lost money and shut down.
He probably thinks of this as an investment to be repaid by a future
President Clinton.
G7 Nations Pledge to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies by
2025.
Why such a rush?
Obama has finally
rejected
the Keystone XL pipeline.
What reluctant "leadership"!
Google Should Not Be Allowed to
Secretly
Collect Private Medical Data.
A call to arms against the Australian parties that have
sold
out to the mining and fossil fuel companies.
Many web platforms systematically manipulate users to give the company
what it wants. Here are
some
of the techniques used.
The way for users to have control over
such activities is to replace those disservices with distributed
social networks implemented by free software.
Apple censors games,
banning
some games from the cr…app store because of which political
points they suggest. Some political points are apparently
considered acceptable.
Clinton was found to have
violated
security rules while Secretary of State, in a way that created an
espionage risk.
This carelessness was a far lesser wrong than the really bad things
she has done (supporting coups, helping plutocrats), but it might
convince Democratic superdelegates that they had better choose
Sanders.
The IMF
backed
down from demanding debt relief for Greece. This means the
euro-banksters are proceeding with their scheme to "rescue" Greece to
death.
The "bail-out" isn't for Greece, but rather for the creditor banks.
Each step imposes more poverty, supposedly so that Greece will have a
surplus and pay back the ever bigger debt. However, the actual result
of the poverty is further economic contraction, so there is no
surplus, and that "justifies" the next step.
This economic warfare is killing Greeks, probably by tens of
thousands. When people die in Greece as a consequence of poverty, I
suggest Greeks turn their funerals into rallies to denounce the
banksters that killed them.
A copy of
the TPP text, with
annotations saying what harm various parts can do.
The "war on terror", in the US, has harmed Americans and their rights,
but
does
not seem to have done even the slightest bit against the few and rare
terrorists in the US.
Abuse victim and habitual criminal Kelly Webb faces deportation from
Australia to the UK, because she was
brought
to Australia at age 2 and was never naturalized.
I understand why Australia wants to expel foreigners that commit
crimes, and for most cases such laws are legitimate. However, people
who were brought to a country as children should not be deported to a
place where they have no roots.
The world won't be a better place if Ms Webb is sent to the UK.
Some US universities have
made
all toilets nongendered.
If the students want it this way, I won't argue against it. In
principle, there is nothing wrong with it. However, if this is
applied to toilets with urinals, I'm concerned that women might feel
uncomfortable, or that
some
males might be accused with exposing themselves for using the urinal
when a female enters. This is not just my imagination.
The leaked conspiracy conversation demonstrates that the
impeachment
of President Rousseff is a coup against democracy in Brazil.
Prominent Britons say: counter-extremism bill
puts
our rights at risk.
Many Chinese academics are
fleeing
China, where censorship is becoming ever more pervasive.
Vietnam systematically jails people that fled Vietnam and asked for
asylum, after they are
forcibly
returned based on promises they would not be punished for leaving
Vietnam.
Some California farmers are
relearning
to grow crops without irrigation. They can even grow tomatoes
that are worth eating, unlike the usual commercial US tomatoes.
I doubt that all crops will work this way. California may have to
stop growing almonds, for instance. I will miss them.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi's brother, a German citizen, wanted to go to the
US to advocate for Mohamedou's release from Guantanamo prison. The US
denied
him entry, after questioning him for hours about his family.
The US could easily have blocked him from boarding the flight, but
that would have been insufficiently nasty.
Since imprisonment without trial is tyranny, the US must release all
the prisoners in Guantanamo, or else charge them with crimes and give
them fair trials.
The head of Victoria's government has apologized to the men
convicted
(in effect) of being gay.
Victoria is a state in Australia. Some years ago I proposed people
should start a magazine to reveal corruption in Victoria; it could be
called "Victoria's Secret".
Twitter is sending messages to people that tweeted identifying
names behind the "celebrity threesome injunction",
pressuring
them to delete their tweets "voluntarily" and warning them of
legal action.
According to this not entirely trustworthy newspaper, such messages
are
going
to people in the US and Spain, where the injunction does not apply
and British courts have no authority.
"Austerity" means more than spending cuts. It is a scheme to transfer
wealth from the poor to the rich. It includes
selling
everything public to the rich at a cut-rate price.
The budget deficit that is the excuse for these policies is no
accident. It is the result of not taxing the rich enough.
Thus, past plutocratic injustice is being used as the excuse for even
more plutocratic injustice.
Professor Zaki was
fired
by a hospital in Saudi Arabia for doing his duty: reporting the
unknown virus that was killing his patient.
The article suggests research that should be done to figure out how
people catch this virus.
Iran has sentenced Narges Mohammadi to
10
years in prison for campaigning to abolish the death penalty.
Unlike many other oppressive regimes, the Iranian regime does not
fabricate a phony crime as an excuse. It openly admits its contempt
for human rights. It is made up of religious fanatics that label
disagreement with their views as evil by definition.
Unemployed people in Detroit are excluded from work by
stores
that require people to apply for jobs only by internet.
I am concerned that applying requires (1) running nonfree software
too. And almost certainly it provides lots of personal data to data
brokers
The right solution is not to require job applicants to hand
over so much personal data to a computer data base. We should not
allow employers to demand this.
Meanwhile, public agencies, at all levels of government, should offer
sufficient public computers for people to come and use to carry out
their dealings with the state.
NSA officials set on ruining Thomas Drake's life
went
as far as to destroy documents that would help his defense,
according to Pentagon Inspector Crane.
Crane
wants
the legal system to protect internal whistleblowers from being treated
like Drake and Binney. He hopes that this way they won't need to
report government wrongdoing to the public.
I see his heart is in the right place, but he's trying to solve only
part of the problem. I think whistleblowers should tell the
people what the state is really doing, because we are supposed to
be in charge of the state. Accountability, in the state, means
accountability to us .
The interview also reveals that the officials who are supposed to
investigate accusations of retaliation (against other officials, for
resisting corrupt or illegal practices) are afraid they will face
retaliation for doing their job.
Fracksters
gained
approval for test fracking in part of England. Their
representative compared a frack well to a human baby, in effect asking
counselors to suppose it would grow into something admirable.
Due to the prevalence of fracking in the US, there is no mystery about
what
a test can grow into or about
how
they will try to cover up the local damage. A sprouting weed
might be a better comparison than a baby.
Clinton, as Secretary of State,
worked
to encourage fracking world-wide. Fracksters claim that fracking
as a "bridge" to renewable energy, but this is based on ignoring the
methane links. The way to get to renewable energy is by building
renewable energy systems. It's not hard if we spend enough money on
it.
Preventing global disaster is worth a lot of investment.
Former President Nasheed of the Maldives has been
given
asylum in Britain. Nasheed was
deposed
by a coup for demanding action to curb global heating before the
Maldives are inundated.
Nasheed got permission to go to the UK for medical treatment, then
asked to stay. This means he broke a promise to the tyrant. The
tyrant has no standing to complain, because he has done much worse to
Nasheed and threatens to do more of it. He deserves whatever bad he
gets.
However, one can debate whether this endangers the chances of other
political prisoners that might in the future seek permission for
medical care in a foreign country.
US citizens:
support
the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act which would partly
close the "revolving door" that admits corrupt people as officials.
A proper president would never appoint people like that.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of Labor to investigate cruel working conditions
imposed on poultry workers.
Trump's men are winning the support of Muslim Republicans by
saying
that they shouldn't believe anything Trump said during the
campaign.
One US judge ruled that the FBI, to use in court evidence obtained by
cracking a computer,
must
show the malware code to the defense. The effect was that the FBI
abandoned use of that evidence.
This makes legal sense, but I suspect the FBI will resort to lying
instead: using the evidence obtained by cracking to find other
evidence, then making up a false explanation of how that other
evidence was found. That is illegal, as I understand it, but
hard to detect.
China's coal trucks produce
giant
traffic jams.
There are strikes all across France
to
oppose the "socialist" government's labor flexibility bill.
Americans, global heating is
likely
to damage the Statue of Liberty.
But don't worry, damage to the Mall of Convenience won't come for a
few more decades.
Dropbox wants users to install a
kernel
module written by Dropbox. This would allow Dropbox to spy on, or
interfere with, anything the computer does.
The nonfree Dropbox Javascript code is
already a
step too far.
India
might
use Iris scanning to identify airplane and railroad passengers, as
well as everyone filing a tax return.
They are already arranging to track all the poor by welfare benefits,
but even for the middle class, there would be no escape.
Iris scanning is currently not as nasty as fingerprint identification,
because people don't leave iris prints in places where they go. But
there is a
danger
that iris-scanning cameras will in the future identify people walking
by on the street.
We Need to Know the
Algorithms
the Government Uses to Make Important Decisions about Us, but most
US states make excuses to conceal them. In some cases, the algorithm
is a company's trade secret. This is a case where, in effect, code is
law — and the law must be published for all to see.
In fact, US states have
laws
that belong to companies.
Sanders has
good
reasons not to throw in the towel to Clinton.
US citizens: call on Congress not to impose a nondemocratic austerity
government on Puerto Rico.
The EU is working on another "trade treaty", with Japan this time.
People had better find out what's in it, because it could be as nasty
as the other proposed "trade treaties". Even worse, it could be only
half as nasty, in the hope that taking smaller steps towards plutocracy
will provoke less resistance.
NO "trade treaty" made by plutocratic governments can be expected to be
good for people other than plutocrats.
Unemployment And Austerity 'Increases Cancer Mortality'. Hundreds of thousands may have been killed this way by the effects of the financial crisis.
That crisis was provoked by banksters, and the austerity response was
demanded by them. The banksters are responsible for these deaths.
Families that escaped from Fallujah, sometimes running at night
without shoes so PISSI would not shoot them, say that the people who
remain there are starving.
I have to wonder whether they are starving because PISSI keeps the food
for its soldiers, or starving because the Iraqi army won't let food in,
or both.
Almost 1000 people have been killed in two years by attacks on hospitals.
Amnesty International in Global Programme to Decriminalise Sex Work.
The criminalization helps maintain the stigma which is part of a patriarchal
idea that women are supposed to be good little properties of men.
13 US states have banned all abortions after 20 weeks, based on questionable assumptions.
I think they aim to do anything possible to impede abortions.
The basic reason to avoid online banking is that the banks leave users holding the bag for security failures. In fact, there is sometimes
pressure to treat them worse.
How the Politics of Extreme Energy Lead to the Criminalization of Social Protest in Argentina.
Fracking in Argentina (like fracking anywhere else) immediately
threatens the Mapuche that live there, but in the long term it
threatens all of civilization, by smoothing the path to more global
heating.
I wonder if the dispute over the Falkland Islands could be settled
with the help of an initial agreement not to extract any oil from the
sea around them.
Today's "digital assistants" are also spies.
For them not to be spies, they would have to be (1) entirely local and
(2) entirely free (libre) software.
A thousand Americans have been convicted of shaking their babies
because the babies appeared to have "shaken baby syndrome", but it
seems that syndrome may be an erroneous theory and perhaps those
parents did not really do anything.
Studying big data leads to slanted results when the data are systematically biased, and often they are.
How to get unbiased data? I fear that today's scientists will support
industry and government in trying to forcibly monitor everyone.
However, many people will give data voluntarily if it is collected in
an anonymous way and can't be reidentified.
An in-depth article about Ada Colau, the radical mayor of Barcelona.
I find her admirably firm in her stance.
The US and China are in a nuclear arms race.
As with the US and USSR in the 70s and 80s, an advance by one side
often puts the other side in danger of losing its deterrent capacity.
Wiser heads should negotiate treaties to limit the advances on both sides.
The head of Brazil's senate has conspired with the new acting
president to pardon people facing corruption charges.
Will London Stock Exchange Bar Firm over Amazon Deforestation?
A student in middle school in Virginia was harassed by a thug
for getting some milk in the lunch room, then arrested for "stealing" it, though in fact he was entitled to get it.
This is the start of the school-to-prison pipeline.
We've got to get the thugs out of the schools.
When Dubya was elected, Exxon tried to pressure Congress to cancel a series of presentations on global heating.
Government monetary shenanigans such as negative interest rates, even
threats to prohibit cash, are bad substitutes for what's really needed:
more government spending.
Indonesia has denied many requests for palm oil plantations.
UN Expert Calls for Tax on Meat Production
Since eating meat is not the best thing for human health,
and places a big burden on the environment (including global heating),
it makes sense to discourage it this way.
US citizens:
call on the Senate to pass
the Email Privacy Act without weakening riders or exceptions.
US citizens:
phone Senator
Stabenow to oppose the DARK act and protect state requirements for
labeling of GMOs in food.
Microsoft continues more or less
forcing
"upgrades" to Windows 10 onto users that don't want the change.
That this is even possible shows how much unjust power Microsoft
exercises over its users. How slow they are, most of them, to
recognize that the problem is pervasive in Windows and this is just
the culmination of decades of it.
A method for commercial monitoring and manipulation of millions of
people: profiling their way of thinking from their
facial
expressions in Youtube videos.
Meanwhile, states are planning to try to figure out people's feelings
and thoughts from watching them with computer programs.
The municipal government of Rome is
begging
companies to donate to preserve ancient monuments.
This is what happens when companies don't pay enough taxes for the
state to do its job.
Poland's right-wing government
has
begun its plan to cut down a large part of the Bialowieza forest.
If a fanatical or extractivist government gets just one turn at power,
it can destroy things that can never be replaced. Forests are
especially vulnerable to this. Perhaps destruction of natural forests
or wetlands should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.
Obama's visit to the Ise shrine along with Japan's prime minister
could support his
efforts
to use Shinto as a vehicle for nationalism.
Shinto is basically an unreformed ancient religion, comparable to
ancient Greek paganism, which believes that kamis (powerful spirits
such as gods) can be found everywhere in nature.
The last US political leader to support Shinto was Senator Joe
McCarthy. He too believed that kamis could be found almost everywhere,
including Hollywood and the US State Department ;-}.
The US is trying to wipe out the ash borer with
four
species of parasitic wasps.
This might actually work, but can we really be sure these wasps won't
find other prey once the ash borers are gone?
Across Europe, the "mainstream" parties are
losing
strength.
I would say this is because they are too timid to denounce plutocracy
and people are getting sick of what plutocracy does to them.
How Russia's Independent Media Was
Dismantled
Piece by Piece (over a period of five years).
Non-tenure-track teachers in UK universities are on strike because
they get
low
pay and no job security.
US universities have the same problem.
Varoufakis says Australia is living on a bubble and condemns its
tax
exemption for people that own existing expensive houses.
Trump said he would donate money to help veterans. Later his
spokesman said he had donated, but wouldn't give any details. Turns
out that was a lie, and they
rushed
to actually donate once the press started investigating.
A
proposed
US law would provide for sanctions against people in other
countries accused of important human rights violations.
It is a good thing in principle, but I fear that the US will apply
this selectively, sparing various tyrannical rulers because they are
US allies. The US
already
does that.
People from Cajolá in Guatemala have been
ruined
by foreign farm plantations and cheap grain imports. Their only
hope is to try to get into the US to work.
The US does not have an obligation to admit them as workers. It does
have an obligation to get rid of the practices that have ruined their
lives at home. I expect that the Guatemalan government allowed these
practices due to US pressure in the first place.
Indian women attribute domestic violence to alcohol and
want
it prohibited.
I understand where they are coming from. I saw a small version of
that progression in my father, and it convinced me to lead a life of
sobriety (which doesn't conflict with occasionally drinking a little
wine).
However, prohibition of an addictive drug is likely to do more harm
than good. The people who are dependent will get it through crime
syndicates.
"My father
warned
Exxon about climate change in the 1970s. They didn't listen."
Florida's escalation of the War on Painkillers drove
abusers
to use heroin instead.
The overall effect is likely to be dangerous. The painkillers are
made in regulated labs and the pills always the same contents. Heroin
is made by unregulated labs and typically diluted with who-knows-what.
Russia and Ukraine traded prisoners of war, which both countries had
put
on trial.
The IMF puts social spending targets into many
"aid"
contracts, but these are usually not actually followed, and they
have little effect compared with the crushing austerity the IMF
imposes.
US retail company executives admit that the updated overtime requirement
won't
lead to (more) loss of jobs.
Elsevier, the continual copyright aggressor, has
bought
SSRN where papers are posted for gratis access. There is plenty
of reason to worry.
With proper antitrust laws, this purchase would have been blocked.
An
analysis of the acquittal of one thug that was involved in the
killing of Freddie Gray.
The person quoted who claims that thugs are "no more or no less honest
than the vast majority of witnesses" is surely mistaken: we know that
they are habituated to lying in court, and that
they
lie as standard practice to protect each other. Other witnesses
do lie but it's impossible that they lie as much as that.
I don't know enough about the situation to have an opinion about
whether this particular thug was guilty.
We need to change the policies that give thugs
almost
100% impunity.
Erdoğan now believes he can make the EU bow to his demands,
with his
power
to grant or not grant help in keeping millions of Syrian refugees
away.
I don't think the EU will give in this far, though.
SCROTUS want to treat Puerto Rico
the
way they screwed Detroit.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Atheism is not a matter of faith
However, the claim that gods exist is not merely devoid of supporting
evidence. When argued as clever theists argue it, it becomes
unfalsifiable by any evidence, and therefore void as a statement about
the real world. That constitutes valid grounds to reject it outright,
not merely to doubt it.
Reportedly mass-market toys nowadays are almost all media tie-ins —
that is, ads that you pay to show your children. Meanwhile, what children mostly use to play are proprietary games afflicted with DRM.
Australia sent refugees to prison in Manus Island, and demands they be
allowed to settle in Papua New Guinea, but it is impossible for them to live there.
Trump acknowledges global heating when it serves his own business interests.
Mohamed Alaradi was arrested and tortured in the United Arab Emirates
along with 9 other Libyan expats. Six of them, including his brother,
have been imprisoned over two years. They now finally have a trial, which is alleged to be unfair.
The US ought to call on its ally to stop doing this sort of thing, but
if it tried to, the example of Guantanamo would make the position
hypocritical. Meanwhile, I wonder if the US is partly responsible
for their arrests.
A reform agenda for Wall Street that we can try to pressure Clinton to endorse.
The UK says it will investigate the evidence that Salafi Arabia dropped UK cluster bombs on Yemen.
To the UK's credit, it has prohibited the manufacture, sale and use of
cluster bombs. In that specific department, there is nothing more it
should do. But the UK should not support Salafi Arabia's bombardment
of Yemen. If it has to recognize that Salafi Arabia is using old British
cluster bombs, it may be forced to stop that support.
The birth rate for US teenagers has reached a record low, thanks to education
and access to birth control.
The rate of abortions has fallen too, since fewer girls get pregnant
without intending to have a baby.
Malian Jihadi to Plead Guilty in ICC Cultural Destruction Trial.
I am glad to see progress made in the prosecution of people who
desecrate human heritage.
In Barcelona, evicting a 5-year squat which turned a former bank into
a community center has provoked rioting.
If the city government can't prevent this eviction (except by paying
ransom), then I don't think the city government should be blamed
for it. But I do wonder if there is more that it could do, such as
to threaten the evicting owner with public criticism and pressure.
For the first time, Mauritania has convicted people of enslavement.
Celia Oyler published another teacher's criticism of a widely used US
school exam. The article quotes a few short questions quoted from the
exam. The company that made the exam threatened to sue her for
copyright infringement, and has got Google and Twitter to censor
discussion of the issue.
US citizens: phone your senators (each of them) at 877-429-0678 to
oppose proposed funding increases for the Pentagon in S. 2943.
Also say that such a decision should not be made with a voice vote.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
Support
Sen. Eldridge's amendment to close a campaign finance loophole in
Massachusetts.
British-Made Cluster Bombs Are
Turning
Up in Yemen. Will Cameron Tell Us Why?
Cluster bombs are already killing children in Yemen, and may continue
to do so for decades.
One of the thugs that collectively killed Freddie Gray has been
acquitted
of charges.
The judge seems to have pushed for a narrow interpretation of the laws
he was charged under.
Burning all currently known fossil fuels would lead to
10C
of global heating, according to a model. That's on the average
— some areas would be heated more, and others less.
Many regions would be entirely uninhabitable for humans. We could
only visit them with multiple backup air conditioning systems.
A
leaked
conversation among key Brazilian ministers shows that they plotted
to remove president Rousseff specifically to quash a corruption
investigation that threatened them.
One said he had corrupted most of the Supreme Court.
"Biodegradable" plastics
don't
biodegrade in the ocean.
Fraudulent DMCA takedown notices impose a plague of
censorship
on the internet. Even the most absurd false claims are taken at
face value, making censorship nearly risk-free.
Big publishers are lobbying constantly for an even worse system, one
that would require web sites to check for anything that had been
the target of a takedown before.
Right-wingers are so set on privatizing that they
will
do it even when it's a loss of money for the state.
Which just goes to demonstrate their real motive.
World-wide
protests against Monsanto.
New Yorkers
blocked
construction of a pipeline for natural gas (which would probably
be from fracking).
In poor countries, women are
still
in danger of developing fistula in childbirth. Then they are
typically ostracized. It is easily fixed with surgery, but no surgery
is available to them.
Seeds of dangerous weeds are
for
sale on the internet.
I think few people would order these if they knew what a problem they
cause.
After the US government persecuted internal whistleblowers such as
Thomas Drake, it also persecuted John Crane, an official who
tried
to insist on treating whistleblowers according to the law, Crane
believes that the office which was
supposed
to protect confidential whistleblowers instead helped persecute
Drake.
In Any Humanitarian Crisis,
Educating
Children Must Be Part of the Response.
The current round of tax increases and privatization imposed on Greece
include plans for additional automatic cuts when (the banksters say
"if") the current round causes so much contraction that Greece
still
doesn't have enough surplus.
Plants have a kind of intelligence that operates at a slow timescale,
so that humans usually don't notice except through
careful
study.
Occasionally people do notice. There is a kind of tea from Taiwan
which is made only from leaves that an insect has started to chew on,
because those leaves taste different.
Although plants make complex decisions, no evidence has been presented
that any plant engages in conscious thought. Without conscious
thought, I don't think an organism is entitled to the right to life.
Isn't it silly how people find it hard to call it a crime to wipe out
a species unless the individual members of it have rights? Wiping out
a species is a wrong of a different kind, a crime against the world,
regardless of whether the individuals of that species have rights as
individuals.
A US drone attack killed the leader of the Afghan Taliban. I expect
it will make little difference to the situation in Afghanistan, except
for
political
repercussions.
What ultimate effect it will have is imponderable. But the main point
is that you can't defeat an insurgency with substantial popular
support by killing its leaders. They will appoint new leaders.
How Big Tobacco
Lost
Its Final Fight for Hearts, Lungs And Minds.
A second year of drought in southern Africa
threatens
to kill up to 50 million people.
Droughts nowadays are only partially natural in origin. I suspect
global heating contributed to this drought.
Exxon says it will
cut
its support for 9 heating denialist groups. That will leave
around 24 more that it will apparently continue to fund, including
ALEC.
Canada has
approved
sale of genetically modified salmon.
I find it entirely plausible that eating these salmon is safe.
The concern for these salmon is that some might escape and transmit
the modified genes to wild salmon. Just one escaper might cause
permanent and irreparable harm.
Supposedly the modified salmon are sterilized, but how reliable is
that process? 99%? 99.9%? There are systems to prevent the salmon
from escaping, but how reliable are they? 99.9%?
Is that reliability maintained when thousands of low-paid workers have
to run those systems, under management that doesn't want to
immediately fix everything that breaks? The US has no Federal Salmon
Agency to make sure every salmon farm gets an annual inspection
and certify the people who maintain it.
If just one modified salmon in a thousand is not sterile, and just one
in a thousand escapes, and the modified salmon number millions over
the course of years, escapes of fertile modified salmon are almost
a certainty.
WHO's statement that glyphosate seems to be safe was
written
by a committee whose chair and co-chair work in another organization
that got a lot of money from Monsanto.
Whether the amounts of glyphosate that people actually ingest actually
cause significant danger to humans may be a hard question to answer.
Whether Roundup is dangerous is a different question, since there is
some
evidence
that other ingredients can harm people. But it is clear that
Roundup
endangers
wildlife, and that patented GMOs promote
concentration
and corporate control of our food.
300 interviews conducted by International Alert lead to the conclusion
that the main factors leading Syrian youths to extremist groups are
"personal experiences of
trauma,
loss of economic and educational opportunities, and a desire for
vengeance against the Syrian government."
The way "loss of opportunities" does this is that they join for the
pay, regardless of whether they entirely agree.
I wonder where groups such as al-Nusra get the money to pay them.
If robots are the future of work, where do humans fit in?
We are nowhere near being able to scan and emulate a human brain,
and nowhere near being able to make the emulated brain run faster
than the original. But these issues may arise even without that.
US citizens: Verizon, settle with your workers.
In the US: Verizon, be fair to your workers.
Also say you stand with striking Verizon workers.
Northern Irish Women Ask to be Prosecuted for Taking Abortion Pills.
William Hager could no longer afford the medicine for his wife's many
painful illnesses, and she told him repeatedly she wanted to die. He
shot her, then called the sheriff to arrest him.
I feel sorry for them both, but especially for him, since he may
now have to spend years in prison.
I wonder if he considered bringing home something she could take to
kill herself. That way, it would be clearly her act and her
responsibility, and he would perhaps not face prison.
It would be so much better if Florida gave people in her situation the
option to formally ask for a humane death. However, most such laws
are limited to people with a terminal illness. The article does not
say she had one; her future could have been many years of increasing
pain.
The EFF has appealed Chelsea Manning's conviction under the CFAA,
which interpreted that law in the most dangerous way, criminalizing
any violation of terms of service.
"I love abortion the way I love liver transplants and antidepressants."
In perfume, use of natural ingredients can be very harmful ecologically
because growing them is terribly inefficient.
India is taking measures to stop Monsanto from impeding the cultivation of non-genetically-modified cotton.
Kenyan opposition supporters are protesting repeatedly against expected rigging of the 2017 election.
Boulder, Colorado, represents what a good future for the US would look like.
I don't believe it is inevitable that the US (or any country) will make a good
choice for its future. If we want that to happen, we have to work for it.
Australia's National Sorry Day is an apology to the aboriginal people
who were massacred, often in cold blood, by British colonists.
I can think of some other countries that should have a National Sorry Day.
For instance, the US. Also Argentina, in which the intentional killing
of indigenous people en masse continued into the 20th century.
A Scientist Weighs Up the Five Main Anti-Abortion Arguments.
As always, it is a mistake to repeat the spin term "pro-life" with
which the enemies of abortion rights twist the issue. I support the
right to life for human beings as much as they do; many of them
support that less than I do, since they are in favor of the death
penalty.
Boston used face recognition systems to try to identify every visitor to a large concert.
This was a test. If and when it works, they might use it on every
street corner. We need laws to limit how the state and private
entities can use such systems to accumulate data about people.
Protesters in Paris, when their banned protest against killer thugs was
attacked by thugs, fought back and set fire to a thug car.
Fortunately, the thugs in the car got out.
I can't blame people for fighting back when attacked, but one should
not escalate so far. If you sink to the level of thugs, you will be
no better than them.
A list of congressional and gubernatorial candidates known to have Koch backing.
Should Trump be excluded from the UK for having encouraged violence
against protesters?
I think he should be prosecuted when he does that, no matter where.
World Headed for Irreversible Climate Change in Five Years, IEA Warns.
Norway has approved oil drilling in new areas of Arctic waters.
Since sea ice comes into that area, it is asking for a spill.
When you look at the supposed benefits of this crazy decision,
you can see that the decision completely ignores the disastrous
downside.
US citizens: phone your senators to block attempts to forbid
states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
San Francisco's thug chief Suhr has resigned after another gratuitous killing by a thug.
Members of Congress that serve trucking companies persistently try to
allow those companies to make truck drivers work over 80 hours a week.
Sleepiness of the driver is a significant cause of accidents.
After thugs in Ferguson arrested journalists to prevent them from
doing their work, and lied about it, prosecutors used invalid charges as leverageto get the victims to agree not to sue the city.
I'd call that a successful act of state terrorism.
The article points out that many other victims plead guilty to false
charges because they can't afford the cost of defending themselves
from even the most absurd accusation.
Denmark is adopting a total tracking system for paying for public transit.
A new anonymous card costs 10 euro, creating a strong disincentive
against getting a new card. However, trading cards is feasible
if there is a way to find the balance on each card.
Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau lost his temper and started hitting MPs from other parties. He banged one MP in the breast with his elbow,
hard enough to cause her pain.
He apologized for this, but his misogynistic followers are now
sending her hate mail.
I wonder what in the world he thought he was doing by trying to drag
an opposition MP away from an official activity. Was there any legitimate
grounds for that, or was it an act in opposition to Canada's constitution?
I don't know.
Sanders
is clearly beating Clinton in campaigning for the future views of
Democrats.
Some prominent Democrats
call
for replacing the Democratic Party if it chooses Clinton.
[US Thugs] Nationwide Are
Secretly
Exploiting Intrusive Technologies With the Fedsâ Complicity.
Protect Myanmar's Marine Resources from
Being
Pillaged To Point of No Return.
Freedom of expression is in danger world wide from France's
demand
to censor searches world-wide.
Unlike the author of that article, I think that limiting searches is
less of an issue than limiting the contents of articles. However,
allowing countries to impose global limits of any kind is intolerable.
ALEC is
campaigning
to stop "net metering", the practice whereby utilities must buy
from homeowners the surplus electricity that they generate from solar
power systems.
Leading Democratic politicians in Colorado
oppose
the ballot initiative for a single-payer medical system in that
state. However, the opposition campaign is funded mainly by
companies that profit from the current system.
Everyone:
Call on
Oklahoma legislators to reject SB 1552 which would make abortion a
felony.
Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP that resists the War on Sharing,
reports that 27% of state demands for subscribers' identities are for that purpose.
That is more than any other purpose.
Europe is rushing the design of an "anti-terrorism" directive,
using a process that will run secretly until it is too late
for the public to influence anything.
The "sunbathing partly undressed woman" argument against drone cameras
is convenient, but omits the most important part of the danger flying cameras pose to all of us.
Nonflying cameras on the street pose much of the same danger, except
the part about being partly undressed (except if the camera can be directed
to look in your window, which is the case for some of them).
Fossil fuel companies are spending heavily to oppose Colorado ballot
initiatives to limit fracking, and plutocratic Democrats are helping the companies.
Around the world, both within countries and internationally, rule of law is increasingly rejected. Democracy and the UN are unable to handle the problems they face.
I conjecture this is because of national and international
plutocratic control that makes democracy fail as an instrument
for the people to get anything that the plutocrats don't approve.
With Obama taking it slow, and Big Oil fighting to make it slower,
the growing world-wide climate protests are our main chance of speeding up necessary action.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to defend the recent
extension of
overtime pay requirement to more workers.
The big danger of violence in Oakland, California, is its thug department.
US citizens: Call on Congress to support the Lautenberg Act and give Americans systematic protection against toxic chemicals.
US citizens: call for saving Wyoming's wolves.
US citizens:
Keep
Oil and Gas Drilling out of the Wyoming Range.
US citizens: phone Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair Norman
Bay at 1-800-571-2435 to
rebuke him for
excluding the public from the meetings at which they gave fossil
fuel companies what they wanted.
US citizens:
support
Senator Gillibrand's bill to reform prosecution of rape in the US
military.
Ever larger cruise ships
spew
ever more air pollution.
The largest are estimated to emit "more sulphur than several million
cars, more NO2 gas than all the traffic passing through a
medium-sized town and more particulate emissions than thousands of
London buses." The air in some port cities is making people sick.
Making
bricks
from industrial waste.
US citizens:
Support
allowing the Veterans Administration to recommend marijuana to sick
veterans, in states which permit medical marijuana.
US citizens:
call on the
Republican Party to denounce Trump's repeated harassment of women.
Turkey has
eliminated
immunity from prosecution for members of parliament.
This is a scheme to allow trumped up charges to remove the
representation of the party that stands for human rights for Kurds and
Turks. It would be the culmination of the plan that Erdoğan
started when he
launched
a civil war against the Kurds in order to get a better election
result.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to stop oil leasing off ALL US coasts.
US citizens:
Tell
Democratic leaders: Don't Help Republicans Gut Wall Street Reform.
Poland's extractivist politicians
threaten
to maim, kill or imprison environmentalists opposed to cutting
down Europe's last primeval forest.
One turn in power is enough for extractivist government to destroy
forever something irreplaceable. The Polish government's plan to cut
this forest, and the Australian government's plan to destroy unique
forest in Australia, must be compared with PISSI's destruction of
ancient buildings in Palmyra.
We should establish heavy world-wide punishments for crimes against
world heritage.
The extremists that occupied the Malheur wildlife reserve come from a
movement of
kooks
who want to privatize large amounts of land in the American west,
and believe that they are entitled to own it.
In fact, private development is
spreading
rapidly in the west, though it would take centuries at this rate
for all the land to be built over.
"Roughly
half of the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize
recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison
guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to
which they have become so deeply addicted."
The same reasons they oppose the measure are reasons why the public
should support it.
Many older Americans don't dare retire, because they are
supporting
their children or grandchildren.
The National Science Foundation concludes that genetically modified
foods are
not
particularly dangerous, nor particularly important for our food
supply.
It is clear that the widely grown GMO foods generally do not hurt the
people who eat them. If they did, medical records would show it.
That doesn't mean they don't hurt wildlife. The widespread use of
Roundup, generally with GMO food crops, has done a lot of
harm
to milkweed and to monarch butterflies. However, each kind of
modification is a separate different issue as regards environmental
harm.
So far, we don't see instances in which a certain crop has several
quite different alternative forms of genetic modification. If that
starts to happen, consumers might want labels to indicate
which genetic modifications are used in a given food.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to follow science, not fossils, on the issue of
fracking and water pollution.
US citizens:
stop
the Dakota Access Pipeline.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to lift the ban on research into the phenomenon of gun
violence.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to publish his tax returns.
The UK, France and Ireland are adopting a requirement to sell
cigarettes in plain drab packaging, that has less to arouse desire and
less to
distract
attention from the warnings that tobacco kills. Studies in Australia suggest that this contributes a small but
significant amount to decrease in smoking, but it will take more years
to get a clear picture of the results.
The article doesn't mention that Uruguay tried to impose plain drab
packaging of cigarettes, and was
forced
to stop by means of a
business
supremacy treaty.
The US is allowing the Pentagon to
provide
military weapons to federal thugs now, as well as local thugs.
The militarization of thugs in the US has led to a large number of
SWAT teams, and they need practice, so they are
used
when not needed. Each time they are used, there is a chance they
will kill someone for no good reason.
Successful Americans
systematically
deny the role that luck played in their success. This threatens their self image, which is
that
they are self-made and that they earned every penny, including what
they got from welfare, public education, or
their
parents.
Stop using ineffective "shareholder engagement" with Exxon as a substitute
for divesting from Exxon!
Even hawks are not welcome in the Israeli government, unless they have
a Trump-like contempt for any idea of restraint and decency.
Uri Avnery describes the takeover of Israel by the bloodthirsty right
wing, followed by forcing all institutions into line.
He compares it to the takeover of Germany by the bloodthirsty right
wing, which he witnessed as a boy.
Senator Warren proposes necessary extensions of US labor law to cover
people who work irregularly for something like Guber.
Does the minimum wage already apply to such work? If not, it needs to.
The Koch brothers are already giving lots of money to congressional
candidates.
US State Department Gave Egypt Passing Grade on Human Rights for Military Aid.
Michigan Republicans have shifted taxation from businesses to
individuals (mostly to the non-rich ones); corporations will pay zero
tax there this year.
Trump has increased his lead over Clinton in the polls,
but Sanders still beats Trump as before.
2/3 of Americans would have a big problem coping with an unexpected
expense of just $1000.
They are also afraid of being shafted if they lose their jobs.
They are not destitute, but their lives are precarious.
A bill in Congress would require training thugs in de-escalation, so
that they know how to do something with black suspects other than shoot
them dead.
Trump and his supporters look aside from, and even excuse, the threats
of violence against a reporter who published a negative article
against his wife.
Brazil's new acting president is imposing right-wing austerity and
privatization.
Foreign powers have set up a new "government" in Libya, and now plan
to send it arms, but it hardly has real existence.
Who will end up with those arms?
There is another government in the eastern part of Libya, and both
now plan to issue money — different money.
Temperatures in parts of India have reached 51C, a record in that
country. People are demanding that the government do something about
this.
The first thing it should do is to prevent things from getting worse.
India must stop burning coal for electricity and invest heavily in
renewable generation and storage.
Public schools in many US cities are becoming racially segregated,
due to segregation in where people live.
Adding to the harm this does is the fact that the racial minorities tend to
be poorer, so their school districts have less funds.
A large part of the civil rights battle of the 1960s needs to be
fought again. In addition, we should stop the practice of funding
schools from local taxes. We need to tax the rich and businesses more.
Clinton, if elected, will put Bill Clinton in charge of the economy.
His right-wing policies in the 1990s, including support for business
supremacy treaties, are why I began voting for Ralph Nader and Green
candidates.
A new treaty tries to interfere with sale of catch from illegal fishing.
Old messages show that Billionaire Polluters issued directions about
exhibits, in exchange for the money it gave to the Science Museum in
London.
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, 25 years ago, fixed
various ecological problems that humans had created by wiping out the
wolves decades before.
Due to this success, and the lack of harm to humans as a result,
many Americans are coming to appreciate wolves instead of fearing them.
I'm in favor of having wolves in the rural parts of America.
A new surveillance robot carries microphones and cameras, and can scan
the license plates of all the cars it sees.
It sends the data it collects to a company's server, which means the
data can be misused by the company, by the state, and by whatever
criminals get into the data base. That is the worst possible
scenario, but it is standard practice.
Listening and watching systems such as this should be prohibited by law,
except when authorized by a court for a specific place and time period.
Privatizing parts of the UK's foreign ministry was supposed to save money
but cost money instead.
Privatizers typically claim that it will do the same job and cost
less, for some theoretical reason such as "investment" or "improved
methods" or "economy of scale". Over and over, the result is the
opposite. Do they then respond, "It was worth trying, but it failed,
so let's now unprivatize that"?
Never. Because those theoretical reasons are merely excuses.
Some blockbuster Hollywood movies are now designed principally to
make viewers feel they have to see the prequels or sequels.
They don't need to have a meaningful plot any more, and they don't
need to please the audience, only convince them to see other movies.
We can change this: don't watch a movie unless you think it is likely
to be good (by whatever criterion of goodness you use). Otherwise,
you know in advance that you're wasting your time (as well as your
money). Don't be a sheeple and watch crap just because your friends
are in the habit of settling for that.
If you use this opportunity to practice refusing to follow the
crowd, eventually you will get good at that, and you can apply
it to other things too.
Only a small fraction of patients that use opioids ever abuse them.
It is a mistake to panic about them.
People who can see where you made social media posts can easily figure
out where you live.
This is not just a reason to ask Twitter not to tell others where you
were when you posted. It is a reason not to let Twitter know where
you posted, by connecting through Tor.
Implanted brain-computer interfaces would bring
digital
insecurity to people's brains.
The necessary starting point for Computer security is free software.
Security for brain-computer interfaces requires insisting that the
software that controls the interface be free. This includes not only
the firmware in the device itself, but also other software that will
tell the firmware how to influence your brain.
For the paper referenced there, see
http://sci-hub.cc/downloads/ef93/pycroft2016.pdf.
The European Union is an instrument of plutocrats. "Staying in the EU
means hitching ourselves to an undemocratic project run by and for a
remote elite." To change that, is it better to leave the EU, or to
try to reform it? It is not easy to decide.
Unfortunately, the UK is run for an elite that is nastier and nearer
to Britain. I think it would be a mistake for the UK to leave the EU
in such circumstances.
If Corbyn's Labour comes to power, that might be a good time to either
do this or threaten it.
Chinese officials make almost 250 million personal social media posts
per year, typically praising the government to drown out all
criticism.
Basically, if you're in China, you may as well consider that any
praise of the government means nothing unless it comes from someone
you know.
Humans Damaging the Environment Faster Than It Can Recover, report finds.
The UK's junior doctors' strike won some improvements in their working
conditions, but the NHS continues to decline as the Tories continue
giving it insufficient funds.
I believe that the Tories aim to destroy the NHS as we know it,
perhaps making it comparable to what you can get in the emergency room
in a public hospital in the US. The firmness of the doctors has dealt
them a setback, but hasn't defeated them.
A review of the effects of marijuana.
The Australian government sent thugs to raid the offices of opposition
party politicians suspected of leaking true but embarrassing
information of problems the government wanted to conceal.
Some EU countries are proposing a mini-TTIP within the European Union.
They are obeying the demands of companies based in the EU, which
demand the same power over European governments that the TTIP would
give to foreign companies.
Would-be frackers demand that the UK approve fracking projects faster,
threatening that otherwise they might take their money home and not play.
If this is true, it offers a great opportunity to Britons: they can
block fracking entirely by simply delaying it.
Or the investors could be lying.
Members of the US military that complained about sexual abuse
(including rape) were often punished with an arbitrary diagnosis
of "personality disorder".
Climate Scientists, Mourning Earth's Losses, Should Make Their Voices Heard.
Most US states have given up on the estate tax, and this costs them a
lot of money. It is part of what makes college education in the US so
expensive.
The US can excel in lots of areas if it stops trying to be number one
in blood and gore, and imitates the countries that do peaceful things
well.
Great Barrier Reef Needs $10bn for Chance of Survival, Scientists Say.
The funds would be to clean water pollution so as to help the coral
cope with global heating.
However, ocean acidification would eventually kill the coral, all of
it, if we don't reduce that.
50,000 people die annually, in just the US and UK, from resistance to
antibiotics.
To a large extent, this is due to factory farms that keep animals in
crowded conditions and give them all antibiotics to avoid the diseases
that would result. They are killing us.
The UK has launched a program to reduce or eliminate indiscriminate
antibiotic use in farm animals.
Finally, political will to confront the issue.
As new antibiotics are developed, it should be absolutely forbidden to
use them in animals.
Obama has decided to allow oil prospecting in the Atlantic,
although that
will cause injury and even death for whales.
All this to get more of something we
already have far too much of!
A prisoner in Auschwitz says that
nobody at the camp could have been
ignorant
of the mass murder —- the stench alone would have told them.
Compare And Contrast: Treatment Of Thomas Drake & Hillary Clinton For
Having Classified Info.
Is
duckduckgo.com
partially enforcing the "celebrity threesome injunction"?
The US can excel in lots of areas if it stops trying to be number one in blood and gore, and imitates the countries that do peaceful things well.
The replacement leader of Brazil's lower house of congress is being
investigated for attempted murder.
America's 500 Top CEOs Pocket 355 Times More Than Average Workers.
US citizens: Saturday May 21 is "Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There" Day.
US citizens: call for making election day a holiday.
Australia sent asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka without even listening
to their claims for asylum.
US citizens: Oppose building the Millennium coal export terminal.
Fraudulent foreclosure continues in the US.
That the banksters are not prosecuted and jailed for this fraud demonstrates the power of the plutocrats.
Trump's insults of journalists must be taken seriously.
He is leading a harassment campaign and pretending not to.
Chelsea Clinton's husband owns a hedge fund.
He is shutting it down because he lost most of its money.
I don't feel much sympathy for him or his investors; they gambled,
they lost, and I expect they aren't broke. However, the most
important point is what it implies about Clinton family values. They
are plutocratists.
In regard to a pipeline that ruptured near Santa Barbara in 2015, the company that owns the pipeline and one of its employees are being prosecuted.
The FBI put microphones in a courthouse without a court order, and listened
to everyone's conversations (even with their lawyers) for 10 months.
Investigating corruption is a good thing for the FBI to do, but it
should not do this by listening without a warrant, or in a way that
allows it to snoop on everyone at the court rather than particular
suspects.
This Isn't a Google Streetview Car, Its a Government Spy Truck.
"We will lose the battle against HIV without LGBT decriminalisation."
For four days last week, Portugal generated all its electricity from
renewables.
This milestone shows what can be done, but it doesn't mean Portugal
has eliminated its carbon emissions. More development will be needed
to be able to generate all electricity from renewables on most days of
the year.
That still won't be enough, because it doesn't count the burning of
fuel in cars, trucks, factories, and maybe homes (if homes in Portugal
ever need heating).
Why There's an Uproar Over Trying to Increase Funding for Poor [US] Schools.
Venezuela is in an economic crisis, with shortages of food and other
everyday products.
This is partly because price controls tend to cause shortages, but
also partly the result of political struggles between the state and
businesses run by plutocrats. For instance, the state might have
stopped Polar from getting foreign currency to buy malted barley
because that company is run by someone who supports the right-wing
takeover, which was probably organized with help from the US.
Corruption surely plays a role too.
Spending more on girls' education is a great investment for society's
benefit.
The Israeli government is trying to wipe out Breaking the Silence by
making it identify its sources, soldiers who testify about crimes
committed by themselves or other soldiers.
The principal aim of Breaking the Silence is to show the persistent
general cruelty of the occupation of Palestine, which Israel
systematically denies.
Environmental Groups Demand End to Logging of Australia's Native Forests.
The wildfire in Alberta that burned through Fort McMurray
has
now covered over 1300 square miles. Only 10% of Fort McMurray was
actually destroyed, but the rest of the city is not safe.
Ironically, the fire is now destroying a tar sands mine. If only Canada
had the sends not to rebuild it later.
Israel delayed the trial of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy until he
was 14, so it could try him as an adult.
He was convicted of murder, based on no evidence except that a mob
assumed he was involved in it, and beat him nearly to death.
The Israeli state issues uses hundreds of gag orders to prevent press
discussion of events and topics that might make political difficulties
for the government.
As the article mentions, it once used gag orders so it could get away
with attacking Palestinians based on a false pretense.
Democratic Party insiders in Nevada rigged the choice of some delegates
in favor of Clinton, by imposing new rules at the last minute and overriding
the representatives there through a falsified voice vote.
One of the nonresponsible international "tribunals" created by
business supremacy treaties rejected Philip Morris's complaint against
Australia's plain paper packaging law.
This is good, but take not of the reasoning: that Philip Morris had
set up a front in Hong Kong merely to take advantage of the treaty.
If the US and Australia ratify the TPP, US companies trying to
obstruct Australia's public health policies (or environmental, or
economic, or anything else important) would not lose for that reason.
Note also that it would have been easy for the same tribunal to ignore
this point. I suspect that the decision was partly in response to the
great deal of political attention that this particular point received.
Among philosophers of ethics, hardly anyone objects to abortion
except those that use religion as a starting point.
The term "pro-life" was chosen by the antiabortionists to misrepresent
the views of us proabortionists. It's a smear, and we should denounce
it, not adopt it.
Robert Parry: The Democratic Party is facing a deep split
between
the supporters of war (Clinton) and peace (Sanders).
I think that the split between plutocracy-as-usual (Clinton) and
new-new-deal (Sanders) is bigger than that split.
Democratic Party insiders in Nevada rigged the choice of some
delegates in favor of Clinton, by
imposing
new rules at the last minute and overriding the representatives there
through a falsified voice vote.
Muslim
States Block 11 LGBT Groups from Attending UN Aids Meeting.
Money can't directly buy happiness, but it
can
buy human company, and avoiding loneliness is important for
happiness.
Iran continues repression of Baháâís, and
even
to talk with their leaders can be dangerous.
A former Facebook journalist employee says it was per
"most
toxic work experience".
A new study claims that glyphosate in food is
probably
not dangerous to humans, but the researcher in charge has a
big
conflict of interest that suggests this result needs to be checked
for gaps.
Meanwhile, the
other
chemicals in Roundup might be part of the danger. They could make
glyphosate more toxic. They could be more toxic than glyphosate.
The manufacturers of those chemicals try to prevent anyone from
studying their effects. There should be a legal requirement for the
manufacturer of an industrial chemical to make it available for
experimental study.
Dust pollution spread in the air by human activities
cause
dead zones in the ocean thousands of miles away.
Psilocybin
lifted
depression for weeks in several patients that nothing else could
help.
Evidence that psychedelics can cure the most refractory cases of
depression has appeared before, and there is now
some
idea of how it works.
JK Rowling Defends Donald Trump's
Right
To Be 'Offensive And Bigoted'.
That's what I've been saying. Censorship is not the answer.
World-wide protests against
fossil fuels.
Corruption in poor countries is in many cases
suborned
by businesses in rich countries.
Bribing a politician is a crime, in most places. Bribing the state is
not. When a business offers a government, "Support our policy
initiatives and we will spend a million dollars a year in your
country", that's probably not a crime, but it is just as corrupt as
paying that country's politicians a million dollars a year would be.
Women are
harassed
for giving suck to babies, while surrounded by ads showing breasts
that are hardly covered at all.
This may be ironic, but it is no coincidence. Our taboo on breasts,
and especially nipples, makes it effective to hint at them in ads, and
leads to repression of women that use them.
In Auckland, New Zealand, even working people
can't
afford a place to live. They are stuck living in tents as winter
comes, and winter in Auckland is cold and rainy.
Moving the collection of everyone's phone call records from the NSA to
phone companies
changes
nothing in regard to the government's power to learn about all
Americans' lives through that data.
Salmon farming might be the cause of
Chile's red
tide of poisonous algae that have made seafood inedible on long
stretches of the coast.
The Tories have for years employed careless and slipshod evaluations
to deny sick people welfare benefits they need. Most sick people who
appeal these decisions, win. So now the Tories have
hired
lawyers to argue these appeals against the sick people and make
sure the cruel and vicious goal is achieved.
The Tories are
lower than
vermin.
Consolidation
Is Eating [America's] Food Economy.
A St Louis thug faces murder charges
for shooting
Anthony Lamar Smith. The thug appears to have planted a gun in
Smith's car to frame him.
Environmentalist Tim Flannery
calls
on Australia to make it an election issue to save Great Barrier
Reef from global heating.
US citizens:
Tell
the Army Corps of Engineers to reject coal exports.
US citizens:
support
the campaign for a minimum wage of $15 in Washington DC.
US citizens:
object
to using the defense authorization bill to attack conservation for the
sage grouse.
Everyone:
Call
on Thailand to drop the charges against Andy Hall.
The Afghan "army" in Helmand is
almost
half nonexistent "soldiers".
Achieving this required corruption at every level of the army
as well as the connivance of other officials.
Moreover, the lack of food for the real soldiers is probably not
because the government has no money for it, but because officials and
commanders have diverted that money. But then, most of the soldiers
have joined the army only for the money.
The use of drugs by the soldiers reminds me of the US army in Vietnam.
They had low morale, too.
The US can keep propping up the Afghan government as long as it wants
to keep spending the money, but it can't defeat the Taliban that way.
Japan
plans
to replace shuttered nuclear power plants with coal burning.
In addition to the short-term pollution that will kill people,
these will contribute greatly to global heating. Tokyo is very
close to sea level; does Japan want it flooded?
Japan should invest in renewable power.
The US government
conceals
its practice of cracking computers, which prevents courts from
judging whether they follow the constitution.
The article uses the word "hacking" to mean security breaking and only
that, which insults us
hackers.
Please use the word "cracking" when what you mean is "breaking
security".
What Are The Congresspeople Whose Districts Will Be Underwater Doing
To
Stop
[Global Heating]?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali reminds us of
how
Islam systematically oppresses women.
It is absurd to say that no one but Muslims can criticize these
injustices. Imagine claiming that no one but Christians can criticize
the injustice of fanatical Christians — how absurd!
Recording everyone's phone call "metadata" is a
substantial
threat to everyone's privacy.
Researchers used basic phone logs to identify people and uncover
confidential information about their lives.
Syrian Arab opposition militias are
committing
war crimes against Kurds in Aleppo.
These crimes are small compared to those committed by Assad's
supporters and PISSI, but it won't be easy to unite the groups that
oppose those two.
The reason why US workers are
not
allowed to go to the toilet is that we have allowed unions to
become too weak.
How Donald Trump
Emboldens
Bigots Across the World.
A
jury will be asked to decide whether reimplementing the Java APIs
is fair use.
The decision by this appeals court (the CAFC) was stupid and
dangerous, but few copyright cases will be covered by that court.
The FSF urged the Supreme Court not to take the case, because the
danger was it would extend the decision to the whole US.
The Tories' proposed "British Bill of Rights" is more likely to be a
Bill
of No Rights.
Trump has
endorsed
deficit reduction as a goal. That means surrender to the
plutocrats. Everything important that the government does would be
cut, rather than make them pay taxes as they ought.
Unsafe Sex Threatens Girls' Health Worldwide. The Prescription?
Feminism.
A study projects that this year's coral bleaching (and death)
could
be a normal annual event in the Great Barrier Reef in 18 years.
Occasionally there will be a much worse bleaching event
which might destroy the reef entirely.
Want to Know What Facebook Really Thinks of Journalists? Here's
What
Happened When It Hired Some.
Using computers frequently for reading
can reduce
your ability to understand information abstractly.
The "connected car" is the
dumbest
idea in automobiles ever, or at least since the Edsel.
There is the danger that someone unauthorized will break the security
of the car. And the even greater danger, to society as a whole, that
this will be used to track where you drive. Remember, there is no
such thing as "the cloud" — that's a misleading name for
"someone else's computer".
Let's organize now to stop either the state or companies from
pushing society into using "connected cars"!
It turns out that
children's
learning really suffers when they don't get a good breakfast.
Government policies that squeeze the poor often mean that children don't
get enough to eat at any time. These policies hold children back
for their whole lives, in this way and other ways, including
lead
poisoning and
other
effects.
The plutocrats then point at the consequences of this to
claim
that those people deserve to be poor.
Australia's "direct action" scheme to support renewable energy
investments
mainly
funds schemes that were going to go ahead anyway.
It might nonetheless do some good, since it will effectively
subsidize those schemes and make them easier to set up.
However, a carbon tax would do a lot more.
The Western-created "unity government" in Libya is
neither
unity nor a government.
Given the violent chaos and extremism of Libya today, even an
externally imposed government might be a step up — if Libyans
generally accept it. If only a minority support this "unity
government", they will do it mainly for western money, and it will be
a phony that needs to be propped up ad infinitem like the Afghan
government.
This April was the
seventh
month in a row to set a temperature record for that month.
The NRA misleads its members, and misrepresents them. (Most of them
support some additional gun control measures.) The NRA has close
connections with gun companies, and a lot of its effort is
dedicated
to boosting the sale of guns.
The European Union's antitrust case against Google
raises
a small part of a big issue.
Perhaps the search engine should be split off from Google and made
into a regulated monopoly.
The CIA
told
the apartheid regime how to arrest Nelson Mandela.
US citizens:
tell
Federal Reserve to stop its 7 billion dollar subsidy to the big
banks.
The UK construction workers who were blacklisted
demand
an investigation of the construction companies for trying to cover
up the evidence.
Proposing
measures
to protect debtors in the US from the cruelty of collection
agencies.
An Australian study has again recognized that
copyright
gives companies too much power.
The same report also examined patent law and concluded that patents
give companies too much power.
It is a
mistake to study
these two different laws together, but in this
case I agree with both conclusions.
A
new
system would make it easier for Big Brother to monitor people
through thousands of surveillance cameras.
It's a great example of what happens when researchers fail to consider
the ethics of their research.
Lack
of Online Privacy Has Chilling Effect, U.S. Department of Commerce
Says.
100 Egyptians were
sentenced
to years in prison for a peaceful protest.
It doesn't matter that the protest was over a fatuous and confused
issue of nationalism. People in Egypt deserve the right to state
their views, even confused views.
Australia is planning to get rid of invasive foreign carp by
releasing
a virus that attacks only them.
This weapon may be useful, but using it alone is likely to provide
only a temporary effect. Australia tried to get rid of rabbits
(another invasive species) with the myxoma virus, and it killed over
80% of the rabbits, but since then they have developed resistance.
Surely carp will evolve resistance to this virus.
If they apply several measures at the same time, maybe they could
eradicate the carp from Australia.
The US is becoming
increasingly
repressive to anyone that doesn't have official government
identification.
This is what right-wing officials want. While these IDs for
immigrants and homeless people are a good thing, it is wrong to
require people to have IDs in order to fill prescriptions, to vote, or
do other daily things.
Dishonest sales and marketing practices are
rife
on the internet.
Queensland, a state in Australia, is considering
prohibiting
tobacco smoking permanently for everyone born after 2001.
Tobacco is a deadly, addictive drug, but they are cocky fools if they
think that prohibiting a drug is simply going to result in its
non-use.
The House Science Committee Hates Science And
Should
Be Disbanded.
Disruption
of natural ecosystems is part of what causes new epidemics for
humans.
The UK government
plans
to impose broad censorship of publications and individuals
considered "extremist".
This "protection" is more dangerous than the Islamist extremism it is
aimed at. Sooner or later, "extremist" will be stretched to include
opposition to plutocracy.
The UK Tories are trying to eviscerate an EU directive to limit
dangerous
particulate air pollution.
The Tories are
lower than
vermin.
California residents:
support the ballot initiative
for some sensible gun control measures.
Everyone:
call
on Walmart to pay workers $15 an hour and give people full-time
work.
Citizens of Minnesota:
tell
your state legislature to reject the dangerous extension of
publicity rights into a form of censorship.
If you know anyone in Minnesota, please spread the word.
Most people won't find out about this issue.
The WWF says half of the world's wild animals have been
wiped
out in 40 years. (This doesn't cover small animals such as
insects and worms.)
It is part of the general extractionist approach that our society
takes: use everything up fast, and let the future go hang.
Facebook deleted
without explanation the page of a publisher in the UK that had
posted articles about publications that criticize Erdoğan.
The article shows that Facebook has censored on behalf of
Erdoğan before.
7-11 underpaid its workers and was ordered to pay what it owed them.
Then it was unhappy with the independent adjudicators who agreed to
workers' claims, and acted to interfere.
Minnesota is considering a law to make publicity rights perpetual, and so broad
that it would constitute censorship.
I think that publicity rights, in basic form, are legitimate.
Massachusetts thugs beat up a man who had surrendered; he had never
threatened any violence.
Around the world, freedom of speech and publication is being attacked
by governments.
In "free" countries, the usual excuse is "national security" — in
other words, sacrificing our freedom in the name of protecting our
lives. In principle, that's backwards! But it's also bullshit: these
assaults on our freedom are generally not necessary, and rarely even
useful, for protecting anything but unjust power.
Trump has threatened an anti-trust investigation of Amazon as retaliation
for investigation of Trump by the Washington Post.
Both investigations ought to be done as a matter of course. The fact
that they are being pursued for specific political reasons, rather
than as a matter of course, reflects the dangerous power of plutocrats
such as Bezos and Trump.
Taking power away from them, and changing the system not to concentrate
wealth and power, go hand in hand.
As schools impose "learning management" systems to track what students
do, they collect lots of data about students. There is no evidence
that this snooping contributes to education, but it is obviously an
injustice.
If some sort of snooping ever does contribute to education, the school should
leave all the data in a per-student memory which the student can wipe when
classes end.
In the US, people are jailed as a result of trials in which they
had no lawyer.
Often this is for nonpayment of child support.
It is legitimate to make fathers with money provide some of that
for their children. It is nonsensical to do this to poor people;
they can't pay what they don't have.
The right solution for this problem is (1) to improve the welfare
system so that no child has to grow up in poverty, father or no
father, and (2) help and encourage people that can't afford to raise
children properly to use reliable birth control.
If the "Ferguson effect" is real, what conclusions should we draw?
US blacks have good reason to fear that thugs will kill them and/or
frame them. To a lesser extent, so do other Americans. If the thugs
want to be trusted, they should start being trustworthy.
Confronting the threat of massive technological unemployment combined
with allow plutocratic.
As someone said in a public hearing in Cambridge, some 20 years ago:
"If the robots make it, we've gotta take it."
Proposed mergers, such as Bayer with Monsanto, would increase
concentration of the seed supply and other industries related to
farming.
Monsanto seems to have too much influence with the EPA's decisions.
A US senate committee staffer made threats to try to stop Colombia
from approving a license for an generic, affordable cancer drug.
Of course, the threat used the propaganda term "intellectual
property", which not only carries spin in favor of the drug companies,
but also impedes understanding of any issue because it confuses
several unrelated laws.
What is sad is that the article uses that term too. The author, who
criticizes the staffer's actions, probably does not realize that the
term gives implicit support to them, as well as impeding clear
thinking about any specific law (in this case, patent law).
That term should never be used. I object to it every time
I hear or see it. You can, too.
The temporary president that is replacing Dilma Rousseff has himself
been convicted of illegal campaign activities, and there is just as much
basis to impeach him as to impeach Rousseff.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
support
full health insurance coverage for contraception, with no gaps or
loopholes.
US citizens:
call
for a ban on transferring cluster bombs to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
support
the Atlantic Seismic Airgun Protection (ASAP) Act.
Civil
Disobedience Is the Only Way Left to Fight [global heating].
It is a mistake to use the term
"climate
change"; that term was imposed by Dubya to downplay the
danger, and it works all too well.
New Zealand is
very
useful for tax-dodging businesses.
Toddlers in the US have
shot
at least 23 people this year.
Over 1/3 of the people shot were killed.
Hundreds of companies in the London Stock Exchange are
based
on tax havens connected with Britain.
Call
on the Democratic Party to oppose any vote on the Treacherous
Plutocratic Poison until the next president takes office.
Real Trump supporters are very much motivated by his
opposition
to business-supremacy treaties that Clinton has supported.
It's no accident that Sanders polls better against Trump than Clinton
does. These people would be potential Sanders supporters.
The UK government makes it easy for people to block nearby windfarms
but
rams
fracking (and possible future poisoned water) down their throats.
Solar-thermal power plants store heat during the day, and
can
convert it into electricity at any time. In some areas, they are
competitive with fossil fuels already.
These plants could replace a large fraction of fossil fuel use in a
few years, but for inertia and fossil fuel subsidies subsidies.
Governments could overcome both, if not for the power of the
planet-roasters.
McGill University graduates are returning their diplomas to
demand
divestment from fossil fuel companies.
The GAO says that the US is failing to monitor the use of
anti-civilian
weapons it has provided to Egypt.
Protests are aimed at Olive Garden restaurants,
demanding
better treatment of their workers and that they stop selling meat that
contributes to antibiotic resistance.
The Olympic Games in Rio could spread the Zika virus
to
poor countries that could not cope with it.
Oxfam says that US poultry packing workers have to wear diapers
because they are
afraid
they will be fired if they ask to go to the toilet.
Billionaires threaten Britain: if you end secrecy rules,
we
will sell our mansions in London!
That would drive down housing prices in London and make the city more
affordable. Two birds with one stone!
Ammar al-Baluchi says the US wants to prosecute him using statements
he made under torture,
asks
for a UN investigation.
I don't think the US is likely to grant that.
The US should release all the prisoners in Guantanamo prison.
Even if some of them really did commit terrorism, they have been
punished enough. It is wrong to punish people without trial,
and in order for the US clear its name, it has to stop doing this.
Egyptians refer to the tyrannical regime as
"the
zombies".
The British colonies that live on tax dodging make the argument that
stopping them is futile
without
stopping the US too.
Of course, we must prevent tax dodging in all these places, but if we
have an opportunity to do it in some places, we should take it The
argument, "Don't stop us before you stop others", is simply invalid.
The fewer such states remain, the easier it will be to concentrate
pressure on those.
Repression in the UK: a man has been jailed because he didn't keep his yard clean, and for having visitors after 9:30pm.
Half of all species of crocodilians are in danger of extinction due to human activity.
The latest victim of Muslim fanatics in Bangladesh was a Buddhist monk.
Many Muslims are willing to tolerate dissent, but the current of
disrespect for others' religious freedom goes back to Muhammad.
Many species of rhinoceros are close to extinct. How can we save them?
The vaquita porpoises are being swiftly wiped out despite Mexican navy patrols.
The cause is one of the many superstitions typical of Chinese medicine.
Most WiFi router models sold in the US will soon block users from installing their own software, supposedly because of FCC regulations. However, the one exception demonstrates that the FCC regulations don't actually require this.
They use the term "open source" because they don't want to endorse our ethical principles.
Pfizer has forbidden US states from using its drug products for executions.
The death penalty is an injustice, and if this stops states from doing them,
that is a good thing. However, I don't think manufacturers should have
control over how their products are used. The industry consolidation
that made this blockage possible is also, in general, a bad thing.
We should stop the death penalty with a decision to abolish it, not
by letting companies have such control.
Both Clinton and Trump are connected to Goldman Sachs.
Tax Experts Push IRS to Expose Multinational Tax Dodging.
The EPA has proposed rules to reduce methane leaks from new facilities, but still has not tackled the existing facilities.
The right thing to do with new fossil fuel facilities is not build any.
Obama's new rules about secrecy of corporations may be meant to forestall stronger action being considered in Congress.
The US has an addition to war, and tends to engage in ever more war regardless of details.
I am not a pacifist: I think that fighting PISSI is legitimate
provided it is done in ways that don't tend to cause lots of civilian
casualties. I don't trust the US government to limit itself to those ways.
In other cases, such as supporting the bombardment Yemen, the US
hardly bothers to offer a reason.
Clinton is not likely to do anything to restrain the increase.
Trump says he will do so, but what such a liar says means little.
Fracking in North Dakota
has caused widespread pollution of water.
Post-Truth Politicians Such As
Donald Trump And Boris Johnson Are No Joke.
Some aspects of society and law tempt people to be corrupt. However, other aspects make it very hard for a poor person not to be corrupt.
French women are rising up against a pervasive culture of sexual harassment
by male politicians.
Israel
has banned Omar Barghouti from travelling abroad, apparently out of disapproval of the views he advocates while travelling.
It's Official: [US] Employers
Can't Force You To Be Happy.
US citizens:
call for ending the
cap on Social Security tax.
US citizens:
call
on the Peabody Energy CEO to stop fighting the Clean Power Plan.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
oppose
new infrastructure for using fracked gas.
I my message, I stated that gas that requires fracking should be left
in the ground.
Delhi and five other Indian cities are in the top 10 for pollution,
which
shortens
people's lives. Nonetheless India has not changed its
plans
to increase coal combustion.
To end corruption, start with the US and UK.
They
allow it in broad daylight.
The British banks are in effect the hub of a global network of
organized crime.
It is telling that Mossack Fonseca claims to have done "due diligence"
to check the legitimacy of an average of 37 new corporations per day.
Their definition of "due diligence" is clearly inadequate.
Nader: The U.S. Political & Media System Is
Designed
to Obstruct, Silence Third-Party Candidates.
Wealthier US families with children are boosting segregation by
squeezing
into neighborhoods with better schools, forcing poorer families to
the worse schools.
Voter ID laws are effective at
voter
suppression, against students and Latinos.
The reward structure of science
encourages
publication of many papers of so little interest that they are never
cited.
Brazil's senate has
impeached
President Rousseff, who will now be temporarily replaced in office
during her trial.
Dominicans of Haitian ancestry, who were stripped of citizenship
retroactively and expelled to Haiti, remain
in
camps near the border, with no medical care, no work, and little
food.
"Enforcing high heels in the office is the height of
workplace
sexism." Especially since they are bad for the feet.
The UK has rejected the cases of Iraqis
mistreated
by UK soldiers occupying Iraq, on the excuse that Iraqi law says
they brought the cases too late.
Tax Havens 'Serve
No
Useful Economic Purpose': 300 Economists Tell World Leaders.
This conclusion is valid if you look at the stated goals of
governments and businesses. But those tax havens do serve the
goals of the rich people that these governments really obey.
The
burning
of Fort McMurray was effectively arson committed by the planet
roasters.
After the Fort McMurray fire, now is the time to talk about
how
to stop our global heating practices.
When people tell us, "Now is not the right time," we must respond,
"The right time was 10 years ago, and now we are very late. Don't
suggest we wait another day!"
Each part of the world has a mission it must do to prevent global
disaster. For Alberta, that mission is to stop the tar sands
extraction.
Trump has
attacked
Clinton for her readiness to attack other countries.
However, he too supported the invasion of Iraq, ignoring all the
obvious
reasons
it was wrong.
The president we need is Bernie Sanders.
A member of the 9/11 commission says that Salafi Arabian officials
provided
support for the hijackers, though not with approval of their
government.
He called for release of the suppressed part of the commission's
report.
The prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib are
still
seeking justice in US courts, while those responsible are seeking
legal excuses to make the issue disappear.
Chomsky: repeating the approach of
taking
a sledgehammer to vulnerable societies plays into al Qa'ida's plan
to draw the west into a quagmire.
The proposed autonomy agreement for areas of Mindanao in the
Philippines
may
now never be ratified.
An autonomous zone for a specific ethnic group is sometimes a good way
to resolve disputes — as long as human rights are protected.
In the Philippines, I was told that this proposed autonomous zone
would be allowed to set its own definition of human rights. I fear
this means trashing human rights in accord with Shari'a law, against
women and against those who want to stop being Muslim. Thus, I do not
regret the failure of this agreement. I hope they negotiate another
agreement that respects the human rights of everyone in the autonomous
zone, not only the males that want to be Muslims.
We Need a Debate on
Drone
Killings — Whether They Should Be Happening At All.
The legitimacy of targeted killing (assassination off the battlefield)
is in question as well as that of the unintended victims.
Some local communities in Australia are
pushing
hard for renewable energy even against the
national
government's push to continue fossil fuels.
Tourist boat operators are
trying
to conceal the damage to the Great Barrier Reef from politicians
and reporters.
This is the same short-term spirit as the fossil fuel companies carry
out. It's easier than preventing further damage, but it won't work
for long.
If encryption software is "munitions", does the Second Amendment guarantee
the
right
to bear encryption software?
Punishing abortion
does
not reduce the rate of abortions. (It does put women in danger.)
However, access to modern contraception does reduce the rate of
abortions, because it avoids unwanted pregnancies.
Legal
Action against the French Surveillance Law (of 2015).
Note that the repeatedly extended "state of emergency" in France makes
the surveillance even worse than what this law authorizes.
Germany
will
repeal one repressive measure that is part of the War on Sharing:
punishing owners of unrestricted WiFi networks when they are used to
share.
This is an example of collective responsibility, which in general is
what states do to enforce laws that the people in general do not
support. A democratic government would put an end to the War on
Sharing, and adopt
non-repressive
means to support the arts.
The article uses the word
"piracy"
to refer to sharing. Since that derogatory word carries spin that
supports the War on Sharing, we should reject it.
Trump now
ties
with Clinton in polls.
Peabody Energy
argued
global heating denialism in court, and lost.
Everyone:
call
on big banks to stop financing Exxon's global heating denial.
An experiment which randomly chose which students could use computers
in class found that
those
who did not use computers got better grades.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ask the US to appoint a special representative to
protect Palestinian minors in Israeli prisons.
Some of those minors are so young that they really are children.
Others are adolescents, and I don't think we should call them
"children", but it is still wrong the way Israel treats them in
prison.
For-profit colleges in the US regularly
make
their students agree to contracts that impose arbitration instead of
lawsuits, and in some cases require them to keep their complaints
secret.
No company should be allowed to impose such requirements on its
customers. Meanwhile, for-profit colleges are a bad idea, and a big
risk; don't spend your money on them.
Farming the sea for plants and shellfish is a
sustainable
food production method.
Exxon is
still
spreading climate disinformation, including via ALEC.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Now that the War on Painkillers is in high gear, the
War
on Diarrhea Medication may come next.
An Arkansas thug
took
Guillermo Espinoza's $20,000, assuming that if he had so much
money it could only be from selling drugs. Then, when prosecutors had
second thoughts, the judge approved the grab anyway.
There is a
long
history of dealing with issues of segregation (racial or gender)
in public toilets.
The leading hedge fund managers were paid an
average
of half a billion dollars each in 2015, even though most of the
funds actually lost money.
Regulations and voluntary policies to avoid sending toxic e-waste to
poor countries for manual recycling are
failing
a lot of the time.
The Democratic Party has invited
business
executives and lobbyists into the heart of planning the Democratic
Convention.
Prisoners in Alabama, who are on strike, say
the
prison is now trying to starve them into surrender.
The heat of the ocean has
killed
all the coral in large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, and made
it useless as a shelter for the many species of fish that depend on
it.
The thug that killed Walter Scott faces federal charges:
obstruction
of justice, and deprivation of civil rights.
Two French whistleblowers
face
prosecution in Luxembourg. They exposed how Luxembourg eagerly
helped multinationals to pay very little tax.
Turkey has
refused
to allow UN human rights investigators to visit.
US bee keepers
lost
44% of their colonies in a year.
Global heating effects may be part of the cause, because they
reduce
the fraction of protein in the pollen that bees eat.
Everyone:
Tell CNN to
stop the climate negligence. Show climate coverage, not fossil fuel
ads.
US citizens:
call on the
SEC investigate "toxic swaps" that drain US cities, and make the
banksters return what they have taken.
A
confused
claim that global heating wasn't really responsible for submerging
some of the Solomon Islands.
Looking closely at this article, it appears that heating really is the
main responsible factor. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, being
cyclical, can make such events happen a few years sooner or later, but
doesn't change anything in the long term.
Emails Reveal Navy's Intent to Break Law,
Threatening
Endangered Wildlife.
Mexicans say state agents
tortured
them to make them support the state's (demonstratedly false) version
of events in the disappearance of 43 students. Independent
examinations found evidence of this torture.
They say state agents even threatened to murder their family members.
The US government has
abandoned
its effort to close two medical marijuana dispensaries in
California.
Duke Tran is suing Wells Fargo Bank, saying his boss fired him because
he told the truth to a mortgage-holder that the bank was
trying
to cheat.
The boss told him and other staff not to admit to customers that the
bank had lost their contracts (or perhaps had
never
had them).
Anti-Zionism
Does Not Equate to Antisemitism, say British Jews rebuking the
claims of the Chief Rabbi.
Rooting out antisemitism from various British political parties
requires carefully
distinguishing
condemnation of the occupation of Palestine from antisemitism.
Confusing the two, which defenders of the occupation persistently try
to do, is likely to encourage antisemitism.
The Lummi tribe
won
a court case to block the construction of a coal export terminal at
Cherry Point, Washington.
"I decided not to have children for
environmental
reasons."
Especially the well-off Americans, who consume so much per person,
should have fewer children.
The fire that burned parts of Fort McMurray has
cut
Canada's oil production by 1/3. Alas, it is only temporary. If
it were permanent, it might help avoid even worse fires in the future.
Thailand
arrested
another person for "defaming the king", and the US has condemned
it.
A refugee forcibly sent by Australia to Nauru had a heart attack, and
died
waiting to be sent to Australia for treatment. He apparently had
tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of medicines.
Nauru does
not allow journalists unless they are totally tame.
Meanwhile, the Australian staff face
threats
of imprisonment if they talk about any sort of mistreatment of the
prisoners. Australia is running a vicious scheme that allows it
to conceal any abuse.
The Iraqi army is
still
incapable of taking Mosul.
The UK government's cruelty towards welfare recipients is
pushing
low-paid workers into desperation. Some have to steal to eat.
Some children can't afford to go to school.
If the Tories seriously wanted workers to work more hours, or get
higher pay, they would make employers give workers longer hours and
higher pay. That would be effective. But Tories don't really want
those changes to occur, they only want an excuse to harass and punish
workers.
This adds to other injustices to the
disabled and the
unemployed.
The real purpose is to demonize the non-rich as an excuse for dooH
niboR (Robin Hood in reverse).
An organization of British authors
condemns
Britain's test-based education.
A success for fishing diplomacy:
Atlantic
mackerel are now managed sustainably.
EPA scientists published a study reporting that the pesticide atrazine
seems to harm wild plants and aquatic animals. The EPA
deleted
it without saying why.
The CO2 level is now
reaching
400 parts per million, yet willfully blindness continues. For
instance, look at
the
plan to build another runway in a London airport.
It would be a wasted investment, because they could not keep using it
for enough decades to recoup the cost.
Note how the discussion of the effect on the "environment" is limited
to the local area around the airport. CO2 emissions are
ignored completely.
"The UK governmentâs failure to build new homes that are energy
efficient
will
see future generations dealing with our costly mistakes."
The same can be said about many other places.
Facebook's team of editors for "trending topics"
altered
the list of stories based on their own biases, and based on
instructions from their bosses.
This is little different from what happens in US mass media generally.
Most of the US media
shut
Bernie Sanders out entirely until he started winning some state
primaries, while
one
TV network hyped Trump because his crudeness attracted viewers.
It's wrong, however, for Facebook to do this if it claims that it
isn't selecting stories, just showing what its useds are looking at.
However, another German was ordered not to say that Erdoğan
should be shot.
Some Turkish citizens are already fighting Erdoğan's men, since
last summer
when
he started a war against them.
Former sex workers speak against
plans
to make sex workers' customers criminals.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic National Convention to give Sanders supporters
fair representation on the platform committee.
Everyone:
call
on Google and other tech companies not to support the Republican
National Convention.
US citizens:
call
for thorough testing of genetically modified mushrooms whose sole
justification is that they stay whiter for longer.
Women who regret having had children face
strong
social pressure to shut up about this, but some are daring to say
so.
The lack of freedom of speech in Scotland is demonstrated by the
prosecution
of someone for posting a video considered "offensive".
I can't tell from the description who it is thought to offend. Jews?
Nazis? Either way, that should not be a crime. Freedom of speech
includes the right to offend, insult, mock or condemn any person,
group, organization, belief or activity.
Clinton is the new darling of banksters, now that the Republicans they
supported are out of the race. In March,
over
50% of banksters' campaign contributions went to Clinton.
Journalists in the Democratic and Republican conventions will be required
to get
background
checks from the Secret Service. This is a dangerous form of
censorship.
Uganda has
banned
coverage of opposition protests.
Mordechai Vanunu faces new criminal charges, but they are nothing
except violating the
outrageous
controls that have been placed on him.
These controls are an
excuse
to pretend that Vanunu is a monster who would justify them. The
charges are absurd anyway.
Putin is
trying
to capture some of the admiration for the Cuban Five.
The Cuban Five were convicted of "spying" in the United States, but
they were never accused of spying on the United States. They spied on
terrorist groups sponsored by the US that carried out attacks in Cuba.
By prosecuting them, the US made a mockery of its supposed opposition
to terrorism.
I gave my support to a campaign to free the Cuban Five, but what
did Putin do for them? Probably nothing, until he got the idea
of inviting them to Moscow so that some of their glory would rub
off on him.
Don't Compare Trump And Duterte — the Philippines Leader Is
Far
Worse.
The Panama papers reveal
heavy
use of New Zealand for purposes of dodging taxes and more.
US courts are gradually going dark, with
secret
evidence and even secret cases.
Less
than 2% of US doctors are responsible for half the medical
malpractice insurance payouts. If state medical boards stopped
protecting doctors that repeatedly screw up, the US would not have a
medical malpractice problem.
Although the euro-boas have backed off demanding a new round of
squeezing Greece, the current round is still being enacted, and it is
likely
to crush people to death.
Meanwhile, they are currently
proposing
only to tinker with secondary aspects of Greece's debt burden. I
wonder whether the IMF will make them go further.
The article repeats a common falsehood by saying that there is a
bailout "for Greece". The bailout is
really
for the boa-banksters.
They launder the money through Greece and pretend they are doing
Greece a favor.
Turkish Border Guards
'Continuing to Shoot and Beat Refugees at Border',
according to Human Rights Watch.
Egyptian Satirists Arrested for Mocking President.
The newly elected president of the Philippines promises to abolish human rights and assassinate those he considers criminals.
What this means is, if he puts you on his list, you will not get a trial.
If any democracy at all survives this, it will be by luck.
The
TPP would impose enforcement of non-competition agreements on
employees. Technology companies want this, but it would be bad for
people who work in technical fields, and perhaps bad for technology
industries over all.
Please don't use the word "protection" in relation with copyright law or patent law. That term is propaganda for those that want to restrict us.
Tory rule has been effective in
quashing renewable energy investment in the UK.
Sea-level rise has submerged some small uninhabited islands in the Solomons. Worse, inhabited parts of some larger islands have been
inundated permanently.
1/5 of the world's plant species face extinction in the short term due
to habitat destruction.
Those involved in UK drone attacks targeted at specific people could
be
prosecuted for murder.
Reddit's Technology Subreddit Ponders Banning Wired & Forbes For Blocking Adblock Users.
What they call "ad blockers", I call "surveillance blockers",
and that's what's important about them. I don't care about seeing an ad,
as such; I object to surveillance and I will block surveillance.
I encourage the redditors to ban sites that are egregious supporters
of surveillance.
SEC And Chuck Grassley Still Trying To Stop Email Privacy Act That Got UNANIMOUS Support In The House.
The Tories want to
impose political control over the BBC.
More information about
the
damage the TTIP would do to Europe.
It would do damage to the US as well, but perhaps not the same damage.
If you see good articles about this, please email them to me.
Offshore front companies are not just for tax-dodging:
swindlers
use them too.
Mossack Fonseca practiced a formal sort of
"due
diligence" with its eyes wide shut.
The Theater of Security Agency is short of staff and is
causing
big problems for air travellers in the US.
Scanning old physical works of art gives museums an opportunity to
try
to impose copyright on them.
The article uses "intellectual property" as a synonym for copyright.
That is a confusing practice, since in another article "intellectual
property" will be a synonym for some other law. The term
"intellectual property" adds nothing to any discussion except a
false
generalization, we should reject it every time it appears.
Ferguson employs private lawyers to prosecute people for imaginary,
even fantastic infractions, and
they
refuse to obey orders to stop.
Fire them?
The
unpredictability
of Chinese censorship may be intentional, to make people generally
timid.
The FBI is menacing a core Tor developer,
trying
to make her answer questions without a lawyer present.
Digital Restrictions Management is an injustice in itself, but it has
a tendency to develop into sabotage — occasionally some
DRM-afflicted works
stop
functioning because a company decides they are "no longer
supported".
Since DRM is an injustice, so are the laws that prohibit breaking DRM.
These laws' purpose is to give certain businesses power over the
public. That purpose is evil, and the laws' effect is evil. It
follows that these laws have no moral authority, and violating them is
not in any way wrong.
If the government wants to teach people the habit of obeying laws, it
should repeal laws like these.
In addition to being an injustice in itself, DRM implies a
security
vulnerability.
The article doesn't say it, but the vulnerability has a name:
"nonfree
software."
It would be better to avoid using the term
"digital
locks" to describe DRM, since that fails to express why DRM is an
injustice.
UK construction companies will pay millions of dollars to the workers
that they
conspired
to blacklist.
Noam Chomsky comments on the
world
geopolitical situation.
Massachusetts citizens:
Oppose
a new subsidy for natural gas.
In my message I called for ending existing subsidies for fossil fuels.
Everyone:
call on the mayor of
San Francisco to fire Thug Chief Suhr.
Everyone:
call
on the governor of Alabama to veto anti-abortion bills.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of the Interior to protect Joshua Tree National Park
from a nearby dam.
Megumi Igarashi, who distributed 3d printer plans for a kayak modelled
on her vagina, has been
convicted
of obscenity.
Prohibitions like these create a sense of taboo about female genitals.
I think that contributes to various sorts of sexual ignorance and
confusion.
The large fire in Alberta
may burn for months.
represent.us campaigns to
limit
corrupting campaign finance at the local level.
A Swedish ISP head has attacked
proposed
laws to criminalize people who share files.
Hundreds
of US hospitals follow rules imposed by the Catholic Church that
put womens' lives and health in danger.
I believe hospital owners should not be allowed to impose such
rules. The Church should have to back off on these rules or sell the
hospitals.
The Panama Papers whistleblower has accused specific political leaders
of protecting offshoring and tax dodging, and
fears
those same leaders will try to prosecute per (the whistleblower) for
exposing the practice.
The 1965 massacre of perhaps a million alleged Communists in Indonesia
left the military in a position of total impunity. Now it uses this
impunity to protect the companies that
burn
thousands of square miles of rain forest to create palm oil
plantations.
I don't think that a massacre of people for their political views
should be called "genocide". The victims were belonged to various
ethnic and religious groups. A massacre is bad enough; we don't need
to call it "genocide" to condemn it.
Brazil is considering a law that would lead to
lots
of Internet censorship.
Lead water pipes laid in some cities in 1900
caused
higher crime rates in those cities in 1920.
It has been three months since Clinton
made
flimsy excuses for not releasing the text of her highly paid
speeches to banksters.
While we do not have proof "beyond a reasonable doubt", for the
standards of politics we are entitled to conclude that she thinks we
would not like what she said.
Groups of heavily armed poachers
regularly
fight the rangers that try to protect elephants at Virunga Park.
Techdirt: Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us
Over
A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment.
The European Commission head said that
Greece
has suffered enough.
This is an abrupt change: just recently the boa-banksters wanted to
squeeze Greece harder. (When they say "reform", it means "squeeze the
people".)
The article says that the IMF "demanded more reforms". However, a
few days ago the IMF did just the opposite: it refused to go along
with further squeezing, pointing out that additional "reforms" would
increase Greece's deficit, just as the "reforms" so far have done.
Has the IMF forced the boas to stop constricting Greece? Or is
this too good to be true? Is it plausible that the IMF has actually
done something good?
US citizens:
call
on the US to demand justice for Berta Caceres and stop supporting the
coup-installed government.
US citizens:
Ask
your state legislator to support automatic voter registration.
US citizens:
support
Human Rights Watch's call for the US to stop producing cluster
bombs and stop giving them to Salafi Arabia.
Over a thousand protesters blocked tracks to stop a coal train.
while
hundreds
blocked Newcastle, Australia, harbor to stop coal ships.
Sea level rise and loss of land are
eating into Louisiana and Alaska.
Syrians' principal motive for joining PISSI is that they
need
to get paid.
The US should be able to offer them more money than PISSI can.
When the FBI
directs
local thugs to create alternative stories to hide the fact that they
actually used a stingray, they violate the constitutional rights
of the suspect with lies.
Computers may soon be able to
recognize
the location of all outdoor photos.
"Colorado Springs
will
pay back destitute people it illegally jailed because they couldn't
pay court fines, the city announced Thursday."
European Greens Present Draft Law On
Protecting
Whistleblowers.
US voters:
you
can ask Democratic "superdelegates" to vote for Sanders.
Fortunately for him, he was not actually removed from the flight.
Perhaps airline personnel are starting to have a slight glimmer of
intelligence in dealing with panicking idiots.
Part of Australia has allowed courts and even individual thugs to
impose
punishments on people based on mere suspicion, no evidence needed.
SCROTUS want to make children of poor families
pay
for school lunch.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
They want to make poor people poorer so as to enrich the rich people
they serve.
The
Guardian repeats the Pentagon's take on Yemen, saying that US
troops and Salafi Arabian bombardment are supporting "Yemen's
government" against al-Qa'ida.
However, the main enemy of the US-supported "government" is the
Houthis, who are Shi'ites. Al-Qa'ida is no friend of theirs.
Everyone:
call
on Google not to sponsor the RNC now that we know it will promote
Trump.
Sadiq Khan, a progressive Muslim, was
elected
mayor of London, defeating a Tory whose campaign was based on
bigotry.
I agree with what this article says about that Tory, and Tories in
general. But not solely because they use one racism while condemning
another, both crassly for political gain alone. Their worst bigotry
is against the non-rich of whatever religion or race.
President Marcos of the Philippines
pioneered
the use of tax havens and secret dealings to conceal billions of
dollars in wealth that he stole from the Philippines. Many other
governments, including the US, protected the Marcos family in exile,
so only a fraction of what he and his associates stole has been
recovered.
The Philippines is investigating the responsibility of 50 large fossil
fuel companies for
human
rights violations in the form of global heating and is present and
future disastrous effects.
"TSA Precheck" functions as a system to
pressure
Americans to submit to background checks.
It can morph smoothly, just like a store discount card, from "You can
save by using this" to "You will be penalized for not using this".
I am not going to enroll.
Social media monitoring doesn't pry into anyone's secrets, but it
gives the state (or business) that uses it
power
that threatens democracy.
More Australian species are now on the endangered list, and the main
reason is government's laxity in protecting their habitat from
commercial
destruction.
Rep. Issa Calls Out Civil Asset Forfeiture As Letting
'Cops Go Treasure
Hunting'.
I think the word "cops" is too nice for them, but otherwise I agree.
The fire that rages through Fort McMurray is part of a world-wide
trend towards bigger and longer wild fires,
caused
by global heating.
This article
implores
our sympathy for the people of Fort McMurray who have lost their
homes to global heating effects.
It is a good clear example of distraction spin.
I don't strongly object to anything in the article. We can sympathize
with the displaced people of Fort McMurray, along with the hundreds of
millions of others who will be rendered homeless or killed by global
heating effects. There is no point condemning people for taking jobs
in fossil fuel extraction, since mostly they are not responsible for
the decision to extract the fuel. (That changes if they campaign
politically to keep the practice going — through that, they make
themselves into planet roasters, co-responsible for attempted
genocide.)
But Canadians should not let that distract them from the vital point:
Canada must curb fossil fuel extraction as fast as possible, along
with the rest of the world.
Canada should care for the displaced people of Fort McMurray
elsewhere, and make sure there is no more tar sands extraction to draw
any of them back. Since that wasn't the town's only reason for being,
some will go back for other reasons, and that's fine.
Burning Kenya's ivory
must
be followed by changes if we are to end elephant poaching.
I should point out two of the important reasons why life in Kenya is
"difficult" for most people.
Clinton
may
get the support of Republican Neocons that will encourage her to
shed lots of blood.
She is
already
leaning their way.
Most US press coverage of foreign events is
dictated
by the White House.
China
used its influence to cancel the Shen Yun dance troupe's shows in
South Korea.
This illustrates the danger that we face outside China when
businesses depend too much on exporting to China.
I watched a Shen Yun show once, and enjoyed the pieces that were
not tendentious, but disliked those that were heavy-handed propaganda.
They put me off even though I agreed completely with their point,
which was to condemn the Chinese state's repression (which has got
much worse since then). My friend who went with me said, "It preaches
too much."
Tyranny in Turkey: reporter Can Dundar and bureau chief Erdem Gul have
been
sentenced
to five years in prison for reporting on Turkey's support for
Islamist extremists in Syria.
The
Panama papers leaker wants to cooperate with prosecution of tax
evaders, if person can be sure governments won't prosecute per.
This article's use of "they" in singular shows how confusing it is,
and how wrong it reads. I reject it. I think we should use Marge
Piercy's gender-neutral third person singular pronouns,
"person", "per" and "pers", which work like "she", "her" and "hers".
They fit the English language well.
Indian prisoners sentenced to death will probably not actually be
executed, but
regularly
face torture and solitary confinement and are stopped from seeing
their lawyers.
8 million Britons suffer from food insecurity, and almost 5 million
regularly pass a day without eating because they
can't
afford food.
This is a measure of the Tories' success in taking from the poor to
give to the rich (dooH niboR).
The Tories
are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
The US has asked Bahrain publicly to
release
dissident Zainab al-Khawaja.
But it is not putting any real pressure into this request.
Bahrain would have trouble resisting any real US pressure.
Many students in London are participating in a
rent
strike against universities that charge dorm rents so high only
the rich can afford them.
Sanders vs Clinton is a battle for the spirit of the Democratic Party.
Sanders
would return to the New Deal and the Great Society programs that
sought to make sure everyone in America has a decent life. Clinton
would continue Bill Clinton's quasi-Republican policies.
Many
prisons in the US are eliminating in-person visits. The prisoner
is cut off from the outside except for very expensive video calls that
require proprietary software.
With such tenuous human contact, recidivism is sure to increase.
However, the right-wingers in control of most US states don't
want to reduce crime. They want to show how tough they are.
Clinton and Trump are
personally
too close to offshore tax-dodging for us to believe that they
would really try to stop it.
The
IMF has vetoed the boa-banksters' plan to "rescue" Greece,
pointing out that it will only create the need for a series of
increasingly destructive "rescues".
Confirmed: the
bailout
of Greece" was really a matter of supporting the euro-banksters
that Greece owed money to.
It's
Time to Extend the 14-Day Limit for Embryo Research.
The claim that suicide is "selfish" is a form of
victim-blaming.
AirBnB creates an opportunity for
racial
discrimination that is outlawed for hotels.
Americans' debt is
mostly
due to dooH niboR, not to frivolous purchases.
Most Syrian refugee minors can't go to school, and many of them are
forced
to work in sweatshops instead.
As the Alberta fires continue to grow in "unseasonably hot" weather,
the
Guardian's coverage avoids relating this to Alberta's oil exports.
French thugs complain that criticism of them is unfair, but plenty of
people can testify about how thugs
attacked
protesters.
I criticize any protesters that start avoidable violence against
thugs. But don't be too quick to assume that isn't the fault of the
thugs. Those "protesters" might be thugs, acting as
provocateurs to give the protesters a bad name. I don't know whether
this is happening in France, but it has happened in other places.
Protection of grizzly bears has enabled their population to increase,
but they are now
threatened
by global heating effects, so it is a mistake to remove the
protection.
It seems to me that there needs to be an intermediate status of
partial protection for species that seem to have recovered. They may
not need the full protection that enabled the population to recover,
but they need some protection so we don't wipe them out.
Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump
Six
Years Ago.
Elif Shafak: "In Turkey we
canât
even laugh at our politicians any more."
If Europe wants to halt the spread of Islamist extremism, it should
prioritize stopping that in Turkey.
After attacking other candidates for taking money from other rich
people, Trump now
says
he will do the same thing.
Sanders is mistaken on one issue:
taxes
on sugary drinks.
This issue is small compared with the major issues on which he is
right. I hope he will get some good advice about it, though.
It is
not
too late to investigate the British thugs' violent attack on
striking miners in 1984, after which the thugs tried to frame the
miners they had arrested.
Iraq holds a thousand prisoners who are perhaps supporters of PISSI,
and keeps them in
tiny
cages.
Maybe there is a good reason to keep hold of them prisoner, but even
Iraq can build a prison where prisoners have room to lie down and walk
around.
McDonald's,
the Corporate Welfare Moocher.
Clinton talked about ending use of coal, but now she
says
she didn't really mean it.
Detroit teachers are on strike because
officials
refuse to promise they would get paid if they did work.
A high-school student faces felony charges for
pulling
his pants down momentarily for a photo that was put in the
yearbook.
Plans for Coal-Fired Power in Asia Are
'Disaster
For Planet', Warns World Bank.
Assad's forces or allies
bombed
a refugees camp inside Syria.
Careerist Republican politicians — the majority of Republican
politicians — are
changing
their positions to agree with Trump.
Trump as Republican nominee is intensely embarrassing to Republican
candidates for other offices. Some have already
blatantly
contradicted themselves.
This may result in their defeat, but we should not count on that.
Republicans can forgive their politicians all sorts of hypocrisy, as
long as said politicians attack those who are weak, different or poor.
2000
US doctors call for universal health care.
Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fawzy, arrested by Egypt for being
somewhere near a protest,
may
be forced to return to Egypt and prison because he no longer has a
US work visa.
Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta: Rush for Mega-Mergers
Puts
Food Security at Risk.
Why
give the Tories a free pass on racist remarks?
Governments have made unprotecting a national park so commonplace that
"protecting"
them gives little protection.
Thousands
of Egyptian journalists, and even newspapers, have joined a
campaign "Journalism is not a crime."
The UK NHS has
given
Google a copy of lots of patients' data, without public scrutiny
of what Google will be allowed to do with the data.
In Pakistan, tribal council members that were the ringleaders in burning
a teenage girl to death have been
arrested.
Her relatives who agreed to the killing were also arrested.
I fear that Pakistan will execute them. In addition to the general
wrongs of the death penalty, this risks enabling them to claim status
as martyrs for the murder they did. I suggest instead punishing them
in a way that will make them the object of public contempt. That way,
others won't be tempted to follow their example.
Eduardo Cunha, one of the leaders of the campaign to impeach President
Rousseff, has been suspended from Congress for
trying
to intimidate corruption investigations directed at him.
Justice for Telecommunications Consumers Act Would
Thwart
Unfair Arbitration Clauses.
Naomi Klein says that war, dooH niboR and global heating are
three
aspects of the same problem. We should unite the struggles
against them.
Everyone:
call
on he EU to stop paying to cut down US forests for Europe's fuel.
US citizens:
Tell Obama to halt new and
expanded fossil fuel leases on public lands.
US citizens:
tell
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau you support a regulation
barring banks and credit card companies from imposing arbitration on
customers and barring them from filing class action suits.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to stop the secret plan for the NSA to hand over its
snooping data for prosecuting Americans.
Everyone:
oppose the new EU plan to
impose a tax on hyperlinks.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to work towards nuclear disarmament by cancelling plans
to spend a trillion dollars on new generation nuclear weapons.
The breakup of Florida's barrier reef, previously forecast for 2050,
is
already
happening. The cause is human-generated CO2 that
dissolves in the ocean and makes it more acidic.
This is expected to wipe out all coral,
later
in this century. The result of that would be the extinction of
thousands of species and a collapse of fisheries that hundreds of
millions of humans depend on for food.
Leaked documents about the TTIP show that
This
Treaty is Indeed Plutocratic. Even more so than we thought: it
would give the US and foreign companies a veto over EU regulations.
The leaked text of the TTIP
has
made the French government reject it. That could kill it
entirely, but we cannot take that for granted. The rejection was
phrased in nationalist terms. The US might propose "more concessions"
(nominally, to France; actually, to the plutocrats and banksters) and
France might support it again.
We have to kill it dead. And CETA. And the TPP.
Clinton denounced the TPP only because she needed to compete with
Sanders. She has supported business-supremacy treaties for decades.
If she wins the Democratic nomination, I expect she will find a way to
push for such treaties again.
Due to unprecedented heat, all schools in Delhi have been
closed
for the summer.
It is not clear that the students will be any safer at home.
Although the "president" of the Gambia's men arrest and shoot
protesters,
people
keep protesting.
It is a mistake to let racist gaffes
overshadow
the substance of racism.
Conservative Think Tank President Says Voter ID
Helps
Conservatives Win Elections.
Republicans have imposed voter suppression on
33
states.
The leader of a group of Israelis that burned a Palestinian teenager
to death has been sentenced to
life
in prison for murder.
A wildfire in Canada is
consuming
the town of Fort McMurray, which ironically is the origin of tar
sands oil extraction.
The fire is the result of "unseasonably hot" weather, but it's only
"unseasonable" by 20th century standards. Global heating is making
this (and the drought) the new normal.
You could call the destruction by fire of that town poetic justice, if
the harmful effects of their oil sands extraction were limited to
them. However, as we know, they will hit the whole world. Canadians,
you must put an end to tar sands oil extraction.
A study estimates that
almost
10% of deaths in the US are caused by a medical error.
Cameron's new censorship plan pretends to be aimed at "violent
extremists", but actually
targets
all sorts of political opposition.
Wise entrepreneurs can still
offer
stock to their employees.
Climate-Exodus Expected in the
Middle
East and North Africa.
Human life will become difficult as very hot regions become even
hotter. Tens of millions could start to flee, maybe hundreds of
millions.
Global
Water Shortages to Deliver 'Severe Hit' to Economies, World Bank
Warns.
In the US, using biometrics instead of a password
cedes
legal rights.
The FBI acknowledged officially that its "hair matching" forensic
technique was
worthless.
2500 trials must now be checked to see whether they were miscarriages
of justice.
Obama's "Common Core" education reform has
failed
to improve education.
We may as well get rid of it, and "No Child Left Alone".
LA thugs have
redefined
prostitution as "human trafficking" to make arresting prostitutes
and their customers appear justified.
SCROTUS supports Obama's new nuclear weapons plan so much that they
don't
want to find out what this will cost.
Obama and the Republicans are both part of the Plutocratist Party.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Honduras has
charged
suspects with the murder of Berta Cáceres.
Given their job descriptions, I don't think they would have acted on
their own initiative.
Egypt's journalists are
holding
a sit-in next to the journalists' union after thugs raided it and
arrested two journalists.
It takes real courage to protest in Egypt under General al-Sisi.
Labour has suspended two local officials for "antisemitism" because of
statements
that really only criticize the occupation of Palestine.
Those two people may or may not be antisemitic, but these statements
don't indicate that.
Neither of the quoted statements appears antisemitic to me. One said
that European support for Israel's occupation of Palestine helped to
provoke terrorist attacks in Europe. This is surely true. The
statement criticizes Israel, but does not express hostility towards
Jews.
The other one compares Israel's occupation policies with Nazi
genocide. To equate them would be an exaggeration — Israel is
not trying to kill Palestinians, only to ethnically cleanse them from
certain areas — but
Uri
Avnery sees a similarity. Unlike us, he saw real Nazis before his
family fled Germany.
The FBI
imposes
secrecy about use of stingrays (fake cell towers for snooping on
people) on state and local thugs, even when this requires cases to be
thrown out.
However, it is quite possible that this secrecy enables them to
illegally deny the use of stingrays in cases where they did use them.
Turkish Journalists Accuse Erdoğan of
Media
Witch-Hunt.
Some European countries have
isolated
jihadi prisoners to stop them from spreading their ideology to
other prisoners.
Isolation from other prisoners does not have to mean isolation from
everyone. In principle, this does not have to be solitary confinement
— it could be like the prison Anders Breivik is in (which seems
acceptable to me). In practice, it tends to be almost solitary
confinement.
Trump, the
union
buster.
What Trump says doesn't mean much, but we can get an idea of how he
wants to treat workers from the way he treats the workers in his
hotel.
Chelsea Manning describes her horrible solitary confinement, in which
she was
constantly
watched and forbidden to lie down or sit against the wall for 17
hours each day.
Australian thugs imprisoning an Iranian refugee (whose husband
recently set himself on fire and died) are acting like kidnapers,
threatening
to punish her if she looks out the window since she might be seen.
When she cries, they inject her with sedatives.
They are trying to bully her into going back to Iran, where she faces
a danger of persecution.
Apparently Australia's policy for keeping refugees away is to threaten
them with worse persecution than what they are fleeing from.
The tuna fishing business can be
wiped
out by overfishing unless the fishing countries make an agreement
to preserve the stocks.
Mothers of jihadis now offer family counseling to
help
mothers dissuade their children from becoming jihadis.
I think this has a chance of working, unlike the heavy-handed
government surveillance/repression campaigns. In addition, this won't
give large numbers of young Muslims grounds to feel resentment.
The European Commission is
inventing
and distorting evidence to justify a new regime of censorship for
the internet.
It's for the sake of the War on Sharing, of course.
US insurance companies, and the data brokers that serve them,
must
be strictly regulated about what kinds of data they can collect.
US citizens:
oppose
SCROTUS's attack on support for healthful school meals for US
children.
The Republicans are working for the billionaires, who are confident
that they can afford good food for their children and judge
that poor people are superfluous.
Uber has
changed
the regulations that cover charging passengers for making cars
wait.
This decision itself may not be objectionable. Taxis typically charge
for making them wait. But that regulation is set by a city agency
which is at least somewhat responsible to the people. Uber is a
business headquartered somewhere else, which accepts no responsibility
to the people of any city.
We should not allow a company to privatize the making of the
regulations that create our social order.
Abu Omar, who was kidnaped by the CIA in Italy and sent to Egypt for
torture, says that former agent Sabrina De Sousa is
one
of the small fry and shouldn't be prosecuted.
The real culprits are higher-ups and not on the list to prosecute.
Poaching of tigers in India is now going at
4
times the 2015 rate.
To reduce poverty, stop obsessing about what poor people do to
survive, and more attention to
making
the rich pay enough taxes.
Angola is worse than Ferguson for jailing the poor: A man who fell
asleep in a stranger's minivan has been
in
jail 8 years awaiting trial.
Global heating is destroying many towns in the Arctic, and will cause
a wave of
climate
refugees.
Wisconsin prosecutors have
appealed
to the US Supreme Court to reopen their investigation that is
likely to touch Governor Walker and his henchmen.
The investigation was shut down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
which Governor Walker had packed.
A prisoner in Nauru, who was raped, needs a surgical abortion which
might have complications. Doctors say to send her to Australia for
this, but
the
state won't allow it.
She cannot communicate with the public, and her name has been replaced
with "S99".
Despite all efforts to keep Australia's outsourced immigration prisons
secret, and the prisoners incommunicado, some footage has leaked out,
and
some
whistleblowers are willing to risk imprisonment to recount the
cruelty they have witnessed.
I hope Ms Orner is finishing this film in a safe place, far away from
Australia.
Farm workers in Yolo county, California, have
inadequate
nutrition because of their low pay and other limitations.
The US teen pregnancy rate has fallen substantially, due to
reliable
long-term contraceptive methods.
Why Do
Progressives
Cling to Hillary?
Sanders asks the Democratic Party to think about which side it's on:
the
rich and powerful, or the rest.
Which is
more
realistic, Sanders or Clinton?
Chomsky measures the corporate corruption of US media by
the
way they dismiss Sanders, who stands for mainstream America, as a
"radical extremist".
Plutocracy is pushing for
cuts
in workers' pensions, while retired executives get lavish
retirement pay.
Fracking: Environmental Groups Sue EPA in Call for Strict Rules on Waste.
Fracking might not be so attractive if frackers had to take responsibility
for the various kinds of environmental damage that it causes.
Trump has gained the Republican nomination;
other candidates have given up.
Kasich eschewed the I'm-toughest-cruelest-extremest rhetoric that Cruz
and Bush used, but his actions make him a right-wing extremist.
Bill Clinton's 1996 "antiterrorism" bill continues to prop up
miscarriages
of justice
Apple
refuses
to pay taxes to maintain Cupertino's infrastructure. Residents
are getting angry.
In Uganda, women known as gay just get murdered. In Somalia, they are
given the choice between marriage (a form of slavery) and death.
Queers in Kyrgyzstan are persecuted; bigots murder them with impunity.
Rising seas (due to global heating) will release pollution from
coastal
landfills.
Who's making sure the Saudi bombs keep falling on Yemen?
The
Tories.
(Plus Obama, of course.)
Increasing numbers of Dalits in India are
converting
to Buddhism.
57 lakh equals 5.7 million.
In winter under Tory cruelty, families must choose:
heating
or eating.
The second in command of the Israeli Army warned that Israel was
taking
up Nazi traits.
Death
by GPS is the extreme case of a very common problem:
using a GPS makes people helpless at orienting themselves.
I'd rather use a paper map.
A woman in solitary confinement speaks to the world through a play
that shows how solitary confinement
crushes
the spirit.
White
House Releases Report on How to Spur Smart-Gun Tech.
Numerous
reasons to reject a cruise ship vacation.
Another reason is that they are as artificial as a resort hotel. (I
know this because I was once hired to give talks on a cruise —
I'd never spend money to go on one.) All the specific pleasures
available on them, you can find closer to home and much cheaper.
I think that what people mainly like about them is the idea of being
on a cruise. They think they gave themselves a prize. Well, you can
pick almost anything and think of it that way.
Over
70% of Britons expect the NHS to deteriorate.
Of course it will: the Tories are trying to kill it.
Only a callous rich bastard can rationally vote for a Tory.
A study estimates that the UK could prevent 80,000 deaths annually by
better regulating
pollution,
workplace safety, and food safety.
Rep. Ryan
wants
to make cancer treatment unaffordable for many Americans by
changing a crucial point in Obama's medical care funding law.
Crackdown in Turkey's Kurdish South-East Turns
Journalists into 'Terrorists'.
This is so Erdogan can cover up the continuing atrocities against
the Kurds in Turkey.
Climate protesters
blocked
the largest coal mine in Britain.
Everyone: support
clemency for Leonard Peltier.
Puerto Rico is defaulting on its debt, because
vulture
banksters lobbied Congress not to allow Puerto Rico a form of
bankruptcy.
If everyone lived like Americans, the human world
would
have already exhausted its fresh water supplies.
Erdogan wants to prosecute members of Parliament for
"terrorism".
Will they be able to find asylum in Europe?
Snowden
analyzes the difference between whistleblowers' leaks and the
establishments' leaks (which often damage security interests much
more).
Britain has a long history of
real
antisemitism.
This needs to be rooted out. Note, however, that none of these
examples had anything to do with concerns about Israel's occupation
policy.
Global Heating Is
Starving
West Coast Waters of Oxygen.
The
EU
proposes that web sites should require visitors to give their
national ID numbers.
Stop waiting for the
"right
moment" to curb global heating. The right moment was 15 years ago!
People, and especially women, who carry guns are
far
more likely to be shot with a gun.
A part of this may be because people who feel more threatened are more
likely to get a gun. But surely that is not the only cause.
The
Feinstein-Burr anti-encryption bill would ban the distribution of
free encryption software in the US. All distribution of free systems
would have to move out of the US.
Italy's supreme court ruled that
stealing
food to eat is not a crime if you are desperately hungry.
NSA and CIA Double Their
Warrantless
Searches on Americans in Two Years.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to make Wall Street banks return the money they got
from cheating American cities.
US citizens:
call for maintaining
funds allocated for coping with future Ebola outbreaks.
The UK regularly deports Romanian prostitutes by
claiming
they are not working. In fact, they are working, but they have
trouble proving this.
A large British retail chain has gone bankrupt because
its
main owner drained it constantly of money.
Parents Shouldn't Spy on Their Kids — it is
bad
for them, as well as unjust.
It was
dangerously
easy to make profiles about everyone in the Netherlands based on
data available to the public.
Inequality
Will
Get Worse Until There's a Revolution.
Electing Clinton, Trump, Cruz or Kasich sure won't help.
Bernie Sanders Is Right:
Poor
People Don't Vote And It's a Problem.
One significant obstacle is logistical: coping with poverty is so hard
that they have no time to vote. Another is Republican interference
with voting.
Many teenage girls in the US today have been
convinced
they need plastic surgery on their genitals in order to be
attractive to boys.
Wang Yam was convicted of murder in a secret trial. Now his
conviction has been put in doubt because the
thugs
concealed evidence that could have helped his defense.
There is other evidence of official shenanigans in connection with
this case.
Islamist
murderers have spread terror in Bangladesh.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to pass the Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act.
US citizens: call on the Democratic and Republican parties to
stop
advocating use of fossil fuels.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to repeal the gag rule that AmeriCorps volunteers are
not allowed to give information about abortion.
Obama's Controversial Offshore Drilling Proposal
Rests
On Research Funded By Fossil Fuel Industry.
This policy is based on a refusal to recognize the fact that oil is
now cheap, and the knowledge that we need to keep 80% of known
reserves in the ground.
This shows an example of the standard way businesses corrupt science
nowadays. Businesses fund professors, who know what they have to say
in order to get more support in the future. They also support "think
tanks" in which those professors can meet and produce reports to say
what the businesses want them to say.
Then the same businesses' pet politicians can cite these studies as an
excuse to do what these businesses want.
The first step in putting an end to this is to make businesses get
smaller.
Shame on states that
force
totally incapacitated people to suffer years of futile pain.
A group of young people sued the state of Washington, demanding that
it protect them (and everyone else alive decades from now) from the
danger of climate mayhem. The court has
ordered
the state to do more to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The US crime of "conspiracy" is so vague that people can get
long
prison sentences for crimes they didn't know about and had only a
tenuous relationship to.
FISA:
the
surveillance court that never says no.
Everyone:
call
on US Chamber of Commerce to stop lobbying against better pay and
working conditions.
US citizens:
call on legislators not
to take money from oil companies.
Brigham Young University expelled Madi Barney when the administration
found out that she had reported being raped. So she
launched
a campaign to pressure the university to change the "honor code".
The current policy is totally logical if you believe the idea that
"honor" consists of staying far away from sex. I'd say that idea is
the root of the problem.
Exiled Soviet, then Russian, dissident Vladimir Bukovsky says he is
being framed for possession of "child pornography". He has
started
a hunger strike just as he did in the gulag.
Stanford University
rebuffed
persistent protests, refusing to divest from fossil fuel
companies.
The cited reason was simply "Let's take it slowly", which is exactly
the attitude that is now fatal.
Disentangling
real antisemitism in Britain from right-wing misrepresentations is
sometimes a difficult question.
Some of the accusations are based on statements taken out of context
or misinterpreted.
Was the bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz a
war
crime?
Reckless action can be a war crime, but I think it is a stretch to
equate confusion to recklessness. Especially since confusion is
almost ubiquitous in war. For instance, US Army officers try very
hard not to kill their fellow soldiers, but that happens anyway
— through confusion.
Ted Cruz is behind a bill to support
state
bans on municipal WiFi access.
In effect, he is trying to give more power to the merged
Charter/Time-Warner.
In resisting a movie company's claim to have a copyright on the
artificially constructed Klingon language, an amicus brief
cites
proverbs in Klingon.
If you are using Tinder from an iThing, your parents or your ex could
be
snooping
on your use.
It must be the case that either Tinder or Apple offers some interface
for snooping.
Muslims in the US are
often
treated as terrorists, just because they are Muslim and talk with
someone in a language other than English. Sikhs face the same
harassment, since ignorant Americans think they are Muslims.
Indians are
dying
from drought and heat, and also from the fires that have been
caused by those.
Will India learn its lesson and start cutting back on fossil fuels?
Shafik Rehman, Bangladeshi editor that supports an opposition party,
has been
charged
with plotting to murder the prime minister's son. It seems he was
investigating someone who was alleged to be planning this.
The Bangladeshi state is more interested in
imprisoning
secular writers than catching those who kill them.
Global heating
could
deoxygenate large areas of the ocean within 20 years.
This would mean no more seafood in some parts of the world, and
perhaps extinction of some (or many) species.
Arguing for
taxing
the wealth of the rich, not only their income.
SCROTUS are
trying
to attack the protection of endangered species through the
military spending bill.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
US citizens:
call
on Senator Baldwin & Rep Gwen Moore to end sending cluster bombs
to Salafi Arabia.
A Florida thug is being prosecuted for battery; he
attacked
a handcuffed woman who was being put in jail.
She tried to kick him, which was a provocation. But since she was
handcuffed at the time, she was unable to really hurt the thug, and he
could have handled the situation without brutality. He should have
controlled himself. That's the job — of a police officer.
A court ruled the FBI
needs
to get a warrant to inject malware into someone's machine. It
can't just set a trap for whoever visits a certain site, without the
authority of a court order.
However, the FBI has written new regulations for itself,
saying
that one court order can authorize it to attack an unlimited set of
computers, if they are using Tor.
Senator Widen
will
try to cut this back.
I think it is legitimate for the state to install spy software in
suspects' computers, with a court order; but these orders must be
limited in scope so as not to threaten everyone.
The hot water that is killing much of the Great Barrier Reef is
due
to El Niño on top of global heating. By 20 years from now,
continued global heating could make this temperature normal, and the
reef certainly won't survive.
Tony B'liar did sales work for Salafi Arabia's oil business while
ostensibly the UK's
"Middle
East peace envoy".
We must stop putting
minors
in solitary confinement. (And mostly adults, too.)
An Iranian who tried to go to Australia but was sent to Nauru couldn't
stand being there. He
set
himself on fire, and later died.
He could not get proper medical care in Nauru, so Australia moved him
to Brisbane in Australia, but this took a long time because Nauru is
4500 miles away from Brisbane. Who was responsible for forcibly
placing him so far away? The Australian state.
His wife, who accompanied him to Brisbane, is being held incognito.
The Australian government uses a variety of unjust means to suppress
information about the various cruel things it does to would-be
refugees. For instance,
making
it a crime to report those things. and sending them to a place
(Nauru) where
independent
journalists are excluded.
Thugs in Paris
violently
attacked Nuit Debout protesters to force them out of the Place de
la République.
I spoke there two weeks ago about
free
software and
how
massive surveillance threatens democracy.
The response was very favorable.
US citizens:
tell the
Senate to protect America's coastal national parks.
US citizens:
tell the
Forest Service: Don't renew Nestlé's water withdrawal
permit.
Students at many US universities are
holding
protests, in some cases sit-ins, to demand divestment from fossil
fuels.
Today's college students have a good chance to be killed by global
heating in the second half of this century. Planet-roasters are
spending millions to make sure this happens. It is rational for the
students to take big risks and make substantial sacrifices to try to
overcome the planet-roasters.
The US has adopted in Iraq the technique of exploding a missile above
the roof of a building as a way of
"warning"
civilians to leave the building (which is scheduled to be bombed
shortly thereafter).
The problems are that (1) the people don't necessarily recognize what
the explosion means, or even that it was an explosion, and (2) the
actual bombardment may come so fast that people don't have time to get
their children or elderly parents out of the building.
Giving this sort of warning cannot as such be bad, but if it becomes
an excuse for predictably killing civilians, that is bad.
Arizona has earmarked
5
million dollars for the Koch brothers' right-wing propaganda
institutes. That's because many politicians there are already
their henchmen.
Don't the Koch brothers have enough money to fund their own
propaganda?
Bruno Kramm of the German Pirate Party was arrested for
quoting
part of the famous poem that insults Erdoğan.
Some towns in Australia find some slogans on the sides of vans
offensive and
want
to institute a regime of public censorship against offending
anyone.
Many US companies
overstate
their profits by using misleading accounting.
A thug working as a security guard at Walmart accused Tyrone Carnegay
of stealing a tomato. Rather than allow Carnegay to show the receipt,
the thug
broke
his bones with a stick, then arrested him.
This thug should spend 200 times as long in jail as Carnegay had to
spend.
Why are people in Western countries
buying
less? Is it a cultural shift influenced by Buddhism?
I have a different theory: so many people have reduced incomes, or
live in a very small space, that they simply can't buy a lot of stuff.
Israel's
Covert
War Against Palestinian Media.
The Dalhousie University student union has
decided
to divest from certain companies that directly aid Israel's
occupation of Palestine.
Israel is
confiscating
land from Palestinian farmers.
10 states with lots of sun have obeyed fossil fuel companies by
discouraging
solar power.
A vehicle for billionaires' disguised political spending
openly
flouts US campaign finance law.
The FCC has
authorized
the merger of Comcast and Charter Cable. After this merger, only
two companies will control 2/3 of US subscribers. No industry should
ever be allowed to get that concentrated, unless it is a tightly
regulated monopoly.
Mitsubishi
Lied
About Vehicle Emissions for 25 Years.
Obama's Offshore Drilling Proposal
Based
on Fossil Fuel Industry Research.
Everyone:
call
on Walmart to make sure its canned tuna was caught without killing
sharks; also to make sure all the workers involved are treated
decently.
Luxembourg is prosecuting
two
whistleblowers and a journalist for revealing how Price Waterhouse
Coopers helps companies dodge taxes.
Three Iranian journalists have been sentenced to many years in prison
on thinly disguised charges of
saying
things the mullahs do not like.
Under Iran's peculiar system of repression, the mullahs are above the
elected president, so he can't do anything when they arrest his
supporters.
The
richest
0.1% are the ones who really have the influence in the US. Even
the others in the 1% are starting to be treated like prey.
David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology, threatened to sue
the publisher of a forthcoming book which rips him to shreds —
written by
his
father.
Scientology has torn many other families apart. That it is doing so
to the Miscavige family is sad, but poetic justice.
The Tory in charge of crushing the National Health Service comes from
a background of such privilege that he has
no
compassion either for patients or the doctors that treat them.
All he understands is life in the class that gains from dooH niboR.
Abortion is
still
a crime in part of Australia, except when "necessary" for the
woman's health.
India's Drought Migrants Head to Cities
in
Desperate Search for Water.
Nobelist Randy Schekman says his lab
will
boycott the most prestigious journals to protest practices that
harm science.
One of those practices is the paywall, but he cites other harms as
well.
The effects of marijuana legalization
in
Colorado.
A new victory for those who
want
to pour lots of money into US election campaigns anonymously.
Aid
to the Eritrian tyranny in the hope that it will drive fewer
Eritrians into exile is fatuous.
How about providing aid to refugees from Eritria just outside the
borders of Eritria?
Do you want to think of Shakespeare as a
"content
provider"?
If not, please don't call anyone that. And please don't
call works or publications
"content".
If you are in solitary confinement, the thugs can do all sorts of
nasty (and prohibited) things to you and get away with it, because
they
can prevent you from telling anyone about it.
Thugs in the UK (and the US)
continue
to demonize large segments of society, and are ready to maim or
kill them given any excuse.
Pervasive surveillance inhibits masses of people: after Snowden showed
everyone how much the US tracks people's browsing, there was a
20%
decrease in visits to Wikipedia pages about topics relating to
terrorism. Evidently a large fraction of people are terrorized by
surveillance.
The rate of visits to those pages remain depressed three years later.
Netanyahu
rejected
a French plan for a peace conference in which other countries
would have tried to pressure Israel and Palestine to agree.
Netanyahu has no wish to make peace with Palestinians; his only use
for peace negotiations is as an
excuse
for continuing the occupation indefinitely.
Uri Avnery: Israel needs a new leftist/peace movement
of people that are
proudly
both Arab-lovers and Jew-lovers.
Global heating has already
increased
the rate of heat-related injuries, but we ain't seen nothin' yet.
UK thugs whose official job was to investigate "extremists" planning
violent crimes were in fact investigating dissidents,
including
Green Party politicians. A year ago they "promised" not to do
this any more, but they continued anyway.
A Green Party leader explains
why
they do this.
Protesters are
camped
outside a thug office in San Francisco to protest killings by the
thugs.
I don't think we should stretch the term "hunger strike" to include
taking sugar or vitamins. A hunger strike is so powerful precisely
because the striker goes to the utmost limit of nonviolence.
Why
So Many Iranians Have Come to Hate the Hijab.
That repression (freudian pun intended) is what the hijab really means
— its purpose. People have a right to wear them, but we should
not give the practice any respect.
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Please send comments on these web pages to
rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2016 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Please reform the law so that coal companies cannot sneak out of their
obligation to pay for cleaning up mines. There must be no way they
can arrange to spin off a subsidiary to go out of business and evade
the responsibility. They should not be allowed to do self-bonding;
they should have to buy insurance.
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