Site original : Richard Stallman's Political Notes
Activists are bringing solar panels to Gaza by boat, since electricity is limited there because Israel destroyed the generating plant.
One Palestinian member of the Israeli legislature is among the volunteers on the boats.
The same Israelis that impose the siege call him a traitor, to distract from the evil of the siege of Gaza.
Colombia has punished those who reported the army's murders, while promoting the generals in charge.
The current president, Nonsantos, was the minister in charge.
A group of 39 whales beached themselves one day in 2011. Scientists now say they did this because underwater bomb explosions damaged their hearing and navigation.
19 of the whales died; the rest went back to sea. Perhaps their hearing was ok and they only followed the others; or perhaps they didn't live long.
Underwater explosions for oil drilling can do the same thing.
Scott Walker set up a "jobs program" that handed $124 million to businesses under his personal supervision, without review. The result was to "create" around 2000 jobs, meaning the State of Wisconsin paid a business $60,000 for each job.
The state could have made more jobs by hiring people directly.
The idea of paying companies to "create jobs" is inherently misguided. from the public's point of view. The state loses a lot of money and gets few jobs — many of which were not actually created, but rather taken away from some other state. The only thing it is effective for is giving money to businesses.
If legislators don't know this, the program is mistake foolish. If they know, it is corrupt and dishonest, I think Walker knows, don't you?
The effective way for the state to use money to create jobs is to give the money to poor people. They will spend it.
Particulate air pollution kills around 4 million people a year, according to WHO.
Greenhouse gas pollution's effects kill only
400,000
people per year at present, but those effects will get worse, and
kill far more,
if
we continue as we are going.