Introduced peacocks becoming a problem in New Zealand
dimanche 1 novembre 2020 à 01:00Introduced peacocks, no longer checked by introduced mammalian predators, are becoming a big problem in New Zealand.
Site original : Richard Stallman's Political Notes
Introduced peacocks, no longer checked by introduced mammalian predators, are becoming a big problem in New Zealand.
Slovakia plans to test all citizens over age 10 for Covid-19.
It seems foolish to omit non-citizens and children. They could propagate Covid-19 past the effort and thus negate it.
Unless you're a campaign manager, stop reading polls! And stop worrying about things that might affect campaign strategy!
Reading those things wastes your time and makes you worry uselessly, because you have no decisions to make which depend on them.
What is worth thinking about in regard to the US election?
It may be useful to think about those topics because they may help you take action. Anything else election-related is just a distraction — so you may as well do some other useful thing instead.
In the past, you could usually tell who won any race at some point in the evening. I used to stay up waiting for this, like most Americans. Then I realized that I had no need to rush to find out the answer. The result, whether good or (more often) bad, would be the same in the morning, Finding out earlier would not enable me to do any more good.
So I decided to ignore the results on election day and read about them later.
Unless you're a campaign manager, stop reading polls! And stop worrying about things that might affect campaign strategy!
Reading those things wastes your time and makes you worry uselessly, because you have no decisions to make which depend on them.
What is worth thinking about in regard to the US election?
It may be useful to think about those topics because they may help you take action. Anything else election-related is just a distraction -- so you may as well do some other useful thing instead.
In the past, you could usually tell who won any race at some point in the evening. I used to do this, like most Americans. Then I realized that I had no need to learn the answer sooner. The result, whether good or (more often) bad, would be the same in the morning, Finding out earlier would not enable me to do any more good.
So I decided to ignore the results on election day and read about them later.
Slovakia plans to test all citizens over age 10 for Covid-19.
It seems foolish to omit non-citizens and children. They could propagate Covid-19 past the effort and thus negate it.
Introduced peacocks, no longer checked by introduced mammalian predators, are becoming a big problem in New Zealand.
Hong Kong thugs arrested Tony Chung as he tried to ask the US consulate to shelter him, and charged him with political opposition.
The reason Chung could not simply leave Hong Kong is that the government had taken his passport and accused him of advocating independence for Hong Kong.
A number of others also facing political charges tried to leave Hong Kong in a boat, but China caught the boat.
Preston Kulkarni, running for Congress in Houston, has stated support for the RSS, a violent anti-non-Hindu hate group in India.
People should pressure Kulkarni and the Democratic Party hard about this, but despite his connection to a hate group, he is clearly the lesser evil this year. After all, his opponent is a member of a violent domestic hate group called the Republican Party.
Missouri voters passed a ballot initiative against gerrymandering. Now Republicans are pushing another ballot initiative which would reverse that one, and reduce the voting power of some minorities.
They hoped they could mislead the voters into passing it.
In the US, recessions typically start when there is a Republican president.
Poland is seeing large protests for abortion rights every day.
The last protest had 100,000 people.
Poland's latest attack on abortion rights affects women whose fetuses are dead or so damaged that they cannot be born alive. For Polish Catholics, granting the fetus one more day of non-consciousness is worth any amount of human grief caused.
Right-wing nasties organized for violent attacks against protesters, which they consider legitimate because the protesters are not fetuses. ;-{.
Adani, which wants to build more coal mines in Australia, used private investigators to study the private life of an anti-mine activist, and his wife, and his preteen daughter.
I suppose they were looking for some irrelevant scandal to distract public attention from the death that comes out of every coal mine every day.
The president of the US has been given enormous decree powers to use in an "emergency." Various officials have warned that this could be dangerous some day.
"Some day" could very well be in December or January, if the wrecker wants to prevent Biden's inauguration.
CIA sources say that the mysterious brain damage which has struct many US agents and officials could be caused by a microwave beam weapon.
If that is the case, wearing a simple grid of wires around the head could block the waves, and attaching a recording thermometer might provide as way to detect the attack. Purpose-built detectors might give more information about the waves.
In San Francisco, over 11 million square feet of office space is now vacant.
We need to convert that space into small residence for poor people to live in. They could have a microwave and a fridge each, rather than a real kitchen. This would enable all the homeless people of San Francisco to have a safe place to live and practice physical distancing. The rest of the space could be made into studio apartments and offered for rent at amounts working people can actually afford.
It shouldn't take much payment to the building owners to get them to accept, since otherwise they are likely to get nothing. Also, unused space should pay a higher real estate tax.
Delta Airlines has put 460 people on a list it won't sell tickets to because they have refused to wear masks while on board,
Refusal to wear masks spreads coronavirus, and the continued refusal of many Americans to wear masks will probably kill hundreds of thousands more. It is good that some organizations take firm steps to make sure people wear masks. Now stores and buses should start protecting their staff and customers.
It took just two days for right-wing Texas provocateur Ivan Hunter to bring his rifle to Minneapolis and start a false-flag attack on the thugs.
When Republicans found out that Americans dying from Covid-19, if they were not old, were likely to be black, they quickly made it their priority to "reopen the economy".
*Documents Reveal WH Officials Tried to Use $250 Million in Taxpayer Money on Covid Ad Campaign to Boost [wrecker's] Reelection.*
This sort of corruption is so frequent that it is hardly even news. What is significant is that our government has no ability to do anything to punish or prevent such corruption. What was supposed to restrain it was an expectaion that the voters would punish corruption when they found it. The wrecker has destroyed that expectation, first for small corrupt acts, then for bigger and bigger ones.
The US claims its regime-change interventions are meant to promote democracy, but they tend to have the opposite result. Bolivia shows that the challenge for democracy is to overcome these US operations.
(satire)
*The Onion’s State-By-State Election Guide.
A closer look at the nation’s 50 worst states.*
Two members of the grand jury that considered indicting the thugs that killed Breonna Taylor say that the case was presented in a strange way, so that it was only at the end that they found out they were not going to be asked to vote on charging the thugs with killing Ms Taylor. The jurors were shocked by that.
Usually, they report, cases are presented to the grand jury by first stating what charges are to be considered. This case and only this case was handled differently.
I do get the impression that the prosecutor wanted to shield the thugs and pretend not to have done so.
Republicans have expanded the supreme courts of Arizona and Georgia in recent years. In Iowa they politicized the selection of judges.
*Overturning the Affordable Care Act Could Result in 68,000 Deaths.*
Racism of the London cops: two brothers, who are black, are suing because they have been searched on the street 25 times.
China had an outbreak of Covid-19 in a factory which uses Uighurs in forced labor.
I would not consider 180 people a "large" outbreak, though. Not by US standards. But there is every likelihood that more people are infected in the region now.
*Nearly 1,000 instances of police brutality [and other injustices by thugs] recorded in US anti-racism protests.*
Belarusian dictator Lukachenko had several important political prisoners brought to one room, then went there and talked to them for hours. He also occasionally listened.
*The greatest tragedy of England's second wave is that it wasn't inevitable.*
Bogus Johnson made the decisions, and he made them badly.
A very large bank that operates in Australia and New Zealand has announced a policy of coal mining and burning coal for heat or power. Existing debtors with heavy involvement in coal will have to make plans to change.
The extreme planet roaster party is calling for a boycott of that bank.
*Despite Court Ruling and Drift Concerns, EPA Approves Use of Dicamba Products on Soybeans and Cotton for Five Years.*
The London thug department was investigated in regard to stopping people to search them with no specific evidence of a crime, and told to change its practices to do that less.
Ralph Nader proposes an informal 14-day waiting period after election day, during which candidates should neither claim victory nor concede defeat.
I am not sure it is a good idea.
To fully defeat fascist trumpery, we need to punish of the crimes of today's fascists. "Going easy" on the leaders of criminal movements doesn't help defeat them.
The Principles for Student Data Privacy and Equity are good, as far as they go.
However, they are not strict in standing up to a pressure to let companies get their paws on students' classroom or medical data when the pressure is because "This is the modern way, and all the other schools are doing this."
If the principles say you can't use Zoom or Microsoft Teams or anything comparable, they will be adequately strong.
(satire) *… new parents Lindsey Conway and Michael Rhodes reportedly freaked out Tuesday upon learning that babies can often live up to 100 years. …Why don’t they tell you all this before you bring them home?*
*Polling Shows 82% of [US] Voters Believe 100% Clean Power Should Be Primary US Energy Goal.*
Over 70% support switching to 100% renewable electric generation by 2035. That's starting to approach the kind of intensity that may avoid global disaster.
The wrecker's maskless virus-spreading rallies are substantially effective: half of them have been followed by local increases in Covid-19 infection.
Poor people in the US often don't vote. They may be demoralized and cynical about the political system, or think that not voting is a protest.
There is a lot to be cynical about in the US political system, but the only way to make it better is through the system itself.
(satire) *Lines Come To Standstill Outside Wisconsin Polls After State’s Official Voting Pen Rolls Under Vending Machine.*
*From simple location-tracking apps to buttons that measure biometrics, college campuses have amped up surveillance in response to Covid-19.*
The article lacks a sharp conception for judging whether these systems are just or unjust and necessary or unnecessary, and for separating those characteristics from painfulness.
The conditions Vassar students had to sign up to must be very painful, and I might have taken a year off rather than accept them. But they are not unjust and may well be necessary to open the campus safely.
The PathCheck app's actions, assuming that the article describes them fully and accurately, seem to be legitimate provided the college makes proper commitments not to let any company or other organization handle any of the data nor to save it nor use it for anything else. But the fact that it is a nonfree app running in a mobile phone makes it unacceptable.
I'd apply the same criteria to reporting one's symptoms daily. That is ok, provided one doesn't have to do it via a portable phone or a nonfree program, and the school won't let any other organization handle the data, or save it for long.
(satire) *Following over two decades of incarceration, Louisiana Penitentiary inmate Reggie Clark, a man falsely imprisoned for 24 years, was finally granted permission Wednesday to serve out the remainder of his sentence in the prison’s new Wrongly Accused Wing.*
*Doing Nothing About Climate Emergency Could Cost More Than All the Wealth in the World.*
That indicates the calculation is meaningless. Because if we're talking about the total destruction of humanity and a lot more, it is impossible and unnecessary to measure that in economic terms.
Which supports the point that the article is making: it is idiotic to say that avoiding total disaster is "too expensive". And foolish to ask, "If we save the world, will I still have a job?"
The bully's hatchet man in charge of Voice of America has officially eliminated its editorial independence, making it the Voice of the US President.
Studying the challenge of a global Green New Deal: how to structure it, how to fund it, and what won't help (nationalization and GDP-reduction).
One flaw of the study is that it adopts the targets of the Paris Treaty, which are too little and too late. But I expect that the overall conclusions will be the same with stronger targets.
*South Korea vows to go carbon neutral by 2050 to fight climate emergency.*
This has the two usual flaws: a pledge about 2050 makes it easy to postpone action until 2030, and "carbon-neutral" invites reliance on offsets that amount to self-deception.
*The world's banks [which are heavily funding extinction] must start to value nature and stop paying for its destruction.*
Two Philadelphia cops shot and killed a black man, Walter Wallace Jr. But it does not seem that they rushed to kill.
He walked towards two cops while carrying a knife. They did not shoot immediately; they shouted at him to drop the knife. This is not a fabricated excuse; the article says it was visible on video.
The article does not say how far he was from them when they shot. Perhaps they didn't need to shoot. Perhaps they could have used a taser instead of a gun. Perhaps they could have tackled him and grabbed the knife, or talked him down. Perhaps medical personnel could have talked him down.
I think the death was probably avoidable, but that doesn't mean those cops had no grounds to shoot.
St Augustine, Florida, floods frequently and can expect almost a meter of sea-level rise by 2060.
I think it would be wiser to move the city's landmarks to high ground, even though that may be in Georgia.
Right-wing cult leaders deal with weakness by scapegoating someone in the name of some religious cult. In Poland, the targets are women that are carrying dead fetuses.
*100 out of [the total of] 229 [UK local government] councils have used or are using automated decision-making programmes, many without consulting at all with the public on their use.*
*Eight people have been charged with conspiring to work on behalf of China’s government in a plot to coerce a Chinese family in the US to return to their home country to face charges.*
If the charges were real corruption, supported by real evidence, and if China gave accused people fair trials, I hope the US government would extradite the suspects when asked. But it seems that the case is political.
Repressive Islamic rulers are revealing their agenda of world-wide censorship.
The sad thing is that they have inflamed the fanaticism of their followers to the point that these ravings win them more support at home. (The wrecker in the US is similar to them.) But it is totally wrong to appease them with any significant concession.
Rather, we need to teach people to recognize that Islamic rule tramples the human rights of everyone, Muslim or not.
The Supreme Court ordered Wisconsin to stop counting postal votes at the end of Tuesday, so Democrats are wisely calling on voters to drop them off rather than mail them.
Amazon has a special store for selling "eco-friendly products".
This is sadly ironic, because buying them via Amazon is not eco-friendly. And that's in addition to all the way Amazon harms society.
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to avoid endangering the southern resident orcas.
Counting recent burials shows Yemen has a massive outbreak of Covid-19.
If the US had stopped intervening, and let the Houthis win the civil war, Yemen would have no trouble now getting ventilators, medicines and medical-quality masks for doctors.
Qatar thugs took all the women off a plane waiting to fly to Sydney and strip-searched them, trying to determine if any of them was the mother of a newborn found dead in the airport.
More women were taken off other flights, to other countries.
Why was Qatar trying so hard to find the mother? I speculate that the purpose was to punish her; right-wing religious extremists often like to punish women.
An experiment captured juvenile ambon damselfish and fed microplastics to some of them and not to others. Then it released them in various areas of the Great Barrier Reef.
The ones that ate microplastics took more risks, and those released in degraded parts of the reef were all eaten within 72 hours.
One of the scientists says that this is because after the fish eat what feels like enough, part of what they ate was microplastics, and the part that was food was not sufficient. This kind of problem results from having large quantities of microplastics.
A few years from now, we can expect the whole reef to be degraded, and fish species that microplastics make careless could go extinct. Their extinction will be due to a combination of human actions: those that cause global heating, together with the making of plastic that we can't recycle.
US citizens: call on the Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs of Staff to refuse any order by the wrecker to interfere with the election.
*A Well-Armed and Unpatriotic Far Right.*
Studying the factors that will aid or hamper the US in resisting a Republican effort to steal the election.
I implore Protect the Results to set up and advertise a way for people to receive instructions after November e without having to run any nonfree software (including nonfree JavaScript code on web sites). One way is to use Telegram. The organization most likely does not read this site, so if you have any way to communicate with it, please pass along and support this request. You might also offer to do the work of setting it up, if you know how.
The US should require everyone to wear as mask while in public places.
There are people who, for medical reasons, cannot wear masks. The law must permit them to do what their health requires. However, it should require people with a non-obvious disability that precludes their wearing masks to carry and show a doctor's note to demonstrate that, in order not to be fined.
Poll watchers in the US must follow strict rules. You can't just show up and say, "I want to watch, so let me in."
*College students make a last-ditch effort to make Election Day an academic holiday.*
I am in favor of this.
*UK mobile phone firms to be banned from selling locked handsets.*
This doesn't alter the basic injustices of mobile phones — that the phone network tracks them and they can be converted into listening devices — so it would not convince me to carry one. But it does eliminate one common secondary nastiness.
*Despite CDC Moratorium—and With Help From White House—Corporate Landlords Have Gone on Eviction Spree.*
I think we should have a law putting a real-estate tax on corporations owning more than a few rental houses, or more than a few apartment buildings, and likewise on the corporations that own them, etc.
Iran's UN ambassador: *"The eight violent wars that the United States initiated or joined since 2001, under the rubric of war on terror, have resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, countless broken societies and families… and unprecedented extremism."*
I would guess that these include Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran has also intervened to some extent in those countries during this period. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran intervened much less violently than the US. In Syria, Iran intervened more strongly and violently than the US. In Yemen, Iran intervened by proxy, which the US ls also doing, but the US carried out direct bombings before that.
If Democrats win the election, and if the Republicans that have seized the Supreme Court don't impose a Republican victory, the Democrats must legislate to undo the dirty court tricks.
Increasing the size of the court would do the job, but decreasing it might be even better. Imagine reducing the court to six judges, based on seniority: all three of the wrecker's appointees would be pushed off.
The constitution says that they remain federal judges for life. But they can be judges in lower courts.
The same method could be used to remove many of the wrecker-appointed judges from federal appeals courts.
Most jails in the US use one of five companies to provide medical "care" to prisoners, and those companies do a measurably bad job.
These companies are successful because they charge less, and they reduce costs by cutting corners — for instance, by being slow to approve permitting a prisoner to be seen by a professional. This is the standard problem with privatizing all or part of a public activity.
Therefore, I suggest that contracting a public function to a private activity should be forbidden by law if the activity involves doing things specifically for, or to, individual members of the public.
The fraction of people in the UK displaying antibodies to Covid-19 has declined by 25% in three months.
This could mean that those people have lost their immunity, but that is not certain. The article explains the details.
*I was Corbyn's chief of staff. We acted decisively to remove Labour antisemites.*
I believe her, because Corbyn is the one person in UK politics that I know is honest and committed to justice. We know that plutocratists in the Labour Party fought tooth and nail to prevent him from winning an election with a progressive program. We know that Jewish supporters of Corbyn rejected the claim that he tolerated antisemitism, while many of those that claimed he did had opposed him before, for other reasons.
History suggests that we Americans can thwart a coup, if we are prepared to declare it a coup and oppose it before it can dig in.
The wrecker's chief of staff said, "We're not going to control the pandemic."
You might interpret this as a frank statement of a hands-off policy of letting the virus spread however it may. But that would be a mistake. The wrecker's actual policy is to spread Covid-19 as much as possible, and the statement was therefore a lie.
*More than 70 science journalists [31]have signed an open letter warning that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's [32]close ties to the fossil fuel industry and [33]refusal to publicly acknowledge the established science behind human-caused [global heating] make her an enabler of "the ecological crisis of our times."*
The Republicans, bent on sabotaging the election, rushed her onto the Supreme Court on Monday. Their haste to do this before election day demonstrates that their intention is for the Supreme Court to throw the election.
A progressive woman writes to a neighbor that voted for the conman in 2016, but with whom she has some values in common, looking for a meeting of the minds.
Carbon capture and storage at significant scale may actually be practical now.
It is not guaranteed that scaling it up to this extent will work without a hitch. If it does, it will help avoid global disaster. However, if these two projects succeed in burying 27 million tons of CO2 per year, that will be a small fraction of the total annual UK emissions, which amount to around 450 million tons per year.
Consolidation in the meat industry enabled giant, Chinese-owned Smithfield to use its market power to whipsaw its smaller giant competitor, Maxwell Foods, into bankruptcy.
Each bankruptcy is likely to lead to an acquisition which will increase the consolidation and make the situation worse.
We need to make the big companies spit up into many smaller companies, in this field and all fields.
Sea-level rise is eliminating beaches that used to be economic hubs for tourism.
It will get worse and worse unless we stop our greenhouse emissions quickly. But don't attach substantive importance to the Paris treaty, which the wrecker is symbolically withdrawing the US from; it was never more than symbolic itself, since it was undermined in advance by planet roasters.
The Tory Party is fighting desperately against public demand to give lunch gratis to children whose families are poor.
One minister said that this refusal is a matter of principle. Which principle, I wonder? [Irony] Perhaps the principle of stinginess? Or maybe it is, "Each family must sink or swim on its own — no helping others!" Or maybe, "Never help the poor! If the government helps a poor person once. people will expect the government to give the poor help every time they need it."[/irony]
*'Sleeping giant' Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find.*
This could be a disastrous tipping point.
(satire) *Armenia, Azerbaijan Announce They Will Only Agree To Ceasefire That Allows Them To Still Shoot Missiles At Each Other.*
An NYU research project asks useds of Facebook to volunteer to run a special browser extension so they can report data about the ads Facebook shows them. Facebook has demanded NYU stop this research on the grounds that it constitutes forbidden "bulk data collection".
*The researchers discovered that numerous political advertisers were violating Facebook's disclosure rules, yet the company has been letting it happen.* People speculate that that's why Facebook wants to shut down this research.
Scientists at GM and Ford knew in the 1970s that their cars and trucks were contributing to dangerous global heating. Despite this knowledge, they campaigned against efforts to shift the Earth off that path.
(satire) *Veterans Affairs Secretary Struggling To Profit Off Of Underfunded Department.*
Utah will run out of intensive care capacity in a week or two. At that point, hospitals will have to choose which patients to treat and which to give up on.
People who glibly talk about herd immunity as a "solution" are opting for this. When the wrecker decided to spread Covid-19, he decided to make this happen.
(satire) *This is obviously a bittersweet moment since we've had such a wonderful longstanding relationship with the moon, but we’re all just really excited to see what it gets up to with a powerhouse planet like Jupiter in its corner.*
Verkada makes face-recognition camera surveillance systems. The employees at work are subject to this surveillance themselves. A few male employees used the system to watch attractive women and chat to each other about them.
Verkada reacted firmly to make sure nothing like that will happen again in that company, at least not for a few years. But the company will continue its efforts to convert society into a place where you are always being watched, and you don't even know by whom.
*The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.*
Chileans have voted to replace Pinochet's constitution. The process of drafting a new constitution will be contentious.
Throwing rechargeable batteries into ordinary trash can start fires.
*How Covid-19 laws are being used to silence garment workers in Burma.*
Australia is also gratuitously repressing protests with Covid-19 as the excuse, and so is the UK.
Population declines for insectivorous birds in the Amazon hint at a big drop in the insect population, even far from civilization.
This could be very dangerous.
Islamist bullying's veiled threat to France: refusing to yield to censorship demands is "unwise".
People have a right to practice their religions, or other cultural practices, but that does not convey the right to gag criticism, satire or mockery of those practices.
It can be painful to stand up against bullies, but what is truly unwise is to yield to them. Vive la France ! A bas la répression Islamiste !
A British librarian swells with pride at the increased provision of freedom-corroding ebooks to readers.
Isn't it a pity that they are not aware that they are helping to subjugate people. That is true for most librarians in the US, too.
You can help educate them by bringing up this issue when offered an ebook "loan" — and then say, "Rather than accept the injustice of a commercial ebook, I'll wait till I can borrow a physical copy."
Bravo to France for standing firm against bullying from some Muslim governments that demand France censor using criteria they would impose.
The murdered teacher was not, as it happens, endorsing the controversial cartoons' mocking of Mohammed; he said explicitly that they were examples for a discussion of freedom of speech. To murder people for mockery would be an outrage, but he was murdered for disobedience to would-be tyranny. He deserves the medal he was posthumously given.
France is not entirely consistent in its defense of freedom of speech. It prohibits stating certain opinions on some historical questions, such as whether Turkey carried out a genocide of the Armenians. Since I am not in France, I can freely say that I believe it did. But people in France, whatever their views on the question, cannot speak freely about it.
Even though the view permitted by France agrees with the view I freely hold, I follow the late Hrant Dink in rebuking France for prohibiting views that disagree with his view (which is also mine). France ought to repeal that law.
France's censorship also includes criminalizing insults against officials (even mild ones). That too is wrong.
These flaws do not detract from the exemplary importance of France's resistance to the decades-long global Islamist censorship bullying campaign. You don't need to be perfect to be a hero for a good cause.
You also don't have to try to threaten or bully others to be a good Muslim, or at least so say millions of Muslims.
If you dislike statements that criticize or mock certain views, you don't have to make them, or look at them. But anyone that tries to impose censorship on people, or countries, is fighting against everyone's freedom.
In the end, the tyranny of "you may not offend us" is hardly different from any other tyranny.
Amartya Sen reports on India's practice of arbitrarily labeling people as "terrorists" and putting them in prison without trial. Ironically, people who are committed to Gandhian nonviolent resistance are especially likely to be called "terrorists".
Sen eplains that authoritarian governments tend to equate "anti-government" with "anti-national".
Pope Francis is setting a bad example on one issue, by holding maskless meetings.
I agree that he should set a good example by insisting that everyone wear masks.
*European support for [right-wing "populist"] beliefs falls, YouGov survey suggests.*
Let's not forget that the original populists campaigned to increase people's democratic control over government, which had important achievements.
Let's reclaim that word for its original meaning.
*Colorado Voters Could Be First to Pass Paid Family Leave by Ballot Measure.*
The state will pay the worker on leave, so people who have been compelled to be "independent contractors" won't be left out.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor AOC's bill to ban use of tear gas in peacetime.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Nestle to give some US water sources back to the public.
US citizens: join a "protect the results" rally on Nov 4, the day after election day. The aim is to demonstrate that the American people will not tolerate discarding the results of the election.
The official protest organizing site doesn't let visitors find the places and times of rallies without running nonfree Javascript code. But this page presents all the necessary information without any Javascript. It is in alphabetical order by two-letter state code; within each state, events are listed in numeric order by zip code.
The page initially contained some "virtual events." There is no way to participate in those in the Free World, so I hope they will be deleted.
To understand why this issue is important, watch this 14-minute video about the injustice of nonfree software, then read this article about how that issue applies to Javascript code sent by web sites.
I would like to ask the protest organizers to fix their site so as not to require Javascript, which can be done simply by making a link to the page that I have linked to, but I know of no way to contact them. If you can contact them, please ask them to take a look at this and to make their site freedom-accessible — next time, at least.
The Drug Policy Alliance presents its framework for decriminalization of possession of drugs.
*[The US] Postal Service Quietly Awards $5 Million Contract to DeJoy's Former Company.*
*The corporate criminal element has infused NPR with millions of dollars of donations.* And it shows.
I got fed up with NPR in the 1990s when I repeatedly heard one of All Things Considered's main commentators attack Bill Clinton from the right.
(satire) *local undecided voter Jeff McNealy reportedly crouched inside a concrete drain pipe Thursday and remained completely silent as he waited for a convoy of political analysts and reporters to pass by on the road above.*
Proposing a salary cap for executives.
This is more complicated than it seems, because executives get paid through bonuses and stock options, and through jacking up the stock price on the shares they own. A serious scheme needs to deal with all of those.
Is a salary cap better than a 90% tax bracket?
There is still a tendency in major US newspapers to hide from recognizing the ouster of President Morales, a year ago, as a coup.
That may relate to support for the coup from powerful elements in the US — whoever got the OAS to make a hasty and flawed claim of election fraud. This was done so well that at first I didn't realize it was false.
Then I saw an article which explained the election system and results and showed there was no fraud.
*Big tech accused of avoiding $2.8bn in tax to poorest countries.*
That is in addition to the far larger amount of tax cheating that they do to countries full of billionaire wealth, such as the US. All of these countries suffer from a lack of funds for governments to use for important purposes.
The laws that stop Americans from escaping unpayable student debts don't cover the 9% or so which are uninsured predatory high-interest private loans, and these are especially likely to wreck Americans' lives.
The conman's deal with Foxconn to "create jobs" in Wisconsin was a con from the beginning.
Nigerians are protesting to demand justice against a special thug squad that has "turned into banditry."
*Sanctions punished the Sudanese people, not their rulers. The US extracting compensation is one more hypocritical act.*
It reminds me of the indemnity that Haiti had to pay to France for its independence. Placing sanctions on a country is not the same thing as a claim to rule a country as a colony, but the resemblance is there nonetheless.
Protesters in Belarus are not giving up, and say that their next step is a national strike.
Amnesty International criticizes governments for blocking a proposal in the World Trade Organization to waive patents on treatment for Covid-19. The governments which opposed it are evidently under the power of plutocracy.
Approving that proposal would have been a step forward, but the WTO's patent rules are unjust all the time — for poor countries especially, but ultimately for all countries.
The parts of the TRIPES agreement (Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science) concerning copyrights and patents ought to be abolished.
The wrecker's latest slogan:
Make America a Grave Again.
The Tories want to take away people's right to challenge bureaucrats' decisions by going to court.
That way, a bureaucrat could shaft you illegally and you'd be screwed.
If Democrats win, they should quickly rebalance the Senate by splitting the populous states.
Dare I suggest merging some of the states of low population?
50 countries have signed the UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons, making the treaty officially valid.
Portland antiracist/antifascist protesters have asked a court to declare the city in contempt for disregarding a court order not to use various sometimes-maiming weapons against the protesters.
*Documents: Powerful Pro-Pesticide Groups Shaped U.S. Push to Weaken International Oversight of Medically Important Antibiotics.*
Use of antibiotics in agriculture breeds resistance to antibiotics, which has the potential to kill millions of people. Resistant bacteria may kill you or me.
But what do pesticide companies care? There will still be plenty of people who want food to eat.
*Universal Mask-Wearing [in the US] Would Save Nearly 130,000 Lives by Spring 2021, Study Finds.*
It appears that trans women do not ever harass anyone in women's bathrooms, but there are several cases where trans women (and cis women erroneously taken for trans) have been harassed or even attacked by people who object to their presence in women's bathrooms.
Thugs equipped with dogs are especially dangerous to people they encounter, especially people who are black and male. Once a dog attacks, it can easily maim.
*Armed men outside St. Petersburg polling place said [the wrecker's] campaign hired them.*
The official campaign organization claims not to have hired them. It might be lying, as usual. Or perhaps that is true in a narrow sense, if they were hired by one of his unofficial campaign organizations.
US schools and companies setting up totalitarian tracking systems already.
Students are already organizing to fight them. Fight hard — this will make the difference between freedoms and tyranny.
Faux News and the New York Post are owned by the same plutocratist supporters of extremists, and they work together.
*New York Post Insiders Slag ‘Very Flimsy’ Hunter Biden Stories.*
Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU, warns that the ACLU today has retreated from its defense of free speech for all views. This leaves a gap in the defense of freedom, just as plutocratists are even more powerful and ready to exploit that gap.
The US should provide good medical care to everyone, including the poor. I advocate a universal national medical system, recently often called "Medicare for all." I don't praise Obama's weak system much, but it is better than nothing, so I am glad that lawyers work to defend it. But it should not be the ACLU that does that legal work; some other organization that focuses on the rights of poor people to government aid should do that.
The ACLU's defense of Obama's medical insurance program is an instance of what I call "unionality" — where an organization that was set up to focus on one particular cause starts to support various other causes because the same people tend to support them. If you judge by the short term, it may seem great to have additional organizations supporting all the causes you favor. In the long term, it risks alienating the supporters of one cause who disagree with the other causes.
The article contains a powerful presentation of why anyone who wishes to change an unjust system needs freedom of speech, and would be a fool not to defend it to the utmost.
(satire) *Trump Threatens To Leak Debate Video Online If Moderator Keeps Asking Unfair Questions.*
(satire) *Miffed Biden Warns Trump’s Undignified Behavior Could Cost Him Cabinet Post.*
*Constitutional Law Experts Endorse Democrats' Bill to Create 18-Year Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices.*
In the long term, this might be an improvement, but I like better the ideas for making appointments non-partisan.
*Only a Reckoning With the Disastrous Legacy of the So-called 'War on Terror' Can Heal the United States.*
The domestic political dysfunction mentioned in the article is, I contend, plutocracy and its consequences — and the imperialist militarism of the past 20 years is one of those consequences.
An international meeting intended to reduce greenhouse emissions from ships is considering rules so weak that they would do harm (by pretending that the issue was being addressed).
On the factors that cause blacks in Chicago to be more likely to catch Covid-19 than whites, and more likely to die from it once they get it.
Sri Lanka's president is changing the constitution to give the president power over all activities of the government.
*Half a million Americans could die of Covid by end of February, study forecasts.*
If Biden wins the presidency, I suppose he will try to curb the spread of Covid-19, but it would take till the end of February for this to have much effect.
*Trump to Seniors: Drop Dead.*
Young Thais demand freedom of speech, even the freedom to criticize the monarch. In their protests, they defy extreme repressive threats such as life in prison for some kinds of nonviolent protests.
*10 Years After Iraq War Logs, It's Impunity for War Criminals, War on Whistleblowers.*
*Trump Sets Up Pharma Billionaires for Coronavirus Payday.*
Fikile Ntshangase, an activist campaigning against extension of a coal mine in South Africa, was assassinated by a team of four killers.
The company Dataminr tries to scan all posted tweets to find anything suggestive of possible violent intent, and report it to the thugs.
Contrary to its name, the company doesn't seem to do this by data mining. Instead it hires a lot of people to make off-the-cuff judgments, which naturally reflect racist presuppositions and generate biased results. (I call this phenomenon BIBO, for "Bias In, Bias Out.")
Identifying "gang members" by questionable criteria has a long and horrible history in California prisons.
Poland has almost completely banned abortions.
Right-wing extremists have basically taken over the country.
*Thousands join Poland protests against strict abortion laws.*
Better antitrust enforcement creates an economic stimulus.
Big banks siphon billions out of US states and cities by underwriting their bonds. The Federal Reserve could eliminate this drain by lending to the states and cities directly.
Proctorio is using a lawsuit to silence someone who criticized its software. The company claims that its training videos are "confidential information".
This dispute doesn't even the deepest issue here: that the software is nonfree, which is itself an injustice, and that it snoops on the student who runs it. It is sad to see people treat that as normal and surrender to it.
*How Workers Can Help Defeat a Trump Coup.*
The RIAA, which represents the unjust power of the three big record companies, has made Github delete the source of youtube-dl.
They won't be able to wipe it out, though.
I think this takedown notice was invalid, because youtube-dl is not mainly used to do forbidden copying. It downloads things that are publicly available on youtube, and the benefit it provides is to do that without running the unjust nonfree software that youtube tries to send to the user's browser.
Thousands of conspiracy cultists marched in London, trying to make each other sick and endangering passersby as well by not wearing masks.
I would sympathize to some extent with their objections to rigid lockdown rules, but they made it clear that we cannot trust them to exercise good judgment to avoid spreading disease.
Here's an example of the absurd rigidity with which the UK handles the matter of avoiding transmission.
*‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority ‐ UK study.*
*Why the Republican Party Wants to Destroy Labor Unions.*
*We spent $2 trillion to keep Americans afloat in the pandemic. Putting a similar amount toward the climate crisis could be even more pragmatic.*
*Biden is Finally Talking About Fossil Fuels — That's a Good Thing.*
The bully's latest act of sabotage: claiming the power to arbitrarily fire many federal employees — in effect forcing them to participate in any sort of injustice or else quit.
*New York's Strand bookstore appeals for help.*
I visit the Strand every time I go to New York City. But it may be a long time before I got here again. Wherever you live, please do not buy from Amazon. If you want to order a book, go to a local physical bookstore to do it.
A local physical bookstore may even allow you to pay cash in advance anonymously and take away a receipt to claim it later. I did this in August in the Boston area.
*Small increases in air pollution linked to rise in depression, finds study.*
Half a million Sunnis in Iraq are still forced to live in refugee camps.
*Countries who kept their response to the pandemic in-house have fared much better.*
*What Bolivia Can Teach the United States About Democracy.*
I wonder if Bolivia can prosecute Elon Musk and other people in the US for backing the coup. Even if we expect that Bolivia will never be able to bring him to justice, this could teach the world a useful lesson.
*Media Outlets Owned by Billionaires Very Quick to Tell Readers Taxing the Rich Is Bad Idea.*
Taxing the rich better must include changes in how transfer of ownership, trusts, etc., affects the taxes to be paid.
Oregon voters: support Measure 110, which will decriminalize all drugs.
Biden said he would "transition from the oil industry", then later said he didn't mean it.
Since Massachusetts is not a swing state, I voted for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
2/3 of the terrorist attacks and plots this year were by right-wing extremists.
A right-wing extremist has just been charged with travelling to Minneapolis to carry out a false-flag attack, burning a thug department building.
He is not the first right-wing provocateur to be charged over violence at Black Lives Matter protests this summer. I wonder if we will find that provocateurs were chiefly responsible for the violence. They fooled a lot of people, including me.
(satire) *Trump Campaign Reminds Supporters To Make Voting Intimidation Plan.*
*'Stop Financing Climate-Wrecking Companies': Campaigners Light Earth on Fire Outside European Central Bank HQ.*
RSF: Thugs have arrested TV reporters and fired rubber-coated steel bullets at them, showing not the slightest bit of shame over these crimes.
Suing the bully and other officials for illegal voter intimidation.
The bully is considering budget cuts for medical programs in cities, because people there don't support him.
A bill to protect US ocean areas from many causes of damage, and rebuild damaged ecosystems.
Boston thugs felt annoyed by the antifascist woman who squeezed a little rubber piggy towards them. They tried to get her fired, by suggesting people boycott her employer because of her.
They pusillanimously asserted that they were not calling for a boycott, merely suggesting the possibility of not buying from there because of her. The difference is too subtle for me.
Then the thugs found out she had not worked there for years. Oops.
*Here's How Meatpacking Corporations Could Protect Workers From COVID-19—and What They're Doing Instead.*
We should not allow so much concentration in that industry, or any other industry.
(satire) *… local psychic Rosemary Shanley confirmed Thursday she was already sick of James Randi’s specter haunting her place of business and ragging on her from the afterlife.*
(satire) *… local farmer’s child Owen Morrison, 10, was reportedly forced Thursday to slaughter a pumpkin he had spent all season caring for.*
The Supreme Court decided for voter suppression when it blocked polling places in Alabama from collecting ballots from people waiting near the door in their cars.
This voter-suppression measure originated from state officials who ordered that no county in Alabama could do this. A lower court blocked the order; the Supreme Court reinstated it.
This will affect white voters as well as black voters. However, the Republican Party is now a mad cult, so Republican voters may refuse to believe that there is any danger.
Taiwan's civic platform, g0v, is effective at helping the people make important policy decisions. It helps people come to agreement.
The software it runs on is free/libre.
(satire) *Dr. Ron Craig informed patient Tom Stossel Wednesday that the weird lump that appeared on his neck in July was in fact nothing he can afford to worry about.*
The DEA proposes to eliminate the crime caused by prohibition of drugs by more vigorous enforcement of the prohibition of drugs. Some drugs degrade and damage whoever uses them, and should not exist, but trying to wipe them out by repression causes more harm than the drugs themselves.
This, by the way, is the reason I do not advocate simple blanket prohibition of nonfree software. It is corrupting, harmful and subjugating, and should not exist — but trying to enforce prohibition of attractive things which are harmful tends to amount to repression.
The Australian state of Victoria will investigate employers with a view to punishing those that if they fail to help employees avoid catching Covid-19.
If the state really does this, it will be an admirable contrast with all the governments that allow employers to pressure their workers to spread disease.
*California must cut San Quentin prison population amid pandemic, court rules.*
The first organized anti-fascists fought in Spain.
Indigenous workers in Western Australia worked for wages, but Western Australia kept their wages, so it was effectively slavery.
Americans could save up to $321bn in energy costs by switching to renewable energy, including for cars and heating buildings. Plus trillions from all the unnatural disasters that this will avoid.
However, it is not the case that we can do with a smaller electrical grid just by installing rooftop solar on all buildings. Houses will still need the grid for times when the region is dark or cloudy.
The numskull is considering labeling Amnesty, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch as "antisemitic" because they have criticized Israel's occupation of Palestine. If the numskull does this, it will be so absurd that only his hard-core supporters will believe it.
Please, numskull, do it! These bogus accusations, which have typically been made against individuals and weak, obscure organizations, will cease to be plausible and will become risible instead.
Please, everyone, don't campaign to stop this. Let him fall into his own trap first, and then criticize.
And let's limit accusations of antisemitism to people and organizations that spread hatred of Jews.
US deportation thugs *'used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders'.*
*Glitter is an environmental abomination. It's time to stop using it.*
We should do this with a comprehensive law designed to cut down the production of plastic objects that cannot be feasibly recycled or broken down.
It's almost November and the Arctic Ocean has not started to freeze!
* Campaigners are seeking to use the UK’s Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions against Turkish prosecutors and officials responsible for arresting and imprisoning thousands of lawyers.*
A House bill proposes a step in defunding the police: federal funding for "mental health first responder units."
They would handle some 9-1-1 calls so that people who are upset, but not dangerous, don't have to face armed thugs who might get triggered and pull the trigger.
*Press Worries About a Fracking Ban’s 'Risk' to Democrats—Not Fracking's Threat to Planet.*
*The US Spends More Than $80 Billion a Year Incarcerating 2.3 Million People.* Most of them could simply be released.
Many of them are in jail awaiting trial, and they entitled to vote, but the system won't give them a way to vote.
Congress can, and should, pass a law cancelling all federal government acts and appointments made under the conman, with a specific list of exceptions of course.
This would get rid of all the extremist judges that the conman appointed, without the need to impeach each one on specific grounds.
*[The conman] had us thinking mainstream Republicans were moderate. How naive.*
*Pope Francis Signals 'Historic' Shift for Catholic Church, Publicly Supporting Civil Unions for Same-Sex Couples.*
If only he would endorse abortion and birth control, I would have little quarrel with the Catholic Church. (Though that would not constitute evidence for the existence of a supernatural entity.)
Google will provide AI to the US border thugs for total surveillance, tracking and identification around the US border with Mexico.
I have a hunch that this total tracking won't remain limited to areas close to the border. The US government, together with companies such as Anduril, must be itching to apply it to the whole US territory.
*Pakistani Shias live in terror* — they may be lynched or executed by the majority Sunnis.
*Even if Biden wins US election, time is running out to save Iran nuclear deal.*
*Trump’s false ‘Russian spy’ claims put me in danger, says Steele dossier source.*
He claims that the bully's falsehoods wiped out his career and put his life in danger.
*Croatian police accused of 'sickening' assaults on migrants on Balkans trail.*
George Monbiot: *Bypassing the NHS and handing crucial services to corporate executives has led to the catastrophic failure of test and trace [in the UK].*
A Republican official in Florida sent voters a confusing letter designed to discourage them from voting.
Analyzing the reasons for the Bolivian Socialist Party's victory, and the challenges it must face now.
*Anglo American sued over alleged mass lead poisoning of children in Zambia.*
Three years ago, obeying the orders of the bully, the US rushed to deport parents of 1030 children, without bothering to ask how to find them again. The children remained in the US. Since then, the ACLU has been trying to find their parents, but it has found parents of only 465 of the children. That's the Department of Hatred and Sadism for you.
Some of those parents may have been killed — after all, they were fleeing from the danger of violence. Perhaps, as they died, they were glad that they had sent their children to a place of safety.
But is it really a place of safety? Will the US let them stay and become citizens? Or will it deport them when they get older to a country they don't remember?
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, has sued the acting king of Salafi Arabia and 28 henchmen in US court.
The goal is to "compel US agencies and officials to disclose new information about what happened to Khashoggi."
The European Parliament continued its system of payments to farm owners with only weak requirements to make farms clean up their treatment of the environment.
The fatal fire in a large London public housing building was caused by bad design choices, secretly and illegally made by the Tory-run local council, which was aiming to save money at all costs.
The council was trying so hard to save money because of squash-the-poor Tory policies.
Austerity kills in many ways, but usually it kills people one by one and there is no inquiry into the specific causes.
The owners of a Venezuelan oil tanker have kept it near the coast since Feb 2019 waiting for the US to let them pump the oil out. If it leaks, it could kill a large part of the Caribbean Sea.
Facebook bent over backwards for right-wing sites, relaxing its rules against misinformation and thus implementing right-wing bias.
Right-wing extremists have learned to lie without a qualm. That includes telling the lie that media are biased against them, as a cynical means of pressuring media to shift to bias for them.
The EU will operate drones in the Mediterranean searching for refugees in boats.
When the drone spots a boat full of people, it won't have guns to shoot them with, but what will European countries do to them?
(satire) *New Stimulus Bill Would Require All Americans To Mail Government $1,200 Check.*
252 million years ago, *the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set off a chain of events that successively extinguished almost all life in the seas.*
That rise of CO2, caused by a supervolcano in Siberia, was not terribly fast. We are now increasing the CO2 level 14 times as fast.
The article does not state an estimate for the peak atmospheric CO2 level in the end-Permian. Can anyone find an estimate for that? It would be interesting to compare that with where we are heading.
(satire) *Jason Momoa, star of the forthcoming Aquaman 2, told reporters Monday he and the film’s producers had brought in a scene double to help execute a particularly challenging facial expression required of his character.*
The wrecker simultaneously acted to spread Covid-19 and cover up how it was spreading.
During the Assange hearing, Craig Murray and Wikileaks found that Twitter and Facebook blocked their posts from reaching most of their followers.
Those sites did not inform Murray or Wikileaks, nor the people who posted about them, nor their followers, that their messages were reaching hardly any of those followers.
As regards Hunter Biden and Ukraine, there may be something fishy there, but if so it is minor compared with the plutocratist acts Biden is likely to commit overtly (and lawfully) if he wins, which in turn are less dangerous than the wrecker's practice of seizing every opportunity to corrupt and ruin.
Move to Amend (movetoamend.org) says that Facebook searches for "Move to Amend" gets a warning that the search is associated with QAnonsense. Move to Amend advocates a constitutional amendment to reverse the "Citizens United" decision.
A QAnonsense spreader smeared some museums in Berlin, and then someone smeared oil on antiquities and art in the museums.
I encourage you to visit the Pergamon Museum if you ever have the chance.
Environmentalists are suing the Department of Hatred and Sadism for harming human health and polluting the environment with tear gas.
One of the Breonna Taylor grand jurors has accused the attorney general of lying about what he said to the grand jury. He did not offer them the chance to indict for her killing.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make an exception for articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
Vietnam appears to have prevented a second wave of Covid-19 while protecting the economy too.
*How [the wrecker] Gutted OSHA and Workplace Safety Rules.*
How Google used its quasi-monopoly power against Yelp.
It is ironic that Yelp itself is using its market power to help GrubHub cheat restaurants.
We should not try to understand this in terms of "good companies" and "bad companies". Rather, we need to prevent any companies from using their market power to get bigger. More generally, we need to make large companies split up so as to greatly increase the number of competitors in every field.
Prisoners in the UK are suffering greatly from not seeing their families or their counselors.
Bad though it is, having Covid-19 spread through the prison and into the surrounding community would be worse.
The US indictment of crackers working for the Russian spy agency GRU shows that the US is deeply monitoring their activities.
It also shows that the group's attacks have caused people to suffer and perhaps even die, in Ukraine and maybe Pennsylvania.
A wildly foolish overreaction: the New Yorker has "suspended" writer Jeffrey Toobin and is "investigating" him for masturbating while thinking his camera was turned off.
Hey, New Yorker, instead of "investigating" this mistake as if it were a crime, you should have your meetings with Mumble (freedom-respecting software which does only audio) rather than with proprietary Zoom.
A new initiative in the UK demands legalization of cocaine and ecstasy with controlled sale in pharmacies.
This would eliminate the dangers that result from black market sale: unexpected overdoses, and mixture with unknown other drugs. It would reduce drug-fueled gangsterism by taking away its most regular customers.
I am surprised and cheered to see that the former president of Colombia, Santos, is campaigning for legalization of cocaine. Prohibition of cocaine has been devastating for Colombia.
Russia has built a literal cathedral of militaristic nationalism.
A special thug unit in the UK is being formally investigated for engaging in gross collective racism and sexism in its office.
To make such talk a crime would be repressive, but we cannot let such attitudes fester among cops; they will certainly translate it into their exercise of their power.
How the US turned in 1940 to a foreign policy of trying to dominate the world, how Biden will probably ramp it up, and why the US continues it despite ever worse results.
Finally, insight about what romantic-sexual desire is like for many men.
*One of the therapists she quotes in her book, Daring Greatly, asserts, “I guess the secret is that sex is terrifying for most men.”*
(satire) *Man Hasn’t Heard Or Read Single True Thing In 6 Years.*
*At 47, I discovered I am autistic — suddenly so many things made sense.*
The EPA has adopted the airline industry's proposal for how to make air travel emit less CO2. Which means, hardly any pressure. Instead it should make requirements for reduced emissions, and convert the whole airline fleet to electric power by 2045.
*Ending Corporate Impunity Is at the Heart of a Sustainable Post-Pandemic Global Recovery.*
The largest dairy company in France is accused of dumping waste into rivers, thus killing fish and harming other species.
*US removes Sudan from terrorism blacklist in return for $335m.*
If Sudan was involved in the terrorist attack in 1998, it ought to be penalized. However, Sudan is desperately poor and needs aid. For that country to pay so much money to the US will be a great burden.
So I think a different penalty would be morally superior. For instance, leaving some of its oil in the ground.
If the conman does not hold on to the presidency, he faces lots of legal trouble.
This article does not include possible criminal charges for crimes while in office, including obstruction of justice (which Mueller found the evidence for).
I expect he will have Air Force One drop him off on Jan 18 or so in a country he expects to will him from US justice.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to push to repeal the authorization for use of military force.
It won't hurt to say this by phone, too.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
*David Hume was a complex man. Erasing his name is too simplistic a gesture.*
Australia is moving to give its spy agency the power to interrogate journalists and activists under very loose conditions. Journalists could be ordered to disclose confidential sources. Activists could be interrogated if they cooperate with any foreign allies.
Experience shows that such repression will be used mainly against those who report on or oppose the actions of the powerful.
The UK announced that Russia carried out digital sabotage of the 2018 Olympic Games and its sponsors, and was planning sabotage of the 2020 games (which did not take place, since they were postponed).
Please do not use the word "hackers" to mean "people who attack computer security." That gives people an erroneous negative impression of us hackers.
*How the oil industry made us doubt climate change.*
Ironically, the term "climate change" was encouraged so the public would not recognize that it refers to something dangerous.
Chinese diplomats in Fiji attacked a Taiwanese official, causing a head injury.
I theorize that this is a probe to see how much aggression the world will let China get away with. Fiji will probably let China get away with this, as China has bought its submission.
I think it is important for powerful countries to recognize Taiwan as an independent country — but not as the legitimate government of China — and tell China that it can either have diplomatic relations noneless, or do without.
*Revealed: chaining, beatings and torture inside Sudan's Islamic schools.*
There is a history of policies of such cruelty in Christian schools in Europe and North America.
*Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services.*
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Attorney General Barr.
The idea is that even though we know the Senate will not remove Barr from office, the impeachment will hamper the Senate from confirming Judge Barrett for the Supreme Court.
After signing, you can follow up by phoning your congresscritter.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Socialist Party won a landslide in Bolivia's election.
*Bottle-fed babies swallow millions of microplastics a day, study finds.*
We don't know whether microplastics hurt humans, and it may take years to gather the data to determine this. But it is unlikely they do any good, and it would be wise to avoid them.
*Lung cancer cases could be mistaken for Covid.* Some have been, and people can die from the delay in diagnosing the cancer.
France is investigating 50 Islamist organizations on the suspicion that they promote hatred and violence.
People who were prisoners in North Korea describe violent torture including rape, used to force confessions.
One of the reasons the US must eradicate its own torture is so that it can speak with moral authority when condemning torture by North Korea and other countries.
The US has not taken steps adequate to ensure that the CIA doesn't torture prisoners in the future. On the contrary, appointing Gina Haspel to head it was an indirect but clear endorsement of torture.
*With Zuck's Blessing, Facebook Quietly Stymied Traffic to Left-Leaning News Outlets.*
The sites that suffered were not very leftist. One example cited was Mother Jones.
*Wichita man arrested for threatening to kidnap, kill mayor over mask mandate.*
Some of the kooks who would murder because of hatred for masks are also nuts enough to say so. But we cannot expect that to protect us from all of them. We need to stop officials from inciting violence.
The company that makes James Bond films gets millions in subsidies from the UK and pays no tax in the UK, since the profit from the films is all assigned to other companies in other countries.
If the UK wants to pay, in normal times, for people to do work, why not pay them to do work that the public needs, such as medical care for the NHS and home assistance for people who are sick or handicapped?
Under my global progressive tax scheme, those companies would be treated as one entity for computing its tax rate, and the UK part would pay that rate on its gross income.
When people return products to Amazon, in many cases Amazon doesn't bother to unpack them and put them on the shelf. It puts them in the trash.
Wikimedia calls on museums to digitize their collections and to allow the digital works, when not restricted by private copyrights, to be freely shared.
Those that are restricted by private copyrights should be shared too, because forbidden sharing is better than no sharing.
*To Stop an Electoral Coup, Study What Went Wrong in the 2000 Florida Recount.*
Keep in mind that the only reason this recount was necessary is because the Republicans had cheated massively through voter suppression, as revealed by Greg Palast.
Covid-19 has provided an opportunity and excuse for many countries to attack traditional human rights on the Internet.
This is in addition to the subjugating effect of pushing people to use nonfree software.
Various crimes the conman could be prosecuted for, if he can't retain his grip on the presidency.
People are working hard to protect coral reefs from the danger of the current level of global heating.
Will this help the long-term survival of coral? It can, if we curb global heating before it goes much further. However, breeding heat-tolerance into corals would have to be done to every species and variety if it is to protect them all.
If we keep increasing the CO2 level, that will eventually kill all corals due to ocean acidification.
The failure of the UK's handling of Covid-19 is due to its disregard for poor people, who live many to a house and cannot self-isolate nor stay home from work.
*Alarming new data shows the UK was the 'sick man' of Europe even before Covid.* This is caused by greater economic inequality.
India has accused an old man of terrorism for helping poor people organize nonviolent resistance against mining companies.
It happens that the man is a Catholic priest, so Catholics are protesting his arrest.
Jailing opposition leaders has become standard practice for India's repressive right-wing government.
John Pilger: *The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange. Whose Side Are You On?*
I note that he published this on his own site. Apparently there is no newspaper which would touch it.
*In the age of Covid, sanctions against ‘rogue states’ just spread the misery.*
*Hong Kong protester 'Grandma Wong’: I was held in mainland China for 14 months.*
*The freedom to offend is a priceless commodity.*
No group should have the right to silence those who disagree with it, criticize it. or oppose it.
*[In Alaska], mountains are collapsing as the permafrost that holds them together melts, threatening tsunamis if they fall into the sea.*
There would be no time to evacuate the town of Whittier if a nearby slope slides into the ocean.
* Tax authorities find it easier to audit earned income tax credit, which disproportionately affects poor communities of color, than to target billionaires.*
The question is, what's the purpose of income tax audits? Is it to treat poor people almost like criminals, or is it to recover millions from rich cheaters?
*How the idea of overthrowing the [US] government became mainstream [among the right-wing].*
They see guns as giving them power over everyone else, and it led them into a power trip.
EFF: *Orders from the Top: The EU’s Timetable for Dismantling End-to-End Encryption.*
The plan could include prohibiting the use of free software to encrypt, or prohibiting computers that can run solely free software.
A fanatical French Muslim murdered a teacher who had presented in class a cartoon mocking Muhammad, as an example in a discussion of freedom of speech.
In response, teachers vow to teach "difficult subjects" and encourage students' "critical spirit".
Imagine if that were in the US: the student would claim that showing him the cartoon was "violence" and demand firing the teacher.
A strict lock-down has nearly finished eliminating Covid-19 in Victoria (a state of Australia), and Melbourne is starting to relax its isolation rules.
Australia is in a position to eradicate Covid-19 and keep it out, if it proceeds carefully and continues a high rate of testing.
Arguing that Victoria could have eliminated Covid-19 in 6 weeks with a more strict lockdown.
That conclusion is from modeling, and we don't have enough real experience with Covid-19 to be sure of the conclusions. But if they are valid, I think that strict restrictions for 6 weeks would be better than 4 weeks of dithering followed by 10 weeks of increasing strictness.
However, we shouldn't criticize Victoria's officials too much. Perhaps they could have done better, but they did get the job done while so many countries are messing it up.
*With the president’s re-election in doubt, cabinet departments are scrambling to finish dozens of new rules.*
Wisconsin has a high level of Covid-19, but the wrecker plans to increase it with an anti-mask campaign rally.
Salafi Arabia is escalating its war in Yemen at the same time that food aid for that country is decreasing.
*Dianne Feinstein Was Harder on Preteen Climate Activists Than She Was on Amy Coney Barrett.*
This shows the convergence between Democratic plutocratists and Republican plutocratists. I hope we get Feinstein out of the Senate soon.
Many major US store chains lobby to imprison shoplifters and keep them in prison for longer.
The UK is investigating charges that banks are committing "industrial-scale forgery" for fraudulent foreclosures.
Why wouldn't they? Billionaire banks got away with it in the US 10 years ago because Obama protected them from charges. Why wouldn't British banks try it too?
I hope that the UK shows more courage than Obama did. I hope it convicts individual banksters and puts them in prison for this.
In the US, blacks were more likely to have their homes stolen in this way than whites. That was due to the injustice of racism, one effect of which is to make blacks poorer in general than whites.
I condemn racism, for that aspect as well as others. But this matter is not about racism. The criminal banksters didn't know the victims, or what race they were. The victims were just names on a list to them. Their employers had nothing to do with making the loans to those homeowners, years before — they had bought the loans en masse.
I do not condemn the banks' giant fraud because many victims were black. I condemn it because it was an enormous crime against millions of innocent poor people. Many of them, whether black or white or other, couldn't replace what was taken from them.
The banks got away with the crime through corruption at the highest level, and that is why I keep referring to it, even 10 years later.
A UN report accuses President Maduro of Venezuela of knowingly presiding over murder and torture.
I would not put it past him.
The new prosecutor of Portland, Oregon, said he will ignore the minor charges such as "interference with a police officer" that thugs like to make to harass protesters.
In revenge, the thugs are making even more such accusations.
Releasing species from another region into the wild is ecological sabotage.
*Nigeria's anti-police brutality protests bring Lagos to standstill.*
Since the white supremacist attack in Charleston, around 100 public symbols of the Confederacy have been taken down. Over 1700 remain in place.
Calling on Senate Democrats to replace Feinstein as the leader of their contingent in the Judiciary. She pals around with the Republicans and acts to support them.
The commander of an Indonesian military unit whose mission was repression and atrocities is now the minister of the military. He has been banned from the US for 20 years, but the sadist has invited him to visit.
Biden's choice for Secretary of the Treasury is a plutocratist. We cannot expect him to do the most important things we need, such as helping to reduce fossil fuel use.
The USPS, responding to a lawsuit, agreed to reverse DeJoy's sabotage of mail delivery.
I wonder whether they will get it all fixed in the 18 days before the election. This job includes installing sorting machines where sorting machines were removed — but they destroyed the old sorting machines. The USPS could easily fail to acquire replacements, especially if DeJoy gives orders designed to cause failure.
The US has sentenced protesters against nuclear weapons to years in prison for the symbolic "damage" that they did on a missile base.
I wonder what could possibly justify keeping them jailed for years awaiting trial. There was no chance they would fail to show up for the trial, if physically capable of doing so. It would have been right and proper to release them in their own recognizance.
Plutcratist economists call unemployment "creative destruction."
In the 80s and 90s, plutcratist politicians said the solution for unemployment in the US was to teach Americans to be "more entrepreneurial". Kudlow is saying the same thing in different words. What they disregard is that starting a business typically requires an investment of capital, that investment is a gamble, and you shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Most people in the US can't even scrape together 400 dollars for an emergency; they can't afford to invest in the risk of starting a business.
Starting a business with a good chance of success also requires knowing all aspects of that business. Most people don't have suitable knowledge. And success for the business requires superiority or unmet demand.
The same Kudlow told the public in February that the novel coronavirus was no problem, while telling rich Republicans that no one knew how dangerous it was.
*As Big Oil Ups Donations to Dems, Biden Says Banning Fossil Fuels Within Next Decade 'Not Possible'.*
The FCC proposes to regulate what social (or antisocial) communication platforms can publish.
The FCC is obeying the orders of the wrecker. Some of those platforms do great harm, but the wrecker benefits from that harm, so I expect the FCC under his domination to try to aggravate the problems. However, I would not trust Biden on this issue either — nor any politician, except one with a very strong commitment to freedom of speech.
Twitter has retreated from a rule blocking people from pointing at published material that was obtained by cracking computer systems.
Please do not refer to that practice as "hacking." That insults us hackers. Please call it "cracking."
The policy Twitter has dropped was very dangerous. Even though the material about Hunter Biden in that NY Post article was neither new nor significant, in other cases the information may be very important.
*China ambassador makes veiled threat to Hong Kong-based Canadians.*
This confirms that China is intentionally using visitors as hostages.
The CDC ordered a ban on evictions until Dec 31, but the wrecker is reinterpreting it so as to help landlords chase people out sooner.
This is not necessarily motivated by a desire to kick people when they are down. Its motive might instead be to increase the spread of Covid-19; we know he wants to do that.
Russia, increasing its level of sexual repression, is trying to arrest single men who used surrogate mothers to have children, based on presuming that they are homosexual.
The government claims it is illegal for homosexual men to use surrogate mothers, although there is no such law.
*Thirty-year failure to tackle preventable disease fueling global Covid pandemic.* Said disease includes *high blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and obesity, all risk factors for Covid-19.*
How to fix the problem of homelessness; how to have a universal basic income without wasting a large part on people who are well-off.
Trying to teach homeless people to use their money more wisely does not usually enable them to find and keep housing, but giving them homes often enables them to use their money more wisely.
With a well-designed progressive income tax, rich people will return as taxes a large part of their universal basic income.
The Democratic Party in many cities and neighborhoods is led by local bosses that are "crass, thin-skinned, and nepotistic," but promise to take care of their supporters' needs.
With this standard of comparison, their supporters did not find the bullshitter outrageous.
Governments are not doing enough to avoid a rebound in greenhouse gas emissions if and when we eliminate Covid-19.
(satire) *Liberal Man Worried Biden Victory Would Immediately Reignite Discussions About Having Kids.*
He doesn't need to worry. Even if we did our utmost to reduce the coming climate disaster, it would not be a kindness to give birth to someone these days.
Ideally the human population should be considerably smaller, so that we can protect nature without having to live in poverty. So if you are thinking of having no children, please go ahead!
*Sen. Warren Slams Disney for 28,000 Fired Workers Amid Stock Buyback Spree.*
The IMF urges wealthy countries to borrow to support people hurt or unemployed by Covid-19, but it imposes crushing conditions on other countries that also need to support people.
The Taliban are besieging some Afghan government forces in Lashkar Gah, and they have mined the road out of the city. Tens of thousands of civilians are trapped there.
Several suggestions for how to make appointments to the US supreme court less partisan and less contentious.
Mexico's top military official during 2012-2018 has been arrested in the US and charged with corruption with a drug syndicate during that time.
Prohibition of drugs tend to have this result.
A meeting of Republican heavyweights to discuss voter suppression was recorded. Someone said, "Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor."
US journalists are doing little to cover the idea of the Green New Deal. Most Americans only see that Republicans say it is bad, and Biden seems to agree, so Republicans attack him for not rejecting it hard enough.
*Biden has recently stated that under his leadership he would end U.S. support for Saudi military intervention in Yemen, a move supported by Congress, and reassess the current close U.S.-Saudi relationship.*
That would be a real change for the better.
US citizens: call on secretaries of state of all states not to allow private "security" heavies at polling places.
California voters: reject Proposition 22, the bow-down-to-Guber exception.
If we win on this, and eventually Uber accepts the requirement to pay its workers better, that will not make Uber (or Lyft) acceptable — it won't change their injustice to their customers. Nor the food delivery gig companies.
*Pro-democracy advocates are organizing more than 170 events [on Nov 4] in anticipation of President Donald Trump illegitimately declaring victory in the Nov. 3 election.* That's a good idea, but they have messed up the web site where they publish the details: it depends on nonfree Javascript code, and it is totally inaccessible in the Free World. I can't see even one word of the contents of their site, only a message saying "Enable Javascript." No way!
It is a shame that I can't (without sacrificing my freedom and principles) find an event near me, and neither can you, nor can I in good conscience post an urgent note asking everyone to look at the site and find an event to join.
This time, we have considerable notice — 18 days to go before Nov 4. Maybe this is enough time to correct the deficiency, rather than merely bemoan it.
If you are a skilled web developer, and you have a web site where you can make a page without Javascript, and run an hourly cron job on the net, please try it. See if you can scrape the data from their site and make a simple HTML file listing all the events, sorted in some natural way. Put that that page on your site, with a brief introduction saying what these events are for.
Then please email me about it, and I will post a reference to your curved mirror.
Senator Lindsey Graham asked for campaign donations in an interview while in the judiciary committee's meeting room. It is illegal to do that.
An experiment found that "eco" glitter, after ending up in a river, harms plants just like ordinary glitter.
We need to regulate plastic in a way that will eliminate most microplastics. Probably anything like glitter should be prohibited entirely.
Comparing the two simultaneous interviews of Biden and the wrecker.
NBC did wrong to hold the wrecker's interview at the same time that Biden's town hall had already been announced for. We can see that the wrecker's goal was to prevent his supporters from hearing Biden.
The article puts this backward, suggesting (though not actually asserting) that the wrecker's program was scheduled first and Biden's was then run alongside it.
However, it appears that the wrecker's interviewer pressed him hard for answers, and and didn't accept his usual wandering evasions.
So he came off looking very bad.
I did not watch either of them, because I did not need to. I know enough about the two candidates and I've made up my mind about how to vote, so reading these articles was enough information for me.
My recommendation is: in a swing state, vote for Biden; otherwise, vote for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party.
*Eyewitnesses have said that [thugs] did not identify themselves before opening fire on Michael Reinoehl while he was in his car.* It appears that they shot as soon as they had identified him.
In other words, they were supposed to arrest him, but it looks like they murdered him instead.
Reinoehl acknowledged he had shot and killed a right-wing protester, but claimed that he did so in self-defense. He was entitled have trial to present his case.
More info about the killing.
The wrecker boasted about this killing.
*'Look for Power in the Shadows': Watch Sheldon Whitehouse Shine Light on 'Dark Money Operation' Behind GOP Supreme Court Takeover.*
Various lasting debilities affect around 2% of the people who get Covid-19.
It follows that if we let the virus run rampant through the US and infect around 70% of the population, so that herd immunity stops it, we will have about 5 million newly disabled Americans. That's in addition to the 2 million or so who would die.
That's what the wrecker is now in favor of.
It could be more than 5 million.
Given the possibility of being infected twice, once with each of the two principal strains of the virus, it's conceivable that each one would spread until 70% of Americans have had it. So we might end up with a 10 million newly disabled Americans.
In the identified cases of reinfection, the second infection was more grave. Perhaps that is a real phenomenon. Or perhaps it is an artifact of the way this is studied: I suspect the analysis to detect reinfection is done only on patients that need to be hospitalized.
The push to let the virus run rampant is a fake scientific controversy bankrolled by rich people.
Thus it is comparable to the planet roaster's campaign to generate fake controversy about human-caused global heating, and fake doubt about whether tobacco kills.
Demand for efficiency has "crushed the humanity" out of the activity and profession of taking care of someone else.
I have a feeling that the use of "to care" to mean an action rather than an attitude is part of that change.
The district attorney of Los Angeles faces a challenge from a candidate who has learned to push for less imprisonment of minor criminals, and more prosecution of thugs.
The incumbent seems like another Kamala Harris, pushing for being harsher on criminals rather than on rebuilding peace in society.
Governor Cuomo is trying hard to wipe out New York State's Working Families Party.
The EU has placed personal sanctions on some of Putin's cronies for poisoning Alexei Navalny.
Australia's electoral and political system could use some changes.
Ohio is doing voter suppression by having too few polling places in cities. Cities are where people are likely to vote Democratic.
When buildings have been shut for a long time, deadly legionella bacteria can multiply in the water pipes.
YouTube will ban contradicting WHO's recommendations about vaccination.
Anti-vax fantasies, when presented as fact, threaten people's lives. It is useful to do something to weaken the conspiracies that make and spread them. However, censorship is dangerous too.
It would be better to avoid promoting such material when people don't explicitly ask for it. For instance, to label each one with "anti-vax", and not recommend anything with that label, nor find it in searches unless "anti-vax" is one of the search terms.
Sicilian Giuseppe Piraino responded to a mafia demand for money by showing the mafioso photos of murdered judges — then showing the recording to the state, and getting 20 mafiosi arrested and charged.
*Ugandan security forces raid campaign office of opposition leader Bobi Wine.*
Massive rewilding and land restoration would absorb a lot of the CO2 that we are adding to the atmosphere, in a natural way.
Perhaps this could be done a more effective method of offsetting emissions.
*Greener play areas boost children’s immune systems, research finds.*
The effect is visible after just a month.
The thugs that searched the apartment where Breonna Taylor lay dying did not try to save her.
The article does not say whether they were the same ones that killed her. Either way, it shows the callous disregard of thugs for human life.
European countries are trying to deal with an increase in Covid-19 by putting off increasing their distancing measures.
The idea of "apply firm measures if the fraction of people newly infected rises above a certain amount" is a mistake. The time to apply firm measures is whenever the fraction of people newly infected is rising. That is the time to apply measures that are sure to drive R down below 1, and drive the number of people infected down to a low level. Delaying the firm measures will require firmer measures, for a longer period.
After that, it is possible to return to the status quo ante provided contact tracing and isolation are stronger than before.
New Zealand is having a referendum to approve a very limited right to help in dying. I urge people to vote yes.
However, the limitations don't make sense. People undergoing unbearable suffering which is sure to end within 6 months will be allowed this right, but those whose suffering might continue for decades will be required to keep suffering.
The Thai government has prohibited protests, arrested leaders, and increased censorship.
Barrett's testimony implies that she thinks all people can simply choose their sexual orientation.
I don't investigate all the associations and attitudes of an organization before I give a talk for it. I don't have time. (Indeed, I expect, when I give a talk for a university, that it is doing some harmful things that I publicly condemn, such as developing nonfree software, obtaining software patents, and teaching that it is wrong to share copies of published works.)
So I think it is possible that Barrett did not know about those specific positions of the ADF when she gave talks for its fellowship program.
But it is also possible that she knew them and agreed with them, and is now covering it up.
*Barrett's Confirmation to the Supreme Court "Would Be a Catastrophe for the Climate."*
Los Angeles County thugs attacked then arrested reporter Josie Huang as she was reporting outside a hospital. Then they gave a reason which was an obvious lie and brought charges against her.
I've heard that the charges against Ms Huang have been dropped, but there is no sign of an investigation of the attack on her.
Individual rewilders release locally lost species to try to preserve them, and occasionally it works. But usually it does not.
It seems that the conclusion is that what we really need is government support for restoring damaged nature.
*Human rights defenders sue German parliament over anti-BDS resolution.*
The resolution equates boycotting Israeli companies with boycotting Jews — in effect equating criticism of Israel's occupation practices with antisemitism.
The Israeli government pushes to establish that those two are the same,
as a weapon against those who criticize the crimes of the occupation.
Meanwhile, its leaders are friends with people who really are antisemitic.
I support the existence of Israel, and I condemn antisemitism.
However, Palestinians have rights too, like everyone else, and Israel
must respect their rights.
The first head of the Black Police Association of London said that
governments made the London thug department less racist, but this
stopped in 2016 and racism is coming back.
(satire) *NASA officials announced Tuesday
that the Hubble Space Telescope had recently given scientists the rare opportunity to observe a pair of galaxies mating.*
A giant international monopoly of privatized water is being formed.
Privatization of water for residential use should not be allowed.
*Calls grow for radical reform of Chile's national police force.
The Carabineros face 8,500 allegations of human rights abuses in the
past year.*
Canada's last ice shelf broke up and disappeared.
*Great Barrier Reef corals have more than halved in past 25 years,
study shows.*
*University of Sydney law professor arrested while watching student protest.*
He sent his students to watch, because they were studying law and
protest. It appears that the thugs went semi-berserk, thinking
"Wheee, lots of people we can beat up!"
"Smart" meters in Australia will enable the company to report when users turn certain appliances on or off by noticing momentary increases
or decreases in total current used.
For "smart", read "snoop".
The worst thing is that people will have no choice about having their homes
connected to these meters.
Snooping meters should be restricted by law about how fine grained
their reports can be. I contend that informing the customer of per
moment-by-moment current use, plus telling the electric utility the
moment-by-moment current use of a block or neighborhood, is enough
data.
The Supreme Court, now with right-wing bias, has allowed the wrecker to undermine the census count by stopping it early.
Galveston thugs tied a leash to a homeless man and pulled him from horseback.
This is not only humiliating, it is dangerous. It can be hard to keep
up with horses, so the person being pulled can easily fall and be
dragged. That can cause all sorts of injuries.
The Rio Tinto mining company signed contracts with Australian
indigenous groups, paying them money but demanding they remain silent
about possible destruction of their ancient sites by mining. When
some found out that a site was likely to be destroyed, they dared not
complain to the government for fear of losing that income.
This confirms my view that these sites should have absolute protected status.
No one should have the power to allow their destruction.
Twitter suspended apparently fake accounts which claimed to belong
to people that were black and planned to vote for the wrecker.
Israeli combat drones that were battle-tested by bombing Gaza may be
bought by the UK and used to track (and kill?) asylum seekers in the
channel.
A French museum had to defer plans for an exhibit about Mongol emperor
Genghis Khan because China demanded that the exhibit not use the words
"Mongol", "Empire" or "Genghis Khan".
Now that China has started a long-term plan to assimilate Mongols that
live in China, it apparently would like to make the rest of the world
forget that Mongols are ethnically different from Han Chinese. That
will be difficult to entirely accomplish, since the rest of the world
is well aware of the Mongol empire. Russia and the Middle East were
conquered by it and they remember.
Right-wing sites pressure Facebook into bending its rules against hate
and disinformation for them. An employee who collected a list of instances
was fired for this.
Five things Facebook should do to avoid encouraging election violence.
Queensland (part of Australia) could convert completely to renewable generation
in 15 years, generating around 10,000 permanent jobs.
Gideon Spiro writes of the looking of Arabs' houses
and the looting of Jews' houses.
Israel has imprisoned Maher al-Akhras without charges, and his response
is a hunger strike.
Imprisoning people without charges is a fundamental injustice, so
Israel should free him immediately, or else state the charges against
him so he can have a trial.
Naomi Klein: *I fear Trump will exploit his COVID infection to further
destabilize the election.*
Prominent academics warn that the IHRA "definition" of antisemitism
lends itself to repression and censorship of defense of Palestinians'
rights.
Even the author of that criterion warns it should not be used this way.
Proposing to confront Covid-19 with a form of partial shutdown of
society, with firm enforcement of the rules.
The cameras proposed here threaten oppression, but if the purpose of the system
is simply and only to measure how many people are in a place and in general
what they are doing, it could be designed not to identify people. Then it
would be safe.
Virginia's voter registration site crashed shortly before the deadline
because a cable was cut.
The same thing happened in 2016. Do you think this was an accident?
Once may have been; twice is not likely. It looks like sabotage to me.
(satire) *"For just $3 per shipment, Amazon users who are
outwardly critical of our company can have their packages delivered in
a blank cardboard box without any logos or branding so they’ll never
get called out for being hypocritical."*
After Republicans stacked the appeals court, it approved the Texas
voter-suppression measure of allowing only one ballot drop-off per
county.
I am curious to see their rationale, but I suspect it is based on
taking at face value the pretense that this is a measure to prevent
fraud, and disregarding the question of what effect it will really
have.
That gives officials a free hand to oppress people: just fabricate a
motive that would have been legitimate, no matter how absurd.
*Social Security's Cost of Living Adjustment Is Inadequate. Democrats Have a
Plan to Fix That.*
*New Analysis Finds Barrett Sides Against Consumers, Immigrants, Workers, and
More.*
Barrett is willing to consider letting the wrecker unilaterally delay
the election.
That would be quite a stretch to the US Constitution, and shows that
she is prepared to go to great lengths to help the wrecker seize
unconstitutional power.
*IMF warns emissions policies 'grossly insufficient' and urges green recovery.*
It is noteworthy that an organization which in general serves
plutocracy says this. It seems that the planet roasters have lost out
to other interests in one important contest.
*USDA and Meatpacking Industry Collaborated to Undermine Covid-19 Response,
Documents Show.*
I don't know whether that was illegal, but it is corruption.
US border thugs deport large numbers of people to the small
Mexican border town of Sasabe, perhaps because they know it cannot
process so many immigrants that fast and has no place for them to stay.
This sadism is typical of the US border thugs.
*Ending world hunger by 2030 would cost $330bn, study finds.*
That is much less than one would expect. Just $33 billion a year would
be peanuts for the US government.
*Cyprus scraps 'golden passport' scheme after politicians caught in undercover
sting.*
A Thai student leads a protest movement demanding reduction of the power
of the king.
Fracking releases radioactive polonium into the air.
A proposed law in Germany is causing consternation because it uses
feminine word endings throughout instead of the usual masculine endings.
Any doubts about the meaning and legitimacy of this draft text could
be resolved easily by adding a note saying that "In this law, words
with feminine endings that refer to human beings include all humans,
whether female or not."
Has the Labour Party still got a conscience? Will it vote against a
bill to permit infiltrating undercover thugs to commit crimes without
limit, even murder?
*Facebook greatest source of Covid-19 disinformation, journalists say.*
*Koch-Funded Legal Group Pushes to Allow Mass Evictions During Pandemic.*
The greatest danger of putting Barrett on the Supreme Court is that it
could adopt that philosophy — that "civil liberties" means there
cannot be any limit on the power to evict tenants.
*Extinction Rebellion is showing Britain what real democracy could look like.*
Big business gets to demand change in government policies at any
moment, whereas the people get to do so only at intervals of years.
One of the reasons for Extinction Rebellion effectiveness is that it
is absolutely, totally nonviolent (though its protests are sometimes
disruptive).
*China still allowing use of pangolin scales in traditional medicine.*
China is not egregious in failing to adequately protect endangered
species. Many countries, perhaps most, fall short on that dimension.
State infiltrators are bad when they infiltrate peaceful dissident
groups. However, infiltrating real terrorist groups is legitimate
and can be very effective for stopping terrorism. Here is an example.
JCB, which sells construction equipment, is under legal pressure
for selling tractors to an Israeli company and not taking steps
to prevent their use in forcible demolition of Palestinian homes.
The US increased the size of the Supreme Court before, and for good
reasons.
* Biden must call on federal workers to ignore illegal orders and faithfully serve the Constitution.*
Announcing a new political article, "The Broken Trust Model of Policing Police"
The bully still has a few weeks to provoke Iran into war.
The provocations are already killing Iranian civilians.
Academics call for universities to join to protect their students from
persecution by China over criticism of China in their classes and
academic work.
Students are afraid of being imprisoned if and when they go to China,
even over what is said by others in the same class.
To get the US to imprison you for what you publish, you have to do something
heroic, such as exposing secret crimes.
China, by contrast, will imprison people merely for criticizing China,
or even for nothing at all if they are useful as hostages.
(satire) *several reports indicated
Monday that the idea of the total collapse of democracy was so
horrifying that America decided it hadn’t happened yet.*
(satire) *Judge Amy Coney Barrett
promised Monday that her Catholic faith’s tenets of generosity and
humanity would not interfere with her duty on the court to crush the
nation’s poorest and most downtrodden citizens.*
*Trump desperately needs to avoid another withering exposure that
another debate would cement. That is why, true to the coward that he
is, he’s hiding from it.*
An additional advantage of public banks is that governments could directly
make them stop investing in fossil fuels.
For the other reasons public entities should put their money in public
banks, see here.
General Atomics has developed spy drones that can track everyone in a
substantial area — such as a big city — at once. The initial
application for them was for war, but now it is making thinly veiled attempts
to fly them over American cities.
Jesse Jackson: *Myths and Lies About Poverty.*
I take issue with Jackson on one point: most Americans do support the
laws that would eliminate most poverty. But plutocats have used (and
created)
flaws in our democracy to keep control of our government and
defeat candidates such as Sanders that stand for the policies most
Americans support.
CEPR: The US Census Bureau underestimates poverty in the US because it uses
too low a value for the poverty line, one that doesn't relate to today's life.
Here's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced a Republican
congresscritter that first insulted her on the capital steps, then
tried to claim that we shouldn't blame him for that because he has
daughters.
I was so moved by her strength and dignity that I found a recording to
listen to via invidious. Her speech is even more impressive as spoken
word.
* To make experimental antibodies [for Covid-19] affordable will cost billions. If they
are shown to work, it will be money well spent.*
Rafał Gaweł, who was prosecuted in Poland for journalism, has won
asylum in Norway.
*WHO chief says herd immunity approach to pandemic 'unethical'.*
The reasons he cites are the simple, evident reasons that we can all
see if we look.
*California investigates unauthorized ballot boxes installed by Republicans.*
Setting up an unauthorized ballot drop-off box is electoral fraud
and I hope those Republicans get punished.
Scientific advisers warned the UK government three weeks ago that
it was time to take strong measures to avoid a "large epidemic".
Either the ministers are timid and weak, or they are playing a game of
trumpery.
China has cut off its importation of Australian coal.
It will presumably burn Chinese coal instead.
This could teach Australia to invest in something less damaging than
coal mining. But I fear that the Australian government will be so
desperate for China to resume buying coal that it will break and bow
down to China. That would be very bad for freedom in the world.
The Australian government has a few oppressive policies — towards
immigrants,
towards software developers.
Towards whistleblowers that
reveal its dishonesty and crimes.
However, in general it is much
better than China.
In regard to global heating, to the first order this makes no
difference. Australian coal and Chinese coal are both very damaging.
*People in Gaza sifting through rubbish for food, UN head says.*
Senate Democrats have failed us by not going to the mat to block
confirmation of Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice.
The hearings are useless. Democrats could show she shot someone on
Fifth Avenue and the Republicans would still confirm her, just as they
confirmed Kavanaugh.
With her, the court will find it easy to use some excuse to set aside
the election and make the wrecker president again.
*Judges' politics absolutely sway how they decide cases. I crunched the
numbers.*
President Xi is showing the people who served as his puppet government
in Hong Kong just how unimportant they are to him.
China is luring Chinese people to adopt the official state payment
app, which is even more Big Brotherish than the private payment apps
they mostly use now.
Protect your country from going down that path — insist on paying
for products and transportation with cash, anonymously.
*This is my message to the western world — your civilisation is killing life
on Earth.*
It is a justified rebuke to civilization, but limiting it to "western"
is not fair. Civilization is global; civilization in Asia is involved
too.
*[One] fifth of nations at risk of ecosystem collapse, analysis finds.*
The UAE punishes foreign workers that get pregnant, and their children,
with homelessness and starvation, and the children with denial of education.
This punishment lasts for an indefinite term; it could be years.
Many religions support injustice to women.
*Covid coughing link 'may be stopping people with lung cancer coming forward'.*
The delay in detecting and treating lung cancer can be fatal.
The UK's National Health Service has also caused delays in testing for
and treating cancer, by being slow. People are dying from that.
Covid-19 made this a lot worse, but it was starting before.
The NHS did a pretty good job, given the inadequate funding that
governments gave it. However, plutocratist governments have cut its
funds step by step over many years.
Under those conditions, it will become less and less effective — but
don't blame the NHS for that.
A right-wing protester in Denver attacked a journalist's bodyguard,
first with a punch, then with pepper spray. The bodyguard shot him
dead.
I am concerned by the fact that the bodyguard was arrested for
defending himself.
The anti-distancing activist who attacked a journalist in Brooklyn
faces criminal charges for doing that.
* Rainforests face unprecedented fires, yet BlackRock, State Street and
Vanguard have consistently voted in favor of deforestation.*
*New Zealand Becomes First Country in the World To Require Financial Sector To
Report on Climate Risks.*
*Anthony Fauci criticises Donald Trump for using his words out of context.*
The bullshitter's campaign made it appear that Fauci was endorsing
some bullshit.
The wrecker may try to seize power after the US election. How can
Americans stop him? Here are methods that succeeded for blocking
coups in several other countries.
(satire) *… members of a local white nationalist militia stated
Friday they were stretched to the limit trying to attack everyone the
president wants them to.*
Georgia kicked over 310,000 voters off the registration list on the
grounds that they had moved. Supposedly it did this based on data
from the USPS. Greg Palast's team checked properly with the USPS and
found out that 197,000 of them should not have been deleted.
This is an example of voter suppression. The current governor of
Georgia stole the election in 2018 by voter suppression like this.
*Amazon bullies partners and vendors, says antitrust subcommittee.*
*Facebook is a social network monopoly that buys, copies or kills competitors, antitrust committee finds.*
*Costa Rica Holds Anti-IMF Protests for Tenth Day in a Row.*
There is a campaign for the UK to block China from having a seat in the
UN Human Rights Council.
The very idea of China's presence in that group illustrates the fact
that it has been taken over by the enemies of human rights.
*New Documents Reveal How the Animal Agriculture Industry Surveils and
Punishes Critics.*
*Federal judge blocks Texas governor's order to shut down ballot drop-off sites.*
I suppose this will go through two appeals and reach the Supreme Court.
I wonder what it will say.
*Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland.*
Some protesters were sick for a long time after being attacked in this way.
Farming salmon on a large scale, as today, causes a number of ecological dangers, and can also incubate diseases as well as
parasites.
*How Charles Koch Is Buying Credibility With Academic Investments.*
Pasco, Florida, tries to prevent crime by persistently harassing people thought to be possible future criminals until they move out of
town.
The US response to Covid-19 has been driven by various wrong intuitions so that it has been purely planned.
The article does not mention that the wrecker and Republicans
intentionally undermined the effort so he could use the disease for
his reelection. (I think we did not yet have proof of that when it
was written.) However, I don't think that invalidates the article.
The Republicans took advantage of these erroneous tendencies, and they
are still doing so.
1/5 of the high-ranking officers of the New York Thug Department have
substantiated patterns of injustice to the public. Substantiated to the department's satisfaction, that is.
The department works hard to cover them up.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The CDC wanted to order people to use masks in public transportation, but the wrecker's political officials blocked it.
If our state and local officials were on our side and getting good
advice, all trying to do the best thing to protect people from
Covid-19 and bring it to an end, it might be better for these
decisions to be made locally. Alas, led by the wrecker, many of them
are on the virus's side, and this decision helped them spread it.
UK thugs display a pattern of violence and bodily harm against
anti-fracking and anti-HS2 protesters.
The head of the Somerville, Massachusetts, thug union now faces
criminal charges for pepper-spraying a person who was handcuffed.
It appears that the most thuggish of thugs feel drawn to becoming
officials of the unions that protect thuggishness.
The saboteur is sabotaging science by forbidding research using fetal
cells culture.
Dubya did the same thing. In the 2000s, a friend of mine hoped that
research would find a way to prevent his developing blindness. Due to
Dubya's policy, that research was not done. Now he is completely
blind.
A fetus is not a baby, and a culture of human cells is not a human
being. There is absolutely nothing wrong (barring unusual
circumstances) with an abortion, and absolutely nothing wrong with
using fetal cells (or their cultures) for research (medical or
otherwise). When anyone acts less than proud of using the results of
such research, we should speak up and say, "Be proud!"
*Despite Trump's 'Jobs, Jobs, Jobs' Bluster, the Rust Belt Is Still Reeling from Plant Closures.*
Covid-19 transmission has been rising in the Czech Republic since August,
and has reached the point where it will overload the medical system.
This demonstrates yet again that trying to trim the settings in the rules
is a mistake. Once transmission starts accelerating, you must take
firm action without delay. You're only safe if the number of new
cases is decreasing.
Even a weak target for greenhouse emissions reduction can create
many jobs and a booming economy.
It could slow down disaster, and pave the way for stronger steps.
See which candidates have pledged to amend the Constitution to reject
the idea that corporations are entitled to human rights.
I was disappointed to see that not one candidate in my state
has endorsed it.
A sunken British slave ship, of great archaeological interest, is being
destroyed by unrestricted trawling.
A few dissident scientists purport to be arguing for letting Covid-19
spread to produce herd immunity. Superficial news coverage makes it
look like a serious scientific dispute, but their position is not
clear enough to make sense. And its supposedly scientific supporters
are not all real scientists.
In other fields, such "skepticism" has been funded by businesses with
something to gain by creating a false impression of uncertainty.
There is no shortage of businesses that might want to create the
appearance of doubt about whether we should try to wipe out Covid-19.
And there are rich supporters of the conman who might do this.
I wonder if someone who knows how to investigate could check for such
connections.
The British practice of raising large numbers of birds to release them
for wealthy people to shoot is causing ecological damage; stricter laws are needed.
Political officials alter the CDC's weekly reports for political
purposes. They are pushing the head of the CDC to modify old reports too.
Dr. Rick Bright resigned from the National Institute of Health after
he was sidelined for insisting on doing what was scientifically and
medically called for.
*'Catastrophic Failure to Tackle Inequality' Left World Unprepared for
Pandemic.*
New political article: An Extinction Rebellion activist comments about the London police
by Clark Killick
US citizens: call on the Department of Agriculture to keep the Roadless Rule
for the Tongass National forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to have no vote on any nomination to
fill Justice Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat until the winner of this
election is inaugurated.
Everyone: Donate now to save Europe from Software Patents, says FFII.
If you are German, contact your representative in the Bundestag
to oppose the "unitary patent".
*Facebook Profited From Climate [Dis]information Even After Vowing to
Fight It, Report Shows.*
These ads were not mere errors, they were intentional deception.
Thus I call them "disinformation".
(satire) *… millions of Americans worried that they weren’t appealing enough to
land any potential commander in chief who didn’t constantly lie, steal,
and cheat on them by having secret relations with numerous other
countries."
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: the US should not allow any one person
to have the power to launch a nuclear attack unilaterally.
Interesting article: *Binary Oppositions and the Hard Hard Problem of
Solidarity.*
Republicans are sending armed white supremacists to "monitor" polling
places and try to intimidate blacks other marginalized people from
voting.
Their supposed excuse for the intimidation is to discourage fraud in
voting, but even if there were fraud, they would be unable to stop it.
(satire) Wisconsin Reports Zero Evidence Of Voter Fraud In Ballots
They’ve Thrown Out So Far.
Bianca Williams rebukes the investigation of the incident where she
was stopped by thugs, because it will consider only whether they treated
her courteously, not whether they fabricated a disguise of a reason.
How people in New York City stopped a pipeline for fracked gas.
*Warning Fundamental Rights and American Lives at Stake, 5,000+ Lawyers Urge
Senate to Reject Barrett.*
They wrote, "Rushing to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett will cause
irreparable damage to the public's faith in the Supreme Court, the
rule of law, and our democracy."
(satire) *… the South Carolina Election Commission announced
Friday that urban polling places would feature large plexiglass
barriers around the entire building.*
(satire) *Frisky Housewife Lets Revealing Robe Slip After Opening Door
To Amazon Delivery Drone.*
Guidelines and examples for resisting coups carried out
by heads of government that refused to leave after losing an election.
It is clear that the would-be tyrant intentionally incited violence
including the planned plot to kidnap or assassinate Governor Whitmer
of Michigan.
What I don't know is whether there is any way to hold him legally
responsible — with criminal charges. I don't know where the line
is for incitement of violence or other crimes this might possibly be.
The cult leader is almost certainly still infected with coronavirus,
but he is holding rallies at which he will surely not wear a mask.
From a rational perspective, this may seem crazy, but I think it makes
sense psychologically, He inviting cult members to demonstrate their
loyalty and faith in him by letting him expose them to coronavirus.
Next year there will be interviews with adults in the prime of their
lives who suffer persistent medical problems stemming from this
display of faith.
Senator Lee, a Republican, declared his opposition to democracy.
He refuses to clarify who he thinks should rule, but I think the
answer would be "billionaires and Republicans."
Pence, in the debate, repeated the wrecker's veiled threat to seize
power if they cannot pretend to have won.
I say "pretend" because their voter-suppression efforts will be
included in the count.
*India's tea workers strike as government fails to deliver wage increase.*
The plot to kidnap or kill Michigan Governor Whitmer has been planned
since June.
Barrett, as a judge, has been happy to seize on technicalities to send
asylum seekers back to danger.
A plan to require houses to be built with electric sockets to aid in
replacing gas stoves with electric stoves in the future, and for
recharging cars in the garage, is facing a big fight from gas companies.
Some people who have "recovered" from Covid-19 experience crippling
"brain fog".
Amnesty International reports that over 220 activists for human,
environmental, and land rights have been murdered in Colombia this
year.
The government is right-wing, thus allied to the paramilitaries, who
are surely responsible for most of the murdering.
*Portland: [thugs] targeted medics [at Black Lives Matter protests]
with teargas and projectiles, report finds.*
Thugs also kept ambulances away from the injured people at the
protest. This is what Israeli soldiers do to injured Palestinians,
and on a number of occasions has resulted in their death.
The city thugs were bad, and the federal thugs were even worse.
They should all be prosecuted.
Julian Assange's extradition hearing demonstrated that the US and UK
governments will break any rule and tell any lie to get Assange.
The article recounts how his supporters' computers were stolen,
as well as how his basic rights as a person accused were violated.
This follows a legal campaign in which procedures and laws were
trashed again and again, and which demonstrated that the Swedish state was only using the
original charges against Assange as an excuse, and had no interest
in seriously investigating them.
If Assange is thinking of suicide, I do not think that represents any
sort of mental derangement on his part. Under Assange's
circumstances, suicide would be a rational act, an act of courage,
avoiding a fate worse than death.
A few days ago I said that no one ever really deserves to die. If you
are facing a fate worse than death, what you really deserve is to
avoid it and live. But if that is impossible, I still hope that you
avoid it.
Covid-19 has unmasked what the Republican Party stands for.
This statement in the article includes an erroneous presupposition.
The latter is what the Republican Party has really stood for since
decades ago, but it tried to disguise that stand until recently.
A letter supposedly signed by scientists that urged the UK to let
Covid-19 spread and aim for herd immunity seems to be at least
partly a hoax.
That "solution" would mean lots of people die or develop lasting organ
damage.
The UK is (reluctantly) using government spending to preserve most
jobs and the workers who have them, even if there is currently no work
for them to do.
*Covid drug given to Trump developed using cells derived from aborted fetus.*
There is nothing wrong with that — fetuses are not human beings. But
the bullshitter will need to excuse himself to the Christian extremists
that support him.
I suppose he will plead hypocrisy again: "Never mind that I
never live by your principles; you know I have no conscience."
Describing some of the crimes the conman could be prosecuted for,
if he can't hold on to the presidency.
The US proposes a deal to support the subjection of Palestinians in exchange
for the subjection of Western Sahara.
Two injustices at once — no wonder the bully loves it.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for killing Jonathan Price
as the latter was trying to break up a fight between other people.
Even the head of the Federal Reserve acknowledges that the US economy
needs stimulus.
Only Republicans deny it.
Hasidic Jews in New York City held a violent anti-mask protest
and attacked a journalist who was doing nothing but making a video.
One of them recognized him and knew he might criticize them later in
his writing.
To those who shouted "Jewish Lives Matter," I agree — they do.
So protect other Jewish lives (and non-Jewish lives) by wearing masks!
The bully plans to impose sanctions on the rest of Iran's banks and
money transfer systems with the aim of preventing Iran from buying
medicine and other products for humanitarian needs.
*The bulk of the chaos [of the wrecker's antigovernance] is simply
America the Terrible emerging from the shadows: our real history
suddenly visible.*
(satire) *… local terrorist group benefactor Ahmad al-Yasin was
reportedly disappointed to learn Thursday that most of his
donations go to covering administrative costs. "… these
funds should go toward suicide vests and stocking up on AK-47s …."*
A House subcommittee calls for new laws to reduce the market power
of the big tech companies.
Feral pigs are overrunning the US and causing a lot of damage.
The problem is difficult because letting individuals hunt them makes them
more wary.
*[The bully's] Directives Restricting Discussion of Race,
Discrimination Are Censorship.*
They are very broad, and could
restrict teaching in public schools, even universities that receive
federal funds.
(satire) *Vice President Mike Pence appeared to
instinctively address his responses to Sen. Kamala Harris’ husband
during Wednesday night’s vice-presidential debate.*
Meanwhile, Harris demonstrated yet again her weakness on confronting the
danger of global heating.
A lawyer warns that parents who accept distance learning from a public
school may be construed by courts as giving the school officials
permission to look through the computer's camera at any time during
school hours, and report whatever they see.
Unlike many other injustices of distance learning, this possible
injustice does not depend on having malware in the computer.
But malware can potentiate it.
* Human Rights Watch report accuses [Bolivia's] administration … of overseeing legal offensive against people linked to
Morales*, the president expelled by the coup in 2019.
To construe launching a nonviolent protest as "terrorism" is tyranny,
and reveals the nature of the coup-installed government.
Evo Morales Tells Jacobin: We’re Still Fighting the Multinationals Who
Drove the Coup.
Last month was the hottest September ever recorded,
as California found out, to its peril.
I've read that 2020 is likely to be the hottest year ever recorded.
But this record will not last many years.
*‘Successful’ People Are Misery Super-Spreaders.*
*'On the Level of Guantánamo': Oklahoma Jail Guards Accused of Torturing
Inmates With 'Baby Shark' Song.*
The idea of torture by repeatedly playing a childish song seems like a
joke. Indeed, it was a joke, in the movie One, Two, Three (1961).
But that headline is misleading. Shackling prisoners to a wall for
hours is real torture, music or no music.
*[UK] Data watchdog finds [education] ministry broke GDPR by
mishandling national database for [all pupils in] England.*
It is interesting to see that in some cases the GDPR can prohibit
construction of a database. Now we will see whether it can in practice
get rid of the prohibited database.
Perhaps in January the GDPR will cease to have any force in the UK,
as its commitment to follow EU directives will cease then.
*Activists Sue San Francisco for Wide-Ranging Surveillance of Black-Led
Protests Against Police Violence.*
Michael Mann reports that the last ten years of climate research
give us a basis for hope: it takes only five years for a reduction
in CO2 emissions to result in a reduction in global heating.
So we still have a chance to avoid global heating disaster, if we
start promptly and work hard.
*EU parliament votes for 60% greenhouse gas emissions cut by 2030.*
This is starting to be in the range of what is really necessary.
*Chase Climate Pledge 'Shows the Power of Relentless Environmental Activism'
But 'Not Aggressive Enough'.*
*As climate catastrophes worsen the insecurity of the white
so-called middle class will only intensify as well, and for good
reason. As it does an even greater number of white folks will choose
from a fascist movement that speaks to their loss of power and invites
them to reclaim it (from the wrong people) by force, or a Black Lives
Matter movement that literally ignores their existence. Which will they
choose?*
I'm going to oppose fascism (a form of illiberal plutocracy) no matter
what, just as I am going to oppose racism no matter what. The violence
of thugs against blacks is vicious, so I will oppose that no matter
what. This is because of my adherence in a universal standard of
justice, one that has nothing to do with identity.
I hope that those who campaign against those forms of evil will
recognize the need for a universal standard of justice. Without that,
their campaigns will undermine their own moral foundation as well as
their chances to win general support.
The inspector general of the Department of Justice reports that
Attorney General Sessions and his deputy were directly behind the
decisions to prosecute every unauthorized immigrant and separate
families. They pressured subordinate officials to do this.
(satire) *White House Staff Heartbroken By Sight Of Weak Trump Struggling To Yell
Racial Slurs At TV.*
*Thousands of people given emergency shelter [in the UK] at start of
pandemic are now being evicted.*
Ironically, this is happening just as Covid-19 is spreading again
and it is cold outside — like the situation that motivated giving them
housing earlier this year.
(satire) *…a
division of confused U.S. Army Corps of Engineers members were
reportedly trying Wednesday to figure out what the big blue cable
connected to the country does.*
*Climate denial ads on Facebook seen by millions, report finds.*
Golden Dawn organized a quasimilitary militia and carried out
crimes of violence for 20 years before it was prosecuted.
Why did the Greek state take so long to prosecute it?
*Fed Lending Saved Corporate America. It Could Do the Same for Cities and
States.*
The Dutch Rijksmuseum is thinking about returning objects that were
collected over a century ago from territory that is now Indonesia.
What does it mean to "return" those objects?
Consider the diamond mentioned in the article, which the Dutch took
from the Sultan of Banjarmasin. If the Netherlands ought to return
that, to whom should it be returned? Today's Republic of Indonesia
has nothing to do with that diamond's history; it succeeded the
Netherlands as the sovereign power for most of Borneo but not directly
from the Sultan's government. It makes no sense to "return" the
diamond to the republic. The sultan of Banjarmasin would hardly have
demanded the return of his diamond to a polity based on Java unless
it was ruled by his descendants.
The diamond could be returned to the sultan's last heir (who might
that be?), but is there really a moral obligation to do that?
The diamond may be worth a lot of money, but I'd expect it has less
non-monitary value than other objects in the museum. Each one raises
the questions, "Was this stolen?" and "If so, from whom?" and "Who is
the heir today of that person or entity?"
The FBI shut down a real right-wing terrorist plot to kidnap the
governor of Michigan.
I hope that after January we can prosecute the extremist that encouraged
this plot.
Everyone: call on Attorney General Becerra to hold Amazon
accountable for its abuses of its workers in California.
Relatives of people who died from Covid-19 feel intensley offended
by the bully's contempt for the deceased.
The New England Journal of Medicine called for voting out the bully,
for the "recklessly squandered lives" of people who died from Covid-19
due to his crazy policies.
US citizens: call on the US Forest Service to reject proposed new regulations
to facilitate extracting fossil fuels from public lands.
General Milley and other top US generals are in quarantine in case the
spreader in chief transmitted coronavirus to them.
Facebook is banning most sorts of presentations of QAnonsense.
The Boston thug department protects its thugs, even from the district
attorney. It drags its feet on handing over information about thugs
that have been accused of violence.
She is threatening (though not with an aggressive tone) to use a
subpoena to get the information.
*[The corrupter]’s Barrett Nomination Another Step Toward Christian Fascism.*
The "prosperity gospel" is a perversion of Christianity. (Don't the
gospels quote Jesus as saying, "Sell all thou hast and give to the
poor"?) Just as the middle ages twisted Christianity into the divine
right of kings, plutocracy has twisted it into the divine right of
billionaires.
Israel's thug chief: Protesting is now illegal so we will continue
breaking up protests, even violently.
Morally, the situation is clear. People have a right to protest, so
they should be allowed to protest as long as they wear masks and keep
well apart. But Israel does not have a written constitution that
could be used to argue legally that the law must not violate people's
constitutional rights.
Deputy Chief Tingirides has set up very successful community policing
in Watts, in Los Angeles.
All thug departments should do what Tingirides is doing in Watts, but
that does not conflict with the goal of defunding. What that means is
to transfer funds to an agency set up to respond to many kinds of
9-1-1 calls by sending people trained for counseling rather than
confronting criminals.
Don't make the mistake of choosing politicians for their physical strength
or the mistake of imagining that recovering from an infection is a test
of physical strength.
The leaders of the Greek right-wing hatred party Golden Dawn have been
convicted of participating in a criminal gang.
Bogus Johnson is trying to take the effective legislative power away
from Parliament and give it to people under the Prime Minister's
command.
The US deportation thugs admit that they acted illegally by deporting
Cesar Marroquín while he was waiting for an immigration hearing.
But that may not enable him to get back.
Intensification of agriculture is pushing global heating.
Thinning some forests in Australia led to worse fires.
It is possible that this was due to other effects of the machines used
to do the thinning.
* The Chinese-backed gold, silver and copper mine [in Papua New
Guinea] risks catastrophic environmental destruction, [UN] special
rapporteurs argue.*
Exxon plans to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 17%, as of 2025.
That is a plan for mass murder.
Two British PISSI recruits tortured captives using techniques borrowed
from US torture, including waterboarding and "stress positions".
We warned that US torture would inspire revenge torture.
*William Hanage, professor of epidemiology at Harvard, likens the [herd
immunity] strategy to protecting antiques in a house fire by putting
them all in one room, standing guard with a fire extinguisher, but
simultaneously fanning the flames [in the rest of the house].*
The Save Our Seas Act proposes funds to encourage research on removing
plastic waste from the sea, and on ways to recycle it.
It can be seen as an effort to avoid doing anything to reduce the production
of plastic objects that are difficult to recycle.
Two Republican disinformation operatives face criminal charges of trying
to intimidate voters with frightening lies.
The Los Angeles thug department makes massive use of face recognition.
It tries to weasel out of this by saying it does not have a face
recognition system. Which is true, strictly speaking, but does not
change anything.
It is a strategic mistake to argue based on the absence of some photos
from the database. Their most obvious reply would be, "So let us put
everyone in it; then it will be unbiased." That is the opposite of
what we want; we want limitations on who they can include in that
database, and which captured faces they can search it for.
(satire) *Trump Supporters Fighting Over Used Tissues President Tossed From SUV.*
*[The bullshitter] lied to America's workers when he told them jobs were staying in
the United States. Under his watch jobs have left while he continues
rewarding outsourcing corporations with millions of dollars in
lucrative government contracts — in the middle of a pandemic.*
Calling on US hotels to stop serving as deportation prisons.
Keeping people in hotels as prisons has facilitated deporting them
quickly and denying them their right to a hearing.
*Peace Groups Blockade Creech Air Force Base to Protest 'Illegal and Inhumane
Remote Killing' by US Drones.*
The district attorney who asked for prosecution of the thug that killed
Breonna Taylor lied about what happened in the grand jury.
Recordings show he never asked the grand jury to consider murder
charges.
Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany recklessly endangered reporters' lives
by refusing to wear a mask while talking to them.
When she got infected, she did not know right away. In general, you
don't know you are infected until some days after you start spreading
virus — or perhaps you never find out. This is why you should always
protect others by wearing a mask. Her failure to do so was reckless.
Surely the superspreader had told her to follow his example, but that
is no excuse.
(satire) *John Bolton
was reportedly seething with jealousy Tuesday that President Trump got
to become a real-life living, breathing biological weapon.*
90 people work doing housekeeping jobs in the White House. At least
two of them have contracted coronavirus, and were told to hush it up.
It is not a safe place to work.
The use of low-paid throw-away migrant labor in agriculture has spread
around the world. Covid-19 has made many of them suffer more, but it will do nothing to improve
the way agricultural workers are treated.
Giving them better treatment, including better pay, will make food
more expensive. But that will be a good thing, if the wealthy
countries support poor people better. It will make agricultural jobs
good enough that citizens will work in them, and make farming more
profitable in poor countries so that not so many people will be
desperate to migrate for work.
Columbia University students voted for divesting from companies that
are involved in Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Israel is planning to build an additional 4,400 housing units on
Palestinian territory.
*Israeli prison ban on phone calls risks ‘breaking spirits’ of Palestinian
minors.*
*Hamas, Fatah agree to hold elections in the coming months.*
Palestinians have been weakened by this disunity, but given the
different conditions in parts of Palestine (in the West Bank, military
occupation; in Gaza, siege) it is difficult for one government to
govern both properly.
*Poll Shows Small Business Owners Support Multinational Tax Transparency.*
I don't think that small business owners should be more important than
the rest of us, but they have plenty of opportunities to get screwed
by big businesses they are compelled to deal with.
The California Resources Corporation owns almost 18,000 oil wells in
California. Most of them are exhausted and must be plugged, for
safety's sake. The corporation is broke, so it will cost the state
almost a billion dollars to plug these wells.
I have a hunch that this corporation did not own the wells when they
were profitable. I have a hunch it did not exist then. My hunch is
that profitable oil companies sold off subsidiaries programmed for
bankruptcy making them the owners of these wells, and those
subsidiaries became the California Resources Corporation.
We know that a big coal company did this to escape its pension obligation
to workers.
The owners kept their wealth, and the workers were thrown back on
Social Security. Which Republicans are now planning to destroy.
If a coal company could do it, oil companies could do it.
Whether or not this is an instance of that form of cheating, it
illustrates the tendency of businesses to run off with "profits" made
by dumping debt on the public.
Remember this next time a rich person says, "I made this (all by
myself)."
*Americans showed [the contemptuous leader] compassion. He repaid us
with contempt.*
Even I showed some compassion to him personally, though without letting this
override my greater duties as an American and as a human being.
A pediatrician asks why thugs should get qualified immunity when they
injure people, and not doctors.
*More and more people are being excluded from British democracy in a creeping
apartheid.*
A German court is considering the case against Assad and his government
for use of sarin.
I have doubts about whether Assad used Sarin. I would not put it past
him; he did plenty of killing, and plenty of torture of prisoners.
I suppose he would not have had scruples about using nerve gas.
But I can't see why he would have used it only twice. Using poison
gas even once, one assumes the full odium of having used poison gas,
but gain little military advantage. Since he does not seem to be
insane, why would he pay so much for so little?
In addition, Seymour Hirsh said that there was no sarin attack
in Khan Sheikhun.
This is a doubt, not a certainty. I am not in a position to reach any
conclusion about this. Meanwhile, it makes no difference to what I
think of Assad. He is guilty of plenty of other crimes.
Pope Francis has spoken against neoliberal trickle-down politics.
Will this lead Biden to reconsider his rejection of Medicare for All?
Protesters won the annulment of the evidently rigged Kyrgyzstan election.
*Labour is staying neutral as the [Tory] government sanctions state
violence against its citizens.* This includes violence up to and
including rape or murder.
People who work in the White House are angry with the wrecker
for not warning them he was transmitting virus and doing nothing
to protect them or reduce the spread.
Got Covid-19? [The conman] wants bleach for others and the best
treatment for himself.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for killing Jonathan Price.
When Jonathan was tased, he started twitching and the thug interpreted this
as a threat.
The Department of Harshness and Sadism wants its documents of abuses
to be classified as "temporary", which means they will be destroyed
in a few years.
The wrecker has done broad harm to science in the US, and to public
respect for scientists. Some kinds of damage could take a long time
to repair.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sponsor H.R. 2529, a bill
to continue the New START arms limitation treaty with Russia.
The UK is considering a massive investment to generate all residential
electricity by wind power.
Examples like these can get the rest of the world moving. The return
on this investment, in terms of towns and farms not flooded, could be
enormous.
*Tesla Can Detect Aftermarket Hacks
Designed
to Defeat EV Performance Paywalls.*
In general, it is the car owner's right to make changes in
the car, and manufacturers should not be allowed to implement measures
to interfere. Devices, including cars, should not require
subscriptions and should not record where the car goes.
But there is an exception: measures to reduce pollution. These are
vital for public health —
air
pollution causes a lot of sickness and death — and "defeat
devices" installed by car owners are just as dangerous as defeat
devices installed by manufacturers.
My solution would be to put those systems into separate computers
whose software cannot be changed by any digital activity. If the
manufacturer can't change it, it is ok that the owner can't.
The Supreme Court accepted a lower court decision that a clerk who
refused to register a same-sex marriage can be sued.
I think the concern showed by Thomas and Alito exaggerates the
situation. Few jobs require taking actions specifically related to a
same-sex marriage. If you don't want to do that part of the job, you
can let someone else have the job.
AT&T has replaced tens of thousands of experienced union workers with
subcontracted temps, chosen for cheapness. They obviously can't have
the same level of skill, and the results cause damage, even danger.
A company called "Arise" outsources customer service for other
companies to gig workers, and treats them as badly as one would expect.
A study estimates that there are 14 million tons of small pieces of plastic
on the ocean floor.
*[The bullshitter's] Appointee to VOA Reporters: Criticizing [the
bullshitter] Is a Conflict of Interest.*
*Clean Electricity Plan Would Free US Economy of Carbon Dependence in 15
Years.* It would also create millions of good jobs in the US.
Indonesia has found in Covid-19 the opportunity to sell out big to
business, undermining many environmental protections and workers'
rights. Workers are organizing a strike and a protest.
Our problems are the result of letting business have too much clout already.
We cannot correct them by giving business more clout.
*As Covid-Positive GOP Politicians Enjoy Healthcare They 'Would Deny Others,'
Coronavirus Pandemic Again Makes Case for Medicare for All.*
Faux News teaches its cultists to speak and think in a different
language with a different way of thinking. Its words are drawn from
English, but speakers of ordinary English can't communicate with them.
The bullshitter has been the biggest single source of misinformation
about Covid-19.
I think the term "disinformation" fits better than "misinformation."
The US Senate is blocking the IMF from giving (for once, not lending)
aid to many poor countries to deal with Covid-19.
Syria is suffering from food shortages, and has rationed give-aways of
bread.
Many opioid treatment centers in the US are turning away patients
for reasons related to Covid-19.
European countries keep slowly increasing their anti-transmission
measures, but too slowly to get in front of Covid-19, so it keeps
on increasing.
Australia and New Zealand got it right: they took strong steps and
drove the case numbers way down. I expect that the timid governments
will end up with a much longer period of lockdown.
Cops (not extremely thuggish, it seems) broke up an 18-person vigil
for Julian Assange, then apparently knocked on Craig Murray's hotel
room door at night to ask when he was leaving.
The fires in California this year have burned over 4% of California's
territory, and the fire season is far from over.
In a decade or two, most years will be like this year, and a few will
be worse. I have a feeling that life in California will be difficult,
and farming even more so.
Twitter has all of a sudden decided not to allow tweets to wish for
someone's death.
Will that apply to everyone?
The nihilist's behavior does more than ruin debates. It makes
the idea of a debate an absurdity.
However, US presidential debates have not been sincere confrontations
of ideas for a long time. Since only the two major parties are included,
we always got soft right wing vs hard right wing.
Video game simulated airplanes emit real CO2, due to data centers
and network transmission.
The programmed obsolescence of game platforms also damages the
environment.
It is never difficult for me to decide not to play a video game. I
simply remember that the game is nonfree software, and the idea of
running it makes me shudder.
*Tens of Millions in PPP Loans Went to Corporate Polluters After Companies
Were Fined $52 Million, Analysis Shows.*
The Tories plan to find new ways to turn off the right of asylum.
One of the causes of the repeated legal claims from asylum seekers in
the UK is that agents keep disregarding the law and the government's
policies, and deporting people in despite of their rights.
Surely this is not an accident. If the minister in charge taught her department
not to take shortcuts, not to deport people illegally, they would not
have the need or the valid grounds to make these claims.
The nonviolent "Medicaid army" is rallying around the US to demand medical care for everyone.
Can anyone tell me of a site where people can find the locations of these
rallies, without having to run nonfree Javascript code?
I would like to post it, and maybe I can go to one.
To call violent right-wing extremists "vigilantes" understates their
actions and their danger.
Proposing reforms to the administration of US elections.
Pointing out that a meritocracy is not a good society for most people.
"Meritocracy" encourages people to compete to climb the ladder, but
ascending one rung pushes another down one. If you have to be above
average to win a decent life, half the people won't get one. What we
really should aim to do is to bring the runs closer together and pull
the whole ladder up. We need to reverse the concentration of wealth.
There is a role in a well-organized society for judging people by
comparing how well they would do a certain job. We want to put the
best people in charge of important decisions. But what does it mean
to be "best"? It's not just a matter of ability — making good
decisions requires good values, too.
We have seen the bad results of choosing managers solely for ability
to succeed. When Boeing ceased to be run by people with a career
commitment to making safe planes, and was instead run by people with a
career commitment to success, it started covering up possible problems rather than fixing them.
When medical insurance companies and hospital
companies started to be run by people who didn't have decades of
commitment to doing medicine, they made it their goal to get more
profit for less medicine.
The word "merit" is not the way to express what we should seek. We
should call this something else. "Menschness"?
Antisocial media, and especially Facebook, host intense misogyny.
The article's explicit point is valid and important, but (I expect)
not really news to readers of stallman.org. You know how nasty
antisocial media get, and that generally females receive more
hostility there than males.
My main reason for citing this article is to highlight a campaign to
change our use of language: the article describes verbal abuse as
"violence".
The insults and threats described are nasty, and they can hurt. But
they are not "violence" (though threatening violence is but one step
away from doing it). To stretch "violence" to include verbal abuse is
an abuse of language, and a dangerous one.
The frontier between words and violence is an important barrier to
escalation of fights. Respect for this line helps people restrain
themselves from moving from verbal attacks to punches or shots. It is
not always effective, but if we weaken it by redefining "violence" to
include mere words, we will learn the hard way how important that
restraint was. Erasing the border will lead to more censorship on the
one hand, and more physical attacks on the other.
Hatred can be expressed through words, and through physical acts. We
can condemn both without erasing the distinction.
There is a lot of hatred on Facebook, and a lot of disinformation, and
a lot of manipulation. Why so much? As I gather, it is because
Facebook's business model gives Facebook an incentive to promote these
things. It designs its algorithm to maximize "engagement" and the
algorithm promotes various kinds of harmful postings because they
achieve that goal.
Facebook is under pressure to curb the hatred, but if its profits depend on pushing hatred (along with
disinformation and manipulation), its efforts to reduce them are
likely to change little.
Rather than trying to fix these problems by imposing various kinds of
censorship, I think we should forcibly change Facebook's algorithm,
and its business model. Businesses are not entitled to human rights,
and regulating business models is not unjust like censorship.
The Interior Department stopped buying drones a year ago, for concern that China will spy through them. Now the US does
not have enough drones for fighting wildfires.
There is danger that China will spy through Chinese-made drones,
just as there is danger that companies and other government will
spy through drones made elsewhere. But I don't think China will
learn many important secrets from looking at wildfires.
The first step to making sure that a drone can't be used to spy (by
some party other than its owner) is to make sure that the software in
it is free, and is being checked by people for quality and honesty.
If you know Jolie O'Dell, would you please tell her that when I phone
her number I get "This number is no longer in service"? Please ask
her to send me email to get back in touch.
Android in the EU offers users a limited selection of default search
engines, which got onto the list by bidding in an auction. As a result,
DuckDuckGo did not make it into the list.
I have no way of seeing what search engines do appear.
Is there any that we think does not track users?
*Amnesty specializes in hard truths. No wonder Modi froze it out of India.*
What worries me is that the advance of tyranny in so many countries
will dilute the strength of efforts to hold tyrants accountable,
which are being weakened by disunity and by conversions to tyranny.
US citizens: phone your senators again at 1-844-335-4855 and implore
them to do everything they can to prevent confirmation of a new
Supreme Court justice before the presidential inauguration on Jan 20.
The cheater pressured his closest associates and big financial
sponsors to risk infection by meeting with him when he had reason to know
Hope Hicks might have infected him.
Will any of them learn a lesson about him from this?
People that work in the White House are worried, too.
Will the cheater's hospitalization hinder the malfunctioning of
government? Let's hope so. Nothing causes more malfunction than
having the cheater actively intervening ;-!.
A book reports that the defeat of Hitler is owed partially to
homosexual members of the British parliament, who frequented Berlin
because of its loose sexual life. They saw Hitler's repression in 1934,
and began teaching others how bad he was.
The bullshitter's ghostwriter says that the bullshitter must be devastated
now that people know he isn't as rich as he pretended to be.
The idea that he sought to embody the poor person's idea of what it
means to be rich makes sense to me. I have a feeling that he was trying
to prove that he was a success, to himself above all.
"Cancel culture" can be found in various political camps. One target
is anyone that advocates the human rights of Palestinians or the end
of Israel's occupation/siege of Palestine.
To be clear, Israel occupies the West Bank and besieges Gaza.
Prisoners are being held longer in the UK because to obtain release
they have to participate in rehabilitation activities, and those
activities are not available due to Covid-19.
Ironically, keeping them in prison tends to increase the spread
of Covid-19.
The US government has worked out an agreement for the bankruptcy of
Purdue Pharma that lets the individuals that own it off the hook.
*With Focus on Assange, Belmarsh Tribunal Puts 'US War Crimes on Trial'.*
This is a private activity, modeled after the Russell Tribunal in 1966.
There were protests on Oct 2 against various banks that fund fossil
fuels.
The US government sent surveillance planes and snipers to George
Floyd's funeral.
Sony has got a patent on the obvious idea that a computer system
(specifically, a game console) might use a camera to recognize all
users, so no one needs to explicitly log in.
This patent would give Sony a basis to sue any other company that
implements this idea. It does not necessarily mean that Sony itself
will implement this idea, or even that it knows how to implement it
reliably, but perhaps it will.
Would you want every Sony-made game console to be able to recognize
you using biometrics? I would not.
On the other hand, given a game console powered by free software, I
might be willing to give my friend's console some biometrics to
recognize me by. But I'd want to be sure that they wouldn't be usable
for recognizing me when I pass by a camera in the street, and that
might be difficult to implement.
"Tips" to Doordash and Amazon food delivery workers go to the company
rather than to the worker, they cancel out the whole of the worker's
base pay.
The article seems to err in equating this to tipping of waiters. They
are not the same system. Yes, the waiter's base pay is below minimum
wage — but the restaurant does not claw back that base pay when the
waiter gets a tip, as Doordash and Amazon do.
Joseph Stiglitz: *How the Republican party threatens the US republic.*
The violence of Chilean thugs against protesters reached the point of
throwing a teenager protester off a bridge.
The protester survived, but that was only luck.
Polish expat Wojciech Sadurski is facing criminal prosecution for
accusing the Polish ruling party and national broadcaster for supporting
right-wing extremists.
To prosecute people for saying things like that (whether true or not)
is tyranny. The fact that this prosecution is occurring proves the
injustice of the Polish government.
The sad thing is that it is not alone. President
Sarkozy of France prosecuted several people for insulting him.
*Indigenous Activists Target Liberty Mutual's Boston Headquarters Demanding
They Stop Insuring Tar Sands Projects.*
Getting oil by mining tar sands is an especially bad form of fossil fuel;
its emissions are higher than most others.
The world should not only stop investing that, it should shut that down
immediately.
Torres Strait Islanders have complained to the UN that Australia is
endangering their way of life by failing to curb global heating.
Their islands are in danger of flooding, and eventually permanent
inundation.
That damage lies in the the future, but Australia's current actions
are causing it, and they must be changed now. Of course, Australia is
not solely responsible for global heating, but its part can be
identified and measured.
*Investors Extracted $400 Million From a Hospital Chain That Sometimes
Couldn’t Pay for Medical Supplies or Gas for Ambulances.*
This is an example of how the US economic system's encouragement of
predatory businesses. I think there should not be any for-profit
hospitals.
Should we wish Trump, the bullshitter, a speedy recovery?
All else being equal, I do. But I think it is more important to wish
my country a speedy recovery from the influence of the bullshitter.
I do not wish him to die. No person deserves to die, and the death of
any person is always something to regret. I would not rejoice that he
is dead.
However, I would rejoice that he can do no more damage.
Industrialization is destroying the mangroves of Kutch, in India, and
with them the unique breed of camels that swim around them.
China has made the production of molecular hydrogen using electrolysis
so cheap that the oil companies' dream of production hydrogen by burning
fossil fuels is already obsolete.
*A judge has granted the request of an anonymous juror in the [Breonna
Taylor] case that their Grand Jury proceedings be made public.*
After studying the transcript, lawyers will be able to tell us whether
the prosecutor tried properly to secure other indictments.
A thorough report on what we have learned from the conman's tax returns.
*'Strong Start' But 'Not the End of the Road,' Says Greenpeace as Biden Vows
to Bar Fossil Fuel Leaders From Transition Team.*
*First-Ever Analysis Reveals How America's Top 100 Law Firms Are 'Accelerating
the Climate Crisis'.* The study gives a grade to each of those law firms based on the work
it has done.
A Texas sheriff has been charged with destroying video evidence
showing how thugs tased Javier Ambler to death.
From now on, New York City will fine people up to a thousand dollars
if they refuse to accept a gratis mask and wear it.
The article says "aggressively", but I think that starting with the
offer makes it a rather kind and gentle manner of enforcement:
"Please let us help you do what is needed to stamp out disease."
The 1880s counterpart to today's Amazon was the railroads: a monopoly
of intermediation which could exploit producers and end-users. One of
the anti-monopoly parties had this song.
Cory Doctorow: we should break up monopolies in lots of fields.
And not only those involved in digital activities. Many fields are
too concentrated now in the US: some that come to my mind instantly
include pesticides, seeds, meat, pharmacies, book publishing, and
airlines.
Every area needs to have many competitors, or become a regulated
monopoly and perhaps not for profit.
My tax scheme
could be part of the solution.
*Australia's offshore asylum centres have been a cruel disaster. They must not
be replicated by the UK.*
Some Maori activists
Maori have common interests, and in a democratic state such as New
Zealand there are well-established ways to pursue those interests.
One is to have a political party, and indeed the author is part of
one. New Zealand's governmental system enables smaller parties to
have some influence, rather than next to zero influence as in the US.
However, a separate parliament — which implies separate laws — for a
subset of people that live dispersed around New Zealand would be
conflict with the principle that everyone is equal under the law.
The article cites the UK as an example to follow. I contend it is
exactly the opposite.
I gather that people considered the UK too centralized. Setting up
regional administrations and devolving some powers to them was perhaps
a wise idea. However, doing this based on the historical "nations"
that were merged three centuries years ago to form the United Kingdom
was utterly foolish: each of those "nations" now has an influential
secessionist party.
Meanwhile, people in England (meaning most of the UK's population) got
none of the benefit of decentralization, because the UK did not set up
a national administration for England. In effect, the UK acted to
boost separatism while remaining, for the most part, too centralized.
I suggest that the right way for the UK to decentralize would be to
divide its whole territory into a workable number of smaller regions,
perhaps roughly one million people in each, avoid aligning them with
old historical grudges, then devolve the same powers to each of them.
The next target of Chinese imperialism is Taiwan.
*Covid-19 has legitimized once-radical ideas in UK, say Green leaders.*
Ivanka Trump is now caught in a financial scandal that may be criminal.
Please don't use the term "first daughter."
The bullshitter was close enough to Biden during the debate to
possibly infect him. His family members were present, without masks,
trying hard to infect other people in the audience.
More about this danger.
Such events should invite people in the audience to ask the staff for
help in dealing with others near them not wearing masks, to tell them
to put on masks or move away.
The governor of Wisconsin begged the disease-spreader to please not
come there for a disease-spreading event.
Now perhaps he won't.
What are the implications of this event for the campaign? Whatever
happens, the bullshitter will lie about it and try to turn it to his
advantage.
Exiles from Salafi Arabia have started a party calling for democracy
there.
Russian critical journalist Irina Slavina burnt herself to death
after state agents seized her computers.
I wonder why she could not face life after that. Was it simply that
one more act of harassment was more than she could bear? Were there
things on the computers that were going to enable the state to ruin
other people's lives?
It seems that coronavirus was not intimidated by the bullshitter.
He got infected despite all his boasts that he would not. He has probably infected many of his cronies. He could have
avoided that by wearing a mask.
Will his supporters feel honored to have received a virus from
their leader?
More about the Syrian mercenaries sent by Turkey to fight against Armenia. It seems they were told they would be guards, and were surprised to find that their job was fighting a war.
*[Republican] Megadonors, Freedom Caucus, and CEOs Bankroll
QAnon-Supporting, Extremist Candidates.*
The governor of Texas ordered counties to reduce the number of places
to drop off ballots.
This is a new method, but it continues the Republican pattern of voter
suppression. If you can't win honestly, cheat, is their motto.
If Republicans were loyal to the idea of democracy, they would not
seek to stop people who disagree with them from voting. Their use of
voter suppression demonstrates that they are opposed to the basic ideas
of the United States.
*Huge Victory for Ocean Defenders as Seismic Blasting Halted in Atlantic.*
It seems there is no quick way to authorize the activity,
and by the time such a thing could be tried, we may have a
better chance of rejecting them.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor the CIVIL Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
(satire) *[the bullshitter] stoked fears surrounding crime Tuesday by having … Mike Pompeo disguise himself as a cat burglar and rob him on
the debate stage. "Oh no, look, it’s a violent Antifa thug sent here by
Joe Biden to rob me!"*
https://politics.theonion.com/trump-stokes-crime-fears-by-having-mike-pompeo-disguise-1845216464
*As a Result of ACLU Litigation, Trump Administration Ends Policy Prohibiting
Immigrant Minors From Accessing Abortion.*
New Jersey has increased taxes on people and businesses with incomes over
a million dollars a year.
It is a small step, but it's a start!
Amy Barrett's legal philosophy, to apply her religion to every decision,
disqualifies her from being on the Supreme Court.
Cambridge University has agreed to divest fully from fossil fuels.
The easiest part of the divestment will be done this year,
another part by 2025. The divestment will be completed by 2030.
Divestment is an important step, but there are limits to what it can
achieve. We need laws to turn off the fossil fuel industry.
The Federal Reserve has bought $355 million in bonds of fossil fuel
companies since March.
The DHS handed out PR instructions telling its representatives to take
a sympathetic line towards the right-wing Kenosha killer, and towards
the right-wing extremist group "Patriot Prayer".
Has the Department of Harshness and Sadism morphed into the Department
of Hatred Support?
* So long as U.S. leaders continue to coddle the Saudis, it’s difficult
not to ask who is more evil—the maniacal Saudi crown prince or the
mendacious Western governments and business people who support him?*
The UK is considering a new standard for "biodegradable plastic" which requires
that they don't result in microplastic grains.
A brief life of Paul Stephenson, a hero of desegregation in the UK and
the US.
The redirection of UK medicine to treating Covid-19 instead of other diseases
will end up having caused tens of thousands of avoidable deaths from cancer
due to failure to treat it early.
I expect there were many more deaths due to failure to treat other
diseases.
The way to avoid this is to stay ahead of Covid-19 with measures strong enough
to keep the infection rate going down. R approximately 1 is like a pencil
balanced on its point — it won't stay at 1.
Nathan Law, in exile from Hong Kong, cannot contact his relatives at all,
since China would seize the opportunity to pressure him by punishing them.
I don't see any hope for Hong Kong; I think China will turn it into a
hell that terrifies people into suppressing their thoughts until they
forget how to think them.
Similarly, Trumpism adapts the traditional Republican attachment to
individual freedom and mutates it into a darker, Darwinian belief that
the strong individual can and should do whatever they like, and to hell
with the "suckers and losers" who might suffer as a result.
The "bread" in Subways' sandwiches cannot qualify for a tax exemption in Ireland, because it has too much added sugar.
That added sugar is not good for people. I wonder if Subway will reduce the sugar to qualify for the tax exemption. I wonder if other countries should adopt a similar legal policy.
*By kicking Amnesty out, India is betraying its founding ideals.*
*Signalling to his base, as he did referring to the Proud Boys on Tuesday, the [wrecker] is following a playbook from 1930s Germany.*
An FBI memo warns about violent right-wing extremist violence, perhaps after the election.
US companies evade regulations on toxic PFAs by switching to newer chemicals that are probably just as bad, but have not been studied yet.
It was obvious that faster processing and less inspection would make meat plants more dangerous. And it has.
Human rights lawyers that make reports to help the International Criminal Court are threatened by sanctions that the US placed on anyone "providing support".
Since that threat is unconstitutional, they have gone to court asking for a ruling that the sanctions don't apply to them.
It will take months to vaccinate everyone against Covid-19, once a good vaccine is available. Only after massively vaccinating people will we find out how effective the vaccine is, for various groups.
The UK has imposed lockdowns in 16 cities, but in most of them Covid-19 has continued to increase, because people are not carrying out the rules.
A cloud of new issues that surround the new instance of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
I think it is quite plausible that Erdoğan will have Turkish planes attack Armenia.
If Assange is convicted, he would be sent to the ADX Florence prison for solitary confinement for the rest of his life. A former warden of that prison describes it as "a fate worse than death."
Perhaps El Chapo requires special security measures, so that his henchmen cannot bust him loose. Perhaps also some of the al-Qa'ida prisoners. But most of the prisoners listed in the article do not belong to a gang and there is no special danger they would escape, no need and no justification to destroy them this way.
Global heating affects
Tepco has been found liable for failing to take steps to keep the Fukushima
nuclear plants safe from tsunamis.
California is considering paying reparations to descendants of past slaves.
I think the US government should do this; and the states that had
segregation laws ("Jim Crow") should pay reparations to the descendants
of blacks who lived in those states.
On the inhibiting effects of knowing someone is always watching.
The USPS stopped updating its list of people's known addresses in
August. This will interfere with states' voting records.
The UK government is drawing inspiration from Australia's horrible
treatment of refugees.
(satire) *Stunned Pundits Criticize Trump For
Refusing To Denounce His Base.*
The US government is going to great lengths to prevent an independent medical
examination of torture victim Mohammed al-Qahtani.
*40% of world’s plant species at risk of extinction.*
The way to save some of those is to curb global heating and protect more
areas of land and sea.
US technology companies may already be helping China repress Hong
Kongers, or anyone talking about Hong Kong.
You cannot trust technology companies that operate in Hong Kong, or in China.
How Ghana licked Covid-19: its president did a proper job
of leading the country, focusing on the crucial goals.
In other words, a country does not need to be rich or advanced to do
this; it is enough to have a competent leader that focuses seriously on
the task at hand, and that people trust. Alas, many countries don't
have one.
*America's year of fire and tempests means climate crisis just got very real.*
George Monbiot: *[Bogus] Johnson's pledges on the environment are
[bogus]. Worse is how cynical they are.*
The Guardian is trying to excuse having leaked the password to decrypt
the file of encrypted unredacted US cables.
Wikileaks published unredacted US cables because various governments
and agencies were about to get the password to decrypt the encrypted
file. A Guardian reporter had published the decryption password in a
Guardian book.
Assange concluded it was better to publish the cables than for them
to be available only privately to those in the know.
Just recently the Guardian has started seriously covering the Assange
hearings.
Meanwhile, here are two more days of Craig Murray's thorough coverage.
With the wrecker determined to grab the coming election by hook or by
crook, we could end up on Jan 20 with no acknowledged decision.
Trans people in Panama faced big difficulties when the country
restricted which days each person could be on the street according
to the sex listed on per national ID card.
I wonder who was allowed to go outdoors on Sundays? Only intersex
people?
This is, by the way, one more reason that national ID cards are an
injustice.
The bullshitter's campaign in 2016 used Facebook ads to discourage
blacks from voting. Facebook should show the public precisely what
it did to achieve that.
Using advertisements to discourage some group from voting is, in
spirit, an attack on democracy. It is not as bad as outright voter
suppression, but it is bad.
Israel is neglecting Arab citizens in dealing with Covid-19,
so the disease is spreading in Arab areas.
Israel permits overt housing discrimination against Arabs.
Amazon's warehouse robots impose a high pace of work on the humans
that still work there. Apparently Amazon has cut their numbers too
far.
*Human Rights Watch Details NYPD Attack on Peaceful Protesters.*
It was a Black Lives Matter protest on June 4. The thugs encircled the
protesters to force them to remain till after the curfew, at which point
the thugs attacked them systematically.
EU unions call for investigation of Amazon's plans to increase surveillance
of its workers.
Turkey is signing up Syrian opposition fighters as mercenaries
to fight for Azerbaijan against Armenia.
Why would they want to do that? Purely for the money? Because Armenians
are "infidels"?
(satire) *… top GOP leaders argued Monday that
giving President Donald Trump a second term would be a Christian act of
charity for a poor, elderly man.* And help him stay out of prison.
The US imports a large amount of products made from wild-caught bats
and rodents. Catching them and handling them creates a danger of new
diseases, and so does shipping them to the US.
*Analysis Shows Nearly 80% of US Household Wealth Owned by Millionaires and
Billionaires.*
Yanis Varoufakis proposes an alternative to a wealth tax that would
achieve the same purpose.
*Environmental Protections Could Be in Danger with Trump’s SCOTUS Pick.*
*Progressives Warn Barrett's Right-Wing Ideology and Past Rulings Signal She
Could Intentionally 'Make the Country a More Unjust Place'.*
Investigating the complexities of Yitzhak Rabin's politics
towards Palestinians.
(satire) *California Firefighters Massage 2.5 Million Gallons Of
Moisturizer Into Forests To Prevent Dryness.*
RSF calls on Oregon to drop criminal charges against reporter April
Ehrlich, for interviewing homeless fire refugees being kicked out of a
park.
The thugs wanted to keep her outside where she couldn't talk with
them.
The cheater poses in public to make Christians think he is one of them,
while privately regarding them as useful suckers.
I too think of them as fools, but unlike the cheater, I respect them
by honestly showing them my disapproval and opposition.
A court order tells the Census to continue for another month as
originally planned, but the Saboteur of Commerce said he will defy the
order.
This looks like another step in the wrecker's campaign to disarm all legal
restraint on what he does.
104 drivers have driven cars into Black Lives Matter protesters since
May 25. Some of them were terrorist attacks, and 39 drivers face
criminal charges.
Some right-wing fanatics escaped prosecution by claiming they were afraid
of the protesters they had driven into the middle of.
DeJoy said that he had the deactivated mail sorting machines
disassembled — apparently to make sure they could not be put back in
service in the event a court ordered it.
He also said that the parts were put into other machines,
but this seems to have been false.
However, some staff have disobeyed and kept machines working, and in general continued doing their jobs well.
It is a mistake to run the Post Office as a business.
We should define it as a national service and think about what more
it can do.
*The Economic Benefits of a Public US Postal Service.*
Giuliani owns a company that has no employees, but got a federal PPP loan
which it is allowed to use only for paying employees. Was this a crime?
If we have an honest Justice Department some day, it should investigate.
Putting that arrogant liar in prison for this and other crimes would
be a little justice.
Many banks cover up their bad debts, with the tacit approval of
government regulators. Some conceal so much in the way of bad debts
that their net worth is negative but they don't let on.
West Virginia's Republican governor is a billionaire but his companies
keep getting sued for nonpayment of debts.
The companies often lose or settle the debts — $140 million so far —
but sometimes they still refuse to pay.
Even worse, officials that he appointed as governor have reduced the
fines his companies owe for environmental violations. That is
corruption.
It demonstrates the plutocratic attitude: the country, the people, and
the Earth are here to be exploited.
In the UK, a few scientists claim that it is safe to let Covid-19
infect nearly everyone. They do this with interpretations and
arguments that are not necessarily wrong, but are strained. The
right-wing press exaggerates the importance of their dissent.
It seems that group disregards entirely the danger of long-term
injury, even to young people.
Because of this, allowing lots of people to be infected,
even people who are unlikely to die, would be a big mistake.
If transmission-limiting measures are taken soon, the hospitals
will not fill up with people sick with Covid-19, and normal treatment
of other diseases can continue.
The US government has contrived to keep most international election
observers away, just when we need them more than ever.
Australian rules for approving fossil fuel plants are designed to rush
the approval and provide excuses for disregarding harm that is likely
to result.
An interview with a woman who has been stalked for 11 years by a violent
ex-lover.
There are many situations where there are a few ways to respond, and
each one may succeed, do nothing, or backfire, and there is no way to
predict. You can choose to roll the dice, spin the wheel, or guess
which number is in the envelope. Good advice might tell you which
gamble gives you the best odds, but you can't avoid gambling, except
by giving up. Whether to threaten an abusive ex may be one of these
situations.
If you lose, you can always agonize about the fact that you might have
won if you had chosen a different source of randomness to bet on. But
the choice you made also might have won. It is useless to agonize
about or criticize the choice of gamble. The best you can do is
choose the best odds and go ahead.
To come up with a better plan could do a lot of good.
I wonder if it might make sense to sentence stalkers to carry digital
trackers to detect whether they approach places where their victims go.
It is unjust to do this to people in general, but it would be acceptable
as a punishment for stalking.
An EU requirement for countries to respect and implement rule of law
is blocking the release of EU funds to Hungary for coping with Covid-19.
A compromise is being considered to release the funds.
I am glad to see that the European Parliament is standing firm for
that requirement. However, perhaps it is right to make an exception
for the medical emergency. Surely other funds, used for things that are
not desperately urgent, would offer a good opportunity to pressure
Órban, perhaps even a bigger one.
Modi has forced Amnesty International out of India by freezing its
bank account.
It's not unusual for the UK and US to deport people to countries they
were too young to remember, and where they know no one. But it is
especially cruel to deport Osime Brown, who is autistic, and won't be
able to survive in Jamaica on his own,
A person who was brought to a country as a child has the right to live
there.
The UK may authorize minorities in China to use British courts to sue
China for repression.
In Thailand, you can be imprisoned for posting a negative review.
That is because defamation is a crime there, rather than a civil dispute.
That is fundamentally unjust.
I have read that some US states make defamation a crime, but those crimes
seem to rarely if ever be prosecuted.
*Many fossil fuel workers like me want to transition to renewables — but we
need support.*
An FBI report from 2006 warned that right wing extremists would try
to infiltrate US thug departments.
We know that a large fraction of thugs are right-wing extremists.
Whether this is the result of active infiltration, I don't know,
but I don't think it matters much.
Amazon is deploying a system for palm recognition.
As the article says, this is much better than other forms of biometric
authentication. Another advantage is that people don't constantly
leave palmprints wherever they go, as they leave fingerprints.
I have wondered whether the inside of the elbow might be a good choice.
A report on the status of inequality,
in the US and internationally.
With Javascript disabled, it looks a little weird, but I'm told
that the information is all accessible.
The "Proud Boys" in Portland were few but violent; they attacked three
journalists while thugs did nothing to stop them. However, thugs did
attack BLM and antifascist protesters, as well as journalists.
China's pledge to limit and reduce fossil fuel use will ruin Australia's
fossil fuel export business.
This is because China will use its own coal rather than buy
from Australia.
The sad thing is, China may do this by building new coal mines. The
decrease in Australia's extraction may not be a decrease in coal
burning for the world as a whole.
*What to Do When the World Is on Fire.* Government policies should
encourage localized and diversified agriculture, using methods that
improve the land and retain water, should replace the encouragement of
monocultures controlled by megacorporations.
I don't want to live on a farm; I would feel isolated and bored there.
But many people would really love to do this, if government policies
encouraged hiring intelligent workers rather than buying "intelligent"
tractors with proprietary software and DRM.
* Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett Is an Enemy of Workers.*
Indeed, she supports businesses against individuals in general.
(satire) *… the Federal Bureau of Investigation
reportedly contacted Apple Monday to demand its assistance in opening
an iPhone 11’s packaging.*
National Nurses United reports on inadequate tracking of Covid-19
cases and deaths in the US.
These errors lead to bad response.
The wrecker has divided America, and his supporters think of us
as evil rebels.
What makes this so devastatingly dangerous is that he has taught
his supporters to reject the idea of following moral rules that
ought to limit their conduct. Because they imagine we are evil,
they believe that any violence, any lie, is justified.
People of such amorality are not fit to have any role in government.
The conman's tax affairs illustrate that the US has made it easy for
rich "businessmen" to divert money out of a business as an excuse
to say it made no profit and owes no tax.
*Until there's a Covid vaccine, we need to focus on treating
longer-term health consequences.* In particular, hyperinflammation,
which injures organs.
Palantir says it will not support governments that abuse human rights
abroad. The word "abroad" is necessary because Palantir supports the
US deportation thugs.
Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, was overheard condemning one of the
bullshitter's advisers, saying that "Everything he says is false".
The adviser in question was Scott Atlas.
He may be misleading the bullshitter as well as the public. However,
getting bullshit as advice from advisers he chose cannot excuse the
corrupter's campaign of bullshit.
I hope that the training of radiologists is not so narrow that they
escape learning basic medical facts about infectious diseases and
epidemics. However, no amount of education can overcome a determined
partisan intention to expose bullshit.
(satire) *Biden Removes ‘Defeating Trump’ From Platform To Avoid
Alienating Swing Voters.*
Adani, the company that wants to construct a giant coal mine in
Australia, is prosecuting an activist for doing what Julian Assange
did: asking for leaks about the plans. Now the company apparently
wants to go further and prosecute the people who did what Glenn
Greenwald did: prosecute the journalists who received the leaks from the
activist.
Oxford University's measures to protect students studying about China
from repression by China: they submit their homework anonymously, and
recording those classes is forbidden.
The precise extent and depth of this anonymity are not clear in the
article. If it means that their teachers don't know their real
identities, that is surprising but may be necessary — I won't argue
with it.
If it means simply that their identities are not associated with
their work in some corporation's cloudy data base that the school uses,
all students deserve that kind of anonymity, on general principles.
Don't dox anyone to a company.
The prohibition on recording classes seems to be necessary in this
case, but it has the unfortunate effect of blocking the one way you
can fully participate in a Zoom class without running Zoom:
find someone willing to make a recording of it, one way or another,
and watch that video (either in real time, or later). (You can participate
in audio by phoning in.)
This could still be done if your friend sets up a webcam on another
computer pointing at the screen, and transmits a stream to your
machine. But that is extra hard since webcams are expensive these
days.
Decades ago, some Chinese swam to freedom in Hong Kong. Now the tyranny they
escaped from has recaptured them.
I read that the UK agreed to try to stop refugees from arriving in
Hong Kong so that Chine would not invade. It would have been
impossible to defend Hong Kong militarily against a Chinese invasion.
On spreading hope for ultimately replacing the system of rule by the rich.
How broad is the repression of China's Hong Kong national security
law?
Argentines are pressuring the president to keep his pledge to legalize
abortion.
Greece is being crushed by debt, but it is spending a lot of money on
arms to beat Turkey for the chance to extract some undersea gas.
Whichever country wins will win the chance to help destroy
civilization. Meanwhile, even if this doesn't result in a war, the
arms will kill destitute Greeks.
It is legitimate to criticize judicial nominees for their religion, if
they seem likely to impose it on the rest of us.
If the cheater did not break the law in paying so little tax, does that
mean he did not do anything wrong?
The article explains why that conclusion does not follow.
But it seems to accept the widespread idea that people are
not to blame for mistreating others when the rules permit it.
That is where I disagree. If person P takes advantage of a flaw
in the system to do injustice, the system is at fault and
P is at fault as well.
Ai Weiwei carried out a solitary protest in front of the court house where
Assange's hearing ie being held.
He was doing what every journalist ought to be doing.
Daniel Ellsberg, famed leaker of the Pentagon Papers that showed the
dishonesty of the US about fighting the Vietnam War, testified that
Assange asked the US government to help redact the leaked documents so
there would be no risk anyone working for the US would be endangered,
but the US government refused to help, so as to be able to accuse
Assange of endangering them.
The pope has gone silent on criticizing China, apparently in exchange for a
say in appointment of Catholic bishops there.
Pompeo has no moral authority, but I think he is right on this one.
Of course, the injustices that the pope should criticize include many
committed by other countries, and they include the USA.
*No, Officials Can NOT Strip Search Kids Just Because Their Mom Let Them Wait
Briefly in the Car.*
*I was kidnapped by [thugs] for nine hours for being a Black Lives
Matter protester.*
*Trump sold voters on the folly that he's a successful businessman. That's a
con.*
I am not surprised. He would not have fought so long and hard to conceal
his tax returns if it were not going to embarrass him badly.
*"A bad businessman or a tax cheat – probably both", say
accountants.*
The heating of upper levels of the ocean is making hurricanes stronger
and interfering with vertical mixing of the water.
It also causes a positive feedback by confining further
heating to the surface level.
To what extent should businesses be able to order stars not to wear
clothing that supports political causes?
Political rights cannot discriminate between one political view and
another. Where and when BLM slogans are permitted, so are right-wing
slogans.
Craig Murray's coverage of three more sessions of the Assange extradition hearing.
Armed fascist demonstrators invade Portland every day and confront
antifascist and BLM protesters, occasionally committing violence
against them, against reporters, and against bystanders. The thugs
tend to let them do it.
Food delivery app companies are parasites; the commissions they charge
to restaurants are draining the restaurants dry.
They wantonly disregard laws to limit their commissions.
The authoritarian UK government has ordered schools not to use any
materials from organizations that advocate eliminating capitalism.
This means that schools can't teach about the history of labor
organizing and the Labour Party.
Already prohibited is anything produced by an organization that
"endorses illegal activity." I suppose that rules out showing people
anything written by Extinction Rebellion. Although that organization
is nonviolent, its protests do include violating laws in minor ways.
Also anything that says you should share copies of published works,
disregarding any unjust laws or anti-socializing contracts that say
you can't.
The Farm System Reform Act would break the dominion of Big Ag over
small farms.
When Colorado thugs arrested Vanessa Peoples, dislocating her shoulder and tying her up so that she had trouble breathing, they shone a light
on of a massive system of oppression, nominally called "child
protection".
There really are parents who mistreat their children grossly, and the
"child protection"service does sometimes protect children from real
dangers. But it tends to be too officious about small mistakes or
confusions, doing harm and spreading terror.
They demand a standard of attentiveness that a middle-class housewife
might aspire to, from parents who don't have either the money or the
time to try. The effective way to improve matters in those families
is to give them more money, but right-wing authoritarians are only
interested in punishing. More than half of black US families get
investigated by these services.
Bringing thugs (many of whom are racist) into the family situation
puts people in many kinds of danger, including the danger of getting a
criminal record, which can ruin your chance for a lawful career and
increase the poverty your children live in.
The same thing happens when thugs are stationed in schools — minor
incidents become opportunities to initiate someone's criminal record.
*There are increasing numbers of experiences putting collaborative
methods for hope and dialogue into practice.*
In small towns in Sweden there are stores with no staff. They are
very convenient for the people who live nearby, because they don't
recognize the danger of requiring them to log in using a national ID
number to buy anything.
Vending machines that accept cash in varying amounts are not unusual.
It would not be hard to make these stores accept cash, too.
There should be a legal requirement that people not have to identify
themselves to buy in a store.
The corrupter will have to pay $400 million in loans within the next
few years, and he may not have that much. No wonder his palm is
always open for gifts.
* France, Germany and UK among more than 60 countries promising to put
wildlife and climate at heart of post-Covid recovery plans.*
*Surge in illegal drift nets threatens endangered species.*
Ralph Nader: *To Democratic Voters — Up Your Demands; To Trump Voters
— See How He Didn’t Deliver for You.*
UK ministers have mostly replaced Parliament as the author of the law,
and are imposing absurd and useless punishments connected with Covid-19.
This has given right-wing antisocialists the opportunity to pose
as defenders of liberty.
Advice for how to help QAnon believers get out of the QAnonsense.
The thug that shot Jacob Blake offers an explanation.
Unconscious racism often manifests by leading someone to jump to the
worst possible conclusion, and take it as absolutely certain. If the
thug is telling the truth about what he thought at the time —
something we cannot be sure of — this could be the explanation for
it.
I don't think it justifies shooting Blake.
*The American public wants less war. Can Joe Biden deliver?*
Mueller failed to use all the means at his disposal to investigate
the possible crimes committed by the corrupter. And then Barr sabotaged
the awareness of what Mueller had found.
About the difficulty of enforcing the rather lax mask requirement of Key West,
and dealing with covidiots.
The people who don't wear a mask, and say "It's my business if I take a risk,"
evidently don't understand that their mask is needed to protect others.
Other people's masks protect you; your mask is to protect them.
Perhaps it would be useful to have a massive publicity campaign about that.
Many employers are using nonfree software, including videoconference
software, to surveil and monitor staff working at home.
The feature that lets someone check whether you are "active" is a
malicious feature. With free software, you could fix it to say
you are active.
We see also how connecting to one of those cloudy dis-service
can be a way for an employer to monitor you.
There is a controversy over whether and how a museum should display the art
of Philip Guston, which depicted people in KKK robes to relate their evil
to everyday life activities.
The danger is not only that people might miss the irony the artist
intended. It is also that right-wing conspiracy fabricators might
intentionally try to misrepresent it or build QAnonsense around it.
Islamic Relief will argue in the Israeli Supreme Court to refute false
accusations that it is a terrorist group.
*Activists protest ban on distributing food to migrants in Calais.*
It is unconscionable to try to eliminate inconvenient poor people
by denying them food.
The few giant meat-processing companies in the US want Congress to give them
immunity for working conditions that encourage the spread of Covid-19.
The corrupter has already told OSHA to support the businesses rather
than the workers.
To shut down the meat plants until they could run with safe procedures
would have caused a disaster. But the government could have made
them, could still make them, heavily liable for failure to protect the
workers in all feasible ways, while helping to increase what is feasible.
Food delivery companies have many ways of preying on the restaurants
they offer "services" to.
Cory Doctorow: many major gig economy companies are con games,
funded by Salafi Arabia.
They are designed to grow very large over a period many years, but
always losing money. *Then, Softbank exits with an IPO that offloads
the money-losing company on suckers who think its longevity means
there must be a 'path to profitability.'* The way the investors profit
is that the IPO brings in more than their investments.
Nuclear weapons are still a threat to the survival of civilization.
New England has been hit by drought and heat.
Wildfires (small compared with California's) have continued rather
that ceasing in June. Cranberry plants are failing to produce
cranberries. Streams are running empty.
The reforming district attorney for Boston and some neighboring cities has
published a list of cops in the zone who have been specifically accused of
being thugs.
It will be harder for them to succeed by testilying.
Advocates of regenerative agriculture claim that it could absorb all
of humanity's CO2 emissions.
I don't have the basis to judge claims about regenerative agriculture.
I can't tell whether they are valid, because I don't know any ground
truth from which I can deduce anything in that area. And I don't know
of any unbiased entities I could have confidence in. Are any farms
succeeding in business using these techniques?
Is it possible to set up a regenerative agriculture emissions
compensation scheme? How would it measure up, in terms of costs per
ton of CO2 absorbed, against investments in increased energy
efficiency? Can the benefit of improved or protected topsoil be
quantified?
It would be good to spell out the claim that is being made. What are
the claimed benefits, and what are the costs? For instance, the claim
could be, "This is a better method of agriculture and farms should
make the investment to switch now." Or it could be, "This system or
agriculture can't compete today because it would require more farm
labor, but we must adopt it for civilization to survive." The difference
is fundamental.
To follow Sweden in curbing Covid-19 requires imitating Sweden's very
strong and effective welfare system.
Australia's government has proposed a plan for reducing greenhouse emissions,
but it depends on making carbon capture and storage far more efficient than
it ever has been.
No matter what your age or condition, Covid-19 can cause you lasting damage that can be incapacitating. The damage can last at least six
months, we now know. Six months from now, we may know it can last a year.
There is no reason to assume it will ever get better.
*From [the wrecker] to Bolsonaro, reactionary leaders are invoking a communism
that no longer exists as a [dishonest] way of attacking the left.*
Today's left isn't Communist anyway, but liars don't care about the truth
of anything.
The mainstream press shows little interest in the prosecution of
Julian Assange even though success could pave the way for prosecuting
other publishers.
The up-to-1200-dollars stimulus checks enabled 7% more Americans to
handle a surprise medical expense. Even that small amount did real
help.
The USPS chief of logistics, in July, made a presentation to local chiefs
pressing them to implement the service cuts.
Although DeJoy was not in that meeting, various vice presidents were,
so it is clear he did this with DeJoy's own support.
Many rural hospitals in the US, which now face a lot of Covid-19
cases, are in danger of going broke.
Students are organizing petitions against the intrusive exam-monitoring systems imposed by many universities.
If you launch a petition at your university, please make sure to give people
a way to sign the petition without having to run any nonfree software,
and that includes JavaScript software sent by a web site. You can invite
people to send email to add their names.
I suggest it is unwise to focus on issues of effective discrimination
against subsets of students. Why so? It's not that these problems
don't matter — they do. What makes them weak focuses is that the
developers of the systems can probably fix them, resulting in a system
that mistreats students in those subsets only as much as it mistreats
everyone else.
Another mistake to avoid is to weaken your demands as a "compromise"
before you state them. Start the negotiations with what you really
want.
By demanding a real solution for the problem, you can build a stronger
movement. You can agree to a compromise later — but it will be,
explicitly, only a partial victory. So it won't make your movement
scatter.
(satire) *Reporter Presses Biden On Lack Of Own Plan To Trigger
Widespread Violence.*
Ro Khanna proposes a bill for term limits in the Supreme Court. After
a justice's term ends, perse would remain a judge and move to lower
courts.
(satire) *"Anyone questioning what President Trump will do on
election night or afterwards is participating in a very dangerous
effort to get Americans to mistrust the basic tenets of this country's
autocracy," said Sean Hannity on his broadcast.*
It's a shame Justice Ginsburg did not retire last time Democrats controlled
the Senate and the presidency.
US citizens: call on Massachusetts legislators to pass the ROE act.
This would get rid of old laws restricting abortion rights, which have
been unenforced due to Roe v Wade. It would also in general increase
abortion rights.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to shut down the Senate to stop
Republicans from picking Justice Ginsburg's successor.
(satire) *In an effort to restore the rule of law, Attorney General
Bill Barr declared Ipswich Middle School an anarchist jurisdiction
Friday after finding a circle-A symbol scrawled on a notebook cover.*
Rep. Jayapal is leading the fight against the PAT RIOT Act's massive
surveillance.
Howard Zinn said, who is on the Supreme Court is not as
important as what the American people demand.
But I don't think we should relax and stop trying to block the
wrecker's choice.
On September 25 there were over 3,200 climate strike events.
I wrote to the organizers to ask them to make it possible to find the
events without running nonfree software. That would be an easy change
to make. I hope that I will be able to participate in the future.
What is the use of a virtual protest, though? The idea of a protest
rally is to show the public and the news media where people stand. If
only the participants can see the rally, it doesn't seem to do
anything.
David Attenborough's Witness Statement shows us the destruction we
have done to Earth's ecosphere, then tells us what we need to do to
save what is left.
WHO: if we don't take effective collective action to curb the
spread of Covid-19, there could be 2 million deaths from Covid-19
before a vaccine starts to slow it.
Postal ballots in Pennsylvania require two different envelopes,
one inside the other. If the voter omits the inner envelope,
per vote won't be counted. This could reject tens of thousands
of ballots.
It is another reason to do early voting, not vote by mail.
A Republican senator proposed a bill to require all postal ballots to
be counted in just 48 hours.
This surely won't be enacted — and I doubt it is constitutional —
but it illustrates the "win by hook or by crook" attitude of
Republicans.
*As Trump Sows Chaos, Democrats Urged to Increase Push for In-Person
Voting—Early If Possible.*
What would the US military do if the wrecker orders it to
suppress "rebellion" based on "fake news"?
For generals to resign if ordered to overthrow constitutional
government would save their own individual honor, but it would not
save constitutional government. Rather, the first one in line who
hasn't got enough honor to resign would commit the crime. Their
duty would be to preserve constitutional government, not step aside.
*How the Protests Upended Portland's Mayoral Race* for the better.
Birdlife International gave the Taiwanese bird conservation group a
political ultimatum, following China's orders.
The US and other countries could conceivably pass laws requiring
organizations to accept cooperation with Taiwan if they do is with
China, on fair conditions. If China tries to bully these
organizations by refusing, the organizations will be required to say,
"That's your choice, China, but it's a shame you see it that way."
Lebanese are going hungry because imported food is now far more
expensive. Some are turning to farming.
China is systematically destroying mosques in Xinjiang, by the thousands,
including sites that are a thousand years old.
US thugs treat indigenous people with the same arrogance that they
show to blacks.
US lawyers do not contest that Rep. Rohrabacher offered Assange a
pardon if he would reveal information about sources of a leak. He
refused.
Assange did say that the leaked DNC emails were not obtained by cracking.
The UK's Covid-19 contact tracing app
asks
users to scan a QR code when they enter certain places.
I suspect that scanning the QR code immediately informs the state
where the phone is located at that moment. That is a violation of
people's privacy.
The Google/Apple contact detection protects privacy pretty well,
though I am not an expert on it. I'd be willing to use that,
if it did not require a mobile phone.
Italy has an approach I think is better, both for finding all cases
and for respecting privacy: simply
test
all the acquaintances of anyone that catches Covid-19, and don't
worry about whether they saw each other recently.
The grand jury
did
not indict any of the thugs involved in killing Breonna Taylor for
that killing. Naturally this triggered protests in many cities.
The decision not to charge the thugs may have been imposed by law.
I saw an article, a couple of months ago, which explained that the
thugs could legally claim self-defense, and it would have been
impossible to convict them.
I did not link to that article because it ended with antisocialist
views about right and wrong, which I did not want to link to, and
because I did not know if its claims about the legalities were valid.
But the outcome suggests that they were.
Since we condemn the outcome, we need to consider this question: at
what point did the thugs commit an act that they deserve to be
punished for?
I believe that point was when they broke into the house without
announcing who they were. When cops act like burglars, they invite
the residents to shoot; but if the residents do so, they are the ones
that are likely to get killed, as happened this time.
The outcome we want is that innocent people don't risk death. One way
to get that outcome is to make cops identify themselves as cops before
entering, with no exceptions. Criminals might fight with or without
the announcement, but the announcement will inform innocent residents
not to.
It is not enough to set a policy against no-knock breakins. It should
be a crime for thugs to do that, so we can indeed punish them when
they do.
We could allow the cops to send unarmed robots to enter the house,
given a warrant. If robots get shot, it is no great loss, and they
would not try to shoot back.
*Labour's target
should
be the Tory party, not Johnson's credibility.*
Chad is
planning
to build oil wells near Lake Chad.
The shore of Lake Chad belongs to four countries, all of which will be
harmed when the oil pollutes the lake. Meanwhile, the greenhouse
emissions from burning the oil will harm the whole world. We
cannot
afford to extract all the oil from existing wells, so any new well
is at best wasted expense, and at worst an assurance of doom.
*The federal government has still not set limits for PFAS compounds,
and some allege that
could
be because it is a polluter of them itself*.
Chicago has obdurately
refused
to reform its extremely cruel thug department.
Chen Qiushi, who reported on China's measures to deal with Covid-19,
disappeared on Feb 10. It appears he
has
been a prisoner ever since.
China continues building prisons for Uighurs —
380
have been discovered so far. Some are adjacent to factories.
Some ancient Uighur neighborhoods in Xinjiang are now
empty
of people. All the inhabitants have been moved, perhaps to those
prisons.
Covid-19 is surging in France, filling hospitals with people who are
badly sick and forcing the postponement of operations people need for
other reasons.
The only way to stop the surge is with distancing, but selfish people
are angry at the unpleasantness of this.
The British government may (if I understand this article correctly)
be thinking of repealing the GDPR in the UK.
The GDPR are greatly inadequate
but they do some good. This would be a change for the worse, and
indicates the intent to let companies such as Facebook and Google
snoop on Britons more and manipulate them more.
Medical effect studies need to keep track of outcomes for men and for women
separately. Some drugs work well for one and badly for the other.
Experiments will determine how long coronavirus can survive and be
infectious in small droplets that float in the air.
An Argentine member of Congress was forced to resign for a trifle: he
engaged in sexplay with his lover and did not realize his camera was
on.
Can't those people distinguish between causing embarrassment and really
doing wrong?
*Dozens of Asian [i.e., of Indian ancestry] lawyers [in the UK] say
they have been mistaken for defendants.*
Such a mistake can hurt feelings but does not do real damage.
However, it is a sign of racial stereotyping that must have other bad
effects.
*Facebook's former director of monetization (sic) says Facebook
intentionally made its product as addictive as cigarettes.*
The term "monetization"
encourages the attitude which leads people
to act this way. Let's shun it.
*Volkswagen to pay compensation for collaborating with Brazil’s
[1964-85] dictatorship.*
*Senator Bernie Sanders has called for an independent election commission to stop Donald Trump defying the will of the people and
plunging the US into a constitutional crisis.*
Doordash has a scheme where it discounts pizza for customers but pays
the restaurant full price. (This is a scheme to mislead and trap
restaurant owners for the long term.)
One restaurant owner started ordering pizzas from his own restaurant
via Doordash, and making money from Doordash on each one.
*Pentagon used taxpayer money meant for masks and swabs to make jet engine
parts and body armor.*
Arizona thugs told a dog to bite Alfredo Saldivar because he
"hesitated" before obeying a command to stand up.
To dispute whether he really hesitated is a distraction. The point
is, even if he did, that is no excuse for such dangerous escalation.
To avoid a future "climate lockdown" where drastic measures are imposed
to cut greenhouse gas emissions, we need to use non-drastic measures now
to achieve faster reductions.
Neve Gordon: Facebook is being pressured to tag criticism of Israel automatically as "anti-Semitism."
The change Facebook recently made, which recognizes the claiming that
Jews secretly rule the world as anti-Semitism, is correct. That
conspiracy theory is antisemitic, and it is not criticism of Israel's
occupation and colonization of Palestine.
Big oil companies are giving a public impression of starting to change
away from fossil fuels, but the change is pretty small so far.
Here's the detailed report.
*If Trump Fills RBG’s Seat, the Court’s Legitimacy Will Be in Crisis.*
What Biden would need to do to reverse the wrecker's sabotage of US environmental policies.
The article says it it would take two years to undo environmental
deregulation, handling each regulation separately, and this would face
opposition from extractivist companies. I have another idea.
Those channels are specified by laws. It should be possible to pass a
law reverting a specified set of regulations to their status as of
January 2017. The old regulations that would go back into effect were
approved through the official legal process, so it would be hard
to challenge them. The process could be finished in a few months.
This would require eliminating the filibuster.
The wrecker is still at it, now eliminating protection for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
*Facebook Ad Ban on Premature Election Victory Ads Is Yet Another Hollow
Gesture.* Because it won't cover premature election victory announcements.
*Trudeau pledges tax on 'extreme wealth inequality' to fund Covid spending
plan.*
If he really does this, it would be a great example.
Sanders and other US legislators called on the Organization of
American States to investigate how it came to publish false accusations
against Bolivia's President Morales.
Bad news for America: Senator Feinstein wants to allow Republicans to
block all progressive legislation, even if the Democrats win a
majority in the Senate.
It is logical that a plucratist legislator would want to help the right-wing extremist party to block progressive legislation.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-335-4855 and implore them to
do everything they can to prevent confirmation of a new Supreme Court
justice before the presidential inauguration on Jan 20.
California will study whether the Joshua tree needs legal protection
from being wiped out by global heating.
* Dozens of women have been convicted for manslaughter, homicide and
aggravated homicide after having miscarriages, stillbirths and other
obstetric emergencies since El Salvador introduced a total ban on
abortion in 1998.*
*White House 'pressured official to say John Bolton book was security risk'.*
It's another example of how the wrecker corrupts every government activity.
The US Chamber of Commerce has found 23 Democrats in Congress
sufficiently plutocratist to endorse their election campaigns.
Some large US corporations have learned to talk about concern for
"stakeholders" other than their owners and executives, but it's only
talk.
In the UK, teenagers (not "children" as the article says) are being
recruited to violent right-wing extremism via internet communications.
In this year's presidential debates, the danger of global heating
disaster may hardly be discussed.
If there is a question about this issue, it is likely to use the
vague, neutral term "climate change" which invites candidates to miss
the point.
*The Federal Reserve bond
purchasing program meant to prevent workers from losing their jobs amid
the Covid-19 pandemic instead bolstered companies who laid off more
than one million workers while paying massive dividends to
shareholders.*
Climate activists call for defeat of the Congressional Democrats'
inadequate energy bill.
The article says that passing that bill would by a "Pyrrhic" victory,
which is incorrect use of the word. "Pyrrhic" describes a victory won
at such a great cost that you can't afford to win another. (King
Pyrrhos of Epirus said that about his victory over Rome.) This bill
would be, rather, a dummy victory.
The oil companies' conservation plans are also drastically inadequate.
Ecuador's treacherous president Moreno is trying to rig the 2021 election
by stopping Correa and his supporters from running.
(satire) *… the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
confirmed Monday that the Earth is dating the Moon.*
The bully continually incites violence against reporters
but pretends not to be doing so.
Remember how in 2016 a Republican candidate apologized for punching a
reporter, but the bully praised it anyway?
Governor Newsom ordered that all vehicles sold in California after 2035
make zero greenhouse gas emissions, but he failed to take real steps
to reduce oil and gas extraction in the state.
*Trump Keeps Telling Us How He and Republicans Plan to Steal This Election.
Can we stop him and save our republic before it's too late?*
Is "steal" the correct word? The final step would use a loophole in
the Constitution, and that a such would not be stealing it.
But the first step is a fraudulent accusation of fraud, and I think that
would justify the word "steal".
Why are Republicans in control of all the swing states' legislatures?
Some of those states now vote majority Democrat, but gerrymandering
has prevented the voters from electing legislators that reflect their
views.
*Perspectives on a riven nation from a worried military spouse.*
18 years in prison for criticizing Xi.
*Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies.*
*Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said
‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show.*
We all suspected this, but we could not be sure. Now we know
that the bully's supporters are a criminal gang.
I have not had time to keep up with Craig Murray's coverage of
Julian Assange's extradition hearings, so here are the links.
After 2C of global heating, Antarctic ice melt would raise sea level
2.7 meters.
That would be in addition to the effects of melting in Greenland and
the expansion of the ocean due to its own heating. I don't know
what the total would be.
French journalists unite to back Charlie Hebdo and the freedom
to blaspheme.
(satire) *Earth reportedly expressed hope Tuesday that a weird
burning sensation was nothing serious.*
(satire) *… Xi Jinping jailed Chinese real estate tycoon Ren
Zhiqiang Tuesday for failing to use the sandwich method of
constructive criticism when condemning him.*
Amnesty International rebukes the UK for denying it access to monitor
Assange's extradition hearing.
If it were not for Craig Murray's coverage, the hearing would be
effectively secret. This is what we expect from outright tyrannies
such as China, but apparently the UK is approaching the same level of
decay.
The developers of the Pebble Mine in Alaska pretend it will be 5
square miles, which is merely large, but what they say in private is
that it will be enormous.
*If Report Proven, ACLU Says Federal Agents Tapping Phones of Protesters Would
Be 'Outrageous' Constitutional Violation.*
Hong Kong's puppet government has derecognized most journalists,
as a preparatory step for repression.
Remember this if politicians in your country try to impose rules about
who is a journalist and who is not. For instance, if they claim that
Julian Assange is not a journalist.
*The QAnon orphans: people who have lost loved ones to conspiracy theories.*
Cults like these used to be run as businesses: Scientology, and the
Moonies. As far as I know, there is no one business profiting off
QAnon. But with so many credulous people, I'm sure there are people
with plans to profit off exploiting them in a tight, cult-like way.
(satire) *As the Democratic presidential nominee ramped up his in-person
efforts to get out the vote, members of the Joe Biden campaign
reportedly went door-to-door Tuesday in the JPMorgan Chase
headquarters.*
Medea Benjamin: reports say that Biden will choose, to run the
Pentagon, the architect of the US policy of military intimidation
around the world.
Biden is proving to be every bit as bad as we expected last spring.
I expect he will put money into the military rather than saving
poor Americans from total misery.
*Facebook says it may quit Europe over ban on sharing data with US.*
This is the road to victory! Make sure Facebook leaves Europe, and
the US, and then everywhere else.
* Coronavirus inflicts American deaths equivalent to a 9/11 every few
days, but [the wrecker] and his allies seem blithely unconcerned.*
Republicans don't care if other people die, but in 2001 they had a
chance to gain by making a fuss about some Americans who died.
Whereas today they have a chance to gain by pretending it isn't
happening.
*Greenpeace says [the EU] must get a grip on reducing greenhouse gases from
livestock or risk missing Paris agreement targets.*
Austin, Texas, voted to cut the thug department's budget. Texas
Governor Abbott threatens to cut Austin's taxes as a punishment for
this, and put the city's thug department under the control of the lawless and cruel state thug department.
The article starts by describing how the state thugs attacked Lauren
Mestas. Her car had slogans such as FUCK THESE RACIST POLICE, and
"all cops are bastards." A thug was so offended by this that he
believed he was entitled to bring many thugs to point guns at her,
then force her out of the car, which they ruined ‐ demonstrating that
at least Texas state cops are bastards.
China has made a glaringly insufficient pledge to be carbon-neutral by
2060.
The cheater hopes courts will stop states from counting valid postal ballots
that arrive after election day.
By itself, this is merely unfair. But when combined with DeJoy's
efforts to delay mail, it adds up to sabotage.
*Ocasio-Cortez Demands Democrats Use 'Every Procedural Tool Available' to Stop
Trump From Filling RBG Vacancy.*
I completely agree.
Covid-19 has made adjunct professors even more likely to be junct.
They also fear losing their medical insurance, although many of them
already have none. If they get sick, they can be fired rather than treated.
They would not have that danger if the US had a national medical
system. In general, a national medical system can encourage hiring
workers because the state can fund their medical treatment by taxing
profits rather than taxing employment.
Matthew Carney recounts more of the Chinese psychological game of cat
and mouse, threatening him and his family.
You may have a mission to do in China which is so important that you
take the risk of being thrown in prison for political reasons. But
don't bring your family with you!
*Calls for Major Reforms After Leaked Docs Detail How Big Banks Help Criminals
and Oligarchs Launder Their 'Dirty Cash'.*
The CDC posted notice that Covid-19 can be spread via aerosols. Then,
a few days later, it deleted that notice.
Can anyone find the evidence about spread via aerosols?
*The Climate Emergency Isn't Just a Crisis, It's a Crime.*
The fossil fuel companies are the mobsters that organized the crime.
Clean energy makes more jobs than dirty energy, but "creating jobs" is used
as an excuse for subsidizing the latter.
A heavily subsidized Shell plant is an example of this.
I have to point out, though, that employment is a secondary
consideration when the survival of civilization and the ecosphere is
at stake. What would be the sense in paying people to poison our
future, even if it did make lots of jobs?
It would be better to create jobs by paying them to move a big pile of
gravel from one lot to another, with shovels. At least that work
wouldn't do any harm.
*AT&T, Coca Cola, Disney, Nike, Procter & Gamble and Uber
all target female consumers and promote women-friendly work
environments, yet they bankroll candidates who actively work against
women’s rights.*
*We need to create a new framework for health
security.*
Republicans put a lot of effort, 10 years ago, into winning control of
state legislatures so they could gerrymander subsequent elections.
Democrats need to win them back.
Bogus Johnson has tuned the distancing rules for the UK, hoping this
will stop the rapid growth in Covid-19 cases.
Experience with him suggests that he has no solid basis to think that
it will do so. I don't have a solid basis to think it won't, but
since tuning has been insufficient in many other places, I predict it
will be insufficient this time too.
Bloomberg is paying the fines for 31,000 Florida ex-cons so that they
will be able to vote this year.
It should not be forgotten that the Florida election was not actually
close. It appeared to be so after Republicans disenfranchised around
50,000 voters, chosen systematically in a way that ensured most of
them would be black and therefore probably Democrats.
Australian thugs found a man drunk and asleep, so they pepper-sprayed
and tased him to wake him up. Then they made false charges against
him. So far, so usual. Except that he was a famous professional
rugby player and there is a video of what they did to him.
The thug commissioner seems to have a great capacity to sympathize
with thugs, but insufficient sympathy for everyone else. I was
surprised that his list of ways to deal with the situation did not
include having four people pick him up, each holding one limb. That
doesn't generally hurt, and he might have stayed asleep.
*A third of my country (Bangladesh) was just underwater. The world must act on climate.*
*Gig Economy Company Launches (a company like) Uber, but for Evicting People.*
Many upper-caste Indian engineers have moved to the US. Alas, they
have brought caste prejudice with them.
The Indian I admire most is Dr Ambedkar, who was the leader of the
Dalits. I urge people to read a biography of him. The one I read was
Ambedkar — Toward an Enlightened India, by Gail Omvedt.
Please do not buy this (or anything) from Amazon!
At the end of his life, Ambedkar developed a rationalist form of Buddhism
which he called Navayana.
Jai Bhim!
*'It smells bad, it tastes bad': how Americans stopped trusting their water.*
A woman in the UK was fired from her job at a school for posting,
elsewhere, a statement disapproving of same-sex marriage.
I disagree with her views, but we must respect her right to state
them. Her employer should have to respect that, too.
As it happens, she made the statement based on her religion, but that
should make no difference. An Atheist should also have the same right to
state those views, or other views, as a religious believer.
The State Policy Network aims at *crushing unions, promoting fossil
fuels and undermining climate science, eliminating regulations and
cutting taxes, privatizing education, stopping Medicaid expansion, and
hiding the identities of political donors.* Now we know 100 of its funders.
It would be useful to develop a consumer boycott list based on this
information.
Cyprus blocked the EU from putting sanctions on Belarus, using the issue
as a pawn.
Cyprus demands the EU take its side in the dispute about which country will
get to extract fossil fuel from the Mediterranean Sea and convert it
into planet-roasting greenhouse gas. It seems that the EU does not recognize
that it must never be done. Why not?
There are many low-lying coastal cities in Turkey, which will be
inundated by global heating. I don't think Turks want them to be
flooded. Don't they realize?
*'Landmark moment': 156 countries agree to Covid vaccine allocation
deal.* People who are particularly vulnerable, due to their conditions
or their work, will get priority.
In the US, rich people will be first.
Alexei Navalny demands Russia return the clothes he was wearing when
he was poisoned, as evidence.
BP has confirmed that half the world's known oil reserves will never be used
and are worthless. This article speculates about political
consequences.
The article also talks about reviving carbon capture, but that
technology was only hypothetical. If it is ever made to work, let's
do it, but don't pretend it is available technology.
The plan to make hydrogen from methane is misguided.
Methane wells leak lots of methane. Transporting methane
leaks too. To add to that, making hydrogen from natural gas releases CO2! That is a bad way to make hydrogen.
As for the idea that there is something wasteful about using green
electricity to make hydrogen, that would make sense if we were hitting
a limit on supply of solar and wind energy. The real limit is how much
of those facilities we build, and we can ramp that up.
Meanwhile, how come Greece, Cyprus and Turkey are still fighting about
possible oil reserves under the sea? Have they not grasped this news?
Or is there something not known to me, nor described in the article,
which makes those new undersea reserves worth something despite
all the other known reserves that won't be used?
*Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers.*
The phone numbers add tracking before connecting to a restaurant, so
that Grubhub can bill for a marketing fee.
The global fight against monopolies and tax havens is picking up.
The article also reminds us that the fight against excessive market
concentration is not limited to blocking mergers and breaking up large
companies. Though we need to do a lot of that, and my tax proposal
can help.
*Affirming Jim Crow, Israeli Parliament Votes Down Bill Guaranteeing Equality
for Palestinian-Israelis.*
Right-wing scapegoating parties are doing very well against
plutocratist parties, since plutocratists around the world have
crushed and silenced the left.
*Republicans Aren't Hypocrites.* To be a hypocrite, you have to stand
for principles.
According to this article, Republicans are cynics that don't care
about any political positions, except as ways to give their supporters
enemies to win victories over.
Friday school climate strikes are starting again.
In 2018, China threatened to imprison Australian journalist Matthew
Carney, and his wife, and their teenage daughter — separately — for
a fabricated visa crime, for offending China with his reporting on
repression.
Carney kept silent about this until now for the safety of other
Australian journalists.
Both the US and China have imprisoned whole families, often separating
children and teenagers from their parents. I don't know which country
does this more often. There are not very many foreign journalists in
China but there are millions of Uighurs.
Another similarity is that both countries do this as part of a
campaign to attack truth.
But the US does not do this to foreign journalists. It is trying to
imprison Julian Assange, which is evil, but it is not trying to
imprison his mate and their children.
*I'm 18 and can already see my Alaska community changed forever by climate
change.*
*Meet the doomers: why some young US voters have given up hope on climate.*
I agree with their estimation of our future. But they are wrong to
give up the fight because of the situation.
They are right that avoiding disaster calls for big national efforts
which current governments refuse to do. (I call them "planet
roasters" because of that refusal.) And it is too late to fully avoid
the disaster.
But it is not too late to avoid part of the disaster. If 20% of
species go extinct, instead of 50%, that will be a great conservation
achievement. If heating kills 8 billion people in this century rather
that 11 billion, that will mean saving 3 billion human lives.
Whatever we achieve in preservation of democracy and human rights will
also make a lasting difference, if civilization survives.
Fortunately, some of the young people are not giving up.
Whatever universities do by 2030, or by 2050, will not make a big
difference directly. But pressuring universities into rapid action
can lead to broader actions that are bigger.
*Immigrant rights groups urge New York senators to block Iris Lan’s
nomination to serve as a federal judge in the southern district.*
I hope they can do so, but Republicans have already disregarded that
traditional Senate practice.
Australia's laws give mining companies great license to destroy
ancient sites with their mines. One might think they were designed to
do that.
I am not persuaded by the "sacred site" argument, because no religion
deserves special deference from people who are not its adherents.
Every church is someone's "sacred site", but that should not protect
all churches from eminent domain and demolition. (For the same
reason, I do not call priests "father".) What we owe to other
people's religions, in general, is to respect people's right to
practice their religions.
What is special about these sites is not that someone's religion calls
them "sacred," but that they are irreplaceable relics from humanity's
past. That applies to some churches and other religious buildings and
objects, too. Typically those are already protected, except that
sometimes fanatical religion attacks them.
The QAnon fantasy enables right-wing believers to feel they are protecting
innocent children. Alas, the protect those children from a fantasy danger
which distracts people from the real source of real sexual abuse.
The QAnon fantasy resembles a cancer in the body of knowledge. Just
as cancer cells have become disconnected from the rules and needs of
the body they are supposed to be part of, QAnonsense beliefs are
disconnected from the body of real knowledge and real society's real
needs. Whatever variant appeals more to the susceptible, will spread.
This jamming together of conspiracies reminds me of a great work of
fiction from the 1970s: the Illuminatus trilogy. It presents a
fictional world in which every well-known conspiracy theory of the day
is posited as true, and weaves them together by inventing connections
that are literally consistent but shockingly implausible.
For instance, three assassins had separately gone to Dallas to shoot
President Kennedy, and the agent who was there to save Kennedy — John
Dillinger — decided he couldn't possibly stop all three, except by
shooting Kennedy before they did. Completely preposterous, but it
wasn't meant to be believed.
What was delightful absurdity as fiction in Illuminatus becomes a
dangerous delusion when taken seriously by the credulous.
On the testimony of two expert witnesses in Assange's hearing.
Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who defends the rights of people faced
with torture and assassination by the US government and campaigns
against those activities, testified about cases that had been helped
Wikileaks releases, and about how US trials about publication of
secrets really work, and explained that the indictment included a
charge of "conspiracy" for which everything Wikileaks released, which
had come from Manning, would be pertinent.
One thing that amazed me was his assertion that Obama had decided not
to prosecute Assange. This amazed me because Obama certainly did not
call off the teams that were keeping him bottled up in the Ecuadorian
embassy. It has been thoroughly established that Sweden and the UK
were manipulating the Swedish charges rather than trying honestly to
pursue them.
Mark Feldstein, an expert on journalistic practices, testified about
how journalists ask source for leaks of secrets and how they protect
the leakers. He said that the things Assange is accused of doing were
standard practice.
The witnesses had prepared based on the old indictment and have been
denied a chance to study the new one carefully, as described in a
previous report.
UK cops report that they have learned how to shut down the
gangs that sell cocaine and heroin outside cities.
I congratulate them, because cocaine and heroin are dangerous, but
this focus on the punitive approach can't ever stop the sale of those
drugs. As the article recognizes, someone else will always show up to
sell them.
What will make those drugs nearly disappear is to adopt a more
intelligent approach — the one that works in the Netherlands
and in Portugal.
This approach is for the national medical system to let addicts
register, then give them drugs of reliable purity to use, and safe
places to use them. When the main buyers are not buying from private
sellers, most of the market will disappear, and so will the private
selling.
*World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam.*
However, I disagree with the recommendations. Instead of "using the
carbon budget for the best," we must use as little of it as possible.
When we speak of the carbon budget, we are making an estimate of how
much more emissions we can make before a certain level of disaster.
We don't know exactly how much, and more emissions means a worse
disaster. It is valid to say, "If we emit considerably more than the
carbon budget, we will make life horrible." It is not valid to say,
"If we emit a little less than the carbon budget, we will be ok."
If we could be certain, absolutely certain, that we had done enough
to avoid disaster, perhaps at that point we could switch to the goal
of helping the poor.
But since disaster is already starting, it is pretty clear we have
already failed to do enough. So we must do the most we can.
*The climate crisis will sweep away my country if the world doesn't keep its
promises.*
What we have to do for the people of many regions that are threatened
— many of whom are among the poorest 50% — is cut emissions ASAP.
Activists doxed 1,000 Belarusian thugs.
We don't know from the information in the article whether they
are hackers.
We also don't know whether they are crackers — we don't
know whether they had to break computer security to get the data.
But I can say with certainty that they struck a good blow against
Lukashenko's tyranny.
Doxing someone is like a kind of violence. Ordinarily, it is bad to
do violence to others, but there are situations where it is justified.
When the thugs are carrying out violent repression of dissidents,
it is justified for dissidents to respond with counter-violence.
It may or may not be a good tactic. In this case, because doxing is a
warning rather than actual physical harm, I think it is a good tactic.
Walmart and Amazon supported the campaign of a candidate who promotes
the QAnon fantasy.
(satire) *U.S. officials told reporters
Thursday they were hurt that Saudi Arabia would try to develop its own
nuclear weapon rather than just asking nicely for one from America.*
California hires lots of prisoners to help fight wildfires. But it is
hard for ex-prisoners to get a job to do this: fire departments
exclude them because of their prison record.
Advice to BP (Billionaire Polluters) if it is serious about
transitioning to green energy.
Many oil companies are going bankrupt, and the rest face a dim future.
We can count on them to try to extract every last dollar from their
operations, leaving nothing to pay for the sealing of their wells.
We need to pass laws to collect a substantial well-sealing tax
which will go into a fund to seal old wells.
Ralph Nader: *Why Do Americans Give Away So Much Control to Corporations?*
I disagree with Nader on one point. The problem with giving personal
information to companies is not that they get it without paying. It
is that they get it at all. Simply having the data and using them
gives them power over people. So don't be distracted by the proposals
to make them pay for the data, one way or another; they don't go far
enough.
Most of the US is in the zones to be affected by climate disaster, one
way or another. If you don't get fires, or water shortage, you get
hurricanes or torrential raines. Here's a map.
Lori Loughlin will serve her prison sentence in a prison near her new
home. The prison has many educational programs, including creative skills
and job skills.
All prisons should offer such lessons. That is called
"rehabilitation" — a concept American prisons used to practice, but
forgot about under Reagan's spirit of cruelty.
Lori Loughlin does not need to learn a new trade, but many prisoners do,
and it can be the opportunity to change from a life of crime to a life
as a good citizen.
Is it silly to teach arts, including music? Some prisoners can make
an emotional contact with an art and see that there is something in life
other than what you can get for yourself.
What bothers me is not that Ms Loughlin's prison has these things.
It is that so many prisons don't.
It would be fair to make wealthy prisoners pay for participating in
these programs — but that is dangerous, because it might lead to
charging poor prisoners for participating in them. That we must not
do!
Democrats and progressives are pressuring Republicans not to try to
replace Justice Ginsburg this year.
It may be possible to succeed. Several Republican senators now running for
reelection are reported not to want to vote on this.
The issue of replacing Justice Ginsburg is boosting support
for Democrats in senate races.
I am concerned that what Schumer and other Democrats are now saying —
"Appoint another justice now and we will expand the Supreme Court" —
might be interpreted as promising the converse: "Don't appoint another
justice now, and we won't expand the Supreme Court." That worries me,
because we need to expand the Supreme Court. We should do this to
cancel Gorsuch and Kavanaugh; we should do this to reverse
plutocratist decisions made before them, including the Corporations
United decision
and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act
and the decision that applied "religious freedom"
co companies.
*Making a demon of JK Rowling is a wretched sport, born of misogyny and
resentment.*
I continue to rebuke Rowling for her unjust lawsuit against
people who bought one of her books,
and since them I have refused on principle to buy any of her books.
But I do not hate her. She does not deserve to be vilified based on
distortions of what she said.
Bogus Johnson is proposing to create three new obstacles against
prosecuting UK soldiers for war crimes including torture.
Fortunately the International Criminal Court will be able to prosecute them
if the British government does not try.
No army is immune to the temptation to vent anger through war crimes.
If a country protects its own soldiers from charges, it in effect
encourages war crimes. The world is full of bad examples; the UK has
been a good example until now.
*A Biden victory cannot bring normal back.*
Even if it could, that would hardly be desirable except in contrast to
the present. The old "normal" was pretty bad for most Americans, and
climate mayhem is making it rapidly worse.
The article uses the non-US definition of "liberalism", meaning
deregulation of business. In the US, "liberalism" is the term we have
used for many decades for the agenda now more often called "progressive".
Medical care for all has been a liberal program since the New Deal.
Likewise workers' rights, and support for the poor. By the 1960s it
included racial equality. By the 70s, it included women's equality,
gay rights, and eliminating pollution.
Why, I wonder, does anyone think to define the term "liberal" to refer
to self-styled "centrists" such as right-wing Democrats?
Lukashenko's thugs are now trying mass arrests of protesting women.
Everyone: call on Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul to investigate
attacks by thugs on BLM protesters.
Everyone: call on California Governor Newsom to end oil drilling
in that state.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the MORE Act.
US citizens: call on the Department of Housing and Urban Development
not to allow discrimination against trans people.
The UK government has replaced promotion of the most capable with
promotion of the most politically loyal.
Michael Young, in The Rise of the Meritocracy, was perceptive. He saw
that if society offered enough social mobility for capable people to
get out of the working class won their own, that would leave the
remaining workers with no one capable enough to organize them to stand
up for their rights.
We must educate and promote capable people anyway, because the
alternative is to let the incapable run things — but we must somehow
prevent this from resulting in telling the less "meritorious" to
suffer low pay and a life of hardship.
*Brazilian wetlands fires started by humans and worsened by drought.*
The people who set the fires are criminals who wanted to replace the
wetlands with cattle ranching. Due to the drought, the large Pantanal
wetland is not wet now.
*Covid is Widening Educational Inequalities for Children Around the World.*
California could protect its buildings from fire with requirements
for careful precautions.
More frequent fires outside the cities might result in less intense fires.
Japan's red pine forests are endangered, and with them the prized
matsutake mushroom.
*In 2016, the Alexandria, Kentucky, police chief talked the city into
hiring a social worker — and four years on, the current chief sees the
program as indispensable.*
Warning Latin America not to end lockdowns too soon.
The US, and then Europe, have shown that this is likely to mean
a new outbreak of Covid-19.
England has been trying to restrain the spread of Covid-19 with local
restrictions, and being rather rigid about them, but it is not
working.
I think the country needs nationwide measures. However, they don't
need to be absolutely rigid. The UK's approach strikes me like
measuring the distance between two people and fining them if is only
198 cm instead of 200 cm.
The US deportation thugs extend their medical neglect for prisoners
from the prisons to the deportation flights.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency (formerly Environmental Protection Agency)
races to demolish environmental protections.
Republicans are fighting on every level to keep the world moving
steadily to a deadly 7C if heating.
Rebecca Solnit: Climate change, Covid – our hearts ache. But a new era
is possible. We can do it.
*Thousands gather in Thailand for anti-government protest.*
Using AI recognition systems on body cameras could be a powerful system
for teaching thugs to be less brutal.
However, it could also be a powerful system for repression of everyone
that comes into range of the camera.
To make body cameras serve and protect the people, rather than repress
the people, we need to make sure that they capture video and audio when they
should, and not when they shouldn't. I've made a technical proposal
for part of that, but we also need proper laws about publishing the
videos.
As for the idea that live monitoring of the video could enable a
deescalation specialist to intervene and prevent a killing, that might
have saved George Floyd. But many killings by thugs occur when thugs
react without taking even a second to think.
There would be no time
to intervene, either. Meanwhile, the live transmission would imply
transmitting the video all the time, which is wrong because most of the
time the video should not be saved at all.
Congressional Democrats call for investigation of Barr for politicizing
his office as Attorney General.
I don't know if this can have much effect. The bully has already
placed his officials are above the law by showing that he will fire
any inspector general that tries to investigate their crimes.
The smoke from wildfires, when breathed by pregnant women, causes lasting
harm to their fetuses in later life.
In some US states, women could be prosecuted for breathing the smoke.
Perhaps millions of women would commit this "crime".
One could imagine prosecuting oil companies too, but the right-wing
officials in those states don't want to go after oil companies, only
women.
Alexei Navalny is making a good recovery.
However, one thing makes me worry that his brain has been injured: a
perverse inclination to use Instagram. ;-{.
We don't know where the climate system's tipping points are, but if one tips,
it could tip others. Or it could block others.
It's like playing a pinball game with Earth as the ball.
Biden seems to have no presencial campaign organization in Michigan.
I wonder if this is because rational people are scared to go there,
and especially scared to approach lots of strangers there.
Meanwhile, the wrecker has taught his followers a delusion of
invulnerability. They don't feel inhibitions about meeting people on
the street to reinforce their rejection of masks.
In effect, the wrecker has found a way to arrange that Republicans
can do real canvassing and campaigning, while his rational opponents
know it is not safe.
*Coronavirus Depression Spike Suggests Social Media Is No Substitute For Real Life.*
Thus, if you refuse to use Zoom, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook,
you can do without them.
A US court has ordered reversal of DeJoy's postal sabotage.
(satire) *White House Vows To Have Something To Stick Into Your Arm By
October.*
New York State agreed to a court settlement which protects the rights of voters
that sent in postal ballots against unjust rejection of their ballots.
Which states have not done this?
The bullshitter wants to turn US history teaching into one-sided
patriotic propaganda.
To a large extent, that's what US history teaching has tended to be:
justifying actions of the US in conflict with other countries, and the
winners in domestic disputes, with the exception of the Civil War: the
supporters of the Confederacy perversely gained the upper hand about
reconstruction.
However, it wasn't totally one-sided in the 60s. You could see that
the indigenous people were cheated. Slavery was condemned.
We see a similar practice of propaganda history in China.
(satire) *Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing ‘1946 Commission’
To Teach How America Started At President’s Birth.*
*50 reasons the bully's administration is bad for workers.*
(satire) *With 30% of the U.S. electorate currently stumbling
through the streets in pursuit of their ballots and shouting, ‘Wait,
come back!’ we fear this sudden, powerful gale has overwhelmed our
electoral system.*
US citizens: call on UPS, Humana, and Ford to stop supporting the
Louisville thug department.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject Chad Wolf as head of the
Department of Harshness and Sadism.
He is too apt for harshness and sadism to be entrusted with official
authority over it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call please spread the word!
Julian Assange's hearing has resumed, and Craig Murray is covering it
as before. I was unable to post these before because I was overloaded
writing a long article.
Murray reports that Keir Starmer, the tame new head of the Labour
Party, condemns Extinction Rebellion as a threat to the free press for
blocking right-wing newspaper trucks one morning, but says nothing
when the free press is truly threatened.
In the first day of the resumed hearing,
Assange saw for the first
time the totally new charges, which his lawyers saw only in the past
few weeks and had been unable to show him in prison. They had a
discussion about them and asked for an adjournment to gather evidence.
The judge refused this.
The defense will not be allowed to call witnesses except the ones it
chose for the old charges.
This continues what we have seen all along: the rules of justice
twisted over and over to assure a politically pre-decided outcome.
This is not as obvious a show trial as the ones Stalin held, but
it is substantively similar.
Organizations such as Amnesty and Reporters without Borders had to
fight for a chance to view the hearing, so strong were the efforts
to prevent public monitoring of the treacherous proceedings.
Salafi Arabia has possible large uranium deposits.
Now that fission power is effectively obsolete, the only reason the
country would be interested is to make nuclear weapons.
It would be natural to propose a nuclear disarmament treaty for Salafi
Arabia and Iran — and perhaps Israel too.
*Only an honest conversation about the Corbyn era will help us learn from it.*
When Hong Kong was a British colony, Britain did not respect freedom
of speech there. Now that it is a Chinese colony, it is China that
doesn't respect freedom of speech there, but it finds the old British
law against "sedition" handy for jailing dissidents.
*Dear America, we too have seen red skies in Australia and we can tell you
what happens next.*
It is not too late to bring about a small disaster instead of the big one
humanity is heading for.
(satire) *Apple announced Wednesday that its new smart watch would
feature a rabbit-ear antenna capable of picking up five or more
television channels in the area where a user lives.*
Scotland will use solar electricity to generate hydrogen as fuel for
vehicles.
One convenient thing is that it doesn't matter that there are times
when there is no light to make hydrogen with. If you make hydrogen at
a high rate when there is light, you have enough for the rest of the
time too.
*The shift to online schooling is running roughshod over children's
privacy rules and rights,*
which were inadequate to start with.
The article is concerned that wealthier schools will choose systems
that "protect" privacy "better" whereas impecunious schools will have
to use systems that protect privacy less. That would be a real
danger, if some of these systems did protect privacy.
In practice, none of these systems give much protection. Whatever
data a company collects is already on the road to being misused. The
only effective protection for privacy is not to put the data in
a database.
Greg Palast: Republicans may be planning to refuse to certify the
elections in some states, using uncounted postal ballots as an excuse.
Use early voting instead of postal voting.
That is what I did for the Massachusetts primary on Sept 1,
and that is what I plan to do for the general election too.
Some US cities have plans to use the recovery from the Covid-19
depression to reduce local greenhouse emissions.
Every little bit helps, but we need more than local improvements to avoid
most of the climate disaster.
China forced 2.6 million "surplus workers" in Xinjiang to move long
distances. The critical attention to what it does there is making
the government uncomfortable.
China is moving to giant multistory pig farms, isolated from the
outside, so as to stop transmission of diseases.
The CDC published the weak recommendations for who should get a
Covid-19 test over the objections of its scientists.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/18/cdc-guidelines-coronavirus-testing-published-despite-objection-scientists
*Wilderness the size of Mexico lost worldwide in just 13 years.*
*Silence reigns on the US-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia.*
The minister in charge of Papua New Guinea's thugs says that they
are corrupt from the top down, and that they drive out any honest employees.
The House of Representatives passed a bill prohibiting discrimination
against pregnant workers, and requiring employers to make reasonable
accommodations so a pregnant worker can keep working.
There is no chance that the Republicans who control the Senate will
agree to this, but passing the bill is useful as political pressure.
How the oil-and-plastic companies have organized world-wide to block efforts
to reduce plastic pollution.
This is yet another facet of the harm done by plutocratic rule.
Belarus protesters are pulling the masks off thugs to identify them.
This seems to dissuade them from violence.
It is an interesting reversal, to use face recognition against the servants
if a tyrant. I think it is justified in that situation,
This suggests to me that the thugs of Belarus are just barely clinging to
obedience to Lukashenko, and that at any moment they could snap.
*Taiwan calls for global coalition against China's aggression as US official
flies in.*
I think it would be interesting for several important countries to
open diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and let China break relations
or keep relations, however it wishes. After a few years, I believe,
China would decide that it needs the diplomatic relations more than it
needs to show aggression against Taiwan.
Parents: call for prohibition of facial recognition in schools.
Everyone: boycott Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorians and Steven Donziger.
US citizens: call on Congress to end weapons sales to Salafi Arabia.
Tree species in the US northeast are moving north under the pressure
of global heating.
Israel has discovered how to make occupation of Palestine profitable.
Indian thugs in Kashmir arrested a man, then tortured him and killed him.
(Of coure, they deny this.) This triggered protests, much as it does in the US.
It appears that the repression of Kashmir in general is not as severe as it
was some months ago: the internet is not shut off all the time any more,
only sometimes.
* Extension on Firefox browser will allow users to record information
about videos recommended by [youtube].* The aim is to figure out why
youtube's recommendation algorithm recommends noisome videos.
The US military-industrial complex proposes to build 60 additional
naval ships,
because a navy that China could catch up with in decades is
not considered sufficient. That does not seem logical to me.
China's approach to taking over the South China Sea is to build
airfields on small islands and reefs. Ships are much more vulnerable
than those airfields. It seems to me that the US would find it more
effective, as well as cheaper, to help its regional allies build more
such airfields.
Barr asked US attorneys to charge protesters with "sedition" — a charge
that would almost always be bullshit.
A whistleblower reports that a privatized immigration prison carried out
hysterectomies by force against prisoners.
One of the reasons we must abolish privatized prisons is that it is
harder to hold them accountable for any sort of cruel, degrading,
injurious or even fatal conduct. Even when people have been convicted
of a crime — which these prisoners mostly have not been — that does
not excuse such treatment of them.
A dissident journalist in Turkey is being prosecuted for mocking
medieval Ottoman sultans.
I doubt the statement that they were from the 13th century, since the
first Ottoman prince, Osman, did not become the ruler of a
principality until 1299. It is more likely that they were from the
14th or 15th centuries.
It should not be a crime to insult a deceased person, or a living
person — or anyone or anything. Such laws are repressive.
*US corporations file for bankruptcy and lay off workers. Why do execs still
get bonuses?*
The OECD calls for government spending without tax increases, to
reduce the Covid-19 depression and help unemployed people.
Deficit spending can be made possible by government borrowing, but also by
creating more currency in accord with Modern Monetary Theory,
except for countries trapped in the Euro-zone
I think it is safe to tax billionaires a lot more
since they got such a windfall this year.
Big US news media accept lots of money from corporations to sponsor
"news events" that present slanted news.
The US government is pretending that sanctions against Iran, ended by
virtue of US rejection of the non-nuclear deal, will come back into
force on Sep 20. This could be meant as an excuse for the wrecker to
launch a war to "enforce the sanctions", to manipulate the
election.
Will Iran's rulers have the self-discipline to refrain from retaliation
until after November 3 so as to refuse to help the wrecker?
*People want a fairer, greener Britain after Covid, inquiry reveals.*
I wish they had voted for the leader who really stood for this: Corbyn.
A UK thug called for making it a crime to go limp when arrested.
It makes me think of Israel fining Palestinians for not demolishing
their own houses.
*America has millions of people in poverty because Americans choose
not to demand the policies that would lift them out of poverty.*
For the US, global heating is a big threat to national security.
What does that make the planet-roasters? And the wrecker?
Of course, global heating is a threat to the national security of many
other countries. Some are sure to be destroyed entirely by it.
It is a mistake for a political party to adopt policies following the polls.
Of course, it is even worse to adopt policies following the rich people's
donations as "centrist" Democrats do.
A party must have values and come to conclusions.
Malaysia may force prisoners to harvest palm oil
which will be exported for use in our food.
The wrecker said that Covid-19 could be stopped by 'herd mentality'.
He sure tries to inculcate a herd mentality into his followers;
if that could stop Covid-19, we would see less infection, rather than more,
in places he holds rallies.
The wrecker's campaign to build a wall has covered only a fraction of
the border with Mexico, but that was enough to wreck Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument. It can never be restored.
Women state their feelings about being childfree
(or, in a few cases, about having children).
Ai Weiwei explains China's strategy, and how the US and the west are
too messed up to cope with it.
Netanyahu stated that Israeli thugs murdered a Palestinian, then
falsely called him a "terrorist" to justify the murder.
He went so far as to apologize to the victim's family.
Netanyahu is, as a general matter, an unprincipled corrupt greedy
bastard. The article suggests that he made these true admissions
about the murder as a way to deny his share of the responsibility.
The beginnings of climate disaster will make many parts of the US
worse places to live. Over time, half the population will be
affected. Millions will need to move, but to where?
The government should not pay so people can bullheadedly remain in
land that is becoming uninhabitable, but it should help the people who
become trapped in houses that are becoming unsalable, enabling them to
move elsewhere.
The exploding price of a planned nuclear power plant in the UK
has made the manufacturer cancel it.
However, the UK has promised unbounded subsidy to the builder
of its first new nuclear power plant, so that one won't be
cancelled by expense. But cancelled it must be, to free up funds
to build wind farms instead.
*Research shows "respectful, non-judgmental conversations are able to
move voters where many other tactics have failed."*
Lowering real US wages since 1975 has taken trillion dollars from
non-rich Americans since then, giving them to rich Americans.
Each year, dooH niboR takes 2.5 trillion more.
*UN Biodiversity Report Urges 8 Transitions Needed to Restore Essential
Ecosystems Impacted by Humanity.*
*Dalits bear brunt of India's 'endemic' sexual violence crisis.*
Upper caste men use brutal rape to maintain their domination of the
Dalits.
Oil companies (which are also plastic companies) have worked hard for
decades to make the public think that used plastic products would be
recycled if we handed them in, knowing this was not true, so that we
would buy and discard plastic without hesitation.
Most of what we hand in goes into landfill because recycling it is not
feasible.
Did they know, decades ago, that plastic products would damage wild
animals and ecosystems?
Perhaps not. (It would be interesting to investigate what they knew
about this and when.) In any case, we know it now. We must reduce
drastically the amount of plastic waste that does not in fact get
recycled, so we do not leave our planet full of toxin dispensers.
Physicians for Human Rights calls for banning the use of
rubber-coated hard bullets against protesters, citing 115 instances
of protesters that suffered grave head wounds from them.
It is against the rules to fire those bullets at people's heads, but
it is clear that they often do it anyway. Perhaps some of them were
firing wildly. Others, I suppose, hit protesters' heads
intentionally. Many thugs are right-wing extremists,
and if they see opportunities to maim protesters and not be punished,
they may go for it eagerly.
Orbán is moving to take control of the last radio station and last
theater in Hungary which are independent of state power.
*Millions in Britain have struggled for years. Only in a pandemic are
they seen.*
I have a hunch that, for Bogus Johnson, starving the poor is not an ideological
commitment, merely a consequence of enriching the rich.
*World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature —
UN report.*
Ideas for a circular economy of plastics.
Bogus Johnson pretends to be negotiating a larger deal with the EU
while cheating on last year's smaller deal.
12 Hong Kongers tried to separate themselves from China in a boat, but
Chinese forces caught them and China will prosecute them — perhaps
for "separatism" — in a bogus trial.
The very idea of stopping citizens from leaving a country is a form of
tyranny which Communist governments were well known for. In the
1980s, the Soviet Union charged a ransom giving a Jew permission to
emigrate. In earlier decades, it was very difficult for anyone to get
permission to leave the Soviet Empire. Since 2000, millions of Chinese
were allowed to travel for tourism. but I would guess that China never
completely dropped the practice of forbidding some people from
leaving.
Billionaire Polluters say that demand for fossil fuels will not increase.
What is not certain is when it will start to decrease.
That detail is tremendously important. Bigger fires are coming soon
to a forest near you, and if you'd prefer to have them only a little
bigger rather than much bigger, you'd be wise to help make sure the
demand declines fast.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences' commits to
working to undo the effects of its past participation
in racism.
The academy's present leaders are not guilty
for actions that happened before they were born,
but the responsibility to undo the continuing effects
of those actions falls to them nonetheless.
This is the same reasoning which led me to conclude, in 2014, that the
United States, acting for today's Americans, should pay compensation
to the descendants of those who were denied equal legal rights under
the systems of slavery and segregation.
(satire) *… NYPD police officer Tom
Sloane reportedly shut off his body camera early Monday morning out of
respect for his dying victim.*
*The NYPD added that it seemed exploitative to
publicize the man’s death because that would be what people remembered
about him, so the department was refraining from releasing any details
about the incident to respect his privacy.*
The ACLU and other organizations called on Congress not to extend
surveillance powers by slipping that into a rider in a continuing
resolution or other "must-pass" uncontroversial bill.
The wrecker is still actively spreading Covid-19 to his death cult,
and now we have proof that he is knowingly lying to them when he
denies the danger.
Don't be distracted into disputes about when Bob Woodward really ought
to have published this fact. It is a side issue, and it is being
raised as a distraction. I see no reason to assume his news would
have had more impact in May or July than it has now.
*A Thank You Letter From Coronavirus to My Enablers in the United States.*
This is not from The Onion.
The saboteur in chief has appointed a global heating denialist to the
management team at NOAA, in charge of climate research there.
One of the practices used to shelter denialists is calling them
"skeptics". CNN's article does this, but please don't repeat that
practice. To be a skeptic means that one is not convinced and wants
to do more investigation to determine what is happening. By contrast,
Legatos is denying what is well established. He is no "skeptic",
he is a denialist.
In general, skepticism is a wise and useful attitude towards claims
until they are demonstrated, but it can be carried too far. For
instance, there are times when skepticism about an approaching danger
must be set aside. When it is time to join the bucket brigade to put
out a fire, objecting that there is no proof this fire can spread is
not an acceptable excuse for refusing to help put it out.
A nurse working a privatized immigration prison describes how the
management disregard Covid-19, gratuitously allowing it to spread to
prisoners and staff.
The EU has decided to undermine its own 2030 emissions-cutting targets
by counting estimated carbon sinks against the emissions.
This is the same error as trying to plan in terms of "net" emissions
(emissions minus absorptions). Any future greenhouse gas absorption
is conjectural. Trees won't remove CO2 from the air if they burn up.
There were pogroms against Muslims in Delhi in February, led by
ruling party, which has now decided to scapegoat a Muslim activist who
spoke against violence,
along with other opposition figures.
See previous information about the pogroms.
*Fanatical Israeli "settler" who killed Palestinian family sentenced to life
[imprisonment].*
This is news because often Israelis who murder Palestinians get a slap
on the wrist.
*Northern hemisphere breaks record for hottest ever summer.*
*Sanders Blasts AstraZeneca for Raising Drug Prices Despite $1.2 Billion From Taxpayers for Covid-19 Vaccine.*
A giant consortium of investors has demanded companies get on course
to achieve "net zero" emissions by 2050.
The firmness is admirable, but they need to demand more.
2050 is too late a target,
and measuring by "net" emissions tends to underestimate emissions.
Ronnie Long was convicted of rape in 1976 because prosecutors
manipulated evidence and hid evidence.
Nonetheless, he is being held in prison to await a new trial, which
could take a months or years.
An invalid conviction is no grounds to imprison someone, so invalidation
of a conviction should invalidate the sentence too.
Right-wing bullshitters in Oregon are fabricating claims that "antifa"
arsonists started the fires, then in imitation of the bullshitter, denying
that that is what they said.
For them, self-contradiction is a tool.
Rwanda is not giving dissident Paul Rusesabagina a fair trial
on charges of terrorism.
Mardin Arvin: *Australians complain about weeks in quarantine. I've
been in [Australia's immigration prisons] for almost eight years.*
A car with cameras looking in all directions could in principle
avoid all collisions.
It could also give the state, or Clearview AI, a chance to identify all
other cars and people it passes near. We must make sure that only
highly processed data gets out of the video processor.
Proper preparedness for future pandemics could be achieved at the cost
of around 5 dollars per person per year, estimates Gro Harlem
Brundtland.
GitHub ironically offers a path for freedom of speech across the great
firewall of China. China can't control it and can't afford to block
it.
*Sanders Delivers Message to Lawmakers Who Claim US Can't Afford Green New
Deal: Climate Catastrophe Is 'Much More Expensive'.*
Biden now talks about "meeting and defeating the onrushing climate
crisis."
Acknowledging the magnitude of climate mayhem is a change for the
better, but not the same as proposing an adequate plan.
The Seattle thug department demanded various news organizations hand over
their videos of protests in a massive and indiscriminate way. As of
a month ago, they obtained a delay.
Can anyone find out what has happened since?
Whistleblower Christopher Pyle, starting with an article in 1970,
reported on how the US Army was systematically tracking Americans'
civic engagement — not limited to actual dissent — and won the political
support to shut it down completely.
He was able to do this because Americans at the time recognized the danger
of tracking and surveillance. Legislators recognized it because they
came from a people that recognized it.
It's up to us to lead the development of a people that detests
tracking and surveillance. Otherwise the people and legislators of
the future will fail to shut down the dangerous systems of the future.
Tesla persistently harasses and cheats workers.
A court ordered the USPS not to send out "helpful" mass mailings to Colorado
voters that contain misinformation about voting in Colorado.
Campaigning for a posthumous pardon for 2500 women executed for
witchcraft in Scotland.
This cruel form of scapegoating continues to this day in Africa.
Thugs in Melbourne arrested peaceful protesters (though some of them
threw fruit), saying that protest is forbidden.
The hell you say, Australia! A government which forbids protest is
tyranny.
Not that repression is unusual in Australia, the country which paid
Nauru to hold Australia's immigration prison and then to abolish
freedom of the press so that journalists could not reach the prison.
As long as the protesters wore masks and maintained distance, they
were entitled to protest.
Defending their right to protest does not mean I support their
protest. Some of them reportedly are QAnon fantasists. That fantasy,
which mutates as fast as HIV-1, is too incoherent to support a serious
inquiry of whether "it" is true, because "it" would be different next
week. I wish they were displaying their steadfastness for a good
cause.
The US railroad industry has its own fusion center, with an
information track leading straight to various government departments
that can repress potential protesters. It can target even people that
only criticize for investigation, and thugs might subsequently forget
that they are only writing.
Reporter Justin Mikulka was painted as a criminal by association
because what he wrote might inspire protests which could perhaps be
illegal.
The "fusion centers" facilitate repression, so if we don't get rid of them,
we must stop them from being used for repression.
*Morality has been stripped from public life. Here’s a four-step plan to
revive it.*
Peter Strzok insists that the wrecker is working for Russia.
The wrecker's henchman, Roger Stone, said that the wrecker should put
his opponents in prison if he can't make them pretend he has won the
election.
Stone is a loyal henchman and would not have said this without
encouragement from the wrecker himself.
I say "pretend to have won" because Republicans stole the 2016
presidential election,
as well as the 2000
and 2004
presidential elections.
An appearance of "victory" for the wrecker is probably going to be
fake. To be sure, millions of Americans will really vote for him, but
they won't be enough to make an honest victory without the cheating.
The US has colonized Haiti (unofficially) for 105 years.
In effect, it still does.
It is useful to recall that four years ago YouTube's recommendation algorithm
recommended pro-bullshitter videos far more often than pro-Clinton videos.
This does not prove that the algorithm was intentionally designed for
that result. Perhaps they were; but we know that right-wingers have
learned how to manipulate recommendation algorithms;
perhaps these results are a
reflection of that.
We know that they do not reflect a majority
preference for the bullshitter, since he lost the popular vote.
Google's response amounts to, "Do not try to judge our actions without
the full information that we won't let you have."
The Australian Green Party will support making Facebook and Google pay
to redistribute journalistic articles if the plan is extended to cover
more sources of journalism.
I am very much in favor of this, as I expect that it will pry loose
those companies' influence over what news people access.
There are some sorts of works that I believe should be free. But that
doesn't apply to news articles. I think individuals such as you and
me should be free to redistribute exact copies, but I don't think that
companies such as Google and Facebook are entitled to that right.
Thus, I see nothing immoral about such a tax. It is a pragmatic
question and nothing more.
*Rather than rebuild the social fabric of his country during the
coronavirus-driven economic slump, Narendra Modi has chosen to play
identity politics.*
Modi is a hater-divider-scapegoater, in the same mold as the bully in
the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil.
*Belarus: 100,000 join rally against Lukashenko on eve of Putin showdown.*
Portland's ban on business use of face recognition covers business premises
which offer goods or services to the public.
I don't think this has any effect on Clearview AI, which is unfortunate since
that is face recognition's most dangerous face.
A neighbor saw thugs shoot and kill Michael Forest Reinoehl without
calling on him to surrender or identifying themselves as thugs.
Those acts add up to murder. We need an investigation to determined
what happened, though we must distrust the testimony of thugs as
usual.
54% of Americans households with incomes under $100,000 have suffered
serious economic hardship since March.
Dr Fauci says life will not be back to normal until a year from now,
even if a vaccine is ready early next year.
Only after many people receive the vaccine can we start to determine
how long its effect lasts.
Indigenous Australians demand rules giving them the power to block
destruction of ancient indigenous people's sites.
If their demands are granted, they will probably preserve most of
these ancient sites, and that is good. But not necessarily all of
them. The "traditional owners" of a site would have the power to
permit destroying it, and sometimes they would do so.
These archaeological sites are important records of human history, all
the more important because few other sites are so old. The most
important thing to do with them is study them, and that should take
precedence over all other use. No one, capitalist or indigenous,
should be allowed to destroy them.
If they indigenous groups agree to protect the sites and cooperate
with carefully planned scientific investigation, I would support
giving them full authority over all other aspects of use of these
sites.
(satire) *… residents of a small town in western
Wisconsin expressed relief Friday that all of their beloved local
businesses had been forced to close down long before Covid-19 struck.*
Everyone: call on corporations to stop supporting "police foundations".
US citizens: call on Twitch to disallow US military recruiting.
Recruiting on Twitch is tantamount to aiming recruiting at children,
even if the military does not acknowledge that.
The Court of Appeals of the DC circuit continues doing its utmost
to deny all legal recourse to the prisoners in Guantanamo.
The US owes each prisoner either a fair trial or release from prison.
If the US cannot do so, because by torturing them it eliminated the
possibility of a fair trial, the US should release them and then think
about avoiding such a foolish actions in the future.
Arguments about expediency cannot override those rights — but I think
they lead to the opposite conclusion. Freeing the prisoners would end
a practice that motivates some people to hate the US.
(satire) *… Public Schools encouraged students
without internet access Friday to attend remotely by peering through
the home windows of wealthier classmates.*
There is an extra level of irony here that the authors are not aware
of. Zoom is proprietary malware, and it surveils the users. You can
protect yourself by not actually running Zoom or being seen by it in a
camera. I have suggested finding a classmate who will record the
video presentation, perhaps by pointing another camera at it, and send
you the recording as a file. Looking through per window would also
do the job, thought it would be less convenient.
*"One can draw a direct line between the [wrecker's] use of paramilitary
forces to suppress protest domestically, and the tendency of
security forces [sic] in foreign countries to violently suppress
their own citizenry — security forces that for years have been
backed, funded, trained, and armed by the United States
government."*
Meanwhile, the wrecker threatens to crush protesting Americans who
might disbelieve the claim, that he will surely make, to have won the
election.
If asked to send help because someone is having a mental crisis,
the last people you should send are cops. When they don't understand,
their solution is "shoot".
Stress, including being confronted by armed thugs, can make people
with mental disabilities lose their capacity to understand what others
are saying to them. In thug-think, that means "resisting arrest,
shoot!"
People who condemned anti-racist gestures by pro sports players cited
various details as objectionable, but now those excuses have been
stripped away. What those people object to is criticizing racism.
*Our national and state policies [about Edtech] are designed to subsidize
profit-seeking from education.*
*The Tragedy of the Singular ‘They’.*
The author is mistaken to despair. No one can force him to use
singular "they", and no one can force me, or you either.
For my own views, and the solution I have adopted, see "Better
Genderless Pronouns in English."
14 states have sued to make the USPS reverse DeJoy's mail-delaying
policy changes.
*Colorado … filed a federal
lawsuit against DeJoy for sending out mailers containing
information that could mislead and disenfranchise voters.*
Republicans have spread disinformation about voting for many years,
but in the past they usually were limited to doing so in private
capacity.
The wrecker's stooges have been editing their own spin into the CDC's
weekly report on the status of public health and diseases.
*Climate Emergency Overdrive: Our Age of Compound Disasters.*
And this is just the beginning of it. To imagine life in 20 years,
imagine that the worst we have seen happens in normal years,
and the worst years are far, far worse disasters.
Most Democrats are not advocating the sort of measures that could stop
the problem from getting even worse than that.
*We need to reclaim populism from the right. It has a long, proud leftwing
history.*
There are large fires in Oregon; people are evacuating from places
near Portland. 1/10 of the state's population has evacuated.
That region is famous for having lots of rain. That the climate has
dried up enough for it to have forest fires is shocking.
Thugs in Bogotá have run amok. First they killed Javier Ordóñez by
tasing him repeatedly while they were holding him down. This inspired
protests in many cities, and the thugs attacked the protesters.
Republican judges in the 11th circuit federal appeals court approved Florida
Republicans' scheme to block around 700,000 ex-cons from voting.
The Supreme Court might reverse this, but if it does not, I urge those
people to to move to a state where their votes can do some good.
*Most wildfire coverage on American TV news (85%) fails to mention
link to climate crisis.*
But that's not as bad as it was in August.
Maduro announced Venezuela's capture of a US marine with arms and
money, claimed to be spying on two oil refineries.
Portland, Oregon, has banned use of face recognition by businesses.
I think this is the first such law in the US, and perhaps in the world.
Since the article quotes people as relating this to racial discrimination,
I wish to comment on that.
Racial discrimination is wrong, and tracking people is wrong, but it
is a mistake to relate the two issues too much. If you think that
tracking people is wrong specifically because it enables
discrimination, that means you are missing the threat of tracking in
itself: that it is the base for repression.
To avert repression, we need to ban tracking regardless of whether it
is used for discrimination.
(satire) *… the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was reportedly ordered
Thursday to incinerate hundreds of screaming, boil-riddled test
subjects before widely releasing the vaccine.*
I'm looking for a volunteer cartoonist to draw a few cartoons per year.
Please send me email if you want to do this for me.
The wrecker continues ordering policy changes to undermine Americans' safety:
legal, economic and physical.
Delaware has sued 31 fossil fuel companies plus the American Petroleum
Institute for the predicted damage that will result from the
greenhouse gas emissions they have already made.
All the oil companies' money can't compensate for the damage that
their products are doing, but massive lawsuits against them can help
defeat them and take away their power continue.
*Another Four Years of Trump Might Kill Off Remaining Hope Saving
Planet From Climate Destruction.*
Sad to say, four years of Biden might have the same result.
Connecticut's public campaign funding system (for state offices) has been
a big success. It has reduced the influence of big money.
Massachusetts adopted a similar system decades ago by initiative
petition, but the legislators repealed it. We voted for the public
funding system again by initiative petition, and the legislators
repealed it again. Why anyone voted to reelect any legislator who had
eliminated the system, I cannot comprehend, but people did.
*With World Closing in on Paris Warming Limit, UN Report Makes Case for
'Transformational Action' to Remake Global Economy.*
The predicted climate disaster is already starting. What should we do?
The article's title is a gross understatement. The California
megafires are not our "wakeup call". They are our "The meeting is
already starting and you're still in bed???" call. If this were a
job, humanity would be fired.
I wonder why the understated term "climate change"
is becoming fashionable again.
Florida's Republican government proposes to build 300 miles
of unneeded toll highways through vulnerable ecosystems so that
people can burn more fossil fuels.
The plan will succeed in providing income to construction companies,
filling the air with more CO2, and provide an excuse to leave poor
people without food, housing or medical care.
This is the epitome of Republican Party philosophy.
Uber and Lyft have put a referendum on the ballot in California to
define their drivers a new legal status combining the worst aspects of
being an employee with the worst aspects of independent contracting.
The article also describes other deceptive tricks that they are using.
This is in addition to making customers identify themselves and run
nonfree software,
A Salvadorean army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for
ordering the political murder of five Spanish priests.
*Trump can't exclude undocumented immigrants from census, judges rule.*
But if his efforts have scared them into not answering, nothing can
undo that.
Right-wing bullshitters spread the bullshit that Oregon's forest fires
were set by Antifascist activists, so others are calling 9-1-1 with
false reports about this.
A friend suggested to me that we should say "Antifascist" rather than
"Antifa", because the latter looks like a name that could refer to
anything and many people don't know it is short for "Antifascist".
A considerable number of children that catch Covid-19 develop heart problems
that may last life-long.
I cannot tell from the article what fraction of children that catch
Covid-19 go on to develop MIS-C. I don't think their sample was
random. But whatever the fraction is, this is a good reason to try to
keep children from catching it.
*A Doctor Went to His Own Employer for a COVID-19 Antibody Test. It
Cost his insurance company $10,984.*
The materials for the test cost 8 dollars. The labor? Surely not
more than $100.
In 1905, an exposé convinced the US public to demand better safety
standards in meat processing plants. This plus unions give the workers
good pay and safe practices. Now, after a 50-year lobbying campaign,
the companies have eliminated both.
Transferring a few thousand troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan is easy
to do and would be easy to reverse; it is not a step on a path to ending
the US interventions there.
A Republican senator's staffer told a constituent with cancer that
buying medical coverage is just like buying a shirt — if you can't
afford it, tough on you.
That is the way the US medical system operates, and it shows why we
need a national medical system that won't charge people for medical
treatment.
*Numerous high-ranking Trump administration officials in
the U.S. Department of the Interior are connected to right-wing
anti-environmental think tanks and legal groups funded by corporate
interests and wealthy individuals seeking to privatize public lands.*
*Warning of More Pandemics to Come, Public Health Experts Urge Collective
Examination of What it Means to Live in 'Harmony with Nature'.*
Most terrorists would hesitate before releasing a disease that was
likely to kill their own side as well as the enemy. But bats,
unknowingly spreading a virus that can affect humans, won't be held
back by any sort of conscious consideration.
The head of Social Security Works says that the wrecker really could
single-handedly destroy Social Security if he is reelected.
Unless 2/3 of the House and the Senate pass a law to override or
compensate for his actions.
California voters: vote no on prop 22, the Uber exploitation exception.
Human Rights Watch: *Social media platforms are taking down online
content they consider terrorist, violently extremist, or hateful in a
way that prevents its potential use to investigate serious crimes,
including war crimes.*
The THRIVE resolution states support for something similar to the
Green New Deal.
Can anyone show me how it compares with previous forms of the Green New Deal?
In particular, it could be only a part of the Green New Deal proposal.
However, it could also be bigger.
Greedy US medical insurance companies are exploiting loopholes, even
maybe-loopholes, to charge for Covid-19 tests.
*'Falling through the cracks'
isn't the exception in the US — it's a fundamental feature of the
system.*
*The most dangerous phase of the US Covid-19 crisis may be yet to come.*
It should be pointed out that the "bipartisanship" of the "CARES" Act
gave some help to poor and unemployed Americans, but a lot more help
to big companies that ought to pay more tax. That was saving poor
people for the short term and screwing them for the long term.
The Chief Justice of Massachusetts ordered a study of patterns of
sentencing, and it found clear evidence of racial bias. Since the
study controlled for other pertinent variables, there is no doubt
about the conclusion: sentencing in Massachusetts is subject to
systemic racism.
That the study was ordered by the state's highest judge gives me hope
it will lead to considered action to reduce the injustice.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The USPS governing board is 100% satisfied with DeJoy, both his
sabotage of the USPS and the fund-raising crimes he committed before
in support of Republicans.
What they are saying is that they are loyal members of the bullshit
party.
South Australia will ban many kinds of single-use plastic items.
This is good, but it is crucial to take action on fishing nets discarded
at sea.
One idea would be to charge a large deposit for them when selling them.
Large enough that no fishing boat operator would dream of failing to turn
in a ruined net.
The Tories plan to lick Covid-19 by applying hypothetical testing technology
which they will try to develop.
Meanwhile, the Tory minister in charge tells asymptomatic people they
cannot have a test. Doesn't he know that asymptomatic people can
transmit Covid-19?
A few years ago the Tories said, as they eliminated incentives to
install home solar power, that they would lick global heating with
hypothetical carbon capture technology.
That technology still has not been developed, and people rarely talk
about it any more.
I think carbon capture and storage was a distraction technique — and
it seems to have been successful, since we still are not taking
adequate measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
*Australia's untapped gas reserves could unleash three year's worth of global
emissions.*
There is no room in the carbon budget for any additional fossil fuel facilities.
Globally, populations of vertebrates have dropped 2/3 since 1970.
Populations of insects have also dropped drastically, but they are not covered by this study.
What it adds up to is that we are ruining nature.
The FBI strains to entrap lonely men into planning to meet imaginary
women who have given contradictory ideas about their age.
A few years ago it was targeting "terrorists" who had to be persuaded
to agree to participate in a fictitious plan of violence they could
never have arranged on their own.
What these two schemes have in common is that they are opportunities
to pretend to protect people from dangers that are entirely imaginary.
*Boris Johnson's 'oven-ready' Brexit had a secret footnote: we'll rehash it
later.*
It is clear now that Bogus Johnson was lying to everyone all along about
his plans for taking the UK out of the EU.
Now that the Irish Republic has thrown off the legal dominion of
Catholic sexual repression, there is no reason for Northern Ireland
not to join the Irish Republic. That would eliminate the insoluble
problems that Northern Ireland causes for UK-EU trade relations.
*Maria Kolesnikova (Belarus opposition leader) says she was told she
would be leaving country ‘alive or in bits’.*
However, they were not in fact ready to go so far; she defied them and
they did not kill her.
Global heating disaster has turned life in California into fear and sickness.
No one can escape the harm.
Bogus Johnson has made it clear he wants the UK to exit the EU with no
agreement.
This explains why there has been very little progress towards a deal:
he was only pretending to seek a deal. This was an enormous lie to
Britons, from a man with a history of lying.
Greenhouse gas emissions have returned to the level before Covid-19.
*'Catastrophe' warning as thousands left homeless by Lesbos refugee camp fire.*
Saint Louis, former capital of Senegal, is being lost rapidly to
rising sea levels.
Tories wanted to pass town laws to fine people for sleeping in doorways.
It is bad to have people sleeping in doorways that people will need to
go through. But why would anyone do that? Lack of any better
shelter, I'd expect. The town should provide poor people with decent
places to sleep, places that will not be bad for others, or for them.
How about if they can also spend the day in their homes?
However, Tories are in favor of government handouts to make sure
somewhat wealthy people lose no luxuries due to the economic crisis.
*The wrecker knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat in
February but intentionally misled the public by deciding to "play it
down", according to interviews recorded by Bob Woodward.*
*British scientists have mapped cavities half the size of the Grand
Canyon that are allowing warm ocean water to erode the vast Thwaites
glacier in the Antarctic, accelerating the rise of sea levels across
the world.*
I think as-yet-undiscovered mechanisms will tend to encourage the
movement towards thermal equilibrium rather than retard it.
If you live in a low-lying city, and you are young, don't expect it
to remain.
*Trumpet preventing Fauci from discussing Covid children risk.*
Brian Murphy accuses the trumpets running the DHS of ordering him to
fabricate intelligence, and suppress other intelligence, so as to
mislead the public. Eventually they demoted him for refusing, and he
has filed a whistleblower complaint denouncing them.
I believe he is sincere, because filing a complaint is a serious
matter.
I am curious what his job title was — the article does not say.
In general, I agree that China is a bigger threat to world freedom
than Russia. Whether that means Xi threatens the US election more
than Putin, I have no idea. But it is clear that rich Americans
threaten the US election more than any foreign country. However,
those are all side issues for this. What we see is that the corrupter
is corrupting US government agencies, and the trumpets who run them
are lying to congress. They should go to prison for that.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate officials' violation of
the Hatch Act.
*New Zealand [and other countries too] must cast off its worries about
government debt in its Covid recovery.*
Modern monetary theory teaches that a country can increase its money
supply and spend the newly created money without causing harm,
provided the economy can absorb the additional currency. I think that
means, in effect, provided it won't overload the productive capacity
in the long term. New Zealand and other countries with their own
currencies have this solution available too,
Poor Euro zone! Those countries will be crushed by the disaster of
the vicious cycle of budget cuts that cause more budget cuts, required
by Euro-zone rules.
The president of the UK Police Superintendents’ Association described the
injustice of policing towards nonwhites as a national emergency.
The US has a long way to go before something comparable could occur.
(satire) *Equifax assured her that a recent drop in her credit score
was unrelated to anything. “While your credit score is
significantly lower now, we just want to you to keep in mind that
you had absolutely no control over it.”*
B'tselem: Israeli soldiers planted explosive booby traps at places
where the children of the Palestinian town of Kufr Qaddum often play,
and where people gather for their weekly nonviolent protests.
This is perhaps the most shocking form of Israeli violence against
protesters, but soldiers have attacked protesters many times
occasionally kill them.
An Israeli soldier shot two Palestinians, a few minutes apart, for no
reason. The second one died, and — amazingly — the soldier was
actually prosecuted and sentenced to three months in jail.
Plus three months of community service.
Israel's failure to prosecute most Israelis that kill Palestinians
means that the International Criminal Court has an opportunity to do so.
It would be awfully ironic if the wrecker won the election for real
by saying he would implement a national medical system.
It would be even more ironic when, after election day, he turned
against the idea again. That is just like him.
(satire) *hellip;aliens pointedly avoiding METI
transmissions confirmed Wednesday that they really thought Earth’s
scientists would’ve taken the hint by now.*
(satire) *…the Lord God Almighty confirmed Wednesday that He had
selected a new class of interns for the fall.*
The Federal Reserve is the wrong tool to help America out of a recession.
China accuses Australia of interrogating Chinese journalists and
telling them to hush it up.
China is hardly hesitant to lie or distort, but this could be true.
Australia does things like that, such as the secret prosecution
of a whistleblower
and the law that threatens every free software developer in the world.
Queensland, Australia, has passed a law requiring Catholic priests to
testify about what they learn in confessions about sexual abuse of
minors by priests.
The aim is laudable, but I doubt this law will actually produce much
evidence.
This reminds me of the US court ruling that seized the recordings made
by an American project that had interviewed former IRA terrorists and
promised to keep the recordings secret for a long time. Until after
their death, I think.
Without that promise, they would not have made recordings.
The effect of this ruling was to set aside the premise and obtain the
evidence from that one set of terrorists, but also to bar any similar
future projects about other violent disputes. Instead of learning
what happened, at some future time, we won't learn it ever. In the
long term, I think we are worse off.
It appears Chairman Xi has decided to cease allowing foreign reporters
in China.
Concealing dirty secrets that the reporters might get wind of is
more important than the benefit of cooperating with foreign press.
It might be interesting to set up a treaty imposing tariffs on the exports
the countries that repress the foreign press.
*Covid risks making [UK] society more unequal than since early
Victorian times.*
Tory cuts to the NHS and other programs that give poor people
a decent life began the process.
Bolivia's pseudo-coup-installed government found an excuse to stop Evo
Morales from running for the senate: they have driven him into exile.
Lukashenko is arresting all the opposition leaders he can get his hands on.
Berlusconi has a severe case of Covid-19.
I hope the right-wingers in Italy that despise wearing masks
learn something from this.
Companies are selling car owners devices to modify their cars
to be more powerful and emit more pollution.
*Thousands displaced by the [big 2018 California] fire have not returned to the
communities devastated by it. It’s a scenario that will repeat as fire
risk intensifies.*
If I lived in California with a forest nearby, I'd be looking to move away.
I wouldn't wait for a fire to burn my house.
*Climate crisis could displace 1.2bn people by 2050, report warns.*
A UK government inquiry recommended measures to protect against future
fires in high-rise apartment buildings. The Tories have refused to
adopt them.
Australia's opposition leader has made a commitment to exporting green
electricity instead of fossil fuels.
Two soldiers from the Burmese army recorded confessions of carrying
out mass killings of Rohingya, under orders.
The wrecker has told the "Justice Department" to make the US take up
the liability for damages, as well as defense costs in E Jean
Carroll's lawsuit accusing him of raping her.
*Why Does [the wrecker] Hate COVID Testing But Love Standardized
Testing [of students]?*
I think it is a rational decision. He desires the election chaos that
spreading Covid-19 could bring. Cancelling standardized tests won't
create chaos at all, let alone chaos that he can profit from.
Some pharma companies have pledged not to ask for approval of a vaccine
without success in a phase 3 blind trial, even though the wrecker
wants them to.
The US has sunk from the First World to become the first Fourth World
country.
(satire) *… inhabitants of a rural Kenyan village
confirmed Tuesday that they were waiting for a group of eager but
unskilled American volunteers to leave so they could rebuild their
school correctly.*
*Citing 'Criminal Exposure' in Straw-Donor Scheme and Possible Perjury, House
Announces Investigation Into DeJoy.*
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally indirectly led to 260,000 cases of Covid-19,
which is likely to include at least hundreds of deaths.
Gratuitous foolish disease spreading on subsequent occasions must
have contributed.
The World Bank rates every country on the "ease of doing business",
which turns out to mean the "ease of big foreign companies' muscling in."
13% of deaths in the EU are caused by environmental pollution.
It could be worse in the US, where the environmental standards are
weaker and enforcement is not very good either.
Covid-19 is intensifying famines in many parts of the world. The UN
predicts that around 265 million people will be on the brink of
statement by the end of this year.
Everyone: call on Samsung to stop participating in coal power construction.
Everyone: call on Rochester officials to (1) prosecute the thugs that
killed Daniel Prude, and (2) stop sending thugs to "help" people
having mental breakdowns.
Hundreds of Australian scientists say that the government and
businesses are gagging them when they try to warn about coming damage
to the environment, and altering their writing, effectively putting
lies in their mouths.
The Rochester thug department chief and his deputy have resigned.
That's progress, but their replacements must act, with the city's firm
support, to curb the violence and lies of thugs. This would be a good
time to shift jobs other than confronting real criminals to other
departments.
Air pollution has a high cost to society.
It would make sense, in a democratic society, to take big steps
to reduce pollution.
California's megafires have burned over 3100 square miles, which
is more than 2% of California's land area. And the fire season still has months to run.
20 years from now, the average year will be like this year. A bad
year will be far worse.
In 2006, the US government had evidence to prosecute Purdue Pharma,
but it did not. We don't know why not.
Two Australian journalists in China were barred from leaving until
they answered questions about a third Australian journalist who is in
some sort of jail and being investigated for charges of journalism.
Governments that are highly repressive and secretive tend to be quick to
equate asking nosy questions with spying. Of course, asking nosy questions
is the job of a good journalist,
The US government has been becoming more repressive and secretive in
recent decades, and we see the effects of that in the prosecution
of Julian Assange.
Remote school does not protect children from the school-to-prison
pipeline. Colorado school officials suspended a child for playing
with a nerf gun (a harmless toy which does not look like a real gun)
while visible on camera, then sent a thug to his house.
It's not that the officials are unable to tell the difference between
a real gun and a nerf gun. It's not that they can't tell the
difference between having a gun near you and seeing one on TV. It is
much worse than that: they have been convinced that it is their job to
ignore the difference.
This is much worse, because it can become far more widespread. We can
expect that not more than a handful of school officials would lose
track of the difference between reality and a picture; but if someone
teaches them to ignore the difference, they could all do it!
The article presents this as a matter of racism. The child is black,
and the parents assume the officials acted insanely because of that.
Perhaps they did, but the article does not present evidence for that.
Maybe they would have been insanely cruel to any child, regardless of
race.
Let's hope these parents sue the pants off them, so they and other
school officials will learn not to do this to any child, ever.
The UK's thug minister vows to protect Britons from Extinction Rebellion.
Who will protect Britons from extinction?
Thugs in Salt Lake City answered a 9-1-1 call from a woman who said
her unarmed 13-year-old son was uncontrollably upset. They treated him
as if he were an armed and dangerous gangster.
The shots did not kill him, but after those injuries he may wish they
had.
This is a precise example of the reason behind "Defund the police".
The city should have sent an unarmed team of calmers and deescalaters,
not thugs.
*'Horrifically Catastrophic': Report Finds So-Called US War on Terror Has Displaced as Many as 59 Million People.*
On the other hand, it might be as few as 37 million people — which is still
a global calamity.
*Rise in carbon capture as global warming speeds growth of forests would
be negated by earlier deaths, say scientists.*
I wonder if we could counteract that by cutting down those trees while
they are large, then somehow preserving the wood from decay. But that
is a far-fetched idea, and if it doesn't work, we must stop letting
companies distract us with "carbon offsets" and "net carbon emissions" and
accept no substitute for less emission.
Is publishing a book denouncing the conman enough repentance to forgive
Michael Cohen for decades of serving him?
*The pandemic is an opportunity to reconsider what makes a good life.*
The Tibetan Policy and Support Act would have the US officially reject
and punish China's intended attempt to appoint the next Dalai Lama.
*The Real 'Hoax' in America Is Record Wall Street Profits as Nation's Jobless
Millions Cannot Afford Rent.*
Rage is building. But Republicans fool the enraged public into
directing their rage against masks and disease-prevention precautions,
instead of the proper targets: the plutocrats and the politicians that
serve them.
The fossil fuel industry, deadly in the long term, is unprofitable overall
even in the short term.
However, the big fossil fuel companies are not hurting enough to shut down.
If they are not making profits in the way we were taught to think of
business as making profits, I suspect they are running something we would
consider a scam if we knew about it.
The UK barred Amnesty International and other human rights groups from
monitoring Julian Assange's extradition hearing.
The UK government now believes it can get away with all sorts of repression
and anti democratic behavior. I hope it is mistaken.
Jacob Blake describes his life as constant pain. Every movement
hurts.
I hope it gets less painful as his wounds heal.
Americans, pay attention to the PRO Act, which would help workers
unionize.
The remake of Mulan was filmed partly in Xinjiang with the help
of a Chinese government agency that also runs brainwashing camps.
It may seem advantageous that US commercial culture production sells
well in China, but it gives the Chinese government influence over what
American companies say or show to the rest of the world about China.
Postmaster Dejoy faces investigation in North Carolina for the crime
of passing campaign contributions through intermediaries.
The wrecker cannot pardon him from state charges and his flunky in
charge of the "Justice Department" cannot call off the investigation.
However, I don't see how this investigation could make Dejoy undo the
harm he has done to mail delivery. I doubt he could even be charged
before election day.
Firing him would not help either, because he is not an individual
criminal loner. He is part of a shameless political machine. If he
were gone, the wrecker would put in another hatchet man to finish the
job.
A former Salvadorean minister is now on trial in Spain for ordering
the murder of six Spanish priests during the country's war of repression.
Landlords will install Alexa listening devices and claim that entitles
them to a higher rent.
I think the crucial question is whether the tenants can physically
disconnect it.
Alexa for Residential will help people (including landlords) snoop on
each other.
How about passing laws that forbid landlords from requiring tenants to
tolerate microphones or cameras inside the property they rent?
Requiring tenants to use an "online portal" (which is
likely to require running nonfree Javascript software and could make
tenants sign away their rights) should be forbidden as well.
Assange's lawyers charge that the US replaced the indictment trying to
disguise the invalidity of the extradition request. They also
complain about being denied the opportunity to meet with their client.
*Hong Kong shocked by violent police arrest of 12-year-old girl.*
That's what thugs do when they perceive the people as enemies.
We see it in the US too.
Australia's extractivist government plans to reduce environmental
protections to permit more mining. Conservationists ask UNESCO to object
since the change would imperil world heritage sites.
China has been working for 80 years to do away with Tibetan culture.
The methods developed in repression of the Uighurs may now be used
to sinicize Tibetans.
It's making me sinical about China's intentions ;-}.
It is true that Tibet was a feudal society in 1950. But ending
feudalism did not have to be followed by assimilation, and forced
inclusion in an even worse system of government. China could have
ended the feudalism and left Tibetans mostly alone, and come out
admired.
A Tennessee thug faces criminal charges for attacking Andrew Golden, who
was making a video of a traffic stop from a safe distance.
The thug should be charged with reckless endangerment for breathing,
maskless, in Golden's face with no justification.
The bully backed off on his plan to close the newspaper Stars and
Stripes.
Matt Taibbi: To understand the bullshitter, think if him as a salesman
who sells the experience of being sold to. Just what he says he is
selling makes no difference to him.
The Democratic Party can't make a serious response because it has no
serious response to America's problems, and its attempts to respond
play into the bullshitter's hands.
I am no expert, but I think we should ignore his outrageous verbal
provocations, and focus on the real harm he does, and the good we can do.
Everyone: support the decentralized month of solidarity with Assange,
Whistleblowers and Press Freedom.
Car companies are spreading FUD to try to defeat the Massachusetts
right to repair initiative.
The truly dangerous data predators are the car companies themselves.
But you can block them, and anyone else that wants to track your car,
by converting it into a disconnected car. Disconnect (or cover with
metal foil) its cellular antenna and its GPS antenna. If warranty
considerations would preclude turning off the antennas, get a car
that's out of warranty.
And do vote for the right-to-repair initiative if you live in
Massachusetts. Next step: require cars to let the owner control what
data to collect and/or make available to anyone.
Ultimately, the computers in the car that can communicate sensitive
data, or allow installation of different versions of software, should
run exclusively free software and the owner should be able to install
modified versions.
The reason the US can't set up enough Covid-19 testing is bad
organization of its medical system. Other countries have done an
excellent job of this, using techniques that the US could employ if
were willing to make the necessary organizational changes,
Hedge fund and private equity "investments" turn out to be rip-offs
for the investors.
What private equity "invests" in is trashing companies and jobs. If
our government were not under the thumb of the billionaires that run these
"investments", we would prohibit them.
Erdoğan is trying to bring back Turkish imperialism as well as
Islamism.
It is a danger, but mainly in the long term. One exception: the
discovery of large natural gas reserves is always terrifying, because
someone might extract them and burn them. We can hope that
international tensions will keep the gas in the ground, but it would
more reliable to sign an agreement to that effect.
Thugs in Los Angeles county kill around 45 people a year, and they're on track
to do it again this year.
Often they shoot people for running away, which means implies that the
victims were not threatening them and there was no need to shoot them.
I'm in favor of defunding the sheriff's department. There is little
chance of reforming the brutal culture of such an organization while
keeping the same personnel. LA county needs some sort of law
enforcement, but it should be restructured. Perhaps one department to
enforce traffic codes and that's all, and another to respond when
people need practical or medical help. A smaller police department
could be called only to deal with dangerous crime.
It seems more efficient to have the same personnel do all sorts of jobs,
but it is asking for trouble.
About Michael Reinoehl, armed Black Lives Matter protester who killed
one of a violent right-wing group that attacked a protest.
We can't take for granted that the statements by cops are accurate.
Did he really pull a gun when cops tried to arrest him? It is the
sort of thing thugs frequently fabricate, but it might be true. He
may have committed "suicide by cop".
I believe Reinoehl's statement that his intention on various
circumstances was to protect people, but I won't take for granted that
the specifics he states are accurate. Was Danielson trying to stab a
BLM protester? IANAL, but I suppose that would have made killing him
justifiable.
I hope that we find out the truth.
Clearview AI argues, stretching the idea of freedom of expression,
that it includes the right to make a database of photos of millions of people
and systematically recognize people against it. This article argues the
contrary.
The US is being crushed by the decision to prioritize creditors
(particularly large, powerful creditors) over the rest of society.
We need a debt jubilee.
A prosecutor in Louisville offered Breonna Taylor's ex, accused of
drug trafficking, a plea deal in which he would say that she was
involved in the transaction.
Now the prosecutor argues that since the offer was made during
negotiations, and was not the final plea deal offer, we should imagine
that it never happened.
The icebreaker Polarstern had a very quick and easy trip to the North
Pole, Terrifyingly easy. The Arctic ice has lost 75% of its volume in
the past 30 years.
Arguing that Facebook deliberately promotes right wing extremism
because it would benefit from a Republican victory.
The US bombing of Libya in 2011 caused a disaster that has harmed many
countries in North Africa.
Putting the residents in each community in charge of building new,
dense housing can defuse the conflicts about it.
Most prisoners' families say that US prisoners do not have access to
soap, disinfectant, and other things they need to stop the spread of
coronavirus.
One other thing they don't have enough of is space to stay away from
each other.
Stiglitz urges states to raises taxes on the rich ASAP so as to avoid
terrible budget cuts.
When the wrecker called on his supporters to try to vote twice, which
is a felony, he committed the felony of incitement.
Michael Cohen's book says that the conman is guilty of the same crimes
as he.
Your employer's "spiritual consultant" will try to teach you to find
deep meaning in your meaningless job.
The Tories want to impose a digital biometric ID system on everyone in
the UK. This would be a gratuitous increment in tyranny.
*15 Years After Hurricane Katrina, It’s Time to Demilitarize Disaster Relief.*
Ralph Nader challenges the Democratic Party to take steps to go beyond
being "not the Republicans".
A study predicts that strict wearing of masks could save 120,000 lives
in the US in the rest of this year.
I'm doing my part. I hope you are too.
The Democratic Party calls for more protection of nature, but does not
talk about giving nature "rights".
I am in favor of more legal protections of nature — more, I expect,
than the Democratic Party advocates,
However, it does not make sense to attribute "rights" to anything
that doesn't have a will with which to decide how to exercise them.
Rather than describe legal protections of nature using a blatant
absurdity, we should describe them as what they are: protections for
something we consider important.
"Centrist" Democrats made a big fuss when the Republican former governor of
Michigan endorsed Biden.
For me, it shows how close Biden is to being a pre-conman Republican.
One way to convince the wrecker to accept defeat could be to convince Putin
to offer him asylum in Russia. But once he is gone, we will still need to
restore democratic elections.
The article describes three changes: eliminating the electoral
college, ending voter suppression and gerrymandering, and breaking
through the two-party system that gives us the choice of moderate right
wing vs extreme right wing.
The author proposes that the peoples of other countries dominated by
the US should have some say in the US government. I agree there is a
problem to be fixed, but I don't think the US government can play,
simultaneously, the two roles of most-of-the-world government and
government of one country.
Sanders states what the US needs to do to prepare in advance to
confront the wrecker if he tries to deny or disregard the election
result.
The problem is, these preparation steps are a wish, not a plan. In
states controlled by Republicans, they have a history of voter
suppression. They won't do what needs to be done. The mainstream
media may not want to help. Facebook may have made a deal with the
wrecker. That leaves only step 4 which can be carried out by
people (Congressional Democrats) that probably want to do it.
FAIR: The Washington Post paired frequent right-wing violence against
BLM with barely any violence by BLM supporters to construct a false
equivalence.
Extinction Rebellion rejects the charge that its one-day blockade of
several right-wing British newspapers, all owned by one company, was
"an attack on the free press." Basically, a press dominated by one
company which covers up the most important information is effectively
not a free press to begin with.
Facebook has banned political ads for the week before election day.
That has a good side, but it includes the ads by state election officials
which tell people where and how to vote.
Facebook could run those announcements gratis; then they would not be ads.
Once again, a ship that picked up migrants in the Mediterranean is
being barred from all ports and is getting low on food and water.
Having cops in a school harms students in the UK,
just as it does in the US.
The bully has repeatedly expressed his contempt for US soldiers that
died in wars. Now he wants to punish a journalist who reported this.
About the US soldiers that died or were injured in Iraq, the bully is
half right. They were duped — by Dubya. He started the war >based
on lies. All the US military personnel that Dubya hijacked to make the Bush
forces were duped, and Dubya is guilty of an enormous crime, against
them and against Iraqis.
They deserve condolences for that, not contempt. They wanted to
serve their country — it is not their fault that Dubya lied to them
about what they would be doing.
The bully has contempt for them because he is heartless. He lives by
duping people; to excuse this, he believes that anyone who is duped
deserves to be duped.
Now he has mad veterans, many of who supported him, very angry.
*Navalny poisoning forces Merkel's party to ask: how do we hit back at Putin?*
Here's a suggestion: switch to renewable energy as fast as possible.
It's vitally necessary anyway, and it will eliminate demand for
Russia's key exports (fossil fuels).
UK thugs arrested over 500 Extinction Rebellion protesters in London.
The excuse in many cases was Covid-19. Of course, protesters must
take care not to spread Covid-19, but did they really fail to do that?
I expect Extinction Rebellion to be very careful about health.
One of their protests was blocking delivery of Murdoch's right-wing
denialist almost-monopoly newspapers.
This has been labeled an "attack on the free press". If they kept
it up for a long time, I would agree, but they did it for just one
day.
Australia has been rapidly building renewable electric generation and
large batteries for storage. However, it is not encouraging any new
investment.
I wonder if this is due to the current planet-roaster government
which came in a few years ago.
China arrests foreigners as hostages.
The bully is trying to put an end to any antiracism training that
presents the idea that the United States or any race or ethnicity is
"inherently racist or evil."
I would object to training people in those ideas, but does that ever
happen? A priori, it seems unlikely.
It is undeniably true that racism systematically gives whites a
certain advantage over blacks in our society. It is the converse of
the disadvantage that racism systematically imposes on blacks. To
recognize this does not assert that whites are evil.
Republicans are sending disinformation about Democratic candidates
including fake images, along with applications for postal ballots.
The bully's henchman has found a strained excuse to shut down Stars
and Stripes, an editorially-independent newspaper for military personnel
and others.
This is going to anger veterans, just when they are angry at being
called "losers" and "suckers."
(satire) *Pope Maintains Divine Buzz By Microdosing Eucharist Throughout Day.*
*Greta Thunberg: don't dump climate crisis on children to fix.*
(satire) *"Tell everyone who will listen
that it wasn’t coronavirus that killed me—it was asthma, and high
cholesterol, and blood pressure!" the dying Trump supporter reportedly
told the hospital staff between gasps for breath*
Conspiracy-theorists held a protest in Melbourne, and did not wear masks.
They are entitled to the right to protest, even in an idiotic cause.
They are not entitled to the right to spread disease. For
intentionally doing that, they deserved to be arrested.
*93% of [Black Lives Matter] demonstrations have
involved no serious harm to people or property.*
The 7% exceptions play into right-wing hands. Nearly all the protesters
know what to do. Can they organize to lead the rest?
Justice is coming slowly for Cherry Groce, paralyzed by a shot by a
London thug, but at least it may teach someone how to avoid doing this
to someone else.
*Britain's obsession with school uniform reinforces social divisions.*
Perhaps it is something more sinister than an innocent obsession.
The US is still failing to manage Coronavirus properly and therefore the
disease is likely to remain at high levels into the winter.
You can help retail workers remain employed by rejecting on-line
orders and delivery. A job in a store is a better job than a
gig-economy job delivering packages.
Rochester thugs suffocated Daniel Prude by putting a hood over his face
and pushing it into the ground. Then they lied about it.
I can understand the need for the spit hood, but there was no need to
shove his face down. And no possible excuse for lying.
I think the chief of the thug department deserves to be fired if he
asserted those lies were valid.
People protested peacefully about the killing, and the thugs attacked
them violently for no apparent reason.
Palantir, the great repression-planning company, plans to go public.
Republicans are suing many states to try to stop them from
sending out large numbers of postal ballots.
Even if they lose the lawsuits, they will delay sending out the
ballots. With that on one side and post office sabotage on the other,
they can cause ballots not to be counted.
In Illinois, vote for the graduated income tax.
*For Years, Journalists Cheered Assange’s Abuse. Now They’ve Paved His Path To
a US Gulag.*
(satire) *… streaming service Spotify
reportedly celebrated Thursday the platform’s 100th dollar given to
artists.*
Oil companies are hoping that increased production of plastics will
make up for decreased combustion of fossil fuels. Alas, it seems that
life can't tolerate plastics.
Thugs went to arrest the man accused of killing a right-wing extremist
protester in Portland, but they shot him dead instead.
I have to suspect they killed him by choice.
Varoufakis has proposed a system to replace today's capitalism. It
still uses markets for goods and services, but workers are always
co-owners as every enterprise is a cooperative.
I don't understand how the levies on countries for having an imbalance
of trade or payments would function. If this is meant to pressure
countries not to have imbalances, what could they do to avoid them?
I am also worried by the idea that people would make all their
payments using central bank accounts — because that implies tracking,
which is dangerous. And I am not convinced that the 5% flat tax on
business income would bring in enough funds for the state to do its
many jobs.
Perhaps I would see these are not real problems if I understood
better. Perhaps some details could be changed. In any case, it is an
interesting area to explore.
One of the planet-roasting policies that the US has maintained for
decades is allowing oil and gas extractors to pay only a small amount
for what they extract. That was always bad. But the wrecker has cut
down the payments to nearly zero for hundreds of wells.
Seven UN special rapporteurs say, *Hong Kong security law 'may break
international laws'.* It conflicts with treaties that China has signed.
This can have an effect on China but only if other countries condition
some decisions on this.
I would expect that the lawless behavior of uniformed US thugs
violates some treaties. And what about Guantanamo. and wars of
aggression? Not that one country's wrongs excuse another country's
wrongs — but would be easier to enforce the treaties if breaking them
were unusual and unaccepted.
*I'm a freelance writer. A Russian media operation targeted and used me.*
The site PeaceData offered to pay him for a weekly column.
*Greystone Nursing Homes, Whose Executives Gave $800,000 to Trump,
Are Epicenters of Covid-19 Deaths.*
Businesses that pay off officials expect something specific in return.
Perhaps in this case it is permission to cut corners on safety.
Tories have pushed reopening so hard that Covid-19 is increasing. Now
some parts of England are running out of coronavirus tests.
An Australian warns Britain about engaging Australian buffoon Tony Abbott
as trade negotiator.
I think Abbott could do worse than fail, though. He would be
excellent at giving the conman whatever he wants, and lauding it.
Johnson makes mistakes, but I think he knows what Abbott will do,
and that is what he wants.
I wish I had confidence that Biden would protect the US (and the UK)
from that bad business-supremacy treaty
but Obama would not.
Iran is holding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe hostage to collect a valid
debt from the UK.
It is wrong to hold people as hostages, but the UK should have paid
this debt willingly.
In 2009, a Buffalo police officer jumped on a thug's back to stop
him from choking someone. She was fired, and lost her pension
while one year from retirement.
Now she is suing to demand her pension.
A Republican congresscritter who fanatically defends the right to
carry guns says he would shoot any blacks that carry guns at a protest.
Does this mean he advocates the right to carry guns only for whites?
Does he now believe that guns should be prohibited at demonstrations?
I'm in favor of that, as long as it applies to everyone.
*Joe Biden, Don’t Let Donald Trump Run as the Antiwar Candidate!*
Inducing people to try to vote twice is a felony in North Carolina,
but the basic principle of trumpery is that supporters of the wrecker
can disregard any law.
Foreign workers in Dubai who have lost their jobs are being left to
starve.
The recently announced policy change would allow foreign workers to quit their jobs, and get new work or depart.
That is a good thing, but it does not help those who can't find new work,
and can't afford to depart.
The UK does something similar to unauthorized foreign workers: they have to beg
for food and shelter.
An appeals court has ruled that the collection of phone records about
all Americans was illegal.
This is but one of many systems of surveillance that Snowden revealed to us.
That is why we need to repeal that part of PAT RIOT act.
Prosecutors increasingly pursue the surviving perpetrators of the
international terrorist plot known as Operation Condor, a conspiracy
of dictators in South America that operated with the support of the
US.
*Undercover journalist Valentin Gendrot describes culture where
[French thugs] act with impunity.* He joined a thug department
and reported on the violence and lies he witnessed.
What an interesting reversal it is for thugs to be the target of an
undercover investigation. We need more of these.
The wrecker urged voters in North Carolina to submit a postal ballot
and then vote in person.
The voting system ought to detect such attempts and block the double
voting. That does not mean it is good for thousands of people to test
it in this way. Especially if Republican officials might be tempted
to let whites get two votes.
The repressive regime in the UK has not officially banned peaceful
protest, but is hemming it in with laws that make it very difficult.
*Portuguese children sue 33 countries over [causing global heating].*
France plans a substantial effort to reduce greenhouse emissions
by investing in bicycle riding.
This, however, can't possibly do enough.
Wild elephants in Africa are dying by the hundreds. Scientists
are trying to figure out the cause.
*Arizona university prevents potential Covid outbreak by testing feces.*
Various US government agencies are scurrying to complete acts of
environmental sabotage by Jan 20, in case the saboteur in chief loses
reelection.
Oportun lends to poor people, initially on fairly reasonable terms;
but if something goes wrong (such as unemployment), it demands high
interest. They can get caught and never get out.
Companies like this are bottom feeders. If people are lucky, these companies can help them squeak by. If they are unlucky, they get caught. But the real
cause of the problem is the low income many Americans get, and the high cost
of everything medical.
The US trade treaty with Jordan led to a big increase in clothing
production there, but didn't do much to reduce the cruelty to workers
there.
As a general solution, I suggest that importing countries pass laws
requiring the label on an article of clothing carry the name of the
company that actually made the article. This could help hold that
company accountable, and it will make buyers more aware of how
the production system operates.
California is being hit by giant fires and coronavirus quarantines at the
same time. Even in cities, thousands of people are evacuating.
If global heating proceeds unabated, I envision that in 2050 there
will be 20 or 30 regional disasters like this each year in the US, and
no place will be safe. We must take drastic measures now.
The dishonest sex smear defeated Alex Morse; plutocratist Rep. Neal
will probably his megacorporations for one more term.
Consumer Reports found that the College Board web site gives data to
many surveillance capitalism companies when students sign up on its
web site.
Some 12,000 additional people died in the UK in March and April
from causes unrelated to Covid-19.
This seems to be because they couldn't go to a hospital for treatment.
This reinforces the importance of taking measures to keep the infection
rate low.
ACLU of Georgia and Greg Palast: *…the State had likely removed
in 2019 the voter registrations of nearly 200,000 Georgia citizens on
the grounds that they had moved from the address on their voter
registration application. However, none of these citizens had
moved,…*
Markey's victory speech: "There is no time for compromise on the
existential threat to our time. We must pass a Green New Deal... The
time to be timid is past. The age of incremental-ism is over. Now is our
moment to think big, to build big, to be big. This is what this
election is all about."
He is right — so how are we going overcome the opposition of Biden,
Pelosi, and so on.
Official thugs and white vigilantes (unofficial thugs) tend to support
each other because they mostly share the same ideology: maintaining a
social order which incorporates racism and plutocracy.
Congress has subpoenaed various documents from DeJoy including his
calendar of meetings, which he has concealed so far.
Around a million primary election ballots were mailed to voters within
a week of the election, meaning they very likely arrived too late to
be sent back and counted.
This is not a matter of artificial mail delays in the USPS, but
if it happens again in November, the consequences will add to the
consequences of those delays.
Amazon advertised for staff to interfere with union organizing. Amazon later said that ad was posted "in error", which probably means
the hiring was supposed to be done quietly. Amazon has long made a practice
of monitoring staff's discussions about unionization.
The US is still carrying out bombing in Somalia, to fight
al-Shaabab, but now it blames all civilian casualties on the enemy.
It is worth reminding people that al-Shaabab was created when Ethiopia
intervened, on behalf of the US, to destroy the "Islamic courts"
government that had established peace in Somalia.
Somalia has not known peace since then.
The city of Hoboken has sued Exxon for the damages of the predicted
consequences of global heating. In the case of Hoboken, the damages
will be due to inundation of much of the city.
Amnesty International condemns US sanctions against the staff of the
International Criminal Court.
The corrupter is fairly consistent about one thing: protecting the
crooks that are working for him.
Extinction Rebellion has launched a series of protests in London and
Manchester, to remind the UK that the part of the disaster we can still
avoid gets smaller with each year of insufficient action.
Everyone: call on US national TV news to stop hushing up the human causes of extreme weather.
If you call, please spread the word!
Black Lives Matter protesters are being charged with felonies for minor
property damage, under laws intended for shutting down street gangs.
One way to help the poor is to compel charitable foundations to spend
more than the current legal minimum on serving their purposes.
As for dodge-assisting funds (my term for them), these function as a
scheme for rich people to buy what they want and dodge taxes
on the money. We should abolish them outright. However, while they
do exist, this change would not make them any worse.
If Biden wants to lead a moral renewal of the US, he should start by apologizing for its wars.
Everyone: call on US national TV news to stop hushing up the human causes of extreme weather.
The wrecker blocked circulation of an intelligence warning that Russia was going to spread rumors that Biden was mentally ill.
Facebook threatens to ban real news rather than pay a tax to Australia
for carrying it.
One response for Australia would be to ban Facebook entirely. That would
get rid of a lot of problems.
*Asphalt roads make city air pollution worse in summer, study finds.*
The Tories' campaign to undermine the NHS has gone so far that private
medicine could push it into a death spiral.
The deaths would be those of Britons who can't afford private treatment.
* In more and more races, the GOP doesn’t have broad enough appeal to
fairly produce an election majority, so it has resorted to rigging the
system so a minority prevails.*
People beg for help on the internet because the government fails
to carry out its responsibilities.
Shame on the government.
California’s Circular Economy & Plastic Pollution Reduction Act was
narrowly defeated in the state assembly.
* Pointing the finger in the wrong direction (at foolish individuals)
excuses those in power for failing to support people to stay at
home.*
*Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus.*
*Iranians tortured and jailed after mass protests, Amnesty report says.*
*Alexei Navalny poisoned with Novichok, says German government.*
The Kremlin will say us that anyone in Russia can get novichoks
from the nearest pest control company. But it must have wanted us to know
that this poisoning was carried out by the Russian state.
Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health,
calls on Americans to disregard the CDC's new perverse non-testing
guidelines.
Influential progressive groups call on Biden to exclude fossil fuel
representatives, in his campaign now and from his government later.
The absence of such people would not guarantee good policies, but their
presence would enable them to impose bad ones.
400 edtech companies have signed a "student privacy pledge", but they suffer
no penalty when they violate it.
Aside from the lack of enforcement, the pledge itself is too weak.
It excludes only a limited subset of the possible
misuses of student data. The right way to handle most student data is
never to let any organization other than the school get its hands on
the data.
There are a few special circumstances in which student data needs to
be held by an organization outside the school itself. Standardized
tests are one of these. In those circumstances, the proper pledge is,
"We pledge not to keep any copy of the student's data other than name,
address, identification number and overall test results. We pledge
not to allow any use of these data, except that specific schools
by the student can verify the test results."
Another special case is for plagiarism checking. The school should
never reveal to such a site anything about the student who wrote the
paper being checked — not even that the same student wrote some other
previous paper. The school should invent a new "student name" for
each paper and only the school should know which student that
corresponds to.
(satire) *[invented name]
expressed worry Tuesday that Donald Trump retweeting him would
undermine his credibility as a conspiracy theorist.*
Progressives have launched the New People's Party.
If it is to succeed, they will need to change the name.
But I wonder, what is the advantage of this party over the Green Party?
*Republicans are flooding the internet with deceptive videos and Big Tech
isn't keeping up.*
(satire) *the FDA reportedly
promised Tuesday to fast-track a cure for the side effects of the
fast-tracked Covid-19 vaccine.*
Jacob Blake's father organized a counter-meeting, voting drive, and
block party to counter the wrecker's meeting elsewhere in Kenosha.
Pope Francis has denounced the practice of consuming resources faster
than the natural world can replace them, and called for urgent climate
defense action.
If mainly Democratic voters vote by mail,
the wrecker could get a misleading apparent lead if the mail-in ballots
are counted later.
Everyone: tell Gilead: Your publicly-funded COVID-19
treatment must be gratis.
This argument is not the best one to use, because it only works some
of the time. Should a company be allowed to gouge on medical treatments
merely because it did not use public funds? I don't think so.
US citizens: call on Congress and the Federal Trade Commission to Stop
the sale of Ancestry to Blackstone
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
The wrecker has cut off the US from international cooperation
in developing vaccines for Covid-19.
This might have no real effect, but it could also cut off Americans
from use of foreign-developed vaccines.
That could be very unfortunate for Americans if the best vaccine is
one of those. We may not be able to get honest information about how
much a US vaccine has been tested or what the results of the testing
are, now that the wrecker has corrupted the CDC and FDA.
Or, if the best vaccine is American, it could deny people in other
countries the protection of that vaccine.
The one thing it cannot do is good.
Arguing that gold mining is of zero benefit to society.
Since it does poison the environment, there is no reason not to
prohibit it entirely.
Prohibition would be fairly easy to enforce against large mines.
There is also small-scale mining, which would be hard to prevent. But
it might do much less environmental harm.
In one study, painting some wind turbine blades black avoid
most of the bird deaths.
The corrupter makes the Secret Service pay his companies in order to
protect him.
California might in theory be able to prevent disastrous megafires if
it did enough controlled burns.
But is that even remotely possible? 20 million acres is 31,000 square
miles, around 1/5 of the area of California. It is more than half of
the forested area. I don't think so much controlled burn could ever
be done.
Zuckerberg said that Apple's app store is monopolistic and harmful to
people who talk with iPhones.
He's absolutely right about Apple. By contrast, Facebook is
monopolistic and harmful to talk with Facebook.
Having classes outdoors could be a benefit for lower grades,
as well as tending to prevent anyone from catching Covid-19.
China is starting a gradual plan to force Mongols to shift from
speaking Mongolian to speaking Mandarin.
Cows spread diarrhea-causing E coli to salad farms, and the US is not doing
much to keep the salad leaves safe.
The wrecker's triumph: thugs and right-wing extremist militias are
now allied and supported by the right-wing media.
Cities whose thug departments are permeated with right-wing extremists
may need to abolish those departments and start new ones, so as to have no
right-wing extremists among their police.
Qatar will end the practice of tying each foreign worker to a single
employer.
This has the potential to reduce the horrible exploitation of
foreign workers there.
Correction: The article I linked to about dictionary.com appears to
have been erroneous, or else I misunderstood it. It treats the words
"Black" and "White" in a parallel way, so I have no criticism.
Thugs in Phoenix pressed Roniah Trotter face down on the sidewalk,
which was so hot that it gave her second-degree burns.
Naturally the thugs said it was she who attacked them. But the
biggest villains in this story are fossil fuel companies. I suspect
it will not be feasible to keep living in the Phoenix region for many
more decades. It will be too dangerous, and when the aquifer is
exhausted there will be no water.
It is too late to avoid global heating disaster, but we can still make
it more or make it less — and civilization's future depends on which
one we do.
LA thugs shot and killed Dijon Kizzee for running away after riding a
bicycle while black.
The details of their story might be true, but we cannot assume they
are true unless we find some independent confirmation. The
unsupported word of any number of thugs — if they have had a chance
to coordinate their stories — is not credible testimony.
The proposed US-Kenya business-supremacy treaty would make Kenya eliminate
its policies that are designed to reduce plastic pollution.
We must expect it will do other bad things too, as they generally do.
I wish I could expect Biden to be better than the corrupter on these issues,
but I expect him to be worse than Obama.
* Researchers in China saw big reductions in organisms [in soil] that play a
crucial role in recycling carbon and nitrogen*, due to
microplastics in the soil.
Right-wing UK pressure groups are trying to remove decision-making from
elected officials in Parliament and move it to assistants appointed by
the Prime Minister.
President Kagame of Rwanda, who does not allow opposition, has
arrested Rusesabagina, a heroic genocide-resister who subsequently
became a heroic opposition leader.
His family says Rusesabagina was arrested in Dubai; he would never
have gone willingly to Rwanda.
After the defeat of Sanders, and the plutocratist Democrats' rejection of
his progressive policies, where is hope to end US government cruelty?
We face an election which either a lousy right-wing candidate or a
perverse crook will win. We must continue the fight to overcome the
plutocratist Democrats. There are a few, such as Pelosi, that will still run against
progressive Democrats in November. Campaign for those progressives now.
As for all the rest, let's start now to support replacing them the next
time they run for reelection.
* Only one in 10 of the world’s electric utility companies are
prioritizing investment in clean renewable energy over growing their
capacity of fossil fuel power plants.*
People are criticizing Whole Foods for not allowing staff to wear
"Black Lives Matter" slogans while at work.
I think it is legitimate for a store to restrict political messaging
by its staff while at work. Would you insist that a store permit
employees to wear white-supremacist messages? So I think it is
legitimate for a store to say that its staff can't present any
political messages while on duty.
However, it seems valid to argue that if Whole Foods really supports
anti-racist campaigns, it should show that support by offering staff
masks they can wear, saying "Whole Foods supports Black Lives Matter."
*Research Reveals Ancient Peat Bogs Burning and Unprecedented Emissions From 2020 Arctic Fires.*
This is a positive feedback that I expect was not taken into account
in climate models. It means things will get worse, and faster, than
they predict.
Private documents from the saboteur in chief's Covid-19 task force
show that when he said it would disappear, he knew the opposite was true.
Hurricane Laura in Louisiana knocked out water supplies and electricity, so people are without air conditioning in the middle of a dangerous heat wave.
It also set a chemical plant on fire, and the chlorine gas can cause a lung problem that makes Covid-19 more deadly.
Global heating contributed to the hurricane and the heat wave.
James Brown voted 568 times — according to Kris Kobach.
Actually it was hundreds of different James Browns, each voting once.
*Our richest corporations are much to blame for the free-market "winner
take all" philosophy that has caused over half of our nation to try to
survive without adequate health care and life savings.*
We don't need to base our argument for taxing big business more on its
benefit from government-funded research. Everyone in society has the
duty to contribute to society, so the rich must not be able to exempt
their income from taxation by passing it through corporations.
The disease-spreader has chosen an advisor that wants to let Covid-18
burn through the US population, killing whoever it happens to kill.
That's the real meaning of "aiming for herd immunity".
We should keep in mind, if he orders the FDA to approve an
incompletely tested vaccine, that he is eager for Covid-19 to kill us
and always ready to lie.
Hamas (Gaza) and Israel have agreed on a truce, and perhaps more — Israel
is supposed to alleviate the blockade of Gaza.
*Researchers found "nice, generous" people advanced at work just as much
as bullies.*
Maybe this is yet another example where each person who succeeds
jumps to the conclusion that success depends on per own characteristics,
while in fact it is just chance at work.
Experts object to the term "climate refugee", but I think their
arguments are valid only for short term — before climate disaster
gets bad enough to make regions uninhabitable.
Imagine if it became impossible to live in California, due to fire,
smoke, and the failure of agriculture. That's the sort of massive
disaster that "climate refugee" goes with.
*Thomas Piketty refuses to censor latest book for sale in China.*
Theists sometimes challenge me to prove there are no gods. I can't do
that, but I can show that god-based theories of the universe can't
explain anything, so they aren't even wrong.
Amazon and IBM are buying from Chinese companies that make systems
used for repression of Uighurs.
*Ban US cotton imports from Xinjiang, say human rights campaigners.*
The bully urged right-wing extremists to protest in Portland, where
they got into fights with local anti-racist protesters. One
right-wing protester was shot dead. We don't know who shot him.
*Sudan government agrees to peace deal with five rebel groups.*
*Australia’s big polluters [have been] required to offset just 1.2% of
greenhouse gas emissions.*
However, even if they were required to offset 100% of the greenhouse
gas emissions, that might do little good, since many schemes for
"offsetting" emissions are of questionable effectiveness.
In effect, schemes for industries to "offset" emissions are a way to
avoid being made to actually reduce emissions.
*N.Y.C. Tenants Say They Were Tricked Into Appearing in R.N.C. Video.*
How a large high school is getting ready to receive students and
reduce Covid-19 transmission.
President Moreno is planning to allow the IMF to put dooH niboR
in charge of Ecuador.
This is to please foreign creditors.
The idea that the IMF would ever help a country it lends to is,
alas, folly. That's what it was initially intended for, but its
mission, since the 1980s if not earlier, was to impoverish the poor.
*Covid vaccine rush could make pandemic worse, say scientists.*
If people use a vaccine that is not very effective, they could start
taking foolish risks, imagining that the vaccine protected them. This
would play into the hands of the Republicans who wish to spread the
disease. The wrecker could pretend to be protecting us while achieving
the opposite.
The long-term effect might be to encourage distrust for all vaccines,
including those that have been thoroughly tested.
People in Belarus felt they could ignore politics and live under the regime.
Now they no longer consider that safe.
*Michael Moore warns that Donald Trump is on course to repeat 2016 win.*
Germany has been very successful in integrating a large number of
refugees.
The British Museum is starting to acknowledge the slave-owning past of
its founder.
*Public transit faces 'death spiral' without $32bn injection from Congress.*
Extinction Rebellion proposes a citizens’ assembly designed to feed
proposals to Parliament. Any proposal that gets 80% support in the
assembly, Parliament would be required to vote on.
Protesters marched again in Minsk despite Lukashenko's threats.
The wrecker has stopped intelligence official from testifying to
Congress about threats to election security.
US citizens: call on your senators to pass the Delivering for America
Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
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