US citizens: call on Congress to reinforce minor labor laws.

Those laws are usually called "child labor laws", and some of the people who may be put to dangerous work when these laws are weakened are children. But most are adolescents, and they too should be protected from arduous work. So let's use a fully accurate name.

The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.

If you phone, please spread the word!

*Ex-Alabama deputy sheriff sentenced to prison for [rape of] woman in his custody.*

I approve of the long sentence of 12 years for rape, but given that the convict committed the crime on duty as an official thug, that perhaps calls for a longer sentence.

The article states clearly that what he did was coerce her to have sex with him. The simple and clear term for that is "rape". But the article avoids that term entirely and replaces it with the vague term "sexual assault". Why do this?

In the antiglossary entry linked to just above, I propose an explanation for this.

The Maui wildfires have been tied directly to negligence by Hawaiian Electric Co, which failed to put insulation on the wires, or even to cut the tall vegetation growing near them.

The pylons holding the wires were wooden and decrepit, and did not comply with the updated standard adopted back in 2002.

I wonder if the company's judgment for damages will exceed its market value. If so, Maui will get an easy opportunity to take over the company and make it publicly owned henceforth.

If the company covers all the Hawaiian islands, they should all participate in owning it. The state of Hawaii could buy the whole company from Maui, or the other principal islands could buy shares of the company from Maui.

Splitting up the company is also conceivable. That would be feasible if the facilities operate separately from island to island, which I expect is the case.

On the morning of September 11, 1973, President Nixon was briefed about the planning for a coup in Chile.

His briefing told him that the plans were not then ready to be carried out. But they were carried out that very day. It seems that the right-wing enemies of President Allende accepted the cooperation and help of the US, but made their own decisions about how to overthrow Chile's government.

Australian climate defense activists who protested a company drilling for fossil gas have been hit by court orders forbidding them from speaking about the protest, and demanding they hand over all communications pertinent to the protest. The company also threatens to sue them for the cost of expensive precautionary reactions.

I don't know what actually happened in the protest. In particular, I don't know whether the protesters released a (possibly malodorous) gas or not. I expect that they are opposed to violence against persons and would not have considered releasing anything dangerous.

Therefore, I think that we have here an instance of a technique frequently used by businesses and sometimes governments to repress protesters: overreacting to the protest in a paranoid way at great expense, then suing the protesters for the "damages" the organization did to itself.