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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Some sites have paper tiger paywalls that can be defeated by deleting a cookie. I don't post links to those sites because it would be too complex to tell users what to do to avoid having to identify themselves.
UNESCO is trying to save the Great Barrier Reef from damage from coal shipments, but half its coral is dead already due to environmental degradation and global heating.
Ocean acidification will kill all the rest, if we burn all that coal.
Murder out of superstition didn't disappear after the Salem witch trials. It still occurs today.
Many Iranians can only support a fictional candidate for president.
In the US, things are not that far gone. We can vote for candidates that stand for good principles; we just know that it would be a miracle for one of them to win.
Can't the US keep guns away from children?
Global heating threatens to destroy cassava, the principal food of millions in Africa, via insects and disease.
US citizens: tell the EPA not to let oil companies block new pollution standards for cars and trucks.
The UK's 100 largest companies are running 8000 tax dodges.
I would expect that most of them are lawful, and take advantage of laws that need to be changed.
How Colleges Are Selling Out the Poor to Court the Rich.
ACLU: President Obama, Don t Let the CIA Control the Torture Narrative.
Pakistan's high court ruled that US drone attacks in Pakistan are war crimes.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Local Farms, Foods, and Jobs Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The House of Representatives passed a bill to end overtime pay in the name of "flexibility" and "caring".
A US-educated minister has been added to the politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
I guess that means more crushing of human rights to cater to global business.
America's contradictory attitudes towards children.
The Pentagon has punctured the pretense that the UK government is trying to rescue Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo.
The conservatives have cut the NHS to the point where hospitals no longer have enough nurses to keep patients safe.
Now that Rios Montt has been convicted of crimes against humanity, we must look at the evidence that the US under Ronald Reagan knowingly supported those crimes.
In the US: call on Publix to join the agreement to demand decent working conditions for the farm workers who grow its tomatoes.
Hollywood influence threatens to block a proposed treaty for a copyright exception for books for blind people.
I have mixed feelings about this treaty. Blind people deserve to escape from digital handcuffs, and so do the rest of us. A treaty that removes some of the harmful effect on blind people is a step towards that goal, but it might also serve as an excuse to resist the further change needed to free the rest of us.
I think, therefore, that we should direct our efforts towards the cause of abolishing DRM, not this treaty.
Offering a little psychotherapy to people who go through a trauma is unnecessary, and some methods actually tend to make people suffer more.
"American" corporations get a special tax deal for foreign earnings, which favors them over real citizens.
The point is not that we should give people the same deal; rather, we should take it away from corporations.
Chad has arrested many opposition journalists and bloggers.
Corruption drains wealth out of Africa, twice as much as it gets in foreign aid.
Extremists' violence was unable to prevent Pakistan from holding a more or less democratic election.
Uri Avnery: why the "one state solution" is a myth.
A right-wing politician embarrassingly acknowledged the real motive for austerity in the UK.
In response to many public complaints, the USDA has decided to do a full environmental impact study on proposed multi-herbicide-resistant GMO crops, rather than approve them without one.
A year after signing the US-Korea free exploitation agreement, US exports to Korea have gone down 10%.
In other words, this treaty failed even to provide the benefit the US was supposed to get. Of course, it did the other harm these treaties always do.
You can pretty much count on a free exploitation agreement to boost profits and reduce wages. Nowadays they also directly attack the rights of the citizens of both countries, with "investor-state" provisions that privilege foreign companies over the country's citizens.
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter to co-sign Rep. Grijalva's letter to Obama opposing the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Obama to take two important steps towards ending imprisonment without trial.
The "American Federation for Children" spent millions to support state legislature candidates that want to privatize public schools.
This is the kind of predator that US parents really should be worried about, since they can hurt a lot more children than any other kind of predator.
A Wikileaks cable shows how the US planned to meddle in Venezuelan politics to try to defeat Chavez.
I don't agree with all the opinions in the article; for instance, I think he's bending over backwards to defend North Korea, which is as nasty a tyranny as you can find on Earth.
A woman in El Salvador has asked the Supreme Court to let her have an abortion, because otherwise she is likely to die from her pregnancy.
The sacred fetus that the Catholic Church would kill her to save cannot survive anyway, because most of its brain is missing. But even if it were healthy, she should not be forced to bear it.
Campaigning against an autodestructive response to the Boston Bombings.
The FBI screwed up testing evidence against 137 people, but only informed the lawyers of 30 of them. Others have languished in prison for years.
How Facebook leads people to forget all the different sorts of people they are giving their information to.
This is not to mention Facebook itself, a perpetual lurker whose presence is dangerous to overlook.
Some Newtown officials voted to tear down and rebuild Sandy Hook elementary school at the cost of 57 million dollars. In these days of austerity, surely there is something more useful to do with that money.
I think that it was a mistake to move the students to another building after the shooting, because that encouraged them to feel they should be unable to cope with being in that building, which is why people are considering spending 60 million dollars replacing the building. When you fall off the horse, you should get right back on it, and that applies here too.
New Zealand has passed a bill to reject software patents, more or less.
I hope that lawyers don't succeed in gaming the new law by cleverly writing the applications to squeeze around it. Also, if there are existing patents in New Zealand that cover computational ideas, I don't think this law gets rid of them.
I recommend a more thorough and immediate solution.
A bill has been introduced to fix one of the injustice of the DMCA, but it is limited to unlocking devices.
This would be a substantial step forward, but not enough to fix the DMCA, because the broader prohibition on breaking digital handcuffs would remain. Digital Restrictions Management ought to be banned outright.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Arbitration Fairness Act (H.R. 1844, S. 878), which would stop companies from imposing arbitration on their employees and customers.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Food processing companies have imposed unsupported safety standards in California, which endanger wildlife.
On the foolish and absurd attachment many people feel toward corpses.
While criticizing this attachment, the article supports it by using terms such as "laid to rest". I never use such terms, both because they endorse superstitious ideas and because euphemisms strike me as encouragement of cowardice.
The New York Times Magazine labeled as the "center" the place between a right-wing extremist economist and a somewhat right-wing economist.
US citizens: Once again, call on the SEC to require publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending.
The Irish government is shielding the companies that sold horsemeat as beef.
If the Irish government intended, in February, to put meat businesses gently on notice so they would cease this practice, that's not wrong in principle. It was a way to put an end to the practice. However, blocking an investigation is going too far.
I see nothing wrong in principle with putting horsemeat in a burger, as long as it is processed safely and announced on the label. The same is true with the other kinds of filler that are normally included in cheap burger patties, whose purchasers typically assume they are buying pure beef.
The UK plans to privatize public defenders, which implies that executives will pressure the lawyers to do a hasty and inadequate job.
The result will be that one company can "represent" you, give you bad advice, then be paid to run the prison they put you in.
US citizens: sign this petition to support the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act, which would charge student loans the same interest rate that big banks get.
Recommendations on a healthy farm system, from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Encryption in the iThings can be broken by Apple.
US citizens: Call on Hagel to tell the navy to take precautions to avoid killing an estimated 1000 marine mammals through deafening underwater sound.
Greg Palast interviews Karzai's advisor, Yahya Maroofi, about the prospect of peace with the Taliban.
There is no reason why the Taliban and the US have to be enemies. They are likely to continue oppressing Afghan women, and if I imagine myself magically transformed into an Afghan women, I would be thinking about how to kill Taliban. However, the other parties in Afghanistan are not much better, not enough to continue the bloodshed over.
The Prime Minister of Japan persistently refuses to acknowledge Japan's aggression in World War II.
This is not excused by US officials persistent refusal to acknowledge US aggression against Iraq.
Are the FBI and IRS Secretly Reading Your Email Without a Warrant?
Against Connecting Terrorist 'Dots'.
As Bruce Schneier pointed out, the metaphor of "connecting the dots" is misleading; only in hindsight can one distinguish the dots that connect from the millions of other dots that don't add up to anything.
Right-wingers dehumanize the poor, so that many people see them as "other" and thus not worthy of help.
Forced into deeper poverty by budget cuts, the poor may look more unsavory, and some may try desperate methods to get a little money. These can provide more excuses to step hard on the poor, and the cycle continues.
What's the purpose of this? Politicians can get elected by demonizing someone, and the poor may be a handy target, just like an ethnic minority. But there is a specific motive, too: to knock down wages and help businesses impose worse working conditions.
US-supported Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt has been found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Dubya's crimes are far worse; when will he be tried?
US citizens: oppose military intervention in Syria.
Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform.
I am more concerned with this issue than with immigration as such.
FBI's Latest Proposal for a Wiretap-Ready Internet Should Be Trashed.
The article has some errors. It uses the nebulous term "cloud" as if it meant something coherent. It recommends "secure" services that use encryption which users can't trust, because they require a nonfree client program — that is, a program not under the control of its users.
The article also has the bizarre idea that using encryption you can really trust is only for criminals, and that they will have to write it for themselves.
Everyone who wants to communicate confidentially on the Internet needs trustworthy encryption, but you don't need to write it. The GNU Privacy Guard, free/libre software for encryption, has been available for over a decade. Unless you're a sucker with a clouded mind, GPG is for you.
Enron fraud king Skilling has got himself out of prison in exchange for not suing his victims any more, and paying them money he won't miss.
It appears staff in the State Department told UN Ambassador Rice to change her description of the Benghazi attack, so as not to give Republicans ammunition.
I don't see anything wrong here. UN speeches are public statements, and we should expect any government to plan carefully what to say in them. As far as I can tell, the changes were not lies and did not cover up any facts.
It's not as if intelligence agencies had been pressured to misinform the rest of the government, as was done to fabricate an excuse to conquer Iraq.
There are plenty of good reasons to condemn Obama, but you can rely on Republicans to find bad ones.
Fast-food workers' protests spread around the US.
Of course, fast food was never meant to be eaten in the first place. It was meant for fasting, not for eating.
More about the censorship order for the 3d-printer gun design.
Bahraini blogger Ali Abdulemam describes how he was tortured and convicted in an absurd "trial", then released, and then had the good fortune to be out protesting when the thugs came for him again.
Obama downplays the repression in Bahrain, which his regime supports.
Fossil fuel companies have sabotaged all political efforts to stop global heating. Governments have been corrupted and stopped from really trying.
Only a surprising technical advance — that is, amazingly good luck — can avert global catastrophe if governments fail to try.
In the US: participate in Jobs not Wars rallies.
A salmon farm as overwhelmed a Scottish lake with high levels of pesticide.
A large conspiracy stole 45 million dollars from banks by counterfeiting prepaid debit cards.
In the past, I would have said this was wrong, but now that banks are robbing people every day, I don't care if banks get robbed.
A woman was found alive in the rubble, 17 days after the collapse of the factory in Bangladesh.
Credulous crowds shouted, "God is great," but what about the thousand workers who were killed? If you believe that a god decides who personally will live and who will die, it must have decided to kill all those people. Shall we shout, "God is lousy"?
I'd rather say, "There are no gods."
UK police corruption protected the murderers of a private detective who was investigating police corruption.
A UK lawyer speaks in favor of Stuart Hall, saying the crimes he is accused of are minor and should not be prosecuted at all.
I don't know whether I agree, because I don't know in concrete terms what Hall has been accused of. In the articles in the Guardian, all specifics are hidden behind abstract terms equivalent to "something sexual which is considered nasty". Does that mean rape? Making a pass? Stealing a kiss?
"Transparency" is a two-edged sword when applied to governments and data.
Keep in mind that Obama is also an enemy of transparency, as regards anything the US government does for our "security", up to and including death squads.
I think the proposed European "right to be forgotten" is ok as long as it is limited to databases and does not apply to anyone's works of authorship.
Here's what the ACLU got for a FOIA request for a document stating general policies (not information about any specific case).
Rating states for their "business climate" has no economic validity; it is just right-wing propaganda to pressure for deregulation.
Cutting down the Amazon rainforest to plant soya will be self-defeating: it will change the local climate, making agriculture less productive.
Another species driven to extinction — all three mangarahara cichlids known are male.
Parts of the Marshall Islands face a shortage of drinking water due to drought.
I can't assume that global heating helped cause this drought, but it is expected to make for worse droughts in general. However, in a few decades these low islands will have plenty of water, all the time.
The US government censored the publication of 3d-printer gun plans by claiming vague, broad censorship power.
I am not particularly in favor of homemade guns, which can be dangerous to their users as well as to everyone else. However, censorship power like this is a bigger a threat.
Angola's war on the poor: evicting them and demolishing illegal homes to make way for the wealthy.
For the long-term, Luanda needs a smaller population. I am sure many women there have more children than they want. Donating reliable birth control would go a long way.
US citizens: support strengthening the law requiring women get equal pay for equal work.
In the US: call on major US stores to stop selling neonicotinoids for home use.
Stephen Hawking withdrew from a conference hosted by the President of Israel, after Palestinians colleagues urged him to do so.
I upheld the academic boycott during a visit to Israel and Palestine sponsored by Palestinians, but I don't advocate a complete academic boycott. However, this conference is not an academic event. It is state-sponsored business boosterism.
Obama recently repeated that he wants to "close the Guantanamo prison", but what he actually tried to do was continuing holding prisoners without trial indefinitely — just not in Guantanamo.
Obama's statement, "When we transfer detention authority in Afghanistan, the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are," condemns imprisonment without trial regardless of details. I can't read it any other way. I don't see any weasel-words in that sentence, but when will he start acting accordingly?
ALEC's latest meeting was surrounded by protesters that outnumbered the attendees.
But that is not enough to stop the corporations and the sellout legislator from making corrupt deals.
To conceal them, ALEC encourages its member legislators to defy requests under state freedom of information laws for copies of ALEC model bills.
500 US children per year are killed accidentally with guns.
Usually they are killed by a child (the same one, or another) who finds a gun at home.
Everyone: call on Asia Pacific Resources International Limited to stop destroying rainforest in Sumatra.
Previously such campaigns were directed against Asian Pulp and Paper. Greenpeace says that company has agreed to stop destroying its parts of the rainforest.
The Syrian Islamist extremist group al Nusra is attracting fighters away from the non-Islamist rebels. This is due to its successes, which are in turn due to the arms it received from countries such as Qatar. The fighters joining al Nusra can probably get better arms too.
Reportedly the US wants to attack al Nusra, but why did the US not pressure Qatar into not arming al Nusra?
I don't think it is possible for any small intervention to enable any other force to win in Syria.
The last time Earth had as much atmospheric CO2 as it has now was 3 million years ago, and it was 8C hotter than now.
Sea level was 40 meters higher (120 feet). So if we don't get this CO2 out of the air, we're sunk!
Two Chileans marines have been convicted for the disappearance of a leftist priest who was killed by Pinochet's men.
The US won't keep permanent bases in Afghanistan, but will continue to run 9 bases until hell freezes over.
A common tactic in the Obama regime's war on whistleblowers is to retroactively declare information secret, then prosecute the whistleblower for disclosing that.
Tory historians are trying to whitewash the racism, violence and torture of the British empire.
An academic who studies the effect of privately imposed labor standards says that they don't do the job: workers need the support of governments.
Progressives promote the privately imposed standards approach because the globalization "free trade" led governments to effectively abandon their workers to the mercy of the plutocrats. Of course, progressives fight against free exploitation treaties too, but so far the only one we have (mostly) defeated was ACTA.
Alas, the private standards are often not really enforced. This study shows we need to end "free trade" as a system, so that governments go back to serving the people instead of foreign business.
Assata Shakur was convicted of murdering a thug, though someone else killed him, but she escaped and received asylum in Cuba. Now the FBI has labeled her as a "terrorist".
It appears Shakur wanted to launch a rebellion of US blacks. I don't support that cause, but rebellion is not terrorism. She may have committed violent crimes; if so, that doesn't excuse the dishonest effort to pin other crimes on her, or shooting her when she had her hands up, or falsely claiming she then fired a gun (it's probably false given her wounds made her unable to even try).
The US military is pervaded by an attitude that encourages and excuses rape. Hardly anyone accused is prosecuted. Since soldiers can get away with rape through influence with their commanders, it is not a big surprise that the officer in charge of the Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office was arrested for sexual assault. He assumed he could get away with it.
The UK government, trying to destroy the National Health Service, has cut preventive and home care; the result is so many emergency cases that the system can't cope.
3d-printed guns could shatter when fired, and kill the person that fired them.
The New York Times gives its full backing to uncertain claims that Assad used chemical weapons, just as it did to Dubya's claims that Saddam had chemical weapons.
An "earth sciences" lab at Oxford, funded by Shell, could be a pathway for Shell to corrupt climate science.
Campaigners against female genital mutilation face threats from people in their communities that want to keep the practice secret.
A fire in a Bangladesh clothing factory killed only 8 people because it occurred when not many were at work.
By contrast, the Boston bombing killed only 3 people, though several others were permanently injured.
China is investing in education, and working hard so that everyone does well, not just the smartest students.
Half the world's population could be dependent on expensive food imports by 2050.
In effect, a preliminary half-capacity Keystone XL pipeline is already being hooked together.
Sabotaging this pipeline would be morally and legally justified under the principle of necessity — preventing a bigger crime. Global heating is forecast to kill a hundred million people by 2030 (and larger numbers later on). This pipeline would not be the whole cause but it would be a substantial cause — more than .01%. If destroying the pipeline prevents even .01% of those deaths, that would mean ten thousand lives saved. Surely that would be enough to justify the action.
Spain has rejected the Swiss request to extradite Herve Falciani, who leaked the "Lagarde list" of possible tax evaders.
The death toll from the Bangladesh factory collapse was over 800.
I suppose there were also many serious injuries, but I have not seen figures.
By comparison, the Boston bombings were a minor thing.
Chinese thugs arrested activists campaigning for officials to disclose their assets.
Whistleblower Ellsberg to SF Pride: Manning Should be Lauded as "Hero That He Is".
Chinese Mines Pollute Tibet's Rivers, Streams.
The US stock market is zooming, although for most Americans there is no recovery.
This demonstrates that the US stock market is no measure of how the real economy is doing. It may be the other way around: the sequester cuts that will shaft most Americans could be boosting stocks because they are good for the plutocrats.
The Zaro family complained to the Israeli thugs about "settlers" who repeatedly trespassed on the family's land, so the thugs arrested the family.
Palestinian human rights defender Shawan Jabarin is arbitrarily barred by Israel from traveling, so he has been unable to travel to receive an award in Denmark or to meet with Human Rights Watch in New York.
Everyone: call on US clothing brands to pay for inspections of foreign factories.
The UK budget for caring for old people has been cut by 20% by the current government, which means people who need help to do ordinary things won't get that help.
The State of Georgia has gone from extreme drought to floods. These are two sides of the same global heating coin.
Elizabeth Smart found out how abstinence-based education teaches people to feel worthless if they have been raped.
She dedicates herself to teaching kids that mistreatment by others has no effect on their worth.
The principal of Orchard Gardens primary school fired the security guards and spent the money on art education. The school improved academically, and no longer has any apparent need for security guards.
A school thug beat up Ashlynn Avery (she needed a cast afterward) and then arrested her — for falling asleep while waiting in a punishment room.
I don't think the fact that she is diabetic makes a crucial difference. This treatment would be just as wrong if done to a non-diabetic student.
China is blocking the next edition of a magazine that published an exposé of forced labor camps.
Opposition activists were arrested at a peaceful protest in Afghanistan. That shows how well we have done at giving Afghanistan freedom and democracy.
The Saudi regime is repressing the founders of a new human rights group.
Algeria convicted a human rights defender of the "crime" of handing out leaflets criticizing unemployment.
Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy.
The UK has a network of license plate readers that track all motor vehicle traffic in the country and make a complete dossier about each vehicle. The US does not say it is setting up such a network, and maybe has no plan for a complete network, but the proliferating automatic license plate readers have the effect of approximating one.
All automatic license plate readers, no matter who operates them, should be required by law to ignore any plate that isn't on a specific list. And a plate should get on that list only by court order.
The plutocrats' elected servants want austerity, so now that the economic excuse they cited has been shown to be false, they invent other ridiculous excuses.
The Bush forces intentionally planned to keep Iraqi sects divided, and the US may be planning the same thing for Syria.
That this had the effect of strengthening forces linked to al Qa'ida was not considered a problem.
The torture-apology movie Zero Dark Thirty was edited under the direction of the CIA.
A report predicts that 1/4 of the children in the UK in 2020 will live in poverty, thanks to cuts in aid to the poor.
Obama (and Pritzker) did it for the money.
US citizens: sign this petition supporting the bill to make large banks hold bigger reserves.
This does not go far enough — we need to break up the big banks — but it is a step in the right direction.
Some states and cities have restricted discrimination against people with a criminal record unrelated to the job.
However, at the same time, there are many official forms of discrimination against everyone with a criminal record, in employment, education, and housing.
The practice of selling a technology product for less than cost, and making people pay the rest of the price over time through tied services, is resented by users.
It is also a major obstacle to making the devices run free software, because they are designed to require the user to use the specific services tied to their sale, and proprietary software is what imposes that restriction.
I hope users will resent this enough to start paying for the devices all at once and insisting on control of them.
Bangladesh faces a shortage of safe water to drink, and the aquifers it uses are rapidly emptying and will salt up with sea water. Meanwhile, global heating has reduced the rainfall.
Part of the problem is caused by having too many children. There are limits to what is possible, and if they keep making the problem bigger, they will sooner or later reach an impossible point. There is not much further to go.
Peace activists who entered the Oak Ridge refined uranium storage facility as a protest face 30 years in prison.
I do not advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament for the US, but what I have to say is independent of whether I agree with them. It is tyranny to punish peaceful protesters that way.
Partly this is to express resentment that they exposed weak security that results from privatizing the security.
The single guard who was sent to investigate the intrusion was scapegoated and fired, which caused him to lose his house. Few Americans don't work as guards in nuclear facilities, but many are in the same vulnerable position, and that is the fault of government with the wrong priorities.
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to confirm Gina McCarthy as head of the EPA. Also sign this petition, but a phone call carries more weight.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588
Ocean acidification (due to the CO2 we pump into the air) can wipe out brittle stars, as well as coral and crustaceans.
Islands in the western Pacific are expected to lose marine resources due to this, as well as due to effects of global heating.
Protesters in Bangladesh, demanding prosecution of "atheists", fought with the thugs.
It appears the thugs attacked first, which is bad, even though the cause these protesters support is pure injustice.
I suspect that the "atheists" are not really atheists, just secular, but still deserve freedom of speech anyway.
Leopoldo Garcia Lucero was maimed by Pinochet's torturers; his case will be judged by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
The Boston bombings are not a reason for more government surveillance.
The Privacy-Invading Potential of Eye Tracking Technology.
That Unemployment Form Might Violate Your Civil Rights.
The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded benefited from a program for "streamlined" inspections (which turned out to mean none at all).
The US condemned repression of journalists, but didn't mention the journalist imprisoned in Yemen due to a request from Obama.
What the Framing of a Terror Suspect Says About GOP Attacks on Due Process.
Rich people want austerity because they profit from it. Erroneous economics that supports austerity received widespread acceptance because it gave the rich an excuse to pretend it was good for others as well.
This demonstrates that money corrupts economics just as it does other fields of science where money is at stake, such as medicine and public health.
Not everyone goes along with the corruption. Paul Krugman champions economics that remembers what the banksters want forgotten.
Citizens are right to distrust the politicians, but what the politicians did wrong before was obey the banksters. They let banksters create bubbles and dangerous derivatives. Now, with austerity, they continue obeying the banksters.
We must support politicians that will treat the banksters as a threat to society. Of course, there are good ways to fight them and bad ways; hurting the banksters is not a sufficient condition for a wise policy. However, it is a necessary condition.
George Monbiot: Why the Politics of Envy Are Keenest Among the Very Rich.
A UK official supported a plan to discredit a tax whistleblower by telling lies to the press.
A Mexican journalist's sons were murdered by gunmen who chased them in a car.
It is unusual to kill a journalist's relatives instead of the journalist. Maybe it had nothing to do with their parents.
Around 20,000 protested in Moscow, demanding the release of political prisoners who protested a year ago.
Time To Demand All Birth Control Pills Be Sold Over-The-Counter.
I agree, as far as that goes, but daily birth control pills are not the modern reliable method of birth control. We need to focus on encouraging the use of the more effective forms — and a major barrier to their use is the expense.
The four million Ahmadis in Pakistan are effectively excluded from politics by discriminatory laws, and face execution for blasphemy if they make a misstep.
It is rather strange to claim to be a Muslim while denying one of the principal tenets of Islam, like claiming to be a Christian and saying Jesus never lived. But Christianity and Islam are full of claims that are hardly rational, and religious freedom includes the freedom to believe any or all of them. Islamic governments generally do not respect people's religious freedom, and Pakistan is one of the worst.
This is why Pakistan is on my list of countries I would not visit.
Most Americans think of Sallie Mae as a government institution. It was one. Now it is a privately-run bank which is nasty to the students that have borrowed, and is a member of ALEC.
The Tsarnaev brothers may have got their inspiration from jihadis sponsored by the CIA with the idea of weakening US rivals such as Russia.
The US says that those accused of felonies must be given legal representation, but the public defender system is so understaffed that they cannot do an adequate job.
Totally aside from problems with the legal system, it is absurd for such things as putting your feet on a seat in a train to be prosecuted as crimes at all.
It is silly to expect the FBI to detect would-be terrorists, or to criticize when it overlooks one, because the significance of the data is not clear except in hindsight.
"Trying harder" (by invading our freedom even more) would not make the effort much more successful.
Fortunately, the casualty rate from terrorism in the US is so tiny (compared with other causes of casualties) that "trying harder" is not necessary.
A pesticide formerly used on bananas in Guadeloupe and Martinique has washed into the sea bottom, and now makes seafood around the island unsafe t o eat.
It will remain unsafe for decades more.
Billionaire Burglar Breaks into Obama's Cabinet.
Rep. Barbara Lee proposed a bill to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Some senators are also reconsidering it.
200,000 protested in Paris to call on Hollande to replace his centrist policy with a progressive policy.
Public banks, and other alternatives to the US Federal Reserve Bank.
A UN army has been sent to the D.R. Congo to suppress a rebel army that commits atrocities.
Many Russian dissidents face prosecution for protesting against Putin.
A 50-year coverup of British repression in Kenya is being exposed.
Obama has nominated wealthy bankster Penny Pritzker as Secretary of Commerce.
She is also known for union-busting and closing public schools.
For this Obama calls her a "distinguished business leader", perhaps distinguished by how much she contributed to his campaigns.
Public Banking as an Answer to Artificial Scarcity.
Companies are fighting to deny the toxicity of chemicals used in products we are all exposed to, just as companies previously fought to deny the toxicity of asbestos and lead.
Refuting the right-wing argument in favor of sweatshops.
I think the article concedes too much to that argument. I agree that safety standards should apply the same to all countries, but I don't agree that replacing a high-wage job with a low-wage job is good merely because the low-wage job is in Bangladesh. That's a big loss for one worker, and a tiny gain for another worker, and the difference goes to the owners.
Companies that want to produce for the US in poor countries, and pay less than US wages, should be required to pay considerably more than the usual wage standards of those countries, as well as taxed for doing this, so that most of the benefit goes to workers and only some to the owners.
Prominent gay activists have published an open letter in support for Bradley Manning.
For me, the fact that he is gay is a side issue. He is a hero for resisting tyranny.
Dubya's assistant in regard to drone policy criticized Obama for using drones to kill people rather that arresting them and putting them in Guantanamo.
Killing people might be more humane than putting them in Guantanamo for life, but why limit the choices to those two? Outside of true war zones, the right thing to do with someone suspected of planning terrorism is to watch him until there is enough evidence to try him, then arrest him and try him in a regular court. No drones, no Guantanamo.
Having children typically leads people to subordinate the future of society to the success of their own offspring.
In other words, taking care of only your own family is just a kind of selfishness.
Congress needs to repeal the "Authorization for Use of Military Force" that permitted Dubya and then Obama to attack people around the world.
The UN, after bringing cholera to Haiti, has failed to carry out its own recommendations for preventing that sort of UN gift to other countries.
Independent news sites in Malaysia face raids by thugs and blockage by filters on the Internet, as well as the virtual equivalent of state-organized "spontaneous protests".
A privatized prison in Ohio has become a disaster.
The company needs to make money somehow.
Ecuador's legislature is moving to cancel a trade treaty with the US, and is organizing resistance throughout Latin America.
Hooray, Ecuador! With this example, it will be easier to knock out the rest of them.
The US government, subservient to Big Pharma, tries to punish governments that make exceptions to medical patents in order to save the lives of people that can't afford monopoly prices.
It is unfortunate that the article cites the propaganda term "intellectual property" without condemning it as propaganda.
Prestigious US newspapers and magazines set up events to sell companies access to politicians.
JP Morgan manipulated its accounts in order to cheat on requirements for backing its risky investments with real assets.
Uri Avnery: Kerry, trying to restart Israel/Arab peace talks, will find that Israel will negotiate ad infinitem, just as before. An agreement will require pressuring Israel to make a deal.
Facebook is offering a paltry settlement to the people whose names were used in advertising without their permission.
A Guantanamo prisoner on hunger strike explains the series of sufferings caused by force-feeding.
Former Guantanamo prisoners point out that the US continues to abuse prisoners in Guantanamo, and call on doctors and nurses to refuse to cooperate with force feeding.
Subcontracting to sweatshops is the clothing industry's intentional business model. (They call this "flexibility".)
The famous brands' response to the resulting disasters is, in most cases, to try to avoid association with them rather than to prevent them.
However, disasters that kill hundreds of workers at once are a small part of the suffering caused by sweatshops. People are regularly overworked until they develop medical problems. Their pay is small, and often they don't receive that pay.
To eliminate these problems, we must eliminate the flexibility of subcontracting. We must tell companies, "Put your factory where you wish, but it has to be your factory, the workers must be employees of your company, and you won't be able to move it easily." The exception would be for commodity subproducts not made specially for one company.
In the UK, people are being fined for mere insults.
The article criticizes the absurd examples but grants unjustified legitimacy to the general practice. Racism is nasty, but you can't stop racism by banning insults, and insults alone do not generate violence.
US citizens: support the Job Preservation and Sequester Replacement Act.
Here's more information about the bill.
US citizens: ask your senators to support the Safe Chemicals Act.
Human Rights Watch: Libya's proposed law to bar former Gaddafi officials from many kinds of jobs is too broad and lacks safeguards.
Bloomberg news has published a list showing the ratio of CEO pay to workers' pay, for some US companies.
Everyone: express solidarity to the LA Times workers who announced they would quit if the paper is sold to the Koch brothers.
In the US: support Guitar Center workers in unionizing against Bain Capital.
US citizens: call on the US Forest Service not to approve uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.
Hamas is "Talibanising" Gaza, step by step, and inspiring resistance.
Democracy activists in Azerbaijan get little support from the West.
Greg Palast has described how the government of Azerbaijan works hand in hand with international oil companies. That's why the US cooperates with Azerbaijan's dictator, and tries to destabilize Venezuela.
If you love listening to birds sing, remember that humans are wiping out songbirds through pesticides and global heating.
Women in Pakistan face threats of attacks if they try to vote.
Even after libel reform, UK libel law prevents publication of books available in the US.
In Copenhagen, a safe room for drug injections protects addicts while reducing theft.
I am sure it also reduces transmission of HIV.
Investigation of the Bangladesh factory collapse leads to suspicion of corruption at many levels.
The practice of outsourcing to local contractors facilitates corruption because the Western companies that sell the goods can disclaim responsibility. If American companies ran their own factories in Bangladesh, they could be prosecuted in the US for paying bribes there.
A wild fire in Ventura county, north of Los Angeles, has burnt 43 square miles.
Due to the severe drought, wild fires are burning already with the intensity usually observed in September. By this September they will probably be even worse.
And global heating will make it even worse.
In the US, where have all the jobs gone?
The article cites various causes of lack of jobs, but the root cause is that business dominates government policy.
When the article states that more global trade is good, it is only half right. More international trade means more total wealth, and that's good all else being equal. But all else is not equal. Globalization gives business more power to dominate government policy. If obstructing global trade is necessary to strip business of its power, so be it.
1/4 of Americans aged 25 through 34 are now unemployed.
The solutions suggested by this article are inadequate, even useless. Not everyone has the ability to practice an educated profession; society must offer a decent life to the rest, also.
We can't reduce unemployment much by helping workers improve their skills. Even if every worker or would-be worker in the US were to become more employable, that would have only a little influence on the total number of jobs. To increase that requires other government policies.
College is too expensive now for most Americans anyway, because governments have ceased to support it. Many Americans are saddled for life with college loans they cannot pay back or get rid of. It's a risk I would not advise anyone to take.
Improving workers' productivity does the workers little good under our current anti-worker political system. American workers' productivity has increased greatly in the last 30 years with no increase in wages.
Among many other nasty things, Iran's government prohibits labor unions.
US state governments are moving in the same direction.
China has adopted a law about hospitalization of the insane, but that law won't help dissidents that are put in mental hospitals.
Jordan is prosecuting dissidents for their words.
Norway is considering a law to impose pushing Internet filters to block sharing.
If you are Norwegian, please try to fight this.
UN Finds Little Appreciation for Human Rights Among US Businesses.
"It's a sad thought that our politicians are so crooked that we have to ask the United Nations for help, but no one else will listen."
US drone attacks destroy traditional moral codes in the victim societies and in the US.
I don't think it makes a difference directly whether people are killed by a remotely piloted plane, a manned plane, an artillery shell or bullets. Any of them can kill innocent people, depending on how much the soldiers care to avoid this. However, drones are easier to use in places around the world where there is no war going on.
An ex-FBI agent confirms that the US records all phone conversations and emails so as to look at them later — universal wiretapping by Big Brother.
This is more dangerous than a few people running around with bombs.
The ruling party in Malaysia seems to be cheating in the election.
In modern civilization, children have no freedom — they are either kept isolated or regimented, and never free to do things on their own.
This reaches an extreme in the US, where parents are rebuked if they allow their children to go anywhere on foot, but resent the need to constant drive them around. Of course, the resentment is taken out on the child.
Enemies of sharing often rant about "copyright theft", a term that they use in a misleading way. Here's a real case of alleged copyright theft.
You can point to this example to refute their misuse of the term.
Sibel Edmonds says secret government documents she translated showed that the US government worked with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri until 3 months after September 11, 2001.
What were they doing together? Supporting terrorism (destabilization).
Everyone: call on the government of Egypt to drop charges against dissidents.
US citizens: sign another petition calling on Obama to close the Guantanamo prison.
The inconsistent history of US opposition to chemical weapons.
US citizens: sign this petition to support closing the Guantanamo prison.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass stricter gun control.
Morris Davis, formerly chief prosecutor in Guantanamo kangaroo courts, calls for giving real trials to those prisoners who deserve prosecution, and releasing all the rest.
I will not recommend signing his petition on change.org, because that site requires running nonfree software. Instead, I've recommended other on-line petitions for supporting this cause.
The law adopted by Dryden, NY, to ban fracking was upheld on appeal.
Abortion rights activists in Ireland risk imprisonment by distributing abortion information in violation of censorship laws.
Pressuring environmentalist organizations with large endowments to divest from fossil fuels.
Although it is clear that British troops in the Bush forces tortured Baba Mousa to death, a farcical trial ensured that no one would be held responsible.
Supporting the right to die, by showing people what it's like not to be allowed a comfortable death.
The UK let Goldman Sachs off 20 million pounds of tax owed to avoid "embarrassing" a pro-bankster minister.
Piracy is almost nonexistent.
China is investing heavily in renewable energy, but its CO2 emissions are growing greatly anyway.
Teaching Africans to be proud of having apes in the nearby forest.
Chomsky: The Boston Bombings Gave Americans a Taste of the Terrorism the U.S. Inflicts Abroad Every Day.
Chomsky's statement that "There are few in Boston who were not touched in some way by the marathon bombings on April 15 and the tense week that followed" is true, but only because of the ridiculous shutdown of Boston's transit system on April 19, together with the media blitz. If not for those, only a fraction of the population of Boston would have been affected. It would have been good to spare the rest.
Notwithstanding this small point, I agree with Chomsky's conclusions. I can feel sad and angry on behalf of the victims of any injustice, but what really preoccupies me is that these events will lead to injustice against all Americans — if they are used as an excuse to curtail our freedom.
US employers often steal their workers' wages. If once in a rare while they get caught and fined, it's just part of the "cost of doing business" for them.
The Mozilla foundation threatens legal action against the company whose spy software pretends to be Firefox.
The secret FISA court has not said no to any surveillance requests in 2011 or 2012.
This laxity probably encourages the FBI to make such requests without good reason. Meanwhile, the requests are formulated in such broad terms that each one permits the FBI to wiretap almost anyone.
Obama can get most of the way towards closing Guantanamo without any help from Congress.
So Obama should start doing, not merely talking.
5-Year-Old Boy Killed Sister With Gun Made For Kids.
If you have a gun in your house, even if there are no little kids there, it is still much more likely to kill you than to protect you.
Exxon has recovered less than half of the tar sands oil that it spilled in Arkansas.
North Carolina's ALEC-corrupted Republican senators are so determined to pass a bill to wipe out a clean energy program that they falsified a committee vote on the bill.
New York State, and other states, plan to hand over all students' academic records to a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, and many related companies too, for data mining and commercial abuse.
This new intrusion is an indirect consequences of the US imposition of oppressive standardized tests, which does other kinds of harm directly.
Thugs in Grand Rapids arrest people without warning for "trespassing", even drivers resting in their cars in a gas station.
I wonder if they choose the people to arrest based on their race. I have no information about the race of these victims, but that's a common behavior pattern for thugs in the US.
In Violation of Constitution, Ethiopian Blogger Will Face 18 Years in Prison.
Expel and Arrest the Best Students: The USA's Road to Ruin.
US citizens: call on the EPA to reject the new neonicotinoid-like pesticide, sulfoxaflor.
The US is considering this new pesticide while refusing to take action against existing neonicotinoids.
The chemical-heavy industrial agriculture system is a major contributor to global heating.
US citizens: call on the Senate to fix the filibuster.
Neonicotinoids may kill birds as well as bees.
The US government is failing to take the bee loss crisis seriously.
The government study shielded the neonicotinoids by citing other factors that contribute to bee colony collapse.
What if that study is right? What if the varroa mites are the main cause of the problem, and neonicotinoids are a secondary factor?
We don't know how to get rid of the varroa mites, and we urgently need to save the bees (not just domesticated honeybees). If the only factor we know how to eliminate is the neonicotinoids, we had better do so forthwith.
Some people appear to be driven to seek a certain level of risk of danger; as a result, measures to make life safer around them can backfire.
Not everyone seeks danger. Thus, I am skeptical of the conclusion that automobile seat belts are self-defeating. Many drivers (and passengers!) use them without looking for other dangers to replace the avoided danger of a car accident.
However, if some people seek danger, we should try to help them get the danger they want in a way that does not endanger others or cost a lot. Identifying the best methods may be a subtle question.
UN officials condemn force-feeding of hunger strikers in Guantanamo.
Maryland's governor, who is thinking of running for president, signed a bill to abolish the death penalty.
400 Bangladeshis (actually 500) were the latest casualties of the global business pressure to mistreat workers and cut their pay.
Pope Francis continues to condemn the greed of the rich as a major world evil.
USAid was connected with a 2008 attempt to overthrow the government of Bolivia.
CEOs Pushing Austerity Enjoy Taxpayer-Subsidized Pay.
Banksters absolutely hate the bill to make big banks maintain reserves to avoid a bailout.
If they didn't hate it, that would be a sign it was ineffective. However, it does not go far enough. To address other evils of big banks, such as their ability to conspire to defraud the rest of us, we need to break them up.
The US pressured Mexico to imprison corrupt officials, so it picked some officials and framed them.
Who Served Their Country Better: George Bush or Kimberly Rivera?
Dubya deserves a life sentence for the crime of aggressive war.
French President Hollande is trying to encourage the election defeat of Merkel, the queen of euro-austerity.
That's the right thing to do, and yet the article derides him for having "bad relations" with Germany, which is an inevitable consequence of trying to do this. It's like criticizing a vaccine because the needle hurts.
Arctic sea ice is melting faster than expected, which means the extreme weather effects already caused by reduced Arctic ice will get even worse in a few years.
This means food will get more expensive, world wide. People in poor countries will die of this, and since millions Americans already find it hard to pay for food, some Americans may die too from it too.
Everyone: sign the petition against the eviction of Jacqueline Barber, whose pension won't pay for her cancer therapy and her mushrooming mortgage payments.
Everyone: call on Mark Zuckerberg to stop funding ads that endorse the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline and drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Indochina has lost 1/3 of its forests in 40 years.
With increasing population, the rate of loss is likely to increase if the cause of the problem is not corrected.
In regard to Syria, the first principle is "Do no harm".
Repeal the Sequester — And the Insanity Behind It.
Americans have forgotten Iraq now that Americans are not dying there, but plenty of Iraqis are being killed.
Blocking a certain chemical in mouse brains makes them live 10% to 20% longer.
I predict we will eventually find that humans have already pushed this life-extension mechanism to its limit. Mammals' life spans tend to be inversely proportional to their heartbeat rate, but humans are the exception, with a lifespan four times that of other mammals with the comparable heartbeat rate. This long life is the result of adaptations in whatever mechanisms could adapt easily. That means that simple means that extend the lifespans of other mammals have probably been used already in humans.
Too bad.
The Greek xenophobe party plans to hand out food to the hungry, excluding those they don't consider Greek.
The state wants to ban this food distribution, but that is the wrong response. The hungry in Greece deserve food. The proper response is for the state to pre-empt the neonazis by offering food to everyone who is hungry. That is the state's responsibility, after all. It is the state's failure to carry out its responsibility that gives the neonazis this opportunity.
It would also be legitimate to legislate that anyone distributing food in a public place must not discriminate: all orderly persons must be offered food just the same, and if a price is charged, it should be the same for everyone.
Civil war is destroying Syrians, while Assad's regime hangs on. The rest of the world ought to do something, but is there anything effective that could be done?
US agencies connived at a scheme to avoid proper environmental impact review for genetically engineered salmon.
Plutocrat-funded organizations advocate a radical shift of the burden state taxes from the rich to the poor, so that smaller shifts will appear to be "the center".
Measuring impunity for killers of journalists: the "impunity index".
Imidacloprid one of the neonicatinoid pesticides that Europe has just decided to ban on certain crops, has been linked to low numbers of aquatic insects and molluscs.
Once used, it gets into streams. The EU pollution standard is too weak; even streams that meet the standard show reductions in wildlife. Some streams were so polluted that their water could be used as pesticides.
Furthermore, the case of imidacloprid was approved shows that the way pesticides are judged for approval in the EU is totally inadequate.
Obama is appealing the court ruling to make emergency contraception available without a prescription to people of all ages.
One of the problems with the FDA's decision is that it makes emergency contraception unavailable to someone who has no government-issued proof of age. People under 18 normally have no need for that.
Alec, the organization that recruits state legislators to pass laws to please business, is now actively concealing the draft laws it sends to its members.
Everyone: implore the Governor of Tennessee not to sign an ag-gag bill.
Profiteers invite US parents to spend thousands of dollars on bulletproof vests for their children, to protect them against the minuscule chance of shootings in school.
The American children that face the largest chance of being shot are the ones whose parents can't afford such protections.
A Florida high school student faces felony charges for a chemistry experiment that caused a small pop.
The "authorities" try to justify their conduct by appealing to strictness for strictness' sake.
Americans, your choices have consequences too. If you freak out about comparatively small acts of violence, just because they are called "terrorism", and you demand that the government do "everything possible" to punish people who do anything like that, it will cause this sort of result.
President Morales has expelled USAid from Bolivia, accusing it of funding opposition groups.
The danger of a US-organized coup is quite real.
People in Spain are committing suicide from poverty, but other movements are fighting back against austerity.
The right wing politicians hardly dare show themselves in public, but they continue to push the country into suffering.
The woman who set herself on fire in a bank was reported in the Spanish press, but they did not give her name. I think the name reported here was spurious, since "Inocencia Lucha" means "Innocence Struggle". Anyway, it's too bad the bank didn't burn down.
The SEC is supposed to require publicly traded companies to publish the ratio between the CEO's pay and the workers' pay, but it has dawdled for three years, catering to those companies' lobbyists.
Another danger in proprietary software: employers can use it to monitor employees 24/7.
Endless economic growth is neither necessary nor sufficient for general well-being.
The full text of Ibrahim Mothana's speech in the US Congress about the effect of drone bombings in Yemen.
International logging companies in Africa corruptly utilize logging permits meant for local inhabitants.
In some places, wind or solar electricity is cheaper than gas or coal, or would be if not for the subsidies given to fossil fuel.
The CIA has been dropping large bags of cash in Karzai's office since 2003.
Thus, the CIA is the "biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan".
This made sense in the short term, as a way to oust the Taliban, but was not the way to build a state that could stand up to a long-term guerrilla campaign.
The CIA has handed out "ghost money" to overthrow governments in various countries.
I wonder if they include Honduras and Paraguay, victims of recent US-arranged coups.
Prison in the US often means being raped, beaten, driven mad by isolation, or killed by denial of medical care.
Ground turkey in the US is contaminated with dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In response, the US government plans to reduce inspections.
Do Young People Care About Privacy? Yes, they do.
The sequester is harmful, but Democrats cannot deny their share of the blame.
Recall that the sequester results from a deal that Obama agreed to, after he adopted the Republican goal of deficit-cutting.
The politicians that deserve our support are those who rejected this goal.
Austerity kills, and makes people sick.
Despite heavy rain and consequent flooding in some areas, almost half of the US remains in drought.
Banks colluded to rig more interest rates, just as they colluded on the Libor rate.
This means that making the big banks protect themselves, so they won't need a bailout, is not enough. We must break them up into a large number of smaller banks — at least 10 times as many.
There is a campaign to extend background checks for gun purchases to block people in the secret "terrorist watch list".
Being placed in a no-gun list, or a no-fly list, is a denial of a person's normal rights, so it must not be done without due process of law.
The US no-fly list is an injustice. People are placed on the list without a hearing, perhaps based on false rumors, and they do not discover this until they arrive at the airport and are not allowed to travel. Then they have no recourse. They have been denied their rights arbitrarily in secret.
What's proposed here is a second similar injustice. Anyone can be "suspected" of terrorism, perhaps falsely — even you. US dissidents are frequently accused of terrorism, and investigated on that pretext.
The "terrorist watch list" works like the no-fly list: people are placed on the list without a court hearing, are not informed about it, and have no way to get off it. That's acceptable if the list is only a way for the FBI to remind itself to pay attention to that person. However, denying people rights on that basis would be another form of secret arbitrary punishment.
The US needs stronger gun control, but it must be done in a way that respects basic principles of justice and the rule of law, not secretly by decree against specific people.
First "Ag-Gag" Prosecution: Utah Woman Filmed a Slaughterhouse from the Public Street.
Thanks to a strong public response, the charges were dropped, but not irrevocably.
We must not be complacent. Ms Meyer could be prosecuted later. So could others. These unjust laws, designed to shield businesses from investigation of practices that are nasty, illegal, and/or threatening to public health, can still be enforced elsewhere, and more states are attempting to pass them.
Will face recognition software be tested at the Statue of Liberty? A journalist reports the developer tried to bully him into silence about the question.
I think we must pass laws about the use of face recognition technology, especially by or in cooperation with the state, so no person can be included in the data base except through due process of law.
The investigative group Muckrock asks for volunteers to help them continue to file Freedom of Information requests in all states of the US.
Ireland proposes to legalize abortion, only in cases of medical necessity.
It is a small step forward, but may provide a base for further advances.
The "morning after" contraceptive pill will be available in the US without prescription to anyone age 15 and over.
Is there a medical reason for that age requirement, or is this the last gap of the "pregnancy is your punishment for having sex" political philosophy, perversely applied to a group that we strongly hope will avoid pregnancy?
Cyprus's legislature voted to accept EU-imposed austerity rather than leave the euro, but the vote was quite close.
Opposition parties are demanding to leave the euro. That means that suffering Cypriots will have an alternative to vote for, next time around.
Israeli soldiers revel in arbitrary dishonesty when helping colonizers steal Palestinian shepherds' grazing land.
They do this in defiance of Israel's high court.
After Israeli colonists attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Jareer, the people held a protest, which was then attacked by Israeli soldiers.
Part of the protest was nonviolent. The part that involved stone-throwing youths was violent, but less so than the state-tolerated attacks against Palestinians.
Israeli colonists in Palestine have accused human rights defender Issa Amro of terrorism and asked for him to be imprisoned without trial.
Is Israel no better than Saudi Arabia?
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the sequester.
The Israeli army continues demolishing Palestinian homes.
Demolitions have made 355 Palestinians homeless since the start of this year.
Austerity in Greece has made sales fall by 30%. This means tax revenues have fallen too.
This demonstrates the futility of trying to satisfy the euro-zone limit on national budget deficits through spending cuts. The effect of the cuts is to make the economy smaller, and the deficit bigger.
What Greece needs is to increase government spending. If that requires leaving the euro, it must leave the euro.
Workers in Bangladesh need our support as they organize for decent wages and working conditions.
What they get from the US is just the opposite. I am sure it is no coincidence that the Bangladeshi government attacked unions (and therefore Bangladeshi workers) with non-union "export processing zones" at the time "American" companies started outsourcing production (and therefore ceasing to be American). The US government helped them outsource, so I expect it helped pressure the Bangladeshi government into attacking workers.
I think we also should make western outsourcer companies legally responsible for any injuries to the workers of their suppliers, and require them to declare all suppliers (including subcontractors) in advance. That will help end the practice where a subcontractor folds when there is a disaster, or shuts down owing workers back pay.
How to End Over-Testing in Schools: Kids Should Answer Only Half the Questions.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the imprisonment of Ukraine's former prime minister Tymoshenko was a political ploy, and that her trial was unfair.
Some strains of tuberculosis has developed resistance to all available drugs, and in today's insane political situation nobody is developing new ones.
The rate of honeybee death in the US was even greater this past winter, and this year there were barely enough honeybees left to pollinate California's almond crop. Next year there won't be enough. And that doesn't count the wild bee species, which are even more important for many crops.
It is time to try whatever drastic measures might help.
Right-wing Americans hate the environment so much that they will make a sacrifice to avoid protecting it.
Another cost of adapting to global heating effects in the next few decades: protecting waste-treatment plants from floods.
Beyond a few decades, some of these plants may need to be rebuilt on higher ground, along with the cities they serve. But there will not be money to do that, with agriculture collapsing and the seas mostly barren due to acidification.
Obama said it is not clear which side used chemical weapons in Syria.
I don't think it is a crucial question. There is plenty of reason to help a secular rebellion against Assad; what's missing is a plausible plan for how to do it, and without that, it is hard to do anything.
Obama says he will try again to close the Guantanamo prison.
We should support the effort.
A bill to deny "too big to fail" banks another bailout is getting support even from conservatives.
One group we know will not support it is the banksters, so ultimately the question will be whether they can buy Congress again.
Scientific experiments with psychedelic drugs are getting started.
Environmentalists are suing to block a uranium mine a few miles from the Grand Canyon. The mine could poison local water supplies.
Global heating threatens the survival of wild koalas.
Corrupt Mexican officials, and their relatives, threaten abuse of power in order to demand favors — but now they get caught.
The UK government made unemployed people fill out a bogus online personality test, giving them scores that had nothing to do with their answers, and threatening to punish them if they didn't do it.
The article does not say, but I suspect that the survey may have required running nonfree Javascript software.
Chen Guangcheng's imprisoned nephew has appendicitis and prison guards are blocking him from effective treatment.
India has imposed total surveillance on the Internet and telephones.
Agents will be able to listen to anything, with no restraints. I expect they will do some listening for private purposes; would you expect thugs in India to be more honest or scrupulous than thugs in the US?
Terrorism is a real threat in India, but it is a small threat compared with the violence of the Indian state itself.
Many US cities punish victims of domestic violence with eviction.
The same "blame the victim" attitude can be seen in laws that punish the homeless and in condemning people for being on welfare.
Google Now shows how much information Google has about you — which, for people that actually use Google services, is far too much.
The civilian contractors who organized torture at Abu Ghraib were never investigated, but victims are suing them.
The US is looking at ways to punish companies that run chat services and are not set up for real-time wiretapping.
Much of Japan's "foreign aid" takes the form of loans, and the debt repayments exceed the value of the "aid".
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev repeatedly said he wanted a lawyer, but the FBI kept interrogating him anyway.
In other words, the Obama regime is using him as an excuse to attack the rights of every suspect. That includes you!
21 Guantanamo prisoners are now being force-fed, a form of torture that amounts to a very slow death.
Pollution from China seems to be killing trees in Japan, and maybe people too.
"It's insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It's also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own."
Half the countries of Europe have no plans for adapting to the effects of global heating.
For a few decades, increasingly heroic measures could cope with these effects, but then it simply won't be possible any more.
UK Cuddles up to Gulf States — ignoring their cruelty to sell them more arms.
Marie Fleming, incapacitated by multiple sclerosis, asked Irish courts to permit her mate to help her die, but they refused her.
UK tax officials investigated a whistleblower about special tax deal given to Goldman Sachs as if he were a tax cheater.
This is reminiscent of Obama's war on whistleblowers, and shows how much the state has sold out to businesses such as Goldman Sachs.
Such deals may have excused big companies from lots of tax; they are now being investigated.
In the US, gun violence is only considered shocking when the victims are wealthy whites.
In some Muslim countries, the dress police attack women. In Gaza they are attacking young men.
The Israeli siege of Gaza gave Hamas its power there, and it will be hard to defend human rights in Gaza from Hamas's abuses as long as the siege continues to be the principal injustice to Gazans.
Thousands of chemicals are now used in products all around us, and several are associated with various kinds of toxicity, but manufacturers lobby against testing them.
Trademarks: the Good, the Bad And the Ugly.
The EU will ban neonicotinoid pesticides for two years.
These pesticides accumulate in the soil; I hope two years' ban will be long enough to verify the effect.
From Amnesty International: Guatemala: Scrapping genocide trial would strengthen impunity.
It's Time to Shine a Light on the Poverty Creation Industry.
The ads for Facebook Home invite people to disconnect from their families and coworkers, effectively inviting people to have no relationships more substantial than a Facebook contact.
It is ironic that I, saying this, was a pioneer in using the computer at the dinner table. But the reason I did so was that people were having conversations around me which I was unable to understand, due to my hearing problems. I didn't choose to ignore them; that much was forced on me, giving me the choice to either hide that fact and be bored, or acknowledge it and do something useful. There was also the option of asking them to speak loud and slowly so I could hear, but that was so obviously burdensome to them that I couldn't do it very often.
The Icelandic Pirate Party has entered parliament.
Dubai thugs tortured three visitors to make them sign confessions they could not read.
Dubai is one of the countries I would refuse to visit.
Islamists kicked out of Mali are attacking Libya.
Facebook-Funded "Child Protection" Event Turns Into Privacy Bashing.
The article refers to "online child abuse", which appears to be nonsense. Such a thing isn't even a possibility without some unusual I/O devices that may not exist anywhere, and that even the most personal of computers don't generally have.
Iraq has banned 10 TV channels including al-Jazeera.
This happens as a violent uprising is going on, in which 180 people have been killed. I am surprised to see no other information about it.
Americans are recognizing that Congress obeys the rich, and only 15% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Congress.
Thugs in Buenos Aires rampaged when workers in a hospital blocked the demolition of a hospital building.
I read elsewhere that one of the reasons for the demolition of that building is that it had dangerous asbestos. Perhaps the demolition was necessary, but that was no reason for thugs to attack.
The US Chamber of Commerce is fighting to preserve the secrecy of what mining and extraction companies that are nominally American pay to other governments.
Meet the Curveballs of austerity, who falsify "economic research" to justify the policy that the plutocrats wanted to apply anyway.
A hoax tweet on an Associated Press account demonstrates the fragility of globalized systems optimized for speed and for efficiency in the usual case, but not for reliability.
US citizens: call on Obama and the EPA to block mountaintop removal coal mining under the Clean Water Act.
New York's thug commissioner Kelly is pushing for total surveillance, using the Boston bombings as an excuse for total contempt for privacy. The proper conclusion from the Boston bombings is that there is no need for more state surveillance. Meanwhile, Commissioner Kelly himself is responsible for plenty of human rights violations.
Leading cancer specialists condemn drug companies for price gouging.
The price gouging is made possible by patents. Patents should not be allowed on medicines needed to treat major illness. Most new drugs that save lives come from government-funded research, not from drug company investments.
Turkish editor Ali Ornek was convicted of "insulting the president" for accusing the president of corruption.
I don't know whether the Turkish president is corrupt, but if he fails to defend the right of Turks to make that accusation, we should treat the accusation as true.
Kuwait is considering a draconian censorship law.
The Tunisian Supreme Court has ducked the issue of religious censorship, allowing Jabeur Mejri to remain imprisoned for publishing cartoons about Mohammed.
South Africa is on the verge of passing a law to punish journalists that publish secrets.
Everyone: call on Arkansas Governor Dalrymple to veto the bill to ban abortions.
The San Francisco Gay Pride Parade's leadership says that expressions of support for Bradley Manning "will not be tolerated"; they are too busy supporting sleazy corporations that give money.
Greenwald shows in detail how the parade has been converted from an expression of real dissent into a bulwark of the establishment.
The Bangladeshis responsible for ignoring warnings that the factory might collapse have been arrested.
Meanwhile, protesters campaign to pressure Western companies to take responsibility for outsourcing work to circumstances such as these.
Everyone: sign this petition to make nuclear reactor companies responsible for damages they cause.
Indigenous people protested at Brazil's congress against a proposed law that would help ranchers take their land.
Brazilians are angry because the football world cup matches will ban local street vendors from selling local traditional food on the street outside the stadium.
This is part of the sports-industrial complex has converted the biggest sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, into engines of business power.
Hong Kong arrested a man for writing graffiti condemning the President of China. This has stimulated various sorts of opposition and resistance.
The virtual equivalent of writing graffiti on a company's advertisement, which is modifying the company's web site, is referred to by Western governments as a "cyber attack" and penalized heavily.
We must establish clearly in our own country that graffiti is not a crime, so we can condemn other countries for prosecuting it.
An citizen initiative in Finland proposes to make copyright law less harsh.
The European Parliament considers yet again a proposal for filters on the Internet.
US citizens: call on the EPA to block Pebble Mine from polluting Bristol Bay and ruining a major salmon fishery.
The Prime Minister of Japan is trying to deny Japan's aggression in World War II.
When will the US admit that it launched a war of aggression against Iraq?
There was not much coverage of the Texas explosion, and much of that coverage was erroneous.
That's what I expected, a week ago.
US media and politicians together are using the Boston bombings as an excuse to attack rule of law in the US.
US citizens: call on your legislators to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Privacy rights are under threat in the European Parliament.
It is important to encrypt data that is sensitive: in the US, it can be the only way to protect your data from the government.
Especially if you are a journalist, whistleblower, or possible target of a witch hunt.
Of course, the worst thing you can do is get into the habit of storing your mail or your writing on a company's server.
Why and how surveillance is harmful.
Poor Kids: Let Them Eat (and Empty) Trash Cans.
Lots of perfectly good food is thrown away in the US, and taking it from the trash is a useful thing to do. But poor people (children or not) should not have to depend on this. The statement by this Republican jerk reflects the true spirit of today's Republican Party, and a lot of the Democratic Party too.
Study: Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide Linked to Cancer, Autism, Parkinson's.
Law Requiring Warrants for E-Mail Wins Senate Committee Approval.
In the US and Bangladesh, dangerous work is often low-paid work, and workplace safety doesn't cost a lot.
Millions in the US face avoidable danger at work, and the lack of a union makes workers scared to report safety violations.
12 important programs that Congress has not rescued from across-the-board spending cuts.
Those cuts will also have a cumulative effect, setting back the whole economy and increasing unemployment.
Zuckerberg's political spending group, supposedly dedicated to immigration reform, is actually funding anti-environment causes. These include drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and building the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
It is not clear yet whether this was done with Zuckerberg's knowledge, but the fact that it was done by both of the groups funded by the organization suggests that that was not coincidence.
Burma is moving towards democracy, but also practicing repression to extract and export fossil fuels.
We need to leave around 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves unused to avoid global disaster, so it is pointless to open up more of them.
Haiti's government has stepped up the evictions of thousands of destitute refugees who have nowhere to go.
Saudi Arabia has imprisoned the founder of a human rights defense group.
Toxic benzene from the Arkansas tar sands oil spill has been found in Lake Conway, but Exxon continues to say it is not there.
With today's "balance" journalism, which mentions both "sides" and doesn't try to find out what's true, this sort of denial is effective even against well-established truth, and oil companies have lots of practice at it.
A US filmmaker in Venezuela has been arrested and accused of transferring US funds to the opposition as a destabilization campaign.
If his journalism is innocent, as it seems to be from this article, these charges might still be true. Or they might false. In any case, it is wrong to call such actions "terrorism".
Stretching the term "terrorism" when accusing people is practiced by many countries including the US.
The UK Labour party demonstrates its weakness of spirit by offering tax reductions for companies that pay a living wage, rather than penalizing the companies that fail to do so, or requiring companies to do so.
Schools attended by 3,000 children in Kentucky were shut down because of a threat posted on the Internet from another continent.
The remaining wild daffodils in Britain are threatened by hybridization with cultivated daffodil varieties.
This shows how GMO salmon can threaten wild salmon.
Human morality is the intelligent superstructure of our innate tendency to help and support each other, which we share with various other social animals including apes.
Artificial nanomaterials in food could be very useful — but we had better test the safety of each kind. I am not a technophobe on principle, and I suppose many of them will prove to be safe, but there will surely be some that are not.
Meanwhile, the general thrust of food technology in recent decades has been to make food that is more habit-forming, leading to widespread obesity. If nanomaterials provide a way to extend this, I think that is likely to occur.
DataCell (which accepted payments for Wikileaks) won its lawsuit against VISA. The court ordered VISA to resume payments to DataCell or face a fine of over a million dollars a year.
I think the US government won't give up now. Maybe the CIA will secretly pay the fine.
US citizens: call on the Secretary of the Interior not to negate the partial recovery of wolves in the US by removing protection from them.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject any cuts in Social Security, including indirect cuts such as "chained CPI".
Bradley Manning will be honored in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. Later: the parade's governing commondreams said that this announcement was premature, and that the committee had vetoed the selection of Manning.
Venezuelan president Maduro has threatened to prosecute opposition candidate Capriles over protests that allegedly turned violent.
It is not at all implausible that the Venezuelan opposition would conspire with the US to overthrow the government. They did it before, and Obama has supported successful overthrows of governments in Honduras and Paraguay. On the other hand, if there is no evidence that Capriles did anything beyond call for protests, there is no grounds to prosecute him.
The Obama regime is giving companies immunity for otherwise illegal wiretapping without court authority.
Protest often needs to be rude to have any effect.
Facebook has censored political satire aimed at the UK unemployment agency and its associated organizations, apparently at the request of a target of the satire.
Slavery is banned, but it survives in many guises that are effectively comparable to the explicit slavery of the past.
Seattle and San Francisco have divested from fossil fuel companies.
The US was involved in the ouster of Paraguay's President Lugo, and in the violence that provided the excuse for ousting him.
Protesters at the opening of the Bush presidential library were violently arrested for stepping off the curb.
Let George W. Bush Discuss His Legacy However He Likes… from the Hague.
Israeli border guards were given official authorization to demand to search visitors' email.
Supposedly this is to be done in cases of suspected terrorism, but naturally it's already applied to political activists.
13 US workers die at their jobs per day.
Two days of this equals the number of major casualties in the Boston bombings.
US citizens: tell your senators to oppose CISPA.
Unemployment in Spain has reached 27%, and more cuts are planned, so it will increase.
If the US claims poison gas was used in Syria, it should show the evidence.
There have been false claims of this sort about various countries in the past.
The wounded from Boston illustrate that the US needs true universal health care.
Karzai has imposed Islamic censorship on Afghan TV, like Taliban Lite.
Why corporations pretend to be "American" part of the time, and "foreign" part of the time.
Hundreds of Chicago Students Walk Out of Standardized Test.
Tackling "Monoculture of the Mind".
Nitrogenous fertilizer damages soil microbes that provide useful nitrogen, forming a sort of addiction.
Bayer and Syngenta Lobby Furiously Against EU Efforts to Limit Pesticides and Save Bees.
Under the Obama regime, the whole world is a battlefield.
The Bush regime ran secret prisons in various countries; now the Obama regime interrogates people in secret prisons run by other countries.
US law distorts the term "weapons of mass destruction" by applying it to grenades and small bombs.
No wonder Dubya thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He surely had grenades.
A man in New Zealand was imprisoned for watching a video of fantasy beings' (elves, pixies, etc) having sex.
The excuses given for this amount to punishment of thoughtcrime.
Everyone: support Chicago retail workers demanding a decent wage.
On the CIA's destabilization campaign against Guatemala.
UK ISPs are trying to hush up the proposed Internet surveillance bill.
A Chinese official was protested for his extravagant banquets, and then was fired for them.
China has a strong tradition of conspicuous consumption. The reason Chinese are wiping out the world's sharks to serve shark's fin soup at banquets is not that shark's fin tastes particularly good, but in order to show how much they are willing to spend.
It won't be easy to change this behavior pattern, but it would be good to do so.
Criticism of NYT editor Jill Abramson is a good illustration of sexist criteria.
Canada's minister of natural resources hopes to drown out James Hansen's warnings with loud lies.
US citizens: call on senators to fix the filibuster when they get a chance in 2 years.
13 EU countries will require special labeling of products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory.
Bahrain has barred a UN official who was supposed to investigate repression of protesters.
Another instance of mass killing in a factory in Bangladesh.
While the place and time of this collapse was an accident, at a larger scale it is no accident that factories in Bangladesh kill large number of workers. US (and European) companies have resisted the application of safety standards (and labour standards) to their suppliers. They lobbied for the system of globalization which encourages such arrangements.
In other words, this was part of the same broad practice of business-arranged weak regulation that led to the Texas chemical explosion and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
US citizens: phone your senators to support raising the minimum wage. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Israel is trying to force Palestinians into exile by destroying the solar and wind power installations funded by European governments.
Two Chinese local officials have died while prisoners of the anti-corruption police. One was apparently beaten to death.
Will the Boston Bombings Kill the Public Police Scanner?
US citizens: rebuke Charles Schwab for sticking a forced arbitration clause in its customer agreements.
US citizens: support the STOP Act, which would reform how the US military handles accusations of sexual assault.
Israeli forces destroyed 1,000 olive trees belonging to the Palestinian town of Susiya, which Israel intends to destroy.
Everyone: urge European countries to block Monsanto's patent grab over many non-GMO plant varieties.
Egyptian conscientious objectors face severe repression; they are permanently barred from working, studying and travel. They protested in Cairo and expressed their solidarity with Israeli draft resister Natan Blanc.
Chileans protest that Pinochet's privatization of water has enabled mines to take water and leave towns with none.
Over and over, attacks against US civilians have been motivated by resentment for US violence and torture against other civilians.
These small retaliatory attacks can hardly intimidate a great country, but the attackers represent the feelings of tens of millions of others. However, the real reason the US should cease its torture and violence against civilians is that they are wrong. As Carl Schurz said,
My country, right or wrong.
When right, to be kept right.
When wrong, to be set right.
The US policy of endless war needs to be set right, not drummed up.
Western governments admire Malawi's new president because she submitted to IMF austerity, bringing the usual suffering.
Burma has freed hundreds of political prisoners, but 300 more remain in prison.
Just like Burma, the US holds political prisoners (such as John Kiriakou) but says they are simply criminals.
Conservatives are clever in finding excuses to blame the poor for the consequences of their poverty.
In human medicine, patents directly obstruct scientific research.
A simple solution is to exempt research from patent law.
Lessons from Japan about how a country can put its economy in gear again.
A UN human rights review of Canada is an opportunity to challenge the human rights abuses of its mining companies.
The restrictions on protests in Montreal should be addressed as well.
As for the treaties that are being used to force mines on El Salvador and Costa Rica, those are forms of industrial colonization, like other free exploitation treaties, must be cancelled.
Greenpeace activists are protesting on a coal ship.
An alleged member of LulzSec could be imprisoned for 12 years for virtual graffiti.
Governments have taken advantage of a technological change to reframe "drawing a critical slogan on a wall" as "attacking and defacing", and punish it with years in prison. That's the War on Democracy for you.
Austerity in the UK is good for the banks…and for the food banks, too.
The EPA has the power to block mountaintop removal mining.
US Cluster Munitions: 277 Million Boston Bombings.
The US Green Party has appointed a shadow cabinet, borrowing a traditional opposition practice from the UK.
The TSA has backed down on exercising a little common sense.
Over a million comments were filed in the public comment request about the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. Most of them were opposed.
Thanks to those of you who filed comments.
The libel reform law has been adopted in the UK, eliminating most of the abuses that attracted people from around the world to go there to sue.
The judge in the case considering the New York thugs' practice of searching people on the street without any basis for suspicion (other than the victim's racial background) says some witnesses have lied.
Given that many thugs were witnesses, I would expect as much.
US citizens: support the EPA's plan to reduce motor vehicle exhaust pollution and thus prevent around 23,000 children from developing respiratory problems.
Yemeni journalist Farea Al-Muslimi will testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee about the effects of drone bombing in Yemen: terrorizing the farmers, helping al Qa'ida recruit using martyrs, and closing all ears to anything favorable about America.
Katelyn Campbell launched resistance against abstinence-only sex miseducation in her high school, and stood up to intimidation from the principal.
UK participation in the imprisonment and torture of Shaker Aamer is being investigated for possible prosecution.
New York Mayor Bloomberg wants less freedom in the US.
Israel arrests large numbers of Palestinian teenagers, and even children as young as nine, and often tortures them to get false confessions or compel them to become informers.
The manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev vs Americans' constitutional rights.
The EPA rubbished the State Department's environmental impact statement about the Keystone XL pipeline.
Chinese are starting to flee Beijing because of the health-damaging air pollution.
Apple exploits the app developers mercilessly, aside from a few stars whose role is to give a misleading impression of what developers can expect.
I can't sympathize much with those app developers, since they are making proprietary software. They all deserve to fail. However, that doesn't excuse the way Apple treats them.
Liu Xiaobo's wife, held under house arrest for two years with no criminal charges and no trial, had a chance to shout "I'm not free" to onlookers when attending a the trial of her brother.
This could never happen in the US. When the US holds people prisoner without charges or trial, it keeps them isolated in Guantanamo and declares that everything they say is "classified".
When the UK imprisoned people without charges, even their names were secret, but now it keeps them under almost-house-arrest instead.
How Facebook Teams Up With Data Brokers.
George Monbiot: This faith in the markets is misplaced: only governments can save our living planet.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject CISPA.
US citizens: reject use of the Boston bombings as an excuse to attack our civil liberties.
Yemeni writer Farea al-Muslimi asks why the US used a drone to kill a man in his home village, an area fully under government control, where it would have been easy to arrest him.
US sanctions have made it impossible to send aid to help Iranians made homeless by earthquakes.
The sanctions are not supposed to block food and medicine, but the UK is blocking Shell from paying a debt by shipping food or medicine to Iran.
This shows that the blocking of food and medicine is an intended result, and US claims to the contrary are dishonest.
In principle, economic sanctions can be legitimate, but their main effect now is to give Iranians a reason to rally behind their government.
There are accusations that Assad is using chemical weapons.
I would not put it past him; at the same time, I would not put it past Israel to make false accusations against Assad. Thus, at this point I don't have a basis to either believe or disbelieve these accusations.
A UK businessman has been convicted of selling phony "bomb detectors" to Iraq, preying on superstition and paving the way with kickbacks.
An interview with Tim DeChristopher, who heroically stopped an illegal auction of oil drilling rights, then was convicted after a dishonest trial designed to suppress the facts.
Japanese thugs want ISPs to block use of Tor in some vaguely defined circumstances.
Elwood Osman shot his wife, Mildred, who was dying in a hospice, and then killed himself.
People speculate that he killed her at her request, and then killed himself so he would not have to live without her, or so that he would not face a murder trial. We can't be sure of that, but it's clear that current cruel laws can put people in that horrible position.
We don't know whether the Boston bombings were terrorism, because we don't know the motive. But people seem to assume that they were.
The use of bombs might be part of the reason. We expect terrorists to use bombs, and crazed killers to use guns. It appears that the older Tsernaev brother supported Islamist extremism, but we don't know whether that was the motive for the bombings.
Global Elites May Finally Realize Austerity Isn't The Answer.
Anti-abortionists imperil women's lives in America, and elsewhere too.
Microsoft is becoming a patent extortionist.
Everyone: condemn Nestle's attempt to patent the traditional use of fennel as a treatment for stomach upset.
A long history of cutting safety inspections has given the US a series of fatal industrial explosions.
The plutocrats' candidate won the presidential election in Paraguay, based partly on buying votes.
Lack of political understanding may have contributed. The woman who voted for Lugo, then was disappointed because congress would not pass his program, should have blamed congress not Lugo.
It's only April, but there's already a wildfire near LA.
Obama plans to break a pledge by "upgrading" nuclear bombs in Europe so that they effectively become new weapons.
We must protect the 2014 Boston Marathon from the temptation to ruin it with crushing security.
The New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square has been ruined by crushing security, so it is mainly attended by tourists who don't know what it will be like.
Now that the "economic" argument for austerity is known to be false, here's a simple solution euro-austerity governments could adopt.
Spain's government plans to privatize many public hospitals and treatment centers.
Most people would be unable to use them.
The US now admits that half of the prisoners in Guantanamo are on hunger strike. The true number might be more.
Egypt's justice minister has resigned, objecting to a bill that threatens to undermine the independence of the judiciary.
Events in Boston are being cited to justify increased surveillance in Germany.
The conclusion to draw from the Boston bombings is that our system dealt with them effectively. We don't need any more surveillance or security measures, and we should avoid damaging overreactions (such as shutting down whole cities for a manhunt).
The crucial point is that the level of terrorist violence in the US is so low already that no additional measures are needed or even useful.
Terrorist violence in the US is such a tiny fraction of all the violent death and injury in the US that it's the wrong place to focus, if your aim is to reduce violent death and injury.
The insidious psychological effect of terrorism does not result directly from terrorism. It results from a panicky overreaction to the events. We can curb this effect by maintaining a sense of proportion.
If you want to reduce murder in the US, enact gun control. (Bonus: with better gun control, maybe the Tsarnaev brothers would not have had guns.) If you want to reduce other violent deaths, enforce safety regulations on chemical plants, mines, oil drilling platforms, and so on.
We need to redirect the public discussion away from the useless focus on the few casualties of terrorism, and onto reducing the big causes of avoidable deaths and injuries.
Russia is resuming the Soviet practice of committing dissidents to psychiatric hospitals.
A Saudi human rights lawyer is being prosecuted for "offending the judiciary".
Any law against "offending" something, no matter what that something is, is an offense against freedom of speech. Most of the world's countries seem to have such laws; freedom of speech is in bad shape.
Israel is planning to evict 30,000 bedouin from their homes in the desert.
America Cannot Assert Moral Authority While Guantánamo Remains Open.
Federal banking regulators have the authority to break up the big banks. Of course, they don't do this because the banksters might be displeased.
Americans overreact to the Boston bombings while underreacting to everyday gun violence.
The shutdown of Boston, which was the biggest overreaction, also protected Dzhokar Tsarnaev from being caught all day.
The US says Shaker Aamer can be released from Guantanamo, but only to Saudi Arabia which can be counted on to imprison him again.
He could testify to US and UK torture practices, and both governments would like to bury his testimony by burying him.
Economists present their conclusions as certainties, but they are often guessing.
The agricultural land-grab is not limited to Africa. It affects Europe too.
Mobile phone companies are now marketing data about where phone users live and where they go.
Count me out.
(The word "monetize" properly means "to put something into use as money". Using to mean "profit from" is disgusting, and deserves our condemnation too.)
US citizens: call for mandatory labeling of GMOs in foods.
Estonians are fighting back against US bullying for stricter copyright enforcement.
Greed, Fear and Other Barriers to Health Care as a Human Right.
Sandra Steingraber explains why she decided to go to jail rather than pay a fine, after her protest against an underground gas storage company that could pollute her area's water.
The price of staple foods is likely to double by 2050, and many people will starve.
Congress and Obama have quietly gutted the STOCK act, passed with fanfare a year ago to stop insider trading by congresscritters.
Uri Avnery reports on a meeting of Israelis and Palestinians, to mourn their dead together.
US citizens: tell the US government not to offer BP a cheap settlement for the Big Spill.
The US is looking at providing military equipment to Syrian rebels.
There is no sign of how they would provide aid to secular rebels and avoid helping Islamists conquer Syria.
ACLU Statement on Miranda Rights of Boston Bombings Suspect.
Raped? Take Money, And Shut Up! Says Indian Police.
I think the repressive nature of Indian culture is partly responsible for the amount of rape there. Ironically, this means Hollywood might be a good influence.
Spaniards are protesting near the homes of deputies from the ruling austerity party, and they want the protests banned.
In Belarus, even a photo contest is now banned.
Ai Weiwei: Every Day We Put the State on Trial.
Cory Doctorow's novel "Homeland", about fighting censorship, is the latest victim of DMCA censorship.
"Trusted" has become a newspeak word for "under repressive control".
US workers are cooperating with European unions to help unionize US grocery stores and warehouses belonging to a European company.
Jordan Anderson, non-Christian student, faces persistent persecution for trying to end religious indoctrination in his school in South Carolina.
U.S. Helps Push Privatization Scheme in El Salvador.
The US ignores homeless families — hundreds of thousands.
Thugs' latest excuse for arresting photographers: they claim that portable phones are weapons (or could be weapons).
Accused murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been captured. Now he should get a fair trial so that justice is done. But that is in doubt, because the US is taking advantage of this opportunity to continue undermining the rights of the accused.
Americans, "the accused" means you! Nowadays just about every Internet user commits felonies (thanks to the CFAA), and even if you don't, you could still be falsely accused.
Human Rights Watch calls on the World Bank to make sure it stops supporting projects that trample human rights.
Mexico wants to do fracking, but it is blocked by the lack of available water.
Of the world's top 20 industrial sectors, none would be profitable if it had to pay for its pollution and nonrenewable resources.
I share the writer's distaste for trying to squeeze something really important into the framing of mere economics, so I've chosen a way to state his point without doing that.
Peabody Energy placed its workers' pension responsibilities in a new spin-off company that was designed to go bankrupt.
Some of these ex-miners will die because they are cheated out of medical care. I think it is fair to say that Peabody's executives and lawyers will have murdered those men.
Google pushes back against advertising masquerading as news.
New psychoactive drugs are synthesized and tested on kids who hardly care about the risks.
It is a shame that many kids are so foolhardy as to take drugs whose harmful effects are unknown. However, prohibition is also to blame; without that, they could take something of known composition and strength, which probably would do them no harm.
Many UK parents did not let their children get vaccinated for measles, and the result is an outbreak that has become fatal.
Investigating allegations that Gaddafi funded Sarkozy's election campaign.
Former Pakistani military dictator Musharraf faces trial for when he arrested the country's judges.
I'd expect that to be a crime of some kind, but calling it "terrorism" seems to be stretching the word, which is a dangerous practice.
Belize's coral reefs, the second largest in the world, have been saved from oil drilling by a court which ruled that the drillers' environmental impact statements really did need to be studied.
This victory may help coral indirectly, too, by slightly restraining our pumping CO2 into the air, which threatens to kill all coral by making the ocean too acidic for it to live.
After a dentist demanded a patient assign copyright on any reviews he writes about the dentist, the patient fought back.
There's another way around this. Someone else can interview the patient, then write the review.
Reports are that the Boston bombings were carried out by a team of two brothers. Whether it was terrorism is a matter of their motivation, but their motivation may not be a crucial detail.
For several years, the FBI has run sting operations trying to catch and incriminate anyone who expresses interest in terrorism. Several groups of incompetent daydreamers have been tried and imprisoned, but these stings have never caught anyone who could really have committed any violence.
We now see that those who are capable of real violence are also smart enough not to blab about it. In other words, the stings enable the FBI to look like it's doing something, but don't achieve anything. There is no point in recruiting numerous informers in the US Muslim community, making everyone in them feel suspect, in order to imprison daydreamers.
The entire city of Boston has been shut down today, including the subway, but the state has not stated any reason for this. Apparently people are expected not to question even drastic orders. This reaction is the diametrical opposite of "Keep calm and carry on". It gives any terrorist the power to do enormous economic damage, far exceeding what he could achieve directly with weapons.
The Boston bombs are already helping to take away Americans' civil liberties: they were cited (irrationally) as a justification for CISPA.
How Obama's lies about the drone death squad were necessary to disguise its illegality under US law.
I propose a name for a country whose main industry is financial services to foreigners who are evading taxes or some other form of responsibility:
A bankana republic.
Developers hope to build houses on the hill where 2% of all the nightingales remaining in Britain now live.
Argentine president Fernández plans to impose indirect political control over judges by having them run for office backed by political parties.
Some states in the US have elected judges, and people say this means that people and companies with political influence (or the money to sway an election) get the court decisions they want.
Karzai says he wants to rein in CIA-controlled militias fighting in Afghanistan after one called for an air strike that killed a bunch of children.
This explains why his order for Afghan forces not to call in air strikes was ignored: this militia isn't really part of the Afghan forces.
An army at war kills civilians from time to time even making all due efforts to avoid it. (I don't know enough details to have any idea whether this militia unit took due care.) The people will accept these unavoidable casualties if they believe the fight is their fight and that defeat would be much worse.
Fossil fuel share prices face big losses because highly-valued reserves of fossil fuels must not be extracted and burnt as the owners would like.
3/4 of fossil fuel reserves belong to governments, and the governments which have large amounts of it oppose action to curb global heating.
A woman in El Salvador may be killed by the state through denying her a life-saving abortion.
This killing is being planned in order to preserve the "life" of a four-month fetus which is so defective it couldn't possibly live anyway.
This shows the murderous irrationality of religion, Christianity in particular.
A new step in Chinese censorship: quoting foreign media is prohibited.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support same-sex marriage. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Obama to have the EPA issue CO2 emission standards for new and old coal-fired power plants.
Congress is trying to destroy the US Postal Service to get at its union.
Bahrain is hosting an automobile race to create a positive image and distract the world from its repression.
Government regulation of recreational drugs fails to recognize that some drugs provide pleasure to their users.
Some drugs really are dangerous, but governments that wish to repress exaggerate the danger of other drugs.
Over 80 European organisations demanded protection for Net neutrality.
They take the concept of net neutrality seriously — no filters or blocking of sites.
Egypt in Dangerous State of Limbo.
Kerry acknowledges that the possibility of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is being eliminated.
Unless he acknowledges and condemns the cause of this — the Israeli land-grab in Palestine — he's wasting his time.
Putin is taking control of the Russian social network VKontakte while persecuting its founder.
In the Chagos Islanders' lawsuit to get their islands back, UK judges have found an excuse to ignore the evidence of the relevant Wikileaks cable, while the UK government refuses to testify to the truth.
Nearly all the senators who blocked US gun control had received money from gun lobbyists.
World wide: join the March against Monsanto on May 25. There will be protests in cities around the world.
It looks like the individual city pages are on Facebook. If you get involved with this, please urge your city to put its page somewhere else, It is ironic and sad to support one monster corporation by protesting another.
The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded, probably accidentally, had not been inspected in five years.
The infrequency of inspection reflects the political power of business, which does not want annoying things like inspections because it does not want to follow annoying safety rules designed to prevent problems such as explosions.
I am going to make a prediction. My prediction is that this explosion will get much less media and political attention than the Boston explosions, even though the number of killed and the number of injured are considerably greater in Texas.
The reason I expect this is that attention to the Boston explosions tends to encourage increased ineffective security measures against ordinary people, and increased surveillance of everything we do, whereas attention to the Texas explosion would encourage increased effective security measures against businesses. The powers behind the media and the politicians want the former and don't want the latter.
Ammonium nitrate has caused bigger explosions before.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed 26 people. It wasn't the only bombing in Iraq this week.
Can Capitalism Tolerate a Democratic Internet? An Interview With Media Expert Robert McChesney.
Gun control advocates won't win until senators fear them as much as they fear the NRA.
WIPO continues threatening to issue a treaty creating new and absurd monopolies for broadcasters.
The privacy-threatening bill CISPA was approved by the house of representatives.
Here the EFF explains why the bill is bad. Obama has threatened to veto it, but with this margin, that won't be enough. So the battle is now in the senate.
A last-minute amendment to the UK's libel reform law could protect the ability of corporations to bully opposition with libel threats.
Paul Lamb, paralysed for 23 years, begs a UK court to let a doctor help him die.
Sydney University cancelled a talk by the Dalai Lama, apparently pandering to China.
The Supreme Court blocked a US lawsuit against Shell for carrying out torture and murder in Nigeria.
The Supreme Court shielded US companies in many cases from lawsuits over their crimes committed abroad.
Suing the UK government over spyware which it has made available to governments that respect human rights even less than it does.
Refuting bogus right-wing claims that the US needs a higher birthrate.
Given the high US level of resource usage per capita, higher than any other large country, any US population growth is a bad thing. In general, if you have no children, that helps civilization survive.
The IRS will correct its manuals that say it can get people's emails without a warrant.
An amendment added to CISPA fails to fix its threat to privacy.
If you are feeling mentally traumatized as a result of the Boston bombings, here are some suggestions for how to heal the trauma (or prevent one from developing).
Burying Thatcher is not enough; we need to bury thatcherism.
Imagine offering as much compassion to a victim of US bombs as to a US victim of bombs.
Despite great investments in renewable energy, CO2 emission continues rising at 2% a year. This is because governments continue encouraging fossil fuel prospecting and extraction, and have done nothing serious to discourage its use.
The Canadian government didn't abolish environmental consultations. Instead it set up a number of hoops to jump through before you're allowed to answer.
US law understands the danger of a monopoly, but fails to recognize that an oligopoly is almost as bad.
The Baghdad Burning blogger returns after 6 years of absence.
A mining company is working with the Indonesian government to strip protection from a large area of forest on Sumatra.
The company that handled privatized ability-to-work tests for disabled people in the UK, and rigged them in various ways to falsely say that people were able to work, has apologized but says it wasn't really responsible for anything.
I don't think this rigging was the company's own decision. Politicians must have requested it.
Surveillance drones may replace peacekeepers in Ivory Coast.
US citizens: call on Congress to raise the minimum wage.
Bruce Schneier reminds us: the best reaction to an act of violence is Keep Calm and Carry On.
Thatcher's Mean Legacy: The Queen Mother of Global Austerity and Financialization.
How Thatcher made British trade unions weak while launching massive privatizations, based on a naive view of public finance.
By allowing tenants to buy apartments in public housing, she brought about the current shortage of public housing in the UK.
Italy is blocking from DNS the names of many sites that link to unauthorized torrents, although in some cases this is a tiny part of what the site does.
Severe land degradation affects 168 countries (nearly all of them).
Former US officials say the US needs to use more diplomacy with Iran, not more pressure.
The IRS is spending less on auditing business tax returns and focusing on ordinary people.
Clean Energy Progress Too Slow to Limit Global Warming, Warns IEA.
A bill in Congress would curb corporate tax evasion.
US citizens: sign this petition to keep the interest on student loans down.
Some parents in New York City are boycotting high-stakes testing of their children.
The Constitution Project's report on "rendition" concludes that America's highest officials were responsible for the torture of prisoners.
Dubya must face trial!
An influential economics paper, which argued that debt levels above 90% of GDP cause a slowdown in growth, based its conclusion on a programming error. As well as other errors.
US mainstream media are trying to define Social Security cuts as the "center".
Perhaps they define "center" as "midway between most Americans and right-wing loonies".
The Boston Bombing Produces Familiar and Revealing Reactions.
Every time a person dies, it is a loss, but we should not lose our sense of proportion. About a hundred people died yesterday from car accidents in the US, and each of those deaths was as much of a loss as each of the three who were killed at the Boston Marathon, or the 42 who were killed by bombs in Iraq. Each day approximately 200,000 people die.
Every time a person dies, it is a tragedy that in a just world would not have happened. If you knew any of those people, I respect your grief. However, most of us did not know any of them, so we have no reason to be feel emotionally overcome. And we dare not allow that to happen — because if we do, politicians will take advantage of our weakness to swipe our civil liberties. (Last time, in 2001, we got the PAT RIOT act.)
That attack is coming, and we don't have much time. Rather than psyching ourselves into dwelling on grief, we must focus and prepare to defend ourselves. An easy first step would be to join the ACLU.
For your personal well-being, I suggest avoiding video coverage of the bombing. There were people who lived thousands of miles away from the Sep 2001 attacks, who watched the repeated broadcasts of recordings of the attacks and were lastingly traumatized into feeling inordinate fear.
After the Boston bombings, can Americans feel more empathy for people in Iraq and Syria?
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families calls for abolishing toxic chemicals from our homes and workplaces.
When everyone's guilty of some felony, hacktivists are the ones who get prosecuted, because the state finds them inconvenient.
Walmart lobbying procured a strange corporate welfare system in New York State.
Our Public Transportation System Is a Sweatshop on Wheels.
A Pennsylvania court ruled that corporations are not entitled to privacy (or any human rights) under Pennsylvania law.
The second half of the interview with Jeremy Grantham, including pointing out the disastrous flaw in capitalism as practiced today.
The European Parliament rejected a plan to make its carbon trading scheme start doing its job.
Australia is asked to define a new category of asylum for refugees from the effects of climate change.
Alexey Navalny is almost certain to be found guilty. His judge has only once found a suspect not guilty, and that verdict was overturned on appeal.
Whether he is in fact guilty is a side issue, since the crime he is accused of is nothing compared to what Putin is guilty of.
Indoor smoking bans have resulted in big reductions in hospitalizations for asthma. Evidently second-hand smoke has a big effect.
As Marketing to Children Intensifies, What Can Society Do?
One thing you should consider doing is not having children. You could spare yourself a lot of grief, and avoid becoming a puppet of money.
In addition, since we do not wish there were zero children, it is good to organize to restrict marketing to children. And if you do have children, push back against the marketers and teach them to do the same.
US citizens: call on the US Navy to allow ships to pass by Pt Mugu Naval Air Station, so that they won't collide with and kill endangered blue whales.
US senators are proposing even tighter sanctions on Iran, explicitly in the name of "regime change".
A few years ago, lots of Iranians wanted regime change, and were imprisoned and even shot for it. That doesn't imply they will support this. And since these sanctions are largely aimed at other countries that buy Iranian oil, they will spark a trade war.
The US is number 26 (out of 29) in child well-being.
Sudan is back to its own censorship.
US citizens: sign this petition to cut the military budget rather than Social Security and veterans' benefits.
Since the US needs deficit spending now, any cut in the Pentagon should be matched by spending increases in useful activities such as renewable energy.
Dr Kress could not refuse when his patients implored him to help them kill themselves. So he testified in the Montana state legislature against a move to make this help illegal.
Obama's nominee for EPA Administrator is responsible for a tremendous increase in the limits for radioactive material in drinking water after a nuclear accident.
If that level exposure were to continue, a large fraction of exposed people would eventually get cancer. Depending on the cause of the radioactivity, it might decay rather than persist.
It may be that a better cleanup is more than the country could afford. If so, it might be a reason not to run nuclear reactors.
US citizens: call on Congress and Obama to close tax loopholes used for tax shelters.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support a tax on financial trades. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Guantanamo prisoners say the US is denying them access to safe drinking water; judge responds, incredibly, that he has no jurisdiction.
The Israeli army decided, naturally, that its attacks that killed Gaza civilians were not war crimes. Human Rights Watch says the Israeli army was too quick to reach that conclusion.
Turkey convicted itself of disrespect for human rights by convicting Fazil Say of "insulting Islam".
Freedom of speech includes the right to mock or condemn any person, any institution, or any belief … even the Church of Emacs. Mocking religions is essential to keep their potentially dangerous power in check.
Three cheers for Fazil Say, and shame on Turkey.
Debtor's prison operates in Ohio today; poor people are often jailed because of small fines they can't pay.
The richest 200 people have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. And it is getting worse.
The UK's "employment minister" announced success for a campaign to pressure unemployed people in London to go back to work, by cutting unemployment benefits.
Given the high unemployment rate, anyone that has got a job got it at the expense of someone else, so that they will be replaced in the benefit rolls by others.
It makes sense that people who work should get more money that those who don't. You should not lose money by working. However, the decent way to implement this is by boosting wages, not by cutting benefits for the unemployed.
How Anonymous Have Become Digital Culture's Protest Heroes.
Some Antarctic ice melts every summer. Recently the rate of melting has set a record, with data going back a millennium.
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel talks about his force feeding in Guantanamo, where he is in prison without trial for no reason.
An interview with Jeremy Grantham about global heating and related issues.
Was the fiscal crisis partly caused by cocaine?
Even if it was a factor, I pin the main blame on subservient governments that permitted banks to engage in abusive practices.
Chavez's vice president Nicolas Maduro narrowly won the election in Venezuela.
An environmental prize for Azzam Alwash, who led the Marsh Arabs to rebuild the marshes that Saddam destroyed.
It is relevant to mention that Bush I called on the Marsh Arabs to rebel, which they did, and then abandoned them after Saddam defeated them.
Universities in the UK are ending their connivance at sex segregation in Muslim activities.
This may seem like a small issue, but it is vitally important. Islam is full of unjust rules, and has a strong current of absolutism. If Muslims in the West are able to impose one of these rules, that success will encourage them to try to impose another. Conversely, Islam's possibility of adapting to exist within secular society depends on learning to accept that it cannot impose rules. The imposition of rules will strengthen the absolutist side, while the failure to impose them will strengthen the tolerant side.
MP George Galloway campaigns against the "canonisation of this wicked woman" (Thatcher).
Hear, hear!
Dalits living in the UK have asked for a ban on caste discrimination.
US citizens: tell Democratic Party organizations to stop supporting Obama's proposed cuts in Social Security and Medicaid.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say, "Vote against CISPA."
The ACLU agrees.
The vote can be in a couple of days, so call now.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Some US states collect data about all students, and give the data to companies which use it for marketing purposes. This is supposedly to help the students, but it must be a twisted definition of "help", like "help companies give you personalized ads". If they really mean it as help, they should make it optional for each student.
Everyone: speak up in support of the last abortion provider in Mississippi.
Threatened with imprisonment in Canada for posting a photo of anti-thug graffiti.
When right-wing political leaders die, their supporters aim to sanctify them. To stop this, we must trumpet the evil those leaders committed.
Google posts DMCA takedown notices it receives from movie studios, and the movie studios send takedown notices to demand deletion of those takedown notices.
In some parts of London, all the houses are owned by super-rich as investments; nobody lives there any more.
The article suggests that second homes (not someone's primary residence) are charged lower taxes in London. If so, that is partly responsible for the problem. The wise policy is to charge higher taxes for second homes. However, the UK may be too much under the thumb of the plutocracy for wise policies to be allowed.
Obama's persistent attack on human rights and the non-rich: a long list.
The Washington legislature gave Microsoft a big tax cut, so now dance clubs are being squeezed to make up for it.
Every legislator who voted for the tax cut is a sell-out, and deserves to get booted out. Can someone post a list of them and send me the URL?
Florida intends to imprison Frank Steese for parole violation, notwithstanding the fact that his violation was involuntary — he was in prison in another state for a murder he was later proved innocent of.
Even if he had been in prison and guilty, isn't that a good enough excuse for a parole violation? What if he had been kidnaped?
Shaker Aamer, prisoner in Guantanamo although he was "cleared for release" in 2007, describes his injuries, and says prisoners will soon die from their hunger strikes.
The pressure in China to marry and have children is so strong that gays often form phony marriages to push off the pressure.
This is why the one-child-per-family policy was necessary, and it is necessary still. However, it might be wise to construct an escape route: a way to satisfy parents' demand for a grandchild with some sort of substitute. Maybe one child could be adopted by various sets of parents in parallel.
2012 set a record for "investor-state" lawsuits, in which a company sues a country for having a law that interferes with whatever the company wants to do.
These are one of the big injustices of many "free trade" treaties, and one of the reasons they should be abolished. This mechanism was used to stop Uruguay from requiring plain paper packages for cigarettes, and is now being used against Australia.
In other words, "investor-state" can kill.
A teacher was suspended for giving students an assignment to pretend they were in Nazi Germany and write an essay arguing that Jews are evil.
If the aim was to stretch their imagination, rather than to inculcate anti-semitism, it would have been more effective to ask them to imagine that they are in 2013 living in Afghanistan or Colombia and write an essay arguing that the US is evil.
Thugs in South Africa systematically torture suspects.
To cover it up, they destroy the victims' medical records and steal their security camera recordings.
It's a great way to get confessions, if you don't care whether they are true.
The US is bullying Spain into escalating the War on Sharing.
2000 celebrated Thatcher's death in London.
Thugs threatened to arrest protesters at Thatcher's funeral if they "cause distress", even by so much as turning their backs at the procession.
Thatcher's ideological heirs are causing plenty of distress in the UK today, but they are safe from arrest because they are using devastating deeds rather than mere words and gestures.
The US-Colombia free trade treaty includes provisions that supposedly were going to improve labor rights in Colombia, but death threats against union organizers keep going strong.
Martin Luther King Jr. told us about the "two Americas". Since his day, the disparity has grown.
Thatcher's support was very useful for Pinochet's murderous regime, and others.
I'm totally in favor of remembering and condemning what Thatcher did; I disagree only with the idea that her mere death is enough to celebrate. I will celebrate when her wrongdoing is ended.
The UK is expanding an airport near a nuclear power plant. What could go wrong?
Only a right-wing fringe of Americans want to cut social security and medicare, but mainstream media say this is the "middle".
Thatcher's rule increased the UK's poverty and unemployment.
Her ideological successors are now increasing them further.
When guards came to punish hunger strikers, Guantanamo prisoners resisted.
When the BBC played the top 20 pop songs this week, it took the unusual step of omitting one: Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead, which people are buying to celebrate Thatcher's death.
The article is mistaken when it says that Thatcher was not responsible for what's wrong with Britain today. The right-wing policies of the UK's major parties are outgrowths of her position.
A bill in Congress would give Israel the unique permission to discriminate among Americans.
Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists.
More information about the problem.
Russian opposition leader faces a trial designed to punish him for his activism.
Compare the case of US whistleblower John Kiriakou.
Gaza has banned journalists from working for Israeli newspapers.
This is not only a violation of human rights, it is also self-defeating to prevent Israelis from getting information about what their occupation policies do.
Virginia has imposed expensive and pointless building requirements on abortion clinics, only to try to shut them down of course.
Researchers seek information from people about their breast cancer genetic studies, to try to replace a secret data base.
It is sad that they offer, as a reward, a device that is defective by design.
Obama's budget proposals include small steps forward in regard to abortion rights.
Fix The CFAA - Warning: before you follow that link, disable Javascript! Otherwise the page you get to will run Javascript code from Facebook. We can't tell what that code does, but it is clearly not free software.
Monsanto is exerting power over the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
US citizens: submit a comment to the State Department saying not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
The US admits giving Guantanamo defense attorneys' emails to prosecutors.
This is a consequence of the way the system for military kangaroo courts was set up. In an ordinary trial in an ordinary court, it could not have happened.
A proposed amendment bill in Washington State would allow companies to demand employee's passwords so as to search private communications.
US citizens: call on the SEC to require publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending.
Everyone: urge Tribune Company's owners not to let the Koch brothers take over their newspapers.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to cosponsor H.R. 1523, the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act, by which the federal government would respect decisions by states to legalize marijuana.
When a US bank fails, its debt for derivatives takes precedence over depositors, thanks to a law procured by the banksters.
US "aid" for Haiti's reconstruction after the earthquake was given to US companies and little was spent on needed real work in Haiti. Few Haitians were hired.
US citizens: help give Obama a million reasons to reject the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Jill Stein comments on Obama's Grand Sell-out.
UK citizens: if you hate Thatcher's legacy, protest the parties that have extended it (Tory, Labour, Lib Dems). Support the Green Party.
3D films may be losing their novelty appeal.
I mention this as an occasion for another point. I get the impression that most people wish for the visceral impact of movies on a large screen (and 3D would be a part of this).
I feel the impact too, but I dislike it. For me, it feels that something is trying to push my emotional buttons, and I resent it.
Synthetic artemisinin means thousands of artemisia farmers will lose their livelihoods.
The Act V campaign is planning to undertake the elimination of malaria within less than a decade. If this succeeds, artemisinin will no longer be needed; thus, artemisia farming was perhaps heading for failure in any case. Of course, we do not want to preserve malaria to keep those farmers employed.
However, the issue is different with spices and fragrances. There is no reason to hope or aim for an end to the demand for vanillin. If vat production leads to an end of farming, it will be a big stroke of technological unemployment, coming at the same time as many other such strokes (for instance, millions of commercial drivers). If we develop vat meat that doesn't involve growing and killing animals and uses less fossil fuel, that great advance could put tens of millions of farmers out of work, perhaps hundreds.
In the US, the true number of unemployed has skyrocketed in 30 years. We have the same number of working Americans as in 1979 although the population is much larger.
We need to change the economic system so that not having a job no longer means living in poverty.
Copenhagen plans to become carbon-neutral by 2025.
The US has identified 18 Russian officials connected with the imprisonment and death of Sergei Magnitsky.
I am all in favor of this, but I think sanctions against US officials involved in imprisonment without trial and torture (in Guantanamo and in secret prisons) would be more to the point.
Worldwide: support protests on April 15 to reduce military spending.
How Thatcher helped sustain Apartheid.
US citizens: stand up for protecting the wild bison of Montana.
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Jewell to stop offering coal-mining concessions on public lands.
UK citizens: MP Edward Garnier is trying to remove a key part of libel reform that would limit libel lawsuit threats by companies against critics. Write to your MP to oppose this.
Three Key Lessons from the Obama Administration's Drone Lies.
Gitmo Defense Lawyers Say Somebody Has Been Accessing Their Emails.
Morsi responded to leaks about military torture and killing of prisoners with exaggerated support for the military.
Two Obamas, Two Classes of Children.
US media hardly mention corporate crime, although it does far more harm than all street crime combined.
As Butterball turkey farm staff in North Carolina plead guilty to cruelty to animals, legislators have introduced an Ag Gag bill to make sure no one else can be exposed.
Bangladesh Police Arrest Acting Editor of Pro-Opposition Paper.
Exxon got TV networks to censor a satirical critical ad.
US legislators are trying to keep the CFAA a threat to us all by pretending they could use it to punish foreign crackers. However, that's nonsense.
Cyprus will have to endure a 25% decrease in its economy and a "bailout" or leave the euro.
Monsanto's toxic history and political influence.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Egypt's army told soldiers to shoot protesters in Suez.
Russia blocks Wikipedia pages for absurd reasons.
A visit to one of the regular protests in Budrus against the Israeli occupation.
Apple's censorship has been outsourced to other agents, who have to second guess to make sure they are never less strict than Apple itself. It's the same with China's censorship.
It is unacceptable for a platform to control what apps people can install. For human rights' sake, this should be illegal.
Obama supposedly sent his new treasury secretary, who supported austerity in the US, to argue in Europe against austerity.
Obama endorses austerity (i.e., "balancing the budget"), which is surely why he chose a treasury secretary who also endorses it. I doubt either of them intended to argue seriously against austerity in Europe.
Thugs in Ukraine frequently torture prisoners and are not even investigated.
Chomsky: In Gaza, Dignity Is the Battleground.
The Liberals who supported Obama pretending he was a Liberal are now seeing what a mistake they made.
I hope they learn the lesson: vote for someone who really supports our views, not a lesser evil that gets more evil each time. We need a president prepared to defeat the plutocracy, not someone who will soften its fist slightly.
Apple's censorship has been outsourced to other agents, who have to second guess to make sure they are never less strict than Apple itself. It's the same with China's censorship.
It is unacceptable for a platform to control what apps people can install. For human rights' sake, this should be illegal.
Calls for armed guards for polio vaccinators in Pakistan and Nigeria.
The Egyptian Army attacked wounded protesters in hospitals, and had doctors operate on them without anesthetic.
Obama Administration Caves to Poultry Industry By Proceeding With Privatized Inspection.
This means more food-borne infections in the US.
'Time to Rise Up': Oklahoma Grandmother Bike-Locks Herself to KXL Pipeline Machinery.
Laws demanding drug tests for large classes of people are spreading across the US.
The War on Drugs is a harmful policy in general, and this is one of the ways that harm is manifested. Even for people who do safety-critical jobs, drug testing is the wrong solution.
Obama's pick for the Secretary of Energy is a crony of oil and gas companies, and in particular with tar sands companies.
It has been clear for a year that Obama intends to approve the planet-roaster pipeline, and is trying to create a framework of deception so he can pretend it is not wrong.
US citizens: call on Secretary of State Kerry to recognize what the Arkansas tar sands oil spill implies about the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Uruguay has legalized same-sex marriage.
I think same-sex couples deserve the same rights as different-sex couples, but rather than doing this in the form of the system called marriage, with its limitation to couples and its assumptions of sexual monogamy, it would be better to replace it with civil partnership that carries the rights and responsibilities that serve a social purpose. People could then call themselves "married" if they want to.
The judge in Bradley Manning's trial ruled prosecutors have to prove that he had reason to believe that his leaks would harm the US and help enemies.
Does exposing US injustices (such as wars of aggression) harm the US, or help the US? In the short term, it can thwart with US government activities and aims — unjust ones, that is, which deserve to be thwarted. You might call that harm.
In the long term, however, leaks may discourage the US from launching further wars of aggression, which would benefit the US both directly (not wasting US lives and money) and indirectly (less inspiration of hatred and terrorism against the US). It would also benefit the rest of the world.
Oil companies are lobbying state governments to pass resolutions in favor of the Keystone XL planet roaster pipeline.
Mexico's current murder rate is not high in historic terms.
The EU has demanded additional austerity measures from 13 countries, including France.
The UK government has extended Thatcher's agenda, but there is no focus for opposition.
Newark Students Walk Out To Protest Privatization Plans And Budget Cuts.
2 million Americans signed the petition calling on Obama not to cut Social Security.
Obama won't care; he listens to the plutocrats, not the people. (And he won't run for reelection.) However, other politicians may be impressed.
The IRS claims the power to read people's emails without a warrant.
It is proper, of course, to investigate tax evaders, but it has to be done with respect to the constitutional rights of suspects.
Monsanto is bullying states by threatening unjustified lawsuits if they require labeling of genetically engineered foods.
A horrifying article: US college students are provided with digital textbooks that they read through proprietary software that reports what pages they read and when.
I presume that these textbooks are stored in encrypted formats and can't be read except with that spy system. It may be impossible to read the books, impossible to study at those colleges, without using proprietary software. Which implies that you must not go to them if you value your freedom.
The worst part is that these students have become accustomed to being watched all the time. They do not feel indignant when they find out how much they are being watched.
Everyone: call on European governments to keep plants and plant breeding safe from patents.
In the US: Call on national supermarket chains to promise not to sell genetically engineered salmon.
3G wireless modems have a back door, and can be reprogrammed remotely with additional tracking functionality.
Of course, whenever the device is in use, the phone network knows roughly where the device is, just as it knows roughly where a non-GPS phone is.
UK citizens: call or write to your MP to insist on unblocking the libel reform bill.
Thugs in Little Rock Arkansas have been arresting and killing people for no reason, and lying to excuse it. Now they are getting exposed, and investigated for a "pattern of misconduct".
Egypt's military killed, tortured and disappeared people during the protests that pushed out Mubarak.
The victims included protesters as well as people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
China has arrested people for posting statements about bird flu.
Whether they were false statements, or embarrassing truths, we have no way of knowing.
Leaked documents show Obama has been lying about the criteria for making drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Everyone: Tell famous US marketing companies to meet with representatives of the Bangladeshi workers that make what they sell.
Monsanto Claims to Ditch Herbicide While Selling More of It.
A man who got drunk on an airplane and started picking fights faces the threat of 20 years in prison.
This illustrates the tendency of US laws to disproportionate punishments. His conduct should be a crime, but it is absurd to threaten a rowdy drunk with more than 6 months in jail.
Winter sports champions warn Obama that global heating will make those sports disappear.
This is a minor problem compared with all the other things that are likely to disappear, such as polar bears, coastal land, coral reefs and reliable US wheat production, but if it gets the attention of some people with an inordinate fondness for sports, that's good.
NRA senators proposed a bill that makes it easier for people with serious mental illness to buy guns.
Half of Gaza's garbage collection trucks are broken down because Israel won't let spare parts or new trucks through.
US citizens: if you have a Democratic congresscritter or senators, phone and say, "If you vote to cut entitlement programs, I will support a Progressive primary challenge against you."
Here's more about the issue.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The French health agency says that BPA in food and in cash register paper is a real health threat to the health of fetuses.
Society should take steps to eliminate this threat. However, in some US states the women could be prosecuted for eating such food or for working as a sales clerk.
Farmers world-wide are organizing to fight Monsanto.
Health insurance is taking steps towards tracking people's food purchases.
"Open access" has given way to phony scientific journals that will publish anything to get the author's fee. Some use other tricks and frauds as well.
In today's "journalism", companies sponsor articles, not just the ads.
Chicago is closing public schools saying it can't afford to run then, but it has money to start government-subsidized private "charter" schools.
Perhaps Chicago does need to have fewer schools in total, but the replacement of public schools with charter schools is another thing entirely. I think corrupt politicians have found an excuse for union-busting and profiteering.
Some cities now direct their thugs to wear video cameras all the time, and trigger them when dealing with the public.
In some ways, this is a good thing. It might even compel thugs to start acting like police officers. But there are also dangers that need to be addressed.
US citizens: Call on the Attorney General not to interfere with the state-by-state legalization of marijuana.
Obama reinforced his right-wing credentials by eulogizing Margaret Thatcher, the UK prime minister who attacked unions and imposed privatization. In US terms, she combined the worst of Reagan and the worst of Clinton.
She inspired admiration for her courage, and occasionally turned it to a good use, such as meeting the Argentine dictators' invasion of the Falkland Islands with a counterattack.
However, courage doesn't redeem injustice. Her main triumph was her defeat of British workers the British public. This led to B'liar's right-wing takeover of the former Labour party, so that even when the Tories lost power, the damage they had done was not corrected.
People across Britain are having parties to celebrate Thatcher's death. As in the case of Steve Jobs, another man who did great harm to the world, I will not celebrate her personal end. (I think that truly occurred some years ago, when she developed dementia.) Any person's death is a loss, even when the person has done great wrong, and since her dirty work is even now being extended, there is nothing to celebrate in the UK today.
I will celebrate when the UK gets rid of her bad works, which include today's Labour Party as well as today's Conservative Party.
If Washington takes as long to change its mind on CO2 emissions as it did on gay rights, Washington will be sunk.
As Budget Cuts Hamper Safety Measures, Over 500,000 U.S. Kids Now Have Lead Poisoning.
Nonetheless, lead poisoning is much less than it was in the 1970s.
About a third of US rivers contaminated with agricultural runoff. One quarter have fish with elevated mercury levels.
Paroled prisoner Daniel McGowan, convicted of arson against tree farms, was put back in prison as a punishment for writing about how he was treated in prison.
McGowan's crimes were substantial, but that doesn't alter the point at hand.
These crimes caused only property damage. The crime that the oil industry is now committing, by keeping civilization stuck on the track to global heating disaster, will kill millions, maybe even billions. That's a different issue, but I mention it for comparison purposes.
The Corporate Betrayal of America.
Nonprofit organizations associated with congressional caucuses are used by companies to buy support from congresscritters.
US employers took advantage of this recession to make everyone work harder.
US citizens: sign this petition to preserve protection on black bears in Louisiana.
US citizens: sign this petition too, for Obama to take social security cuts out of his budget.
This is in addition to phoning the White House, which has more effect than signing a petition.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
How public intellectuals are corrupted into looking the other way and denying the political injustice they can't fail to see.
Law and Disorder: the Destructive Dynamic of America's Segregated Cities.
US citizens: submit a public comment about the danger of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The US cites women's rights as a justification for war, some of the time, while also supporting misogynist religious extremists some of the time.
I think the article errs in saying that US supported the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan. From what I read, the US supported other factions at the time, but they ware all rather Islamist and right-wing, including some that were almost as bad.
But this does not invalidate the overall point of the article.
Children who are effectively kidnaped and enslaved and forced to do illegal jobs in the UK are sent to prison, rather than rescued.
The cases where they are forced to grow marijuana will disappear if marijuana is legalized, as it ought to be, but the general problem will continue with other sorts of activities, including some that really should be illegal.
Portugal's government resolves to hit the poor again, rather than the rich.
Roundup-ready GMO crops led to increased pesticide use, and nearly wiped out milkweed, resulting in the precipitous decline of monarch butterflies.
The monarch population is now about 6% of what it was in 1996, and it's going to be hit even more by planned GMO crops. Meanwhile, global heating will kill the trees where they spend the winter.
Test Case of President Xi Jinping s Commitment to Fighting Corruption.
China Rights Review 'Shrouded in Secrecy,' Activists Pressured.
Public Knowledge asks Congress to make a small change in the DMCA's ban on breaking DRM.
Digital Restrictions Management means technology products perverted to work against their users. Instead of banning the people from breaking these digital handcuffs, a just government would ban companies from imposing them. So it is a shame that opposition to this fundamentally unjust law is timid and calls for only small changes in it. That is a strategy for making little progress. The way to win, in the long term, is by condemning what is wrong.
Consider, for comparison, the campaign for same-sex marriage.
They did not campaign for tiny changes; they campaigned for what they really wanted, and after a long fight it seems they are going to win. Whether or not you agree with that campaign, it demonstrates something about how to campaign to change a law that seems firmly implanted.
Please support our campaign to eliminate DRM.
Obama wants to pass some sort of gun control law, no matter how weak. This means he will have to accept whatever Conservatives will let him have.
If he were a Progressive, and focusing on the long term, he would make the Republicans vote against a strong bill and use that to get them voted out in 2014.
US citizens: sign this petition to allow reporters full access to Mayflower, Arkansas.
Public Citizen: Time to Open the Books on the Political Intelligence Industry.
The Republican Party is being compelled by its political interest to abandon same-sex marriage as a scapegoat, but it will just create another.
Kerry is going to make a show of trying to resume the Israel-Palestine "peace process".
Palestinians show no interest because they have long recognized that these "negotiations" are, for Israel, nothing more than cover for the continuing land-grab. They would respond to a real offer from Israel, but they won't get one.
The Bureau Investigates will try to identify all the people killed by US drone attacks.
Google has made a deal with Universal (the music factory) in which Google promises to disregard all DMCA counter-notices.
Google is challenging in court the validity of a PAT RIOT Act secret search.
Israeli columnist Amira wrote that Palestinian schools should teach children how to resist occupation, and received lots of hate mail.
USA Today told Americans that "We're feeling rich" due to the high stock prices.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to promise to veto CISPA. Also sign this petition, if you haven't.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Wikipedia France is being harassed by spy officials trying to force sysadmins to delete a certain page.
US citizens: phone the White House calling on Obama not to propose cutting Social Security. Also sign this petition.
Americans made a bad mistake electing a president who is a Republican at heart. His natural tendency is to do harm. But we can still try to stop him.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Exxon has set up a little police state in Mayflower, Arkansas, and is keeping all reporters out.
It is clear why Exxon wants to do this: to suppress the truth. What I don't understand is how Exxon gets away with this. On what authority do they threaten to arrest reporters? Can't reporters arrest them instead?
The US government wants to make a database about who knows whom, ideal for investigation of future crime or dissent.
The Bahraini teacher and human rights advocate, Mahdi Abu Deeb, was tortured and then sentenced to 5 years in prison.
Walmart owners are giving millions to fund "charter schools", perhaps in order to destroy teachers' unions.
Thugs in New York City think that we'll be safer if all of us are being watched all the time. But they want an exception for thugs.
The thugs are a particularly dangerous sector of society, and since they have special powers to abuse, they don't need to have the same right to privacy that ordinary citizens deserve.
By 2050, estimates suggest the amount of US land hit annually by wildfires will double.
In some regions, it is forecast to increase by a factor of 5.
Ancient ice in Peru that took 1600 years to form has melted in 25 years.
25 years ago, this glacier had melted back to a point 4700 years old. Now it has melted back to a point 6300 years old.
US citizens: support New York fast food workers who demand higher wages.
US citizens: call on Exxon to tell the public the facts about the Arkansas oil spill.
Manned aircraft can do the same total aerial surveillance as drones, and when one plane can cover 15 square miles, it's feasible to watch everyone in entire cities.
If you watch everyone and everything with flying cameras, that's too much information to keep track of with humans. The US is developing software to do it. It will be used to suppress dissent.
Everyone: call on MIT to investigate Ernest Moniz (Obama's nominee for Energy Secretary) for concealing a conflict of interest in an MIT study about fracking.
Companies are funding right-wing "education" for US judges.
US Governors' Groups Rely Increasingly on "Dark Money" Affiliates.
Republicans Criticize Government Spending Unless It Lowers Our Wages.
The European Union held a bogus "consultation" designed to collect "support" for a predetermined conclusion: nastier copyright enforcement.
The use of the propaganda term
"intellectual
property" reflects the bias of the "consultation".
If you are 17 years old, and you read Seventeen magazine last week,
you
could have been prosecuted for it.
Senator Hatch wants the US to appoint a "Hollywood ambassador" whose
mission would be to
impose
unjust copyright laws on other countries.
The official proposed title includes the term
"intellectual
property", which is propaganda for the harmful goals this proposal
is aimed at.
US mainstream media have a long history of
covering
up facts that might embarrass the government, and planting
falsehoods.
Iain
Banks explains his participation in the cultural boycott of Israel.
I am not sure that refusing to publish a book in Israel is an
effective or useful method of action, but aside from that I mostly
agree with his view of the overall question.
Apple
deleted an app from the app store because it provides access
to books that are banned in China.
Apple and China both practice censorship; they are made for each
other.
I suggest not referring to apps, or anything, as
"content".
Old-fashioned antisemitism is
coming
back in Hungary.
If Israel had made peace with Palestine, instead of using
"antisemitism" as a club to bash anyone that criticizes the occupation
of Palestine, condemnation of real antisemitism would be more
effective.
Pakistan bans candidates if they are not
"good Muslims".
This is in addition to imposing the
death
penalty for "blasphemy".
Most Muslim countries deny religious freedom in various ways. In
Malaysia, people of Malay descent are
legally
required to be Muslims.
A US court
overturned the rule that young women must get a
prescription for the morning-after pill, saying it was politically
imposed in defiance of medical recommendations.
Theocratic Christians don't want women to get this medicine because
they see pregnancy as a punishment for sex. Anything that enables
women to have sex and avoid the punishment denies them the argument
that they want to make. That's the reason for their crusade against
abortion, too.
Fewer
Americans are employed today than at any time since 1979,
but Congress and Obama don't concern themselves with serious
efforts to create jobs.
This article errs in not recognizing the
progressive
caucus budget proposal. Sure, it has little chance of being
adopted, what with all the congresscritters that are working for the
rich, but don't claim that no member of Congress even has a rational
proposal.
Americans who abandoned their houses, often because a bank said it
would foreclose and didn't, face
big
bills and even prosecution.
Offshore Tax Havens
Cost
Average US Taxpayer $1,026 a Year, Small Businesses $3,067.
Afghan Villagers Flee Their Homes, Blame US Drones.
The myth of the free market as a force of nature lets companies pretend that their profits measure their own activity and their own moral worth.
Verizon's data about its customers' sharing is available for lawsuit purposes too.
Perhaps this was the intention all along of Obama's "six strikes" program.
Nuclear waste tanks in Hanford, Washington, could explode due to buildup of hydrogen gas.
The mayor of Buenos Aires warned that the disastrous floods will become more common with global heating.
Good on him for not forgetting this.
A former soldier testified that the current president, right-wing Otto Pérez Molina, was involved in atrocities during the 80s.
A new method of protecting rhinos: injecting into their horns coloring and a pesticide that makes humans sick.
If poachers develop a way to bleach out the coloring, but the pesticide remains, their customers will get sick. That will cut down on the trade too.
Most US fast food restaurants lead children into obesity. Here are the details.
Storing oil-extraction wastewater underground, a technique similar to fracking, caused a powerful and damaging earthquake in Oklahoma.
A man with neurological problems, who needs to carry lots of juice to avoid seizures, fights legally with the TSA which tries to stop him for no good reason.
Thugs harassed a 6-year-old in Ohio repeatedly just because she was walking to the post office, and are now trying to take her away from her parents.
When I was 6 years old, I walked to school in Manhattan — like most kids in my school. The fashion of child-raising in the US today is repressively overprotective.
My suggestion to her is, when captured, to respond to all questions about her with her name, rank and serial number.
The US seems to be hitting increased unemployment.
A right-wing government in a depression tends to do this.
A court found that the US government conspired in the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Back then, there were no drone attack aircraft, so it had to be done with a handgun.
US citizens: sign this campaign to reduce the injustice of the CFAA, not make it worse.
One heroic blogger continues to cover the violence of the War on Drugs in Mexico.
Thousands of people that have secret bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands have now been identified.
Taliban attacked a courthouse and killed 44 people indiscriminately.
If Afghanis hated the Taliban for killing civilians the way they hate the US for killing civilians, they would defeat the Taliban. But they don't.
200,000 US workers are disabled each year due to toxic chemicals used in their work. OHSA focuses on sudden accidents and doesn't do much to prevent toxic exposure.
US citizens: call on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to give unemployed college graduates a feasible way to deal with their loans.
Notwithstanding Erin Brockovich's triumph, Americans still drink hexavalent chromium in their water, and the chemical industry pressured the EPA not to regulate it.
ALEC is pushing bills in many states to ban cities from requiring paid sick leave.
As a rough guide, any bill supported by ALEC is bad, and any elected official who belongs to ALEC is aiding the enemy. Big companies, and the politicians that support them, are the principal enemy of most Americans.
At What Point in Pregnancy Does a Woman's Personhood End?
Washington State is considering a law to require insurance companies to cover elective abortions.
It is amazing to see such a wise policy being considered in the US.
The NRA proposal to arm teachers would make students distrust teachers and fear arrest in school for minor things.
It might also result in more children shot.
Maine thugs torture prisoners with long-term solitary confinement, and spraying pepper spray on their faces while they are shackled.
In the US, if you're under 13 and you read news on-line, you could be prosecuted and imprisoned under the CFAA.
Making everyone a criminal, then prosecuting only dissidents, is the way of tyranny. We know that the prosecutors of Aaron Swartz looked at the matter this way.
Everyone: sign this petition calling for revocation of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.
The UK government is imposing its cruel policies without visible opposition because it has crushed all visible protest through violence and imprisonment.
Activists on Both Sides of Atlantic Denounce US/EU FTA as Corporate Power Grab.
All the "free trade" treaties since the WTO are corporate power grabs.
US citizens: call on your elected officials to support the Public Lands Renewable Energy Development Act.
Euro-zone and UK austerity is giving the results an honest economist would have predicted: depression and unemployment.
Tunisia needs to reject the IMF-imposed policies that knocked it into poverty.
Four Iraqi newspaper offices were attacked by militia members dressed as soldiers. Perhaps they were real soldiers — in Iraq, that is not implausible.
Even Aurora Shooter James Holmes Shouldn't Get the Death Penalty.
Evidence suggests that the Chinese fishing fleet tells the UN about only 9% of the fish it catches, which adds up to cheating African countries.
Slavery takes different forms from in the past.
How to put an end to modern forms of slavery?
Using prisoners as low-paid employees for profit is also a modern form of slavery, and has the effect of reducing wages for free labor as well as encouraging more imprisonment.
Morocco tortured confessions out of protesters, then sentenced them to prison in military kangaroo courts.
Morocco's government has close ties to the US; perhaps they are following the path of Guantanamo.
I was told that, Around 2000, the current king granted additional human rights, but then he acceded to Bush's request by taking away some of them.
In India, thugs often attack journalists, sometimes killing them, and rarely face justice.
US citizens: phone the White House and say, "No cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and no veiled cuts either." Also sign this petition, but a phone call will carry more weight.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
The legal requirement to offer paid sick days is slowly spreading around the US, due to one local struggle after another.
Fossil fuel protesters in the UK face imprisonment for their protests.
The "crime" they pled guilty to, after being denied a jury trial, was set up as a way to criminalize protest.
"Tiger parenting" is not effective at raising children's grades; it is better to be supportive.
As austerity pushes the euro zone into depression, Obama and the Republicans want the US to follow.
The Least Developed Countries bloc now accepts responsibility to join in cutting CO2 emissions.
There is a global push to discourage and even stop profit-shifting that enables companies to avoid taxes.
Climate scientists warn that Australia will face worse floods, droughts and giant fires unless global heating is curbed.
The Arms Control Treaty was approved by the UN, but it was weakened so it may not have any real effect.
The World Bank proposes to eliminate extreme poverty world-wide by 2030.
I think that it might be possible if there is political will, but population growth and global heating will make the job much harder.
A fish caught near Fukushima had a high level of radioactive cesium.
One bite might not matter, but it would be dangerous to eat such fish regularly.
A former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is going to advise banksters. About how to hoodwink the SEC, I suppose.
The US needs a constitutional amendment so that people working in in decision-making jobs for any level of government are forbidden for ten years to work in or for the industry they made decisions about. This should certainly include elected officials.
Britons are signing a petition calling on a conservative minister to live for a year on the £53 a week he wants unemployed people to get.
I wish I could urge people to sign the petition, but it is hosted at a site that requires people to run nonfree Javascript code, and I don't want to encourage that.
The Taliban are refusing to negotiate peace.
I guess they expect to win the war.
Oil pipeline spills are sickening.
The US has a fund to clean up oil spills, but doesn't trouble oil companies with paying into it.
How the US fuels corruption in Afghanistan.
It's not all the US' fault: Afghanistan never had much of a tradition of resiting corruption.
Resisting corporate control of US food.
How North Dakota's public bank gives the state prosperity, insulating it from whatever the banksters do.
Germany Doesn't Get Much Sun. How Did It Become a Leader in Solar Energy?
More US college graduates are now working in low-wage jobs.
Now that going to college is likely to saddle you with tremendous debt that you'll never pay off, it is better not to go if your chances of getting a well-paid job afterward are not great.
Near Boston: rally in Boston to correct the injustice of the CFAA.
An important UK spy leader said she organized the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Cambodian women have taken the lead in fighting forced evictions.
The fact that the government permits these land-grabs in the first place shows it is not on the side of the people.
A Palestinian prisoner died of cancer because Israeli prison guards delayed his treatment until too late.
Israeli soldiers sometimes block ambulances from reaching injured Palestinians.
The New York City Thug Department chief said the purpose of searching people arbitrarily on the street was to instill fear in certain minority groups.
The Alaska legislature thinks oil companies pay too much taxes. Poor oil companies!
How drug companies delay generic drugs with bogus lawsuits, with the support of the Supreme Court.
Michigan voters repealed the law that let the state eliminate the government of a city, so the state government passed a new one just like it.
A record number of Americans are using food stamps now because a record number are living in poverty.
Congress is trying to direct the US into war with Iran.
Obama could alter the use of drone attacks to make them comply with US and international legal principles.
It still leaves the question about whether these would do more to strengthen al Qa'ida than to weaken it.
Hamas took another step towards Islamist cruelty by segregating the schools of Gaza.
US regulation of banks is designed never to find evidence to convict them.
The evil of Big Pharma is revealed in the threats Novartis made if India doesn't give it additional patent power. What nonsense, to claim that nobody thinks there is a simple solution! Here is one.
Novartis responded to the decision by threatening to arbitrarily withhold other drugs from India, causing sick people there to die. Presumably these will be drugs which are in fact patented, drugs not affected by this decision. That shows this is not a self-protective reaction, but a murderous threat.
In the absence of free exploitation treaties such as the WTO, India would respond to the threat by making those drugs locally. Novartis' death threats are mere bluster, unless the WTO gives them force; and that reveals the murderous nature of the WTO.
As for the pretense that the abuse of medical patents is "necessary" for the sake of research, we already know this is bogus. The big pharma companies spend more on advertising and corrupting doctors than on research, and little of their research goes into life-saving drugs anyway. Patents on drugs should be banned except in the wealthiest countries.
There is a very simple solution: get rid of the WTO. It undermines democracy and it does harm to people in many other ways.
While this is simple, but won't be easy. The obstacle is that our governments are controlled by politicians who have sold out to business, who see in Novartis' threats an excuse to surrender, rather than a reason to fight.
Indians can start turning funerals into protests, until they put in place a government prepared to kick out the WTO.
The term "intellectual property" spreads confusion by inviting people to suppose that patent law is similar to various other unrelated laws, including copyright, trade secrets, and geographical denominations. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.
UK Bush forces soldiers testify about tortures they witnessed in a US secret prison.
Obama personally intervened to keep Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in prison.
Shaye exposed the fact that the US carried out a bombing in Yemen, and killed lots of civilians. This is part of Obama's War on Journalism.
30,000 have asked the Norwegian Nobel Committee to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Bradley Manning.
It would correct the absurd mistake of giving one to Obama.
Providing gratis birth control to the poor is a great social investment; even ignoring the human benefit, it pays for itself many times over.
New technology that eliminates many jobs tends to produce recession and can cause lasting human costs; but a government minded to serve the public interest can prevent these problems through deficit spending.
(Our government doesn't do this because it is controlled by the banksters.)
With today's rapid progress in computing, the result is a series of crises, and no recovery ever.
The subtle difference "social security" and "welfare" plays into the hands of the right wing.
Novartis lost in its attempt to stretch Indian patent law.
Note, however, that the existence of patents on medicines in India, imposed by the WTO, represents a defeat for sick people around the world.
An interview with Nathan Blanc, who is repeatedly jailed for refusing conscription to participate in the occupation of Palestine.
How the EPA has stretched "conditional registration" for pesticides so far that a bus can drive through it.
Women in Egypt protest every week against the extreme patriarchal system which the government supports.
The root of this problem is the general condemnation of women who did anything sexually irregular (even when pushed into it by their families).
The next step in destroying the British NHS is to make doctors deny medically needed care in order to save money.
IVF in an overpopulated world is a double waste of resources, so the NHS should eliminate IVF services entirely. However, cataract operations enable blind people to see again. It is an outrage not to give the NHS enough resources to provide these operations to everyone that is likely benefit from them.
There is no real shortage of funds for the NHS. The Conservatives have cut its funding as part of their program of class warfare (austerity) and use those cuts as an excuse to mess it up.
Feminism has failed to help most women, by focusing mainly on a "glass ceiling" that most employees of either sex never get anywhere near.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the MARCH act, which would allow women in the US military to pay to get abortions in military hospitals.
In my letter, I said this does not go far enough, that abortions should be gratis, but that this is an important step forward.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The film "Dirty Wars" tries to show Americans what US violence looks like to the peoples that suffer it.
Egypt's most famous satirist was arrested for criticizing the government.
This is part of a general attack on dissidents.
Freedom of speech includes the right to insult anyone and anything. To make it a crime to insult someone is repression.
Drone-defense clothing: a mirror-surface hoodie.
I am skeptical that it really works. The only way any clothing could stop heat-sending cameras from seeing you is if it blocked heat transfer, and that would make you awfully hot.
A drug company argues that NAFTA requires Canada to change its patent law because it doesn't provide the company with what it "expects".
The worst thing is that it might really win this case. And Obama wants to extend this kind of oppression to more countries through the TPP.
Geoengineering plans cause their own disasters if they cool the Earth unevenly.
Schemes to cool the Earth could in theory cancel out the global heating effect of CO2, but they would not even try to prevent ocean acidification and the effects of CO2 on fish.
Drone Manufacturers Whine That They Are Misunderstood.
The DMCA puts researchers in danger.
The DMCA anti-circumvention provision is fundamentally wrong, and hurts everyone who uses any sort of digital media. Our goal should be to repeal it entirely, and replace it with a ban on Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
Instead what we see are proposals for small changes, including this one, and the push to legalize unlocking of devices.
Each of these changes would reduce the harm done by the DMCA, but even taken together they don't go far enough. We should not demand less than what we really need. Instead of demanding several insufficient changes, let's make an alliance for what we really want, and the first step is to legalize making and using the tools to break digital handcuffs.
The NSA spent billions on a system for correlating everything it listens to, which (fortunately for us) never worked, but wasted' lots of our money. So Obama went after … the whistleblowers.
Temperature records since the 19th century show the Alps are steadily warming, and many ski areas are low enough that they are getting less snow.
In 50 years, there may not be much good skiing left in the Alps, but people won't complain about that; with the damage to agriculture and the environment, few people will be in a position to travel to the Alps anyway.
Chicagoans protest racist school closings.
US citizens: sign this petition calling for a senate vote on appointing Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Also phone your senators (again).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
When factory fires kill lots of workers, typically because of blocked fire exits, who are the victims? The workers, or the factory owners that can't exploit them any more?
Chef Ahmed Errachidi was imprisoned in Guantanamo for 5 years and tortured, because the US did not bother to check the accusations against him.
Living now in Morocco, he is still not free: at the request of the US, Morocco bans him from travelling. After all, anyone who has been given such a good reason to hate the US might become hostile even though he never was before.
Errachidi says he would pardon the soldiers who tortured him, and wants only the ringleaders to be put on trial. I disagree, because "I was just following orders" is no excuse. The soldiers should be tried too.
A broad range of wild species in Britain are threatened by the unusually cold March and April.
These species won't go extinct this year, but the unusual cold is the result of melting Arctic ice, and global heating will make it happen more often.
The Chilean student movement for gratis education has resumed with a bang.
New York City will require all workers to have paid sick days. City Council Speaker Quinn has yielded to pressure and has dropped her opposition to the measure.
Quinn is running for mayor. She is rather right-wing, but gets Liberals to vote for her because of her lifestyle (she is openly gay). I appreciate her courage in standing against prejudice, but personal courage in an official is no substitute for good policies.
Women: if you are pregnant, make sure your family knows not to bring you to a Catholic hospital in case of medical emergency. It might kill you.
Falling Gasoline Use Means U.S. Can Just Say No to New Pipelines and Food-to-Fuel.
A study estimates that Dubya's wars will ultimately cost the US 4-6 trillion dollars.
Here's the full report.
Burma is getting lots of trade offers, but it still is fighting minority groups, and its government is promoting land grabs.
The UK's secret courts bill was passed, ensuring that mere justice cannot interfere with protecting US torturers.
EU distortion in presenting the relation between productivity and wages provides cover for pushing wages down.
Obama supports the coup-installed death-squad government in Honduras for fear people will elect another leftist if allowed to.
Perhaps years of running aerial death squads have endeared that practice to Obama.
A 1995 global heating forecast has proved pretty accurate.
If we reject the mythical ideal of the "free market", what do we put in its place?
The Golden Gate Bridge no longer accepts cash; it has been turned into a surveillance system.
A city in England will give emergency funds to the poor in a way that surveils their purchases — and forces them to buy at Wal-Mart.
I would not object if these funds could only be spent on certain sorts of products, like Food Stamps in the US. However, total surveillance like this is not required for that, and this total surveillance system doesn't even do that. It is preying on the rights of people too poor to say no.
Cost of Environmental Damage in China Growing Rapidly Amid Industrialization.
Islamists in Libya are persecuting Christians for speaking in favor of Christianity.
People have a right to state their views — even Christianity, even Islam.
Chinese revenge against Liu Xiaobo has extended to arresting his brother-in-law.
This repression is not unique. In 1995, China imprisoned the 6-year-old Panchen Lama and his family, and nobody has been allowed contact with them.
There is no proof that they are still alive.
Persecution of Egyptian dissidents sparked widespread fighting between secularists and Islamists.
A brave Korean legislator is trying to repeal the unjust "three strikes" copyright law.
Boston thugs are infiltrating music-lovers' society to shut down rock music performances in private homes.
This campaign must make people feel like they are living in a police state. It is amazing that something so nasty is being done for such a puny reason, and suggests that someone is on a power trip.
Boston needs to change this law, but that's not enough. If thugs will sow suspicion throughout society over one minor thing, they will find another excuse if this one is taken away.
Guantanamo hunger strikers say that US prison guards denied them water, and chilled them with air conditioning while denying them adequate clothing.
In principle, anyone can lie, but prison guards have learned to overcome the usual hesitation about doing so. Therefore, I believe the prisoners' accusations.
The EU is considering whether to trust companies to pseudonymize your data.
In Germany, a court rules ISPs cannot be forced to store data about customers for use in attacking them.
Another screw in the TPP: no more "buy American" requirements in government contracts.
If this were going to benefit poor and working people in other countries, it might be ethically a step forward. However, "free trade" generally helps the rich and hurts the rest, by undermining democracy.
The TPP could forbid public banks, too.
There is no legitimate goal for anything like the TPP. Americans do not need more "free trade". So all it can do is harm. We need to kill it.
Agriculture and fishing in the Mekong basin face two threats: dams and global heating.
United Arab Emirates prosecuted activists, and blocked observers from watching the supposedly public trial. And searched their hotel rooms while they were futilely complying with arbitrary rules.
Obama is much more subtle about secrecy in trials and covering up torture.
Corporate power is directing the Internet into something very bad.
Copyright Wars Are Damaging the Internet.
The FDIC is considering a plan to seize people's bank deposits and convert them into stock in the bank, stock which might never be worth anything.
For large deposits, which are not insured, this might be better than losing them entirely, as could happen if the bank failed. However, this plan includes the deposits up to $250,000 that are supposedly insured by the FDIC itself.
A further injustice is that creditors for derivatives have priority over bank depositors, for whatever money is left in the bank. And banks are reorganizing to help the derivatives creditors screw depositors.
Thus, it seems that the government is planning to deal with the problem of undead banks at the cost of bank depositors.
Some US companies are cutting workers' hours to avoid giving them health benefits.
Health care and other social benefits should not be connected with employment: that creates an incentive to cut employment.
Non-military use of surveillance drone aircraft raises a wide variety of issues.
Attack drones are also being prepared for use in America's homes and streets.
Greg Palast says that oil companies blocked the privatization of Iraq's oil in order to keep the price up.
If so, it was probably a good deed. If oil were cheaper, we would be burning more of it. However, no war was required to achieve this goal.
The US economy seems to be improving, if you judge by totals. So why are people's lives not getting better?
The explanation for this paradox is simple: in a highly unequal society, totals mainly represent what's happening to the rich, and say nothing much about what's happening to most people.
A small fraction of Americans get half the total income. If income doubles for them, and is cut in half for the rest, the total will increase, while most will be worse off. There's nothing here that is hard to understand, except why journalists continue to treat totals as significant.
For meaningful economic measurements, away with totals, mean values and per capita values; use measures that reflect what's happening to the non-rich.
French President Hollande got bad news: his budget cuts won't satisfy EU demands for reduced deficit.
However, for France, the worst part is that Hollande is trying to cut the deficit, the exact opposite of what's needed when recession hits. He's not doing enough to push back against this euro zone requirement.
EPA Loophole Allows Flood of Pesticides to Litter US Ecosystems.
Protesters oppose replacing the UK's Trident nuclear missile submarines.
US citizens: Call for protection of the Mexican grey wolf (whose range includes part of the US), which is close to extinct.
Albert Woodfox has spent 40 years in solitary in a Louisiana prison.
If he's guilty of the murder he was convicted of (there's some doubt about this, and his conviction keeps getting overturned), it justifies imprisonment, but not this.
An Egyptian blogger faces legal threats over Twitter statements — and not even his own Twitter statements.
Tyrannical states have developed organized systems of collaboration in repressing the people more effectively.
China has prohibited many activities for Tibetans, extending as far as urging protection of the Tibetan language.
Israeli violations of Palestinian media freedoms on the rise.
The US State Department plans to conceal the public comments against the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
It is clear now that Obama plans to approve the pipeline, and he is constructing a system of lies he can present as an excuse.
The biggest threat to US national security is when the US starts wars.
Sudan is massacring civilians in Darfur again.
How Big Corporations Are Unpatriotic.
When the CEO says, "This is my country", he means "This country is my property."
Manufacturers of neonicotinoids propose an untested "plan to help bees" instead of the ban on the pesticides known to harm bees.
A French advertisement is being attacked for "glamorising prostitution". If so, it won't be the first time that prostitution in France was glamorous. The courtesans of the 19th century still fascinate.
Is prostitution exploitation of the prostitute? Sex work resembles work in general, in this regard. If you're a star, in great demand, you can be in the driver's seat and thus not exploited at all. If you are at the bottom of the heap, ill-paid and mistreated by your boss, you are exploited. If you are literally forced to do a specific job, that's more or less slavery. Meanwhile, there are many in middling conditions for which the job is tiresome or exhausting but tolerable.
It would be obvious nonsense to claim that restaurants should be forbidden to employ waiters because some people are forced to work in restaurants and exploited. Instead, we campaign to improve working conditions and pay for waiters.
Likewise, we wouldn't waste two seconds on the claim that domestic service work should be banned because some women are kept prisoner and brutally forced to do this work. We easily separate the issue of a particular kind of work from that of the abusive conditions and forced labor that occurs in some cases.
Strange that, once the discussion turns to prostitution, otherwise intelligent people become unable to make the same distinction.
Bruce Lehman admits using policy laundering via WIPO to impose the DMCA on the US.
It worked so well that Obama is now trying the same thing with the TPP.
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1111 and say you want strong human rights provisions in the Arms Control Treaty. Say that countries should have to do due diligence to make sure the arms they export won't be used for torture or death squads.
A majority of UN members has criticized the arms control treaty as too weak. The weakening is the deletion of provisions that would have required countries that wish to export arms to first check the human rights record of the government that wants to import those arms.
It's obvious why the US doesn't want this. Such a rule would stop countries from exporting arms to the US unless it ceases torture and assassination.
The US drought has eased slightly, leaving 50% of the US in drought, which is not expected to end any time soon. Wheat production is suffering greatly.
CIA Has Plan to 'Collect Everything and Hang on to it Forever'.
A former CIA analyst describes resisting pressure from Cheney to find nonexistent connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qa'ida.
Canada's government has forbidden government librarians to speak to the public.
Croatian weapons, apparently smuggled into Syria by European countries, end up in the hands of jihadi organizations in Syria.
Israel seized vital equipment from Wattan TV a year ago, and still holds it.
The ACLU is suing Pennsylvania prisons for keeping mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement, which tends to provoke additional mental illness.
The US is investigating accusations that Microsoft bribed various countries to choose Microsoft products.
Prominent Cuban dissidents are no longer in prison, but many have been exiled or face frequent harassment.
An Egyptian TV host faces charges of "promoting terrorism" for interviewing a dissident.
FBI surveillance programs are based on dubious assumptions about people's thinking. Research demonstrates that some are false.
Mahdi al-Behadili describes how British soldiers in the Bush forces captured him, then knocked him unconscious (breaking his nose), then handcuffed him and interrogated him while repeatedly hitting him. Then came the sleep deprivation...
I call them the Bush forces because Bush effectively hijacked troops from the US and UK to use as his private army. But there is a specific purpose in this name: to prevent Americans from thinking that their patriotism should lead them to excuse that crime.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose any "Grand Swindle" to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
Also sign Bernie Sanders' petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Massachusetts citizens: call on Governor Patrick to raise the minimum wage.
The Israeli army has a long tradition of disregarding the Supreme Court. In 1951, the residents of Iqrit got a court order that they could return to their homes, but the army blew them up instead. Now some of their descendants are camping on their land.
I find it sad that the page they use to post their photos was Facebook. They could make them equally accessible somewhere else.
US citizens: support the progressive Back to Work budget.
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to stand firm on protecting the Izembek wilderness in Alaska.
Many US states are passing laws to hurt low-wage workers, sponsored by ALEC.
US citizens: tell Obama not to pour money into missile defense systems of dubious efficacy.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to make the CFAA less nasty, not worse.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: oppose the attempt to remove protected sea areas in New England, needed by fish species already overfished.
US citizens: sign this petition requiring congresscritters and senators to acknowledge corporate sponsors on their clothing.
US citizens: tell Senator Schumer to return the campaign money he got from private prison companies before he makes decisions about imprisonment.
US citizens: sign this petition to ban Arctic oil drilling.
US citizens: Call for a new FCC chairman who has the public's interests at heart.
Everyone: phone MacDonalds to insist it take responsibility when its stores exploit workers.
MacDonalds makes "fast food"; i.e., food meant not to be eaten. But that's a different issue.
US citizens: Phone the White House and ask Obama to defend insurance coverage for birth control for all American women. Also sign this petition.
US citizens: Call on Secretary of State Kerry to push for no oil drilling in Arctic seas.
US citizens: write to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to say that student loans should not require students to go to arbitration instead of court.
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1115195195191 and say you want strong human rights provisions in the Arms Control Treaty. Say that countries should have to do due diligence to make sure the arms they export won't be used for torture or death squads.
In the euro-zone, the more you obey the new colonial master, the more you get punished.
The overuse of the Earth's resources is a real problem. To correct it, someone was going to have to lose something. In an ethical solution, the rich would bear most of the losses, while others would have to use resources more efficiently and reproduce less. However, the rich seized on the problem as an opportunity for a power grab, causing unnecessary suffering for everyone else.
200 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions appear to have caused the observed extinction of 3/4 of all species on Earth, by pouring CO2 into the air.
The research found there were three bursts of vulcanism in a 40,000 year period. This suggests that the first burst might have caused warming in just a few thousand years. Now we are going to do it in 100 years.
Sanders Bill Would Break Up Big Banks.
The appointment of a former UK minister to head the International Rescue Committee undermines the political independence of relief efforts.
They already face suspicion from some belligerents, which interferes with their relief work.
The political tide is starting to turn against Too Big to Fail.
This is largely a matter of political courage — we need officials who zealously prosecute banks and banksters. It is also partly a matter of needing laws and policies that would it difficult for a large bank to continue to exist.
I have proposed a way to convince large companies to split up.
Many unrelated organizations are backing AT&T's push to deregulate telephones.
It is because they have been bought.
Neocotinoids stop bees from learning to associate scents with nectar.
Neonicotinoid pesticides may be hurting birds as well as bees.
Greenland has curbed oil and gas drilling.
Sanctions against Iran may have backfired, encouraging Iran to speed up uranium enrichment.
The ACLU's arguments that the No-Fly list is unconstitutional.
A CIA agent that destroyed evidence of torture is being considered for an important post.
Not one senator spoke in favor of Obama's plan for disguised social security cuts.
The Ballooning Number of Corporate Kangaroo Courts Is Destroying Our Right to a Fair Trial.
A small amount of cell phone location data is enough to identify the person carrying the phone.
More reason not to have one.
The FBI wants to be able to monitor gmail and dropbox in real time.
To debate this request in terms of details is to miss the point. The US government has far too much surveillance power already. Any increase is a step in the wrong direction, regardless of details.
A man got fired for making jokes in Pycon that alluded to sex.
Making jokes referring sex, as such, is not wrong. Making a joke about "fork" or "dongle", as such, is not wrong. To criticize these things is prudery.
I don't know precisely what those people said; there might be more information in Richards' blog post, which I cannot access. Perhaps their words deserved criticism for some other reason I have not seen.
In the absence of that, they are the ones who were wronged. Pycon should not have criticized them for this (not even privately), they should not have apologized, and they certainly didn't deserve to be fired.
This appears to be an attempt to reimpose oppressive 1950s prudery. Richards and her supporters deserve to meet firm resistance. However, I would not have called for her to be fired for this, and sending her threats of violence was inexcusable.
Richards does wrong by publishing a blog in a site that won't let people even see the text without running nonfree Javascript. But, assuming you are wise enough not to run nonfree Javascript code, that will be her loss, not yours.
Crucial documents in the Bradley Manning trial are being kept secret. This reinforces the fact that his leak was a public service.
Guatemalans testified about massacres committed by soldiers under the orders of the former dictator Rios Montt.
Meanwhile, anti-mining activists are being killed.
If your camera has Internet capability, it will be used to watch you.
Krugman says Cyprus should leave the euro.
It is worth noting that the now-destroyed tax-haven banking industry of Cyprus was a bad thing. Eliminating it was a positive step, even though eliminating it inevitably means economic decline for Cyprus.
However, it would be better to do it in a way that doesn't cause so much poverty.
Lots of small investments can fund a small solar power project.
Monsanto and the Seeds of Suicide.
Whether to allow patents to apply to growing plants is a public policy decision. It should be made in the best interests of society, and farmers are a bigger part of that than Monsanto.
Everyone: pressure Obama to allow a strong Arms Trade Treaty.
Israel government no longer just supports the "settlers"; it is the "settlers".
They gave Obama a document calling for annexation.Global heating helped a fungus attack coffee plantations in Mexico.
A threatened species of possum in Australia is likely to be made extinct in a decade or two by global heating.
30% of Britons say they would pray for world peace if they prayed for anything. What does that imply?
The UK government claims each privatization will provide some rational benefit, but they are all excuses: for those politicians, privatization is an end in itself.
Israel's blockade of Gaza includes ordering fishermen not to go more than three miles out — but fishermen get shot without warning even less than three miles out.
Israel recently tightened the blockade as a collective punishment.Peru Declares Environmental State Of Emergency in its Rainforest (due to pollution from years of oil extraction).
Talking about the danger of global heating makes the public more concerned, but the public rarely hears about the issue. Thus, one right-wing lie is that the public hears about this too much and shrugs it off.
The US Senate went on record opposing cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The right-wing uses bogus moral issues about private life and sex to distract attention from issues of public morality that threaten all of us.
Supporters of the banksters influence the views of US politicians because the people the politicians know are those supporters.
A House committee proposes to extend the CFAA to make persecutions like that of Aaron Swartz possible in a wider variety of cases.
Russian exile Berezovsky appears to have died by hanging.
People do hang themselves inside locked rooms, but I don't think they cut themselves down afterward. Is that even humanly possible?When pork producers promise to end use of a practice, the promise is filled with so many hidden "except for"s that it adds up to nothing.
Internet companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple are increasingly putting iron curtains around their services, trying to make their users semi-captive.
Before MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air, it ordered him to present twice as many Conservative guests as Liberal guests.
The Internet's total surveillance makes 1984 look like freedom by comparison.
I dispute only one of Schneier's claims: that it is impossible to do without all the snooping computerized services that he cites. I do without almost all of them, almost all the time. You can, too. See http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html.
This year's blizzards and cold waves are the paradoxical result of global heating. Here's how that comes about.
As heating progresses, it will cause more floods and more droughts.
Campaigning in Texas against explicit racial bias in executions.
The Obama regime wants to be able to read your email without a warrant on a variety of pretexts. But this is being spun as support for increased privacy rights.
The New York Thug Department arrests tens of thousands of youth for possession of marijuana, mainly from minority groups, and this does considerable harm to them.
These same groups suffer from persistent low-level repression in the form of arbitrary searches on the street without probable cause.
With federal agencies doing very little to inspect US animal farms, and undercover private inspectors being banned by states, in effect there will be no inspection.
Perhaps undercover journalists will be able to publish their exposé of farms through Wikileaks, like Bradley Manning.
Palestinians in several villages are threatened with expulsion from their homes because the Israeli army declared the region a military training zone.
An interview with Mustafa Barghouti, one of the founders of Palestinian nonviolent resistance.
Morsi has arrested five prominent dissident leaders.
He is applying laws in a biased fashion: strict towards secularists, and lax towards his own supporters.
US-style SLAPP suits have hit Israel and are intimidating people who complain about companies or officials.
Two paths for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Tracking the movements of the most southerly population of polar bears finds that, as expected, global heating is hitting them hard.
Arizona is considering a law to require transsexuals to use public toilets in accord with the gender on their birth certificates.
If this law passes, transsexuals who visibly resemble their chosen gender could make an effective protest simply by obeying it. "If my presence makes you uncomfortable, don't blame me — complain to your state legislator." We could call this "civil obedience" ;-).
"We Have a Right to Heal": Campaign Demands Justice and Reparations for Iraqis and Vets.
Teaching boys to be kind, rather than aggressive.
The Looming Threat of Water Scarcity.
US history books say almost nothing about the prevalence of rape by soldiers in Vietnam.
Investigating the World Bank's participation in forcing Ethiopian peasants off their land.
Poachers in Chad killed 86 elephants in a few days, a loss that would in normal circumstances take 20 years to replace.
A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying [Iraq] Veteran.
The disaster isn't over yet: al Qa'ida set off 12 bombs in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad.
One way is to prosecute Bush. The proper question is: What should a reasonably prudent president have known about the legality of launching a war, and why didn't that president know it?
The case can be based on a mountain of lies.
The Korean women who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese army still protest every week, those who still live, but Japan only condemns them.
The analysis in this article applies also to other cases, such as slavery and Jim Crow laws in the US. Today's Americans are not personally guilty for those wrongs, but the US owes compensation to today's descendants of the slaves, since they continue to suffer the consequences of the wrong done to their ancestors.
The Supreme Court upheld the right of first sale for copies people have imported noncommercially.
This is important for me personally, since I sometimes give the MIT library books printed in other countries. I am sure many of you will also find opportunities to exercise this right.
The Obama regime demonstrated its usual hostility towards readers and listeners when it supported the wrong side. I am glad to see it defeated once again, but this is not enough.
What we really need to do is to establish the right of first sale for all published digital works. Publishers should not be allowed to make you sign that right away. When you pay for a copy, no matter how they try to describe it, it should be your property, and you should be allowed to give it away, lend it, or sell it. (And share copies, too, but that's a different point.)
The NRA has succeeded in blocking the ban on assault weapons, but the ban on large magazines is still being considered.
"Better school security" probably means some harmful measure.
Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt is now on trial for the massacres carried out by his soldiers.
They killed around 250,000 in total, but the trial is about 1700 killings in a few specific massacres.
The US should apologize to Iraq for the destruction it carried out there.
This implies paying reparations as well; but at present it is hard to see how to do that in an effective way while the violence continues.
A book of photographs and testimonies of soldiers in the Bush forces that came to condemn the mission they were sent on.
The article goes too far in claiming that "any action perceived as unpatriotic towards America was met with moral outrage, or even banishment by family and friends" at the time. I condemned the Bush regime as war criminal every week, expecting to rile supporters of the regime, but I can hardly claim that this required any special courage. It required moral firmness and conviction, but not courage, since I was in no danger.
However, the pressure could well have been greater on people in military circles.
James Goodale, who counseled the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers, says that Obama is a worse enemy of press freedom than Nixon was.
Cyprus has rejected the plan to cut people's savings.
Western officials admit that sanctions on Iran have failed to either force Iran to make nuclear concessions or provoke a rebellion.
It won't provoke a rebellion because Iranians blame the West, not their own government. A few years ago, they protested in the street against their government's tyranny, but now they are more angry at us.
The Boy Scouts of America's prejudice against gays is closely related to its prejudice against atheists.
A disabled Briton is suing to block a privatization she fears will ruin her life or endanger it.
The US is developing autonomous weapons that will choose targets on their own. Israel has already sold some to China.
Syrian rebels now have a government and have elected a prime minister, but it is not clear whether that will have any influence on events in Syria.
The Philippines will give women gratis birth control, but bans abortion and even emergency contraception.
New UK press rules threaten freedom of some blogs.
The prosecution of Bradley Manning threatens all US journalism with censorship.
The article ends by crediting al Qa'ida for the menacing censorship in the US, but al Qa'ida only provided an excuse. Those who hate our freedoms, politicians such as Bush and Obama, are responsible because they took advantage of the excuse.
A new coalition calls for extending the 4th amendment properly to people's digital communications like phone calls and letters.
Surgeons in Iran are running out of anesthetics due to US-imposed financial sanctions.
New York City will require stores not to display cigarettes.
I think it is legitimate to take measures like this to discourage use of dangerous, addictive drugs. But I fear that the WTO will try to stop them, on behalf of tobacco companies.
The campaign for divestment from fossil fuel companies.
Cambodian Workers Wrest Justice from Wal-Mart and H&M Supplier.
Importers should be required to document all their suppliers (including subcontractor), and those must provide whatever surety is needed to assure their workers are properly treated. Any treaty that stands in the way of this must be torn to shreds.
Arctic lands are turning into a temperate zone, with a shorter winter and three other real seasons.
"The types of plants that could go no further north than 57 degrees north 30 years ago are now found at 64 degrees."
Calling for the right to unlock any technology product, and the information needed to repair it.
Of course, all programs should be free software, and all repair manuals (and all other manuals), since they are works made for doing practical jobs with.
Big mining companies disposed of their pension obligations into a spin-off company designed to go bankrupt, as a way to eliminate those obligations.
Statistical modelling concludes that global heating has already made Katrina-style hurricane storm surge 2 to 7 times more likely.
In other words, each time it happens, global heating is the main cause.
Republican National Committee Plan: More Money In Politics, More Influence For Rich People.
The effort to blame the awful plight of the young on Social Security and Medicare is picking up steam.
Andrew Auernheimer was sentenced to prison for telling reporters that AT&T had a security hole.
The US government firmly defends large companies such as AT&T against everyone who doesn't bow down for them.
Obama plans to keep troops in Afghanistan for a long time.
It is no surprise that the US is saying that the Afghan army just got far more effective. It always says that.
900,000 US veterans are waiting for benefits, and some die because they can't get funds for treatment.
The ideological demand for unlimited movement of money and investment between countries may be losing its grip.
US Aids Honduran Police Despite Death Squad Fears.
This fits with the US's general policy, ever since the coup, of supporting the coup-introduced repression quietly and deniably.
The True Costs of Industrialized Food.
One smuggler was caught with over 10% of the population of an endangered species of tortoise.
Having a gun makes you more likely to be killed with one — but it's not only because someone can take your gun and shoot you. There are many causes. For instance, having a gun (or even seeing one) leads people to behave more aggressively.
The lesson of Cyprus for the US is that the US had better stop banks from taking dangerous risks.
That requires ending "too big to fail" and "too big to jail". The US should have 50 times as many major banks, all small enough that we can let them fail.
My proposal for a progressive tax on business income could help encourage banks to stay small. It is possible to apply this proposal only to banks, or to all business.
Russian thugs raided the Moscow office of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.
US citizens: sign this petition to help low-income US college graduates get out of student loans they cannot repay.
The Cyprus bank bailout ultimately protected insured savings up to 100,000 euro, and savings above that will only be partly lost.
Creditors and stockholders of the worst banks in Cyprus will bear a large part of the loss.
If people with lots of savings now pay more attention to whether the banks they use are solvent, this might in the long term be a good thing, restraining banks from taking large risks as in the past. Governments might think twice before accepting a stake in a bank that is headed for failure and thus burdening the public with that bank's losses.
However, countries thrown into depression by austerity measures (including Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal as well as now Cyprus) need deficit spending to get out of depression, and the euro zone rules won't let them do this.
The continuing resolution to fund the federal budget also has two give-aways to agribusiness corporations. One attacks farmers' rights; the other exempts GMOs from judicial review.
Corporations Are Behind The Common Core State Standards — And That's Why They'll Never Work.
The Dangerous Myth That Climate Change Is Reversible.
It's not reversible by cutting emissions, that is.
We could reverse global heating if we could actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere — but nobody knows a feasible way to do that at the scale that would be necessary. Plans for future "carbon capture and storage" are designed to operate on the exhaust of a power plant, where CO2 is much more concentrated than in the ordinary atmosphere and that makes it easier to do. Even CCS does work, all it will do is reduce the CO2 emissions from the plant.
The ACLU has sued to allow Guantanamo prisoners to publish information about how they were tortured.
Until they are permitted to tell us, we must make do with songs such as Guantanamero.
A Tennessee Republican calls for "making sure that [only] the right people are voting."
He means, people likely to vote Republican.
The US border patrol operates drone surveillance on "frontier" areas so broad that 2/3 of Americans live in them, equipped with radio listening devices and means of recognizing individuals. They allow all sorts of thugs to look through these drones.
Fighting to protect an unusual wild forest in Cambodia.
World Bank Must End Support for Honduran Palm Oil Company Implicated in Murder.
State legislators often vote on questions that affect their financial interests.
EU poverty 'eating into the heart of society'.
Three million in Spain are now in extreme poverty.
The Palestinians of Jayyus won a court order to move the annexation wall to give them back more of their land, so annexationists settlers are building obstructions to stop them from from using it.
African journalists fear that UK press regulation will be encourage press repression in African countries.
I don't know what to think about the issue of UK press regulation, because I think it will be the details that make it good or bad, but the articles I see don't talk about those details.
The NSA divides its pervasive surveillance activities into little pieces so Americans don't notice what they add up to.
The effects of complete government surveillance can be seen in the imprisonment of John Kiriakou, based on searching his email to find something to accuse him of.
US citizens: call on the owners of the LA Times not to sell that or other newspapers to the Koch Brothers.
The US Trade Representative published misleading statistics to give the impression that the US-Korea "free trade" treaty is beneficial for Americans. This article exposes the distortions.
Free exploitation treaties are typically bad for most people in all
the countries involved, and
benefit
mainly businesses. This one is no exception. Americans and Koreans
should join hands to eliminate it.
Free exploitation treaties also often
interfere
with methods for managing fiscal crises.
Turkey's prime minister got a leading columnist fired. The columnist
had printed
leaks.
This nasty behavior is not as bad as what the US government did when
it harassed
a journalist's mother until he got upset and gave them an
excuse to prosecute him.
A film student made a video of Greek neo-Nazis, the Golden Dawn party,
some of whom spoke
in
favor of racism and even genocide.
Now they accuse him of secretly filming them, which is absurd since he
was pointing a big videocamera at them. However, even if that had
been true, it would not alter the fact that they said what they said.
Greeks have good reason to be angry, but these people are putting the
blame on minority groups and immigrants instead of the powerful rich
banksters. How convenient for the banksters! I wonder if that might,
perhaps, not be a coincidence. Are banksters bankrolling Golden Dawn?
US citizens: phone your senators and say,
"Legalize
sharing (through bittorrent, for example, and please don't call
sharing 'piracy')."
An EU study finds that
music
sharing does not reduce music sales.
If sharing did reduce sales, that would not justify the War
on Sharing. Fundamentally, people must be allowed to share, regardless
of secondary effects on anyone else. These data demonstrate a secondary
weakness in the record companies' arguments for the War on Sharing,
but we must be careful when we use it to avoid giving the impression
that the war would be justified if it could be shown that sharing
did reduce some company's income.
Please take pains to reject
use of the word "piracy" to refer to sharing. That word is enemy
propaganda.
Spain's government plans
further
attacks on sharing.
What the occupied Spanish people think about this is of no importance
to them, not in this and not in anything else.
People in Minnesota who assisted the suicide of a woman who suffered
from incurable pain face criminal charges, though the law against
"advising" suicide was ruled
unconstitutional.
To help people escape from suffering, at risk to oneself, is heroism.
These laws are simple cruelty.
Most of the senate
voted
to endorse the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
If one of your senators voted for this, phone to rebuke that vote.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Justice to stop prisons
from gouging prisoners with amazingly high prices for phone calls.
US citizens:
call
on Attorney General Holder to end solitary confinement
for minors.
I would rather sign a petition to end it for everyone, but this would
be is a step forward.
An ACLU lawsuit
upheld
the right to use New York subways without an ID card and to take
photos there.
If you are arrested for an unjust reason, don't feel humiliated!
There is nothing shameful in being arrested — think of the great
dissidents who have been arrested, and realize that you are starting
to follow their path.
It is impossible to argue that Dubya was right in claiming that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, so US newspapers try to do
the next best thing: to
make
it appear that Dubya made an honest mistake.
Israel hypes the
Iron
Dome anti-missile defense much as the US did
the Patriot Missile during the first Gulf War.
In both cases there is doubt that they did any good at all.
The speech
Uri Avnery wrote for Obama.
It can be compared with Obama's
real
speech.
Years after the civil war ended, Sri Lanka still keeps tens of
thousands of Tamils in prison, including civilians, and
tortures
them. Thus, the UK faces pressure to boycott the annual
Commonwealth meeting foolishly planned for Sri Lanka.
Scandinavian countries provide examples of
good
ways to handle failing banks.
A misguided
copyright decision puts digital clipping services in danger.
CVS wants to compel its employees to hand over
personal
health details.
16
Giant Corporations That Have Basically Stopped Paying Taxes —
While Also Cutting Jobs!
California's sequoia trees could be
killed
by global heating.
The UK government, after deciding to test the unemployed looking for
excuses to kick them off government help,
set
targets for how many people to kick off.
Israel has
apologized
to Turkey for attacking the Mavi Marmara.
The apology says that errors led to killing the activists and does not
admit wrongdoing.
I hope that Turkey will insist that Israel should end the blockade of
Gaza rather than allow a weak apology as a substitute.
Global heating is helping to wipe out the
traditional
fish of Mumbai.
Hyped ideas of
resurrecting
extinct species, which are a long ways
from really working, threaten to undermine the will to prevent
extinction.
Some of the obstacles can certainly be overcome. We know how to raise
orphan baby birds so they can be released to the wild, so the lack of
parents of the same species could be overcome. However, other problems
might be more difficult.
I am in favor of research into resurrecting extinct species,
but we should resist over-hyping them.
Americans who don't obey the mainstream political line face
personal
attacks. For instance, Chomsky faces attacks against his style and
mannerisms, as well as false accusations, all used to distract from
his points.
You can see elements of this also in criticism of me. One can try to
argue against my views based on reasons, without personal insults; but
you'll find a number of forums where people repeat personal insults
(often false) about me, deriding my views without addressing them
in the hope of preventing them from being considered.
If you see that happen, I hope you will respond by bringing discussion
back to the points about freedom that really matter.
US paddlefish (relatives of sturgeon) are now threatened by the
practice of passing
off paddlefish roe as caviar.
Fighting
to repeal the Louisiana creationism education bill.
Libyan freedom-fighter Hassan Al Amin, first exiled by Gaddafi, has
been forced
into exile again. He says that militias have hijacked the
revolution.
This has a bearing on what to do regarding Syria. Here's a
proposal
for a new way to intervene, neither militarily nor through economic
sanctions.
A new plan for Cyprus protects bank deposits
up
to 100,000 euros.
I think this plan is legitimate, because bank deposits beyond 100,000
euros can be lost if the bank fails. The modern idea that the state
should dump the burden on the public rather than allow a bank to fail,
is precisely what creates "too big to fail". This partial loss of
deposits over 100,000 euros could be seen as a soft kind of bank
failure.
However, this is only legitimate if the bank's owners receive the
first hit.
Unemployed Britons who were ordered to work for no pay then sued the
UK government and won. Now the UK government is passing a law to
retroactively
nullify the judgment, for no reason except that it
doesn't want to pay this much compensation to the victims of the
scheme.
Reportedly that article was originally published by an organization
called Civitas, which then took it down, but someone else posted a
copy.
I think it is legitimate for the state to retroactively annul
arrangements that gave other parties power over the state, in cases
where such power should never exist. For instance, Chicago's
privatization of parking fees. It's a different story when what is
annulled is a matter of ordinary people's rights.
Paying this judgment to unemployed Britons would be good for the UK
anyway. Even if this judgment had not occurred, even if this
imposed-work-for-nothing scheme had never been set up, it would be
good to give the unemployed more. (And the working poor, too.)
Beekeepers and activists have
sued the
EPA to end the use of bee-toxic pesticides.
Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party has a
chance
of being allowed to participate
in the next Haitian elections, after being excluded twice as a
consequence of Aristide's forced exile.
Aristide was
kidnaped
by US soldiers and taken out of Haiti,
when Bush decided to impose a more compliant regime there.
Obama may move some of the CIA's drone attacks to the Pentagon.
This could impose more obedience to international law, but it might
also reduce
theoretical congressional oversight.
However, it
won't
apply to Pakistan, which is where most of the CIA's
drone attacks are done.
In the US, poor people charged with misdemeanors may be told they
must
not dare demand to talk with a lawyer.
Human Rights Watch
criticizes the Truth and
Reconciliation law passed in Nepal, because it offers an amnesty
to people that committed grave crimes in the civil war.
The idea of a Truth and Reconciliation procedure is to offer an
amnesty in exchange for full confessions, to help the factions that
fought make peace. This is one important goal; punishing criminals is
another. Truth and Reconciliation sacrifices the latter for the
former. I would not want to say that is wrong; it seems to have
worked well in South Africa. I can't judge whether it is a good
approach in Nepal, or generally.
Many public libraries
block
access to the torrentfreak.com, a news site.
What
NAFTA has done to Mexicans.
On misplaced
sympathy for Steubenville rapists.
It should be noted that part of what makes rape so painful is the
tendency for family and society to be nasty to women for having been
raped.
This is bad enough in the US, but even worse in some other countries.
For instance, Samoan men rape unmarried women and then order their
victims to come home with them; the victims obey because they expect
to be rejected by their families afterward. In many Muslim countries,
the victims might be imprisoned or killed.
To regard a woman as "damaged goods" is to treat her as "goods"
rather than as a person.
The Internet needs to follow the
same
principle as postal mail:
the messenger is not responsible for anything wrong with the message.
In the US:
support
the Arkansas Promise: college education for every student
that does well in High School.
The US is prosecuting journalist Barrett Brown, who was
investigating
private spy and military contractors, by strained charges as it
did to Aaron Swartz.
US citizens:
call
on the government to ban drilling in Alaskan Arctic seas.
Why does the US want to protect
dangerous
business negligence by prosecuting security hole whistleblowers?
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to send you a copy of
the TPP
negotiating text.
You can't have one, and neither can they. That's the point.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
tell
Conoco not to drill in the Arctic.
The Sultan of Oman has
pardoned
the dissidents imprisoned for the crime of protesting.
That's a positive step, but protests must be legal, and likewise
criticism of the government, of the sultan, and even of you or me.
Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis writes about
being
prosecuted for publishing the leaked list of possible Greek tax
evaders.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to limit immigration detention to when it is
necessary and justified.
Everyone:
stand
with the people of Dryden to encourage them as they resist a
lawsuit from a billionaire who demands to be able to do fracking in
their town.
The Pentagon is covering up
the
size of Guantánamo hunger strike. and is obstructing
access for prisoners' lawyers and journalists.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to veto CISPA.
Obama, speaking in Israel, criticized the injustices of the occupation
and called on Israel to make a deal that allows a
real
Palestinian state.
However, he called on Palestinians to negotiate for a settlement while
Israel continues colonizing their land. Palestinians have recognized
that such negotiations are harmful since they only give Israel
cover
for colonization.
Obama surely realizes that this speech will not make the useless
"peace process" start moving again. It is only meant to communicate
to the public. The denunciation of the occupation makes it a better
statement than one might have expected, but getting Israel to
entertain a real peace would require real pressure from the US.
Here is the
whole
speech.
Kurdish leader Öcalan has called for a
cease-fire
with Turkey, which seems to be negotiating major concessions to
respect Kurds' human rights.
Land
Grabs Spread Throughout Developing World.
Beatrice Mtetwa, human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, was
arrested
responding to a client's request for help.
Tunisians face criminal charges for
"libeling
officials".
In Nigeria, an editor faces charges for an article that
criticized
someone important.
An activist sued the San Francisco Thug Department for
searching
his phone without a warrant.
How the tremendously increased inequality of the US
hurts
Americans.
Due to an issue on stallman.org on Friday, March 22, the site had to be
restored from a backup from a few days ago. Because of this, some notes that
were posted are no longer up and are being restored now. There may be some
other minor issues but everything should be back in order in a day or two.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators via 1-855-68-NO
WAR and ask them to
oppose
the AIPAC bills that would push the US into war with Iran, and to
insist that those bills go through committees.
US citizens:
tell
the U of North Carolina that complaining about rape
is not "being disruptive".
US citizens:
submit a
comment to the FDA against approving
genetically engineered salmon.
The US has agreed to pull its special forces out of a district of
Afghanistan where they are
accused
of torturing prisoners.
One aspect of Cyprus' parliament's rejection of the bailout plan was
that it wants Cyprus to continue serving as a
tax
avoidance banking haven.
Cyprus is
looking
for another way to rescue its banks, perhaps with
help from Russia.
However, it might be best if the banks simply fail, since savers will
be protected up to 100,000 euros. This will teach a salutary lesson
to banksters: yes, your bank can still fail, so don't take stupid
risks expecting to be bailed out if they go wrong.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to sign Rep. Lee's letter
against war with Iran. Also sign
this
petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Everyone:
call on the Maldives to stop punishing women who are raped.
I do not like addressing the coup leader as if he were president,
but I signed it despite that, for the sake of the issue.
Part of the New York Thug Department
systematically
left major crimes unreported while spending its time arresting
people for marijuana.
The labor movement and the climate defense movement
need
to work together.
Everyone: sign
this
petition in support of Iraq Veterans Against the War's
request for a hearing to investigate the war crimes of the Bush forces.
Rwanda has dropped certain forms of press censorship, but
journalists
remain in prison.
US citizens: call on
Exxon to stop pretending it supports education,
and instead pay its fair share of taxes for education.
Alexander Perepilichnyy appears to have been
murdered
by Russians for trying to track down the perpetrators of the giant
tax fraud which Magnitsky reported.
Iraqi women's rights activist Hanaa Edwar says that things are
not
looking good.
In Iraqi Kurdistan,
400
"honor killings" are reported each year, but thousands more may
occur.
49 congresscritters who call themselves "progressive" have refused to
take a firm stand against cutting Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid. See if
yours is one of them.
If so, complain!
Climate defenders were
arrested
blocking a Transcanada office in Massachusetts.
As the Obama regime tries to crush protests, it will put many
protesters on trial. The purpose of the jury is to stop the state
from imprisoning people for "crimes" that the public does not consider
wrong. If you are on a jury when a peaceful protester is tried,
always vote "Not guilty".
The pipeline will cause many deaths, and that is a bigger crime than
destruction of property. Thus, even sabotaging the pipeline will be
justified, morally and legally, by the principle of necessity.
The UK conclusively
rejected
freedom of speech, by convicting protester Bethan Tichborne for
carrying a sign that said Prime Minister Cameron has blood on his
hands.
Meanwhile, the thugs that beat her up afterward have not been
prosecuted at all. Typical.
It is the state which is guilty here — of criminalizing dissent
using ridiculous pretexts, just like many other
tyrannical states.
It's not yet spring, but
wildfires
in the US west have started.
Global heating is responsible for heat waves early in the year
(though not for precisely where and when this one occurred),
and increases the chance of droughts such as the one that
prepared the ground for this fire to spread.
In a couple of decades, it will be much worse.
A protest in Afghanistan
demanded
removal of US special forces, accusing them of torturing people.
The Taliban
kill more civilians than the NATO forces do, but they are
not foreigners. Ultimately, if Afghans do not support the
intervention, they will not forgive the damage it does to people.
The DMCA
destroys
cultural archiving, and can make our era's culture
into a future dark age (except for whatever illegal copies may survive).
It is conventional folly that says, "Don't copy things without
permission, and everything will be fine." Wisdom does not respond to
an attack on our rights by surrendering without a fight. Wisdom says,
"I always had, and still have in principle, the right to make copies,
and with digital technology that right is more useful, so this sneaky
method to deny it is intolerable."
More
details about the ruling that part of the PAT-RIOT Act is
unconstitutional.
The United Nations Development Program's head
condemned
the War on Drugs.
Federal prosecutors are again using the CFAA to attack someone for
an
annoyance that should hardly be a crime.
Right-wing pundits
grasp
at straws to find a sign that austerity causes something other
than poverty.
Ecuador will formally cancel a trade treaty with the US, because oil
companies are trying to use the
"investior-state"
provision that lets them sue Ecuador for doing anything that
reduces their profits.
This is what Uruguay should have done, when a multinational tobacco
company used
the Switzerland-Uruguay free trade treaty against Uruguay's
plain-packaging law for cigarettes. But Uruguay's government
didn't show the courage and strength of Correa's.
Americans, do you think our government should give foreign
corporations that sort of power over us? I call it treachery, a
betrayal of our country.
The World Trade Organization's treaty doesn't have an "investior-state"
provision, but it allows one country to sue another over laws such
as the US
ban on flavored cigarettes,
so it comes to the same thing. The WTO represents a betrayal of
our country and every other one that signed up to it, and when it
bands public health measures, it can kill. The WTO must be abolished.
A UN report on deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza concluded that one of
the many fatalities in Gaza may have been caused by a Palestinian
rocket that fell short. US coverage focuses on that one casualty,
and ignores
all the other casualties in Gaza that were definitely
caused by Israeli attacks.
The revolving door for prosecutors explains
why
they don't prosecute banksters: they want to work as lawyers for
those banksters.
They would rather prosecute easier targets, such as Aaron Swartz,
even if they don't really deserve prosecution.
A New York state assembly member who voted against legalizing medical
marijuana was caught
speeding
on the highway with marijuana in his car.
Crackers can now attack people by
faking
a 9-1-1 call to send a SWAT team to raid them.
This adds to the danger which the
numerous
unnecessary SWAT teams across the US already posed.
Greenpeace combats deforestation in China by campaigning against
disposable chopsticks.
US citizens: join
the Week of Action to stop CISPA.
March
Madness: The 5th Straight Year of Extreme Corporate Tax Avoidance.
The Shame of
America's Gulag: Its conditions are tantamount to torture, and
prisoners are worked as slaves.
A prison thug who
pepper-sprayed a shackled prisoner right in the face
managed not even to get fired for it.
Teaching US school children to
think
the conquest and occupation of Iraq were good.
Social
Security for the Next Generation? If You're Under 40, You Should Be
in the Streets.
Syria's government bombards civilians, and
tortures
and kills prisoners.
The rebels also torture and kill prisoners.
Sugar causes
euphoria in the same way heroin does.
Imprisoning people for using heroin is as absurd as imprisoning people
for using sugar, but it makes sense to design policies to discourage
excessive use of either substance.
In the UK, not only is protesting a crime;
a
gathering that the thugs think of as a protest is a crime too.
Zimbabwe is holding bogus elections again, with a
ban
on political meetings and short wave radios.
Iraq
10 Years Later: The Deadly Consequences of Spin.
Most journalists, like most politicians, decided to go along with the
pressure. Those who decided not to do that easily saw the holes in
Dubya's threadbare story.
US citizens:
call
for reducing the use of drift gillnets, which kill
lots of sea life for each fish they are intended to catch.
Indoor pollution
from stoves kills 4 million people per year.
The article described a plan to try to do something about it,
but I have no independent information about that.
The UN agreed on a
policy
about women's rights, but the Catholic Church
vetoed
any mention of their right to an abortion or birth control.
The Cyprus
"bailout" plan takes part of people's bank deposits.
The loss of some bank deposits is not shocking in principle. If a
bank fails, deposits up to a certain amount (100,000 euro?) will be
insured, and the rest might be lost entirely. The difference in this
scheme is that even deposits under 100,000 euro will lose 7%. This is
marginally worse for the non-rich. Why not let everyone keep the
first 100,000, so they are no worse off than if the bank had failed?
Why not let Cypriotes and permanent residents keep their whole
deposits, so mainly the Russian oligarchs get soaked?
Steubenville football team members were found
guilty
of raping a girl who had passed out drunk.
The people of the town had such an attachment to the football team
that they defended the players. I think it is childish to feel so
strongly about a mere game, or get that concerned about a struggle
over no real issue.
I think it would be good to show US high school students something
better to look forward to than getting drunk. But it is hard to do
that when they know that their future is only crap jobs, while
companies extract all the wealth from the US for the sake of
billionaires, banksters screw them over, and frackers poison them.
The UK is
removing
global heating from the school curriculum.
Instead of addressing the problem, hush it up. However, it's a silly
move. By the time the children affected become old enough to vote, or
influence the opinions of voters, the disastrous effects of global
heating will be visible to everyone.
Somali journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, who was imprisoned for interviewing
a woman who accused soldiers of raping her and intimidating her into silence,
has
been freed.
There is
some
evidence that the new pope lied to priests who were driven
into exile by the Argentine military dictators.
However, it does not prove he went so far as to betray them. I doubt
there is a way to establish the truth, and I don't think this evidence
is enough basis to conclude he was culpable.
However, it is a certainty that he opposes abortion, birth control and
gay rights. That is plenty of grounds to condemn him.
Israel is building
housing for Jews in the old city of Jerusalem,
aiming to prevent any part of the city from being available
as a capital for Palestine.
It would be justified to require Israel to hand these over to Palestine
just as it is justified to require Israel to hand over all its colonies
in the West Bank. However, another option would be to make Jerusalem
the capital of both countries.
Thousands
Rally in Budapest for Democratic Rights.
The government, which has over a 2/3 majority in parliament, is
changing the constitution in ways accused of undermining the
possibility of political opposition. I don't know enough of the facts
to reach a conclusion myself.
Houston has banned
feeding the homeless, and banned them from looking
for food in garbage cans.
Like many US cities, Houston wants to make homeless people go
somewhere else, such as the cemetery.
The Obama regime
surrendered
US agriculture to Monsanto, by declining
to challenge the tactics that gave it a near-monopoly.
Debunking
the rush to replace school lessons with computer games.
The article does not mention another problem with most of these games:
they are proprietary software.
Teachers
Make Handy Scapegoats, But Spiraling Inequality Is Really What
Ails Our Education System
The UK
will
not turn back from austerity, even though (or, perhaps,
because?) it is having its usual disastrous results.
The quandary
about aiding the Syrian rebels.
It is horrible to do nothing, but it is not obvious how to do
something with good effects.
US citizens:
call on the FDA to let its scientists present their
knowledge and conclusions to the public without hindrance.
US citizens:
submit
a public comment calling for rejection
of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to support a strong arms control treaty for guns.
A hedge fund was fined
$600
million for a $276-million profit based on insider trading.
At that rate of fine, hedge funds will do insider trading if they
think they have less than a 45% chance of being caught.
I expect they are caught under 4% of the time, so to deter a repeat,
the fine should have been over ten times as large. If the fund would
not agree to pay that much, perhaps the SEC should have prosecuted it
in court — shocking as that might sound.
Maryland will abolish
the death penalty, but may still execute the people already on
death row.
North Dakota is considering
a
law to ban abortions after 6 weeks, though not stated in so many
words.
The legislators that vote for these bills know that they are unconstitutional
under Roe v Wade. They are trying to create opportunities for right-wingers
in the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.
The UK government
obeyed
agribusiness and torpedoed the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.
Since the pesticide accumulates in the soil, it will take many years
before bees can return to the areas where it has been used.
Thugs in Angola confiscated dissident music, then
attacked
a protest against the confiscation.
Egyptian thugs attacked
two
groups of journalists during protests.
ACLU:
Five
Reasons Why the Courts Aren't Enough to Ensure Drone Privacy.
How the CFAA developed into its current oppressive form, and how Obama
proposed
to make it even worse.
Court
Says Obama Can't Talk About Drones and Still Call Them Secret.
The former head of the House ethics committee, Jo Bonner, says his
trip in Kenya complied with the
ethics
rules he helped develop. That's exactly the problem.
New
'Costs of War' Report: Hundreds of Thousands Dead, Trillions Spent.
The UK government lost a lawsuit to unemployed people who showed they
were unjustly penalized based on unclear rules. So the government is
pushing a
retroactive
law to deny the claims of unemployed people.
Apparently Tories think that the unemployed can afford the loss but
the state can't.
An ISP imposed 25 and 75-year contracts
on
entire housing developments in Virginia.
Fifteen
Benefits of the War on Drugs.
E-book stores are considering various sorts of
imitation
restricted "lending" and "resale".
This would, if implemented, eliminate one of several reasons why the
e-books are ethically unacceptable. However, the other reasons would
remain: every copy is controlled by DRM, and it is impossible to read with
free software. People would not be able to borrow or buy used copies
anonymously under these systems where every transaction is under
control of the central company.
This is still
not ethically acceptable.
US citizens: call
on Obama to clean up dangerous waste dumps from factory farms.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to put banks on trial when they commit crimes.
Aaron
Swartz Lawyers Accuse Prosecutor Stephen Heymann Of Misconduct.
Every US prosecutor knows about the legal requirement to hand over
information that might help the defense. When they don't do this, it
is because they are trying to get away with a miscarriage of justice.
"Cyberwar" rhetoric
plays
into the hands of spies and military in whatever country.
Obama will visit Israel and Palestine but
will
not do anything significant to further the cause of peace.
Anything significant would require resisting the pressure from the
Israeli hawks' lobby.
The US has recognized that Shell's plans for drilling in the Arctic
are inadequate.
Nobody knows how to reliably clean up an undersea oil well leak
anywhere, and even less so in the Arctic; thus, any plan Shell offers
will necessarily be inadequate. However, if Obama remains "committed
to drilling for oil in the Arctic", we must worry that the US will
accept some other, more specific inadequate plan.
Since we must leave 70-80% of all known fossil fuel reserves
in the ground, any reserves that are particularly hard or risky
to get at (such as these) should be at the head of the list
to be left untouched.
A UK university has banned an Islamic group from holding events there,
after the group tried to impose
sex
segregation on the audience in a debate.
Obama told Republicans he is sincere about
selling
out the people who voted for him.
How Hugo Chavez
defeated
US plans to privatize and rip off Latin America.
The
Back
to Work budget proposes to get the US out of its recession.
I support this, but I think that even more spending should be done
because balancing the budget now is a misguided idea.
US citizens: sign
this
petition telling Holder not to hesitate to prosecute and jail
banksters.
The Catholic Church still does
great
harm in the world.
Genetically engineered corn and soy is
wiping
out milkweed, and monarch butterflies too.
Global poverty has decreased substantially since 1990, but
environmental degradation including global heating threatens to throw
3
billion people into extreme poverty by 2050.
Two honest senators are trying to break up the big banks.
Alas, Obama like most of Congress has sold out to the banksters.
It is now clear that JP Morgan cut off standard reports to bank regulators
just as it was hit by a big loss.
We cannot tolerate the existence of banks that dare to cut off reports
to regulators, and we cannot tolerate regulators who allow a bank to
get away with this. "Too big to jail", indeed. We must chop the
large banks into small ones, any one of which could perfectly well be
allowed to go out of business, and none of which dares defy regulators
for even a day.
William Leonard, head of the US Information Security Oversight Office
for most of the Bush regime, says successive US presidents have abused
secrecy to grab increased powers.
"It is as if Lewis Carroll, George Orwell and Franz Kafka were jointly
conspiring to form official US policy."
The US Conservative conference demonstrated the extremism and racism
that we know slink among them.
The biggest danger of this is that it will enable Democrats such as
Obama to move ever further to the right, and still win elections by
saying they are not as bad as the ones who admit they are
Conservatives.
A US district court ruled that PAT-RIOT Act collection of personal data without a warrant is unconstitutional.
There are several hurdles to cross from here to a real victory, but at
least it is a start. Bravo, EFF!
Just as most Indians despise and abuse Dalits, the Dalits despise and
abuse the Thurumbars.
The Ambedkar quote is great: 'In Hinduism all are unequal, but some
are more unequal than others.'
The Muslim Brotherhood, in power in Egypt, attacked women's rights at the UN.
An Egyptian government internal report, commissioned by Morsi,
says thugs killed 800 protesters in 2011.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
Representative Markey's office and tell
him you oppose the "No Knives Act", which would ban common sense in
the TSA.
Markey is running for senator (to replace Kerry), so he has reason
to pay attention to anyone in Massachusetts, not just people in his
own district.
Tell Markey you are fed up with security theater and you appreciate
even this tiny intermission that the TSA has offered.
Indians in Peru and Brazil are
organizing
together against an oil company. Since we need to keep
70%
or 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, there is
no justification for trying to find any more.
Half the prisoners in Guantanamo are on hunger strike, but Obama's
response is to
cover
it up.
The Obama regime, confronted about
indefinite
detention in Guantanamo in the Organisation of American States,
responded by twisting the meaning of the term and denying the facts.
Indefinite detention means someone is imprisoned without a specific
sentence, and with no criterion for release. That is the case for all
the prisoners in Guantanamo, unless some have already been convicted
by military kangaroo courts — but I don't think any of those
have completed.
Obama refused
Democratic senators' request for information about drone
assassinations.
The senate should pass a law to restrict them.
US citizens: call 1-855-68-NO WAR and ask your senators and
congresscritter to vote against AIPAC's bills for war with Iran.
Dangerous, even carcinogenic artificial food colorings can be replaced
with
safe
color from vegetables and fruits.
25 governments are using the FinSpy malware program
to
get information from people's computers.
This includes regular human-rights violators such as Vietnam, Qatar
and the United States.
The
Cruel Gap Between CEO Pay and the Stagnant Minimum Wage.
A UK activist got a
court order to delete his file from a database on
"domestic extremists", since there was never any evidence than he was
one.
However, so far nothing has been done to stop thugs from accumulating
more records on him and other dissidents, or to punish them.
New
Gas Worth Nothing If We Take Climate Seriously.
Obama
Administration Excludes National Security Policies from
(supposed) Commitment to Transparency.
Even Democrats are
starting
to object to Obama's aggressive secrecy
and attacks on whistleblowing.
An activist mocked Sarkozy for an insult the latter had said to
someone, and received a criminal conviction for it. He appealed to
the European Court of Justice, which gave a
narrow ruling in his
favor: it was not a crime because he was satirizing Sarkozy.
When Sarkozy said the same words, that was not satire, so according to
this ruling, there was nothing to protect him from prosecution. Yet
he was not prosecuted, and still has not been. Apparently, the
censorship is applied in a politically biased way.
But Sarkozy should not be prosecuted for this, nor anyone else.
Personal insults, even serious ones, are part of freedom of speech.
France, and European countries in general, are greatly
lacking
in respect for freedom of speech.
US citizens: call
for showing Bradley Manning's trial on CSPAN.
Americans who are not rich get a raw deal when charged with crimes,
because they can't afford a lawyer who will do anything but ask
them to make a
plea
bargain.
US college students have to work so much for pay that they must
skimp
on studies, sleep, or both.
Camel's
Nose: Let's Outlaw Drone Strikes in the United States.
China's Dead-Hog Scandal Is Gross — But So Are the Hog Feces in
US Waterways.
'Unmitigated
Disaster': Iraq's Pain Has Only Intensified Since US-Led Invasion in 2003.
The article describes how the US has imposed disaster Iraq for 40 years
since it helped the Ba'ath party take power.
I question a few of the points. There are charges that Bush I's
ambassador Glaspie encouraged Saddam to attack Kuwait, but we can't be
sure. When Bush I decided not to take Baghdad in 1991, that may have
been a wise decision, and we don't know what would have happened the
other way. Also, I don't think the sanctions regime counts as
"backing" Saddam.
But these don't invalidate the overall conclusion.
Car manufacturers
systematically
cheat on fuel efficiency measurements.
That's in Europe — do they cheat similarly in the US?
An imprisoned Cambodian dissident has had his sentence
reduced.
That's a step in the right direction, but framing dissidents is always
bad.
Leveraged
buyouts that saddled many companies with large debts
may cause those companies to collapse.
If the companies declare bankruptcy, those who bought them out will
lose all, which is justice, and the banks will lose some of what is
owed to them, which is also justice. But some of those banks are so
big they are above the law, and make a habit of dumping their losses
on the public.
US citizens:
call
on the Bureau of Land Management to maintain
protection of wilderness in Alaska.
Award-winning Lao environmental activist Sombath Somphone was kidnaped
at a thug checkpoint in Vientiane, and the state is
doing
nothing to try to find him.
All these facts support the conclusion that the kidnapping was
organized by the state, and that it wants to make Sombath die of cancer.
Some Iraqi Sunnis are
planning
a renewed civil war to take control of Iraq away from the majority
Shi'ites.
I find it unlikely that they can defeat the majority even with financial
support from Saudi Arabia. I think it is more likely that Sunnis will be
massacred.
Don't
auction off empty TV airwaves, SXSW activists tell FCC.
The US stripped human rights from non-citizens first, and then
from citizens.
Paul Ryan's Connections to Insurance Companies.
He has a personal financial interest in his attack on government-provided
medical funding.
Breaking the Law, by Reading It.
Net Neutrality Neutralised in France?
The US has stopped publishing
data on
drone attacks in Afghanistan, and (amazingly) deleted the data it
had previously published.
I don't think using a drone on the battlefield is worse than using a
manned aircraft or artillery. Indeed, drones might be less bad, less
likely to hit civilians for instance. What makes drones specially bad
is their use off the battlefield.
Nonetheless, this secrecy is part of Obama's dangerous campaign to
keep
the people in the dark.
Many US states are considering bills to ban
undercover
journalism to expose disgusting conditions in farms.
Liberal New Yorkers have been duped into supporting a conservative
candidate for mayor,
because
she is gay.
I am glad if New York City is unprejudiced enough that a gay person
can win election as mayor, just as I am glad that it is possible for a
Black to be elected president. But I wouldn't support a right-wing
gay candidate like Quinn or a right-wing Black candidate like Obama.
Intersectarian war is ramping up in Iraq, this time fueled by
rivalry
between political leaders.
An MD in Scotland, campaigning for
legalization
of assisted suicide, says he gave medicine and advice to various
badly ill people who for sane reasons wanted to kill themselves.
Advances in solar and wind energy are steadily
driving
the prices down.
Now if only we took away the subsidies from fossil fuel and nuclear,
and put it into renewable energy, we could make great strides in
curbing global heating safely.
Domestic workers have been mostly
left
out from workers' rights in the US.
40% of children in large parts of Asia and Africa are
stunted
in brain and body due to insufficient food when young.
We need to help their mothers have fewer children.
Fossil fuel burner EDF has dropped its UK
lawsuit
against environmental protesters.
Public
Pays for Fukushima While Nuclear Industry Profits.
The surging US stock market means nothing for American workers, since
the corporations with lots of money
don't really
want to hire people.
Our
'Government of Laws' Is Now Above the Law.
Norway
Calls the World to Ban Nuclear Weapons.
Brooklyn
Community Says 'Enough is Enough!' After Police Kill 16-Year-Old Boy.
Manning
Statement Audio Leaked in Opposition to 'Extreme Secrecy in Our Courts'.
Since 2001, there have been 750 complaints of torture or abuse of
prisoners of Israel.
Not
one led to a criminal investigation.
Israeli troops are shooting Palestinian protesters
dead.
Why
Today's "Cannibal Cop" Conviction Should Terrify You:
There is no evidence that he intended to carry out any of his fantasies.
US citizens: phone your senators and say to vote against SR 65,
which would encourage Israel to attack Iran by promising US support.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support the Democracy Is For
People constitutional amendment.
We also need the amendment saying that
human
rights, in general, do not apply to corporations.
The UK will
block
an EU plan to ban the pesticides that appear to kill bees.
A New York thug was
found
guilty of plotting to kidnap women and eat them.
However, the thugs that attack protesters and then try to frame them
are usually
not even prosecuted.
If Corporations Don't Pay Taxes, Why Should You?
The US has ignored the lessons of Fukushima. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
routinely ignores accidents it is supposed to penalize.
Bloomberg's NYC ban on large sugary drinks was struck down by a court, but this victory for obesity-promoting big business is nothing to celebrate.
To prevent antibiotic resistance from growing, we must change practices
that release antibiotics into the environment (farms, rivers etc.).
Phone manufacturers are surely funding a lawsuit to abolish a US law
requiring them to discover whether the minerals they buy from the Congo
are funding war there.
Proof that investment banks cheated companies when handling their IPOs,
in order to get kickbacks from clients that would buy the stock.
The European Union needs a way to expel member states that turn to
dictatorships.
It also needs to be, itself, a lot more democratic.
The US Trade Representative has a job of vital importance: giving
business more power over the US. It just release a disingenuous
report pushing harmful goals justified by dishonest reasoning.
Former Presidents of Brazil and Switzerland say that the War on Drugs
is an offense against human rights.
Corporate welfare outrage: proposing a retroactive tax break for a giant
and profitable company.
An Israeli landfill in Palestine is spreading toxins and carcinogens.
Caught on video: fanatical "settlers" beat up a teenage Palestinian shepherd
as soldiers watched and did nothing to prevent the attack.
Israel's system of imprisoning Palestinian minors systematically
violates their human rights, says UNICEF.
US citizens:
support the I am Not a
Loan campaign to free students from overhanging student debt.
Aung San Suu Kyi, now in the Burmese Parliament, supported a crackdown on
protesters
on
behalf of a Chinese-owned copper mine.
The local people will probably support the mine if (1) their
environment and health are properly protected from pollution and (2)
they get a fair share of the wealth that the mine will generate. This
is feasible, but the owners probably want to skimp on it so as to
increase their profits. There is no excuse to let them get away with
this. Aung San Suu Kyi and Parliament ought to tell the mine
investors to give the local people enough to convince them to
approve the mine.
US citizens:
sign
this petition calling on Obama to stand up for Tibet.
Wolves are a success story for endangered species reintroduction,
but several states are
trying
to eradicate wolves even though their
numbers are still few.
Somali journalists were
attacked
as they tried to cover a court case.
Peculiarly, the court agents wanted the press to cover the session,
but soldiers interfered anyway.
Afghan government forces members keep on
shooting US and Afghan government
personnel.
In Iraq, civilians were killed frequently for driving near a US
convoy, after soldiers mistook them for attackers. Once soldiers know
an attack can take that form, it is natural that they protect
themselves. However, by doing so, they generate public hatred.
Unless the populace hates the guerrillas enough that they forgive the
soldiers, there is no way for the soldiers to win their hearts and
minds once this cycle gets started.
Many
things can be determined about a Facebook user, with pretty good
accuracy, from the user's published list of "likes".
If you do as I do, and reject Facebook, you are safe from this form
of snooping.
How can we get the news items that interest us, without telling a
server what criterion to use? Simple: download lists of items, and
have software on our own machine decide which articles to show. This
software can fetch additional articles (which it doesn't actually show
us) just to create a false trail.
One of the accused Delhi bus rape-murder gang
committed
suicide in prison, or was murdered.
Look at the ridiculous response of the victim's relative, who is
incensed that the man is dead because he wanted the man killed. There
are valid and sufficient reasons to punish rapists and murderers, but
sadism is not one of them.
If, however, the man was murdered, that is a different issue. The
state must not kill prisoners or let them be killed. However,
all people, even prisoners, have the right to commit suicide.
Ideas parents dislike "spread like a fungus" on the Internet,
so filters are being developed to
block
access to discussions about topics such as anorexia.
The article clearly shows the lack of clarity about the purpose of
these filters. Is it to prevent children from "stumbling upon"
something they don't want to see, or to prevent them from finding what
they do want to see? The former might be easy, because the child will
cooperate with it. The second is much harder, but I suspect that's
what parents really want.
If such filters ever work well, millions of parents will use them to
keep their children from finding out about evolution or the principal
reason for the current local drought, flood, big storm, heatwave,
agricultural plague, or other effect of global heating.
US citizens:
submit a
public comment against the Keystone XL pipeline
whitewash study.
If (only) the Dalai Lama were Pope.
The Obama regime says it set out to kill al-Aulaqi after getting
Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) to inculpate him, but multiple
evidence shows it had already made this decision earlier, when reportedly
it knew nothing about him except that he was expressing hostile views.
Meanwhile, inculpation by a prisoner such as Abdulmutallab is hardly
a solid basis to conclude someone is guilty of anything.
Zerlina Maxwell, debating a right-wing show host, rejected the idea
that women should carry guns to stop rapists, and said that we should
put the blame on men who rape.
Irate right-wing men sent her rape threats.
Amnesty International condemned the Iraqi government for continuing
disrespect for human rights.
EU Bans Sale of Cosmetics Tested on Animals.
Two AIPAC-sponsored bills would push the US towards war with Iran.
Americans for Peace Now explains how they are dangerous.
The Drone Question Obama Hasn't Answered.
The New York Times asks congress to repeal the 2001 authorization for
using military force.
Note that doing this "effective on withdrawal of US troops from
Afghanistan" might have no effect, since Obama wants to leave some troops
there permanently.
The movement to resist urban noise shows that popular opposition
to the effects of technology can force technology to change course.
How religious beliefs (probably Christian) help habitual criminals
silence their consciences.
Human Rights Abuses Spiral in Iran: UN.
Obama has increased the rate of refusal of Freedom of Information Act requests
to a record.
In the [US] South and West, a Tax on Being Poor.
Tens of thousands are marching to Delhi to protest river pollution.
Senator Warren tore into the US bank regulators for their lax attitude
towards their probable future employers.
The top US admiral in the Pacific Ocean says the biggest threat
to the US there is global heating.
Hollywood now
bows
down to China much as it
bows
down to the Pentagon.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, oppose attacks on
birth control and women's health programs. Also sign
this
petition, but the phone call will have more impact.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call for
rulemaking about use of drones for surveillance
in the US by the border patrol.
A list
of many kinds of information that companies regularly collect
about most Americans.
They don't get most of this information about me, because I am a
surveillance
resister.
Everyone:
call
for protection of sea turtles in Baja California.
US citizens:
call
on the US to follow international law about assassination.
US citizens: call for the US to
stop
predatory "payday loans" that gouge the poor.
US citizens: Call
on Attorney General Holder to prosecute banks, not consider them
"too big to jail".
US citizens:
call
on Obama to work for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.
US citizens: the Keystone XL pipeline, which would threaten civilization
in the long term, would first threaten caribou habitat.
Call
on the US to consider this issue properly.
Dubya's conquest and occupation of Iraq was arguably the
biggest US
foreign policy mistake in its history.
It was also an act of
aggressive
war: the crime for which German and
Japanese leaders were executed.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to end "too big to jail".
Tobacco companies and their submissive governments are
using
the World Trade
Organization to attack Australia's plain paper packaging law for
cigarettes.
They make the absurd argument that companies have a right to draw
further profit from their investments in advertising.
The WTO ruled against the US law against
flavored
cigarettes, too.
The World Trade Organization kills people by subordinating human lives
to profit. Let's kill it before it can kill again.
A proposed US-EU free exploitation treaty threatens Europe with another
attack
on democracy that could increment the political power of business
up to US
levels.
The US inspired hatred in Iraq using the
same
methods that were so effective in Latin America.
But the Pentagon isn't satisfied, and wants to do it again, this time
with no restraints.
The School
of the Americas is still operating; its name was changed
in the hope we would forget.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Arbitration Fairness
Act, which would stop companies from imposing forced arbitration on
customers and employees.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
A 6-year-old in the US was arrested for crossing a street, and for
going to a store on her own.
When I was 6 years old, I had to cross streets and avenues to get to
school. Avenues in Manhattan are several lanes wide and the cars go
rather fast. But this was nothing special — every child did it.
The UN Commission on the Status of Women is being undermined
by a right-wing leader who is bowing down to the Vatican.
The European Union is considering an extreme censorship proposal
in the name of ending prejudice against women.
I've seen porn on German TV stations, late night. I suppose
that would be banned too.
Having guns in your house makes you less safe. Allowing concealed weapons
leads to more gun crime.
It is takes constant practice to use a gun well enough that you
could stop an armed assailant.
Google has obtained a royalty-free patent license for the VP8 video
format (used in WebM), effectively for everyone.
I hope that some browser developers will now stop refusing to support
VP8 format.
Refuting criticism of Chavez.
Biased, nationalist history considered as a secular counterpart of theology.
Teachers' unions recognize the closing of public schools, while
opening nonunion "charter" schools, as simple union-busting.
O'Keefe, who destroyed the community aid group Acorn, has paid compensation
to an employee he smeared.
What disappoints me about this article is that it shows no hint of a
doubt that there is something bad about setting up a brothel.
Obama will try Abu Ghaith in a civilian court.
This is the right way to do it. At least Obama has passed up one
opportunity to trash human rights. If he passed up more of them,
I might consider him a good president.
A sperm whale was killed
by the plastic waste it swallowed.
Maimed London protester Alfie Meadows was found
not guilty of "violent
disorder" after his third trial.
The government goes to great lengths to try to repress protesters.
Meanwhile, the thug who attack Meadows has not even been charged.
Another protester was convicted of arson for burning a wooden bench.
This is perversion of the word "arson" and shows, once again, the
repressive nature of law in the UK.
The UK government has cut
support for poor people that have more bedrooms
than the state judges they need; but the UK doesn't have enough smaller
apartments to house all of them.
Even when they can find smaller apartments, the requirement to move
could cause them great hardship and expense.
The school-to-prison pipeline starts with five year olds that talk
about playing with toy guns, or imaginary toy guns.
It might be better for parents to stop raising children in a way that
gets them used to guns; but not by threatening to punish the children.
New Report Exposes How High Frequency Trading Drains Investment and Jobs from the Real Economy.
A US appeals court ruled that border agents need "reasonable suspicion"
to search the contents of a traveler's laptop.
That is a step forward, but the criterion remains very weak.
The Justice Department intervened in support of a man who made
a video of thugs beating up men they were arresting.
Three cheers for this, but it doesn't look like lawsuits against thugs
are enough to make them stop this. They should be prosecuted.
Some states may resist the New Generation Science Standards for religious
reasons.
Giving US thugs military weapons has resulted in many killings of
innocent civilians.
Thus, SWAT teams make Americans less safe.
The problem is due to federal programs to fund SWAT teams. Once a
city has a SWAT team, it feels a need to use that expensive resource,
with the result that people are regularly exposed to the danger.
Even small cities with little crime have armored vehicles
that are designed to fight other armored vehicles.
The ACLU is investigating to find the extend of the problem.
Why drones endanger privacy worse than helicopters.
How states are proposing to regulate drones.
US budget cuts could endanger efforts to control leaking tanks
of radioactive waste.
Stores track customers' cell phones.
They can't see me this way.
Microsoft allows Skype to be censored in China, and tries to make
this sound like normal business.
A bar has banned Google Glasses to protect its patrons' privacy.
Why Chevron's multimillion political payment was apparently illegal.
Even if Chevron is fined ten times the amount it gave, that may do no
good since the payoff on political influence payments is often
hundreds or thousands of times what was given.
The loophole Chevron is trying to use — giving through one
subsidiary while contracting through another — should not be allowed
either.
The legal argument for allowing Super PACs to receive unlimited donations
from corporations is that they would be independent of the political campaigns;
but in practice they are hardly independent.
Even if they were indeed run independently, they would still tend to
buy the support of candidates, who know full well which companies want
which policies.
The bad US health care system kills around 50,000 people a year
because they can't afford care.
It also bankrupts many people — over 60% of bankruptcies in the US
were caused by medical expenses.
Solving this problem requires putting an end to many profitable,
exploitative businesses, including some that have the form of
"nonprofits" (as explained in Brill's article). Thus, we need
to steel ourselves to ignore the protests of those businesses,
as we change to a system that serves our needs. As for the
owners of those businesses, they'll live.
Global heating and other ecological degradation threaten a global
collapse of civilization, due to food insufficiency among other things.
The greatest crimes known are genocide and aggressive war. The
companies and crony politicians now keeping civilization on track for
collapse are committing both of these. A global food insufficiency in
a few decades would be the biggest genocide ever seen, and will
trigger bloody wars between the desperate starving and the frightened
ones with some food.
I propose that people should assemble, now, a database on all those
responsible, both the leaders such as the Koches and the followers
such as Obama. With this database, they can be punished, and their
ill-gotten gains can be taken away from them or their
descendants. We should make sure they cannot buy their way out
of the catastrophe they are imposing on the rest of the world.
If we make this clear enough, soon enough, we might even scare them
into allowing measures to stop global heating.
100 women in Ulster have stated they have used abortion pills,
as a campaign against restricting abortions there.
Combining "predictive policing" with a society of fools that allow
Internet services to know thousands of daily details about them
could lead to pre-emptive
arrests of people who somehow resemble past criminals.
I wonder what effect it had on the 13-year-old girl that the police
took her computer and turned her into an unintentional stool pigeon.
Ellen Brown praises Beppe Grillo's economic plans for ending austerity
in Italy.
Time magazine presumes that war with Iran is only a matter of time.
To the extent that this facilitates starting the war, the war would be
a matter of Time.
A Massachusetts bill would ban Internet services from data-mining
data stored by schools.
I am in favor of this bill. I don't care how it would affect specific
companies such as Google or Microsoft: it would be an advance in the
public's rights.
At the same time, I don't think it goes far enough. Even if this
becomes law, people should not store any private information on remote
storage services without encrypting it before upload.
The EFF supports a bill introduced to tighten rules for government access
to some sorts of people's digital information.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the nebulous term "cloud",
but its conclusions are valid anyway.
The US unemployment rate would be at 9.5% if we included the people
who have given up on finding work again due to the recession.
Keeping terrorism trials in US courts works much better than using
Guantanamo kangaroo courts.
What's more, it is closer to real justice,
There was a big antinuclear protest in Japan, two years after the
Fukushima disaster started.
The cleanup may take 40 years,
and let's hope there isn't another tsunami during that time.
Rich people are investing in profiting from global heating.
The danger is that those businesses will have an interest in global
heating and will lobby against efforts to reduce it. Some of these
businesses should be banned just to ensure that doesn't happen.
A shocking case illustrates the dishonest
way the UK government
imposes privatization of state schools, over the wishes of the
community.
UK university students are on
strike to block privatizations.
Death sentences for accused
football rioters have led to an insurrection
in Port Said.
Rand Paul's filibuster against Brennan's appointment got straight to the heart
of Obama's rationale for ordering assassinations.
New York thugs regularly arrest people for carrying a condom, if they
look suspicious. Supposedly that proves they are prostitutes.
Even if they really are prostitutes, that is an injustice. There is
no justification for banning prostitution. All that does is oppress
the poor.
Chicago's mayor claims school closures are a way to save money
but it looks like they are just union-busting.
The military/industrial/congressional complex is spending billions
on planes that the air force does not need, which illustrates how
there is a lot of room for cuts in military spending.
The UK government is corrupted
through links between ministers and oil
companies.
Antibiotic resistance is spreading
in bacteria that live in people's intestines.
India's coal-burning electric plans kill
around 100,000 people per year
and cause 20 million new cases of asthma per year.
At a debate in London between Islam and Atheism, the Atheist debater
refused
to speak unless women were allowed to sit wherever they wished.
Bravo!
Efforts to teach Pakistani drivers safe driving founders due to an
Islamic fatalism about death.
CITES has given protection to 5 species of sharks which were most
heavily threatened.
The ICC prosecutors have dropped the case against one Kenyan politician
after a key witness said he was lying.
I don't know enough to have any idea what the truth is in this.
Bush discouraged public attention to the cost of the occupation of
Iraq, which facilitated corruption and waste.
In the UK, nuclear power plant operates keep their benefits but shift the
cost of disasters to the public. This creates moral hazard, encouraging dangerous practices.
I recall that the US has a similar policy, though I don't have a
reference for it.
Gang rapes against women activists in Tahrir Square are being hushed up
by Islamists.
US citizens: phone your senators and call for
moving
nuclear waste to medium-term dry storage, rather than leaving it
in pools next to reactors.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call
for the US to stop big banks from issuing
exploitative payday loans.
Uranium mining in Australia threatens the world's
oldest
rock art.
If that uranium is mined and put in reactors, it can damage more than that.
After NHS budget cuts, the UK government
criticizes
the demoralized staff. They want these overworked people to be at
the top of their form all the time, to make up for the insufficiency.
The British Commonwealth chose to have its next meeting in
Sri
Lanka, ignoring that government's systematic repression.
A Somali woman talks about the gang rape by Somali soldiers, followed
by
persistent government efforts to hush it up and protect them.
A company handling UK medical care for the NHS has
lied
hundreds of times about the level of staffing it provides.
Privatization of an activity means a company extracts profit from it.
To find that profit, the company has to squeeze someone or something.
In this case, it's the patients.
The US is now
almost as unequal in wealth as Brazil.
The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing to
end
use of solitary confinement as a punishment for prisoners.
One prisoner (at least) was punished with solitary confinement for
filing a lawsuit against the prison.
A woman who was badly sick got a late-term abortion but died anyway.
Now anti-abortion religious fanatics are
trying to attack her.
I've read they also want to cancel the surgeon's medical license.
If
women change their names on marriage, that hurts their careers as well
as perhaps their self-respect.
The article ends, sad to say, with an argument in favor of changing names:
to screw up use of Facebook. However, if you do the
right thing and reject Facebook, that argument disappears.
Venezuela after
Chavez must face the issue of the global heating
caused by its oil exports.
Journalists in Tanzania
face violent attacks.
Australia's Climate Commission holds global heating responsible for
the
record hot summer.
CITES voted not to ban polar bear hunting.
If polar bears are reproducing in plenty, but they can't all survive
due to the changed habitat resulting from global heating, a certain
amount of hunting will not affect the future size of the bear
population — in effect, it will cause some bears to die instead
of others. I don't know what that amount is, or how it compares with
the 600 or so polar bears killed annually by hunters.
Sausages are a lot more dangerous that
horsemeat-contaminated chopped meat.
Two brave doctors in the US do late-term abortions. Here is a description
of the threats and hostility they must face every day.
Any pregnant woman in the US might find her life depends on these
doctors, if certain complications of pregnancy occur.
Kansas is considering a law to treat embryos as persons.
Birth Control and "The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition".
McDonalds is
working foreign students for no pay. So they went on strike.
What it Means that
Monsanto Holds the Patents on Life.
Gas from tar sands
oil extraction is poisoning people in Alberta.
The driver of the car in
which
Oswaldo Payá was riding says
that he made a false confession under duress,
and that the accident which may have killed Payá
occurred when a government car rammed his car from behind.
British Bush forces gave
no
painkillers to wounded Iraqi prisoners.
A hatred of Iraqis pervaded the Bush forces; this might be an instance of it.
Venezuelan politicians accuse the CIA of
causing Chavez to get cancer.
I find it the accusation unlikely. It would not surprise me at all if
the CIA tried to assassinate Chavez. He was an enemy of the banksters
that Obama generally serves, and Obama openly practices assassination.
However, the chemicals that can cause cancer do not act reliably or
quickly, unless perhaps if given in massive doses, and I think that
might cause other acute problems. Is there a carcinogen that might
plausibly be used for this?
Stability in Iraq depends
on punishing US torturers.
Linking US-sponsored
torture in Iraq to US-sponsored torture in El Salvador.
A US congressman says that Abu Ghaith
deserves
to be punished for propaganda praising the September 11 attacks.
Isn't expression of opinion supposed to be a constitutional right?
There may be other grounds to prosecute Abu Ghaith, but the US should
not punish anyone for mere opinion.
What the European Parliament and Rand Paul say about Obama's
assassination policy and his
evasive responses when asked to justify it.
Al Qa'ida is not an enemy army; it is a criminal gang. The US must
recognize this and treat it that way, and grant the usual respect for
the rights of the accused.
On the Legacy of Hugo Chavez.
How Chavez earned the
hatred of US plutocrats.
Over 200 people a year starve in UK NHS hospitals
because the staff are overworked and cannot attend to them.
This could easily be avoided — it just takes hiring enough staff.
Will plans to make record-keeping take less time help?
Maybe. This efficiency could be an opportunity to increase the time
staff can spend on patients. However, this could be used as an
opportunity to reduce the level of staff.
If the
NHS is effectively privatized, which one do you think the new bosses will do?
Hungary's governing party is accused of taking the country towards
absolutism.
CO2 emissions rose in 2012; it was the second-largest annual increase
ever measured.
UK thugs pleaded guilty to selling
information about celebrities to a newspaper.
Airline employees, irrationally concerned about minor dangers,
are pushing the
TSA
to cancel its common sense.
Could someone please run a national campaign to support the change?
How the Tea Party grew out of tobacco company PR that
denied the health danger of tobacco.
Relating
US snowstorms to global heating.
The Attorney General
openly said that some US banks are too big
to be prosecuted no matter what crimes they may commit.
These banks are mortal enemies of the independence of the United
States. Don't be distracted by pipsqueaks such as al Qa'ida —
fight the banksters. I am sure they have killed a lot more than 3,000
Americas in the past few years.
US citizens: call on Congress to close tax loopholes used by
corporations and the rich.
Everyone: call on Bayer to stop
selling neonicotinoid pesticides,
since they appear to be killing bees.
In the US:
tell Comcast to stop lobbying against paid sick days
for workers in Philadelphia.
Obama is
"reaching out to Republicans" again.
What could they have in common? Obama has
already said he wants to cut Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid.
This makes it all the more important for Americans to phone their
members of Congress to demand that they sign the Grayson-Takano letter
and promise to vote against any such "grand bargain".
Don't let Obama and the Republicans impose
any more sacrifices on poor
Americans.
Rich Venezuelans who live in Florida are celebrating the death of Chavez.
They hate him because he did not let them exploit Venezuela as they wish.
What this shows is that they have no shame about exploiting the poor.
Sad to say, they have come to the right country. The US would be much
better off economically if it had a Chavez as president. And our
human rights would be safer, too. Chavez famously violated human
rights on some occasions (and I have criticized them), but he's a
human rights hero compared with Bush and Obama.
Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden are
filibustering Brennan's appointment to head the CIA, in order to express their opposition to
Obama's claim to be allowed to kill anyone anywhere.
In the US:
tell
Target to stop selling clothing made by slave labor in
Uzbekistan.
Britons:
write
to MPs to save the libel reform bill.
US citizens:
thank
Obama for nominating Gina McCarthy to head the EPA.
US citizens:
tell
Obama to reject the State Department's whitewash of the
Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
A Venezuelan opposition leader faces
criminal
charges of influence peddling in 1998.
I won't assume these charges are false — this was the sort of
thing that politicians did. However, it seems like excessive to bring
such charges 15 years later.
Government officials warned in recent years of the danger of
dictatorship
in the US.
Laws are now effectively
secret.
The State Department's whitewash of the planet-roaster pipeline was
written in conjunction with a consulting company that also
works
with oil companies including the Koch brothers.
It looks like Obama has been bought and is constructing a web of lies
to serve as an excuse.
Vote for Benjamin Kallos for New York City Council
The "Internet of Things" is really a scheme to
morph everyday life
into a complex of marketing/surveillance activities presented as a new
form of friendship.
I don't want to have a "relationship with a brand". I don't want to
give companies any information about me when I buy or use their
products. I have
opted out almost completely from these twisted uses
of the Internet.
There are several different uses of the network that people call
"cloud" due to not understanding them. When an article says "the
cloud", the author means, "It uses the network, but I don't know
how or why; I don't know what I'm talking about."
Secular journalists in Tunisia
face death threats from intolerant
Islamists and obstruction from the state.
At least 8 billion dollars of
Iraq "reconstruction" funds were wasted
outright.
Much of the rest did little good.
Pentagon and Petraeus
linked
to Iraqi torture centres.
Zainab Al-Khawaja, Bahraini dissident, has been
imprisoned over and over for peaceful protests.
Obama showed some more assassination opinion memos to some senators,
but not to us.
Obama has
made Guantanamo even nastier than it was, and most of the
prisoners are now on hunger strike since they know they can't be
released.
Obama, like Bush before him, makes me ashamed of my country.
I am proud I didn't vote for either of them.
ALEC is pushing laws in US states to lower minimum wage.
The Supreme Court may authorize thugs to collect DNA from every person
who is arrested, on the pretext that it is for verifying identification.
Put this together with the school-to-prison pipeline, and they will
get samples of every American's DNA in the future.
Obama's assassination rationale: "If a high official does it, it's not
illegal."
A More
Independent South America and the Chávez Legacy.
Tariq Ali
describes the Chavez he knew.
Google Glasses could
turn millions of people into data collectors for
Google, giving data about themselves and others.
If these devices were running free software, you could decide what information
to give to whom, rather than being used by them.
Citizens of the EU: protest
against austerity on March 13 and 14.
Efforts are being made to clean up depleted uranium in Iraq.
I suppose the cleanup plans include only a fraction of the most
contaminated sites. The question to ask the US and UK military:
"If some enemy invaded your country, would you fire depleted uranium
shells?"
President Chavez of Venezuela
has died.
Hugo
Chávez Kept His Promise to the People of Venezuela
Obama, naturally, used the occasion to repeat his perennial criticism
of Chavez. Obama works for the banksters, and the banksters really
really want to get Venezuela back under their dominion. The US
senator, meanwhile, pretends that Venezuela's elections are less
democratic than US elections.
I have some criticisms of Chavez. I don't like his support for
dictators, the plan to
shut
down the main opposition TV channel, and the arbitrary punishment
of some opposition figures (recall that
the
US is at least as bad).
Overall, however, I think Chavez was a far better president than Bush
or Obama, in terms of the mission of the state: to assure the freedom
and well-being of the people.
A teacher at the Friends School in Ramallah was
barred
by Israel because she refused to become an informer.
When masked Israeli "settlers" attack and harass Palestinians, the
border thugs typically support the harassers. Here's a photo showing
a
soldier shaking hands with a masked "settler".
The villagers of Yasuf have been blocked for years from access to
their farmland by fanatical "settlers", who also
burned
their mosque.
Many US "cloud storage" companies
check
the files that users store, looking for "illegal materials".
Today they check for known images of sexual abuse of children.
Tomorrow they could check for whatever the government wants them to
check for.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say,
"AIPAC
[the Israeli Hawks' lobby] does not speak for me — I am against
attacking Iran, and against Israeli colonies on Palestinian land."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Measuring the US development into a dictatorship:
only
two of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are still heeded.
This article details how the US government regularly makes monkeys out
of the rest of them.
Abu Dhabi has tortured 70 dissidents
I disliked Chavez's friendship with Iran and Gaddafi's Libya, but it was
no worse than western support for the regime in Abu Dhabi.
The TSA has decided to
permit
small retractable knives in the cabin.
A small bit of common sense.
The woman who died in a California nursing home apparently
did
not want CPR done to her.
To respect her wishes would have been correct, but the nurse on the
phone did not say she was doing that.
If you're going to do CPR, the sooner the better. Thus, the policy
she cited — to call an ambulance to come and do CPR —
makes no sense at all.
Thugs in Sydney
threw
a man on the ground and brutally injured him.
In usual thug fashion, they plan to fabricate an accusation against him.
It may get thrown out by the judge, but it will do to protect the thug from
facing justice.
Offensive language does not excuse attacking anyone. Not even if the
attacker is a thug.
Transcript:
Lawrence
Lessig on Aaron's Laws Law and Justice in a Digital Age: Section I
You're
Not Allowed to Use Public Transportation At All : A Report
from Israel's Segregated Buses.
A legal
victory for generic medicines in India.
I am not sure what the "Intellectual Property Appellate Board" is,
or even whether it is an Indian agency or an international one.
However, its name endorses a bogus concept,
"intellectual
property".
What the present
rise in the Dow average
says about the US.
The
Sequester Is President Obama's Fault.
It is because he supported the right-wing idea of cutting the deficit.
Obama wants to raise the US minimum wage, but
not
enough.
Walmart billionaires are
trying
to privatize education in Los Angeles.
Their charter schools treat teachers like Walmart employees.
A marathon race in Gaza has been cancelled after
Hamas
refused to allow women to participate.
3 million years ago,
giant
camels lived on Ellesmere Island, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean.
We may get camels there again in a century or two, if we don't change
course now.
The UK and New Zealand plan to follow Australia in requiring
plain
packaging for cigarettes.
Uruguay adopted a similar law years ago, but a cigarette company with
headquarters in Switzerland used an
Uruguay-Switzerland
free exploitation treaty to force Uruguay to cancel the deal.
A UK thug is on trial for using the government's data base to
find
vulnerable women and push them into sex.
This
isn't
the first time.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to cancel the artificial crisis
that is crushing the US Postal Service.
US citizens:
Oppose
the proposal to allow aspartame in milk without
mentioning them on the label.
Aspartame isn't sugar, but it is associated with other health problems.
In addition, artificial sweeteners confuse a
brain-stomach
feedback loop, and that tends to encourage obesity.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to legalize unlocking of mobile devices.
The executives of the Kabul Bank fraud got a fairly
light sentence.
Nonetheless, it is better than the way the US treated the perpetrators of
foreclosure fraud. Obama basically let them
off the hook.
South Korea has decided to advocate a UN human rights review of North
Korea.
I think this is the right decision. Once in a while, keeping quiet
about tyranny makes it possible to do some good, but if this becomes
common, the effect is to help tyranny continue.
A nurse working at an old age home in California
refused to administer
CPR to a dying inmate, saying that the company had forbidden staff to
do this.
It would be proper to ban companies from having such policies, but it
would also be interesting to investigate whatever motivated the
company to adopt that policy. Perhaps some laws underlying that
motivation also should be changed.
2/3 of the forest elephants of Africa have been killed in the last decade,
and with increased poaching effort, they could be extinct quite soon.
The overthrown president of the Maldive Islands was arrested
on apparently political charges.
How Niger, a neighbor of Mali, avoided problems like those of Mali.
The US stock market has surged up. Is it a coincidence that this follows
the massive budget cuts of the sequester?
The budget cuts will hurt the real economy over coming months, but
gain for the rich are not tied to gains for the real economy any more.
For the rich, this disaster may be opportunity, and that may show up
in stocks.
There are effective and ineffective ways to cap bankers' pay.
The Swiss scheme seems to be a good one, but the
EU is looking
at a worse one.
Taxing financial transactions would help protect the US from Wall Street.
No wonder Obama is against it.
The Gates Foundation has set up a data base about millions of US
school students and made it available to companies.
Parents should organize to demand that their school systems not
participate.
A veteran of the Bush forces is mortified by the damage he helped do
to Iraq.
North Korea threatens to cancel the 1953 cease fire.
This seems like the usual North Korean bluster: it already launches attacks
at will, and has broken the cease fire many times.
CPR doesn't always do good — often it results in a short extension
of helpless life.
This argues against a policy of insisting on CPR. However, it is no excuse
for a company that orders qualified employees never to perform CPR.
Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike (force-fed) for 12 years to
protest India's repressive rule of Kashmir.
Now she faces prosecution
for attempted suicide. This is ironic considering that the ruling Congress Party was once led
by a famous hunger striker, Mohandas Gandhi.
Why We Must Resist Netanyahu and the Hawks' Reckless Push for
War on
Iran. Ten years ago, Katharine Gun leaked evidence of US/UK spying on UN
delegations, and prevented Bush from getting a
UN resolution in
support
of his conquest of Iraq. She was prosecuted for this,
but charges were dropped. Her only regret is that she was unable
to prevent the war.
I hope you will join me.
Chicago workers fought off two companies in succession that wanted to shut down their factory, and now have the chance to run it and buy it
Evidence was presented in court about torture and murder by the British Bush forces.
The UK secret courts bill passed the House of Commons. That will be used to quash lawsuits from torture victims.
Manta rays are endangered because of superstitious use of their gills.
If Switzerland Can Crack Down on CEOs, Why Not the US?
BY 2050, ordinary ships will sail across the Arctic Ocean. Won't that be neat?
Ice-free Arctic water will mean a lot more heat is absorbed. Isn't it stupid to talk about the savings in shipping, as if that could be significant against the disaster this will cause?
Biden insists Obama is really prepared to start a preventive war with Iran.
Outside of a few specific issues, he is "Republic an lite".
US citizens: if your congresscritter is in this list, thank him for signing the Grayson/Takano letter promising to vote against any cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
If your congresscritter is not in this list, phone and say, Sign the Grayson/Takano letter! Defend our Social Security, Medicare
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Apple is reportedly making legal threats against a computer-controlled sex toy called the iGasm.
As far as I can tell, the only unethical thing about the iGasm is that it is made to work with an iThing. Can it be used from some other computer?
I'm informed that the device connects to an audio output and should work with any audio player.
A bill in New Hampshire would ban aerial photography entirely, except when carried out by the government.
The aerial photography that most needs to be regulated is that done by, or for, the government. This is because the government has the greatest power to hurt you with whatever it sees. However, as shown by the example of CISPA, if company collects information about people and hands that over to the government, it has the same effect as if the government collected that information.
In rejecting responsibility for cholera in Haiti, the UN betrays its own purpose.
However, the intervention in Haiti was also a betrayal of that purpose, since it only supports the US's goals in Haiti.
It is very important for you personally to refuse to use Facebook, especially if some of your friends do (or might), because that's how you influence them, for good or for ill.
Southern Company now expects to receive an 8-billion-dollar loan guarantee for building new nuclear power plants, after making a donation of $100,000 for Obama's inauguration.
There was a campaign urging Obama not to accept donations from companies for inaugural events, but he ignored it.
The motto of US business: invest in politicians, because there is no higher rate of return.
Former Libyan dissident Belhaj, tortured by Gaddafi with British help, says he will settle his case for 3 pounds and an apology.
Belhaj deserves an apology, but more than that is at stake. The UK government has a history of aiding nondemocratic regimes that torture, first Bush then Gaddafi. It will probably do this again, if we don't take steps to stop it. Therefore, we must make sure that future aid to torturers cannot be covered up.
If Belhaj wants to prove his goal is not his own enrichment, I think it would have been just as effective to pledge any possible compensation payments to charity.
An interesting Greenpeace protest: setting up a fracking rig in the constituency of a right-wing politician, to show his own voters what he has done to them.
Farm workers in Florida are pressuring supermarket chains to agree to decent wages and working conditions.
Toxic chemicals get get into food, particularly milk, through plastic implements used in milking.
This is one more demonstration that we can't expect people to protect themselves individually from toxins. It has to be done by regulation: by designing food processing to be safe for everyone.
Wall Street's incentive structure encourages traders to take wild risks that hurt their employers.
India's government, under world pressure, gave tribes rights over the land where they live. Now it is trying to partially cancel that.
Burma's proposed new press law fails to adequately defend press freedom.
Thugs in Port Said, Egypt, started by firing back at people who were shooting at them; but they continued firing for a long time, shooting at unarmed people. Egypt's government has not tried very hard to investigate.
Chicago's Board of Education creates a crisis, and charter school operators reap the benefits.
Cardinal O'Brien, who recently resigned under pressure from to accusations of sexual abuse, has apologized for them in a vague way which does not admit anything specific.
Perhaps his suggestion that priests should be allowed to marry was an attempt to do something to save future priests from a situation like the one he was in. If so, I am glad he made the attempt. I would not be surprised if that bothered the Vatican more than the sexual accusations against him.
Troops in Afghanistan shot two boys during a battle, taking them for Taliban fighters.
Accidents like this will happen in war, despite the best efforts to avoid them. If the Afghan people were enthusiastic about the US-lead intervention, they would accept a certain level of accidents.
What bothers me most is that we can't count on US soldiers to try their best to avoid killing Afghan children.
PM Shinawatra says she will ban the ivory trade in Thailand.
A Somali woman who accused soldiers of raping her has been release from prison, but not the reporter who interviewed her.
Swiss voters approved a law to limit pay for executives.
This should be adopted world-wide, and any politician who does not support it is apparently working for the rich.
Here's an indication of how far politicians will go to support their paymasters.
The company Ernst & Young has made a deal to avoid being prosecuted for tax evasion, but some of its employees were convicted.
Obama's ISP-implemented system of punishment without trial for sharing has a secondary flaw: it is so bad in terms of security that it invites others to attack users in another way.
The Malaysian government paid US columnists to smear an opposition political leader.
I don't know enough to have an opinion about Anwar Ibrahim, but the Malaysian government tramples religious freedom by prohibiting Muslims from converting to another religion or to Atheism.
Apple's email service silently censors suspected sex.
US executives responsible for distributing food contaminated with salmonella are being prosecuted individually.
Uhuru Kenyatta, candidate for president of Kenya, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for stirring up violence in the previous election.
Global heating will fall especially hard on the Middle East.
Everyone: thank Bradley Manning for showing us what the US government was really saying and doing.
US citizens: sign this petition to require background checks for gun purchases in the US.
US citizens: call on Congress to cut its own salaries as other federal employees' salaries are being cut.
"School choice" (vouchers) hurts more than just unions.
UK doctors accuse the government of trying to privatize the NHS by stealth.
Just about everything that right-wing government does that concerns programs to help the non-rich is a stealthy way of cutting them.
Uri Avnery: the torture of Arafat Jaradat might have been part of Netanyahu's attempt to provoke Palestinians into a third intifada, much as Ariel Sharon provoked them into the second intifada
Over 100 million Americans are regularly exposed to levels of trihalomethanes that can cause cancer.
It will be difficult to reduce the level, since chlorine needs to be added to drinking water to kill dangerous bacteria, and reducing farm run-off is a gigantic task (although there are other benefits from doing it).
Minnesota, the "land of 10,000 lakes", has overdrawn its aquifer for years and is now in trouble.
Republicans are willing to crash the US economy to get what they want.
However, I will make a stronger statement (inspired by Naomi Klein's idea of "shock capitalism"): crashing most of the US economy is part of what they want. If they were in power, they would make most of the same spending cuts, with a few notable exceptions (corporate welfare).
US movies and TV systematically propagandize for the US military, and now for the CIA as well. They do not leave this to chance.
Did Arafat Jaradat Die Under Interrogation?
Protesters across Portugal chanted, "Austerity kills."
The Department of Homeland Security has spent almost 800 billion dollars, but isn't using that money very well.
The corporate media stand behind their economic quack remedy, pretending that government spending cuts will make the economy grow even though it repeatedly does the opposite.
They should try dowsing for buried coins instead. At least that might succeed, once in a rare while.
US citizens: tell Obama to veto CISPA.
Al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula now promotes "open source jihad".
This confirms I was right to decide not to support open source.
The government of Lagos, Nigeria, regularly bulldozes slum neighborhoods because poor people don't fit their PR goals. 30,000 people can be made homeless in a day.
The slumdwellers of Lagos could dig bulldozer traps and disguise them with real shacks. This would make the state think twice about its massive acts of cruelty.
US cities are also often cruel to the homeless, for the same callous and evil reason: they look ugly and are bad for business.
This is not to say that these poor people have no duties of their own. There is one thing they should not do: reproduce. However, we who are wealthier have a duty also: to pay for their effective long-term contraception, and abortions as needed.
The US State Department report on the planet roaster pipeline closed its eyes to the pipeline's environmental dangers.
In the US: join the rapid response protest team against the planet-roaster pipeline.
Since the Hindu fanatic party got into power in Karnataka, journalists there have been attacked and imprisoned.
Saudis protesting against imprisonment without trial were arrested and imprisoned without trial.
They are protesting about the imprisonment without trial of previous protesters, who were themselves protesting imprisonment without trial.
This developed into a protest against the minister in charge.
Isn't it a shame that the US is an example of bad conduct on such an important issue?
Freedoms Online in France: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
Right-wing rulers of Canada and US are trying to resurrect ACTA.
The CISPA Government Access Loophole.
Government-imposed Chinese censors make extra money on the side by censoring on behalf of anyone who will pay.
Western countries are providing arms to Syrian rebels, including surface-to-air missiles.
Sharks need protection to prevent their being fished to extinction.
Roundup contains other ingredients besides glyphosate, and some of them are toxic too.
Obama wants a free exploitation treaty with the European Union.
The use of the term "intellectual property" shows that the plan is based on confused thinking. However, "free trade" treaties in general represent a surrender of state power to business, which makes them bad for all but the rich.
The right-wing wants to cap benefits for the poor, but not for the rich.
The US keep on expanding the growing of crops to make fuel, even though it has been clear for years that this is a wasteful and harmful practice.
The UN is investigating Sri Lanka's record of oppression and atrocity.
Suggestions from CITES about how to end poaching of large animals.
The US government shares the blame for the Big Spill, because its regulatory agency encouraged risky drilling.
This in no way exonerates BP, not even partly, because the oil companies were eager to do risky drilling and the regulatory agency was bowing to their wishes.
City must wake up to digital growth, says tech investor.
Perhaps it is better for Britons generally to discourage the replacement of the high street with Internet sales. The UK is not compelled to leave this question to chance or happenstance.
The South African thugs that killed Mido Macia have been arrested.
However, punishing the culprits of one thug attack is just the first step towards ending the thugs' reign of terror.
Bradley Manning's statement.
For millions, Manning's heroism is established.
How to force registered sex offenders out of a city: build some tiny parks, leaving no place they can legally live.
HIV infection in the US is concentrated in states which don't offer proper education about how to avoid it.
As standardized tests constricts around children and teachers, teachers and students in one school have decided to boycott these tests.
Why is the US government not helping in the prosecution a former Haitian "president" (dictator)?
While right-wingers look for ways to "invest in the apocalypse", it is not too late to prevent it ... if we try.
For California condors to survive requires a complete cessation of use of lead ammunition, but the NRA opposes this.
January 2013 was the hottest month ever recorded in Australia, and this summer has been the hottest summer ever recorded in Australia.
In 40 years, this deadly heat wave will be normal for summer.
The UK government is deceitfully blocking EU action to protect bees from neonicotinoid pesticides.
Opposition party supporters in Bangladesh rioted after their leader was sentenced to death.
I have no knowledge to judge whether Sayedee and other defendants are guilty of those crimes. It might be so. At the same time, it might be that this is a politically-minded attack on the opposition party.
Even if they are guilty, they should not be executed.
The South African thugs that dragged Mido Macia from their van, and killed him, made up a bogus excuse: they said he tried to grab a gun from them.
This excuse is bogus in two ways. First of all, it's false: evidence shows Macia didn't do it. But it's bogus in a deeper way: even if Macia had done that, it would not have justified dragging him to his death. It would have justified arresting him and charging him.
If Macia had indeed try to take a thug's gun, that would be grounds to arrest him and charge him, but not to drag him on the ground from a car. No circumstances could ever justify that.
These thugs should be tried for murder, and perhaps this time they will be. However, most of the thugs that attack innocent people enjoy impunity.
Other acts of amazing brutality by South African thugs.
Women who had long-term affairs with police spies talk about the lasting harm that this does.
One change that should be made, to prevent this from happening again, is to stop treating protesters as gangsters or terrorists. The state should not try to protect businesses from the inconvenience of a protest.
Obama has intervened in favor of same-sex marriage in the Supreme Court.
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to do its job and block Navy plans to injure an estimated 13000 cetaceans with sonar.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to oppose Graham's bill that would endorse an Israeli attack against Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call the White House and ask Obama to visit Bil'in and Budrus when he goes to Palestine
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Ethiopian immigrants on their way to Israel were pressured into taking somewhat dangerous contraceptive shots, which were continued afterwards.
This was apparently done for racist motives, and racism cannot be justified. However, a non-racist, uniformly applied policy of limiting reproduction can be justified. There is no room in our small planet for people to take the attitude that "to have a lot of children is to be rich."
Obama's signals suggest he is not really going to do anything about global heating.
There is an additional reason people should not have children now: they will probably be killed by in the global heating disaster, a few decades from now.
Spain's recession has got worse, falsifying the state's predictions that it would improve.
This will mean lower tax revenue, which will increase the budget deficit that Spain's government is destroying lives to reduce. So they will have to make more cuts, and so on until someone has the guts to stop the cycle and tell the EU to drop dead.
Meanwhile, the nationalized bank Bankia, made from merging the large banks that were failing, has become worthless.
Its only purpose, apparently, was to lure its customers into losing money.
Apple is testing software to block a widely used jailbreak program.
Although jailbreaking an iPhone has been explicitly ruled lawful in the US, that doesn't guarantee there will be a way to do it. Don't make this assumption — don't buy products that need jailbreak.
The decline of wild bees can devastate agriculture, since they do a better job of pollinating than honeybees do.
Bradley Manning pled guilty to 10 charges, and not guilty to the rest. This is a summary of what he said.
Glenn Greenwald says that Manning's statement demonstrates his heroism.
Manning's statement that he offered the material to prominent news media first will tend to hamper the Obama regime's plans to prosecute Wikileaks for encouraging Manning to leak the material.
The UK has secretly cancelled some people's citizenship, then targeted them for assassination.
US citizens: call on Chief Justice Roberts not to undermine the Voting Rights Act.
Human Rights Watch reports that the Sri Lankan military is still raping and torturing Tamils.
The Ethnic Cleansing of the Jordan Valley.
The FBI organizes more terrorist plots in the US than anyone else, its sting operations have never caught any who would have committed a real act of terrorism on their own. They catch only simpletons who they can lead into crime.
The Pentagon wants to spend a trillion dollars on a new fighter plane, the F-35, that probably won't work.
It is probably obsolete, compared with coming drones.
Its stealth technology is likely to become much less expensive due to advances in radar systems.
Some in Congress want to impose a biometric ID card on everyone who works in the US.
This is something we must fight. What it does to non-citizens is a side issue; imposing this on citizens is the injustice.
The UK government's response to the recession caused by austerity is to make austerity more brutal. This will make a bigger recession, and thus an excuse for more austerity.
I am sure they know this. They want austerity as a form of shock capitalism.
Haiti hopes to eliminate cholera through sanitation measures, but cannot get money to do it.
A UK court blocked deportation of Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka. The judge's decision shows how rigid and robotic the border agency's behavior is. That the UK still tries returns refugees to a state that is known to torture such returned refugees shows how far the UK stretches to ignore valid arguments for asylum.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for using subpoenas to get Obama's drone assassination legal memos. Also send a message through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The FCC is not planning to set up free WiFi across the US. However, it might do something that would help make better WiFi networks.
The NRA Wants to Keep Gun Records Secret From Everyone Except the NRA.
Jack Lew, ex-bankster, has been appointed Secretary of the Treasury.
Lew is in favor of budget cuts that are harmful.
Sugar consumption has been tied to adult-onset diabetes, even independent of obesity.
The European Union has imposed a limit on bonuses for banksters.
This is a step in the right direction.
Shell has decided not to try to drill in the Arctic this year.
Apparently it has decided to try to show more concern for safety to try to avert a decision banning Arctic drilling entirely. That decision is necessary anyway, however. We need to leave around 80% of the known reserves of fossil fuel in the ground, to avoid global disaster. So it makes no sense to drill in such places.
Drug Dealers Admit Berkeley PD Have Asked Them To Assault Cop-watchers.
Peterson's Puppet Populists.
Progressives warn that playing along with austerity can sink Obama.
Handcuffing 7-Year-Olds Won't Make Schools Safer.
Walling Ourselves Inside a Militarized-Police State.
9 surprising (and ugly) facts about US junk food.
Too Big To Fail gives the big banks effectively 83 billion dollars a year. This is the same amount that the sequester proposes to cut.
The article errs in calling Obama's position "Liberal". In the 1970s we had a word for people with views like his: "Republicans". It is a smear on Liberalism to associate it with Obama's right-wing views.
As a Liberal since the 1970s, I call for increased deficit spending so as to get Americans back to work, as well as cutting military spending in order to boost useful civilian spending even more.
The Progressive Caucus's Balancing Act does a large part of this. However, the US should entirely reject the idea of reducing the deficit now. We should indeed increase taxes on the rich, but then we should spend that money on something important, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The ACLU has sued to overturn a new restriction placed on sex offenders forcing them to move.
The ACLU is raising an issue that can be raised in court, but ethically speaking this issue is secondary. This case reveals how the sex offender registry is a motor for irrational injustice. As usual with these laws, new restrictions are imposed on all the "offenders" because they seem necessary for some. Some sex offenders are a threat to children, but most are not. Having sex with a 17-year-old does not make a person a threat to anyone at all. In fact, it shouldn't be a crime in the first place.
Put that together with the widespread practice of pushing minors to plead guilty to "offenses" on strange pretexts, as part of the school-to-prison pipeline, and it adds up to a lot of injustice.
One Antarctic exit glacier could raise the seas two meters in a short period of time, once it gets going.
In the US, going to prison may be the only way to get a needed operation.
US banks waive fees for rich clients but gouge the poor.
Making this even worse, some states require people to get certain benefits through banks that gouge them.
The Bradley Manning trial has published some documents, responding to public criticism.
Repression of Bahais in Iran is increasing.
The ban on conversion tramples the rights of everyone who has ever been a Muslim. Similar disrespect for religious freedom is found in most Muslim countries.
The number of people in Syria that have been driven from their homes may soon reach a million.
Although this is very bad, what happened in Iraq was much worse. Iraq has 3/2 the population of Syria, but the number of people driven from their homes due to the Bush-B'liar occupation of Iraq was 4 times as many as in Syria.
In other words, if Iraq had suffered the way Syria is suffering now, that would have been less than what the US and UK did to Iraq.
Although wolves are now reestablished in many parts of the US, hunting them could put them back into danger.
More information.
The UK's cruel government has imposed a new tax on the poor, but most won't be able to pay it.
Big Pharma has cut off many medicines to Greece.
The Greek government should license local manufacturers for all the medicines that have been cut off.
The Copyright Propaganda Machine Gets a New Agent: Your ISP.
The French government proposes to impose SOPA-style filtering on ISPs.
The prosecution of Bradley Manning plans to belabor the point that al Qa'ida found his Wikileaks disclosures interesting. This follows a standard tactic of deception: prove the strong premise to distract attention from the invalid premise.
Of course, anything that shows wrongdoing by the US would be of interest to anyone who opposes the US. At the very least, it would provide reasons to criticize. If that was enough to make the leak a crime, by that logic any exposure of any wrongdoing by the US is "aiding the enemy".
Of course, supporters of Bush said exactly that. That is the attitude of a totalitarian state.
However, even if al Qa'ida had managed to get some other use from a piece of this the Wikileaks information, that would not justify the government's attempt to equate informing the public with "aiding the enemy".
Cory Doctorow suggests merging libraries with hackerspaces in a new synergy.
The major powers offered Iran some sanctions relief in exchange for limiting uranium enrichment, and Iran is eager for a deal.
Why didn't they make this obvious offer before? Is it that they didn't want to reach a deal?
Proposing a US Department of Peacebuilding.
Antibacterial consumer products can kill you, indirectly.
8% of the population of West Virginia is estimated to be addicted to painkiller pills. Efforts to cut the supply are reportedly so successful that they are pushing users to use heroin instead.
Heroin is not inherently very dangerous, but it is dangerous in practice because of the risk of accidental overdoses. Thus, these government activities threaten drug users with death — and imprisonment too, since possession of heroin is a crime. Great job, thugs!
I feel sorry for people who are addicted to painkillers, not just because they are addicted, but because of the dissatisfaction or boredom that must have inspired them to try those drugs. However, threatening them is not going to make things better.
Obama Promises More Transparency on Drone Strikes, Then Doubles Down on Secrecy.
Thugs in the UK systematically ignored accusations of rape in order to improve the statistics for their region.
Retired people will be a larger fraction of society as baby-boomers retire, but this will not be much of a burden for society if it is handled sensibly.
The EU has approved a ban on discarding fish of the wrong species that are accidentally caught.
This has the potential to result in less total fishing effort, and fewer fish killed, to deliver the same amount of food. Whether it achieves those goals depends on other details. Fishing companies will try to push in another direction.
Another environmental activist has been assassinated in Thailand, following 29 other activists.
60 years ago, creditors forgave half of West Germany's debts, putting Germany on the road to prosperity.
Now Greece, Italy and Spain need debt forgiveness, and don't forget the many poor countries that have been crushed by debt for decades.
Hagel was confirmed as head of the Pentagon.
I am not very enthusiastic about him, but it is good that the Israeli hawks' lobby has been defeated in its attempt to block him. This may pave the way for further defiance of that lobby in the US.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to co-sign the Grayson letter, firmly refusing to vote for any deal Obama might make that would involve cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The research practices of psychology need reform: they lend themselves to acceptance of error as truth.
Tony B'liar, desperate to defend the conquest and occupation of Iraq, asks us to assume that something worse would certainly have happened in Iraq if not for the invasion.
Something else bad might perhaps have happened — who knows? — but it would have had trouble being as bad as what has really happened to Iraq in the past ten years. The bloody civil war in Syria isn't as bad as what the US and UK did to Iraq.
What would happen to society if computers could tell when people are lying?
I don't know about you, but if I bump into someone and say "I'm sorry", I am not lying. When I say that, it means I think I was at fault and I really am sorry. I don't agonize about a minor error like this, but I am sincere in recognizing it.
I don't want people to conceal uncomfortable truths from me, and I don't do that to others. (I feel very uncomfortable when pressed to praise something I don't really like, because lying bothers my conscience.) But there are situations where concealing the truth is a moral duty — for instance, if agents of a regime that represses journalism asks you questions like, "Did you see so-and-so talk with Bradley Manning?" If you can't respond, "I don't remember," you could be forced to do a real wrong.
Wrongheaded Copyright Claim Blocks Online Posting of Important Technical Standards.
Proposed secret unfair "trials" can't legitimize US government death squads.
Using drones on battlefields raises no special issue not raised by artillery or manned attack aircraft. What makes drones a different issue is the practice of using them in places that are not battlefields, against people who are not fighting.
The death, apparently by torture, of Arafat Jaradat has led to protests in many places in Palestine.
A Palestinian child was shot in the head at one of these protests, and is unlikely to recover.
Israel freed many Palestinians as part of a prisoner exchange, but has made a secret law by which it can imprison them again based on minor pretexts — even traffic tickets.
Gangs of "settlers" frequently invade the Palestinian village of Qusra and attack the inhabitants. The army always protects the attackers.
Amazingly, one attack elsewhere in the West Bank has led to indictment of the "settlers".
This rarity of this exception shows how far the occupation forces normally turn their back on justice.
Palestinians fired a rocket at Israel for the first time in 3 months.
During those 3 months, Israel attacked Gaza daily.
About Israel's spy and assassination squads that dress and speak like Arabs.
A gang of Jewish youths beat up an Arab street cleaner in Tel Aviv. He was badly injured and is in the hospital.
This is much like the way anti-semites used to beat up Jews, as described to me by my mother.
US citizens: call on Kerry to support taxes to reduce CO2 emission from air travel.
As Wall Street profits rise, the banksters plan to cut thousands of jobs.
Do you think they will still call themselves "job creators"?
Italians voted to reject euro-austerity.
The main opposition coalition in Egypt will boycott the elections.
The UK government is covering up information tying Russia to the murder of Litvinenko.
The United Nations is responsible for killing more than 8,000 Haitians since 2010. And it's not even willing to say it's sorry.
The UN occupation of Haiti is the result of the US-organized coup that included kidnaping President Aristide. The current "president" of Haiti was imposed by the US after a bogus "election" in which Aristide's party, the largest in Haiti, was excluded.
Côte d'Ivoire: Revenge and Repression.
US citizens: call for taxing financial transactions as a way to avoid the stupid sequester deal.
Despite this, cuts in military spending would still be desirable. We could transfer those funds to useful activities.
Obama's dumb budget-cuts deal would cause immediate trouble for the overcrowded federal prisons. But the root cause is imprisoning too many people.
Of course, a large part of this is due to the War on Drugs.
The US Supreme Court upheld the catch-22 excuse to prevent judicial challenge of Bush's massive wiretapping program.
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![benefit mainly businesses. This one is no exception. Americans and Koreans should join hands to eliminate it. Free exploitation treaties also often interfere with methods for managing fiscal crises. 27 March 2013 (Columnist in Turkey fired for printing leaks) Turkey's prime minister got a leading columnist fired. The columnist had printed leaks. This nasty behavior is not as bad as what the US government did when it harassed a journalist's mother until he got upset and gave them an excuse to prosecute him. 27 March 2013 (The Golden Dawn party in Greece) A film student made a video of Greek neo-Nazis, the Golden Dawn party, some of whom spoke in favor of racism and even genocide. Now they accuse him of secretly filming them, which is absurd since he was pointing a big videocamera at them. However, even if that had been true, it would not alter the fact that they said what they said. Greeks have good reason to be angry, but these people are putting the blame on minority groups and immigrants instead of the powerful rich banksters. How convenient for the banksters! I wonder if that might, perhaps, not be a coincidence. Are banksters bankrolling Golden Dawn? 27 March 2013 (Urgent: Legalize sharing) US citizens: phone your senators and say, "Legalize sharing (through bittorrent, for example, and please don't call sharing 'piracy')." 27 March 2013 (EU study on music sharing) An EU study finds that music sharing does not reduce music sales. If sharing did reduce sales, that would not justify the War on Sharing. Fundamentally, people must be allowed to share, regardless of secondary effects on anyone else. These data demonstrate a secondary weakness in the record companies' arguments for the War on Sharing, but we must be careful when we use it to avoid giving the impression that the war would be justified if it could be shown that sharing did reduce some company's income. Please take pains to reject use of the word "piracy" to refer to sharing. That word is enemy propaganda. 27 March 2013 (Spain's gov't to attack sharing) Spain's government plans further attacks on sharing. What the occupied Spanish people think about this is of no importance to them, not in this and not in anything else. 27 March 2013 (Criminal charges for assisting with suicide) People in Minnesota who assisted the suicide of a woman who suffered from incurable pain face criminal charges, though the law against "advising" suicide was ruled unconstitutional. To help people escape from suffering, at risk to oneself, is heroism. These laws are simple cruelty. 26 March 2013 (Most of senate endorses Keystone XL) Most of the senate voted to endorse the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. If one of your senators voted for this, phone to rebuke that vote. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 26 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop prisons from gouging prisoners for phone calls) US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to stop prisons from gouging prisoners with amazingly high prices for phone calls. 26 March 2013 (Urgent: End solitary confinement for minors) US citizens: call on Attorney General Holder to end solitary confinement for minors. I would rather sign a petition to end it for everyone, but this would be is a step forward. 26 March 2013 (Right to use NY subways without ID) An ACLU lawsuit upheld the right to use New York subways without an ID card and to take photos there. If you are arrested for an unjust reason, don't feel humiliated! There is nothing shameful in being arrested — think of the great dissidents who have been arrested, and realize that you are starting to follow their path. 26 March 2013 (US newspapers on Dubya's claims about WMDs) It is impossible to argue that Dubya was right in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, so US newspapers try to do the next best thing: to make it appear that Dubya made an honest mistake. 26 March 2013 (Israeli hype about Iron Dome) Israel hypes the Iron Dome anti-missile defense much as the US did the Patriot Missile during the first Gulf War. In both cases there is doubt that they did any good at all. 26 March 2013 (Uri Avnery writes speech for Obama) The speech Uri Avnery wrote for Obama. It can be compared with Obama's real speech. 26 March 2013 (Sri Lanka keeps Tamils in prison) Years after the civil war ended, Sri Lanka still keeps tens of thousands of Tamils in prison, including civilians, and tortures them. Thus, the UK faces pressure to boycott the annual Commonwealth meeting foolishly planned for Sri Lanka. 26 March 2013 (Good ways to handle failing banks) Scandinavian countries provide examples of good ways to handle failing banks. 26 March 2013 (Digital clipping services in danger) A misguided copyright decision puts digital clipping services in danger. 26 March 2013 (CVS wants employees' personal health details) CVS wants to compel its employees to hand over personal health details. 25 March 2013 (Tax-avoiding corporations cutting jobs) 16 Giant Corporations That Have Basically Stopped Paying Taxes — While Also Cutting Jobs! 25 March 2013 (California's sequoia trees) California's sequoia trees could be killed by global heating. 25 March 2013 (UK kicking unemployed off gov't help) The UK government, after deciding to test the unemployed looking for excuses to kick them off government help, set targets for how many people to kick off. 25 March 2013 (Israel's weak apology to Turkey) Israel has apologized to Turkey for attacking the Mavi Marmara. The apology says that errors led to killing the activists and does not admit wrongdoing. I hope that Turkey will insist that Israel should end the blockade of Gaza rather than allow a weak apology as a substitute. 25 March 2013 (Traditional fish of Mumbai disappearing) Global heating is helping to wipe out the traditional fish of Mumbai. 25 March 2013 (The hype of resurrecting extinct species) Hyped ideas of resurrecting extinct species, which are a long ways from really working, threaten to undermine the will to prevent extinction. Some of the obstacles can certainly be overcome. We know how to raise orphan baby birds so they can be released to the wild, so the lack of parents of the same species could be overcome. However, other problems might be more difficult. I am in favor of research into resurrecting extinct species, but we should resist over-hyping them. 25 March 2013 (Personal attacks used as distraction) Americans who don't obey the mainstream political line face personal attacks. For instance, Chomsky faces attacks against his style and mannerisms, as well as false accusations, all used to distract from his points. You can see elements of this also in criticism of me. One can try to argue against my views based on reasons, without personal insults; but you'll find a number of forums where people repeat personal insults (often false) about me, deriding my views without addressing them in the hope of preventing them from being considered. If you see that happen, I hope you will respond by bringing discussion back to the points about freedom that really matter. 25 March 2013 (US paddlefish threatened) US paddlefish (relatives of sturgeon) are now threatened by the practice of passing off paddlefish roe as caviar. 25 March 2013 (Louisiana creationism education bill) Fighting to repeal the Louisiana creationism education bill. 25 March 2013 (Hassan Al Amin exiled again) Libyan freedom-fighter Hassan Al Amin, first exiled by Gaddafi, has been forced into exile again. He says that militias have hijacked the revolution. This has a bearing on what to do regarding Syria. Here's a proposal for a new way to intervene, neither militarily nor through economic sanctions. 25 March 2013 (Plan to protect bank deposits in Cyprus) A new plan for Cyprus protects bank deposits up to 100,000 euros. I think this plan is legitimate, because bank deposits beyond 100,000 euros can be lost if the bank fails. The modern idea that the state should dump the burden on the public rather than allow a bank to fail, is precisely what creates "too big to fail". This partial loss of deposits over 100,000 euros could be seen as a soft kind of bank failure. However, this is only legitimate if the bank's owners receive the first hit. 25 March 2013 (UK law to retroactively nullify judgement supporting people's rights) Unemployed Britons who were ordered to work for no pay then sued the UK government and won. Now the UK government is passing a law to retroactively nullify the judgment, for no reason except that it doesn't want to pay this much compensation to the victims of the scheme. Reportedly that article was originally published by an organization called Civitas, which then took it down, but someone else posted a copy. I think it is legitimate for the state to retroactively annul arrangements that gave other parties power over the state, in cases where such power should never exist. For instance, Chicago's privatization of parking fees. It's a different story when what is annulled is a matter of ordinary people's rights. Paying this judgment to unemployed Britons would be good for the UK anyway. Even if this judgment had not occurred, even if this imposed-work-for-nothing scheme had never been set up, it would be good to give the unemployed more. (And the working poor, too.) 25 March 2013 (Bee-toxic pesticides) Beekeepers and activists have sued the EPA to end the use of bee-toxic pesticides. 25 March 2013 (Chance of Aristide being allowed in next Haitian elections) Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party has a chance of being allowed to participate in the next Haitian elections, after being excluded twice as a consequence of Aristide's forced exile. Aristide was kidnaped by US soldiers and taken out of Haiti, when Bush decided to impose a more compliant regime there. 25 March 2013 (Moving CIA drone attacks to Pentagon) Obama may move some of the CIA's drone attacks to the Pentagon. This could impose more obedience to international law, but it might also reduce theoretical congressional oversight. However, it won't apply to Pakistan, which is where most of the CIA's drone attacks are done. 25 March 2013 (Failure to protect poor peoples' right to counsel) In the US, poor people charged with misdemeanors may be told they must not dare demand to talk with a lawyer. 25 March 2013 (Nepal's Truth and Reconciliation law) Human Rights Watch criticizes the Truth and Reconciliation law passed in Nepal, because it offers an amnesty to people that committed grave crimes in the civil war. The idea of a Truth and Reconciliation procedure is to offer an amnesty in exchange for full confessions, to help the factions that fought make peace. This is one important goal; punishing criminals is another. Truth and Reconciliation sacrifices the latter for the former. I would not want to say that is wrong; it seems to have worked well in South Africa. I can't judge whether it is a good approach in Nepal, or generally. 24 March 2013 (Access to torrentfreak.com blocked at public libraries) Many public libraries block access to the torrentfreak.com, a news site. 24 March 2013 (NAFTA) What NAFTA has done to Mexicans. 24 March 2013 (Misplaced sympathy for Steubenville rapists) On misplaced sympathy for Steubenville rapists. It should be noted that part of what makes rape so painful is the tendency for family and society to be nasty to women for having been raped. This is bad enough in the US, but even worse in some other countries. For instance, Samoan men rape unmarried women and then order their victims to come home with them; the victims obey because they expect to be rejected by their families afterward. In many Muslim countries, the victims might be imprisoned or killed. To regard a woman as "damaged goods" is to treat her as "goods" rather than as a person. 24 March 2013 (The messenger is not responsible for the message) The Internet needs to follow the same principle as postal mail: the messenger is not responsible for anything wrong with the message. 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Support the Arkansas Promise) In the US: support the Arkansas Promise: college education for every student that does well in High School. 24 March 2013 (Prosecution of journalist Barret Brown) The US is prosecuting journalist Barrett Brown, who was investigating private spy and military contractors, by strained charges as it did to Aaron Swartz. 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Ban drilling in Alaskan Arctic seas) US citizens: call on the government to ban drilling in Alaskan Arctic seas. 24 March 2013 (Prosecution of security hole whistleblowers) Why does the US want to protect dangerous business negligence by prosecuting security hole whistleblowers? 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Ask for a copy of the TPP negotiating text) US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to send you a copy of the TPP negotiating text. You can't have one, and neither can they. That's the point. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop drilling in the Arctic) US citizens: tell Conoco not to drill in the Arctic. 24 March 2013 (Sultan of Oman pardons imprisoned dissidents) The Sultan of Oman has pardoned the dissidents imprisoned for the crime of protesting. That's a positive step, but protests must be legal, and likewise criticism of the government, of the sultan, and even of you or me. 24 March 2013 (Prosecution of Kostas Vaxevanis) Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis writes about being prosecuted for publishing the leaked list of possible Greek tax evaders. 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Limit immigration detention) US citizens: call on your senators to limit immigration detention to when it is necessary and justified. 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Stand with the people of Dryden) Everyone: stand with the people of Dryden to encourage them as they resist a lawsuit from a billionaire who demands to be able to do fracking in their town. 24 March 2013 (Guantánamo hunger strike) The Pentagon is covering up the size of Guantánamo hunger strike. and is obstructing access for prisoners' lawyers and journalists. 24 March 2013 (Urgent: Veto CISPA) US citizens: call on Obama to veto CISPA. 24 March 2013 (Obama criticizes injustices of Israeli occupation) Obama, speaking in Israel, criticized the injustices of the occupation and called on Israel to make a deal that allows a real Palestinian state. However, he called on Palestinians to negotiate for a settlement while Israel continues colonizing their land. Palestinians have recognized that such negotiations are harmful since they only give Israel cover for colonization. Obama surely realizes that this speech will not make the useless "peace process" start moving again. It is only meant to communicate to the public. The denunciation of the occupation makes it a better statement than one might have expected, but getting Israel to entertain a real peace would require real pressure from the US. Here is the whole speech. 24 March 2013 (Kurdish leader calls for cease-fire with Turkey) Kurdish leader Öcalan has called for a cease-fire with Turkey, which seems to be negotiating major concessions to respect Kurds' human rights. 24 March 2013 (Land grabs) Land Grabs Spread Throughout Developing World. 24 March 2013 (Human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe arrested) Beatrice Mtetwa, human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, was arrested responding to a client's request for help. 24 March 2013 (Criminal charges for criticizing officials) Tunisians face criminal charges for "libeling officials". In Nigeria, an editor faces charges for an article that criticized someone important. 24 March 2013 (San Francisco Thug Department sued for searching phone without warrant) An activist sued the San Francisco Thug Department for searching his phone without a warrant. 24 March 2013 (Inequality in the US) How the tremendously increased inequality of the US hurts Americans. 23 March 2013 (Site Status) Due to an issue on stallman.org on Friday, March 22, the site had to be restored from a backup from a few days ago. Because of this, some notes that were posted are no longer up and are being restored now. There may be some other minor issues but everything should be back in order in a day or two. 23 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose AIPAC bills) US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators via 1-855-68-NO WAR and ask them to oppose the AIPAC bills that would push the US into war with Iran, and to insist that those bills go through committees. 23 March 2013 (Urgent: Tell UNC that complaining about rape is not "being disruptive") US citizens: tell the U of North Carolina that complaining about rape is not "being disruptive". 23 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose FDA approval of genetically engineered salmon) US citizens: submit a comment to the FDA against approving genetically engineered salmon. 23 March 2013 (US agrees to pull special forces out of Afghan district) The US has agreed to pull its special forces out of a district of Afghanistan where they are accused of torturing prisoners. 23 March 2013 (Cyprus' banks) One aspect of Cyprus' parliament's rejection of the bailout plan was that it wants Cyprus to continue serving as a tax avoidance banking haven. Cyprus is looking for another way to rescue its banks, perhaps with help from Russia. However, it might be best if the banks simply fail, since savers will be protected up to 100,000 euros. This will teach a salutary lesson to banksters: yes, your bank can still fail, so don't take stupid risks expecting to be bailed out if they go wrong. 23 March 2013 (Urgent: Support Rep. Lee's letter against war with Iran) US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to sign Rep. Lee's letter against war with Iran. Also sign this petition. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 23 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop punishment of women who are raped in the Maldives) Everyone: call on the Maldives to stop punishing women who are raped. I do not like addressing the coup leader as if he were president, but I signed it despite that, for the sake of the issue. 23 March 2013 (NY Thug Department leaves major crimes unreported) Part of the New York Thug Department systematically left major crimes unreported while spending its time arresting people for marijuana. 23 March 2013 (Labor and climate defense movements) The labor movement and the climate defense movement need to work together. 23 March 2013 (Urgent: Support Iraq Veterans Against the War) Everyone: sign this petition in support of Iraq Veterans Against the War's request for a hearing to investigate the war crimes of the Bush forces. 23 March 2013 (Press censorship in Rwanda) Rwanda has dropped certain forms of press censorship, but journalists remain in prison. 27 March 2013 (Urgent: Call on Exxon to pay taxes for education) US citizens: call on Exxon to stop pretending it supports education, and instead pay its fair share of taxes for education. 27 March 2013 (Alexander Perepilichnyy) Alexander Perepilichnyy appears to have been murdered by Russians for trying to track down the perpetrators of the giant tax fraud which Magnitsky reported. 27 March 2013 (Iraqi women's rights) Iraqi women's rights activist Hanaa Edwar says that things are not looking good. In Iraqi Kurdistan, 400 "honor killings" are reported each year, but thousands more may occur. 27 March 2013 ("Progressive" congresscritters) 49 congresscritters who call themselves "progressive" have refused to take a firm stand against cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. See if yours is one of them. If so, complain! 27 March 2013 (Protesters arrested for blocking Transcanada office) Climate defenders were arrested blocking a Transcanada office in Massachusetts. As the Obama regime tries to crush protests, it will put many protesters on trial. The purpose of the jury is to stop the state from imprisoning people for "crimes" that the public does not consider wrong. If you are on a jury when a peaceful protester is tried, always vote "Not guilty". The pipeline will cause many deaths, and that is a bigger crime than destruction of property. Thus, even sabotaging the pipeline will be justified, morally and legally, by the principle of necessity. 26 March 2013 (UK convicts protester for criticising PM) The UK conclusively rejected freedom of speech, by convicting protester Bethan Tichborne for carrying a sign that said Prime Minister Cameron has blood on his hands. Meanwhile, the thugs that beat her up afterward have not been prosecuted at all. Typical. It is the state which is guilty here — of criminalizing dissent using ridiculous pretexts, just like many other tyrannical states. 26 March 2013 (Wildfires in the US west) It's not yet spring, but wildfires in the US west have started. Global heating is responsible for heat waves early in the year (though not for precisely where and when this one occurred), and increases the chance of droughts such as the one that prepared the ground for this fire to spread. In a couple of decades, it will be much worse. 24 March 2013 (Protest in Afghanistan demands removal of US special forces) A protest in Afghanistan demanded removal of US special forces, accusing them of torturing people. The Taliban kill more civilians than the NATO forces do, but they are not foreigners. Ultimately, if Afghans do not support the intervention, they will not forgive the damage it does to people. 24 March 2013 (DMCA destroys cultural archiving) The DMCA destroys cultural archiving, and can make our era's culture into a future dark age (except for whatever illegal copies may survive). It is conventional folly that says, "Don't copy things without permission, and everything will be fine." Wisdom does not respond to an attack on our rights by surrendering without a fight. Wisdom says, "I always had, and still have in principle, the right to make copies, and with digital technology that right is more useful, so this sneaky method to deny it is intolerable." 24 March 2013 (PAT-RIOT Act) More details about the ruling that part of the PAT-RIOT Act is unconstitutional. 24 March 2013 (War on Drugs condemned) The United Nations Development Program's head condemned the War on Drugs. 24 March 2013 (Using the CFAA to attack people for being annoying) Federal prosecutors are again using the CFAA to attack someone for an annoyance that should hardly be a crime. 24 March 2013 (Right-wing pundits grasp at straws to justify austerity) Right-wing pundits grasp at straws to find a sign that austerity causes something other than poverty. 24 March 2013 (Ecuador to cancel trade treaty with the US) Ecuador will formally cancel a trade treaty with the US, because oil companies are trying to use the "investior-state" provision that lets them sue Ecuador for doing anything that reduces their profits. This is what Uruguay should have done, when a multinational tobacco company used the Switzerland-Uruguay free trade treaty against Uruguay's plain-packaging law for cigarettes. But Uruguay's government didn't show the courage and strength of Correa's. Americans, do you think our government should give foreign corporations that sort of power over us? I call it treachery, a betrayal of our country. The World Trade Organization's treaty doesn't have an "investior-state" provision, but it allows one country to sue another over laws such as the US ban on flavored cigarettes, so it comes to the same thing. The WTO represents a betrayal of our country and every other one that signed up to it, and when it bands public health measures, it can kill. The WTO must be abolished. 23 March 2013 (US coverage of Israeli attacks on Gaza) A UN report on deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza concluded that one of the many fatalities in Gaza may have been caused by a Palestinian rocket that fell short. US coverage focuses on that one casualty, and ignores all the other casualties in Gaza that were definitely caused by Israeli attacks. 23 March 2013 (Revolving door for prosecutors) The revolving door for prosecutors explains why they don't prosecute banksters: they want to work as lawyers for those banksters. They would rather prosecute easier targets, such as Aaron Swartz, even if they don't really deserve prosecution. 23 March 2013 (State assembly member who voted against legalizing marijuana) A New York state assembly member who voted against legalizing medical marijuana was caught speeding on the highway with marijuana in his car. 23 March 2013 (Crackers can fake 9-1-1 call to send SWAT team) Crackers can now attack people by faking a 9-1-1 call to send a SWAT team to raid them. This adds to the danger which the numerous unnecessary SWAT teams across the US already posed. 23 March 2013 (Deforestation in China) Greenpeace combats deforestation in China by campaigning against disposable chopsticks. 19 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop CISPA) US citizens: join the Week of Action to stop CISPA. 19 March 2013 (5th straight year of extreme corporate tax avoidance) March Madness: The 5th Straight Year of Extreme Corporate Tax Avoidance. 28 March 2013 (US prisons) The Shame of America's Gulag: Its conditions are tantamount to torture, and prisoners are worked as slaves. A prison thug who pepper-sprayed a shackled prisoner right in the face managed not even to get fired for it. 19 March 2013 (How US school children are taught to think about Iraq) Teaching US school children to think the conquest and occupation of Iraq were good. 19 March 2013 (Social security) Social Security for the Next Generation? If You're Under 40, You Should Be in the Streets. 19 March 2013 (Torture and killing of prisoners in Syria) Syria's government bombards civilians, and tortures and kills prisoners. The rebels also torture and kill prisoners. 19 March 2013 (Sugar) Sugar causes euphoria in the same way heroin does. Imprisoning people for using heroin is as absurd as imprisoning people for using sugar, but it makes sense to design policies to discourage excessive use of either substance. 19 March 2013 (Criminalisation of gatherings in the UK) 19 March 2013 (Criminalisation of protest in the UK) In the UK, not only is protesting a crime; a gathering that the thugs think of as a protest is a crime too. 19 March 2013 (Bogus elections in Zimbabwe) Zimbabwe is holding bogus elections again, with a ban on political meetings and short wave radios. 19 March 2013 (Consequences of the spin on Iraq invasion) Iraq 10 Years Later: The Deadly Consequences of Spin. Most journalists, like most politicians, decided to go along with the pressure. Those who decided not to do that easily saw the holes in Dubya's threadbare story. 19 March 2013 (Urgent: Reduce the use of drift gillnets) US citizens: call for reducing the use of drift gillnets, which kill lots of sea life for each fish they are intended to catch. 19 March 2013 (Indoor pollution from stoves) Indoor pollution from stoves kills 4 million people per year. The article described a plan to try to do something about it, but I have no independent information about that. 19 March 2013 (Women's rights) The UN agreed on a policy about women's rights, but the Catholic Church vetoed any mention of their right to an abortion or birth control. 19 March 2013 (Cyprus "bailout" plan) The Cyprus "bailout" plan takes part of people's bank deposits. The loss of some bank deposits is not shocking in principle. If a bank fails, deposits up to a certain amount (100,000 euro?) will be insured, and the rest might be lost entirely. The difference in this scheme is that even deposits under 100,000 euro will lose 7%. This is marginally worse for the non-rich. Why not let everyone keep the first 100,000, so they are no worse off than if the bank had failed? Why not let Cypriotes and permanent residents keep their whole deposits, so mainly the Russian oligarchs get soaked? 19 March 2013 (Steubenville football team members found guilty) Steubenville football team members were found guilty of raping a girl who had passed out drunk. The people of the town had such an attachment to the football team that they defended the players. I think it is childish to feel so strongly about a mere game, or get that concerned about a struggle over no real issue. I think it would be good to show US high school students something better to look forward to than getting drunk. But it is hard to do that when they know that their future is only crap jobs, while companies extract all the wealth from the US for the sake of billionaires, banksters screw them over, and frackers poison them. 19 March 2013 (UK removing global heating from school curriculum) The UK is removing global heating from the school curriculum. Instead of addressing the problem, hush it up. However, it's a silly move. By the time the children affected become old enough to vote, or influence the opinions of voters, the disastrous effects of global heating will be visible to everyone. 19 March 2013 (Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim free) Somali journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, who was imprisoned for interviewing a woman who accused soldiers of raping her and intimidating her into silence, has been freed. 19 March 2013 (The new pope) There is some evidence that the new pope lied to priests who were driven into exile by the Argentine military dictators. However, it does not prove he went so far as to betray them. I doubt there is a way to establish the truth, and I don't think this evidence is enough basis to conclude he was culpable. However, it is a certainty that he opposes abortion, birth control and gay rights. That is plenty of grounds to condemn him. 19 March 2013 (Israel builds housing for Jews in Jerusalem) Israel is building housing for Jews in the old city of Jerusalem, aiming to prevent any part of the city from being available as a capital for Palestine. It would be justified to require Israel to hand these over to Palestine just as it is justified to require Israel to hand over all its colonies in the West Bank. However, another option would be to make Jerusalem the capital of both countries. 19 March 2013 (Protest in Budapest) Thousands Rally in Budapest for Democratic Rights. The government, which has over a 2/3 majority in parliament, is changing the constitution in ways accused of undermining the possibility of political opposition. I don't know enough of the facts to reach a conclusion myself. 19 March 2013 (Houston bans feeding the homeless) Houston has banned feeding the homeless, and banned them from looking for food in garbage cans. Like many US cities, Houston wants to make homeless people go somewhere else, such as the cemetery. 19 March 2013 (US agriculture surrendered to Monsanto) The Obama regime surrendered US agriculture to Monsanto, by declining to challenge the tactics that gave it a near-monopoly. 19 March 2013 (The rush to replace school lessons with computer games) Debunking the rush to replace school lessons with computer games. The article does not mention another problem with most of these games: they are proprietary software. Teachers Make Handy Scapegoats, But Spiraling Inequality Is Really What Ails Our Education System 19 March 2013 (Austerity in the UK) The UK will not turn back from austerity, even though (or, perhaps, because?) it is having its usual disastrous results. 19 March 2013 (Aiding Syrian rebels) The quandary about aiding the Syrian rebels. It is horrible to do nothing, but it is not obvious how to do something with good effects. 18 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop FDA hindrance on scientists) US citizens: call on the FDA to let its scientists present their knowledge and conclusions to the public without hindrance. 18 March 2013 (Urgent: Rejection of Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline) US citizens: submit a public comment calling for rejection of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. 18 March 2013 (Urgent: Strong arms control treaty for guns) US citizens: call on Obama to support a strong arms control treaty for guns. 18 March 2013 (Hedge fund insider trading) A hedge fund was fined $600 million for a $276-million profit based on insider trading. At that rate of fine, hedge funds will do insider trading if they think they have less than a 45% chance of being caught. I expect they are caught under 4% of the time, so to deter a repeat, the fine should have been over ten times as large. If the fund would not agree to pay that much, perhaps the SEC should have prosecuted it in court — shocking as that might sound. 18 March 2013 (Maryland to abolish death penalty) Maryland will abolish the death penalty, but may still execute the people already on death row. 18 March 2013 (North Dakota considers law to ban abortions after 6 weeks) North Dakota is considering a law to ban abortions after 6 weeks, though not stated in so many words. The legislators that vote for these bills know that they are unconstitutional under Roe v Wade. They are trying to create opportunities for right-wingers in the Supreme Court to reverse that decision. 18 March 2013 (UK gov't obeys agribusiness) The UK government obeyed agribusiness and torpedoed the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides. Since the pesticide accumulates in the soil, it will take many years before bees can return to the areas where it has been used. 18 March 2013 (Angolan thugs confiscate dissident music) Thugs in Angola confiscated dissident music, then attacked a protest against the confiscation. 18 March 2013 (Egyptian thugs attack journalists) Egyptian thugs attacked two groups of journalists during protests. 18 March 2013 (Why courts aren't enough to ensure drone privacy) ACLU: Five Reasons Why the Courts Aren't Enough to Ensure Drone Privacy. 18 March 2013 (The CFAA) How the CFAA developed into its current oppressive form, and how Obama proposed to make it even worse. 18 March 2013 (Obama's drones) Court Says Obama Can't Talk About Drones and Still Call Them Secret. 18 March 2013 (Jo Bonner's ethics rules) The former head of the House ethics committee, Jo Bonner, says his trip in Kenya complied with the ethics rules he helped develop. That's exactly the problem. 18 March 2013 (Costs of war) New 'Costs of War' Report: Hundreds of Thousands Dead, Trillions Spent. 18 March 2013 (Unjust penalization of unemployed people in the UK) The UK government lost a lawsuit to unemployed people who showed they were unjustly penalized based on unclear rules. So the government is pushing a retroactive law to deny the claims of unemployed people. Apparently Tories think that the unemployed can afford the loss but the state can't. 18 March 2013 (ISP imposes 25- and 75-year contracts) An ISP imposed 25 and 75-year contracts on entire housing developments in Virginia. 18 March 2013 (War on Drugs) Fifteen Benefits of the War on Drugs. 18 March 2013 (E-book stores consider "lending" and "resale") E-book stores are considering various sorts of imitation restricted "lending" and "resale". This would, if implemented, eliminate one of several reasons why the e-books are ethically unacceptable. However, the other reasons would remain: every copy is controlled by DRM, and it is impossible to read with free software. People would not be able to borrow or buy used copies anonymously under these systems where every transaction is under control of the central company. This is still not ethically acceptable. 17 March 2013 (Urgent: Clean up waste dumps from factory farms) US citizens: call on Obama to clean up dangerous waste dumps from factory farms. 17 March 2013 (Urgent: Put banks on trial) US citizens: call on the SEC to put banks on trial when they commit crimes. 17 March 2013 (Aaron Swartz lawyers accuse prosecutor of misconduct) Aaron Swartz Lawyers Accuse Prosecutor Stephen Heymann Of Misconduct. Every US prosecutor knows about the legal requirement to hand over information that might help the defense. When they don't do this, it is because they are trying to get away with a miscarriage of justice. 17 March 2013 (The "Cyberwar" rhetoric) "Cyberwar" rhetoric plays into the hands of spies and military in whatever country. 17 March 2013 (Obama to visit Israel and Palestine) Obama will visit Israel and Palestine but will not do anything significant to further the cause of peace. Anything significant would require resisting the pressure from the Israeli hawks' lobby. 17 March 2013 (Shell's plans for drilling in the Arctic) The US has recognized that Shell's plans for drilling in the Arctic are inadequate. Nobody knows how to reliably clean up an undersea oil well leak anywhere, and even less so in the Arctic; thus, any plan Shell offers will necessarily be inadequate. However, if Obama remains "committed to drilling for oil in the Arctic", we must worry that the US will accept some other, more specific inadequate plan. Since we must leave 70-80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, any reserves that are particularly hard or risky to get at (such as these) should be at the head of the list to be left untouched. 17 March 2013 (UK university bans Islamic group) A UK university has banned an Islamic group from holding events there, after the group tried to impose sex segregation on the audience in a debate. 17 March 2013 (Obama's sincerity about selling people out) Obama told Republicans he is sincere about selling out the people who voted for him. 17 March 2013 (Hugo Chavez) How Hugo Chavez defeated US plans to privatize and rip off Latin America. 17 March 2013 (The Back to Work budget) The Back to Work budget proposes to get the US out of its recession. I support this, but I think that even more spending should be done because balancing the budget now is a misguided idea. 17 March 2013 (Urgent: Prosecute and jail banksters) US citizens: sign this petition telling Holder not to hesitate to prosecute and jail banksters. 17 March 2013 (The harm done by the Catholic Church) The Catholic Church still does great harm in the world. 17 March 2013 (Monarch butterflies and milkweed) Genetically engineered corn and soy is wiping out milkweed, and monarch butterflies too. 17 March 2013 (Global poverty) Global poverty has decreased substantially since 1990, but environmental degradation including global heating threatens to throw 3 billion people into extreme poverty by 2050. 16 March 2013 (Break big banks) Two honest senators are trying to break up the big banks. Alas, Obama like most of Congress has sold out to the banksters. 16 March 2013 (Too big to jail) It is now clear that JP Morgan cut off standard reports to bank regulators just as it was hit by a big loss. We cannot tolerate the existence of banks that dare to cut off reports to regulators, and we cannot tolerate regulators who allow a bank to get away with this. "Too big to jail", indeed. We must chop the large banks into small ones, any one of which could perfectly well be allowed to go out of business, and none of which dares defy regulators for even a day. Here is more information. 16 March 2013 (Abuse of secrecy) William Leonard, head of the US Information Security Oversight Office for most of the Bush regime, says successive US presidents have abused secrecy to grab increased powers. "It is as if Lewis Carroll, George Orwell and Franz Kafka were jointly conspiring to form official US policy." 16 March 2013 (US Conservative conference) The US Conservative conference demonstrated the extremism and racism that we know slink among them. The biggest danger of this is that it will enable Democrats such as Obama to move ever further to the right, and still win elections by saying they are not as bad as the ones who admit they are Conservatives. 16 March 2013 (collection of personal data without a warrant) A US district court ruled that PAT-RIOT Act collection of personal data without a warrant is unconstitutional. There are several hurdles to cross from here to a real victory, but at least it is a start. Bravo, EFF! 16 March 2013 (Indians and Dalits) Just as most Indians despise and abuse Dalits, the Dalits despise and abuse the Thurumbars. The Ambedkar quote is great: 'In Hinduism all are unequal, but some are more unequal than others.' 16 March 2013 (Muslim Brotherhood) The Muslim Brotherhood, in power in Egypt, attacked women's rights at the UN. 16 March 2013 (Number of protesters killed by Egyptian thugs in 2011) An Egyptian government internal report, commissioned by Morsi, says thugs killed 800 protesters in 2011. 16 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose the "No Knives Act") Massachusetts citizens: call Representative Markey's office and tell him you oppose the "No Knives Act", which would ban common sense in the TSA. Markey is running for senator (to replace Kerry), so he has reason to pay attention to anyone in Massachusetts, not just people in his own district. Tell Markey you are fed up with security theater and you appreciate even this tiny intermission that the TSA has offered. 16 March 2013 (Indians in Peru and Brazil fight oil company) Indians in Peru and Brazil are organizing together against an oil company. Since we need to keep 70% or 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, there is no justification for trying to find any more. 16 March 2013 (Prisoners in Guantanamo on hunger strike) Half the prisoners in Guantanamo are on hunger strike, but Obama's response is to cover it up. The Obama regime, confronted about indefinite detention in Guantanamo in the Organisation of American States, responded by twisting the meaning of the term and denying the facts. Indefinite detention means someone is imprisoned without a specific sentence, and with no criterion for release. That is the case for all the prisoners in Guantanamo, unless some have already been convicted by military kangaroo courts — but I don't think any of those have completed. 16 March 2013 (Death to Whistle-Blowers?) Death to Whistle-Blowers? 16 March 2013 (Obama refuses to give information about drone assassinations) Obama refused Democratic senators' request for information about drone assassinations. The senate should pass a law to restrict them. 16 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose AIPAC's bills for war with Iran) US citizens: call 1-855-68-NO WAR and ask your senators and congresscritter to vote against AIPAC's bills for war with Iran. 16 March 2013 (Dangerous artificial food colorings) Dangerous, even carcinogenic artificial food colorings can be replaced with safe color from vegetables and fruits. 16 March 2013 (FinSpy malware used by 25 governments) 25 governments are using the FinSpy malware program to get information from people's computers. This includes regular human-rights violators such as Vietnam, Qatar and the United States. 16 March 2013 (Cruel gap between CEO pay and minimum wage) The Cruel Gap Between CEO Pay and the Stagnant Minimum Wage. 16 March 2013 (UK activist ordered to delete his file) A UK activist got a court order to delete his file from a database on "domestic extremists", since there was never any evidence than he was one. However, so far nothing has been done to stop thugs from accumulating more records on him and other dissidents, or to punish them. 16 March 2013 (New gas in Japan) New Gas Worth Nothing If We Take Climate Seriously. 16 March 2013 (Obama's aggressive secrecy) Obama Administration Excludes National Security Policies from (supposed) Commitment to Transparency. Even Democrats are starting to object to Obama's aggressive secrecy and attacks on whistleblowing. 15 March 2013 (Activist mocks Sarkozy, gets criminal conviction) An activist mocked Sarkozy for an insult the latter had said to someone, and received a criminal conviction for it. He appealed to the European Court of Justice, which gave a narrow ruling in his favor: it was not a crime because he was satirizing Sarkozy. When Sarkozy said the same words, that was not satire, so according to this ruling, there was nothing to protect him from prosecution. Yet he was not prosecuted, and still has not been. Apparently, the censorship is applied in a politically biased way. But Sarkozy should not be prosecuted for this, nor anyone else. Personal insults, even serious ones, are part of freedom of speech. France, and European countries in general, are greatly lacking in respect for freedom of speech. 15 March 2013 (Urgent: Show Bradley Manning's trial on CSPAN) US citizens: call for showing Bradley Manning's trial on CSPAN. 15 March 2013 (Non-rich get raw deal when charged with crimes) Americans who are not rich get a raw deal when charged with crimes, because they can't afford a lawyer who will do anything but ask them to make a plea bargain. 15 March 2013 (US college students) US college students have to work so much for pay that they must skimp on studies, sleep, or both. 15 March 2013 (Bill to outlaw drone strikes in the US) Camel's Nose: Let's Outlaw Drone Strikes in the United States. 15 March 2013 (Swine-contaminated water) China's Dead-Hog Scandal Is Gross — But So Are the Hog Feces in US Waterways. 15 March 2013 (US-imposed disaster in Iraq) 'Unmitigated Disaster': Iraq's Pain Has Only Intensified Since US-Led Invasion in 2003. The article describes how the US has imposed disaster Iraq for 40 years since it helped the Ba'ath party take power. I question a few of the points. There are charges that Bush I's ambassador Glaspie encouraged Saddam to attack Kuwait, but we can't be sure. When Bush I decided not to take Baghdad in 1991, that may have been a wise decision, and we don't know what would have happened the other way. Also, I don't think the sanctions regime counts as "backing" Saddam. But these don't invalidate the overall conclusion. 14 March 2013 (Systematic cheating on car fuel efficiency measurements) Car manufacturers systematically cheat on fuel efficiency measurements. That's in Europe — do they cheat similarly in the US? 14 March 2013 (Sentence reduced for Cambodian dissident) An imprisoned Cambodian dissident has had his sentence reduced. That's a step in the right direction, but framing dissidents is always bad. 14 March 2013 (Leveraged buyouts may cause companies to collapse) Leveraged buyouts that saddled many companies with large debts may cause those companies to collapse. If the companies declare bankruptcy, those who bought them out will lose all, which is justice, and the banks will lose some of what is owed to them, which is also justice. But some of those banks are so big they are above the law, and make a habit of dumping their losses on the public. 14 March 2013 (Urgent: Protect wilderness in Alaska) US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to maintain protection of wilderness in Alaska. 14 March 2013 (Sombath Somphone kidnaped in Vientiane) Award-winning Lao environmental activist Sombath Somphone was kidnaped at a thug checkpoint in Vientiane, and the state is doing nothing to try to find him. All these facts support the conclusion that the kidnapping was organized by the state, and that it wants to make Sombath die of cancer. 14 March 2013 (Iraqi Sunnis planning renewed civil war) Some Iraqi Sunnis are planning a renewed civil war to take control of Iraq away from the majority Shi'ites. I find it unlikely that they can defeat the majority even with financial support from Saudi Arabia. I think it is more likely that Sunnis will be massacred. 14 March 2013 (TV airwaves) Don't auction off empty TV airwaves, SXSW activists tell FCC. 14 March 2013 (Human rights in US) The US stripped human rights from non-citizens first, and then from citizens. 14 March 2013 (Paul Ryan's Connections to Insurance Companies) Paul Ryan's Connections to Insurance Companies. He has a personal financial interest in his attack on government-provided medical funding. 14 March 2013 (Breaking the Law, by Reading It) Breaking the Law, by Reading It. 14 March 2013 (Net Neutrality) Net Neutrality Neutralised in France? 13 March 2013 (US stops publishing data on drone attacks) The US has stopped publishing data on drone attacks in Afghanistan, and (amazingly) deleted the data it had previously published. I don't think using a drone on the battlefield is worse than using a manned aircraft or artillery. Indeed, drones might be less bad, less likely to hit civilians for instance. What makes drones specially bad is their use off the battlefield. Nonetheless, this secrecy is part of Obama's dangerous campaign to keep the people in the dark. 13 March 2013 (US states consider banning undercover journalism) Many US states are considering bills to ban undercover journalism to expose disgusting conditions in farms. 13 March 2013 (Liberal New Yorkers duped into supporting conservative candidate) Liberal New Yorkers have been duped into supporting a conservative candidate for mayor, because she is gay. I am glad if New York City is unprejudiced enough that a gay person can win election as mayor, just as I am glad that it is possible for a Black to be elected president. But I wouldn't support a right-wing gay candidate like Quinn or a right-wing Black candidate like Obama. 13 March 2013 (Intersectarian war in Iraq) Intersectarian war is ramping up in Iraq, this time fueled by rivalry between political leaders. 13 March 2013 (Legalization of assisted suicide) An MD in Scotland, campaigning for legalization of assisted suicide, says he gave medicine and advice to various badly ill people who for sane reasons wanted to kill themselves. 13 March 2013 (Solar and wind energy prices) Advances in solar and wind energy are steadily driving the prices down. Now if only we took away the subsidies from fossil fuel and nuclear, and put it into renewable energy, we could make great strides in curbing global heating safely. 13 March 2013 (Domestic workers' rights in the US) Domestic workers have been mostly left out from workers' rights in the US. 13 March 2013 (Children stunted due to insufficient food) 40% of children in large parts of Asia and Africa are stunted in brain and body due to insufficient food when young. We need to help their mothers have fewer children. 13 March 2013 (EDF drops UK lawsuit against protesters) Fossil fuel burner EDF has dropped its UK lawsuit against environmental protesters. 13 March 2013 (Public pays for Fukushima) Public Pays for Fukushima While Nuclear Industry Profits. 13 March 2013 (Surging US stock market means nothing) The surging US stock market means nothing for American workers, since the corporations with lots of money don't really want to hire people. 13 March 2013 ("Government of laws" above the law) Our 'Government of Laws' Is Now Above the Law. 13 March 2013 (Norway Calls the World to Ban Nuclear Weapons) Norway Calls the World to Ban Nuclear Weapons. 13 March 2013 (Thugs kill teenager in Brooklyn) Brooklyn Community Says 'Enough is Enough!' After Police Kill 16-Year-Old Boy. 13 March 2013 (Manning statement audio leaked) Manning Statement Audio Leaked in Opposition to 'Extreme Secrecy in Our Courts'. 13 March 2013 (Complaints of torture or abuse of prisoners of Israel) Since 2001, there have been 750 complaints of torture or abuse of prisoners of Israel. Not one led to a criminal investigation. 13 March 2013 (Israeli troops shoot Palestinian protesters dead) Israeli troops are shooting Palestinian protesters dead. 13 March 2013 (The "cannibal cop" conviction) Why Today's "Cannibal Cop" Conviction Should Terrify You: There is no evidence that he intended to carry out any of his fantasies. 13 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose SR 65) US citizens: phone your senators and say to vote against SR 65, which would encourage Israel to attack Iran by promising US support. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 13 March 2013 (Urgent: Support Democracy Is For People constitutional amendment) US citizens: call on your senators to support the Democracy Is For People constitutional amendment. We also need the amendment saying that human rights, in general, do not apply to corporations. 13 March 2013 (UK to block ban on pesticides linked to bee deaths) The UK will block an EU plan to ban the pesticides that appear to kill bees. 13 March 2013 (NY thug found guilty of plotting to kidnap and eat women) A New York thug was found guilty of plotting to kidnap women and eat them. However, the thugs that attack protesters and then try to frame them are usually not even prosecuted. 13 March 2013 (Corporations Don't Pay Taxes) If Corporations Don't Pay Taxes, Why Should You? 13 March 2013 (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) The US has ignored the lessons of Fukushima. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission routinely ignores accidents it is supposed to penalize. 13 March 2013 (Bloomberg's NYC) Bloomberg's NYC ban on large sugary drinks was struck down by a court, but this victory for obesity-promoting big business is nothing to celebrate. 13 March 2013 (Prevent antibiotic resistance) To prevent antibiotic resistance from growing, we must change practices that release antibiotics into the environment (farms, rivers etc.). 13 March 2013 (Phone manufacturers) Phone manufacturers are surely funding a lawsuit to abolish a US law requiring them to discover whether the minerals they buy from the Congo are funding war there. 13 March 2013 (Investment banks) Proof that investment banks cheated companies when handling their IPOs, in order to get kickbacks from clients that would buy the stock. 13 March 2013 (European Union) The European Union needs a way to expel member states that turn to dictatorships. It also needs to be, itself, a lot more democratic. 13 March 2013 (giving business more power) The US Trade Representative has a job of vital importance: giving business more power over the US. It just release a disingenuous report pushing harmful goals justified by dishonest reasoning. 13 March 2013 (War on Drugs: offense against human rights) Former Presidents of Brazil and Switzerland say that the War on Drugs is an offense against human rights. 13 March 2013 (Corporate welfare outrage) Corporate welfare outrage: proposing a retroactive tax break for a giant and profitable company. 13 March 2013 (Israeli landfill) An Israeli landfill in Palestine is spreading toxins and carcinogens. 13 March 2013 (Soldiers not prevent attack) Caught on video: fanatical "settlers" beat up a teenage Palestinian shepherd as soldiers watched and did nothing to prevent the attack. 13 March 2013 (Violation of human rights) Israel's system of imprisoning Palestinian minors systematically violates their human rights, says UNICEF. 13 March 2013 (Urgent: Support the I am Not a Loan campaign) US citizens: support the I am Not a Loan campaign to free students from overhanging student debt. 13 March 2013 (Crackdown on Burmese protesters) Aung San Suu Kyi, now in the Burmese Parliament, supported a crackdown on protesters on behalf of a Chinese-owned copper mine. The local people will probably support the mine if (1) their environment and health are properly protected from pollution and (2) they get a fair share of the wealth that the mine will generate. This is feasible, but the owners probably want to skimp on it so as to increase their profits. There is no excuse to let them get away with this. Aung San Suu Kyi and Parliament ought to tell the mine investors to give the local people enough to convince them to approve the mine. 13 March 2013 (Urgent: Call on Obama to stand up for Tibet) US citizens: sign this petition calling on Obama to stand up for Tibet. 12 March 2013 (Several states trying to eradicate wolves) Wolves are a success story for endangered species reintroduction, but several states are trying to eradicate wolves even though their numbers are still few. 12 March 2013 (Somali journalists attacked) Somali journalists were attacked as they tried to cover a court case. Peculiarly, the court agents wanted the press to cover the session, but soldiers interfered anyway. 12 March 2013 (Afghan gov't forces members shoot US and Afghan gov't personnel) Afghan government forces members keep on shooting US and Afghan government personnel. In Iraq, civilians were killed frequently for driving near a US convoy, after soldiers mistook them for attackers. Once soldiers know an attack can take that form, it is natural that they protect themselves. However, by doing so, they generate public hatred. Unless the populace hates the guerrillas enough that they forgive the soldiers, there is no way for the soldiers to win their hearts and minds once this cycle gets started. 12 March 2013 (What's revealed by Facebook users' "likes") Many things can be determined about a Facebook user, with pretty good accuracy, from the user's published list of "likes". If you do as I do, and reject Facebook, you are safe from this form of snooping. How can we get the news items that interest us, without telling a server what criterion to use? Simple: download lists of items, and have software on our own machine decide which articles to show. This software can fetch additional articles (which it doesn't actually show us) just to create a false trail. 12 March 2013 (Death of accused Delhi bus rape-murder gang member) One of the accused Delhi bus rape-murder gang committed suicide in prison, or was murdered. Look at the ridiculous response of the victim's relative, who is incensed that the man is dead because he wanted the man killed. There are valid and sufficient reasons to punish rapists and murderers, but sadism is not one of them. If, however, the man was murdered, that is a different issue. The state must not kill prisoners or let them be killed. However, all people, even prisoners, have the right to commit suicide. 12 March 2013 (Internet filters) Ideas parents dislike "spread like a fungus" on the Internet, so filters are being developed to block access to discussions about topics such as anorexia. The article clearly shows the lack of clarity about the purpose of these filters. Is it to prevent children from "stumbling upon" something they don't want to see, or to prevent them from finding what they do want to see? The former might be easy, because the child will cooperate with it. The second is much harder, but I suspect that's what parents really want. If such filters ever work well, millions of parents will use them to keep their children from finding out about evolution or the principal reason for the current local drought, flood, big storm, heatwave, agricultural plague, or other effect of global heating. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Comment against Keystone XL pipeline whitewash study) US citizens: submit a public comment against the Keystone XL pipeline whitewash study. 12 March 2013 (If (only) the Dalai Lama were Pope) If (only) the Dalai Lama were Pope. 12 March 2013 (Obama regime) The Obama regime says it set out to kill al-Aulaqi after getting Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) to inculpate him, but multiple evidence shows it had already made this decision earlier, when reportedly it knew nothing about him except that he was expressing hostile views. Meanwhile, inculpation by a prisoner such as Abdulmutallab is hardly a solid basis to conclude someone is guilty of anything. 12 March 2013 (Zerlina Maxwell) Zerlina Maxwell, debating a right-wing show host, rejected the idea that women should carry guns to stop rapists, and said that we should put the blame on men who rape. Irate right-wing men sent her rape threats. 12 March 2013 (Amnesty International and the Iraqi) Amnesty International condemned the Iraqi government for continuing disrespect for human rights. 12 March 2013 (EU Bans Sale of Cosmetics) EU Bans Sale of Cosmetics Tested on Animals. 12 March 2013 (AIPAC-sponsored bills) Two AIPAC-sponsored bills would push the US towards war with Iran. Americans for Peace Now explains how they are dangerous. 12 March 2013 (Drone Question) The Drone Question Obama Hasn't Answered. 12 March 2013 (Repeal authorization for using military force) The New York Times asks congress to repeal the 2001 authorization for using military force. Note that doing this "effective on withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan" might have no effect, since Obama wants to leave some troops there permanently. 12 March 2013 (Technology to change course) The movement to resist urban noise shows that popular opposition to the effects of technology can force technology to change course. 12 March 2013 (Religion may help criminals) How religious beliefs (probably Christian) help habitual criminals silence their consciences. 12 March 2013 (Human Rights Abuses) Human Rights Abuses Spiral in Iran: UN. 12 March 2013 (Refusal of Freedom of Information) Obama has increased the rate of refusal of Freedom of Information Act requests to a record. 12 March 2013 (Tax on Being Poor) In the [US] South and West, a Tax on Being Poor. 12 March 2013 (River pollution) Tens of thousands are marching to Delhi to protest river pollution. 12 March 2013 (Lax towards their future employers) Senator Warren tore into the US bank regulators for their lax attitude towards their probable future employers. 12 March 2013 (Global heating) The top US admiral in the Pacific Ocean says the biggest threat to the US there is global heating. 12 March 2013 (Hollywood bows down to China) Hollywood now bows down to China much as it bows down to the Pentagon. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose attacks on birth control and women's health programs) US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, oppose attacks on birth control and women's health programs. Also sign this petition, but the phone call will have more impact. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Rulemaking about use of drones by US border patrol) US citizens: call for rulemaking about use of drones for surveillance in the US by the border patrol. 12 March 2013 (Information that companies collect about Americans) A list of many kinds of information that companies regularly collect about most Americans. They don't get most of this information about me, because I am a surveillance resister. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Protect sea turtles) Everyone: call for protection of sea turtles in Baja California. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Call on the US to follow international assassination law) US citizens: call on the US to follow international law about assassination. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop predatory "payday loans") US citizens: call for the US to stop predatory "payday loans" that gouge the poor. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Prosecute banks) US citizens: Call on Attorney General Holder to prosecute banks, not consider them "too big to jail". 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Treaty to abolish nuclear weapons) US citizens: call on Obama to work for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Protect caribou habitat) US citizens: the Keystone XL pipeline, which would threaten civilization in the long term, would first threaten caribou habitat. Call on the US to consider this issue properly. 12 March 2013 (Dubya's conquest and occupation of Iraq) Dubya's conquest and occupation of Iraq was arguably the biggest US foreign policy mistake in its history. It was also an act of aggressive war: the crime for which German and Japanese leaders were executed. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: End too "big to jail") US citizens: call on Obama to end "too big to jail". 12 March 2013 (Attack on Australia's plain packaging law for cigarettes) Tobacco companies and their submissive governments are using the World Trade Organization to attack Australia's plain paper packaging law for cigarettes. They make the absurd argument that companies have a right to draw further profit from their investments in advertising. The WTO ruled against the US law against flavored cigarettes, too. The World Trade Organization kills people by subordinating human lives to profit. Let's kill it before it can kill again. 12 March 2013 (Proposed US-EU free exploitation treaty) A proposed US-EU free exploitation treaty threatens Europe with another attack on democracy that could increment the political power of business up to US levels. 12 March 2013 (Inspiring hatred in Iraq) The US inspired hatred in Iraq using the same methods that were so effective in Latin America. But the Pentagon isn't satisfied, and wants to do it again, this time with no restraints. The School of the Americas is still operating; its name was changed in the hope we would forget. 12 March 2013 (Urgent: Support the Arbitration Fairness Act) US citizens: phone your senators to support the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would stop companies from imposing forced arbitration on customers and employees. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 11 March 2013 (6-year-old arrested for crossing a street) A 6-year-old in the US was arrested for crossing a street, and for going to a store on her own. When I was 6 years old, I had to cross streets and avenues to get to school. Avenues in Manhattan are several lanes wide and the cars go rather fast. But this was nothing special — every child did it. 11 March 2013 (UN Commission and Status of Women) The UN Commission on the Status of Women is being undermined by a right-wing leader who is bowing down to the Vatican. 11 March 2013 (Censorship proposal) The European Union is considering an extreme censorship proposal in the name of ending prejudice against women. I've seen porn on German TV stations, late night. I suppose that would be banned too. 11 March 2013 (Guns) Having guns in your house makes you less safe. Allowing concealed weapons leads to more gun crime. It is takes constant practice to use a gun well enough that you could stop an armed assailant. 11 March 2013 (Google obtained patent license) Google has obtained a royalty-free patent license for the VP8 video format (used in WebM), effectively for everyone. I hope that some browser developers will now stop refusing to support VP8 format. 11 March 2013 (Refuting criticism of Chavez) Refuting criticism of Chavez. 11 March 2013 (secular counterpart of theology) Biased, nationalist history considered as a secular counterpart of theology. 11 March 2013 (Recognize the closing of public schools) Teachers' unions recognize the closing of public schools, while opening nonunion "charter" schools, as simple union-busting. 11 March 2013 (Paid compensation to an employee he smeared) O'Keefe, who destroyed the community aid group Acorn, has paid compensation to an employee he smeared. What disappoints me about this article is that it shows no hint of a doubt that there is something bad about setting up a brothel. 11 March 2013 (Obama will try Abu Ghaith) Obama will try Abu Ghaith in a civilian court. This is the right way to do it. At least Obama has passed up one opportunity to trash human rights. If he passed up more of them, I might consider him a good president. 11 March 2013 (Sperm whale) A sperm whale was killed by the plastic waste it swallowed. 11 March 2013 (London protester Alfie Meadows) Maimed London protester Alfie Meadows was found not guilty of "violent disorder" after his third trial. The government goes to great lengths to try to repress protesters. Meanwhile, the thug who attack Meadows has not even been charged. Another protester was convicted of arson for burning a wooden bench. This is perversion of the word "arson" and shows, once again, the repressive nature of law in the UK. 11 March 2013 (Cut support for poor people) The UK government has cut support for poor people that have more bedrooms than the state judges they need; but the UK doesn't have enough smaller apartments to house all of them. Even when they can find smaller apartments, the requirement to move could cause them great hardship and expense. 11 March 2013 (School-to-prison pipeline) The school-to-prison pipeline starts with five year olds that talk about playing with toy guns, or imaginary toy guns. It might be better for parents to stop raising children in a way that gets them used to guns; but not by threatening to punish the children. 11 March 2013 (Trading Drains) New Report Exposes How High Frequency Trading Drains Investment and Jobs from the Real Economy. 11 March 2013 (US appeals court) A US appeals court ruled that border agents need "reasonable suspicion" to search the contents of a traveler's laptop. That is a step forward, but the criterion remains very weak. 11 March 2013 (Justice Department) The Justice Department intervened in support of a man who made a video of thugs beating up men they were arresting. Three cheers for this, but it doesn't look like lawsuits against thugs are enough to make them stop this. They should be prosecuted. 11 March 2013 (Resist science standards for religious reasons) Some states may resist the New Generation Science Standards for religious reasons. 11 March 2013 (Giving US thugs military weapons) Giving US thugs military weapons has resulted in many killings of innocent civilians. Thus, SWAT teams make Americans less safe. The problem is due to federal programs to fund SWAT teams. Once a city has a SWAT team, it feels a need to use that expensive resource, with the result that people are regularly exposed to the danger. Even small cities with little crime have armored vehicles that are designed to fight other armored vehicles. The ACLU is investigating to find the extend of the problem. 11 March 2013 (Drones and privacy) Why drones endanger privacy worse than helicopters. How states are proposing to regulate drones. 11 March 2013 (Radioactive waste) US budget cuts could endanger efforts to control leaking tanks of radioactive waste. 11 March 2013 (Stores track customers' cell phones.) Stores track customers' cell phones. They can't see me this way. 11 March 2013 (Skype to be censored in China) Microsoft allows Skype to be censored in China, and tries to make this sound like normal business. 11 March 2013 (Google glasses) A bar has banned Google Glasses to protect its patrons' privacy. 11 March 2013 (Political payment was apparently illegal) Why Chevron's multimillion political payment was apparently illegal. Even if Chevron is fined ten times the amount it gave, that may do no good since the payoff on political influence payments is often hundreds or thousands of times what was given. The loophole Chevron is trying to use — giving through one subsidiary while contracting through another — should not be allowed either. 11 March 2013 (Legal argument for allowing Super) The legal argument for allowing Super PACs to receive unlimited donations from corporations is that they would be independent of the political campaigns; but in practice they are hardly independent. Even if they were indeed run independently, they would still tend to buy the support of candidates, who know full well which companies want which policies. 11 March 2013 (Bad US health care system) The bad US health care system kills around 50,000 people a year because they can't afford care. It also bankrupts many people — over 60% of bankruptcies in the US were caused by medical expenses. Solving this problem requires putting an end to many profitable, exploitative businesses, including some that have the form of "nonprofits" (as explained in Brill's article). Thus, we need to steel ourselves to ignore the protests of those businesses, as we change to a system that serves our needs. As for the owners of those businesses, they'll live. 11 March 2013 (Global collapse of civilization) Global heating and other ecological degradation threaten a global collapse of civilization, due to food insufficiency among other things. The greatest crimes known are genocide and aggressive war. The companies and crony politicians now keeping civilization on track for collapse are committing both of these. A global food insufficiency in a few decades would be the biggest genocide ever seen, and will trigger bloody wars between the desperate starving and the frightened ones with some food. I propose that people should assemble, now, a database on all those responsible, both the leaders such as the Koches and the followers such as Obama. With this database, they can be punished, and their ill-gotten gains can be taken away from them or their descendants. We should make sure they cannot buy their way out of the catastrophe they are imposing on the rest of the world. If we make this clear enough, soon enough, we might even scare them into allowing measures to stop global heating. 11 March 2013 (Restricting abortions) 100 women in Ulster have stated they have used abortion pills, as a campaign against restricting abortions there. 11 March 2013 (Predictive policing on Internet) Combining "predictive policing" with a society of fools that allow Internet services to know thousands of daily details about them could lead to pre-emptive arrests of people who somehow resemble past criminals. I wonder what effect it had on the 13-year-old girl that the police took her computer and turned her into an unintentional stool pigeon. 11 March 2013 (economic plans for ending austerity) Ellen Brown praises Beppe Grillo's economic plans for ending austerity in Italy. 11 March 2013 (War with Iran) Time magazine presumes that war with Iran is only a matter of time. To the extent that this facilitates starting the war, the war would be a matter of Time. 11 March 2013 (Bill to ban data-mining) A Massachusetts bill would ban Internet services from data-mining data stored by schools. I am in favor of this bill. I don't care how it would affect specific companies such as Google or Microsoft: it would be an advance in the public's rights. At the same time, I don't think it goes far enough. Even if this becomes law, people should not store any private information on remote storage services without encrypting it before upload. 11 March 2013 (EFF supports bill) The EFF supports a bill introduced to tighten rules for government access to some sorts of people's digital information. It is unfortunate that the article uses the nebulous term "cloud", but its conclusions are valid anyway. 11 March 2013 (US unemployment rate) The US unemployment rate would be at 9.5% if we included the people who have given up on finding work again due to the recession. 11 March 2013 (Keeping terrorism trials in US courts) Keeping terrorism trials in US courts works much better than using Guantanamo kangaroo courts. What's more, it is closer to real justice, 11 March 2013 (Antinuclear protest in Japan) There was a big antinuclear protest in Japan, two years after the Fukushima disaster started. The cleanup may take 40 years, and let's hope there isn't another tsunami during that time. 11 March 2013 (Profiting from global heating) Rich people are investing in profiting from global heating. The danger is that those businesses will have an interest in global heating and will lobby against efforts to reduce it. Some of these businesses should be banned just to ensure that doesn't happen. 11 March 2013 (Privatization of state schools) A shocking case illustrates the dishonest way the UK government imposes privatization of state schools, over the wishes of the community. UK university students are on strike to block privatizations. 11 March 2013 (Death sentences for football rioters) Death sentences for accused football rioters have led to an insurrection in Port Said. 11 March 2013 (Rand against Brennan's appointment) Rand Paul's filibuster against Brennan's appointment got straight to the heart of Obama's rationale for ordering assassinations. 11 March 2013 (arrest people for carrying a condom) New York thugs regularly arrest people for carrying a condom, if they look suspicious. Supposedly that proves they are prostitutes. Even if they really are prostitutes, that is an injustice. There is no justification for banning prostitution. All that does is oppress the poor. 11 March 2013 (School closures) Chicago's mayor claims school closures are a way to save money but it looks like they are just union-busting. 11 March 2013 (Complex spending billions on not needed planes) The military/industrial/congressional complex is spending billions on planes that the air force does not need, which illustrates how there is a lot of room for cuts in military spending. 11 March 2013 (UK government is corrupted) The UK government is corrupted through links between ministers and oil companies. 11 March 2013 (Antibiotic resistance) Antibiotic resistance is spreading in bacteria that live in people's intestines. 11 March 2013 (India coal-burning) India's coal-burning electric plans kill around 100,000 people per year and cause 20 million new cases of asthma per year. 11 March 2013 (Debate Islam and Atheism) At a debate in London between Islam and Atheism, the Atheist debater refused to speak unless women were allowed to sit wherever they wished. Bravo! 11 March 2013 (Pakistani drivers) Efforts to teach Pakistani drivers safe driving founders due to an Islamic fatalism about death. 11 March 2013 (CITES protect sharks) CITES has given protection to 5 species of sharks which were most heavily threatened. 11 March 2013 (ICC prosecutors) The ICC prosecutors have dropped the case against one Kenyan politician after a key witness said he was lying. I don't know enough to have any idea what the truth is in this. 11 March 2013 (Discouraged public attention) Bush discouraged public attention to the cost of the occupation of Iraq, which facilitated corruption and waste. 11 March 2013 (UK nuclear power plant) In the UK, nuclear power plant operates keep their benefits but shift the cost of disasters to the public. This creates moral hazard, encouraging dangerous practices. I recall that the US has a similar policy, though I don't have a reference for it. 11 March 2013 (Gang against women hushed) Gang rapes against women activists in Tahrir Square are being hushed up by Islamists. 10 March 2013 (Urgent: Move nuclear waste to medium-term dry storage) US citizens: phone your senators and call for moving nuclear waste to medium-term dry storage, rather than leaving it in pools next to reactors. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 10 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop banks from issuing exploitative payday loans) US citizens: call for the US to stop big banks from issuing exploitative payday loans. 10 March 2013 (World's oldest rock art threatened by uranium mining) Uranium mining in Australia threatens the world's oldest rock art. If that uranium is mined and put in reactors, it can damage more than that. 10 March 2013 (UK govt criticizes demoralized NHS staff after cutting their budget) After NHS budget cuts, the UK government criticizes the demoralized staff. They want these overworked people to be at the top of their form all the time, to make up for the insufficiency. 10 March 2013 (British Commonwealth to meet in Sri Lanka) The British Commonwealth chose to have its next meeting in Sri Lanka, ignoring that government's systematic repression. 10 March 2013 (Somali gov't protects rapists) A Somali woman talks about the gang rape by Somali soldiers, followed by persistent government efforts to hush it up and protect them. 10 March 2013 (UK patients squeezed for profit by private contractor) A company handling UK medical care for the NHS has lied hundreds of times about the level of staffing it provides. Privatization of an activity means a company extracts profit from it. To find that profit, the company has to squeeze someone or something. In this case, it's the patients. 10 March 2013 (Unequal distribution of wealth in the US) The US is now almost as unequal in wealth as Brazil. 10 March 2013 (Solitary confinement as punishment for prisoners) The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing to end use of solitary confinement as a punishment for prisoners. One prisoner (at least) was punished with solitary confinement for filing a lawsuit against the prison. 09 March 2013 (Religious fanatics attacking abortion) A woman who was badly sick got a late-term abortion but died anyway. Now anti-abortion religious fanatics are trying to attack her. I've read they also want to cancel the surgeon's medical license. 09 March 2013 (Women names on marriage) If women change their names on marriage, that hurts their careers as well as perhaps their self-respect. 09 March 2013 (Women change their names on marriage) If women change their names on marriage, that hurts their careers practically as well as through suggesting that they are inferior to men. The article ends, sad to say, with an argument in favor of changing names: to screw up use of Facebook. However, if you do the right thing and reject Facebook, that argument disappears. 09 March 2013 (Venezuela after Chavez) Venezuela after Chavez must face the issue of the global heating caused by its oil exports. 09 March 2013 (Journalists in Tanzania) Journalists in Tanzania face violent attacks. 09 March 2013 (Australia's Climate Commission) Australia's Climate Commission holds global heating responsible for the record hot summer. 09 March 2013 (CITES voted not to ban polar bear hunting) CITES voted not to ban polar bear hunting. If polar bears are reproducing in plenty, but they can't all survive due to the changed habitat resulting from global heating, a certain amount of hunting will not affect the future size of the bear population — in effect, it will cause some bears to die instead of others. I don't know what that amount is, or how it compares with the 600 or so polar bears killed annually by hunters. 09 March 2013 (Dangerous of sausages) Sausages are a lot more dangerous that horsemeat-contaminated chopped meat. 09 March 2013 (Late-term abortions) Two brave doctors in the US do late-term abortions. Here is a description of the threats and hostility they must face every day. Any pregnant woman in the US might find her life depends on these doctors, if certain complications of pregnancy occur. 09 March 2013 (Law to treat embryos as persons) Kansas is considering a law to treat embryos as persons. 09 March 2013 (Birth Control) Birth Control and "The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition". 09 March 2013 (MCDonalds working foreign students for no pay) McDonalds is working foreign students for no pay. So they went on strike. 09 March 2013 (Monsanto Holds the Patents on Life) What it Means that Monsanto Holds the Patents on Life. 09 March 2013 (Oil extraction is poisoning people) Gas from tar sands oil extraction is poisoning people in Alberta. 09 March 2013 (Driver of the car Oswaldo) The driver of the car in which Oswaldo Payá was riding says that he made a false confession under duress, and that the accident which may have killed Payá occurred when a government car rammed his car from behind. 09 March 2013 (British Bush forces gave no painkillers) British Bush forces gave no painkillers to wounded Iraqi prisoners. A hatred of Iraqis pervaded the Bush forces; this might be an instance of it. 09 March 2013 (CIA accused causing Chavez to get cancer) Venezuelan politicians accuse the CIA of causing Chavez to get cancer. I find it the accusation unlikely. It would not surprise me at all if the CIA tried to assassinate Chavez. He was an enemy of the banksters that Obama generally serves, and Obama openly practices assassination. However, the chemicals that can cause cancer do not act reliably or quickly, unless perhaps if given in massive doses, and I think that might cause other acute problems. Is there a carcinogen that might plausibly be used for this? 09 March 2013 (Stability in Iraq) Stability in Iraq depends on punishing US torturers. Linking US-sponsored torture in Iraq to US-sponsored torture in El Salvador. 09 March 2013 (Punished for praising the September 11 attacks) A US congressman says that Abu Ghaith deserves to be punished for propaganda praising the September 11 attacks. Isn't expression of opinion supposed to be a constitutional right? There may be other grounds to prosecute Abu Ghaith, but the US should not punish anyone for mere opinion. 09 March 2013 (European Parliament on Obama's assassination) What the European Parliament and Rand Paul say about Obama's assassination policy and his evasive responses when asked to justify it. Al Qa'ida is not an enemy army; it is a criminal gang. The US must recognize this and treat it that way, and grant the usual respect for the rights of the accused. 09 March 2013 (On the Legacy of Hugo Chavez) On the Legacy of Hugo Chavez. How Chavez earned the hatred of US plutocrats. 09 March 2013 (A year starve in UK NHS hospitals) Over 200 people a year starve in UK NHS hospitals because the staff are overworked and cannot attend to them. This could easily be avoided — it just takes hiring enough staff. Will plans to make record-keeping take less time help? Maybe. This efficiency could be an opportunity to increase the time staff can spend on patients. However, this could be used as an opportunity to reduce the level of staff. If the NHS is effectively privatized, which one do you think the new bosses will do? 09 March 2013 (Hungary's governing party) Hungary's governing party is accused of taking the country towards absolutism. 09 March 2013 (CO2 emissions rose in 2012) CO2 emissions rose in 2012; it was the second-largest annual increase ever measured. 09 March 2013 (selling information about celebrities) UK thugs pleaded guilty to selling information about celebrities to a newspaper. 09 March 2013 (Pushing the TSA to cancel its common sense) Airline employees, irrationally concerned about minor dangers, are pushing the TSA to cancel its common sense. Could someone please run a national campaign to support the change? 09 March 2013 (Denied the health danger of tobacco) How the Tea Party grew out of tobacco company PR that denied the health danger of tobacco. 09 March 2013 (US snowstorms to global heating) Relating US snowstorms to global heating. 09 March 2013 (US banks are too big to be prosecuted) The Attorney General openly said that some US banks are too big to be prosecuted no matter what crimes they may commit. These banks are mortal enemies of the independence of the United States. Don't be distracted by pipsqueaks such as al Qa'ida — fight the banksters. I am sure they have killed a lot more than 3,000 Americas in the past few years. 08 March 2013 (Urgent: Close tax loopholes) US citizens: call on Congress to close tax loopholes used by corporations and the rich. 08 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides) Everyone: call on Bayer to stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides, since they appear to be killing bees. 08 March 2013 (Urgent: Comcast against paid sick days) In the US: tell Comcast to stop lobbying against paid sick days for workers in Philadelphia. 08 March 2013 (Obama is "reaching out to Republicans") Obama is "reaching out to Republicans" again. What could they have in common? Obama has already said he wants to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This makes it all the more important for Americans to phone their members of Congress to demand that they sign the Grayson-Takano letter and promise to vote against any such "grand bargain". Don't let Obama and the Republicans impose any more sacrifices on poor Americans. 08 March 2013 (Rich Venezuelans celebrate the death of Chavez) Rich Venezuelans who live in Florida are celebrating the death of Chavez. They hate him because he did not let them exploit Venezuela as they wish. What this shows is that they have no shame about exploiting the poor. Sad to say, they have come to the right country. The US would be much better off economically if it had a Chavez as president. And our human rights would be safer, too. Chavez famously violated human rights on some occasions (and I have criticized them), but he's a human rights hero compared with Bush and Obama. 08 March 2013 (Senators filibustering Brennan's appointment) Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden are filibustering Brennan's appointment to head the CIA, in order to express their opposition to Obama's claim to be allowed to kill anyone anywhere. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Stop sale of clothing made by slave labor) In the US: tell Target to stop selling clothing made by slave labor in Uzbekistan. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Save the libel reform bill) Britons: write to MPs to save the libel reform bill. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Thank Obama for nominating Gina McCarthy) US citizens: thank Obama for nominating Gina McCarthy to head the EPA. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Reject State Department's whitewash of Keystone XL) US citizens: tell Obama to reject the State Department's whitewash of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. 07 March 2013 (Venezuelan opposition leader faces charges) A Venezuelan opposition leader faces criminal charges of influence peddling in 1998. I won't assume these charges are false — this was the sort of thing that politicians did. However, it seems like excessive to bring such charges 15 years later. 07 March 2013 (Danger of dictatorship in the US) Government officials warned in recent years of the danger of dictatorship in the US. Laws are now effectively secret. 07 March 2013 (State Department's report on Keystone XL) The State Department's whitewash of the planet-roaster pipeline was written in conjunction with a consulting company that also works with oil companies including the Koch brothers. It looks like Obama has been bought and is constructing a web of lies to serve as an excuse. 07 March 2013 (Benjamin Kallos for New York City Council) Vote for Benjamin Kallos for New York City Council 07 March 2013 (The "Internet of Things") The "Internet of Things" is really a scheme to morph everyday life into a complex of marketing/surveillance activities presented as a new form of friendship. I don't want to have a "relationship with a brand". I don't want to give companies any information about me when I buy or use their products. I have opted out almost completely from these twisted uses of the Internet. I hope you will join me. There are several different uses of the network that people call "cloud" due to not understanding them. When an article says "the cloud", the author means, "It uses the network, but I don't know how or why; I don't know what I'm talking about." 07 March 2013 (Journalists in Tunisia face death) Secular journalists in Tunisia face death threats from intolerant Islamists and obstruction from the state. 07 March 2013 (Iraq reconstruction funds wasted) At least 8 billion dollars of Iraq "reconstruction" funds were wasted outright. Much of the rest did little good. 07 March 2013 (Iraqi torture centres) Pentagon and Petraeus linked to Iraqi torture centres. 07 March 2013 (Imprisoned for peaceful protests) Zainab Al-Khawaja, Bahraini dissident, has been imprisoned over and over for peaceful protests. 07 March 2013 (Obama showed more assassination opinion) Obama showed some more assassination opinion memos to some senators, but not to us. 07 March 2013 (Guantanamo even nastier) Obama has made Guantanamo even nastier than it was, and most of the prisoners are now on hunger strike since they know they can't be released. Obama, like Bush before him, makes me ashamed of my country. I am proud I didn't vote for either of them. 07 March 2013 (Laws to lower minimum wage) ALEC is pushing laws in US states to lower minimum wage. 07 March 2013 (Authorize thugs to collect DNA) The Supreme Court may authorize thugs to collect DNA from every person who is arrested, on the pretext that it is for verifying identification. Put this together with the school-to-prison pipeline, and they will get samples of every American's DNA in the future. 07 March 2013 (Obama's assassination) Obama's assassination rationale: "If a high official does it, it's not illegal." 07 March 2013 (A More Independent South America) A More Independent South America and the Chávez Legacy. 07 March 2013 (Tariq Ali describes the Chavez) Tariq Ali describes the Chavez he knew. 07 March 2013 (Google Glasses) Google Glasses could turn millions of people into data collectors for Google, giving data about themselves and others. If these devices were running free software, you could decide what information to give to whom, rather than being used by them. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Protest against austerit) Citizens of the EU: protest against austerity on March 13 and 14. 07 March 2013 (Clean up depleted uranium in Iraq) Efforts are being made to clean up depleted uranium in Iraq. I suppose the cleanup plans include only a fraction of the most contaminated sites. The question to ask the US and UK military: "If some enemy invaded your country, would you fire depleted uranium shells?" 06 March 2013 (President Chavez dead) President Chavez of Venezuela has died. Hugo Chávez Kept His Promise to the People of Venezuela Obama, naturally, used the occasion to repeat his perennial criticism of Chavez. Obama works for the banksters, and the banksters really really want to get Venezuela back under their dominion. The US senator, meanwhile, pretends that Venezuela's elections are less democratic than US elections. I have some criticisms of Chavez. I don't like his support for dictators, the plan to shut down the main opposition TV channel, and the arbitrary punishment of some opposition figures (recall that the US is at least as bad). Overall, however, I think Chavez was a far better president than Bush or Obama, in terms of the mission of the state: to assure the freedom and well-being of the people. 06 March 2013 (Teacher barred by Israel for refusal to become informer) A teacher at the Friends School in Ramallah was barred by Israel because she refused to become an informer. 06 March 2013 (Israeli border thugs support "settlers") When masked Israeli "settlers" attack and harass Palestinians, the border thugs typically support the harassers. Here's a photo showing a soldier shaking hands with a masked "settler". The villagers of Yasuf have been blocked for years from access to their farmland by fanatical "settlers", who also burned their mosque. 06 March 2013 ("Cloud storage" companies check users' files) Many US "cloud storage" companies check the files that users store, looking for "illegal materials". Today they check for known images of sexual abuse of children. Tomorrow they could check for whatever the government wants them to check for. 06 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose AIPAC) US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "AIPAC [the Israeli Hawks' lobby] does not speak for me — I am against attacking Iran, and against Israeli colonies on Palestinian land." The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 06 March 2013 (US development into dictatorship) Measuring the US development into a dictatorship: only two of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are still heeded. This article details how the US government regularly makes monkeys out of the rest of them. 06 March 2013 (70 dissidents tortured in Abu Dhabi) Abu Dhabi has tortured 70 dissidents, maiming some, to get them to confess to a conspiracy to commit some vaguely described horrible act. The state claims to have had written proof of this, but has destroyed it. I disliked Chavez's friendship with Iran and Gaddafi's Libya, but it was no worse than western support for the regime in Abu Dhabi. 06 March 2013 (TSA to allow small knives in cabin) The TSA has decided to permit small retractable knives in the cabin. A small bit of common sense. 06 March 2013 (CPR) The woman who died in a California nursing home apparently did not want CPR done to her. To respect her wishes would have been correct, but the nurse on the phone did not say she was doing that. If you're going to do CPR, the sooner the better. Thus, the policy she cited — to call an ambulance to come and do CPR — makes no sense at all. 06 March 2013 (Thugs in Sydney brutally injure man) Thugs in Sydney threw a man on the ground and brutally injured him. In usual thug fashion, they plan to fabricate an accusation against him. It may get thrown out by the judge, but it will do to protect the thug from facing justice. Offensive language does not excuse attacking anyone. Not even if the attacker is a thug. 06 March 2013 (Aaron's Laws) Transcript: Lawrence Lessig on Aaron's Laws Law and Justice in a Digital Age: Section I 06 March 2013 (Israel's segregated buses) You're Not Allowed to Use Public Transportation At All : A Report from Israel's Segregated Buses. 06 March 2013 (Legal victory for generic medicines in India) A legal victory for generic medicines in India. I am not sure what the "Intellectual Property Appellate Board" is, or even whether it is an Indian agency or an international one. However, its name endorses a bogus concept, "intellectual property". 06 March 2013 (Rise in the Dow average) What the present rise in the Dow average says about the US. 06 March 2013 (Sequester is Obama's fault) The Sequester Is President Obama's Fault. It is because he supported the right-wing idea of cutting the deficit. 06 March 2013 (US minimum wage) Obama wants to raise the US minimum wage, but not enough. 06 March 2013 (Walmart billionaires try to privatize education in LA) Walmart billionaires are trying to privatize education in Los Angeles. Their charter schools treat teachers like Walmart employees. 06 March 2013 (Marathon race in Gaza cancelled) A marathon race in Gaza has been cancelled after Hamas refused to allow women to participate. 06 March 2013 (Camels at the edge of the Arctic Ocean) 3 million years ago, giant camels lived on Ellesmere Island, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean. We may get camels there again in a century or two, if we don't change course now. 06 March 2013 (UK and New Zealand to require plain packaging for cigarettes) The UK and New Zealand plan to follow Australia in requiring plain packaging for cigarettes. Uruguay adopted a similar law years ago, but a cigarette company with headquarters in Switzerland used an Uruguay-Switzerland free exploitation treaty to force Uruguay to cancel the deal. 07 March 2013 (Thug on trial for using gov't database to prey on vulnerable women) A UK thug is on trial for using the government's data base to find vulnerable women and push them into sex. This isn't the first time. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Save the US Postal Service) US citizens: call on Congress to cancel the artificial crisis that is crushing the US Postal Service. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Oppose aspartame in milk without label) US citizens: Oppose the proposal to allow aspartame in milk without mentioning them on the label. Aspartame isn't sugar, but it is associated with other health problems. In addition, artificial sweeteners confuse a brain-stomach feedback loop, and that tends to encourage obesity. 07 March 2013 (Urgent: Legalize unlocking of mobile devices) US citizens: call on Congress to legalize unlocking of mobile devices. 06 March 2013 (Executives of Kabul Bank fraud get light sentence) The executives of the Kabul Bank fraud got a fairly light sentence. Nonetheless, it is better than the way the US treated the perpetrators of foreclosure fraud. Obama basically let them off the hook. 06 March 2013 (UN human rights review) South Korea has decided to advocate a UN human rights review of North Korea. I think this is the right decision. Once in a while, keeping quiet about tyranny makes it possible to do some good, but if this becomes common, the effect is to help tyranny continue. 06 March 2013 (Refuses CPR to a dying inmate) A nurse working at an old age home in California refused to administer CPR to a dying inmate, saying that the company had forbidden staff to do this. It would be proper to ban companies from having such policies, but it would also be interesting to investigate whatever motivated the company to adopt that policy. Perhaps some laws underlying that motivation also should be changed. 06 March 2013 (Killed 2/3 of the forest elephants) 2/3 of the forest elephants of Africa have been killed in the last decade, and with increased poaching effort, they could be extinct quite soon. 06 March 2013 (Arrested on political charges) The overthrown president of the Maldive Islands was arrested on apparently political charges. 06 March 2013 (How Niger avoided problems of Mali) How Niger, a neighbor of Mali, avoided problems like those of Mali. 06 March 2013 (The US stock market has surged up) The US stock market has surged up. Is it a coincidence that this follows the massive budget cuts of the sequester? The budget cuts will hurt the real economy over coming months, but gain for the rich are not tied to gains for the real economy any more. For the rich, this disaster may be opportunity, and that may show up in stocks. 06 March 2013 (Ways to cap bankers' pay) There are effective and ineffective ways to cap bankers' pay. The Swiss scheme seems to be a good one, but the EU is looking at a worse one. 06 March 2013 (Taxing financial transactions) Taxing financial transactions would help protect the US from Wall Street. No wonder Obama is against it. 06 March 2013 (Data base available to companies) The Gates Foundation has set up a data base about millions of US school students and made it available to companies. Parents should organize to demand that their school systems not participate. 06 March 2013 (Veteran mortified by the damage he helped do to Iraq) A veteran of the Bush forces is mortified by the damage he helped do to Iraq. 06 March 2013 (Cancel the 1953 cease fire) North Korea threatens to cancel the 1953 cease fire. This seems like the usual North Korean bluster: it already launches attacks at will, and has broken the cease fire many times. 06 March 2013 (CPR doesn't always do good) CPR doesn't always do good — often it results in a short extension of helpless life. This argues against a policy of insisting on CPR. However, it is no excuse for a company that orders qualified employees never to perform CPR. 5 March 2013 (Irom Sharmila) Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike (force-fed) for 12 years to protest India's repressive rule of Kashmir. Now she faces prosecution for attempted suicide. This is ironic considering that the ruling Congress Party was once led by a famous hunger striker, Mohandas Gandhi. 5 March 2013 (Resist) Why We Must Resist Netanyahu and the Hawks' Reckless Push for War on Iran. 5 March 2013 (Katharine Gun) Ten years ago, Katharine Gun leaked evidence of US/UK spying on UN delegations, and prevented Bush from getting a UN resolution in support of his conquest of Iraq. She was prosecuted for this, but charges were dropped. Her only regret is that she was unable to prevent the war. 5 March 2013 (Chicago)](http://www.stallman.org/images/trade-treaty-comic.jpg){kind=link}
