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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.
The persecutors's scheme to label protests as "terrorism" had a terrible success, as protesters were sentenced to prison for 30 years and more for nonviolent protest activities.
The persecutor's henchmen had declared (arbitrarily) that this was organized terrorism on behalf of the nonexistent "organization", "Antifa". But the arbitrary designation as "terrorism" was not challenged in court — the judges silently accepted it.
Companies are advertising products using simulated video depicting simulated customers.
All satisfied, naturally.
Is there an important moral difference between using a machine learning system to generate video of an apparent customer who praises a product, and filming video of an actor giving a performance depicting such a customer? I don't see a significant difference, is there something I am missing?
If there is no significant difference, that doesn't mean they are morally acceptable. Maybe both should be considered fraud unless labeled with how they were produced.
*Papua New Guinea faces severe food shortages as El [Super]Niño brings frost and drought.*
The European Union, under pressure from right-wing immigrant-haters, is negotiating with the Taliban about returning refugees to Afghanistan.
This threatens to aid the Taliban in carrying out their policies of oppression. Every woman in Afghanistan is oppressed; many men are, too. The EU should give asylum to every Afghan women who can reach there, and many Afghan men will deserve it too.
Senator Warren calls for reversing some of the many large mergers that have subjected the US to drastic industrial concentration.
Even before the wrecker became president again, the US had a lot less business competition than it did a few decades ago. Several years ago I needed a new condensation pump to pump the air conditioner's water condensation out of the basement. There had traditionally been two competing manufacturers, but the government had allowed them to merge, so there was only one. That merger should have been blocked to maintain competition in that small field.
Often the US appears to have a lot more competition than it really has. The supermarket company Albertsons uses all these names:
Robert Reich: Mourning the great ideals which America had partly achieved, but which the wrecker is trashing.
"Age verification" requirements threaten to identify whistleblowers. They generally require that all users of a site prove their identities, or present video selfies which governments could use to identify them.
Any attempt by a whistleblower to contact a reporter through a site that does age verification is likely to enable tyrannical rulers to identify per and crush per.
This will also prohibit reporters from using anonymous accounts to follow what others are posting or enable sources to contact them.
*Anti-deportation-thug organizers shift focus to defend democracy from [the persecutor's] assault.
Citizens in Minnesota using lessons learned from migrant crackdown to protect elections from president's threats.*
Unsurprisingly, disagreements about vague or unspecified crucial details of the draft US-Iran peace deal have led once again to an exchange of fire.
Which is more useful, to pose a question to a chatbot, or pose it to a deity?
The chatbot has the advantages that it actually exists, and that its answers are not entirely filtered through the mind of the one who asks.
But it has the disadvantage of not actually understanding the questions
(or most anything else).
US citizens: call on the US Postal Service to continue delivering mail to anyone and everyone — to reject the plan to control whom states can mail ballots to.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the pretend-intelligence hype industry.
In my letter, I denounced the hype term "artificial intelligence" and called for the taxes to be high enough to make human-based customer service, which is superior, competitive again. I deleted the paragraphs that presumed "AI" was a good thing.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to oppose the BUILD America 250 Act.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
We need laws to stop companies from enforcing nondisclosure agreements on employees who report wrongdoing.
Part of Bangladesh has emptied its aquifer and is running out of water. Farmers are likely to go broke and become paupers, and likely many will die.
Will this teach the rest of us to take conservation seriously before we meet a similar fate?
*Israel puts Palestinian doctor in solitary confinement after 17 months held without charge.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya now in cell barely big enough to sit in, says son, after UN experts demanded his release in March.*
Imprisonment without trial is unjust. Solitary confinement is a form of torture. The tiny cell is a form of torture. Denying him medical treatment is an injustice.
Apparently the real accusation against him is providing medical treatment to Palestinians.
10 aspects of disaster to expect from a "super" El Niño.
* The world's largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an "unfathomable" increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.*
Frighteningly high temperatures in Antarctica — you could walk around outdoors without a coat. Lots of ice must be melting.
*[The bullshitter], ever the unreliable narrator, is unable to force reality to match his preferred story on Iran.*
Japanese fans are angry at the bullshitter for incorporating images and video segments of adored fictional characters in his propaganda postings.
The propaganda promotes mass imprisonment, aggressive war, and (I suppose) gross ecocide as well. But the supposed moral principle that the Guardian quotes the fans as citing is an issue that isn't a moral principle at all: copyright law.
One is quoted as invoking the bogus moral concept of "intellectual property", which was promoted by various industries since the 1960s to give the impression that disparate artificial state-imposed monopolies were part of a moral broader imperative.
Each of those monopolies is an independent issue, so yoking them together like this is a fundamental misconception of all of them.
Some of the boats that the US attacks are probably engaged in smuggling people as well as possibly drugs. But the US generally doesn't identify the people on the boat — so attacking the boat is indiscriminate killing.
If the US government has reason to suspect the boat's crew of smuggling anything, the legitimate thing to do is capture them, question them, and then perhaps try them. Not murder them.
Admired economists suggest a general long-term road map for eliminating poverty.
Policies that priorities "economic growth" have produced hundreds of millions of people in extreme poverty, thousands of billionaires, and massive disasters.
This should be no surprise, since if you take their last dollar from a billion people and give two billionaires 700 million each, that counts as "growth". Such "growth" is happening all the time around us because our system promotes it.
To eliminate the robot-like maximization of "growth", we will need to find and correct all the little dodges that enable banks to promote poverty-spreading "growth" by disguising it as "fairness" (to a business) or "benefiting everyone" (but mostly the already-rich).
I criticize the article's repeated equation of "poor" with "south" and "rich" with "north". This extreme oversimplification ignores the surging poverty in most "northern" countries, and misrepresents the issue as if it were a territorial conflict. The details of the injustice vary from place to place, but it's the same system.
*Greenpeace calculates that wealthiest contribute nearly $1tn of damage a year with ownership-based emissions.*
A special barge can collect 90% of the plastic floating out of an urban river. It runs unattended for a long time, then signals to pick up the collected plastic pieces.
*Funding cuts and repressive laws raise risk of new HIV epidemic, says UNAids.*
A court in Germany ruled that Google is responsible for accusations in Supposed Intelligence Overviews when they are not justified by sources.
For Google to design the implementation of "overviews" to check their validity require it to understand the sources and what can validly be inferred from them. That would require true intelligence—pretend intelligence isn't sufficient.
The corrupter met with resistance to his nomination of Bill Pulte to head US intelligence agencies, and has now nominated Jay Clayton who likewise gives little reason for confidence.
If the bombing of the water tanks of Bemani, Iran, was deliberate, it was a war crime.
B'tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, presents testimony from recently released Palestinian prisoners about their torture in Israeli prisons — including rape.
[Part of ]*Antarctica's coast missing an area of sea ice the size of France as temperatures peak 20°C above average.*
The idea that part of Antarctica's coast is "west" seems absurd and arbitrary — Antarctica's only coast is the north one. But that is a minor side issue and does not reduce the gravity of advancing climate disaster.
A British thug is being investigated for using bullshit generators to generate fake "evidence" for a trial
France has accused an Israeli company of running disinformation campaigns against elections in France, Scotland, Angola, and Togo, as well as the New York City municipal election.
The company had described itself suggesting that its work was in the field of "information warfare".
I support the Unfair Bullshit Generator Regulations Elections Act, but I refuse to call it by the name that its sponsors have given it.
US citizens: call on the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine to defend climate science from political interference and industry pressure.
As Republicans try to steal this year's election by systematic gerrymandering, the mainstream media cover this as if it were a horse race rather than an attack on democracy.
Several European countries have imposed sanctions on companies found to be aiding Israel's colonies in the West Bank.
It is a week step, but it could become a path towards stronger measures.
Israel bombed the ancient city of Tyre and damaged an archaeological site. To repair an archaeological site is impossible.
*EU plans to ban Russian soldiers from [entry to EU countries] in fresh sanctions on Moscow.*
I think this is valid, but the EU should give itself the option to grant exceptions to Russian soldiers who are asking for asylum.
*"Woefully unprepared": extreme heat will double US hospitalizations [for heat-related illnesses] by 2040, study finds.*
That is just 14 years from now!
The choice of 2040 is arbitrary — surely it will continue getting worse after that, unless we recognize what is necessary and curb global heating.
Direct effects of heat on humans are just one of many problems we are causing by not curbing global heating. By 2040 I expect that crop failures will put food outside the reach of millions every year. causing millions of deaths.
*Anti-Muslim hate and antisemitism are twin crises. We must confront them together.*
As usual, the religion that is really dangerous in the west is the majority religion here — Christianity. Particularly the evangelical variety.
*[The saboteur's] cuts to intervention programs could increase violent crime, experts say. Community programs are more effective at reducing violence than simply making arrests, advocates say.*
Meta is suing a former employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams, for publishing a book about her experiences working there.
She was invited to panel at a major book festival, but because the court had threatened to fine her, she dared not speak or make any gestures.
The book is called Careless People. If you want to buy the book, or any book, I urge you not to obtain it from Amazon. By paying cash for it anonymously, you can fight against Orwellian surveillance.
I have found a local bookstore that is willing to let me order books anonymously, paying cash in advance, and I occasionally do that. That enables me to order new books (but not used books) that are not available in a physical book store. Since the store does not know my name, I think its request for cash in advance is entirely reasonable.
Maybe you too can find a bookstore near you that will do this for you.
The World Court ruled that a treaty gives gives workers the right to strike.
When Israeli politicians compare Palestinians to "Amalek", they are advocating genocide.
A European web site and its volunteer contributors help defend democracy in the US by publishing the identities of masked, badge less deportation thugs.
Why does the bully direct his agents to perform so much systematized cruelty on randomly chosen victims? One possible explanation is that imposing an inflexible system manipulates people to believe that the system is justified and correct.
(satire) *Department Of Labor Cracks Down On People Getting Paid For Work.*
Why did the UK ban Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur from speaking at Oxford? Arwa Mahdawi's response is, "Because on Gaza, we punish the witness, not the crime."
*Banning leftwing activists from entering Britain: an illiberal move with a long history in [Britain].*
The Oxford Union invited them to speak by videoconference instead.
I hope they don't plan to use Zoom, because Zoom censors remote talks about political topics much as the UK government censors presencial ones.
The deportation thugs were planning to set up a special deportation prison specifically for families.
It might be a little less cruel to children than an ordinary deportation prison, normally used only to jail adults. However, if it tortures the prisoners like most US deportation prisons, it could do irreparable harm in a few weeks.
(satire) *[The nincompoop] Diverts All Science Funding Into Locating The Smurfs.*
The UK is on a path to give Palantir access to patients' medical records in England. If Palantir gets that, it will let the magats use it for persecution.
A Jamaican thug is accused of shooting a protester dead. The protest was over the fatal shooting of her cousin by another thug a few days before.
The House of Representatives passed the resolution to end US fighting with Iran. The Senate has not yet voted, but it may pass.
As the article shows, the bullshitter has already demonstrated how he would respond if the resolution does pass: with falsification. His philosophy is, "Grab what you want, then state contemptuous bullshit as an excuse."
If senators don't like to be given bullshit, they will need to start blocking lots of other things the bullshitter wants.
*Iran and the US both think they are winning the war. The truth is they are both losing.*
Prisoners of the deportation thugs report they are denied food and clean water unless they sign documents they can't even read.
The attempt to force false confessions is a standard practice of cruel governments that despise justice. Many countries have done it. It is the shame of the US to be one of them.
The biofuel "solution" to global heating can do terrible harm if it substitutes for increased solar and wind electric generation. *Experts say increased use of crops for fuel is "dangerous game" that could send food price inflation soaring.*
Because Pretend Intelligence "agents" do not really understand what they were told to do, not at the level of ground truth that is, nor the actual effects of their actions, they often mess things up like Mr Magoo.
Ralph Nader argues that an impeachment drive against the corrupter now, before the 2026 election, would be a good way to induce splits in the Republican Party and may be drive him to resign.
His arguments may be valid, but I wonder how much less destructive and cruel Vance would be.
Right-wing extremists aim violence and hatred at restaurants that join in rebuking the deportation thugs.
One of the dangers of tech companies storing your personal data, and personal data about you, in their online dis-services is that agents of repression can copy that data from the company without even informing you.
The wrecker's henchmen plan to break up and wreck the National Center for Atmospheric Research, stating global heating denialism as their motive.
A court blocked one attack, ruling that it was "arbitrary and capricious".
If they succeed, the blow to climate modeling may indirectly kill millions more people, perhaps hundreds of millions more, but it will be hard to estimate how many of additional deaths were due to the sabotage of NCAR. In 20 years or so, their successors will deny that the saboteurs of today had anything to do with the world-wide disasters, but people who reject their lies will understand who is responsible.
Scott Pelley reports that Bari Weiss, appointed saboteur of CBS News, told the 60 Minutes team to say that Renee Good was "driving toward" the thug that shot her. (Their video showed she was steering to avoid him.)
She also directed the team to make the protesters appear more violent (another request for a lie).
The FBI fired just recently the analyst who warned in 2023 of potential danger from "Catholic violent extremists" opposed to abortion.
As we all know, the danger from anti-abortion activists in the US comes mainly from evangelicals, not from Catholics. And their violence is primarily lawfare rather than direct violence.
Aside from those details, the warning was right on track. State efforts to ban abortion have killed a number of women who needed an abortion to save their lives after a complication in pregnancy.
I suppose the reason that the FBI fired them is that the violent anti-abortion extremists are supporters of the saboteur in chief, who is the boss of the head of the FBI.
Robert Reich argues that the US was steadily moving towards oligarchy before the corrupter pushed it quickly to the extreme.
Therefore, if we do overcome the corrupter and his followers, they may turn out to have taught us a crucial lesson about defending democracy, justice, and honesty.
Right-wing extremists in the UK constantly accuse the cops of treating white suspects worse than nonwhite suspects, with no evidence except how often they claim this.
Meanwhile, statistics continue to show bias against black suspects.
It is a standard right-wing extremist strategy: claim the opposite of the truth, and repeat it in a chorus until people lose track of what is true.
A Cuban journalist founded an independent internet magazine. "State security" forced him into exile by showing him on TV labeled as a "CIA agent".
* Humanity can raise living standards, reduce inequality and keep global heating within a 2°C rise, according to a sweeping vision for planetary survival.*
The plan includes redistributing a large part of rich people's wealth. I don't have the time or background to validate the details, but it sounds plausible, if we can overcome the power of the rich.
The authors of the plan describe it.
It is worth a try, since our current course is taking us to disaster.
Systematic changes magats have made in internal procedures have nearly eliminated EPA enforcement of antipollution regulations.
The US has paid millions to convince various countries to receive deportees from the US who have no relationship from those countries.
80% of them were re-deported from there to their home countries. (Most of them, the US could not deport to their home countries because they were in danger of persecution there.)
Amazingly, the US plans to deport 400 Iranians to Iran, *including Christian converts, ethnic minorities, and political dissidents.* The persecutor isn't satisfied with torturing and killing people directly; he wants to help Iran do so too.
US citizens: call on the US Postal Service to continue delivering to anyone.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence. He is loyal to the corrupter rather than to the country he ought to serve, and that makes him unfit.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the bully's threat-backed demand for the complete voting list of each state.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
A conversation between a Labour minister and Ambassador Mandelson rebuked Labour MPs for wanting to raise taxes on some people who could afford to pay more. Another minister said this was embarrassing.
It should be extremely embarrassing for Labour to be exposed as ridiculing the idea of raising taxes on the rich. That is exactly what it must do to reduce the poverty than has been increased by directing an ever-increasing fraction of society's wealth to the rich.
Alabama moved three activists, who lead protests against prison conditions, into solitary confinement.
*Laura Wittmann resigned from Uline in condemnation of the company owners' active support for fascism in the US.*
"Appeasing bond markets" — prioritizing keeping interest rates for government bonds low — is supposed to bring "stability", but in the UK it means a steady decline in the productive economy.
A government has a practical need for low interest rates if it regularly borrows money to spend. Clearly governments need to get less funds by borrowing and more by taxing the rich.
Sweden urges parents to put limits on when and where they use snoop phones, especially when around children, because it seems that seeing adults use them is a bad influence.
The residents of Monterey Park, California, have voted for a permanent ban on datacenters.
*Three Lebanese hospitals hit by Israeli forces in under a week.*
It reminds me of Gaza.
*The world needs clean water to help fight antimicrobial resistance.*
Rich people resist paying for everyone to have clean water, but the result may be the death of some of them as well as many others.
*Antibiotics use in livestock could rise by a third in next 15 years, UN report warns.*
If that happens it will drive antibiotic resistance up. Efforts to reduce the mass use of antibiotics in cattle have met with opposition from Big Ag, which profits from the practice although it results in the death of humans.
The article bizarrely speaks of "human resistance", but the resistance in question is resistance of bacteria to medicines meant to kill them.
(satire) *White House Doctor Claims [the corrupter] A Perfectly Healthy 9-Foot-Tall 35-Year Old.*
(satire) *Black Neighborhood Demolished To Make Room For Nothing In Particular.*
Scott Pelley condemned the magat management of CBS for "murdering 60 Minutes", and they fired him for that, as he must have expected. Since then, he has reported that they had tried to command him to insert lies into the show.
*[Australia's] national disability insurance scheme’s proposed overhaul will cause "material harm" to Australians with disabilities, undermine its original intentions and hand unprecedented power to the health minister, the federal government's own reform advisory committee warns.*
In a country where business has political power, they lobby to modify every system and every new law is that the rich and the businesses get the benefit. It seems that they did that to this reform, which was apparently intended to help disabled people. The lobbyists tend to argue that "this is the best outcome that is politically possible."
The wrecker fired the independent board that oversees the National Science Foundation and replaced them with obedient saboteurs. Their first act of sabotage is to terminate the Ocean Observatories Initiative and reserve its monitoring equipment.
Nothing can help the businesses that want to cause mayhem in the ocean like eliminating the equipment that can monitor their activities and the changes they cause.
The Iranian regime is starting to allow people to use the internet again, but people are worried that the shutdown was used to introduce new systems of surveillance and censorship that are not directly visible.
A company lacking in experience has been contracted to build an oil pipeline across Bosnia. It may have been chosen because participants in the corrupter's Jan 6 coup attempt are involved in it.
An inexperienced company is likely to screw up. With an oil pipeline, that could mean oil leaks and ineradicable pollution. But the corrupter and his friends well suppose they will never be held accountable for whatever damage may follow from the choice to be careless.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to support Bernie and AOC's AI Data Center Moratorium Act.
In my letter I stated my support for the bill, then denounced the term "AI" as a marketing hype campaign, naming the URL https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#ArtificialIntelligance.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to plan to save democracy in the US.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard to stop blocking customers' donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to make the rich pay more into Social Security, and not cap or reduce what retirees receive.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
The UK government has promised to abolish the system of "zero-hours contracts", in which a worker must be ready to work on short notice and cannot plan per life in advance based on the work schedule. Naturally, businesses claim that reducing their "flexibility" will make everyone suffer.
Of course, business lobbyists want the government to neglect all the harm that this imposed "flexibility" tends to do to the worker. Of course, they presume that business's profits outweigh all other factors, and they argue for this based on the absurd "trickle down" model of economics — often veiled so that it might seem more plausible.
The "trickle down" model trains citizens and politicians to truckle to business. We can call the result a "truckle down" economy.
Businesses that want to benefit from "flexibility" about a worker's hours should be required to pay the worker for that flexibility, each time.
Here's an example of how that might work. Canceling all or part of an agreed shift, less than a week before, would legally require paying the worker 1/4 of the normal pay rate for the cancelled hours, as well as arranging additional working hours for per as a replacement so that per total hours are not decreased.
I do not claim that those specific details are optimal. The details can be adjusted — the point is to illustrate the general idea.
Thugs in the UK acted as if they believed Palestine Action were really a terrorist organization: harassing one supporter and then trying to pressure him into being a spy in the group.
Palestine Action is a political campaigning group, not a terrorist group; but once a government endorses a false accusation, the normal operation of its laws and procedures will turn into harassment and worse.
*CBS News veterans urge Paramount CEO to "uphold editorial independence" at 60 Minutes.*
This approach is worth trying — there is little else we can try to protect the main US news media from becoming even more subjugated by big business.
The Paramount billionaire owners of CBS are firing reporters who won't be subservient. Some decided to go down fighting.
The Minnesota Republican Convention publicly honored the ex-cop Derek Chauvin who is in prison for the murder of George Floyd.
That murder touched off Black Lives Matter protests across the US.
Senator Ellison condemned this, but based seems to have based that on its hurtfulness to specific persons. That is true, but it is a side issue. Indeed, the Republicans' gesture was hurtful, but it was far worse than that!
Their act of Chauvinism can only be understood as glorification of murder and promotion of racism. They deserve to be excoriated -- and every politician who participated ought to be confronted with this during the election campaign. "Representative So-and-So, do you endorse the murder of George Floyd? If so, was it because he was black, or because he was helpless, or because the murderer was a uniformed thug?"
The article linked to at the beginning displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles, such as that one, because they are morally important and I don't want to let the racists they rebuke off the hook.
I will not give the gross bigotry of racism a pass on account of smaller bigotries of anti-racism. Instead I reproach them both.
China is suborning treachery in Britain among Chinese-English interpreters that handle calls to government agencies from visitors from China, especially if they are talking about Chinese repression.
China puts a lot of effort into repression of Chinese visiting other countries or finding refuge in them.
Some US cities are imposing curfews on minors. Baltimore is avoiding heavy-handed policing when they are teenagers, but in the case of actual children, it looks like this might lead to punishing parents who don't control the children all the time (or have to work at night).
After the US civil war, Congress passed laws to protect the rights of freed slaves. The Supreme Court, mainly right-wing, erased them.
That is similar to what is happening now.
To experience forced marriage, rape, and murder is not unusual for girls in Iraq.
I wonder whether these things happened when Saddam Hussein was in charge.
The wrecker's henchmen made a deal to pay a billion dollars of taxpayers' money to Total Energies to avoid finishing two mostly completed offshore wind farms. Six states are suing to cancel this deal.
The deal illustrates the perversity of the wrecker's support for fossil fuel, because it provides no possible benefit to anyone except fossil fuel companies. (Total is primarily a fossil fuel company itself.)
The California Democratic primary for governor pits Tom Steyer, a progressive billionaire, against Xavier Becerra, a corporate Democrat supported by non-progressive billionaires.
US citizens: call the Dept of Energy to cancel its plan to fund an increase in coal mining.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your senators to oppose and filibuster the CLARITY Act.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to block the corrupter's exploitative deal with the IRS.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the cheater's medical debt trap.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Garbage incinerators don't burn PFAs, they spread them into the environment.
US Republicans tend to shorten their life spans, and their spans of healthy life, through superstitious ideological rejection of medicine.
Democrats experience the same flawed medical system but they accept the good it can do for them, while demanding rational improvement.
People in Texas believe that safety in schools depends on having lots of cops around, but what actual cops actually do in schools is brutalize students.
Putting cops in schools was observed many years ago to result in suffering for students.
Employees of the Injustice Department asked for search warrants to demand the lists of people who watched political protest videos. When the judge refused, they argued he should conceal the fact that they had asked for the warrants. The judge denied that too.
The US since January 2025 has *deported 21,000 [people] to places US calls too dangerous to visit.*
Britain is headed for a food shortage caused by extreme weather, which itself is caused by global heating. That implies such shortages are likely to get worse and worse.
Global heating effects now threaten national security.
When state voters vote to establish abortion rights, right-wing extremists in the state legislature go to extreme lengths to set that decision at naught.
*Officials hugely underestimated impact of [supposed intelligence] datacentres on UK carbon emissions.*
The new estimate, over the next ten years, is around 80 times as much, and equivalent to around 3 million people.
Discussion of the age of the "Cerne Giant" chalk drawing in England need to recognize that the figure gets redrawn every 10 years or so. Thus, the object people actually see is not old.
A judge reopened the lawsuit by the corrupter against the federal government, which he had ordered federal employees to settle in his favor, to have the possibility to reject the settlement.
In January, the bully demanded that Iran stop killing protesters.
That demand would have been laudable if he had really meant it. But this was shortly after deportation thugs callously killed protest observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the bully's agents protected the killers.
Subsequent events demonstrate that he cares no more about the lives of Iranian protesters than about American protesters. His orders to attack Iran included nothing to protect protesters, but plenty of just plain war, as well as killing the civilian leaders.
I suspect that aggressor countries will henceforth follow the bully's example, targeting the civilian leaders at the start. (The killing of Iran's leaders ironically backfired, but as yet there is no dissuasive evidence that such a result will naturally tend to occur.)
The US branch of TikTok quickly started practicing political censorship through the recommendation algorithm.
*How [the wrecker]'s EPA rollbacks could harm our air and water – and worsen global heating.
* Australia is in a slightly strange moment on renewable energy. From one perspective, it is embracing renewables, and solar in particular, what by any measure is a historic pace. From another, investment in new developments may not be happening fast enough to meet climate targets, or to ensure there is enough replacement capacity in place as old and failing coal plants close.*
Democracy Now discusses the violent cruelty of the US Border Patrol, going back decades, and how the bully has extended that cruelty throughout the US using the deportation thugs.
The harasser has ordered many foreigners living in the US with visas or green cards that they must go to their home countries to apply for or renew a green card.
This can be quite a hassle, since the process takes time, and they can often lose their jobs and homes in the US, while they no longer have any place to live at "home" nor any way to make a living there.
There is no reason for this policy change except harassment. The harassment may be meant to reduce the number who ultimately succeed in immigrating.
*UN adds Israel and Russia to blacklist for sexual violence in conflict.*
The heads of UK government knew when it appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US that his private personal connections made him unfit for the job. Now they are covering up how much they knew.
Their reason for choosing him was, it seems, that he moved in circles with the corrupter (and Epstein). That very fact assured he could not be trusted. Once you start appeasing the corrupter, you will find yourself pressured into ever increasing corruption.
Mexico is passing a law that would allow the electoral court to annul an election if it finds "foreign interference".
Critics politicians warn that this would enable the government to annul any election. After all, attempts at foreign influence happen often. Some of them are indirect, such as when the president of a neighboring great power threatens to impose 50% tariffs on your exports, or to invade, if your country does not obey his demands.
It is hard to measure objectively what effect the foreign influence has had. It would be better to act in a less drastic manner while the foreign influence is being exerted.
The article does not say what would happen after the annulment of an election.
Several Big Tech figures were invited to speak at graduations recently, and talked about how wonderful their Supposed Intelligence was. The graduating students responded with boos.
One of the speakers reportedly responded arrogantly by claiming that LLMs' triumph and dominion was inevitable, so just give up.
The sensible reaction to that is to stand up, shake a fist, and say, "We'll show you what's 'inevitable'!" And then to organize to fight against the practices of pushing and luring people into using LLMs, especially those implemented in user-subjugating ways — as nonfree software or SaaSS.
But they need to learn to write politically without using LLMs, and to criticize each other's writing constructively to help each other learn. They need to do an effective job of winning support to win this political battle.
Remember, the Republicans are allied with the tech billionaires, and so are the so-called "moderate" corporate Democrats. To stop Supposed Intelligence from being an engine of domination, we need to overcome both groups.
But that's the same thing we need for many other life-or-death goals, such as curbing global heating. It's better to fight for a good world than give up!
*Guards at a New Jersey [deportation prison] are retaliating against [prisoners] for nonviolent protests over poor conditions, including a hunger and labor strike, according to relatives and members of Congress.*
Israel reaffirmed its plans to force Palestinians out of Gaza and then claim they left "voluntarily".
Europe has a framework ready for putting Putin on trial for the crime of aggressive war and other atrocities, along with his deputies who helped him to plan and organize them.
*New York City sued over alleged racial discrimination in removal of children by protective services Plaintiffs say children’s services uses "emergency removal" disproportionately against Black and Latino families.*
It is plausible that ACS in New York City is racist. However, we have seen that such agencies in other parts of the US are overprotective and inclined to persecute parents of any race if they do not treat their children like prisoners.
Israel plans to compel a large fraction of Gaza's population to leave Gaza and then claim they left of their own free will.
Where they would go is not clear.
Arguing that progressives who continue using ex-Twitter despite its imposed domination by right-wing extremists are only exposing themselves to its lies, and achieving no good. It is "an open sewer, beyond redemption."
It appears the persecutor is trying to take revenge on E. Jean Carroll, who sued him for rape and won, by directing the Injustice Department to work hard to find crime to accuse her of.
They have hit on an accusation that was raised in his trial and dismissed already by the judge.
The lawyers in the Injustice Department who participate in this vengeance scheme will demonstrate their unfitness to work for any government agency. I wonder, does this call for disbarring them?
*Fossil fuel firms may have to pay for climate damage under proposed UN tax.*
There is no chance they could afford to reimburse all the damage they are doing, but the tax might help save all of us if it pressures them to reduce the damage.
* Garden crops such as apples, garlic, carrot and beetroot will grow better if they experience low temperatures in winter.*
They will be additional collateral damage of global heating.
The leaders of the South Britain Green Party hit the economic nail on the head: the billionaires the ones making you poor, and don't let Deform's scapegoating of asylum seekers distract you from that.
US citizens: call on the head of OSHA to resign in disgrace. (OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the issuance of subpoenas to Reddit and ex-Twitter which aim to identify people who anonymously posted political statements that reproach the deportation thugs.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Everyone: call on FIFA to stop fueling global climate disaster.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your senators to fight the wrecker's USPS Board takeover.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: submit an official comment to the Office of Personnel Management opposing the plan to require federal workers to sign lifelong secrecy agreements covering everything they do and know about their jobs.
I have condemned since around 1980 nondisclosure agreements that cover generally useful technical information, and refused ever to agree to one. These nondisclosure agreements are a different moral issue; they will be aimed protecting corrupt and treacherous acts inside federal agencies.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to investigate the FBI's raid on a voter registration activity.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on the USPS to obey its mandate by rejecting the magats' attempt to obstruct the mailing of ballots to voters.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to reject the deeper embedding of U.S.-Israeli military cooperation.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
*Bipartisan group of ex-federal judges challenges [the corrupter]'s $1.8bn [corruption slush fund]* in a lawsuit.
They have also urged the judge who approved this self-dealing "settlement" to reopen the decision and investigate whether the case that it "settled" was fraud on that court.
The persecutor has deported around 17,500 people to countries they have never seen before. Most of them do not speak the local language and can't live there.
Even worse, many of those countries intend to send those deportees back to their countries of origin, where they are likely to be tortured or killed.
Magats don't mind killing an immigrant and are glad to involve another intermediate country as an excuse.
US state abortion prohibitions hinder treatment after miscarriages.
Calling on the Democratic Party to adopt ranked choice voting for the presidential primaries of 2028.
Israel is expanding, step by step, the part of Gaza where Palestinians are to be shot on sight. Originally it was 53% (plus a roughly defined border strip). Then it expanded to 60% plus... Now Netanyahu has ordered widening it to 70% plus the border strip.
US citizens: call on CNN, NBC and the New York Times to cover the FBI's election intimidation raids.
US citizens: call on your state's governor to protect consumers and ban surveillance pricing.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to restore screwworm control funding.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Life in the part of Lebanon under Israeli occupation resembles the West Bank. Shi'ites are being forced out of their towns entirely. Sunnis, whose farms have been effectively confiscated, are living amidst patrolling Israeli soldiers under an all-night curfew and anyone who goes outdoors is likely to be shot dead.
Tony B'liar's parting advice for the Labour Party: to become the third right-wing lunatic party, competing with the Gory Party and Deform.
Magat officials are arbitrarily blocking many immigrants from renewing truck driving licenses even though they are authorized to work in the US.
Under magat control, the EPA is *prioritizing big business over public health.*
(satire) *Listerine Leaves 0.1% Of Germs Alive To Spread Message Of Terror Throughout Microbial Community.*
US citizens: call on the Senate to Reject Todd Blanche for Attorney General.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on the media to expose the Supreme Court for playing politics.
US citizens: call on the Senate to resist the bully's air travel shutdown, meant to punish cities that won't help the deportation thugs.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
The Democratic National Committee commissioned a report about why the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, then refused for a long time to release it.
Facing public pressure, the committee released the report, after saying the report was badly flawed for disregarding a very important point: the effect of Democrats' refusal to criticize Israel firmly about Gaza.
It seems that the report was written to avoid that issue. I wonder who decided to write the report that way.
The UK Labour Party, competing to outdo the extreme right-wing in harshness to refugees, plans that each asylee will get a review every 2.5 years — and these reviews will continue for 20 years before the refugee is allowed to remain permanently.
The policy is, I think, meant to drive refugees to seek asylum elsewhere.
The Ministry of Truth has deleted from the DOJ web site the information about prosecutions of participants in the bully's Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.
Bullshit generators can give users recommendations for what to change in their faces using plastic surgery, but they may be dangerous or foolish.
The recommendations may unreliable, impossible, or injurious, but users become dead set on getting these operations and then may ruin their lives by having them or seeking the funds to have them.
I suspect that calling those programs "bullshit generators" instead of "AI" would help some people turn away from them.
Advice on how Europe can defeat Putin's ambitions.
"Bossware", which a company runs to snoop on and send commands to workers, is spreading to control more and more workers.
Bossware is oppressive, of course. On the general level, it is oppressive because it is a nonfree program. More specifically, systems that give orders to people are treating them like machines.
The article bemoans the confusion that comes from using the term "AI" to refer to both bossware and LLMs. That is not the only confusion that comes from the term "AI". Let's reject that term, and use the terms "bossware" and "LLMs" instead.
The second indictment of James Comey, after the first prosecution failed, shows the persecutor's determination to hurt his opposition, by hook or by crook.
(satire) *ICE Issues Ransom Note Demanding $65 Billion If U.S. Wants To See Minnesota Again.*
It looks like the would-be bully is coming to recognize that the only way out of his war with Iran is to climb down, accept partial defeat, and draw a pretty face on it. Given the circumstances, that choice is less harmful than any of the other options, but militarist Republicans are enraged.
I am disappointed (though not surprised) that this has done nothing to advance the cause of human rights in Iran, nor even to find out how many dissidents the Islamist fanatics have killed.
Robert Reich argues that the saboteur in chief does not act as a constitutional president, and does not deserve the title of "president".
I agree, but Reich does not suggest what to call him instead.
I have a number of suggestions in the glossary page.
Australians who were seized by Israel from the Gaza aid flotilla report torture and sexual abuse by Israeli thugs.
Australian PM Albanese pleads ignorance of whether those reports are true, but some of the victims were diagnosed with broken bones from torture. Those should be easy to verify with an x-ray. Even bruises will have been recorded by medics in Turkey and Australia.
Albanese should verify the facts quickly and then act accordingly.
Abusive deportation prisons tend to give prisoners totally inadequate medical attention, systematically refusing to examine problems that sometimes turn out to be very dangerous.
This can lead to death, or to a fate worse than death, such as dementia.
*Former prosecutor calls for EU statute blocking US sanctions on ICC members.*
Varroa mites, which are parasites on bees, have become immune to the chemical that is used to protect bees from them. This could lead to disaster.
The corrupter and his capi are now making their corruption totally blatant as a scheme to demoralize Americans who might perceive something wrong about corruption.
US citizens: call on Home Depot and Lowe's to stop spying on customers.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject Bill Pulte for Director of National Intelligence.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code — not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on USPS to withdraw its proposed limits on who can vote by mail.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code — not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to require that deportation thugs not separate a child from per family.
Summarizing the state of protecting the oceans, both surface and bottom, from damage by human society.
Prisons in the US sometimes lose track of a prisoner, making it impossible for relatives and lawyers to contact per. The result is terrible. This article focuses on Malik Muhammad; Oregon sent per into a South Carolina prison and per family could not tell where perse was.
I found this article gratuitously hard to understand because of its unannounced and unexplained use of plural pronouns to refer to Malik Muhammad. For each plural pronoun there was some group of people that it could have referred to. I had almost reached the end before I realized I had been misunderstanding over and over.
This sort of problem is part of the reason why I completely reject use of plural pronouns for an individual. For the situations where I don't know someone's gender, and for people who assert non binary gender, I use gender less singular pronouns.
We should all switch to them, to make our speech and writing easier to understand.
The author of a UK government report on drug trade in the UK run by China reports on repeated attempts to corrupt him.
The bully's nominee for attorney general has been one of his henchmen since 2023.
He has already attempted many injustices for his master.
Palestinians testify about being beaten and raped in Israeli prisons.
No matter what the reason for putting someone in prison, even if it was a sentence resulting from a fair trial, torturing per is never justified.
US citizens: Stop the wrecker's plan to increase the maritime speed limits that protect Atlantic right whales from extinction.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to keep public funds from being diverted to private schools.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to preserve LIHEAP funds to help poor people pay for heating and cooling.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to pass the Save the World Cup Act, which would protect World Cup soccer games from the deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Here is the message I sent.
Normally I would not write to you about sports activities, but this is about protecting the public.
Soccer is popular across most of the world, more than in the US. So soccer matches in the US will be ideal bait to catch and persecute anyone that grew up elsewhere. If deportation thugs can haunt World Cup games, they will surely deport refugees waiting for asylum hearings, residents with visas, even naturalized citizens, not just unauthorized visitors.
Please support efforts to protect the public from them. Don´t let them put knock-out drops in the world´s cup!
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Amazon's VP of Workplace Safety to tell workers directly that they are allowed to call 911 in an emergency.
The recommended letter text encouraged telling workers that specifically using some cr...app, which is surely nonfree, so I deleted that part.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your senators to pass the Taxing Buybacks from Big Oil Windfalls Act.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: Billionaires are shaping primaries — call on your congresscritter and senators to reform the funding system.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate Supreme Court ethics.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to support a universal medical system ("Medicare for All").
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the NSA from warrantless spying on Americans.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: make phone calls to your officials in Congress to reject massive government surveillance.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to renew section 702 of the PAT RIOT Act without the loophole that permits snooping on Americans.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on the Department of Labor to Stop Private Equity and Crypto Scammers from Gambling with Workers' Retirement Savings.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Erdoğan's government has just removed the head of the main opposition party, Özgür Özel, by invalidating the party's leadership contest held over two years ago.
Its previous leader, who now becomes leader again, lost an election to Erdoğan in 2023. People hoped Özel would defeat Erdoğan next year.
*The corrupter has created a slush fund of taxpayer money to give to his friends.*
George Zimmerman may have escaped conviction for shooting Trayvon Martin because an important witness for the prosecution spoke with a strong accent of her ethnic group. I wonder whether courts ought to offer accent interpreters for witnesses whose accents might lead jurors to misunderstand or devalue their testimony, or simply make it a struggle to know what the witness said.
The US has indicted Raúl Castro, ex-president of Cuba, accusing him of ordering an attack on two small planes in 1996.
According to Wikipedia, the planes were dropping leaflets "to fall on Cuba". There is some slack in the precise meaning of that, but maybe Cuba had legitimate grounds to order them to land and then force them to do so.
However, Cuba had no legitimate grounds to shoot and destroy these unarmed planes without first ordering them to land. By doing that, it committed a crime similar to the boat attacks that the bully continually orders elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
The US ought to indict the people responsible for the continuing series of boat attacks, who are Americans, if it is to indict the people responsible for Cuba's airplane attack 30 years ago.
Cops who defended the Capitol against the anti-American's Jan 6 attack are suing, claiming that the anti-American's slush fund is corrupt support for crime.
NATO and the EU accuse the Putin forces of redirecting Ukrainian drones and sending them over Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
I don't see any sense in the resignation of Latvia's prime minister over this. The right thing to do is to develop a net deployer which can get a drone tangled and bring it down. (Ukraine's army has had success defending against Putin forces drones with used fishnets.)
This might make it possible to study what the Putin forces had done to take control of the drone. Suitable encryption, with redundancy and error detection, could make that impossible. It is much more difficult than mere jamming.
Ecuador has suffered from a repressive "war on drugs" since 2024, with soldiers kidnapping, torturing, and killing people, and showing no reasons for any of it.
Muslims (and Muslim charities) are often debanked based on vague suspicions — because banks have been told to deny banking service to terrorists, but they have no valid way to identify the few who really are terrorists.
*US judge dismisses criminal indictment against Kilmar Ábrego García,* saying that the prosecution was politically based.
Many of the activists seized on the latest Gaza aid flotilla suffered violent attacks after the Israeli troops captured them. They began the violence on the aid boats, after seizing them, and continued it afterward against the captives in prison.
They shot some captives with less-lethal bullets (these are usually rubber-coated steel) from a short distance. Sometimes this broke their bones.
Cops raped some of the protesters.
These attacks caused injuries that have been confirmed by doctors from the victims' home countries; nonetheless, the Israeli government denies them, thus arrogantly legitimizing these attacks while expressing brazen contempt for the truth.
Prosecutors in some countries are investigating criminal charges over these attacks.
Indigenous rights activists in Russia face harsh repression.
As in Canada and the US, indigenous groups find mining and extraction put their health in danger, and they try to resist.
Minister of "security" Ben-Gvir spread abuse of Palestinians in Israel's prison system. This has been covered occasionally.
Now he has trained similar abuse on foreign activists, and some countries are rebuking Israel for this. But the foreign activists are, in themselves, a secondary issue: they are campaigning to end Israel's deprivation and violence against Palestinians under occupation.
Ben-Gvir is trying to create a buffer zone around the cruelty to Palestinians, a buffer zone of cruelty to foreigners who defend the human rights of Palestinians. But it may backfire and make more of the world see the cruelty towards Palestinians more clearly.
Global heating marches steadily on, with a possible record marine heat-wave on the US Pacific coast, along with a record low amount of snow in the Rocky Mountains. This occurring with water already in shortage could result in a painful scarcity of water in a large part of the US west.
If it doesn't happen this year, it will happen in another year. There are random fluctuations in the details, but the big picture is that the heat is producing global disaster.
Major anti-social media platforms have blocked access to the accounts of some exiled dissidents from Salafi Arabia so that they can't be seen inside Salafi Arabia.
Australians on the Gaza aid flotilla describe many kinds of torture that were inflicted on them by the anonymous, masked Israeli soldiers and prison guards.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to investigate Kash Patel's flagrant misuse of taxpayer funds.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore funding for Social Security offices.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject magat recommendations to undermine FEMA.
Global heating is increasing the amount of damage done by disasters, so FEMA needs to be strengthened and better funded. This in addition to strong efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions to make global heating taper off.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Instagram has eliminated end-to-end encryption, leaving many user communities in danger of persecution.
I suspect that the zucker did this because the persecutor asked him to.
Estimating that around 145,000 young US citizens have had a parent taken away and jailed by the deportation thugs.
A detailed explanation of student loan repayment in the UK shows clearly why it is a far less destructive system than that of the US.
In the UK, even well-paid graduates can't advance very far in paying down their student debt. But does that matter? After 30 years, the debt that remains will be cancelled anyway. To explicitly "rebrand" the UK student debt as a tax on graduates sounds manipulative, but it is valid to argue that the UK's student loan system already is in fact a tax on graduates.
By contrast, in the US system you must pay even if unemployed, and the debt will be canceled only by your death (or perhaps if you are permanently disabled).
The bullshitter alternates between claiming that he is about to launch a massive attack on Iran and claiming that a peace deal is about to be agreed. I don't believe there is any truth in either kind of claim — they are mainly psychological manipulation. I suppose they are aimed at the non-Iranian public, because of Iran's general internet blockage.
One goal of the psychological manipulation is to make the bullshitter impossible to predict. What he says about that is bogus. We need to learn not to start trusting him in any way.
The long, slow fight to give rights to domestic workers has had a victory in Indonesia.
Australia is planning devastating cuts to climate modeling.
Australia's part of global climate modeling is essential because it is the only major contributor that focuses on the southern hemisphere. Since the climate disaster is accelerating, and threatens to kill millions or even billions, the rational thing to do is increase funding for it.
It would be useful to investigate how this decision was made — and how pressure or corruption from planet roasters influenced it.
A rare strain of Ebola virus, for which the usual tests and vaccine do not work, requires global action now.
US government cuts in medical research and aid could kill millions of people.
The latest victims of human colonization include orangutans whose native forest has been systematically colonized with support of the Indonesian government.
For decades, the government has had a policy of settling large numbers of Javanese in islands with less human population density. This has aroused accusations of colonization from the peoples who live in those islands.
A tangled web of secretive campaign organizations is spending billionaires' money to defeat progressive candidates in Democratic primaries.
They have to do it secretively because they are on the edge of campaign finance laws against coordinating PAC-funded activity with candidates' campaigns.
Whether or not it is against the law, it is clearly against democracy. If elections can easily be bought by the rich, they can't be decided by issues.
How the expected increased "productivity" of LLMs for specific tasks can result in decreased productivity, and deskilling, for an organization overall.
The PKK, which fought for independence for the Kurds of southeastern Turkey, has disbanded and peace talks are going on. This provides an opportunity for environmental restoration, if people can grasp it.
For peace to last, Turkey needs to restore democracy enough to permit victory for opponents of Erdoğan, rather than starting a civil war as an excuse to do the election over.
The corrupter dismissed his lawsuit against the US government, and ordered his agent in charge of the Justice Department to make an agreement between him and the US government to set up a slush fund (with government money) which will secretly give some of that money to whoever the corrupter orders. Up to 1.8 billion dollars, total. For instance, it could be used to reward some of the people who at his suggestion attacked the US Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. It could be used for bribes.
In legal terms, that agreement is not a settlement of that lawsuit, but he wants us to think of it as a settlement of that lawsuit, hoping that will give it an odor of legitimacy.
Recruiting ads for the deportation thugs ooze with messages of racist hatred, and an anti-terrorist agency in Colorado warned that they could incite right-wing terrorism.
After nine years, the UK government is finally thinking about prosecuting the many individuals, organizations and companies involved in causing the fatal Grenfell fire.
The Department of Howlingly Serious issued an alert to warn cops all around the US to beware of a spoof site that invited the public to report suspected immigrants — and posts the funny reports.
I'd like to watch a few, but according to the article, they are posted on sites which require nonfree software to access.
Richard will give a talk in Bern, Switzerland on June 12 titled Freie/Libre/Libero/Liber Software, for Sovereignty and Freedom.
US citizens: call on Congress to refuse to fund implementation of the bully's plan that could label millions of Americans as "domestic terrorists".
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the wrecker's attacks on housing and homeless assistance programs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on on major news organizations to cover the wrecker's foreign aid cuts with urgency and moral clarity.
US citizens: support the cops who fought the coup-leader's Jan 6 riot at the Capitol, as they sue him to block his self-settlement meant to give him lots of money to give the rioters as "compensation" for the punishment of their crimes.
US citizens: call on news organizations to cover the persecutor's attacks on the media as threats to press freedom.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the Paramount - Warner Bros merger.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to vote NO on the $70B blank check for the deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on reject section 702 of the U SAP AT RIOT Act, which has a loophole that the NSA uses to snoop on US citizens without a warrant.
For more information.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to put a windfall profits tax on fossil fuels, and spend the money building renewable generation.
To do this, you can use this campaign and modify the text to add that suggestion for spending.
I did this because my congresscritter and senators are notably progressive. If yours are Republicans, it might be better strategy to in your case to support campaign's own suggestion -- to use the tax money as a rebate to ease Americans' immediate suffering.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on major media to stop climate-hushing.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on the WTO to limit fishing before sharks and tuna are wiped out.
US citizens: call on your representative and senators to support real, comprehensive gun violence policy reform.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to stop the persecutor's $1.8 billion insurrection slush fund.
In my letter I called it a step in a coup.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to stop the Pentagon's warfare-powering supposed-intelligence data centers.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Stop the Pentagon’s Warfare-Powering AI Data Centers
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
I am deeply concerned about the Pentagon’s plans to build data centers for computers to decide who to bomb.
In addition, just by running the data centers, the Pentagon will make nearby American cities unlivable, by making water and electricity scarce and expensive. 7-in-10 Americans oppose data centers being built in their communities because of the hardship they create.
I urge you to block the Pentagon from building new taxpayer-subsidized data centers. And please don't be quick to call them "AI", because that is a marketing hype campaign which we should not boost.
Matt Stoller thinks Google's next goal is to control nearly all prices based on collecting personal information about nearly all purchases and personal preferences.
See https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-practices/instacart-ai-pricing-experiment-inflating-grocery-bills-a1142182490/ and https://substack.com/redirect/d27787e6-e804-4231-8f23-2eaf0e1bc652?j=eyJ1IjoiMmRjd2YyIn0.m51z6BBZ0nK06POYEEH_mMhm8t1iRiokalBUx8IccKE
It is unfortunate that Stoller effectively boosts this scheme by describing it with the term "artificial intelligence".
Many US universities are thinking about themselves as businesses and judging their activities in terms of cost and profit.
The idea that an educated populace is important is being discarded.
Besides, why bother studying what people have written, or art they have made, when de-generative supposed intelligence can produce it faster?
Describing what Massachusetts has done, and is considering doing, to protect immigrants from the federal deportation thugs and stop the latter from causing them gratuitous and avoidable problems.
(satire) *Stephen Miller Reminds Picky-Eater Son That There Starving Kids In Basement.*
Some well-known LLMs have been proved to be able to deliver up nearly complete copies of the text of some well-known books.
They may, as a result, be found to infringe the copyright on those books.
Precisely why and how this happens is a factual question, but this article does not tell us the answer. In particular, it does not prove that their developers intentionally and specifically stored large parts of any specific book's text verbatim. It could be that the writing style of that book is so distinctive that continuing repeatedly from any portion of the book always finds the text that comes next in the book.
A couple of years ago I heard that someone had made Copi(a)lot reproduce the whole text of the GNU GPL version 3 that way. GitHub surely did not intend for it to do that! And, of course, it omitted the crucial license notice which ought to say that the program is released under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later.
Where the Deform Party won election to local government, they will use local government power to spread persecution and fear.
The rulers of China care only a little human rights, but the current rulers of the US have ceased to raise the issue because they care even less.
The campaign for the right to die, and to assistance in dying, continues in the UK, though limited to those who are expected to die anyway within a short time.
Budget cuts and direct cancellation of specific programs have left the US unprepared for new pandemics.
Both the saboteur in chief and the saboteur of health have pushed to create these new problems.
Some members of SCROTUS publicly spread hatred of Muslims.
The world's main religions — Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism — have all displayed in recent years the potential to persecute unbelievers. Right-wing fanatics try to stir up the hatred to the point of killing. However, in each of those religions, most believers do not want to kill and can live in peace with other groups. The crucial thing is to reject the right-wing killers.
The US history of prosecuting reporters and their sources (whistleblowers) runs through Nixon and Obama, and merges into the persecutor's current efforts to totally subjugate the news media.
Two thugs from police departments miles away visited several Cincinnati schools and tried to conduct "wellness checks" of a list of students, with no warrants to justify this and having no jurisdiction there anyway. It turns out they were working on behalf of the deportation thugs, perhaps seeking to make a few unlucky children's life drastically worse. This follows the usual gross basic emotional dishonesty of the deportation thugs.
"AI" "scribes" used by some doctors to generate medical records make significant errors in their output, fairly often.
Kash Patel faces a new criticism — for snorkeling in the vicinity of the USS Arizona National Monument.
Patel has done a series of cavalier, unjust, and repressive actions, for which he ought to be impeached and removed, and in some cases perhaps jailed. But snorkeling near a sunken battleship is not one of them. It is of no real significance — only a symbolic meaning which anyone might attribute or not.
I observe a tendency to reproach, excessively, alleged failures to "show respect" is a distraction from the real injustice that really matter. It plays into the hands of right-wing extremists, who just love "showing respect" for dead heroes as an excuse for persecuting or murdering the living heroes who campaign for freedom today.
US deportation thugs may retain enough of an idea of common humanity and an idea of right and wrong to feel a moral conflict between that idea and the cruelty of their job. Various organizations are offering them paths to repentance and rehabilitation.
European countries are seeking excuses to deny asylum to true refugees that have reason to fear being tortured, or wish to live where their close relatives live.
The persecutor seems to be threatening to kidnap Raúl Castro, the aged former president of Cuba.
In Cuba there are right-wing dissidents, that want to allow some people to get rich subjugating the rest, and there are left-wing dissidents, such as the late Oswaldo Payá, who want to preserve the educational and medical achievements of the Cuban revolution while establishing freedom of speech. The persecutor would surely despise Payá just as he despises the Americans funds for good education and medical treatment he is eliminating.
Among various kinds of dangerous pollution produced by burning wood in fireplaces, one shocking kind is lead.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to oppose the Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection Act. It is a roundabout way of exempting payday loans from existing regulations that protect the public.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to Oppose H.R. 4801 and Protect Against datamining and manipulative fintech.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
I urge you to edit the letter's subject and text to remove the term "AI" and replace it with "snooping and manipulative fintech" or something else that rejects the marketing hype. For good measure, you could critique the term "AI" -- I did that too.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: Support H.R. 1137, the "No Kill Switches in Cars Act."
I think that if someone is convicted of driving under the influence, or something close to that, it is legitimate to attach a sensor-driven kill switch to stop per from driving while inebriated.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to put an end to the FISA law's permission for warrantless spying on Americans.
The FISA court was supposed to prevent abuse of this power, but it has announced that the constraints on its operation made that impossible in practice.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
*The [English/Welsh] Greens need to learn the right lessons from the destruction of Corbynism.*
*New Report Reveals Coordinated Corporate Campaign Against Life-Saving Federal Heat Standard for Workers.*
California's rule requiring businesses to protect their workers, with rest breaks and access to water and shade, is a big help, and extending it nationwide could avoid thousands of illnesses (some of them fatal) per year.
*Three-quarters of UK millionaires would be happy to pay more tax, research finds.*
Israel is about to start building an Israelis-only road through the West Bank, designed as an excuse to exclude Palestinians from all the other roads in a central region of the West Bank — and force them all out.
Woodrow Wilson warned in his campaign in 1912 about the domination of the US government by a few rich people, and called for stripping them of their power.
At the same time, he pressured actively for racial segregation.
It is impossible to simplify Wilson to pure good or pure evil: we need to recognize both at once, in different areas of life, and judge each of them as it deserves.
The boss of JP Morgan, a giant US bank, praises UK officials as "smart" when they reduce taxes for big foreign banks like his, and tries to threaten them with "investing less" if they might increase taxes for big foreign banks.
He is one of the arrogant rich men that Woodrow Wilson warned about. He is an enemy of Britain, and Britain should treat him as an enemy.
He is an enemy of America, too, for the same reason.
Republicans in Utah and Oklahoma want to shield fossil fuel companies from liability due to damage done by global heating.
Australia's cunning cruelty of sending asylum seekers to (in effect) prison in a country where they have never been is now spreading world-wide.
Israel agreed to a "cease fire" in Gaza, but violates it in several ways. In fact it is only a reduction in the frequency of atrocities.
Resisting the construction of datacenters for pretend intelligence is not mere nimbyism. They are the only aspect of pretend intelligence that people have a chance to oppose.
*In the words of the antitrust expert Zephyr Teachout: "If you want democratic governance of AI [sic], block datacenters. Google's not coming to any democratic table, not listening to any rules, without people showing force."*
I see one other point where we can resist — by refusing to call it "intelligence".
The wrecker is pushing forward towards the goal of abolishing FEMA by rendering it useless.
44% of human languages are now in danger of dying out.
(satire) *DHS Warns Any Action By Americans Will Be Treated As Domestic Terrorism.*
(satire) *Taylor Swift Adds Additional Wedding Dates In L.A., Miami, Boston.*
(satire) *Authorities Unearth Mass Grave Of [the bully's] Advisors.*
* Data from missions showing critically low snowpack on mountains across the west raises alarm among experts.*
This problem of global heating was predicted many years ago. We could have prevented some of the dryness if we had made a global effort.
*Chicago Ordinance Would Bar Cops from Active Involvement in Extremist Groups.*
Every state should enact such a law, and so should the federal government, if we ever pry it lose from violent extremists in the federal government.
Arguing for a ban on ads for commercial gambling.
I can support this cause.
*Pity the poor billionaires – demands for higher taxes must feel hurtful.*
And biased! Don't forget the unfairness of increasing the tax rate only for the super-rich ;-!
Global heating has created a wheat crop failure in the US. *Temperature swings have left crops across the Plains in terrible conditions, with some farmers opting not to harvest.*
If we don't curb global heating, this will happen more and more often.
The nocebo effect is real, just like the placebo effect.
According to one study, the nocebo effect seems to be responsible for around 3/4 of negative reactions to Covid-19 vaccine.
Reportedly one LLM is very good at finding exploits in software. People will need to fix them.
Another future LLM may be very good at finding exploits in tax systems. People will need to fix them, too.
The UK is really nationalizing the train operating companies, reversing one disastrous ideological decision made by the Tories decades ago.
Narges Mohammadi, Iranian human rights activist, wrote a memoir which describes beatings, solitary confinement, and denial of medical treatment. She is dying in prison, and those cruel state actions are part of the cause.
I wonder why the US persecutor hates the Iranian persecutors so much, given that he seems to be just fine with Russia's persecutor. He surely does not care any more about Iranian's human rights than about Americans' human rights. Perhaps this reflects Netanyahu's influence on him; perhaps he hates Iran's rulers because they persistently organize Shi'ites to oppose Israel on behalf of Palestinians.
*Pardoned January 6 rioter sentenced to seven years for Virginia burglary.*
The bullshitter launched the mob at the Capitol after preparing them with violent hatred, and arranged to make armed support hard for the Capitol police to obtain. In 2025, he pardoned all those who had been convicted for participating in the attack. There is no reasonable doubt that he arranged the attack intentionally and considers it an act of support for him. Justice calls for him to be convicted of the attack and sentenced to prison.
Google datacenter planning documents misleadingly minimized the projected greenhouse gas emissions by a factor of five.
Richard Stallman will speak in Erlangen, Germany on June 16 at 16:00, at the School of Engineering of FAU.
The talk is on the moral issues of free vs nonfree software.
We suggest you bring cash.
US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to stop the plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
US citizens: call on Reuters to stop enabling helping the deportation thugs.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the fascist's attempt to ban voting by mail.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Tell Congress: Reject the magats' budget that attacks public education.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Citing the household cost of blockaded oil and gas to remind people of the desperate need to start climate defense.
The article uses the fashionable term "toxic", saying that the topic of climate disaster and the need to prevent it has become "toxic". What does that actually mean? Why in general does a topic, cause, or person, become "toxic"?
It is usually the result of a systematic campaign of vilification which aims to associate the target with a vague criticism, for which the reasons rarely rationally reconsidered. In the case of climate defense, we know this campaign has been operating for years, funded by the fossil fuel companies and spread by the many businesses that have relations with them and the politicians that they have funded.
The word "toxic", at the concrete level, refers to the existence of such an association for that target. But its connotation puts the blame on the target. Thus, it is a weasel-word whose effect is to endorse the campaign -- in effect, to condemn climate defense for being the target of vilification by the rich.
I therefore suggest rejecting the word.
*World "unprepared" for next pandemic as countries fail to agree on sharing information, tests and vaccines.*
Magat officials have closed San Francisco's immigration court.
US immigration courts have been underfunded for years, producing a large backlog of immigration cases. The wrecker's policy is to seize on various bogus excuses (such as criticizing him for his actions and policies) to cancel people's immigration cases. As a result, delaying the resolution of those cases is advantageous for him.
US Food and Drug Administration scientists published papers on the rate of side effects from Covid and Shingles vaccines, and found that serious side effects were very rare — one in a million.
Anti-vax agency officials withdrew the papers, claiming that the conclusions are invalid.
*Report shows banned non-fiction books doubled over last school year in US. New PEN America report analyzed 3,743 unique titles removed from libraries and classrooms and found books about activism and social movements were targeted.*
"Data rescuers" are trying to save copies of US government data publications before magat officials destroy or alter them.
Mexico city is pumping so much water out of the aquifer underneath it that it is sinking up to 40cm per year.
When pipes leak under Mexico City, where does the water go? Into the aquifer? If so, leakage is just a way of extracting less. But I can't be sure of that — that water may take years to reach the aquifer than where it is needed. And engineers would compensate by increasing the extraction rate.
With enough money, solar-powered desalination could provide water for Mexico City, and pipelines could bring it there. But this would require taxing the rich.
Australia has allowed some Australians who became PISSI wives, and were imprisoned for years in Syria, to return to Australia.
Some of them face grave criminal charges for supporting PISSI, and they deserve that. But exiling people is an unjust punishment for any crime, and punishing them without a trial is unjust too.
Radical listening — a way of drawing passersby into exploring political issues together.
China is trying to eradicate Tibetan culture and language by teaching children to speak only Chinese.
This reminds me of the residential schools that the US and Canada forced Amerindian children to live in during much of the 20th century — likewise designed to erase their cultures and languages.
The US and Canada ceased that practice some decades ago; now China is taking it up.
Many victims of domestic violence that includes blows to the head suffer from memory loss and cognitive disabilities.
Ralph Nader describes several political issues that would be worth writing about, but reporters disregard his requests that they do so.
With regard to trying yet again to remove the monster from office, we know that it can't be done with the current composition of Congress. He was impeached twice during his first term, the second time after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and Senate Republicans protected him both times. They would surely do it again; their attachment to him takes precedence over their country.
Besides, he now has another monster, less deranged but no less cruel and un-American, standing by to replace him.
However, as Nader suggests, the attempt might be an effective basis for organizing to save the Constitution by defeating SCROTUS in November. And our ex-presidents do have a duty to help.
Big financial companies such as Fidelity and Vanguard have arbitrarily blocked customers from donating to the SPLC from their donor-advised funds.
I wonder if they can move these funds to other companies that aren't lackeys of persecution.
*ABC lawyers accuse [the] FCC [in court] of punishing network for political reasons.*
It is not news that the FCC is doing that, but ABC's willingness to resist is rare and admirable.
Proposing directions for negotiation between the US and Iran that might lead to a deal.
It seems to be that the biggest obstacle is how to assure Iran that the US will actually keep a deal. Remove the bullshitter from office, perhaps?
*Proposing to cut interest rates poor countries pay for their massive debts by around 11% so they can fund social needs.*
Much of those debts should be wiped away.
Violent antisemitism, threatening murder, has been percolating for years in Australia.
I don't think a threat of murder in 2019 had much to do with criticism of Israel's atrocities. It was simply hatred and scapegoating.
Billionaires have taken effective control of many governments and used it to impoverish most of humanity. A fraction of the billionaires are Jewish; most are not. Focusing condemnation narrowly on the Jewish billionaires lets the (non-Jewish) majority of billionaires, such as Musk, off the hook.
Ironically, today's Nazis give their political support to the right-wing governments that cooperate thoroughly with Israel's atrocities. They cite antisemitism as an excuse to persecute people who reproach those atrocities, and mostly leave the other antisemites (Nazis who support them) alone.
Most US cities are worse than many third-world cities in public transport.
Since the many cars that Americans use emit enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, the whole world should demand that the US start catching up.
*[The wrecker] and his oil-and-coal oligarchy should face sanctions for its war on the environment.*
Zohran Mamdani condemned an event held in NYC which encouraged Americans to invest in West Bank land being stolen from Palestinians.
Bravo, Mamdani!
Sad news: Robert Reich's site has become paywalled. As a result, access to an article there requires running nonfree JavaScript code (https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html) and requires identifying oneself by using a payment account. Each of these consequences is unjust, and I have a moral obligation not to refer people to pages that require such things.
I can't let the links remain here as they are, but they are numerous and it will take time to deal with all of them.
The articles I linked to did not have that problem when I made the links.
US citizens: call on Congress to refuse to fund Trump’s executive order that could label millions of Americans as domestic terrorists, or in any fashion block it.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to stand up for science, not polluter profits.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: denounce the DOJ's Attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center.
US citizens: call on the Department of supposed Justice to drop bogus charges against James Comey and stop persecuting political speech.
Global heating will isolate New Orleans and Baton Rough in the middle of the sea, miles away from land. New Orleans must start now to move to higher ground.
*Want a green card? Better make sure you haven't criticized Israel on social media.*
*Six supreme court justices handed down a ruling built, ostensibly, on the belief that the US has changed so much as to render the protections of the Voting Rights Act unnecessary. No one should be that gullible.*
Activists Israel captured on the recent Gaza aid flotilla are being jailed in Israel. They told their lawyers that they are being held in solitary confinement, blindfolded.
Israel claims they are part of a group which it accuses of working secretly with HAMAS. That would be a bad thing if true, but I won't believe it on Israel's say-so. That is a standard way that right-wing extremists in the US and Israel try to smear anyone that defends the rights of Palestinians.
Even supposing that is true, it can't justify abuse of prisoners by Israel.
*[Executive agencies are] increasingly ignoring US courts, new analysis shows.
Critics warn that respect for rule of law could break down as executive branch flouts judicial decisions.*
Zambia agreed to hold the RightsCon conference this May, but canceled it shortly before it happened.
The article speculates this was due to pressure from China, and there may have been such pressure, but I have a hunch that the Zambian ruler objected to the event's support for equal rights for queer people. Zambia is very repressive in that area.
Starmer is seeking a path to label defense of Palestine as antisemitism.
Once you accept that identification, you will inevitably take an unjust stance on at least one of the two issues.
Starmer Labour called itself the "adults", meaning the ones who would prevent adoption of mad policies such as raising taxes on the rich. Rich people from increases in taxation, thus leaving a choice of various policies that won't solve the big problem of impoverishing the non-rich.
With a right-wing party in power, the "adults" may try to stop it from tearing up the legal system and constitution. However, with an ostensibly left-wing party in power, the "adults" try to prevent any major economic changes that could once again direct a large part of the country's productive capacity to the non-rich.
* Researchers found that TikTok's "For You" pages prioritized pro-Republican [messages] in New York, Texas and Georgia.*
The research operated many dummy accounts and tallied how what the site showed them, comparing that with the preferences that the account showed by which videos it cut off.
The experiment does not reveal how the site chose the videos it chose to present to each user. We don't know whether the site was specifically programmed to show more right-wing messages. Perhaps the site prefers characteristics that are more often found in right-wing messages.
But ultimately that design detail is not very important. What matter is that TikTok spreads right-wing bias.
The leftist premier of West Bengal has accused Modi's party of stealing the election.
This is plausible, given the laws they adopted to deprive Muslims of Indian citizenship if they don't have written proof of it. One of the two laws (which operate together) is explicitly biased against Muslims.
British cops have arrested two Green Party candidates, accusing them of promoting antisemitism.
The statement attributed to Sabine Mairey is flagrantly antisemitic. Aside from being inherently bad, it is also foolish and self-defeating to try to support Palestinians' rights by attacking the Jews that support Palestinians' rights.
The statement attributed to Saiqa Ali supports HAMAS. Since HAMAS is a terrorist organization, arguably the statement supports terrorism. However, HAMAS does not advocate antisemitism. HAMAS is is Islamist, meaning it seeks to impose the rules of Islam on everyone, including non-Muslims. That would be unjust, but does not imply treating Jews worse than Christians. However, HAMAS would be likely to treat Atheists such as me worse than either Christians or Jews.
According to Wikipedia, HAMAS was formerly antisemitic, but ended that about 10 years ago.
Flock license plate cameras are networked to facilitate tracking of all cars' travel.
This is ideal for all sorts of abuses, from "running a plate for a date" to repression of protest groups once they have been identified as part of the mythical "terrorist" organization "Antifa".
The UK set up a national car tracking network over 20 years ago, and used it to find specific people and stop them from traveling to a protest.
Do you expect the persecutor to be less unjust than Tony B'liar?
Arguing that banning or interfering with taking trophies from hunting wild animals is a misguided policy that interferes with protection of wildlife.
*Democrats say EPA head's budget cut proposal "reads like climate change deniers' manifesto".*
Magat federal prosecutors have lost in court in their prosecutions of protesters, because judges found them to be stretching the truth to the point where it snapped.
China will impose strict regulations on Pretend Intelligence chatbots that have conversations about suicide — a human must be notified to intervene.
Other things that chatbots will be prohibited from doing include encouraging violence, and emotional manipulation, and promoting "obscenity", gambling and crime, and misleading users.
An intelligent being can try to apply such rules because it can understands, more or less, the meaning of its communications. (Although it is not easy even for an intelligent being to understand reliably what a communication might imply to another intelligent being.)
A pretend intelligence will have trouble applying such rules beyond a superficial manner, because it is not capable of such understanding. It might have a discussion of "getting off this mortal coil" or "the big sleep" and not detect that as a reference to suicide or death.
Aside from that, I would expect that these rules will be interpreted by China as restricting discussion of political issues that lead to criticizing China. Alas, the US might restrict discussions of fascism and democracy, a few years from now.
The magats reopened the "gun show loophole", which allowed gun dealers to sell guns at gun shows without requiring a background check from the buyer.
A machine learning system did better than human doctors at providing a second opinion for emergency triage.
I think this justifies describing that system as "artificial intelligence", when used for that job.
60 significant countries agreed to adopt plans for ending use of fossil fuels.
The most powerful countries, who are he biggest consumers of fossil fuels, did not participate, but the participants amount to half the global GDP, so their decision might shift the world's climate trajectory.
Many low-income Americans can't easily get to a supermarket due to cuts in bus service caused by the end of a federal subsidy. (I suspect the wrecker ended it.)
However, there is no decrease in bus service in Somerville, Massachusetts. The MBTA has been increasing its bus service in the past few years and claims to have more bus service now than in 2019.
Supermarkets used to be far more numerous, a few decades ago. I think many independent small supermarkets went out of business.
Never apologize to your political enemies when they take offense tactically over a statement that wasn't actually wrong.
Activists on the latest Gaza aid flotilla accuse Israeli soldiers of violently torturing them after seizing their ships.
Israel says the flotilla's leaders will be taken to Israel for "questioning" — which may include torture.
British king Charles III, speaking to the US Congress, tried to urge the US to move back to democracy and respect for legal rights.
Will it change the minds of some Republicans?
An appeals court in the South, which is generally right-wing biased, ruled that abortion clinics cannot mail abortion drugs.
This will do terrible harm to women who can't afford to travel to a state where abortion is still lawful.
The Supreme Court then temporarily lifted the prohibition.
Ralph Nader critiques the No Kings movement for failing to follow up with local organizing everywhere to demand removal of the would-be dictator.
US citizens: call ABC to resist the bully's censorship demands.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a war powers resolution about Cuba and end the humanitarian crisis that the US is causing there.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
California officials point to changes in laws as the cause of a 35% decrease in the rate of homicides since 2024.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I present this comment about them.
Most US Christians reject the fascist "Christian nationalist" movement and they increasingly organize to oppose it.
Research suggests that repression of climate protesters is self-defeating: it builds the impetus for climate defense.
The UK says it might send refused Afghan asylum seekers back to Afghanistan.
This would make the UK culpable for the repression that drives them to flee and beg for asylum.
The CIA experimented with attempts at brainwashing of North Korean prisoners of war starting in 1950. However, it did not try using mind-altering drugs for this until later.
The Big Bad Bill established a federal tax voucher program — a taxpayer paying tuition for private school could take the whole sum off per tax owed.
This takes that money straight off the public budget.
A survey of many schemes that the cheater and his family use to receive money from supporters, many of whom visibly receive special preference for giving the money.
SLAPP lawsuits endanger freedom of the press; magat officials are now using them and tightening the screws to a level that few can resist.
To restore effective freedom of the press, we need laws to stop this practice. But officials that practice SLAPPing won't approve them.
If we had a supreme court full of honest supporters of freedom and democracy, they would interpret existing laws to prioritize citizens' freedom to participate in forming public opinion. But it is hard to count on that to come back.
(satire) *[The bully] Claims Correspondents’ Dinner Shooting Reinforces Need To End Journalism.*
US sanctions imposed on Cuba in two stages by the persecutor appear to be responsible for increasing Cuba's infant mortality rate from 4.0 per 1000 live births in 2028 to 9.9 per thousand as of 2025.
I suppose that non-infants in Cuba are also dying at a higher rate now.
Disneyland is joining the movement to get Americans accustomed to facial recognition everywhere and anywhere.
If it correctly recognizes you at a ride in Disneyland, that instance won't do you any harm. But the Orwellian general practice of using facial recognition facilitates finding and repressing dissidents or anyone else selected for persecution.
I have reconsidered my conclusion about the UK's advancing-age ban on selling tobacco. It is a regulation on selling the drug, not a prohibition in the usual sense. So perhaps it is acceptable.
The persecutor is threatening ABC TV with lawfare as retaliation for Jimmy Kimmel's joke.
* While a fifth of the global population lived in a country where press freedom was categorized as "good" in 2002, that has now fallen to less than 1% of the world’s population.*
Contending that the Supreme Court's vitiation of the Voting Rights Act made the US cease to be a democracy.
The Supreme Court overturned section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for more Republican gerrymandering.
UK local councils are arbitrarily prohibiting ordinary acts in public places -- from feeding birds to using a "dirty word", or political campaigning, or gathering in a group.
The fines are farmed out to private companies -- which should be prohibited absolutely. When a private company is empowered to impose fines, it tends to become oppressive, demanding payment even for fines that are not legally justified.
Several Republican-dominated states are rushing to draw new electoral districts to lock in more Republican elected officials, including in Congress.
A violent form of antisemitism in Britain is motivating violent attacks on Jews, both attacks on synagogues and attacks on Jews chosen at random on the street.
The attackers seem to equate being Jewish with supporting Israel's atrocities against Palestinians and Lebanese. That is mistaken, foolish, and unjust.
Visitors to the US will henceforth be refused a visa if they admit to any fear of persecution in their home country.
This is, I suppose, meant as an excuse to deny them asylum if they ask for asylum while visiting the US. It may be effective repression, but it goes against the spirit of the right to asylum.
The saboteur in chief is eliminating the political independence of US medical and scientific agencies.
This will put all of us in danger.
Maryland's law against surveillance pricing has several loopholes opened by industry lobbying.
One loophole is that the law allows the store to set a high official price and then offer discounts selectively based on personal data.
If every customer initially sees the high official price, that is not as devious as full-on surveillance pricing. If the official price is too high, the customer may simply decide not to purchase.
But if the store only shows that customer's personal discounted price, this is equivalent to surveillance pricing as currently practiced.
None of these problems affect me, because I don't identify myself to the store. The store can't generally track my location, either -- and at the time I buy there, my location is "right in front of the sales clerk".
Just after Hungary escaped from right-wing extremism, Bulgaria has probably fallen into it.
The bully is forcing various countries to expel their Cuban doctors. That leaves them with a shortage of doctors.
Scientists forecast that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation is quite likely to collapse.
*A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic.*
The world's two largest airlines (United and American) propose to merge.
The idea is absurd in principle, since it would undermine competition. Under a government that believed in preserving competition, they would never have proposed this. But the wrecker encourages the businesses that support him to merge and become a monster — as long as they use their power in devious ways to punish his designated enemies.
*US tech firms successfully lobbied EU to keep datacenter emissions secret.*
This shows that EU governments felt desperate for money ("investments") from those companies — so desperate that they betrayed their countries for those companies' favor.
Protester Renea Gamble, who was arrested for wearing a penis costume, was found not guilty, and will sue the city for arresting her on absurd grounds. Perhaps also for knocking her down so that she hit her head on the ground.
The thugs said that at one point she had named herself as "Aunt Tifa", and prosecuted her for that too. I love her sense of humor.
A reporter investigated FBI head Patel's command for FBI personnel to act as security for his girlfriend. In response, the FBI began investigating the reporter.
For magats, whatever magat officials do for the benefit of magats, even if corrupt or illegal, is legitimate. For journalists to investigate such actions is "stalking".
Patel has also sued The Atlantic for investigating his official life.
A project has tried to estimate the cost to black Americans in Fulton County, Georgia, of various racist laws and government practices, including slavery and Jim Crow, and sometimes having the KKK drive blacks off their land to take it away from them.
It also includes the wages they would normally have been paid for work that they were forced to do. It amounts to a large sum in today's money, though the article does not estimate an overall total.
The project aims ultimately to determine a just quantity of reparations to give to descendants of those who were robbed and cheated. I am interested in seeing the results. How to give a disprivileged group's members effective aid to surmount the inherited effects of being disprivileged is not obvious.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles, such as this one, because they are important. I want to help the article educate people about racism. At the same time I want to rebuke its bigotry — so I present this comment about it.
*[Justice Department] inspector general to audit department's compliance with Epstein Files Transparency Act.*
The question this raises is whether this will be an honest audit (Did the department follow the law?) or a maga-audit (Did the department do what the corruptor wanted?).
The restructuring of the US Forest Service may be intended partly to hamper research to understand global heating effects.
The new head of the Forest Service used to work for a logging company, and in his thoughts he still does.
The corrupter is pushing Bosnia to make a corrupt deal to have a pipeline built by a company run by loyal henchmen with no pipeline experience.
Aside from the diversion of funds to reward people for committing crimes for the corrupter, the social cost of this would be a bigger risk of pollution and increase of the general level of corruption. The EU is right to try to stop it.
Polanski, the leader of the English Green Party, is Jewish and upholds Palestinians' rights — and rejects the attempt to tar that as "antisemitic". He rebuked Starmer's criticisms, saying, "We've got into a bizarre situation in this country where a non-Jewish prime minister is attacking the one Jewish leader on a case of antisemitism."
Mayor Mamdani vetoed a bill to ban protests near schools. He was not able to veto a similar ban on protests near religious establishments, but it deserved to be vetoed.
The corrupter/persecutor embodies the worst of us. *Name the ugliest human quality, and [he] will demonstrate it and glory in it.*
I criticize one point in the article: don't hint at criticism of "dodging the draft" during the Vietnam War.
The Southern Poverty Law Center pays people to inform on the private plans and views of hate groups. Magats in the "Justice" department are prosecuting the SPLC for supposedly "defrauding" their donors. However, Donors say this is no fraud — the SPLC is exactly what they want it to do.
The confusion here is an instance of judging actions by their form while disregarding the substance of the ethical issue. I wonder whether a computer program came up with this idea.
Republicans in Congress seek to protect fossil fuel companies from all legal responsibility for the damage of growing climate disaster.
If they do cause full-blown climate disaster, they will not have enough trillions to pay for all the damages. But the liability might help us at an earlier time — help us make them stop causing the disaster.
*[The bully]'s pardons are harming violent crime survivors*, by eliminating fines that the pardoned criminals would have paid into the fund to compensate them.
The UK's rules about political campaign donations spread a suspicion of corruption, which is confirmed every time a party changes rules and laws to favor the interests of rich people who donated to it.
The same is true in the US, even though the precise rules are different.
The article advocates public funding of political campaigns. I support that.
The bully insists on personally making all decisions about negotiations with Iran. The trouble is, he is incapable of deciding anything.
Iran properly doesn't trust anything the bully says about war or peace.
The ingrate is planning to send a thousand Afghan refugees (who helped the US army in Afghanistan) to the Congo instead of allowing them into the US.
The Congo has had a civil war for decades. What a lousy reward that is for their help.
The UK will ban everyone who is now under 16 years of age from ever buying tobacco.
I am against the use of tobacco, because tobacco is deadly. But I think it is wrong to prohibit drugs, even if they are dangerous. Regulating and discouraging drugs of abuse makes sense, but prohibiting them outright goes too far.
China has imprisoned a Chinese who who engaged in a pro-democracy protest while studying in Australia.
Never forget that China seeks to spread repression over the whole world.
1950s CIA agent Peter Sichel later rebuked the US for overthrowing various more-or-less leftist governments, including Mossadegh in Iran.
* [President] Milei's reforms to [Argentina's glacier pollution] law will open up high-altitude areas to mining and risk water reserves already strained by the climate crisis.*
*Canadian mother held by ICE with daughter, 7, speaks out on families "suffering greatly" in [deportation prison].*
She is married to a US citizen and had papers to reside in the US, when she was grabbed and subjected to cruel pressure to agree to deportation. For magats, forcibly breaking up families brings a sense of achievement.
The magats controlling the US government keep covering up US military personnel wounded in action.
*Trump has turned Title X upside down: from a contraception program into a pronatalist machine.*
Office workers say that use of pretend intelligence in the office does not increase productivity, it only reduces quality of the writing. It gets replaced with "workslop", full of confusion that requires hand-editing to fix.
If this sets a new, enshittified standard for how business deals with customers, customers may find that they no longer have a better choice like what used to be standard. Perhaps they will cope, at the cost of more misunderstandings. Businesses might reduce their expenditures, but there will be costs as a consequence.
Israel seized another flotilla of boats carrying aid to Gaza, this time in international waters, 600 miles away from Gaza and Israel.
Israel's suggestion that activists should deliver their aid to Israel for Israel to transport to Gaza is mockery. There is plenty of aid waiting for Israel to allow it into Gaza. It piles up outside Gaza because Israel chokes the transport of that aid into Gaza. That is the main cause of the shortage and suffering in Gaza, and the reason for the aid flotillas.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore the gerrymandering limitations that the Supreme Court just abolished.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
One question is, how can this be done? Passing the same law that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional would not work.
Perhaps it would work to require states to use the algorithm that finds the fairest possible set of districts.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban gambling on war and on government policies.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Rebecca Solnit: *The United States is being murdered, and it's an inside job.*
The CDC was going to publish a study that found that Covid vaccination reduced the risk of hospitalization for Covid by half, for healthy adults. The organization's acting director, appointed by RFK jr, suppressed publication using an irrational excuse.
A deportation thug faces 14 years in prison on charges of aggravated assault for using his gun to menace people in a vehicle.
Anyone who knows of the whereabouts of Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr should inform the Minnesota State Police.
A Phoenix thug went to the nearby suburb of Chandler, wearing a mask and a gun, trying to frighten/provoke some sort of reaction from protesting high school students and (he hoped) get an opportunity to arrest some.
The students were mostly too disciplined to fall into his trap, though one threw water at him and was arrested, falsely, by Chandler thugs for allegedly throwing a water bottle. (The Phoenix thug evidently expected that the Chandler cops would have the attitude of thugs, and it seems that they did.)
There is a happy ending: the Phoenix police chief rebuked that thug for endangering the community's trust in the department, and is investigating possible punishment for him. It is heartening that the chief wants his cops not to be thugs.
Sea-level rise due to accelerating global heating will ruin the lagoon of Venice before the end of this century.
More precisely, closing the flood barriers as often as will be required in a few decades will result in growth of algae which will petrify.
Global heating will ruin large parts of the land and sea. We can't address the problem by treating all the many symptoms — we need to curb the heating itself.
Right-wing billionaire men have planned a multi-step campaign to convince young women that they should fear birth control, fear to vote, and let men have power over them.
The men admit this, but the influencers they promote don't admit they are part of such a campaign.
The saboteur in chief ordered a big increase in US extraction of fossil fuels in the name of "defense readiness".
The biggest threat to US national security, other than Republican officials, is the threat of global climate disaster, which this plan would increase.
*The Los Angeles Police Department deployed drones intended for public safety uses to surveil a No Kings rally and a protest against the Trump administration's anti-immigrant campaign, flight data reveals.*
England plans various measures to help women be safe walking after dark.
When installing measures to protect people from one injustice, it is important to avoid exacerbating another injustice. Any additional TV cameras must be disconnected from networks so that they do not extend automated surveillance of everyone. In other words, security cameras, rather than surveillance cameras.
The policy of letting passengers get off buses between stops at night is a good idea, especially where stops are far apart, but for equality's sake it should extend to all passengers.
I hope the added streetlights will be controlled by motion detectors, so that they don't wipe out small nocturnal animals as an unintended consequence.
Students at Columbia U say that the university chose to allow deportation thugs to grab students, rather than demanding a judicial warrant.
*Burning wood for power worse for climate than gas equivalent, report finds.*
That doesn't imply that the world can safely continue burning gas and oil!
Indigenous Canadians testified in court around 20 years ago about the abuses that they has suffered years before as children forced to live in residential schools whose aim was forced assimilation.
Now the government plans to destroy the records of that testimony, in the name of protecting the privacy of the witnesses. However, decisions about compensation for individuals are not the only reason this testimony is important.
The general story of the cruelty of those schools is now widely known, but specific testimony is what supports that general conclusion.
Billionaire Polluter seeks another chance to spread oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Republicans, as is their usual policy, decided to give them another chance. Environmentalist groups are suing to prevent it.
One US appeals court has approved of laws that require public schools to post the ten commandments in every classroom.
It seems clear to me that this favors Judaism and Christianity over all other alternatives including Atheism. I think the court used a very narrow interpretation of "establishment of religion".
The EU council of foreign ministers has considered a proposal to impose trade sanctions on Israel for its government's support of atrocities against Palestinians. The motion did not pass.
Woody Guthrie's political songs are becoming necessary again in the US.
US citizens: call on Congress to block privatization of the US Postal Service.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on the EPA to stop trying to weaken coal ash protections.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to block war with Cuba, and end the humanitarian crisis there.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Magats claim that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy can cause autism. A large empirical study has found that it doesn't.
Never trust what magats say about medicine. They don't have a commitment to making sure it is true.
Many countries' legal systems take no cognizance of the violent abuse that drives women to kill their husbands as an act of self defense.
Be skeptical about claims that specific products will improve your microbiome. Science doesn't yet know enough to predict what interventions might be helpful, so those who try to sell you products to intervene in your microbiome are likely to be exceeding actual knowledge.
Indigenous Americans face racial profiling by deportation thugs, who demand proof of citizenship because of their appearance.
*Africa's forests transformed from carbon sink to carbon source, study finds.*
The same has happened to the Amazon forest and in South-East Asia. We have gone over a tipping point and are sliding down to global disaster.
(satire) *The Best Books To Motivate And Inspire You.*
Various US states are working on laws to regulate or prohibit the construction of new data centers. The constructors try to evade public regulation and even public awareness until it is too late. At that time, the data center typically has the right to demand all the electricity and water it needs, which can far exceed what is actually available in the place. That can be catastrophic.
Note how plutocratists threaten states with being labeled as "closed to new business" if they take any steps to stop businesses from wiping the floor with the public there. The public needs to learn to laugh in the face of anyone who advocates that plutocratist view.
Around the world, the length of summer is growing by 6 days per decade.
But this may speed up in the future, given that global heating is accelerating.
Robert Reich argues that general public hatred of the bully might pressure some Republican senators to vote to remove the bully from office.
Maybe so, but if that makes Vance president, will it really be better?
Jobs for US college graduates have become scarce in some fields where they used to be available.
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