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.
Ferguson is planning to raise more revenue by increasing fines.
Other information confirms that this includes fines for traffic offenses. That will fall heavily on the poor, increasing the oppression they already suffer. Some will be jailed because they can't pay these fines, which will be an excuse for other fines.
A thug union objected to a right-wing city councilor's union-busting plans, so their private investigators tried to frame him.
I too object to those union-busting plans — the fact that the union members are thugs doesn't excuse them — but this form of opposition is pure thug.
A US high school basketball team was kicked out of a tournament for wearing "I can't breathe" protest shirts while preparing for the match.
What strict repression! I am sure the tournament organizers will say, "We're not racist, we only oppose criticizing racism. We're not in favor of cops' killing people, we just insist that nobody rebuke them when they do."
The NSA plans to crack into millions of computers and take remote control of them.
Alexei Navalny was given a suspended sentence of over 3 years — meaning that Putin can hold this over Navalny for any sort of protest activity that Putin chooses to declare illegal.
This is similar in spirit, though not in legal detail, to the practice in the UK and the US of making arrested protesters agree to refrain from protests as a condition of bail.
China is imposing strict conformity on views expressed in universities.
Western countries such as France which prohibit disagreement with the official view of certain issues, such as the genocide of the Armenians, provide China with an excuse for its own restrictions on permitted opinions.
Many working people in the UK are effectively working for nothing because their wages pay for less than the costs of working.
I suspect the right-wing government would punish them if they quit.
Senator Bernie Sanders: The Trans-Pacific Trade (TPP) Agreement Must Be Defeated.
The Prison State of America: prisons are a scheme for forced labor, charging prisoners fees and fines to make them work for companies for a pittance.
The private prison companies lobby for many measures, some explicit and some subtle and indirect, to put more people in prison.
The last independent TV station in Russia is being shut down.
Red knots, birds that migrate very long distances, are in danger from global heating in several ways at once.
The public school system of a city in Pennsylvania is being turned over entirely to a company.
US TV shows about the real lives of teenage mothers convinced thousands of US teenagers to avoid following that path.
It appears that these shows caused a 6% drop in the rate of teen pregnancy, from 2008 to 2012. (A further 11% drop was due to other causes.)
The UK government has decided to permit the main nightingale habitat site to be bulldozed for new housing.
Police officer Joseph Crystal was hounded out of his department after reporting a thug for attacking a handcuffed prisoner.
The thug was convicted, got a slap on the wrist, and remains employed by the department.
Campaigners are putting labels on goods in UK stores that make demands to pay their workers a living wage.
A headline-minded prosecutor in Arizona tried to charge people with intentionally killing dogs under their care, hoping to bury evidence that an air conditioner failure was the cause.
Perhaps kennel companies should be required to take care to detect nighttime air conditioner failures in time to do something to save the dogs, but prosecuting hapless employees is not the way to establish such a regulation.
Compared with 40 years ago, Americans are better off in some ways and worse in many others.
The GDP is worthless as a measure of society's economic well-being. If a plutocrat gets a billion dollars of income by taking $100 in income away from each of 10 million working people, that is a big change for the worse, but the GDP registers it as no change. When an article presents GDP figures as if they mattered, that indicates a bad framing of the issues: Garbage In, Garbage Out.
Using the word "monetize" embodies and thus promotes the attitude that the article opposes.
When computer manufacturers have back doors to get people's data. that creates many threats over and above an antidemocratic government.
Al-Sisi is ruling by decree and has imposed a series of diktats against human rights.
A US-linked radio station in Azerbaijan is being shut down and its staff persecuted.
The Mall of America and its pet city government plan to sue "black lives matter" protesters into ruin.
Big banks' losses due to betting on a high oil price could be imposed on taxpayers due to the betrayal budget bill that Senator Warren tried to stop.
Obama, obedient as always to the banksters, lobbied the Senate to pass it.
Mexican farm workers, growing produce for the US, are treated as slaves and forbidden to leave the farm. If caught escaping, they are brutalized.
Forced to buy food from stores that gouge them, they end the season in debt.
A Femen protester is imprisoned in the Vatican.
Picking up a statue and holding it in a protest is not "stealing". What nonsense! As for "offending religious sentiments", that's at the core of freedom of speech.
Pfizer is trying to bully pharmacists not to prescribe generic drugs.
The Dodd-Frank bill was not strong enough in the first place, but the Federal Reserve keeps giving banks extensions on complying with it.
A court told London Activists they could reenter the unused bank building to serve a meal to the homeless on Christmas, but the court betrayed them immediately after and they were not allowed to do this.
One of the activist points out that the UK has 10 unoccupied buildings for each homeless person.
The state's refusal to let homeless people live in those buildings demonstrates its evil priorities. Making squatting a crime was vicious too.
Does anyone know whether the Green Party advocates legalizing squatting?
Mehmet Emin Altunses faces the criminal charge of insulting the president of Turkey.
Anyone who loves Turkey must fight to get these charges dropped so that Turkey does not disgrace itself.
"No Justice, No Respect": Why the Ferguson Riots Were Justified.
Treaties are needed to restrict development of autonomous AIs with deadly weapons.
A SWAT team raided Chad Chadwick's house
based
on a false report, shot him, beat him up, and tased him, then
fabricated a series of charges against him.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
They did not convict him of anything, but they ruined his life as well as rendering him deaf in one ear.
These thugs must be punished or they will ruin someone else's life next.
Privatized UK parole officers put people back in prison for taking jobs that start too early in the morning.
Jeffrey Deskovic was falsely convicted of murder, and freed after 16 years. Now he dedicates his life to freeing others wrongly imprisoned by a system that makes slapdash mistakes.
A cinema in the UK called the thugs to arrest some 12-year-olds for bringing iThings with them to the movie.
The fact that they did not in fact record the movie is a side issue. What if they had done so? Since that is not a crime in the UK, the only complaint the cinema could make is that they violated its rules. That should not qualify as an "emergency" — the thugs should have refused to come.
This is in addition to the general point that laws against sharing copies of published works are an injustice.
Protests Erupt in Nicaragua over Inter-oceanic Canal.
The canal raises two issues. One is that farmers who will lose their land don't trust that they will be compensated. There is an obvious solution: start buying their land at a fair price now.
The bigger and harder issue is that of potential ecosystem damage. I don't know if there is a way to prevent that.
Advice for Americans dealing with debt collectors.
How the nebulous idea of "cloud computing" led millions of internet users to lose their privacy.
The one flaw in the article is that it presumes we have all fallen for the trap. For example, "When the technology industry embraced 'cloud computing' and made it part of our daily lives, we all made a Faustian bargain." Maybe you made that bargain — I never did. I hope you will join me in rejecting it now.
Some kinds of services are acceptable to use in specific ways. But if you adopt a policy of trusting a service without first carefully checking who you would be trusting with what, you'll be mistreated over and over. This is why I have adopted the policy of not identifying myself to businesses I deal with except under very narrow conditions (for instance, the company that hosts stallman.org knows it's mine).
In other words, you've got to stop thinking that there is a "cloud", and start thinking about each particular service.
Life and business in occupied Palestine are tangled in hundreds of absurd Israeli regulations, each with its own excuse, but all designed simply to make life poor and difficult.
Obama continues to claim that the war in Afghanistan made the US safer.
A public hospital in Alabama makes patients waive their legal right not to be sued for hospital bills.
I don't think poor indebted Americans should feel the slightest shame about using bankruptcy to escape the medical bills that a civilized country would never have tried to impose on them.
Meanwhile, I wonder whether the hospital's contract with these patients is valid. If the law says hospitals can't do something to their patients, can the hospitals set it aside just by getting the patient to say yes?
Democracy protests in Hong Kong have resumed and thugs arrested dozens.
The UK government celebrates the 1914 Christmas truce because it doesn't threaten the idea of war. Contrast it with the reception of acts and movements that did.
Obama plans to send mercenaries to Iraq so he can deny he is sending ground troops there.
Mercenaries are troops.
Faux News cut a protest chant in mid-sentence to misrepresent it as advocating the kill of thugs.
Now cat litter comes with DRM.
How a woman won election as MP for Timbuktu.
Syriza's Marxist economist does not propose leaving the Euro. Rather he demands debt relief with that threat in the background.
Is Sony's Crackdown a Bigger Threat to Western Free Speech Than North Korea?
Russia reports that an unidentified witness saw a Ukrainian fighter plane take off with missiles and land without them, at the time flight MH17 was shot down.
If true, this would not be conclusive proof that Ukraine shot down the passenger jet. There could be other reasons for the fighter to return without missiles.
But is this testimony real? We have only the Russian state's word that the witness made this testimony — and that the witness exists at all.
The UK has used bail conditions to arbitrarily ban hundreds of activists from protests.
The bogus charges are dropped eventually, but in the mean time, democracy is the loser.
Israel arrested members of an anti-Arab hate group, accusing them of various violent acts.
Brazil's new Agriculture minister is the obedient servant of big agribusiness and will energetically promote deforestation.
The NSA and its friends undermine general internet security in many ways.
The NSA has created a web of cooperating companies. It helps protect them from cracking, and they allow help the NSA spy on others.
The low price of oil may be Saudi Arabia's plan to hurt Russia and Iran.
The article speculates that it may cause a big decrease in oil production a few years from now. I hope that leads to more renewables installation then, but it would be better to have a high oil price now to incentivize renewables now.
Israel's parliament is considering a law to bar the most outspoken Palestinian legislator from parliament.
I disagree with Ms Zoabi on her controversial statement: I think kidnapping children is wrong even in fighting a colonizing occupying power. Nonetheless, barring her from election to Parliament attacks the democratic rights of hundreds of thousands of people, and that is also wrong.
New Jersey is trying to clear away the democratic procedures that allow the residents of a city to block water privatization.
Governor Christie has a chance to block this by vetoing the bill. If he does not, it may hurt his presidential chances.
Homeless squatters joined activists who sought to feed them, to occupy a disused bank in London. The government sent thugs to kick them out, true to its policy of screw the poor to help the rich; but two of the activists climbed on a balcony rather than leave.
This shows that the UK state regards the idea of feeding homeless people on Christmas as a danger so urgent that it warrants an eviction on Christmas eve to prevent it. (For me, as an Atheist, I don't particularly care that it was Christmas; I'd disapprove of the eviction equally much on any day of the year.)
The court ordered the activists be allowed to return temporarily to feed the homeless today. I guess someone decided to try to smooth over resentment over the eviction. I hope it does not succeed in that aim.
Dissecting the US "evidence" supposed to tie the cracking of Sony to North Korea.
It's flimsy argument, misleadingly cited multiple times as if that made the conclusions stronger. In other words, total bullshit.
The North Korean regime is viciously oppressive; there is no need for false accusations where so many valid accusations are available. But these accusations smell like a PR campaign meant to shape US public opinion.
Don't forget Sony's cyber-attacks against its own customers.
Thugs in St Louis (near Ferguson, that is) shot another black teenager, saying he was pointing a gun at them.
If things happened as the thugs claim, I don't think they did wrong this time. But people are right to distrust the thugs and demand proof, as the thugs have lied so many times before.
The US government asks courts to order computer companies to remotely give access to people's computers — when the companies have power (through back doors) to do so.
The defense is to use free software that probably does not have a back door, rather than proprietary software that almost certainly does have one.
Let's Leave Behind the Age of Fossil Fuel. Welcome to Year One of the Climate Revolution.
The UK gave 1.5 billion dollars in subsidy to all sorts of power plants just for existing and doing what they were going to do anyway.
The subsidy was supposed to be an incentive to bring new generating capacity on line, but it did none of that.
Since a large fraction of this generating capacity uses fossil fuel, that fraction of the subsidy is subsidy for continuing to use fossil fuel (rather than building renewable capacity).
Global heating is disrupting butterflies, so that caterpillars mature in the autumn and can't survive the winter as adults.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to stop giveaways to Wall Street.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
The TTIP would require US states to pay foreign companies in order to regulate toxic chemicals such as Bisphenol A.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty Is Plutocratic". Its other name, TAFTA, stands for "Turn All Freedom To Ashes".
A solidarity hunger strike persuaded Israel to release Nahar al-Saadi from solitary confinement after 570 days of it.
Solitary confinement is a form of brainwashing common in US prisons.
Israel blatantly disregards the Fourth Geneva Convention in its treatment of occupied Palestine.
Another way Comcast tries to buy support for its planned merger with a large competitor: by handing out cards that entitle the bearer to decent customer service. In Washington DC, these cards are often given to people with political influence.
As two children (ages 10 and 6) were walking home from a park, thugs grabbed them, took them to their home, then threatened to shoot their father.
I think the father should have refused to sign any papers making absurd promises, even for a few days, and told the kids, "I can't stop them from taking you prisoner, but mom and I will rescue you." Any child of 6 will understand what that means.
When I was 6 years old, I walked to school every day. That's what all the boys and girls in first grade did, in my ordinary neighborhood public school in New York City. How cowardly TV has made Americans.
A police officer in Buffalo was fired for trying to stop a thug from choking a handcuffed man.
Quite a few security experts doubt US claims that the crack attack on Sony was carried out by North Korea. This article presents their reasons.
Santa Claus and his crew joined a protest against a natural gas storage facility that is likely to pollute the regional water supply in nearby Seneca Lake.
There is still a chance for the many streams of climate defense activism to prevent the worst level of disaster — but we need to push for deep changes that go beyond changing our individual lifestyles.
CO2 emissions are putting mussels in danger.
Everyone: call on Mississippi Attorney General Hood to drop his plans for a mandatory ISP censorship list.
It does work to sign with Javascript disabled — the page of JSON data that you get indicates success.
Australia's carbon tax was effective in reducing CO2 emissions. That's why the fossil fuel companies' men were so determined to get rid of it.
Nepalese workers are dying in Qatar at the rate of 15 a month. And this doesn't count the workers from India and other countries.
Another fine mess for freedom of speech in Egypt.
Luxembourg should not bring charges against the person who leaked the tax avoidance schemes of Luxembourg.
Amazon Anonymous claims its boycott in the UK has cost Amazon 8 million dollars.
While I support the boycott, I can't say I have bought any less from Amazon than I did in the past.
In 1995, Senator Moynihan proposed to abolish the CIA.
US torture extends beyond the CIA, and everyone responsible ought to be chased down and prosecuted.
Reportedly three other countries have made a secret agreement giving Ukraine a veto over publishing results of the investigation of the destruction of flight MH17.
This article belongs to a body of writing that claims that MH17 was shut down intentionally by Ukraine. That is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof — it is much more plausible that badly trained missile operators were mistaken about the target. The articles I have seen are not extraordinary proof: for the most part, the evidence is attributed to people I can't find much information about, and I am not convinced it is for real.
For instance, this article says that the unusual flight path of MH17 has never been explained, but I recall reading that it (as well as other flights before and after) were diverted away from a storm.
Nonetheless, the author personally attests to getting a runaround in requests for information about this agreement, and I think that point is credible.
The Smartest Cities Rely on Citizen Cunning And Unglamorous Technology (as opposed to fancy sensors that spy on everyone).
Refugees from Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea report on life under the rebels and/or Russia.
Some of these people could be motivated to exaggerate, but it is consistent with what Putin does in Russia, and some of them had no other reason to flee.
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has laid charges of torture in Germany against two officials of the Bush regime: former CIA Director Tenet and former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
Contrast the difference in reaction between the unusual event that someone shoots a thug dead and the frequent event that a thug shoots an unarmed man dead.
The producers of a documentary about Edward Snowden have been sued by someone who claims they are "profiting from the theft of documents".
From what I have read, the use by journalists of leaked documents is lawful in the US. (The movie isn't where they are used; it is about Snowden, not whet he showed us.) But the US government might try to use this lawsuit as an opportunity to press its case to label Snowden as a criminal.
US universities host raving supporters of the occupation of Palestine, but those who criticize it are labeled "antisemitic" and excluded.
Sony Threatens to Sue Twitter Unless It Removes Tweets Containing Hacked Emails.
The Lima agreement is weaker than weak — a "roadmap to global burning."
A Milwaukee thug shot an unarmed homeless man, apparently beating him up first, then accused the homeless man (apparently falsely) of attacking him. The thug will get off without prosecution.
1/4 of the tenant families in the UK have cut back on food to pay rent.
Ukraine is planning to join NATO, and
NATO
does not reject the idea.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
That seems calculated to push Russia into war.
Thugs don't seem to mind so much when right-wing fanatics kill thugs.
The oppression of North Korea is no joke.
Nonetheless, I think it is a fitting target for jokes — ha ha, only serious.
The world's wheat harvest is predicted to decrease 6% with each 1C rise in world temperature.
Maybe we could cope with a 12% decrease, but 30%?
Koalas are headed for extinction due to human destruction of their habitat.
Pressure for prosecution of US torturers is growing.
The New York Times editorial uses the word torture which many other media have avoided. It omits the ringleaders, Bush and Cheney, from the list of suspects to be investigated, but they should be the prime targets.
The senate talks about setting up a "truth commission" to investigate, as a substitute for prosecution. That won't be enough to cleanse America's name, or repudiate tyranny. The Bush regime's secret memos trashed the whole Bill of Rights.
So much evidence has been published already, including Dubya's and Cheneys' public confessions, that there should be no need to offer any of the major organizers immunity.
A Taliban-supporting cleric in Pakistan threatened violence against protesters, and is being investigated for these threats.
Italians have been charged with planning
right-wing
terrorist violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
Painting a pretty face on the harsh life of servants is a way of romanticizing inequality.
Accepting sponsorship from arms companies promotes arms trade and war.
It's comparable to sponsorship from tobacco companies, fossil fuel companies, or Big Pharma.
Large dam projects in Amazonia lead to deforestation, and may have something to do with the failure of rains in Sao Paulo.
A high-ranking New York thug posted a tweet that appears to endorse intentional extrajudicial killings.
Listing the 32 Democratic senators that sided with the Republican betrayal budget bill.
What the banksters got from the betrayal budget bill:
taxpayers
potentially on the hook for giant losses from speculation in
derivatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
Facebook blocked access in Russia to a page proposing a protest in Russia, in obedience to the Russian regime.
US citizens: call on the FDA not to approve genetically modified salmon.
Eating them is probably safe, but growing them in the ocean endangers wild salmon.
US citizens: call on Obama not to renominate Wall Street's Antonio Weiss to regulate Wall Street.
US citizens: call on Obama to show some spine in opposing Wall Street's corruption of Congress.
The UK's anti-immigrant party's leader reacted with bad grace to a satirical app.
I hope that the developers released the app as free software.
The New Economy movement calls for making economic activities smaller-scale and under local ownership.
Syriza could win the next Greek elections, and says it will destroy austerity — but the forces of repression could stage a coup in Greece.
US citizens: call on Holder to prosecute JP Morgan.
Everyone: call for
dropping
the "feticide" charge against Purvi Patel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call for prosecution of the CIA officials responsible for torture.
I added a note saying to prosecute Cheney and Dubya as well.
Ten medical problems that modern contraception can prevent or make lighter — aside from pregnancy.
The Christian story of Christmas encapsulates disgust for female sexuality.
Thugs are not always the killers — occasionally they are killed. Someone shot two NYC thugs, just before killing himself, and after killing someone else.
Other thugs have seized on this as an opportunity to campaign for their own impunity, and to attack the public for the anger that has been provoked by the actions of many thugs over a long time.
In effect, the thugs claim that their lives matter astronomically more than yours or mine
, and that protesting when they kill mere citizens is equivalent to shooting them.I don't think those two thugs deserved to die. But I feel less concern about each of them than about each of the many innocent people that thugs have killed — because the thugs are part of a group that has power and uses it arrogantly to oppress.
The reason I call them "thugs" is not primarily because of the killings they do, many of which are due to haste and unconscious racism rather than malice. Rather, it is primarily because of the numerous protesters and other innocent victims that they grab, punch, kick, pepper spray, or beat with sticks, and then frame for various bogus charges. That, they do from arrogance.
Only a fraction of thugs would do those things, but when they lie about it, all their buddies support their perjury. That's why they all deserve the name of "thugs".
Once in a while someone in a thug department stands for justice and rejects the arrogance and impunity of the other thugs. Those people deserve the name of "police officer".
The Taliban are winning their war against Pakistani children's future.
The Tor project reports that some government (the US, it appears) may try to disable its directory authority servers and shut the Tor network down.
Christian fanatics falsely claim that some birth control methods are abortion, so they can stretch their restrictions on abortion rights to restrict birth control too.
From my point of view, the difference between contraception and abortion, while real, has no moral significance: they should both be legal and the state should provide them both gratis.
The EPA's proposed rules for handling coal ash are too weak to do the job.
It's not a good thing for everyone's email to be published. Or collected by the NSA.
When Maria Lopez cut her finger on a meat saw at the Hormel plant, because they had sped up the production line, they kept the line running dripping her blood into the food.
The higher production speed causes accidents and contamination, but the companies have bought the support of the US government to allow them to replace government inspection with their own half-hearted inspection. To trust these companies to inspect themselves is to invite them to cut corners on safety — for their workers and for their customers.
The UK has imposed onerous and unnecessary restrictions on volunteers returning from helping to care for Ebola patients in Africa.
These people can be trusted to tell medical personnel if they develop symptoms suggesting they might have Ebola. And if they don't have those symptoms, they are not contagious.
As Egypt's government plunges to new depths of tyranny, it is getting