[ 2024 September - December | 2024 May - August | 2024 January - April | 2023 September - December | 2023 May - August | 2023 January - April | 2022 September - December | 2022 May - August | 2022 January - April | 2021 September - December | 2021 May - August | 2021 January - April | 2020 September - December | 2020 May - August | 2020 January - April | 2019 September - December | 2019 May - August | 2019 January - April | 2018 September - December | 2018 May - August | 2018 January - April | 2017 September - December | 2017 May - August | 2017 January - April | 2016 September - December | 2016 May - August | 2016 January - April | 2015 September - December | 2015 May - August | 2015 January - April | 2014 September - December | 2014 May - August | 2014 January - April | 2013 September - December | 2013 May - August | 2013 January - April | 2012 September - December | 2012 May - August | 2012 January - April | 2011 September - December | 2011 May - August | 2011 January - April | 2010 September - December | 2010 May - August | 2010 January - April | 2009 September - December | 2009 May - August | 2009 January - April | 2008 September - December | 2008 May - August | 2008 January - April | 2007 September - December | 2007 May - August | 2007 January - April | 2006 September - December | 2006 May - August | 2006 January - April | 2005 September - December | 2005 May - August | 2005 January - April | 2004 September - December | 2004 May - August | 2004 January - April | 2003 September - December | 2003 May - August | 2003 January - April | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 ]
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.
* Now that they can no longer pretend the climate crisis isn’t real, big emitters and their enablers are making all of the right noises –- and taking none of the right actions.* This includes Australia's government.
It also includes United Airlines. It proposes to use "100% green fuel" for its planes, and plans to burn a lot more fuel than today; but it has no plausible plan to get enough of this green fuel to run more than a fraction of its flights.
A lawsuit challenges the intentionally inadequate US system for labeling genetically engineered foods.
Each kind of genetic modification raises different issues, so it is a
mistake to generalize about them. There is no reason to suppose by
default that they do practical harm, but some specific modified
varieties can do harm for specific reasons. Aside from that,
they
are likely to carry patents which would do practical harm to society
if it depends on them for something important.
* Australia’s independent expert group OzSage has savaged the
“let
it rip” Covid-19 strategy in New South Wales and elsewhere, saying it will
condemn some people to death, particularly the more vulnerable.*
Australia has apparently flipped completely from the approach it used
until a few months ago.
*Indonesia relents
on plan to push back boat carrying 100 Rohingya
refugees after outcry.*
Some Indian states are making it a crime to
offer any sort of
inducement to convert to a religion.
Even beyond that, a local official will have the power to decide
what constitutes an inducement. That opens the door to repressive
selective enforcement — in favor of Hinduism and against anything
else.
What if the law were enforced honestly and narrowly? That's not going
to happen under a ruling party that encourages religious-based hate
crimes, but let's suppose.
I think that would still unacceptably restrictive. People should not
be required to get government approval for what they believe.
Public benefactors have
developed
an unpatented Covid-19 vaccine
and taught various companies around the world how to make it.
If it works against Omicron, it would be a great step forward.
Giving away a baby is
not
a simple and painless substitute for abortion.
It isn't painless for the mother, nor for the baby's subsequent life.
I wonder to what extent the pain, nowadays, of an adopted child's
subsequent life is socially constructed. Was it painful in general
200 years ago to be adopted, if your adoptive parents were not poor
and treated you as well as their other children? I don't know.
Perhaps in most cases you would know all along who your biological
parents were and the reason for the adoption — for instance, because
your parents had more children than they could support, or because
they had died, or to give a childless relative an heir. But there
would have been shame imposed on you if your parents were unmarried.
In my view, making one more human being is not inherently a plus —
and even less so nowadays, considering the
disaster
that any newborn
today would be heading for.
The Taliban have
forbidden
women to drive, or ride in a car, over 45 miles
from home, except with a male relative.
This will make it harder for women who are trapped by other forms of
repression to get out of Afghanistan. Perhaps that is its purpose.
Salafi Arabia continues to be even worse.
Global heating is on track to more or less
put
an end to winter.
A network of experts that generally underestimate the risk of certain
methods of tying or grabbing people systematically
help thugs get away
with putting them in danger of death.
*The Right[-Wing] Wants to
Make
Disabled Veterans Into the New
"Welfare Queens."*
As usual, plutocratist
politicians say they will "reform" the Veterans
Health Administration to make it more efficient. As usual, the real
result is to make the actual work more costly, while saving money by
creating opportunities to refuse to help people.
I wonder what sort of jobs wounded veterans who still have all their
limbs have a chance today of getting and doing successfully. If you
have no special skill that's in demand, you probably have to work 10
hours a day for a pittance and have your
wages stolen.
Right-wing politicians generally advocate giving rich people "more
incentives" while giving poor people "tough love". This fits the
pattern.
*Arizona spends
a majority of its welfare budget on the Department of
Child Safety. The agency then investigates many poor parents,
sometimes removing their children for reasons stemming from their
poverty.*
Right-wing politicians generally advocate giving rich people "more
incentives" while giving poor people "tough love". This fits the
pattern.
Robert Reich: *What
is the real meaning of January 6?*
Places where global heating is
eating
away at people's homes.
Oklahoma Republicans are considering a bill to
allow parents to
order the school library to remove specific books.
*Jamal Khashoggi's killers
living
in luxury villas in Riyadh, say witnesses.*
*There is nothing
more unpatriotic than someone who calls [perself] a
"patriot." The flag-waving hypocrites who proudly proclaim their
loyalty to their country are determined to kill America.*
There is nothing new in seeing those who wish to spread cruelty and
repression wrapping themselves in the flag. But I have struggled to think
of a word that fits the enormity of the wrong those people are doing.
The anti-Covid drug molnupiravir
has
the potential to encourage the
development of new variants.
Only testing it in practice would show whether this happens or not;
but if does, the result could be a disaster.
Since the Pfizer treatment is more effective and does not have this
risk, we should not use molnupiravir.
Just as Covid-19 has evolved to spread more easily than ever,
Australia has adopted
a criterion for "possible exposure" which is
narrower than ever.
It looks like a plan to avoid finding out about most cases of Covid-19.
New Orleans is planning a municipal wifi system that would operate
privately and enable
surveillance of its users.
Air filters reduce
the spread of Covid-19 indoors. Putting them in
all classrooms and other school spaces would help keep schools open
safely, and at a low cost too.
Yanis Varoufakis: why the Multiverse is
fundamentally
designed for zuckers.
Covid-19 provided an
opportunity
for billionaires to enrich themselves,
in the process pushing around 100 million people into poverty.
Governments should have prevented this, but didn't try hard.
Satellites launched by SpaceX threatened
collision
with China's space station twice this year. The US should not permit SpaceX to do that.
China aside, Starlink's planned 12,000 satellites would increase the
danger
of collisions that would produce more space junk.
Despite the best of care in choosing their orbits — which SpaceX
appears not to have taken — it will be dangerous. So it should never
have been approved. No activity should get approval for thousands of
satellites.
To say "China does wrong too" does not constitute an excuse.
In space, and on Earth, we must work together to avoid disaster,
not argue about who is worse.
Over recent decades, US truck drivers'
wages
have gone down, their
working conditions have got much worse, and they are made to work long
hours, including many hours of unpaid waiting.
Drivers' unions have been mostly broken, and most of them are treated
as gig workers.
No wonder there is a shortage of truck drivers.
Dr Fauci proposes requiring
vaccination
for domestic US flights.
I am in favor of this. Anything that gets more Americans vaccinated
will save American lives and help beat Covid-19. Of course, there
will be an exception for people who for medical reasons must not be
vaccinated.
*Russian court orders
closure
of country’s oldest human rights group,* Memorial.
*At least 18
peaceful environmental protesters jailed in UK this year.*
Some have been sentenced to months in prison.
The magnitude of the disaster they are trying to prevent clearly justifies
disruption — but if their action makes the general public angry instead
of winning support, it would seem to be backfiring.
The injustice of the oil companies can
motivate
people to fight against
global heating.
However, in order to know what the threat is, and what to fight for, they
still need to understand at least what science says is going to happen.
Poland's right-wing government used Pegasus to
spy on opposition
politicians.
This is one among many
antidemocratic
measures it has used.
Google, Facebook and Instagram are
restricting
accurate information
about abortion while permitting misinformation.
*Why the Very Worst People Really
Don't
Want Us to Look Up.*
If you want to watch the movie Don't Look Up, please don't watch it
on Netflix. That company uses malicious software and malicious
hardware in people's computers to restrict what they can do with the
video data.
It also records data about who watches what — data that should not
exist anywhere.
It also demands that its customers agree to an antisocial contract
promising not to share copies. If you have agreed to that antisocial
promise, you did wrong — so don't compound the wrong by keeping the
promise! But really you shouldn't agree to it in the first place.
There many reasons to flick off Netflix.
*Cori Bush: Congress Should Mark Jan 6. by
Expelling Members Who
Helped Incite Attack.*
They violated their oath to defend the constitution.
She knows, as we know, that other Republicans in Congress will block that.
She aims to highlight how thoroughly the main stream of the Republican
Party has become disloyal to their country.
* Court instructs [Shell] to
stop
[seismic] tests along Wild Coast [of
South Africa] after concerns raised about wildlife and lack of
consultation.*
What this suggests to me is that government regulators failed to do
their job, failed to enforce regulations. Perhaps Shell's money
played a role in bringing that about.
California's record-breaking December snowfall is
not enough to end
the years-long drought. Without more snow in the rest of the winter,
the water shortage will continue to get worse.
The response to Covid-19 has
awakened
pan-EU solidarity in pan-EU
public opinion.
However, Slovenia joined Poland and Hungary in
undermining democracy
and civil liberties.
*Plastic beads could
make
nets more visible to cetaceans, scientists say.*
Putin is crushing the
freedom
to investigate and report on Stalin's
crimes of 70 years ago and more.
The European Court of Human Rights, to which Russia is a party,
ruled in favor
of allowing Memorial to operate.
In Hong Kong, journalism that criticizes the government in any way is
now
forbidden. Even people who stopped months ago face prison for
doing it before.
Everyone in Hong Kong who once criticized the state must be terrified
now, but freezing and keeping mum will not prevent their being jailed,
tortured and crushed. I hope that they have a chance to get out of
Hong Kong and apply for asylum, but the state may already have blocked
that. Otherwise, the only way I can see they can escape a fate worse
than death is choose to die taking an enemy with you.
I hope that I will have the courage to die fighting if I am ever in a
situation like that.
A regional project for Massachusetts to import Canadian hydropower
through Maine has run into difficulties because people living near the
planned cable were unhappy with it. Planet roasters
aggravated the
dispute in order to kill the plan.
It wouldn't surprise me if the cable contractor chose an annoying route
in order to increase its profits. Maybe its path should be changed.
Maybe Massachusetts should pay Mainers and Anishnabeg more for the
electricity so as to win their approval. Why not? They are not well
off.
But I criticize the article for calling them "the most affected
communities", assuming that people who live near the power cable —
who are concerned about aesthetics and tourism — have more at stake
than the hundreds of millions whose lives will be upended, or simply
ended, by global heating disaster.
This deal is very important because it is a step towards saving them.
Changing details to salvage the deal is fine. Killing it is not.
Franco's dictatorship in Spain
censored
books and movies politically.
Censored versions are still being published, lent, and broadcast.
The uncensored works should be brought out, but I don't think the
censored versions should be destroyed or hidden from the public.
People should be able to see what right-wing censorship did.
Russia has allied itself with
global
heating disaster.
*Which philosophy helps us confront the crises that
beset
us... "we first" or
"me first"?*
I agree with the basic point. We can't expect capitalism to naturally
produce a system that will give society the best of capitalism and
share the benefits with all of us. Capitalism tends to empower the
greedy, who will seek to leave us in poverty. Preventing that requires
institutions that are powerful enough to keep the rich down.
Ironically, we see that functioning only in China. But China's political
repression makes it hell to be shunned.
*Sanders Says Congress Must
Ensure
Mass Distribution of N95 Masks.*
I predict Republicans will oppose this. Although Republicans say they
are only against requirements to wear masks, in general they oppose
all wearing of masks to slow the spread of Covid-19.
More than that, they oppose all efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19.
They will oppose making better masks available because that would
result in making fewer people sick. Some oppose vaccines, saying they
want people to
develop
immunity the dangerous "natural" way, rather than the safe way by vaccines.
There is no reason to take that extra risk.
Parents and caregivers that smoke have a
powerful
influence on children to smoke.
In Britain, teenage children of those parents are four times as likely to
smoke like other teenagers.
(satire) *Oakley Introduces
Line
Of Sunglasses For Front Of Head.*
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Haaland to overturn the recent sale
of fossil fuel leases. Phone 1-866-834-8040.
I also said that the Interior Department should block all drilling
that it can block, because there is no room for it in the carbon
budget.
US citizens: call on Biden to
reinstate
the ban on landmines.
Manchin's blind trust, meant to reduce his conflicts of interest,
does
not contain all his income from the fossil fuel stock he owns.
That means it fails to eliminate his conflict of interest.
Texas has a new effort to
remove
voter registrations from people
who fail to prove their citizenship when challenged.
While it is true that non-citizens have no right to vote in the US
(except in certain local elections in
places that have granted them
the right to vote), it is easy to abuse a program like this to prevent some citizens
from lawfully voting. They may have moved and not get the letter.
Poor people often have to move frequently. They may get scared of any
sort of "trouble", especially if they belong to dis-privileged racial
or ethnic groups.
In addition, the agency carrying out the purge has opportunities to do
racial profiling when choosing whom to challenge.
Biden has put an end to the Republican plan to
attach work
requirements to Medicaid, state by state.
Black and Asian-American job applicants
face
discrimination in simply
getting a job interview. The proof is in a study that found they were
twice as likely to get an interview if their resumes avoided disclosing
their race.
The plastic pellets called "nurdles", used as the base for molding
plastic products,
may
be toxic to animals when they spill in the sea.
There is a push to upgrade the standards for shipping them to make
it less likely they will get loose if a container falls in the water.
Ariel Dorfman describes
his hopes for Chile's new president Boric, as
well as the obstacles and opportunities he faces.
DeSantis wants to
authorize
parents to sue schools that teach "critical race theory".
Critical race theory is historical study of the development of racism
and its role in the history of the US. That is a legitimate and
important part of US history. But when right-wingers use that term,
it means all sorts of different things. We can't tell what sorts of
teaching that law will actually try to do away with.
Global protests have been
rising
for 10 years. Most of them support
progressive causes; a minority are far-right-wing.
The EPA has delayed
20 years in developing regulations for DINP, an
endocrine disruptor and carcinogen.
*Revealed: US Public Pension Funds Are
"Quiet
Culprits of Climate Chaos".*
Labour has attacked the UK government for
opposing the approval
of generic manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines.
At least it has done one good thing.
The public is encouraged to feel it is safe to open the economy and
spread Covid-19 because only "people with underlying conditions" die.
Then that is equated to people who are unproductive and on their last
legs anyway. But actually it's a
large
fraction of everyone.
That article cites statistics for Australia, but I expect the situation
is similar elsewhere.
However, there are situations in which we really need to keep part of
the economy going. The US medical system is being undermined by the
number of staff who are getting Covid-19. There is a move to let sick
workers return
to work sooner, which medical personnel say is
dangerous.
Which is worse — for some people to get treatment from staff that
have a slightly larger chance of giving them Covid-19, or for some people
not to get treatment at all? I think it depends on the details.
An argument
against the prevailing belief that more education
naturally leads to a general reduction in poverty.
A lack of education can keep people's wages down, but providing more
education doesn't necessarily enable poor people to earn more. There
are other things that can keep wages down, including business owners'
greed, racism, and sexism.
*Democracy under attack: how Republicans led the effort to
make it
harder to vote.*
A cloth mask does some good in reducing the spread of Covid-19,
if it's over your nose and mouth, and a surgical mask is better.
But you can get
a
lot more protection from an N95 or FFP2 mask.
Real KN95 masks are equivalent, but there are lots of counterfeit
KN95s. The CDC has a web page that lists many counterfeit KN95
brands, but I'd rather get an FFP2.
Mudassar Kadir, a former BBC journalist in Afghanistan, got out of Afghanistan
but is stuck in Dubai. The UK scheme to aid refugees who worked for the UK
government doesn't
cover people who worked for the BBC.
15
years in prison in today's Russia, for writing about the Soviet
Union's crimes.
PEN America, founded by writers to defend the freedom to write, has
been taken
over by plutocratists. This shows when the organization smears
Julian Assange in the process of nominally defending him.
Various proposed
approaches to regulating Facebook.
*Feeling Hopeless About the Climate? Try Our
30-Day
Action Plan.*
*Gabriel Boric vows to
"fight
privileges of the few" as Chile’s premier.*
Republicans' coup preparations are
pushing
the US towards a risk of
civil war.
New Zealand has
extended
its quarantine requirements to stop Omicron
from spreading at large.
Scotland is moving to pass a law to
formally
pardon the people
executed as "witches" until 1736.
There is a campaign
for all of Europe to do this.
Amir Assadollahzadeh, Iranian athlete competing at a championship in
Norway, was threatened with punishment by his national team unless he
publicly showed support for General Soleimani.
He
fled and has sought
asylum.
In the end-Permian mass extinction, 7-10° C of
global heating caused
microbes to grow faster and turn most of the ocean into a deoxygenated
dead zone. Then other microbes, those which could metabolize sulfur,
did so and filled the ocean with hydrogen sulfide, which
killed most
other sea life.
We could be on target to make 7°C of
global heating
— especially with the help
of methane
leaking from permafrost.
Maybe equally drastic (though different) results will follow.
How many humans could survive that?
Explaining
the distortions in a widely circulated article which
alleges many kinds of sloppiness in a 2020 clinical trial of the
Pfizer vaccine, and exaggerates their significance.
If the facts in the article are accurate, most of them have no effect
on the validity of the trial's conclusions. As explained here, they
had a small chance of affecting some 1000 — out of 44000 total
subjects — in the trial.
That 2020 trial is irrelevant for evaluating the Pfizer vaccine
nowadays, because we now have records of hundreds of millions of
people who have been vaccinated with it. That is far more evidence
than the trial gathered, and shows conclusively that the vaccine does
considerable good and hardly any harm.
*How China Uses
Contractors to Spread Propaganda on Facebook and Twitter.*
It includes spreading false reports to undermine those who criticize
or resist China.
(satire) *Nation's Next Of Kin
Exhausted
From Constantly Identifying Bodies.*
The article exaggerates — this sort of burden is limited to states
ruled by Republicans.
Reporting that bus service in Chile was
shut
down on election day
as a voter-suppression tactic.
It was not successful in preventing Baric's victory.
*Tigrayan forces to pull out of nearby Ethiopian regions in
ceasefire offer.*
We are getting little scraps of information, and I don't think we can make
any sense of them.
*Right-Wing Groups Opposed to Government Aid
Cashed
In While Collecting PPP
Loans.*
*The European Commission is facing a backlash from Greta Thunberg
and fellow climate activists over
plans
to include gas and nuclear
energy in a "green" investment guidebook.*
The plan to include subterranean gas is so absurd that it amounts to
telling the world to drop dead.
*My family Christmas has got a lot better since we
stopped
giving presents.*
I am not at all inclined to celebrate Christmas, but if I did participate in a
family holiday, I would consider following that family's decision.
Proposing a plan
for confronting this pandemic and future pandemics.
Paxlovid saves
most people who catch Covid-19, and reduces transmission, too.
We need to make enough for everyone. You can be sure Big Pharma will
block the way we could produce enough to
save everyone.
*By ditching landmark climate legislation,
America
makes the world
unsafe.*
Other countries should threaten the US with economic sanctions
unless it helps save the world from global heating.
*"Foreign criminals" are just an excuse: the Tories are
trying to take away
rights from all of us.*
The enemies of liberty always find a scapegoat to serve as an excuse.
*US
labor organizing rises in 2021 after decades of decline.*
*Joe Manchin Is
Faking
His Fears of Inflation.*
Activists who protested for democracy in Egypt have now been
sentenced
to prison.
The charges of "spread false news" remind us that a truth-hating government
will apply these charges to truth-telling. If the Republicans take control,
they will prohibit refuting their lies.
The New York Times obtained confidential communications between
Project Veritas and its lawyer. Project Veritas got an injunction
ordering
the Times not to publish the memos.
This violates the First Amendment's protection of freedom of the
press, as it has generally been interpreted. I wish we could count on
the Supreme Court to stand by that protection.
Vietnamese workers accept debts as much
as
$30,000 to get smuggled
into Europe and forced to work doing construction, manufacturing,
agriculture, restaurants and nail bars.
They pass through a Chinese factory set up as part of a special deal
between China and Serbia.
Each trip to another country is a gamble on a false dream.
In effect, they are addicted to gambling.
*Hindu nationalists
mimic
Nazi Germany with a vow to "fight, die, and kill".*
One trafficking ring made $200 million
trafficking
workers from Mexico
to work as slaves on farms in Georgia.
*Global health experts and activists have been warning for more than a
year that aggressive
variants of the virus are essentially guaranteed
as long as much of the world’s population remains unvaccinated.*
George Monbiot registered his deceased goldfish as a waste disposal
business to show how
utterly
sloppy the UK government is about
protecting the environment.
Stella McCartney (to name just one rich person that you may have
heard of) increased
her own salary even as her company was getting
government money to help it last through Covid-19.
A legal requirement to offset new greenhouse gas emissions has the
effect
of a tax on emissions, because the required offsets will cost money
whether or not they actually absorb any CO2.
*The Pentagon's 20-Year Killing Spree Has
Always
Treated Civilians as
Expendable.*
Vaccinating everyone against Covid-19 will
cost
far less than allowing
it to continue to cause havoc. Here are recommendations.
The US military installed pipelines to transport jet fuel around
Okinawa, but it has
covered
up the fact that the sensors to check for
leaks are broken.
Explaining fintech startups as ideas for systems to move money around
and make it look like something special and brilliant, so people
won't
count how much they're paying for it.
Google and Apple divide up the market for spyphones; this duopoly does
part
of the harm that a monopoly would do.
*[Although] the amount of [US] land burned
this year didn’t reach 2020 levels, a troubling new trend emerged:
fires
are getting harder to fight.*
Kim Potter was convicted
of killing Daunte Wright, apparently based on
concluding that her taking the pistol by mistake constituted such
great negligence as to be criminal.
Manchin's excuse of "inflation", for blocking the climate-and-relief
bill, is refuted
by Sanders and by many economists.
The NAACP, represented by the ACLU, has
sued
South Carolina in federal
court for its newly designed system of racist gerrymandering.
They deserve to prevail, but I am concerned about one possible obstacle.
I seem to recall that, two or three years ago, the US Supreme Court's
right-wing majority ruled that federal courts had no jurisdiction over
state-level gerrymandering.
Is that correct? If so, does it imply that this lawsuit is doomed to
defeat? If there is a crucial legal difference in this case, can
anyone tell me what it is?
A list of many ways
climate
mayhem affects, and will increasingly affect,
human health.
*Local officials call on Idaho sheriff to
resign
after he allegedly
made disparaging comments about Native Americans.*
Officials must serve all the public — those who accept bigotry are
not qualified for the job. This goes double for cops, because bigoted
cops are likely to be thugs.
*Amazon Settlement With NLRB Could
Ease
Worker Unionization Efforts.*
The settlement binds Amazon to avoid certain forms of union-busting,
for all its US warehouses, and will enable the NLRB to act quickly if
Amazon violates the deal.
*21 Million+ Going
Hungry in US as Manchin Tanks Expanded Child Tax Credit.*
*Conservationists say a
plan
to search for oil and gas near Rowley
Shoals in north-west Australia is "reckless" and will put one of the
world’s healthiest reefs at risk.*
That is a powerful secondary reason for not considering extraction
there. It may persuade some of those that don't give a damn about the
primary reason: there is no room in the
carbon
budget for any new
fossil fuel extraction.
Continued emission of CO2 makes the ocean acidic and will
eventually
kill essentialy all coral, and many other kinds of marine animals too.
A new US law presumes
that goods produced in Xinjiang were made with
forced labor unless there is proof to the contrary.
Explaining the distortions
in a widely circulated article which
alleges many kinds of sloppiness in a 2020 clinical trial of the
Pfizer vaccine, and exaggerates their significance.
If the facts in the article are accurate, most of them have no effect
on the validity of the trial's conclusions. As explained here, they
had a small chance of affecting some 1000 — out of 44000 total
subjects — in the trial.
That 2020 trial is irrelevent for evaluating the Pfizer vaccine
nowadays, because we now have records of hundreds of millions of
people who have been vaccinated with it. That is far more evidence
than the trial gathered, and shows conclusively that the vaccine does
considerable good and hardly any harm.
US citizens: call on the House to
remove
racist Rep. Boebert's committee
assignments.
This needs to be done, but it is an inadequate punishment because they
don't care about their punishment. They are making veiled but obvious
calls to overthrow US democracy and impose forced permanent minority
rule, and it is building up a movement to do exactly that.
Next rally for Assange:
2pm to 3:30pm on Dec 31 in Copley Sq, Boston.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to
fire the
wrecker's appointees in the DOJ.
US citizens: call on Biden to
cut
the Pentagon budget.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
the Martha Wright-Reed Prison
Phone Justice Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Some songbirds in Europe are
threatened
by traditional hunting carried
out at a massive level.
There is no possible valid justification for unsustainable hunting of
threatened species. People who advocate the right to hunt, if that is
not a euphemism for the right to trash the world, must support
regulation that will ensure that the species continues thrive.
A plan has been announced to change the
UK's
handling of transgender
recognition, to better respect the rights of trans people and the need
for protection of biological females.
Since I'm neither a trans person nor a female, I don't have opinions
on the details of how to handle these things. But I do intensely hope
that those two groups find a modus vivendi they can live with, so that
they cease to see each other as enemies.
Intel apologized to China for the offense of
informing
its suppliers
that US law requires them to avoid products from and manufacturing in Xinjiang
(because of China's
repression
of the Uyghurs with forced labor and brainwashing).
As American cities remove statues of people that fought to continue
slavery, Hong Kong's universities are
removing statues that
commemorated the Tien An Men Square protests for democracy, and the
massacre of the protesting students.
Many of the prisoners in Rikers Island prison have
caught
Covid-19 in the past week.
The city offered a bonus to persuade prisoners to get vaccinated.
One can't ask more than that.
Boston City Council members are
investigating
how the thug department is
spending money taken from people without a trial to buy surveillance data.
This should extend to all forms of acquisition of surveillance
equipment — and arms — and to arranging to use them without buying
them.
*AOC Leads Demand for Biden to Work on
Ending
Saudi Blockade of Crucial Yemen
Airport.*
*The Fed Must Act
on the Climate Crisis to Protect Our Planet and Economy.*
Amazon warehouse workers say that the company works them so hard that
some die
from it.
Biden has come around to
accepting
the idea of curbing the filibuster,
if necessary, to pass voting rights laws.
To get this passed, he needs to do more than accept this. He has to
lead a push for it, to have chance to get Manchin to go along with it.
And we are running out of time, as regards gerrymandering.
*US intel and satellite images show Saudi Arabia is now
building
its own ballistic missiles with help of China.*
Fortunately Salafi Arabia
isn't building these to launch nuclear
weapons.
New York City is
divesting
all its pension funds from fossil fuels.
Several funds have already completed the operation.
* Researchers have advocated
moving
away from "just-in-time" model to
more resilient structures.*
"Just-in-time" is designed to maximize efficiency at the
expense of
robustness. I've called it foolhardy.
In coming decades, climate mayhem
will cause disruptions of supply due
to floods, fires, mass starvation, and wars.
The books that right-wingers ban in school libraries are
gaining new
popularity.
Do you believe that there were only two books about heterosexual
relationships in the high school library? Nonsense! Considering
Shakespeare only, they must have had Romeo and Juliet, Antony and
Cleopatra, Macbeth, King Lear, and Henry V. But those books did not
show up in the search, perhaps because nobody thought of labeling them
with "heterosexual."
There are several ways Biden can use executive authority to
accomplish
the goals that Manchin opposes.
*[The wrecker] could face charges for
trying
to obstruct certification
of election, legal experts say.*
I wonder if this law can be used to thwart Republican efforts to
override
local election results in future elections.
*Research identifies at least
262
bills were introduced in 41 states
this year with the intent to hijack the election process.*
*"My grandmother hid Jewish children": Poland’s
underground
refugee network.*
*It’s Christmas
in the Metaverse.*
Strictly for zuckers.
*US to lift
Omicron travel ban on eight African countries.*
The attempt to keep Omicron out of the US was worth a try, but there
is clearly no need to continue it. I'm glad that the US has
demonstrated rationality, first by trying the travel ban quickly, and
then by ending it.
Senate Democrats have failed to
fight
hard to pass voting rights
The US has relaxed its sanctions on
Afghanistan to allow some
humanitarian aid to arrive there.
It is disappointing that it took the US months to do do what is obviously
morally required.
*WHO boss: western countries’ Covid booster
WHO
boss: Covid booster drives likely to prolong pandemic*
That is true, unless we expand production quickly to the practical limits.
The way to do that is to allow generic production.
Furthermore, vaccination in poor countries is further limited because someone
has to pay the high market price. Allowing generic production would make
vaccines available at prices donors could afford to fund for everyone.
An undercover agent in the
Klu
Klux Klan reported two murder plots
to the FBI.
He also reported on uniformed "law enforcement" officers who were
traitors, working for the KKK. The agencies they worked for were
ineffectual at controlling this. Look at the Florida agency which
asks us to suppose that this problem is entirely a thing of the past.
The FBI has history of catching fantasy terrorists that could never
have committed violence in the real world without FBI informants'
holding their hands.
They
were caught with fake explosives that they
believed were real.
In this instance, the FBI investigated people who could have really
carried out violence, or helped do so. The FBI was really doing its
job.
The fantasy terrorists were Islamists. It does not appear there is
a real Islamist terror network in the US,
but
there is a real
white-supremacist terror network
Omicron is indeed milder,
and
fewer patients will need to be admitted
to a hospital.
However, because it spreads so fast, it can still overwhelm
medical systems.
How the Koch Network built
up
the movement against resisting Covid-19.
*Boston police bought spy tech with a
pot
of money hidden from the
public.*
The thug
department got the money via "civil forfeiture", which is a
legal excuse to take people's money —
punishment
without a trial.
That's not their only source of funds for thumbing their noses at
the law: many thug
departments have foundations set up to give them
money they can use in unaccountable ways.
In Cambridge, the thug
department cannot evade the surveillance tech
ordinance by using outside funds. Boston should do likewise. More
generally, laws should forbid thug
departments from buying arms or spy
devices without city authorization, regardless of what money they use,
and from accepting them as gifts.
As for civil forfeiture, that must be
abolished.
Punishment without trial is tyranny.
*Biden's New Fuel Economy Standards Still
Allow
Cars to Pollute More
If They're Not Called Cars.*
The different categories once had a rationale, but changes in vehicle
production have erased that, leaving nothing but an excuse to pollute
more.
One simple solution is to put a big tax on the categories that are allowed
to pollute more.
British families living in public housing will be hit with many
increases in expenses including a rent increase, a tax increase,
plus
gas and electric increases, along with inflation.
*200,000 UK children
could
be made homeless this winter.*
I'd expect that an even larger number of adults are in danger of
homelessness.
Hindu nationalists publicly support Indians accused of
harassment of
Muslims and Christians.
The Hindu-nationalists in India are raving about supposed forced
conversions to Islam the same way Republicans rave about supposed voter fraud.
An official that seached for such cases in Karnataka and
couldn't find any
was punished just like Republicans who couldn't find any voter fraud.
*Some Prisoners Released During Pandemic
Can
Stay on Home Confinement,
Says DOJ.*
"Buy now, pay later" is a form of borrowing with no
safeguard to assure
a user doesn't go heavily into debt.
The sudanese opposition accuses the
military
of raping protesters.
*'Major Win for 45 Million Student Debtors':
Biden
Extends Loan Payment Freeze.*
"Next, President Biden should cancel student debt," said Sen. Elizabeth
Warren.
(satire) *More Fridge Magnets Forced To
Take
On Extra Holiday Work Holding Up Christmas Cards.*
Biden should invoke the Defense Production Act to compel
vaccine companies
to cooperate with generic production.
Sanders calls on the Democratic Party to
show
courage and fight for the Build Back Better relief bill.
To make Manchin and Sinema visibly take a side for it or against it.
*Corporate Donations Poured Into Manchin's
PAC
Ahead of Final 'No' on Build
Back Better.*
Striking workers at Kellogg's accepted a
contract
somewhat better than
the one they previously rejected.
They did not abolish the two-tier system, but they established a way
for some newer workers to get into the higher tier.
Kellogg's responded to the rejection of its
unsatisfactory
contract by firing all the striking workers.
People started a boycott in response. When I was ready to post about
it, I held off because of a report that a new contract was being
discussed.
I read that Kellogg's was unable to find any replacement workers to
hire.
I have never forgiven Kellogg's lawsuit against the erotic satire
comic Cherry Poptart. I enjoyed the joke, so resent the company for
censoring it. The trademark claim may have been invalid, since no one
was ever going to think that the comic had anything to do with
Pop-tarts or Kellogg's.
Call on Congress to reform the Supreme Court to
take
it away from the
right-wing extremists.
Staff sick with Omicron is reducing the capacity of some US hospitals
just as
they
were reaching the point of overload.
*How electric vehicles
have
helped labor and climate groups team up.*
Even asymptomatic Covid-19 infections can result in lasting
disability, also known as "long Covid". Will the disabilities
from previous
Covid
infections act as commodities to cause
massive deaths from Omicron?
Robert Reich: more important than whether you go to a holiday party is
whether
the
US will get its act together so we can protect each other
from Covid-19.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
I think the specific rules described in the petition
are not ideal, but I signed anyway because the overall idea is good.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to
remove
Senator Joe Manchin as
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
US citizens: call on Biden to
reduce
the sanctions on Afghanistan
enough to ensure they do not cause anyone to starve.
(satire) *Police Finally
Throw
Out Old, Embarrassing Evidence From '80s.*
Omicron will test
whether
the US can now defend itself from pandemics.
Our individual actions will add up to the nation's response.
Naturally, Republicans urge people to be selfish about it. When they
say, "It is a personal decision," they mean, "Don't care about anyone
else." By reducing solidarity, they aim to weaken the nation by
causing more sickness and more economic damage, which they will use to
stimulate support for imposing minority rule.
I will go further than Robert Reich, and suggest that you pull out of
any gatherings unless they are just a handful of people, all
vaccinated, and all limiting their other contacts.
*After Mocking Idea, Biden Administration to
Distribute 500 Million
Free Covid Tests.*
You can look at the positive side: in just two weeks, they changed their
mind and adopted the policy. That's pretty good flexibility.
But the first 500 million won't last long if people use them as often
as they should.
These tests give a significant fraction of false negatives, so don't
assume you're safe for others because you got a negative result. The
real benefit of these tests is for employees who can't work from home
to use them frequently, and therefore avoid going to work after a
positive result.
People in Linlithgow are campaigning to
preserve the name of a
centuries-old pub, the Black Bitch, which refers to a female dog from
a 13th-century legend.
I agree with Nidhin Chand, the resident who said, "If people want to
address [racism in Linlithgow] they need to tackle real racism, not a
female dog.” Her name suggest she is of Indian origin, so I would
expect she has been a target of racism.
If there are people who think the pub's name is racist, whether
residents or visitors, that results from ignorance — and ignorance
can be corrected. For instance, the city could put up an a very
visible point-of-interest placard about the legend, near the pub
itself.
Robert Reich: the cause of today's inflation in the US is a lack of
competition. Businesses raise prices even though they are making
great profits already, because there is nothing to stop them.
The Federal Reserve's chair, a Republican that Biden
reappointed in the teeth of progressive demands
not to do so,
is using that inflation as an opportunity to
cool
down the economy.
That will hamper unionization — surely a Republican's goal.
However, the Omicron variant is likely to cool the economy quite a bit
in January. Even if few get badly sick from Omicron, many will have
to stay home. Many businesses will have to reduce service. So will
hospitals; people will die from that, including people with diseases
other than Covid.
The United Mine Workers has called on Manchin to
support the Build
Back Better bill. This might change his mind.
OSHA's vaccine-or-test mandate for employees is now, at least temporarily,
back
in effect. This ought to get a lot more Americans vaccinated,
and enable many others to stay home when sick.
Many retail stores have fewer than 100 employees, and they are exempt
from the requirement. They should follow the policy anyway, or else
OSHA should include them — for the customers' safety.
It appears that Neanderthals in Europe, 125,000 years ago, kept
forests open by
starting
fires occasionally.
The indigenous Australians are known to have started brush fires
frequently enough that the fires burned only the brush, and spared the
trees. This kept the terrain open. It seems they did this by policy.
Perhaps biologically modern humans used this method everywhere that
it was applicable.
The article's information is that Neanderthals did basically the same
thing. They too may have done it by policy, thought we don't know
yet.
Reclaim Finance studied the drawdown plans of 47 coal companies
and found that only 3 have
basically
adequate plans.
The rest are planning to sell their mines, or punt the ball into the future.
The UK has achieved a world first by
eradicating
subterranean termites.
A UK court quashed
the convictions of four migrants who were forced to
drive the boats that they had paid to travel in.
Tories plan to ask retired British teachers to fill in when the
regular teachers are out sick with Covid-19. Here's what the
request
would look like.
*New York Times Reporting on Airstrikes Should
Give
Daniel Hale More
Credit. And call for Biden to immediately pardon him.*
Peng Shuai made a
recorded
announcement that she never accused a high
official of some sexual crime. We know this is false — people
saw her statement. She did accuse
him.
For a ruling organization that has contempt for truth, such as the
Chinese Communist Party or the Republican Party, it is perfectly
acceptable to flat-out deny what people know. In China, hardly anyone
dares contradict an official lie. Republicans have convinced tens of
millions of cultists to believe lies willingly when they come from the
cult's leaders. Partly because they expect to be drummed out of the
cult if they ever disagree.
I don't see any description of what Peng said the official did, other
than "sexual assault", which is not specific. It covers a wide range,
so we don't know what kind of act she is talking about. However, in
this case I expect it had to be rather grave, to motivate her to take
such a risk.
The US military has
prohibited
active participation in extremist groups.
*Defending Julian Assange Is
Defending
Anyone Who Dares to Speak the Truth.*
The core
of Putin's bullshit is to pretend that, for NATO not to make
concessions constitutes an attack. "Russia has no place to retreat
to" pretends that for Russia not to attack would constitute retreat.
Humoring this pretense only gives Putin additional clout. NATO by
doing so hobbles itself.
*More than 167,000 US children have
lost
a caregiver to Covid.*
The wrecker and the Republican Party are to blame for making it so
many.
Right-wing extremist groups are
probing
in towns and counties around
the US for where they can get away with violence and intimidation.
Research suggests a
relationship
between microplastics and
inflammatory bowel disease.
US citizens: support the
EPA's
proposal to regulate methane.
*As of December 16, there have been only nine confirmed deaths
directly related to, or caused by, Covid vaccines (specifically the
Johnson & Johnson vaccine), despite over 490 million vaccine doses
being administered in the US, while over 800,000 people have died
from Covid, out of over 50 million confirmed Covid cases in the US.
Yet many believe they are better off taking their
chances with getting
Covid instead of getting vaccinated, when in reality, Covid infection
is hundreds of thousands of times more dangerous than vaccination.*
Get your immunity the safe, easy and reliable way — through vaccine!
Kanye West's campaign for president was funded and
run by the
Republican machine
West and the Kardashians have something in common with the bullshitter:
the audacious pursuit of attention regardless of how.
*Who is Gabriel Boric? The radical student leader
who
will be Chile's
next president.*
He defeated a supporter of Pinochet's military dictatorship, which took
power in a US-backed military coup and then murdered thousands of
people that opposed it.
What right wing extremists seek to censor: *sex education, race,
LGBTQ+ lives and -– perhaps most troubling of all –
those that teach
young people about their human rights.*
Manchin admits he is determined to make
Americans poorer.
*The enemies of American democracy?
Big
lie, big anger and big money.*
Tory ideas of freedom: people should be free to go to the theater
unvaccinated and spread disease,
but
those who catch it as a result
are not free to get treatment.
Also, free to extract and burn oil, but not free to inconvenience
anyone protesting against that.
By the way, Bagehot's words, quoted in the article, would seem to
justify almost any conceivable means to cut down the use of fossil
fuels. Our society cannot survive continuing this way.
*The science is clear: climate, biodiversity and
human
health are fully interdependent.*
Florida Power and Light is lobbying Republican state legislators
to
reduce incentives for homeowners to install solar power systems.
Its money helped put some of those legislators in power.
I don't know whether its lobbying broke any laws, but in a broader
sense it constitutes corruption.
*The prison radio station
giving
Texas men on death row a voice.*
The UK is engineering legal rulings to give Venezuela's
gold
reserves of almost 2 billion dollars to golpista Juan Guaidó.
This reminds of of the string of bizarre legal proceedings
that
engineered the decision to extradite Julian Assange to the US.
In both cases, the UK has twisted its own legal system to do the US
bidding.
*An 82-year-old Jewish woman, who is being investigated by Labour
for alleged antisemitism for the third time in less than three years,
is threatening legal action against the party, claiming it has
unlawfully
discriminated
against her based on her belief in
anti-Zionism.*
If she wins her suit, will Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters be readmitted
to the Labour Party?
One will was put through probate twice.
*Republicans are
shamelessly
working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats
paying attention?*
A pilot program in Liverpool a year ago, in which essential workers
took a home Covid test every day,
cut
the number of people in
hospitals for Covid by 1/3.
Mark Meadows was
the
coordinator of most of the bullshitter's
coup attempt on Jan 6.
*The reality of soil carbon is that it is
highly
variable, hard to
measure, hard to shift and easy to lose.* It is important, but basing
a plan on it is risky.
*[The
bullshitter]’s Next Coup Has Already Begun.*
12% of Americans are leaning towards violence in support of the delusions
that the bullshitter's machine has propagated.
*Amid Deadly Tornado, Texts Show Amazon
Threatened
to Fire Driver If Packages Not Delivered.*
The Socialist Kshama Sawant, on the Seattle city council, won
a
recall election pushed by big business money.
*Tennessee recently
passed
anti–Critical Race Theory legislation,
banning educators from teaching students that any individuals are
"inherently privileged, sexist, or oppressive" based on their race
or sex.*
Clearly no person is "inherently" sexist, because that is an attitude.
Likewise, no person is "inherently" oppressive, because oppression is
a matter of conduct. Schools should never teach things like that, and
I can't criticize those two points in Tennessee's law.
It is clearly true in our society that some people are given more
baseline privilege regardless of what they say or do. Is it right to
say that they are "inherently" privileged? I think not: the privilege
is inherent in the system, not in the person.
However, that is a subtle distinction, and I can easily imagine that
white supremacist Tennessee officials might disregard it and punish a
teacher for teaching the facts about racism.
Amazon collaborated
actively with Chinese propaganda to get authorization
to sell in China.
The December
tornadoes were unprecedented — very different from usual
tornadoes.
Global heating is at work.
(satire) *Things No One Tells You Happen
When
You Fly First Class.*
*PFAS "forever chemicals"
constantly
cycle through ground, air and water,
study finds.*
US citizens: call on Congress to
expand
the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to
hold Mark Meadows
in contempt.
US citizens: call on Biden to
cancel
student loan debt.
Sanders: *We need leadership at the FDA that is finally willing to stand up to
the greed and power of the pharmaceutical industry. In this critical
moment, Dr.
Califf is not the leader Americans need at the agency.*
Biden's energy secretary reassured the organized Big Oil that the US
government won't
fight with them. "We're not a bogeyman...We heard
you loud and clear."
That seems to explain why Biden is not listening to us.
I should explain that I am not convinced that banning oil export from
the US is. itself, crucial. That ban would not reduce fossil fuel
usage, nor fossil fuel demand. If there is a way it would help us
prevent climate disaster, I don't see it.
On the other hand, reducing oil extraction in the US is crucial
progress. The US has to push for this, not just make distant
pledges to push later.
(satire) Leaked
January
6 Texts To White House (The Onion's version).
*The Plan to Tax
Stock Buybacks From Corporations With Record Breaking
Profits.*
* A coalition of public health advocates is urging the Biden
administration to
retain
public ownership over "any new domestic
manufacturing capacity that is established" as a result of the White
House's plan to increase the global supply of Covid-19
vaccines.*
Senator Warren has
endorsed
expanding the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court rulings allowed donations to separate election advocacy
organizations on the
supposition
that they are independent of the candidate's
campaign.
If politics were known for the highest level of moral probity, perhaps
we could trust them to do that. Some people stated their belief in
this, perhaps as willful self-delusion. The rest of us suspected it
was bullshit.
Now we have evidence it is often false. In many cases the official
campaign and the "independent" advocacy organization hire the same
consultant.
Starbucks workers at more stores are
pushing
for votes to unionize.
Meanwhile, the company is retaliating against workers and managers.
If you live near any of the stores where workers are pushing to
unionize, you might have fun standing outside with a sign saying
"Hooray for the union!" If you occasionally patronize one of them,
you could also make a small sign saying "Union Yes!", put it on your
bag, and go in and buy something.
The US settlement with Purdue Pharma has been blocked by a judge
who objected
to protecting the Sacklers from lawsuits.
Tories propose to
require
banks to lend to fossil fuel companies.
Somalia is being hit badly by global heating —
three
successive seasons
have brought no rain.
The Arctic is heating
much faster than the rest of the Earth.
The record temperature recorded in the Arctic is now 38C — above
human body temperature.
All countries in the Middle East (including Iran) voted repeatedly for
a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East,
except Israel.
The last time it was proposed, the only other country opposing it was
the US.
This is an almost certain way to assure Iran does not develop nuclear
weapons.
Decades ago, when Israel was surrounded by countries that called for
attacking and destroying an outnumbered Israel, Israel needed a
nuclear deterrent against that possible attack. Even though Israel
won its wars against all the much bigger Arab armies, there was no
guarantee that it always would. But now many of those countries
have made peace with Israel. Israel may want nuclear weapons
but it doesn't need them. And the US doesn't need to insist that
Israel keep them.
As Republicans prepare their next coup,
no
powerful force in the US
is organizing to resist it.
Senator Sinema has stated the intention to
maintain
the filibuster at all costs
rather than pass a voting rights law that could block the Republican coup.
Her argument is that the Republicans could benefit from the absence of
the filibuster, if they take the Senate. That's true — if they hold
the House and the presidency.
But if that happens, they would abolish the filibuster the first day.
They abolished the filibuster for nominations years ago, which is how
they put three right-wing extremists onto the Supreme Court.
Sinema's heroic "sacrifice" is a bogus excuse not to resist the next coup.
Indigenous pipeline-resisters in Canada point out that the courts
almost
always side with the pipeline and against them.
This author has no doubt that the pattern is racism at work.
Is that pattern due to racism? It could be so. Or it could be due to
plutocracy. Or it could be due to a combination of both causes.
It isn't valid to presume a priori that the cause is mostly racism,
when we know how far the Canadian government will go to support
pipeline construction
and tar sands oil.
We could tell how significant racism is as a factor if we could
contrast these statistics with comparable statistics about
non-indigenous Canadians. The article doesn't give any.
Perhaps there are no comparable statistics. Perhaps non-indigenous
landowners don't oppose pipelines. Perhaps the government routs
pipelines through indigenous land to spare the white Canadians' land.
If so, that choice could be directly because of racism, or because the
whites have more political clout to resist with, or both.
It could be the case that the indigenous pipeline resisters in Canada
have special opportunities to sue, based on the rights of their
tribes, which no one else has. If so, I appreciate their exercising
those opportunities to defend the climate. They are fighting for all
of us.
Alas, that would mean this gives no opportunity to measure to what
extent the Canadian courts are racist in enforcing Canadian law.
(satire) *"We're
Still
Gonna Go To Vegas, Buddy," Says U.S. Soldier
Holding Dying Drone In His Arms.
*US Once Planned To Kill Assange But
Gives
"Assurances" It Won't Again.*
Cruel US prison conditions are a national shame, but in addition to
threatening Julian Assange, the US demand to prosecute Assange also
threatens
freedom of the press.
That is the biggest issue here.
(satire) *Critics Warn Biden’s Plan To Remove Lead Pipes Would Put
Millions
Of Potential Murder Weapons In Circulation.*
Omicron's rapid spread is convincing many Britons to wisely stop
visiting restaurants and theaters. To prevent them from closing
permanently, the UK should
bring
back its plan to support the workers
while there is no work for them.
I expect the US to need a similar policy for the same reason.
Here's an idea: furlough payments for workers should be limited to
those who get vaccinated.
Thomas Piketty's
recommendations
for equality.
Above all, we need to replace current property taxes with wealth taxes.
Other measures are required to reduce male-female economic inequality.
One interesting point is that the non-wealthy people in Europe are using
sustainable levels of resources. It is the wealthy 10% that use too much.
Ideas for the federal government to
undo
the segregation (and poverty
for blacks) that its policies intentionally created during the 1930s.
*Catastrophic
Global Disorder Beckons Unless We Act Swiftly on Climate.*
Manchin says he
refuses
to allow extension of the child tax credit.
He has been playing a dishonest political game for months.
When it expires, which is very soon, millions of poor Americans will
be desperate. If they camp around Manchin's house, it might make
him change his mind.
Millions will also be required to start paying towards their unpayable
student loans, unless
Biden cancels them.
(satire) *Amazon
Fires
Employees Who Didn’t Clock Out After Getting
Buried In Rubble.
(satire) *Texas School's
Unbanned
Books Down To 3 Copies Of Tom
Clancy's "Threat Vector".*
*Top US Banks and Investors Responsible for
Nearly
as Much Emissions as
Russia, Report Finds.*
*Deforestation has made
outdoor
work unsafe for millions of people in
the tropics over the past 15 years, a study has found.*
*Wood burners cause nearly
half
of urban air pollution cancer risk.*
That is despite the fact that only a small fraction of houses are
burning wood.
The study reports that the pollution from burning wood is especially
dangerous. Just because it's natural, that doesn't make it safe.
*Warmer
winters are happening across the globe, and can be drivers of
catastrophic weather events and profound changes.*
Despite a few spectacular theft raids on stores,
theft in California
is still significantly less than in 2019.
Biden appointed
a loyal friend of fossil fuel business to hand out
infrastructure contracts.
Bolsonaro and his remaining followers
try
to cause havoc — and
spreading Covid-19 is one of the ways. Brazil has approved
vaccination for children age 5-11, so Bolsonaro wants to expose
officials who made the decision to danger of murder.
The Sami (formerly known as Lapps) have words for many different kinds
of snow. However, due to climate mayhem, they are getting a kind of
snow that they never used to see. It generates
a
layer of ice that
blocks reindeer's access to plants they need to eat, so they go hungry.
Credulous believers think that
5G
radio bands emit dangerous
radiation. Some wear "protective" necklaces which really do emit
dangerous radiation.
Why believe the claim that something is better for your health, just
because someone claims unsubstantuated knowledge of the matter?
Without a proper double-blind experiment, they can't really know. The
usual explanation for such claims is that they are hoping fools will
pay them money.
*Republicans are
plotting
to destroy democracy from within.*
Putin's idea of how to lower tension in Europe is to
demand a list of
military concessions that would give Russia dominating military power.
He must think that Europan leaders are cowards that can be terrified
into surrender.
It might be good for NATO to limit troop deployments to its eastern
regions, perhaps 200 or 300 miles width extending in from their
borders with non-NATO coutries, if in return Russia agrees to limit
troop deployments to its western regions, 200 or 300 miles width
extending from its border with other coutries including the Baltic
countries, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. This symmetrical agreement
would give neither side a military advantage but would discourage an
attack by either side.
After the tornadoes,
Kentucky
is hit by heavy rains.
A house that remains open to the elements during rain can be ruined by
mold in a few days. Many of these houses will be good for no use
except demolition.
It is not clear to what extent climate catastrophe is responsible for the
tornadoes, but it certainly has already caused bigger rains. Will anyone
teach the people of Kentucky that the small initial wave of
global heating
has ruined people's lives? Their Republican officials will not.
The UK and Australia are planning to
sign
a business-supremacy treaty.
Does it include
an
ISDS clause (I Sue Democratic States)?
The article does not say, but if it was developed
out of the TPP then it probably does.
*Capitol attack panel
subpoenas
author of PowerPoint plan for coup.*
*Serbia blocks
Rio Tinto’s plan to mine lithium after protests.*
The general worldwide practice in operating mines is to do only the
required minimum to protect the environment from damage caused by
the mine or the wastes it generates. Eventually the mine is
exhausted and the company makes legal arrangements to leave the mess
for others to pay for. It makes sense not to allow companies to run
mines that way.
But we do need the minerals that we can get only by mining. So what
is the right way to run a mine?
Does anyone know a way to operate a mine and protect the environment
properly? Or of research to determine how?
A non-polluting mine might be much more expensive. Properly run mines
may be uncompetitive in today's business environment. Wise countries
will respond, "In 20 years, when other countries have allowed mining
to poison their water, our minerals will be even more valuable,
valuable enough to make a non-polluting mine profitable. In the mean
time, we can wait."
*[Some European] supermarkets
drop
Brazilian beef products linked to deforestation.*
The plague
of mice in part of New South Wales destroyed flood protection
and made the disaster of the big rain much worse in some places.
*"Really
abnormal" storms and tornadoes tear through Great Plains and midwest.*
Rep. Jim Jordan
sent
Mark Meadows on Jan 5 a proposed plan for Pence to
override the election results.
The UK proposes strict criteria for giving their former Afghan
employees asylum:
a
"high and imminent risk” of threat to their life.
The city of Chicago will
pay
5 million dollars compensation to
Anjanette Young for handcuffing her nude after breaking into her
apartment with guns drawn.
They raided her apartment by mistake, but even when they have a valid
reason to search someone's apartment, they should not treat per like
dirt. Not everyone suspected is guilty, and even culpable criminals
shouldn't be treated like that.
*Lawyers say their
conversations with incarcerated people are being
recorded and analyzed by private companies in at least nine US
states.*
A mega-rainstorm may have cured California's drought, but it has
done
great damage too.
*Freelancer Soe Naing
was
arrested in Yangon [a week ago] while taking photos of a
‘silent strike’ protest against military rule.* He has died in jail.
Chances are he was tortured.
*The NHS will soon
be overwhelmed unless coherent and strict rules are
applied to social distancing.*
The same goes for US hospitals. Hundreds of thousands of Americans
could die in the next few months, avoidably, due to the failure to follow
safety precautions and the failure to enforce them.
Justice and public health require supporting people who get sick from
working or commuting, or who must not take the risk of catching Covid-19 by
going to work.
The governments that sustain the vaccine monopoly could have avoided
this by permitting more vaccine production. We could have vaccinated
most of the world by now and perhaos prevented the Omicron variant
from evolving.
New Zealand plans to
override
zoning so as to allow apartment
buildings basically anywhere.
Pelosi defended the practice of
investments
by legislators in shares
in corporations.
It may not be a harmful conflict of interest each and every time —
but often enough, it is that.
*Freakish wind storm brings
"dust
bowl" conditions to
tornado-devastated US states.*
Robert Reich explains
his
idea of how the mainstream media get their bias.
*Debunking Pharma Lies, Experts
Identify
100+ Firms Ready to Make mRNA
Vaccines.*
The article falls into the error of talking about
"intellectual property"
as if it meant some concrete things that could be useful in making drugs.
(satire) *Lakers Fans
Frustrated With
Volatile Hot Dog Prices In Crypto.Com Arena.*
*Democrat introduces
[federal]
legislation requiring gun owners safely
store firearms, in wake of Oxford school shooting.*
Dollar General stores are
often
fined for being unsafe for working in.
The fines are evidently insufficient to achieve the desired effect of
making the store improve safety.
Global heating has
become
tied up with extinction of many species.
A former high official of the Indian police describes how
thugs in India
are taught to practice torture and to think of it as a form of group
solidarity.
More about Dr Asthana.
Explaining his office,
Director
General of Police.
The UK is planning to
relax
regulations on toxic chemicals. I think that
the real purpose of leaving the EU was to allow businesses to mistreat people
in ways the EU does not permit.
The US continues
slowly
moving away from capital punishment, but
right-wing politicians promote it so as to stick their tongues out
at the idea of being humane.
Australia has rejected
a gas drilling project!
This is an amazing change in the position of a government that has
been resolutely planet-roaster for years, and climate defense activism
made it happen.
France has restricted
travel from the UK because of the spread of
Omicron there.
It's not a punishment, it's self-protection.
Meanwhile, by next week at the latest the UK may as well end its ban
on travelers from some African countries. Travel from those places
will not be a significant cause of more cases of Omicron in the UK,
not compared with transmission within the UK.
Mississippi's Republicans
blocked
federal funds to expand Medicaid on principle. The principle
being that poor people and blacks should suffer. If "god" had wanted
them not to suffer, he would have made them not get sick.
*Iran and the UN inspector have
reached
an agreement on the imminent
reinstallation of cameras at the Karaj nuclear facility, a move that
is seen as indispensable to keeping alive the broader nuclear talks
and the lifting of US sanctions on Tehran.*
I think Iran has decided to get serious about making an agreement
rather than trying to make the US desperate for an agreement.
Of the patients who were hospitalized with Covid-19 and still had problems
when they got out,
at
least half still have problems a year later.
10% still have brain fog.
*Kentucky candle factory bosses
threatened
to fire those who fled tornado, say
workers.*
*Would
a union have saved them?*
*California ex-sheriff's deputy
charged
with pouring scalding water on
mentally ill inmate.*
*Nobel laureates call for
2%
cut to military spending
worldwide.*
In London, if you have the symptoms of a cold,
it's
most likely to be
Covid-19 Omicron.
That may be true in many countries in a few weeks from now.
There are too many cattle in the Netherlands, and the pollution they
generate is damaging waterways. The government has a plan to
drastically
decrease the number of cattle.
The cattle also produce
methane,
which is a bigger problem than manure because it is a global
problem.
The world is considering using
ammonia
as fuel, instead of petroleum. The efficient way to transport
hydrogen fuel is to convert it to ammonia.
Instead of reducing cattle to avoid ammonia pollution, perhaps
new systems for collecting cows' manure and urine can turn that
waste into a resource.
If it is necessary to reduce the amount of cattle farming in
the Netherlands, the state should not bow down to businesses by
begging and paying them to comply with laws. At least, not for
farms that are corporations. That would be putting businesses
above the public — plutocracy, in other words.
Instead, the state should tax farms based on how much pollution
they generate.
Amazon
supports anti-vax organizations.
*The Class War —”
Waged
and Being Won by the Rich —” Is Destroying US
Democracy.*
Over 8% of Britons will be
in
danger of being stripped of their
British citizenship at any time, without a trial, without even telling them,
under the Tory plans.
They would find out what had been done to them only if they visited
some other country and were stopped from returning, stateless and
trapped in whatever country they had tried to visit.
*Louisiana Policy Intended to Reform Solitary Confinement
Still Leaves People
in Indefinite Lockdown.*
The EPA has failed
for 4 years to regulate neonicotinoid pesticides in
accord with their tendency to kill many insect species, not just
pests. Now a lawsuit calls on the EPA to regulate them.
*Documents link
Huawei to Uyghur surveillance projects, report claims.*
The US states that try to force women to have babies
do
little to help those babies grow up to be capable and have good lives.
(satire) *GOP Warns Loophole In New Bill Could
Still
Allow Teachers To
Sing About Critical Race Theory.*
White supremacists have
constructed
a false picture of what "critical
race theory" is, and are
using
manipulative language to lump it
together with some bigoted ideas as an excuse to prohibit both.
(satire) *Political Analysts Say
GOP
Could Take House If A Few Key
Assassinations Break Their Way.*
In some parts of India, the
high-caste
Hindu fanatics condemn eating
any meat, or even eggs. They try to impose that rule on everyone through
violent bullying.
Mark Meadows' log of texts shows that the wrecker's son had informed
the White House that
rioters
were attacking the Capitol and implored
the wrecker to "lead now" with an "Oval Office address."
The suspicion is that this was, for him, notice that things were
already satisfactory.
An Antarctic ice shelf is
on
the verge of shattering. When it does,
it will allow the Thwaites glacier to flow much vaster into the ocean
and raise sea level faster.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to
reduce
protection on several
endangered species based on no scientific grounds.
It seems to be continuing with destructive orders that the wrecker
gave. I would suspect this is because of the saboteurs that he appointed
to the department.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the
Women's
Health Protection Act. Among many other things, this will legislate
to protect abortion rights even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe
v Wade.
A US Navy sailor is accused of
setting
a small fire that totaled the
amphibious assault ship, Bonhomme Richard.
It seems to me that a more important question than who or what started
the fire is, why was the ship vulnerable to being destroyed by the
setting of a small fire? That is a lousy characteristic for a
warship. In battle, even small hits can start a fire. A ship that
can be destroyed so easily is not a very good ship for a navy.
*Protesting voting rights activists
arrested
as Biden meets with Manchin.*
I tend to think that it would be more effective to protest Manchin in
West Virginia than in DC.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to
tax
the rich and pay child
care workers a living wage now.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
*The network
of election lawyers who are making it harder for
Americans to vote.*
Proposal: to prosecute
the countries that are blocking generic production
of Covid-19 vaccines in the International Criminal Court.
The article makes an interesting suggestion, but its analysis calls for
clarification. It is not correct to say that the countries such as
Canada, Germany, the UK, Japan, and South Korea are "hoarding vaccines".
The real vaccine hoarders are the companies that make the vaccines.
They block the independent production of vaccines so that everyone has to
buy from them; this increases the price they can charge, and thus
increases their profits.
Countries such as Canada, Germany, and so on are culpable for helping
the companies do that. But they are not exactly "hoarding" the
vaccine themselves. In criminological terms, they are accessories.
What is the motivation of the leaders of those countries for
supporting that deadly profiteering? One obvious possibility is that
the leaders are corrupt — that they get personal advantages from
serving powerful businesses. This is how plutocracy works.
But I hesitate to suppose that their motives are naked, simple
corruption. I wonder if those leaders believe their countries have a
real national interest in supporting artificial scarcity. That
would enable them to believe they are somehow serving their countries,
not merely helping to kill for profit.
It's possible that they really believe the propaganda built around the
term "intellectual property". Please join me in
refusing to use that
term, not solely because of the propaganda but also because it
generalizes about laws that are too different for generalizing.
Lukashenko has sentenced
a would-be opposition candidate to 18 years
in prison for opposition.
US citizens: call on Congress to
regulate Facebook.
I could sign this petition because it
does
not call for censorship of the substantive opinions people can
advocate on Facebook. The sort of regulation I think is called for
would be in the algorithm that picks things to show each user, that
come from people the user did not ask to follow.
*Barbados can be
a
beacon for the region -– if it avoids some of its
neighbours’ mistakes.*
Children can learn
the value of money at age 7, and this can lead them
to better skills for planning ahead.
(satire) *TV Network Refuses To Air "Miracle On 34th Street" For
Outdated
Depictions Of Hope, Joy.*
The US Constitution arguably
requires
states to run free and fair
elections.
Alas, right-wing justices on the Supreme Court have ruled that the court
cannot enforce this in substance.
(satire) *New Proposed Wealth Tax Would
Target
Americans With Circular
Driveways.*
American generals that lose in war are
rewarded
with riches once the
"revolving door" brings them to serve on the board of a military
contractor.
The old Reaganite order is dying,
but
the new progressive order is unable
to be born.
Biden's officials
held
a large auction of oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico,
and said that they had no choice because of a court order.
However, government lawyers had concluded that the court order did not
require holding any specific auction.
Republican state election officials elected in 2020 are
trying to cast
doubt on the presidential election, while insisting that there is no doubt
about the validity of the elections they won.
But … they were the same election!
US citizens: call on Secretary Buttigeig to
release
a full economic justice and racial equity plan for Public Transit spending.
Cities
need trees — each tree does a lot more good than a lawn.
The Pentagon concluded that
no
one was individually negligent in
ordering a drone attack against a vehicle that in fact contained
friendly noncombatants — rather, it was a system failure.
I do not see anything implausible about that. System failures are
quite common.
As for whether it is true that no one individual was culpable, I don't
know, but someone studying the report might be able to see if it
appears to be covering up anything.
The Pentagon said that it has adopted recommendations to fix the
system's flaws. The article doesn't give the details.
In order to determine, years from now, whether the recommendations
have achieved their goal, we need the US military to be ready to admit
deadly mistakes in the future. In the past it has had a pattern of
denying them and covering them up.
Has the US paid reparations to the relatives of the deceased?
Vaccination
requirements for for group events, and restaurants, substantially
increased vaccination in many countries.
How the US is gradually
murdering Julian Assange.
I must rebuke the author for lumping together the corrupt dictator Ngo
Dinh Diem, who served the US badly because of his corruption and
repressive leanings, with people who opposed the US or its economic
empire.
I rebuke him even more for equating Biden with the wrecker. Biden is
no Sanders, but he is trying to save the US from the out-and-out fascism
and supports changes for the better, blocked by Manchin and Sinema as
well as the Republicans.
But then, Hedges says there is no difference between Sanders and the
wrecker. Hedges takes an extreme view of politics: either you're
rebelling against the US government or a toady. I don't agree.
Customers of Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citibank:
call on
them to stop investing in climate destruction.
You could
also move
your
money
to
a smaller
bank that invests in local businesses and housing. Those banks
do lots of bad things, including helping
to provoke
the economic crisis of 2008,
and defrauding
customers.
The Department of Justice has promised not to be quite as lenient with
crimes committed by corporations.
This
article reports and gives
advice.
Most news publishers, universities, businesses, and government
agencies avoid
the term "corporate crime" — it is impolite to suggest
that laws be applied to corporations. They replace the term with
euphemisms.
*Afghan health system
"close
to collapse due to sanctions on Taliban."*
The US fumbled badly in the "Democracy Summit" when Taiwan's minister
Audrey Tang displayed a map showing the democratic countries and
tyrannical countries in the far east.
It's evidently pertinent and important, so if you invite various people to
speak about democracy and the far east, someone's likely to bring it up.
The US in effect set a trap for itself and fell in.
Audrey Tang also advocates free software within the government of
Taiwan. I hope she does not get punished for being the occasion for
embarrassment.
Global heating is
expected
to make Australia's soil release carbon —
a positive feedback loop that will spoil Australia's optimistic plans.
Craig Murray explains how
the
appeals about Julian Assange's extradition
will take years, and all the while he will be in a prison that subjects him
to inadequate medical care — he has already had a stroke.
The UK may hope he dies before the process ends.
Rebecca Solnit:
*America
witnessed a coup attempt. Now it’s
sleep-walking into another disaster.*
The Republican Party has become all coup, all the time.
Malta is the
first European country to legalize possessing marijuana
for personal use.
*Group of women asks US supreme court to
overturn
topless sunbathing ban.*
Whatever your sex, sunbathing is bad for your skin —
you can even get skin cancer. It's wiser to be nude in the shade.
A report
about mergers of giant US media companies and how they have
affected the public.
*D.C. council renames
the street in front of the Saudi embassy after Jamal
Khashoggi.*
This is following the rub-the-tyrant's-nose-in-it policy.
Elon Musk's company SpaceX is buying up houses near its headquarters
in Texas. Some
homeowners say it is offering far too little.
Governor Newsom plans to
turn
the Republicans' everybody-sue-'em approach
to gun control.
The everybody-sue-'em approach is inherently dangerous, regardless of
what it is used for. It should not be used to regulate abortions, or
guns, or anything else. No constitutional rights are safe if that
everybody-sue-'em approach is permitted.
Anyone worthy to sit on the Supreme Court would have realized that
this approach must be rejected regardless of what the issue is. We
have to hope that seeing it used against a favorite right-wing
recruiting stand will convince the extremists on the court to change
their minds about that approach.
But I expect they will instead fabricate inconsistent excuses to
permit the approach when used for right-wing purposes and reject it
when used for progressive purposes.
Jay Rosen: *The first thing news organizations have to do is
announce
they are pro-democracy, pro-truth, pro-science, pro-evidence and
pro-voting.*
(satire) *Army Receives 15-Yard Penalty For
Drone-Striking
The Kicker.*
40 years after the El Mozote massacre, El Salvador is
prosecuting the
surviving perpetrators — US-trained soldiers of the military government.
The right-wing current president is trying to protect them.
In response to atrocities such as this, dissidents in the US demanded
closure of the School of the Americas. The government responded by
changing its name
and hoping people would forget about it.
Experience in the UK says that
Omicron
often spreads to everyone in
a get-together, and comes on very fast.
They are asking people to take a home Covid test right before going to
any get-together. The UK is making those tests readily available.
The US seems not to want to pay for them.
Also, they are asking even vaccinated people who had contact with an
infected person to
take
an at-home Covid test every day for the next week.
This is to slow the spread of Omicron.
Of all the Britons who say
they
love freedom, few are opposing the bill
to sentence protesters to a year in prison.
I support the right to protest to demand the freedom to go
unvaccinated — though I think it is wrong actually go unvaccinated
and risk spreading disease. I hope that everyone who supports the
right to protest will join in the campaign to preserve that right.
Dr Rebecca Gompertz and her colleagues
provide
abortions where that is
forbidden, on ships and by telemedicine.
When asylum seekers try to go to Britain in a boat, one of them has to
steer. The
UK prosecutes whoever does that.
*Beijing is aiming
for global ascendancy – but its leader’s vision of
world dominion is centralised, oppressive and totalitarian.*
*Reporters Without Borders calls
increasing
media oppression in China a
"great leap backwards" and says Hong Kong journalism is "in freefall."*
*In a society driven by "gotchas" and self-righteousness,
let’s be more
ready to recognise our own failings and less hasty to judge others’.*
*New rules on UK arms trade makes it
"easier"
to sideline human rights.*
*How elite [expensive] hobbies
let
billionaires pay no tax.*
The don't even limit themselves to the deductions that the law allows.
Bogus Johnson has
built
hatred for the Tory Party to the point where
Labour might win. But that won't do anything great: Starmer has
made sure of that.
Freezing sperm and tissue from endangered animals is an effective way
of increasing
the preserved genetic diversity of a species — provided there is
still a living population to mate with sperm, or host clone embryos.
*UK universities
took
£89m [in "gifts"] from oil firms in last four years.*
*Climate Critics Warn of
"Big
Gaps" in Biden Plan to Eliminate Overseas Fossil
Fuel Funding.*
A whistleblower has reported that the UK officials responsible for
giving asylum to Afghans were
shockingly
negligent about their job.
They put off reading thousands of urgent messages about people who
would be in danger.
One senior official stayed on vacation during the period.
The UK government seems to have been poisoned by the attitude that
no job deserves to be attended with urgency.
Nowadays the government seems to be
stopping
the whole project
by depriving it of funds.
South Korea is pushing to make
daily
life possible without any
presencial interactions with other people.
Is it possible to purchase from an "untact" store, cafe or take-out
store without identifying yourself and paying cash? If you live in
South Korea, please tell me what you experience?
Everyone: call on big delivery companies to
switch fast
to electric vehicles.
Many of these companies deliver for stores that require purchasers to
run nonfree software, require them to identify themselves, and don't
allow paying cash. I urge you to refuse to buy things that way,
electric vehicles or no.
US citizens: insist that
the
new USPS chair must fire Postmaster DeJoy.
(satire) *Kim Jong-Un Eagerly Waiting For
Inner
Circle To Get Big
Enough So He Can Start Executing People Again.*
Jesse Jackson: *Should Parents Be
Held
Responsible for Their
Children’s Unspeakable Gun Violence?*
Here's one thing that is clear to me: if we are going to punish
parents their children's violence, we must insist on objective
standards for what parents should not do. Otherwise, we risk that
punishing the parents become an automatic consequence of a killing
by the child, regardless of how the parents acted, because of
the desire to punish.
*The extra $25 billion that the U.S. Congress is moving to pour into
the Pentagon's overflowing coffers is
the
exact sum researchers say is
needed to produce enough coronavirus vaccines to achieve widespread
global inoculation.*
Whether this would actually end the Covid-19 pandemic is not clear, but it
would certainly reduce the harm.
*How a terrorism law in India is
being
used to silence Modi’s critics.*
UK banks are closing
bank accounts of charities that work with Kenya
in ways that either indicate bizarre incompetence, or something worse.
It seems to me like another form of "hostile environment".
The natural resources needed for food for the human population are
under
strain — depleted or damaged.
In Wisconsin, fanatical Republicans determined discredit the 2020
election and undermine future elections, are
conducting a secret
"audit" of ballots from 2020.
(satire) *Executives Urge Boycott Of Kellogg's After
CEO Receives
Insulting Salary Offer Of $11 Million A Year.*
Nearly all the Republicans in the House of Representatives
voted against
a bill to limit federal officials' power to abuse the government system.
The only explanation I can think of is that they want future
Republicans to engage in abuses.
Vaping nicotine
tends
to cause erectile dysfunction.
When former prisoners find a job,
the
complex requirements of probation often
make it impossible to keep the job. The US should change that.
Human Rights Watch reports that
Tigrayan
fighters murdered civilian
prisoners
and said this was retaliation because an Amhara militia was fighting
them on the battlefield.
You can't equate militias with civilians who are prisoners.
Women often face
criticism if they speak as loud as men do.
If the Supreme court overturns Roe v Wade, that could
damage the legal
idea of a right to privacy in the US, and that could in turn threaten
gay rights, contraceptives and fertility treatments.
Rep. Jayapal is
pushing
to end Medicare's privatization experiment.
The fossil fuel industry's
subtle
tactics for blocking decarbonization.
(satire) *Smithsonian
Acquires
Coat Hanger Neil Armstrong And Buzz
Aldrin Used To Get Back Inside Lunar Module After Locking Selves Out.*
Extinction Rebellion activists
faced
charges for blocking a train line
in London. The jury acquitted them.
(satire) *New Zillow Feature
Lets
Users Track Happy Lives Of People
Who Outbid Them For Dream House.*
*Arizona students stage hunger strike to
urge
Sinema to support voting reform.*
They give our country hope, but others will need to build on their beginning.
The Supreme Court's decision
effectively
upheld the Texas law
prohibiting almost all abortions, and permitting vigilantees to sue
anyone that assists a pregnant woman in getting an abortion.
The little sliver of the decision that went against the Texas law is
a minor detail that won't in practice change much.
The authors are certain that the court will overturn Roe v Wade next
spring. But in the mean time, they have allowed staten laws to
undermine the constitutional structure of US law, just to attack
abortion rights six months sooner.
The prohibition of abortion will motivate millions of women, and
millions of men, to organize politically. But they will not be
organizing in a democracy that would give them a chance to change the
government. Republicans are putting an end to that.
Mark Meadows had a copy of
a
presentation offering the wrecker various
options to overturn the presidential election, one being a coup.
*Biden administration drug czar says
it's
time to treat drug addiction like a
chronic disease.*
For a "drug czar" to advocate harm reduction is a big advance,
even though it doesn't directly change anything.
To continue US fossil fuel extraction using fracking would
cost 25
trillion dollars, and enormous resources.
Renewable energy would be far more efficient.
(satire) *Senators Explain
What
Gun Control Means To Them.*
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports
a
record number of journalists
in prison around the world, for the sixth year in a row.
Why federally-funded
universal child care services would be a wise
investment for the US.
Alternatively, the US should provide adequate welfare benefits for
single parents so that they don't live in poverty.
The European Union is considering
a
directive to give many sorts of gig workers
the legal rights of employees.
This could be a big step forward against
the
companies' mistreatment
of their workers, but won't change the way they mistreat customers:
requiring them to run nonfree software and identify themselves.
I absolutely refuse to be a mistreated in that way, so I have never
used any of those companies.
The food
delivery companies additionally parasitize the restaurants
whose food they deliver.
Coastal animals are
colonizing
floating plastic garbage.
This enables them to move to other coastlines, where they did not
previously live, and mess up the ecosystems there.
US citizens: phone your senators at +1
(202) 224-3121 and say not to leave Washington until the Senate
passes the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass
the Freedom
to Vote Act.
US citizens: call on Congress
to weatherize
low-income homes now.
US citizens: call on Biden to fill the rest of the Federal Reserve
Board with progressive leaders who will
take
on the big banks to fight the
climate crisis.
Rally
for Julian Assange at
3pm on December 18
in Fresh Pond Mall, 186 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, Mass.
Sea-level rise (caused by global heating) is
making
sea-side towns in Ghana
uninhabitable.
*Staff employed [in Afghanistan] to teach British values and the
English language
refused
the right to come to the UK.*
This decision teaches an ironic lesson about Tory values.
Committee to Protect Journalists: *Number of journalists in jail
around the world
at
new high, says survey.*
Biden will start another effort to
eliminate
incandescent light bulbs.
The wrecker blocked the previous attempt.
The planned gradual phase-out — details are not given — could be
worse than merely slow. It could give a Republican the opportunity to
cancel the change in 2025.
* It's up to you and me to decide
what
it means to be a socialist in 21st
century America.*
A survey of preparedness against future pandemics found that countries
scored
39 out of 100, on the average.
Efforts to prevent the emergence of pandemics score even lower.
Plutocratists have found another
excuse
for a subsidy to big business:
to produce more IC chips in the US.
The traditional way to encourage domestic production is with an import
tariff. That gives the same preference to domestic production, but
instead of giving money to big businesses, it collects money from
big businesses. Since big businesses have too much money anyway,
the latter is better.
Governments in the US have been subsidizing businesses more and more,
justifying it by supposed trickle-down benefits that often
fail to
happen. Americans are starting to recognize that the net result is to
transfer
public money to businesses.
If the US government insists on "investing in" US chip manufacturing,
it should invest by buying stock in those businesses. At least that way
the public treasury will benefit if they do well.
In addition, it would be useful to prohibit encryption systems which
don't let the owner of a computer read and write the keys — such as
TPMs and the Management Engine.
China is trying to pass as a democracy by
muddling the concept of
democracy.
In the US, the Republican Party (following the bullshitter) is doing
likewise, with its
voter
suppression,
gerrymandering,
and plans to arbitrarily
reverse elections when it dislikes the outcome.
China proposed a policy of compelling Communist Party members to
have
more babies, again
resembling
the Republican Party.
Of the two, the Communist Party was less nasty, because it withdrew the
suggestion in response to lots of criticism.
A judge appointed by the wrecker has
put
a stay on Biden's vaccine mandates
for employees of federal contractors.
Republicans believe that the most important cause in the world, what they
should be willing to die for, is keeping Covid-19 going strong in the US.
*Filibuster
Reform for Debt Ceiling Fight But Not Voting Rights or
Reproductive Freedom?*
*Senate Dems Help
Torpedo
Resolution That Would Have Blocked $650 Million Arms
Sale to [Salafi Arabia].*
A guard at a UK deportation prison says that the
culture
of the guards is racist and it "radicalizes" the staff into racism.
*Amazon Employee
Describes
"Sheer Brutality" of Work [in an Amazon warehouse] to Senators.*
Loujain al-Hathloul, imprisoned women's rights activist, is suing
three US intelligence officers who she alleges
helped
the UAE crack her phone, which enabled the UAR to arrest her and send her to Salafi
Arabia to be imprisoned.
*California residents will be required to use
green waste bins to
dispose of food [waste] which municipalities will turn into compost or
biogas.*
I wish I could give food waste to someone that would compost it.
It's too complex for me to do, because I'm non compost mentis ;-}.
*New York City’s noncitizens will
soon
be allowed to vote in local elections.*
The Senate is blocking confirmation of Biden's nominee for combating
antisemitism, because she
criticizes
a Republican senator for a racist
remark. Many strong supporters of the Republican Party are antisemitic, and
the wrecker said that American Nazis include "fine people",
so perhaps his followers prefer to deactivate efforts against antisemitism.
Verizon is collecting
browsing records from customers even if they already said they
wanted to "opt out" from such collection.
My understanding is that every ISP in the US keeps records of what
network sites are contacted from each connection (mobile or fixed),
for government surveillance. The only thing a subscriber can "opt
out" of is Verizon's use of that same data for its own profit.
The thing to do is not let Verizon see what site you talk to.
* Ancient shrines, oral folklore and hip-hop cyphers are all part of a
rich artistic heritage
being
‘hollowed out’ in Xinjiang say Uyghur
exiles and scholars.*
China has done
similar things to Tibetan culture for decades.
As agricultural runoff kills Florida's seagrass, the
manatees
are starving.
Florida is hand-feeding the remaining manatees, but that solution won't work
for wild manatees over the long term.
The UK agreed to
extradite
Julian Assange,
accepting the US's substantively
vacuous
assurances not to subject Assange
to certain specific kinds of brainwashing and mind-killing conditions.
More information
here and
here
The worst damage comes from the
general
decision to extradite journalists for publishing whistleblower reports.
That will harm journalism and thus also democracy, world wide, for
as long as democracy and journalism exist.
*Britain can't complain about global corruption — it's
helping
to fund it.*
*The streets of many towns and cities across Myanmar were deserted on
Friday as the public held a "silent strike" to
protest against the
military government,*
An incomplete list of
gross
political misconduct against Bogus Johnson.
An incomplete list of
accusations
of dishonesty against Bogus Johnson.
Will Tories exile
British citizens for protesting?
Columbia University has
threatened
to fire graduate students who are
on strike.
40
million Americans have college debt. Millions of them with low incomes
keep paying and paying, but the interest they are charged is bigger than
the payments. They will spend the rest of their lives crushed by debt.
Britons revile
the "We can have parties and spread disease" Tories.
It seems they
had parties in various official quarters, last year.
Mining companies want to
mine
the metals from undersea vents. The
total area of these vents is small, and many species live only there.
Mining could wipe them out in decades.
A study finds that
(some)
tropical forests that have been mostly
destroyed regrow quickly, and after 20 years are going strong again.
Leaving them alone is better than planting new trees.
I expect that these results vary depending on the location and on what sort
of destruction occured. It would be interesting to get more details.
The Patriotic Millionaires
rebuked
Senator Sinema for defending the
carried interest loopole, which cuts taxes for private equity funds.
I think those are the same funds that have destroyed many US companies
by selling off their valuable assets and leaving them with debts that
will force them to shut down.
Greenpeace activists
blocked
doors of the Royal Bank of Canada,
demanding that it stop funding climate disaster.
Activists also offer the bank's executives charred wood from houses
burned by wildfires in Canada.
Right-wing Democrats joined with Republicans to
reject
Biden's nominee for head of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Perhaps she was inclined to do the part of her job which includes
investigating misconduct by banks.
Kellogg's workers
voted
to reject a "two-tier" contract
that would pay all new workers less than the old ones.
In Australia, Labor (much like US Democrats, mostly
plutocratist)
is appealing
to Christianity to mobilize people for climate defense.
I wonder if that would work in the US.
*Styrofoam trash
adds
to antibiotic resistance crisis.*
An analysis of lab experiments found that
microplastics, in realistic
concentrations, can harm human cells.
An astroturf
campaign to block a wind farm — in the name of protecting the
environment — is funded by oil company.
Kim Potter is on
trial for killing Daunte Wright at a traffic stop.
She says that she thought she was firing her taser.
Either Potter grabbed the pistol intentionally and pretended it was
her taser, or she grabbed the pistol unthinkingly by mistake. I have
no particular insight into which one it was.
I am sure it is possible to make such mistakes, and I don't think it
serves any moral or practical purpose to punish them. This wasn't the
usual bullshit lie that thugs
tell after killing someone for no valid
reason. However, I am sure there are some
thugs who are so
habituated to lying that they would be capable of intentionally
drawing a pistol while shouting "Taser, taser!"
Whistleblower Daniel Hale, who told us how
the
US covers up killing
thousands of civilians with drone attacks, has received the
International Whistleblower Award.
The US accuses El Salvador of negotiating a deal with gang leaders to
reduce
the violence of their combat for control of drug trade.
I expect that this was the best option available to El Salvador. I
wonder if it includes being less violent to the populace as well as to
each other. Gang violence and threats are often the cause that drives
Salvadoreans to flee to the US for seeking asylum.
Reality Winner explains her motives for
informing
the public about how
Russia had penetrated some US election systems.
The article also explains why each side of US politics was unhappy
with the facts she revealed.
Rep. Pascrell talks about an investigation into
policies that make
the US an attractive spot for some kinds of tax-dodging.
*Biden signs order for government to
achieve
net-zero emissions by 2050.*
This is totally insufficient, but it is something Biden can do
without getting the Senate to agree. It is disappointing to fall
into the fashionable
"net
zero" pitfall, though.
The UK estimates that it probably has
10,000 cases of the
fast-spreading Omicron variant.
At this point, I think that there is no benefit in blocking travel
from the African countries where Omicron was initially discovered.
The number of additional cases likely to arrive from there is surely
insignificant compared with the number of people catching Omicron in
the UK.
New Zealand proposes
to ban tobacco.
Tobacco is a deadly, addictive drug, and eliminating it would be a
substantial improvement. But
prohibition
of an addictive drug tends
to backfire.
US citizens: call on the FDIC to
limit
banks' investments in fossil fuels
and in industries that bet on heavy use of fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the
Protecting Our Democracy
Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
* A wave of shoplifting crimes are attracting
front-page news, while the $15bn stolen by corporations from
workers receives
no coverage at all.*
Of course, what drives the headlines is notoriety. A video of someone
shoplifting is surprising, since we expect those thieves to try to
avoid notice. Theft of workers' wages happens quietly. It is a very
important problem, but it is not news.
People get arrested for stealing products from stores, but stealing
wages requires a lawsuit. The lawsuit requires private funds, and no
one will be arrested for the theft.
If bosses were arrested for stealing wages, they might stop. That is
the kind of crime that punishment ought to deter effectively.
So why don't we do that?
I suppose it is partly because business owners have more political
power than workers. But also because businesses do this by making
unfair rules and then enforcing them. To stop that requires a trial
to judge the rules.
If some of these rules were standardized by law, it would be easier
to arrest bosses for trying to impose illegal rules on workers.
Subcontracting work is popular partly because it allows the company or
agency that pays for the work to avoid responsibility for the work.
Cutting pay and speeding up the work are one common result; another is
that the work is done badly and people have no recourse for it. I
advocate laws to restrict subcontracting to a much lower level.
Egypt has released
Patrick Zaki on bail. He still faces years in
prison for publishing his experience confronting the prejudice against
Egyptian Christians.
Someone commented "Thank God" about his release. I find that
particularly ironic, given that religion is the cause of his problems.
*Abstinence-based recovery nearly killed me — the
Tories’ ‘war on
drugs’ won’t work.*
The Tories have proposed a bill to
privatize
the NHS in substance.
They have made the horrible and inadequate US medical system (horrible
and inadequate if you're not wealthy) as their model. But in one
respect, they have chosen to go further, by removing the requirement
that the NHS provide emergency care to everyone.
Given the Tory attitude towards refugees, I suppose that soon
they won't get treatment even for broken bones, as part of the
"hostile
environment".
Biden promised he would reverse the wrecker's attack on the
immigration judge union, but
has
not made any change.
The UK is considering
an "emergency" approval for use of a
neonicotinoid pesticide.
There is a real emergency, but use of neonicotinoids creates its own
future emergency for which we have no remedy.
The UK was going to raise the capital gains tax, but
quietly
dropped the plan.
The ties that now bind nations together are
becoming methods for
fighting each other.
In the 1970s, the short-sighted western countries responded to OPEC's
power with a campaign to boost their own extraction of fossil fuels.
That campaign is still advancing, even though we now know it is
suicidal.
The best way to respond to Putin's threats is to speed up renewable electric
generation.
*Wildfires broke
carbon emission records from Siberia to the American west.*
China is offering
vaccines instead of loans to win diplomatic
support from African countries.
The new approach is much better for those African countries. I wish
the US were inclined to compete with China at it. If it were not for
the oppressiveness of China, and its plan to conquer and subjugate
Taiwan, I would wish China success in this competition.
Record high temperatures
devastated
the Christmas tree crop planted in
Oregon this year.
A meticulous approximation says that
Ethereum
uses around 2 to 3
gigawatts. That is equivalent to 2 to 3 coal-fired power plants, or
1/3 of what Americans use for watching TV.
Republicans attack
the basic idea of having the law apply equally to
everyone — and thereby the basic idea of public health rules that people
are requires to obey to keep the public safe.
It is now possible to
predict
a person's physical appearance fairly reliably from per DNA sequence.
Since our current knowledge of the significance of genes is imperfect,
some people will not actually resemble the prediction. This may cause
the wrong people to be questioned. At least it will be possible to
prove, with their DNA, that they are not the suspect.
Other possible problems are not caused by inaccuracy of prediction.
However, I don't think we should call it "racial profiling" when the
state suspects people in racial group R because it is known that the
culprit was in group R. If a witness says, "He was black" or "He was
white", we would not call it "racial profiling" if that led to
questioning blacks, or to questioning whites.
Real racial profiling is when cops jump to the conclusion that they
should search for a certain group, not based on knowledge, but rather
based on assuming that people in group R are likely to be criminals.
The world can produce enough food for the current human population.
but it might take
big
social changes as well as changes in diets.
Resistance to those changes will be strong.
The smaller the human population, the smaller the necessary changes
will be.
The UK denied
asylum to Ethiopian Seyfu Jamaal, saying he would be
safe in Ethiopia where civil war is spreading.
Congress must
not trust the US military to take civilian casualties
seriously and investigate them properly. Congress should do the
investigating.
California has canceled
the approval of the pesticide sulfoxaflor,
because of its danger to bees.
It is probably dangerous to other non-pest insects, too.
* Since 1995, members of the global 1% have
captured
38% of all new wealth while the poorest half of humanity has
benefited from just 2%.*
*Global inequality "as marked as it was at
peak
of western imperialism."*
The British government
formally
apologized for failing to enforce fire
regulations, with the result that 72 people died in a fire spread by
flammable building materials.
Now will it take responsibility for fixing firetrap apartments that
people bought, who now can't afford to pay to make them safe? The
government agreed to pay for this for tall buildings, but
arbitrarily
decided to leave the people in shorter buildings trapped there.
*White House Dismisses
Idea of Mailing Out [Gratis] Covid Tests Like
Other Nations.*
It looks like Bogus Johnson ordered an evacuation plane to
take rescue
dogs and cats out of Afghanistan and leave some human beings behind.
This shows why I agree only to a limited extent with idea of animal
rights: because strong support tends to lead people to save dogs they
love rather than human beings they don't know.
I doubt that Bogus Johnson really cared about those pets, any more
than he cares about Afghans or Britons in general. But I think that
Farthing must have cared about the pets, and that motivated him to use
some sort of personal connection to get this favor from Johnson.
*The International Tennis Federation says it has not suspended
tournaments in China because it
"does
not want to punish a billion people."*
If that excuse were valid, it would be wrong to deny China anything it
wants, because (after China publicizes the denial) most Chinese would
feel you had denied them something, so you would have "punished" them.
A sports tournament is never so important that cancelling it constitutes
an unfair punishment to the would-be spectators.
(satire) *Federal Witness Protection Program Criticized
For Failing To Create Believable Female Identities.*
Rich right-wing fanatics have funded campaigns to elect right-wing fanatics
to school boards. Where they succeed,
they
enact policies to facilitate
spread of Covid-19 and try to sabotage education about racism
*ALEC Is
Enabling
Anti-LGBTQ Hate.*
With all the
injustices
that ALEC promotes
One more injustice may seem to change little. But this may make
ALEC more vulnerable. Many companies have taken strong stands in
favor of gay rights, and they may find it hard to support ALEC given
this.
An anti-coal activist in Australia has been living in her car.
She can't go home, as she has
been
ordered not to see her SO for a year.
Now the thugs have seized the car and plan to sell it.
Another variant, similar to Omicron, usually passes unnoticed with the
quick tests usually used.
Scientists
have no idea how much it has
already spread.
Outlining a national strategy
to protect people from Covid-19.
Agriculture uses lots of plastic,
generally
single-use, and disposed of by burning or burying in the soil.
Tourists in Antarctica bring
invasive
species that grow in places where the ice has melted.
Whether this new ecosystem is a bad thing, I'm not sure.
If there are no native species for them to drive out,
maybe no harm is done.
US counties that voted more for
the
wrecker have higher death rates
from Covid.
The wrecker's supporters tend not to get vaccinated, and thus are more
likely to die.
A list of possible
sanctions
against Russia if it attacks Ukraine.
It is somewhat misguided to list canceling the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
as a possible punishment, since that pipeline must
never
be used in any case. It would burst the carbon budget.
Many in Afghanistan that the UK offered asylum to
did
not make it out, and
are now trapped there.
Under those circumstances of chaos and hurry, almost anyone will make
mistakes. Perhaps we should not blame the UK and the US for slipping up.
However, the UK government seems in recent years to have become
systematically
incompetent for all tasks that involve
doing things for
specific people. Especially those that
involve
passports and visas.
I don't know whether this is a matter of hiring corrupt or incompetent people,
or a workplace culture that makes it better to do nothing than to help
anyone who wasn't supposed to be helped, or something else.
Timnit Gebru: *
For
truly ethical AI, its research must be independent
from big tech.*
The billionaire "philanthropists" of Big Tech dominate nonprofit
fundraising, too, and they use this to shape society according to
their ideas. Bill Gates set up much-criticized changes in education
in the US, and made almost all leaders and experts in the field
reluctant to criticize them because they hoped for funding from the
Gates Foundation.
Gebru's point makes sense to me, but that alone won't make AI in the
service of companies safe. Letting servers run by others dominate
your computing activities is giving those others tyrannical power over
you. That moral issue is separate from the one that Gebru raises.
If part of what attracts people to use the servers is AI that "works
well", that AI will contribute to dominating people, even if there is
nothing wrong about how that AI itself functions.
Sweden has adopted a multipurpose RFID person identification chip. This is very dangerous,
because
it tends to lead people to use one
chip to identify themselves for many activities.
Even if different servers run by different operators control different
activities, their databases are all pre-indexed.
Getting the chip inserted into one's hand makes this more shocking,
but it is just the icing on the poisonous cake.
A black defendant won a new trial
because
the jury deliberated in a room
with a Confederate flag and other symbols.
This illustrates part of how systemic racism operates. The racism of
the Confederacy, and the slavery system it fought for, propagates
through the actions of its present-day adorers into racist influence
on other people.
The retrial will not exactly tell us whether that influence was
crucial in the first trial. Partly because the appeal found another
error in his first trial: some evidence will not be admitted next
time. Partly because it will have a different jury and maybe a
different judge. But also because influences like this are not
overwhelming. They do not compel a given outcome independent of what
the facts justify. Rather, they change tendencies. They may or may
not hurt a particular individual on a particular occasion, but overall
they make the system more unfair.
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 object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
With China defending the Burmese military rule,
the
US has no effective
way to oppose it.
Sanctions would have little effect because China would not adopt them.
I wonder if there is some sort of communications technology that the US
could provide to the resistance, that might aid its efforts.
(satire) *Centrist NFL Fan
Spends
Sunday Rooting For Line Of Scrimmage.*
Victoria's border closure (with another part of Australia) blocked
thousands of residents of Victoria from returning home.
They
tried to apply for an exemption, but the automated bureaucracy made impossible demands.
Ralph Nader: crimes by corporations are ever more documented,
but the US
government hardly ever really prosecutes it.
Former prisoners of Australia's offshore immigration prisons,
and
former staff, rebuke the UK for planning to do likewise.
*US, UK and EU will help fund South Africa's coal phaseout,
offering a
model for the developing world.*
*Rohingya sue
Facebook for £150bn over Myanmar genocide.*
*All coral reefs in western Indian Ocean "at
high
risk of collapse in next 50
years."*
It doesn't mention the other danger of
ocean
acidification.
*New York City sets
Covid
vaccine mandate for all private employers.*
When gambling
addiction lures people into unpayable debt, some of them
commit suicide.
There are around 400 such suicides a year in the UK.
I was unable to find any comparable info about the US.
China points
to the grave flaws in US democracy to make itself appear
not so bad.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been
sentenced
to four years in prison, for various invented crimes.
Basically,
for acting as if Burma were a free country.
Resistance
to the coup is going strong, a year later.
The Tories plan to
put
Humpty Dumpty in charge of laws: they will mean
whatever ministers say they mean.
The UK is planning
its
own version of a "war on drugs".
I expect this to do increased harm, just as
the
US "war on drugs" has done.
*US seeks Russian and Chinese support to
salvage
Iran nuclear deal.*
California's voters are leaning towards
repeal
of the death penalty.
Students in various US high schools are
organzing to protest the
prejudice and hatred shown by others in their school.
Why is smuggling
of fentanyl increasing as heroin decreases? It's the
"iron law of prohibition": "As you crack down on the original
substances, you end up with a substitute that is usually more compact,
more potent, easier to smuggle and more problematic, more dangerous."
Biden wants stricter
punishment for possessing or selling fentanyl.
The hyperpunitive
approach never stops people from using an addictive drug.
Because fentanyl is dangerous, we need policies that reduce the danger.
Decriminalization
together with treatment can at least reduce the deaths
from overdoses and contamination, and often helps reduce use.
Honolulu shut down its main source of water because of
contamination
with jet fuel.
When the Navy stopped pumping water from that area, because its water
was contaminated, the result was to direct the flow towards
Honolulu's well and contaminate that well's water.
*'Global Empire of the US Christian Right':
Dark
Money Fuels Attacks on
Abortion Rights Worldwide*
Brazil passed a law to create a
compulsory
license to patents that
obstruct protection from Covid-19, but Bolsonaro vetoed it; the Senate
can override, but it has failed to do so.
It is not clear to me how this law would enable vaccine manufacturers
in Brazil to get access to the trade secrets of making the vaccines.
One of the supposed reasons for the patent system is to procure the
publication of details in patent applications — but that no longer
has the intended results. Patentholders publish the minimum they can
get away with, while keeping the rest of the details secret.
Every shooting in a school
encourages
pressure for more complete surveillance
of students, which supposedly would make it possible to identify those
who will be murderers.
This approach doesn't seem to be practical, because even with lots of
personal surveillance data, it's hard to identify the few who will
actually commit violence. The system gives warnings about many and
nearly all are false alarms. The followups harass many and rarely do
any good.
*Nine pro-corrupter lawyers
ordered
to pay $175,000 for sham election lawsuit.*
One of them faces federal charges of
falsifying
incorporation papers.
*Poland plans to set up [a centralized digital]
register of
pregnancies to report miscarriages.*
When women have miscarriages, the state might suspect them of having
had an abortion. Some US states have
prosecuted women based on
discovering that they had miscarriages,
and some Latin
American countries as well.
*Winter heatwave
breaks
records in four US states.*
Hotter winters has harmful effects. It can mean less snow or ice
remains to fill rivers in the spring. It can enable pests to survive
and multiply, which used to live somewhere warmer.
The Pegasus spyware was used to
crack
the phones of some US officials.
This is in addition to officials of France and some other countries.
I can't imagine what justification a state could offer for such a
boycott. "Those rich little companies are getting less investment —
that is a horrible injustice! We must support them!"? It would be a
blatant act of partisanship, a law with no pretense of a public
interest purpose.
*GOP Reject
Vaccine Mandates for Men, But Demand Pregnancy Mandates for Women.*
Shell has got final permission to
set
off explosions off the East Coast
of South Africa.
Even if Shell knows how to reduce the harm to whales' hearing from the
seismic tests, it makes no sense to permit exploring for oil under the
ocean bottom, or anywhere, because there is no room in the carbon budget
to extract that oil.
(satire) *Bounty Scientists Scream As Experimental Paper Towel
Absorbs
Entire Lab.*
Michael Reinoehl, anti-fascist, admitted shooting an armed right-wing
counterprotester and said it was self-defense. The thugs
went after
him and killed him; some said he tried to shoot them, but others said
he was running away, unarmed.
Contrast this with how they treated Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed
unarmed antiracist protesters and said it was self-defense.
The article makes claims about what "the Democrats" will do, and that
may apply to plutocratist
Democrats. I think some progressive Democrats
are different.
Pfizer's patents and secrets
give
it power which it uses to bully
governments to agree to one-sided agreements (with unjust arbitration
instead of trials), and keep the whole thing secret from the public.
This shows that patents in the medical field are worse than just
instruments to gouge the non-rich and let the poor die. They are a
system where peoples are ruled by corporations.
This system needs
to be destroyed.
Oceanic windfarms
act
as artificial reefs that provide a much better home
for sea life than a flat bottom. They can reinvigorate fishing.
In addition, they block the kinds of fishing that wipe out everything.
*Principles v money: from tennis to F1, this is the real contest
taking over
global sport.*
I never care about sports except on the rare occasions when I come
across an example of real heroism, something more important than
sports. The Women's Tennis Association's defense of Peng Shuai was
such an example. Since I never watch sports, I won't actually see
it, but I will read the news about it.
Plankton that proliferated 2 billion years ago died and became graphite,
which lubricated rocks, which
facilitated
the growth of mountains.
French people's incomes
increased
in the late 1700s because they became
less religious and practiced contraception more.
* When environmentalists on a Seychelles atoll decided to race boats made
from ocean litter, they had
500
tonnes to pick from.*
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, targeted with lawfare by President
Do-dirty, will be allowed to go to Norway to
receive
her Nobel Prize.
Microgig platforms such as Mechanical Turk are designed to
keep the
labor force atomized and poor.
The wrecker's "Remain in Mexico" is
now
operative again: making asylum
seekers that cross the US-Mexico border stay in Mexico while their
cases are considered. The Mexican border cities are very dangerous.
Whatever we think of the "Remain in Mexico" policy, we can't blame
Biden for obeying a court order. The last thing we need now is for
the president to promote the idea that the president can disregard
court orders at will. That would help future Republican presidents do
the same.
However, there must be a procedure that the wrecker used to put the
"Remain in Mexico" policy into effect. I expect that procedure could
revoke it, too, in a way that the court would accept. So I wonder: is
Biden doing that?
Polar bears in Churchill, Canada, on Hudson Bay,
face
eventual extinction when there is no longer any sea ice.
Nevada's Supreme Court ruled that a gun company
cannot
be liable if a person
uses its product for murder.
I think the judge's ruling is the only proper decision. For any
product that can be used as a weapon, society has basically two
choices: permit people to make, sell, buy and own that product, or
forbid it.
If society decides to permit the product, it must not hold the maker
liable for crimes committed using it. To do that would make
production so dangerous that no one would dare produce it; in
practice, production would be indirectly prohibited. This applies not
only to products that are weapons, but also to other products which
are not intended as weapons, but are dangerous — for instance, table
knives.
It is wrong for society to prohibit anything indirectly via
unpredictable third-party liability. (Can you name something else
that is now being prohibited indirectly in parts of the US?) If
society decides to prohibit making, selling, buying and owning a
certain kind of product, it should do so explicitly and directly, not
by letting others sue the makers into bankruptcy.
I support prohibiting AR-15 rifles, and other guns that can be
converted in effect into machine guns with a convenient add-on. Those
guns make more danger; as far I can see, there is nothing good about
them that could outweigh that reason to prohibit them.
Climate defenders have
sued
the UK government for establishing a plan for billions in subsidies for fossil fuel extraction.
Fossil fuel companies such as Exxon are running big ad campaigns on
podcasts, claiming that they will
cure
global heating with carbon capture —
which is unlikely ever to work well enough to make a difference.
British parents asked the thug
department to help them get their daughters
back from PISSI.
All the thugs cared about was interrogating the parents
then they exiled
the daughters without talking with them.
The Unite labor union will
cut
its donation to the new, "centrist"
Labour Party.
I am sad to say I don't think this will change Starmer's politics. He
must have a powerful reason to have chosen the mission to ensure that
no one like Corbyn ever leads the Labour Party again.
The Pentagon said it expects China to be
ready
to defeat the US and conquer
Taiwan by 2027.
The Pentagon may be saying this as a bluff to get more money. It has
said such things before — compare the 1960 "missile gap". It could
also be a valid prediction; if so, is there a way to avoid the two
alternate disasters?
In a previous period of "refugee crisis", heroic people
risked
all to help people reach Britain or the US from a country where they were sure to be
oppressed and likely to be killed.
Israeli bombers destroyed Gaza's bookstores and libraries last May.
One
has been rebuilt, thanks to foreign donations.
Iran has reportedly
blown
off negotiations on the non-nuclear deal.
The other parties have not rejected further talks.
The 2019 drought in New South Wales
killed
many of the native trees,
in some places around 2/3 of them.
This is in places which weren't burnt by the wildfires.
Workers are on
strike at 58 British universities, due to the low wages
and absence of job security of decades of making universities act like
businesses.
Justice Sotomayor warned that the right-wing justices are
treating the
Supreme Court as a political instrument, and that this will destroy
respect for the court.
Republicans don't care about maintaining respect, because they aim to
impose nondemocratic minority rule. As long as their supporters
control all political power, they don't care what the rest of us
think. Their motto is, "Let them despise us, as long as they obey
us."
Arguing
that Cop26 produced a weak declaration because of the unfairness
of singling out coal over oil and gas.
There is some truth in that, but I think it is a matter of details.
There are many powerful specific interests in one kind of fossil fuel
or another. Whatever set of priorities among fossil fuel activities
an international campaign might choose — including the set, "all
fossil fuels are equally bad" — will arouse strong opposition
somewhere. That opposition will create arguments about "fairness",
all aimed at "reduce that other fossil fuel in that other region first".
There will be no fairness in the climate disaster we are heading for.
Wealthy countries such as the US will be able to keep things going for
longer than India.
Biden has proposed to have health insurance companies pay for Covid-19
tests, with a limited
number of tests available gratis through
community clinics.
By international standards, this is an inadequate plan.
Senator Markey calls for laws to make the Federal Reserve start
pressuring banks to
stop
lending to fossil fuel investments.
We also need to give the Fed a chair who will lead this:
not the Republican appointee Powell.
*Poor countries
mustn’t
open up [their] economies [to international
competition] until they are strong.*
Missouri's Republican governor asked on Nov 1 for a report on how
effective mask mandates have been at preventing Covid-19. The results
showed that Missouri cities with mask mandates reduced 25% fewer cases
than other areas. So
he
buried the report.
A few Republican senators threatened to
shut
down the US government if
they didn't get their demand: undermining enforcement of federal
vaccine mandates.
US citizens: call on the EPA to
regulate
methane emissions.
US citizens: call on Biden to
stop
oil drilling on federal lands.
We need to stop new oil drilling on private lands too, but the president cannot
do that by himself.
US citizens: call on Congress to
fix
the Supreme Court and save
abortion rights.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word
US citizens: call on the Senate to carefully examine the nominees for
the USPS Board of Governors, and demand commitments to
repair and
improve the USPS.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the EPA to
protect
frontline communities.
*"Enemy combatant" [Abu Zubaydah] held at Guantánamo
petitions for
release because war is over.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 and
ask per to ask the House leaders to bring the MORE Act (H.R. 3617)
to a vote.
This bill would end federal prohibition of marijuana.
Everyone: reproach Disney for its DRM on December 10,
the
Day Against DRM.
Also, please spread the word.
*Ecuador's Highest Court
Enforces
Constitutional "Rights of Nature" to
Safeguard Los Cedros Protected Forest.*
This demonstrates that countries can establish and defend broad
protections for natural ecosystems, including broad prohibitions of
actions that tend to damage them, without endorsing an appearance of
animism by saying that forests, rivers, etc. are "persons".
The push for animism can be seen in that article, however, where it
claims tat monkeys, bears, frogs and birds won this legal battle.
I am proud to say that human beings like you and me won this case.
Monkeys, bears, frogs and birds can be harmed by mining, but are not
capable of understanding what mining is, nor trying to regulate it.
Only humans can do that.
A large statistical study found that some pollutants
affect the
sex ratio of human babies.
It is inconceivable that that people who will have male babies would
tend to move to places with certain pollutants, while those who will
have female babies would tend to move to places with other pollutants.
The pollutants must be causing the change in sex ratio, somehow. Most
likely each of these pollutants is more likely to cause an abortion of
one sex than the other.
We don't have any evidence about how far into the pregnancy these
abortions tend to occur. If it is more than six weeks, some southern
US states may someday try women for
"feticide"
if they live in
places where such pollution is present.
The coup
in Sudan is not over: the military brought back
the civilian prime minister, but only as a front man.
Military personnel at Pearl Harbor believe that jet fuel has leaked
from tanks into
their water supply, because the water looks, tastes
and smells of oil.
They suspect that it is related to various symptoms that many have
developed.
The Navy has been warned about the danger from these tanks but didn't
pay attention until now.
The US rejected
the idea of a treaty to ban autonomous robots with
lethal arms.
I can imagine US officials thinking about the current US advantage in
AI and concluding that unrestricted deployment of autonomous weapons
would give the US an advantage in this decade, so (they might conclude)
it is better to reject the treaty.
On the other hand, if 15 years from now China is in the lead in AI,
having this treaty in place already would benefit the US against China.
Those short-term considerations are the wrong way to look at this
question, because it is bigger than the narrow questions of short-term
advantage. In the long term, this treaty will prevent a danger to all
humans.
The British military has
eliminated
command influence in the response to
accusations of rape.
This means that your commander won't be able to protect the accused.
Command influence is the poison in the military justice system, and
people have campaigned for decades to eliminate it from the US
military.
Several states governed by the Covid Party now offer
unemployment support
to workers that are fired for refusal to get vaccinated.
In effect, this amounts to paying people to undermine public health.
The Republican Party program is to keep Covid-19 circulating in the US
as much as possible. This causes instability and harms the economy,
both of which make Americans unhappy, and they perversely blame Biden
rather the the Republicans who are doing it.
Some Americans foolishly accused China of releasing Covid-19
in order to hurt the US. That accusation is implausible and there
is no evidence for it. But that's basically what the Republican
Party is doing now.
One Democrat in Congress
accused
them without mincing words.
The causes of Democrats' political weakness
don't
include fringe wokeness.
(satire) *Starbucks
Dangles
Tied-Up Union Organizers Over Vat Of Steamed Milk.*
What
a lawyer learned by volunteering to help poor people in eviction
court.
Luke Holland interviewed
old, surviving Nazis about their crimes under
Hitler. Some of the interviews are now a film.
I wonder what will happen when modern Nazis see this film. Will the horror
of Nazism break through their curtain of lies, or will they lie to themselves
about what they see?
(satire) *Rob Manfred Confirms Pete Rose Remains
Ineligible From
DraftKings Official MLB Hall Of Fame At Cooperstown.*
China ran an organized
disinformation campaign to cover up the
imprisonment and brainwashing of a million Uyghurs. Twitter just closed it.
Air pollution kills
over 170,000 people per year in Europe.
I'd guess it's a comparable amount in the US. It's population is around 3/4
of the EU's, but I think it treats poor people worse.
Part of Australia regularly jails minors under inhumane conditions,
giving them only
an hour per day outside the cell.
Even children are jailed.
The atmospheric river that flooded British Columbia
killed
over half a million
farm animals, as well as destroying buildings, roads and bridges.
All kinds of infrastructure were inadequate for such a flood, but
improving them will be a never-ending game of catch-up unless we stop
making the climate worse.
A mob of religious fanatics in Pakistan
lynched
a foreign factory
manager who was accused of "blasphemy".
*The Republican party is
abandoning
democracy and embracing political
violence.*
There are so many Indian students in US universities that
caste
prejudice has come with them. Some US universities are taking measures
to resist it.
We don't know how long the phenomenon of Dalits has existed in India.
Some say that in the period 600-1000, when Hindus took control in India
and crushed Buddhism, they oppressed the Buddhists and that oppression
made them Dalits.
How prosecutors convinced
Alice
Sebold that Anthony Broadwater was the man who raped her.
I've read that Sebold's memoir, Lucky, has been from withdrawn from sale.
The article did not say whose decision that was.
It would be wrong to continue selling it as it was written. However,
an idea occurs to me. Sebold could invite Anthony Broadwater to add
an epilogue to it, and publish that version with the income going to
Broadwater and/or pertinent organizations for justice.
If a place has "historical and cultural significance" to some group,
does
that imply there must not be a lithium mine there?
I am not convinced.
Lithium is important for defending the climate. We must not block
lithium mining based on sentimentality alone.
There are things whose physical presence can justify blocking any sort
of mine. If a site holds historical or scientific information, or
important art that can't be moved, those call for protection.
However, it may be sufficient to keep the mine away from those
important things rather than outside the entire area.
Other scarce resources, such as water, and endangered species and
ecosystems, are also important to protect. Mines tend to leak
pollution, and mining companies often try to weasel out of their
responsibility for the pollution they cause. There should be no mine
unless reliable clean practices are enforced by a disciplinarian that
the mine cannot fire or disobey. Those precautions would make the
lithium more expensive, but the lithium may be worth that cost.
However, we need not forego lithium because of anyone's sentimentality.
In this regard, I do not discriminate between indigenous people and
anyone else.
I'd be in favor of moving part of Arlington National Cemetery to make
way for a lithium mine, if necessary. The cemetery's importance to
people is not due to its location, but to their sentiments about the
veterans buried there. We can respect those sentiments by moving the
graves to a different location to enable mining the lithium.
*Fair Elections and
U.S.
Constitution Come Under Attack at ALEC Meeting.*
In Papua New Guinea, as in the US,
Christian
faith spreads Covid-19.
When people catch Covid-19 shortly after vaccination — before the
vaccine has time to become effective — the faithful make an illogical
leap and claim the vaccine killed them. They want to believe the
vaccine is harmful, so they find excuses to be fooled by. Often it is
fatal.
Don't let this happen to you — get vaccinated!
*Biden Invites Venezuelan Coup Leader
Juan
Guaidó to US "Summit for
Democracy".*
President Maduro doesn't always respect democracy,
but
he does so more than Guaidó.
And much more than US Republicans.
The bullshitter held an event at the White House with relatives of deceased
US soldiers, then accused them of
infecting
him with Covid-19. He had had a positive test the day before.
In other words, he risked infecting them, then knowingly made a false
accusation. That gives a good overall picture of what he is.
(satire) *NASA Delays Space Walk After It Starts
Snowing
In Outer Space.*
The FERPA law was passed to stop schools from handing out students' personal data to companies.
The
US government changed and reinterpreted the law so as as to facilitate
and even require such snooping.
Amazingly, someone has accused the
Yes
Men of inventing disinformation
A new process can reportedly reduce methane emissions from
cow
dung while improving its nitrogen content as fertilizer.
It remains to be seen how well this actually works in practice when scaled up
to higher quantities.
This method won't eliminate all the methane emissions from cows.
They also emit methane through farting.
Twitter's new policy of deleting images posted without the consent of
the people shown in the image seem well-meant,
but
could prohibit posting any street photography.
I've proposed the criterion that occasionally snapping people on the street
should be legal,
but
systematically collecting photos of everyone should be illegal.
*Last-minute attempt to stop Shell’s
[seismic]
exploration of whale breeding grounds [off South Africa].*
Seismic exploration can injure whales' (including dolphins') hearing, which may kill them.
Large PR companies have worked for decades inculcating a
conceptual
framework to guide people to reject climate defense action
while trying to remain unidentified.
The culpable companies include Cerrell, Edelman, Glover Park, and Ogilvy.
56% of workers in the gas and oil industry, world wide,
would
rather work in renewable energy.
Those companies fired many workers last year, and some refuse to come
back. But there will be room for all of them in renewable energy
if we invest funds to make it grow.
Democrats in Congress called on the Attorney General to end
Chevron's
use of a US court to persecute Steven Donziger.
Senator Durbin has proposed to legislate to give each prisoner in
Guantanamo
a real, civilian trial, or release him.
I support this, but there are a few details that need attention.
First, what about prisoners that were tortured into confessions?
I think those confessions will be inadmissible in real US trials,
which could mean that they can't be convicted of anything.
Charges against them ought to be dropped, but will the proposed
amendment do this?
Second, what will the US do about prisoners that face no charges but
have no country they can safely go to? That is not a justification to
keep them in prison.
I think it is ok to let them live in the US if they wish. A handful
of non-citizens in the US, even if they wish revenge, will not make
any significant difference to the security of Americans. They will be
insignificant compared with all the unidentified people who do or will
feel that way.
Third, what about those who find a home abroad and wish revenge?
There are so many people that wish for revenge against US
military violence that these would make no significant difference.
The cause of US price inflation is that corporations
which
were making big profits saw an opportunity to make even more profits.
(satire) *Nation’s Embattled CEOs
Announce
We Just Gotta Do Better,
Simple As That.*
*Labor group says
Amazon
massively under reported Covid cases contracted at work.*
Acton Business Fairs give children (and younger teenagers)
an
easy chance to start a real business on a small scale.
Sometimes they make substantial money. I expect that most do not
succeed to that point, but they can learn a lot even so.
Mega-activities that put some sort of waste into
the
ocean will eventually cause mega-damage.
It is feasible to put an end to
transmission
of HIV, with money and attention.
Spotify flaunts how
it
tracks what each user listens to, and invites users
to boast about Spotify's knowledge of them.
This devious scheme is all the more vicious because it operates at an
emotional level which most the manipulated victims can't even recognize
as manipulation.
Out, out damned Spotify! If you can't stop yourself from using it yet,
at least stop yourself from promoting it.
If you have the strength to reject streaming, you can proudly say this
How about this slogan:
If someone chides you by saying that sharing is illegal,
you can respond with, "The music companies bought the law,
but they can't make sharing wrong."
What sharing slogans can you think of?
George Monbiot:
*Jailed
for 51 weeks for protesting? Britain is
becoming a police state by stealth.*
The article spells out the details. Being near the expected site of a
protest would be grounds for searching people to check for suspicious
equipment, such as signs or handouts. Almost any sort of support for
a protest would be grounds for imprisonment.
It reminds me of what I've read about Hong Kong.
Salafi Arabia bribed and threatened other countries to
get them to vote
to terminate the UN investigation of its war crimes in Yemen.
Xiomara Castro has
won
the election in Honduras.
Calling for removal
of computers from elementary school, on the
grounds that their use (beyond occasionally) is bad for education.
I am not an expert on pedagogy, but I know that those computers are running
nonfree (unjust) software, and much of it has
malicious
functionalities —
snooping on the children, and addicting them to systems that
manipulate them. So I concur with the recommendation.
Doctors warn that Medicare's new "direct contracting" amounts to
a plan to
privatize and ruin it.
The wrecker started the plan, but Biden has not stopped it.
Michael Mann's book,
The
New Climate War, describes how planet
roasters have abandoned denial of the climate crisis and turned to
distraction, and blaming millions of individuals for succumbing to the
social pressures that the roasters have set up.
He disagrees partly with Thunberg, saying that we should not despise
the compromise policies recently adopted by governments. They are
inadequate, but they are motion in the right direction.
When a powerful organization leads and pressures weaker and
disorganized people to do something harmful, both the organization and
the individuals are morally culpable — but if we want to make an
effective change, we must above all attack the organization.
(satire) *Dr. Scholl’s Introduces
New
Amputation Kit For Dry, Cracked Feet.*
*The Federal Trade Commission
Has
the Power to Break Up Big Tech.*
Dozens of former Afghan government soldiers and officials have been
killed
or disappeared since the Taliban took over.
The Taliban's leaders say this is not the Taliban's policy, and
perhaps that is true, but it seems that they are not in control of what
the Taliban actually do.
Republicans are
trying
all possible avenues in parallel to prevent
future free and fair elections in the US, and their threat is real.
What I don't know is, how can we stop them from succeeding?
New Zealand will
legalize the practice of testing the illegal drugs
that people plan to take, to assure them that the drugs have the
expected contents and dose.
New York City will
open
supervised injection sites,
but no testing as yet.
*What
should we make of the US assurances regarding how Assange would
be treated if extradited?* They are worthless, because they rule out
only a few special kinds of torture. Torture and brainwashing are
standard practice in US prisons.
An appeals court
upheld
California's law that prohibits large magazines.
I worry that the Supreme Court will reject it.
Fungi
in the soil that connect plants sequester lots of carbon in soil,
but modern agriculture and global heating are destroying them.
When
the FBI tries to recruit a non-US-citizen as an informant, it
first offers positive inducements; but if those don't persuade per,
they may start harassment of per, even per friends too. They put Aswad
Khan on the no-fly list, then put his friends on it too; this terrorized
everyone who knew him, so they broke off contact and left him isolated.
This behavior is what I would have expected from the KGB. It hurts
that my country is guilty of it. The secrecy and arbitrariness of the
no-fly list must be eliminated.
I foresee that Khan will be compelled to turn, for friendship and
business, to Pakistanis that are hostile to the US. The FBI has left him
no other way to go. His friends must feel resentment to the US also.
Putin is making
bellicose demands, threatening to start a war
if the west does not obey.
Specifically, he threatened to attack if western countries send troops
to Ukraine, or even sell Ukraine antiaircraft missiles that could help
resist the threatened Russian attack. This while Russian troops and
proxies remain in Ukraine.
Rather than be intimidated, the west should do exactly what was right
to do last week: give Ukraine weapons to help it mount a better
defense but don't threaten Russia, point out that this is no threat,
and expect Putin to do the sensible thing.
Meanwhile, European allies must recognize that approving the Nord
Stream 2 gas pipeline would be surrendering to Putin and to global
heating at the same time.
The US doesn't
try its best to investigate civilian casualties from
its air raids, nor to avoid them.
Omicron
was infecting people in Europe before it was reported from
South Africa.
Does this mean that blocking travel from southern Africa is useless?
It can't possibly keep Omicron out of Europe or the US, but it may
delay the growth of Omicron cases for some period of time. Since we
may be a race against the time to develop a new vaccine, that delay
is important.
However, once the number of daily new cases in some non-African
country far exceeds the rate at which travelers from Africa might
bring more cases, continuing the ban on travel from Africa to that
country will do negligible good, so it will be time to end the ban.
Rain will be more
common than snow in the Arctic, a few decades from now.
This will rapidly destroy the permafrost, and perhaps release
enormous quantities of methane stored in it. That could cause a chain
reaction of global heating.
*Pfizer Is Lobbying to
Thwart
Whistleblowers From Exposing Corporate Fraud.*
Business-dominated
globalization of trade was supposed to give poor countries
massive trickle-down, but it didn't.
Maybe they should reject the WTO.
Criticizing "presenteeism",
the demand that workers be present when
scheduled even if that is making them too ill to do actual work.
Why Extinction Rebellion
protested
by blocking Amazon distribution centers.
It cites reasons that are only indirectly related to
global heating.
I agree with those reasons, and they are among the reasons I urge
people to boycott Amazon. But I tend to think that Extinction
Rebellion should keep a sharp focus on climate defense, and avoid
blurring the focus by bringing in tangential issues of any kind.
Union workers are energizde to fight "two-tier" contracts, which say
that new
workers will be treated worse than the old workers.
This practice not only locks in future cuts in pay and working conditions,
it also breaks the solidarity of the union. I doubt that employers will shed
even two tears about that.
US citizens: call on Congress to
support
diplomacy with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to legislate to
offer
college at no charge.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your Senators to act now to
confirm
Jessica Rosenworcel and Gigi Sohn to the FCC.
Also to act to reinstate net neutrality, even the
limited
form that existed in the US before
the
wrecker got rid of it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
remove
Senator Joe Manchin as
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word.
The defense lawyers in the Guantanamo kangaroo court
accuse
the prosecutors of bending over backwards to conceal information about how the accused were
tortured. They say it conceals more from them than it concealed from
journalists making FOIA requests.
This information is pertinent to the legal question of whether the
court should consider confessions that they gave a few months after
the end of their four years of torture. The fact that this question
needs to be asked demonstrates the injustice of these courts.
A scientific summary of the
possible
effects of the Omicron variant,
depending on three parameters that scientists are working on measuring.
New Zealand is considering adopting a law to
give
an artist a share
of the sales price when per work is resold.
This raises a number of moral issues.
New Zealand's proposed law it applies only to works that sell for more
than a thousand dollars. I would not begrudge 50 out of that for the
artist. As a practical matter, I'd be content with this law.
However, it is being presented as
"intellectual
property" and used
to boost the public's respect for that confused over generalization.
The bullshitter
challenges
Democrats to debate with him.
There can't be a real debate with the bullshitter unless there is a
referee that can penalize him. Otherwise, with each utterance, the
bullshitter will make up a new lie, and at the end, he will say, "I
won!"
Botswana's appeals court has ruled that
laws
prohibiting homosexual acts
are unconstitutional.
Barbados has proudly
broken its last connection with the British monarchy.
Barbados first removed
a statue of Admiral Nelson, for allegedly supporting
slavery.
According to Wikipedia, there is a debate about he whether did so.
A slaveholder published a letter from Nelson, after Nelson's death,
which contained an extremely harsh defense of slavery. Some argue
that this was inconsistent with the rest of his actions and claim
that the words were not written by Nelson.
A mob of religious fanatics
attacked
a police station in Pakistan
with the aim of kidnapping and lynching someone accused of blasphemy.
With all the surveillance technology in place in the US, and all the
laws passed for the war that's on drugs, finding and prosecuting
everyone that assists friends or strangers in getting an abortion
could
be as easy as pie.
Some students at Arizona State University demand that the university
expel Kyle Rittenhouse from a class, and
ban
him from campus, to cater
to their feelings.
The university must not grant any group of students the authority to
order the expulsion or banning of other students. To do so would grant
the first group arbitrary power.
Secret Chinese government papers show that the repression of Uyghurs was
ordered
by President Xi himself.
The UK plans a policy to
publish
summaries of the "algorithms" used for
making government decisions.
The article seems to equate "algorithm" to applications of machine
learning. Properly speaking, those are not specific algorithms.
Will the policy apply to algorithms in the proper sense, which don't
involve any machine learning, and can be precisely described by their
source code?
Either way, this is a small step forward. The state really ought to
use free software for all its computing, for the sake of
national
security and accountability, and release the source code when
there is no specific reason not to.
For software that makes decisions about people, it should always
release the source code — which, when machine learning is used, also
includes the trained neural net.
Nonetheless, it is an advance.
A court in Spain is
investigating
a company that snooped on Julian
Assange while he was in the Equadorian embassy, and has asked the US
for pertinent information about the company, but the US has made
excuses for not answering.
The defense tried to raise the issue of this surveillance in Assange's
extradition hearing, but hampered in various ways. The inability to
determine what the US had to do with the snooping may have harmed his
case.
The outcome of this investigation is directly relevant to whether
Assange will be extradited, so it is understandable that the US
tries to thwart the investigation. Understandable, but dishonest.
Calling on big global retail companies to
commit
to cutting the greenhouse
emissions of their shipping.
I think countries should tax the arrival of a ship based on the amount of
emissions it made in the voyage, increasing the tax rate each year.
The WHO calls for a treaty to
oblige
countries to share information
pertinent to future pandemics.
The information to be shared would include observed observations
and technology (including how to make medicines).
Why the stamp-out-every-outbreak approach is
still
advantageous for China.
When mainstream media warn that a country "risks being left behind",
that generally is pressure to yield to the plutocrats' orders.
Michael Cohen says that
prosecutors
know about the wrecker's crimes
and could "indict [him] tomorrow."
US citizens: call on Congress and the DOJ to
swiftly charge, arrest
and prosecute the wrecker's allies that refuse to testify.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
US citizens: call on your senators to
vote
against confirming Powell
as head of the Federal Reserve.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
Everyone: call on Call on AIG to
stop
insuring and investing in
fossil fuels.
In Honduras, the
corrupt president Hernández cannot run again. His
chosen successor is running against Xiomara Castro, the wife of former
President Zelaya
who was ousted by
the
US-approved coup.
People infected with the Omicron variant are
showing
up in various countries.
The cases we hear about were detected on entry and have been
quarantined, which means they don't imply that Omicron is being
transmitted in those countries.
It may in fact be spreading in them, but we don't have evidence about
it.
Here's an article whose premise is that the most important thing about
the world's response to
the
Omicron variant is how it treats the people
living in southern Africa where that variant emerged.
Of course, they should not be punished for Omicron. They did not do
anything to cause or help its appearance there; in particular, it
isn't their fault that they were not vaccinated. Unlike right-wing
anti-vaxxers in the US, the Africans did not choose by preference to
spread disease. It was the vaccine companies that caused Africans to
remain unvaccinated, by
chosing
to limit the vaccine supply.
But neither is there any reason to applaud the people of southern
Africa. They didn't do anything heroic. Not that that's a criticism
of them. As far as I know, there was nothing that they should or
could have done about Omicron.
So, how should we judge some countries' quick suspension of travel out
of southern Africa? It was the right thing to do. It was absolutely
necessary for protecting the rest of the world from the danger which
Omicron may represent.
Not knowing yet whether Omicron is dangerous enough to require cutting
off travel, nor whether Omicron was already spreading in their own
countries, leaders were compelled to try this protective measure in
case it could succeeded -- because delay would surely lose the
opportunity.
Whatever disappointment or expense it may be for people in southern
Africa to be blocked from travelling -- including citizens and
visitors both -- that is a small thing compared with the danger that
this measure may succeed in avoiding.
If it turns out that Omicron is not particularly harmful, these travel
measures will not last long. If it spreads globally anyway, obstacles
to international travel will be the least of the world's worries.
The important lesson to learn is that we must accelerate vaccination.
When we know what vaccine will stop Omicron, we must vaccinate everyone
before a worse variant has a chance to evolve.
The US Department of the Interior recommended addressing the future of
extracting oil and gas by
charging
companies a little more for it.
That would enable the US to get a bigger share of the profits from
destroying the world's future.
The people who wrote that report disregarded the matter at stake. I
would speculate that their loyalty is to the fossil fuel industry.
We have to question Biden and Haaland's judgment, and loyalties, for
leaving the report in the hands of those people -- and for continuing
to authorize more drilling.
One university has started the
Uyghur
genocide divestment movement.
*Police Aerial Surveillance
Threatens
Freedom to Protest.*
The Republican Party as a whole now
supports
threats of violence against
officials that don't bow down.
*"A core threat to our democracy":
threat
of political violence growing across
US.*
The German Green Party will get the
ministry
of Economy and Energy.
This should put the party in a good position to influence decarbonization.
*Alabama Miners Are
Still
on Strike After 8 Months.*
Exploiting workers is always bad, but if a coal mine treats its
workers well, it is nonetheless a danger to the ecosphere. What we
need is not the establishment of good working conditions in that coal
mine, it is to shut the mine and replace it with other employment with
good conditions.
Louisiana thugs appear to
falsify
records on the racial identities of
drivers they stop, so as to disguise their bias in deciding who to stop.
The UK has reevaluated the tax implications of certain complex banking
schemes that some people have used for many years, and sent them
unexpected
tax bills, some as much as hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Many cannot possibly pay. Some responded by suicide.
The UK has required
masks in stores and public transport, as a precaution
against the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, which has already
been found in the UK.
This will slow the spread of Omicron, but since people are still
allowed to eat together inside restaurants, the variant will surely
spread anyway. Basically, this is not enough.
Omicron has also been
found
in other European countries.
(satire) *Amazon To
Let
Warehouse Employees' Families Work
Thanksgiving Shifts Too.*
(satire) *Al Roker Reminds Macy's Parade Viewers All The Balloons They
See Today Are Up
For Adoption.*
Polls show that
Biden's
popularity has decreased, but the progressive
parts of his agenda remain popular.
The obvious way to stop most migrants from travelling to Britain
on small boats is to
set
up a workable system to let them apply
for asylum from elsewhere.
Given that 2/3 of them who reach Britain on boats do receive asylum,
the goal of keeping them away is misguided.
* [Indian] farmers will
continue
protesting until the government meets
several other demands, including raising the minimum price of their
produce, withdrawing legal action against some farmers, and paying
compensation to the families of hundreds of farmers who have died
as a result of the civil action.*
Bravo! People who are not rich can't trust Modi to keep a promise.
What Modi tried to do is Modi make individuals negotiate deals with
giant companies that face only small amounts of competition. That
puts the companies at a big advantage and leads the individuals to
ruin.
May countries have
restricted
entry from southern Africa where the
Omicron variant is believed to be spreading.
The other African countries need to restrict travel, too.
That is, if it isn't too late already.
A credit card called "Aspiration"
markets
itself as a way to protect the
climate, but its claims are full of cloud.
Affirmative action for university admissions could be thought of as
partially
counteracting the system that preferentially admits certain
privileged students -- mostly white.
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 object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The world might have avoided the emergence of the new Covid-19 variant,
that seems to be more infectious than Delta, by
removing the
artificial obstacles to faster manufacture of vaccines.
There are threats
of legal action against several countries which are
blocking this: Canada, the U.K., Norway, and Germany.
The term "intellectual
property" is a bogus concept which conflates
several disparate kinds of imposed monopoly, of which patent law is
just one. These laws are so different from each other that a
statement which generalizes about all of them, as that term leads
people to do, always spreads confusion.
Please join me in absolutely refusing to use the term.
California
plans to ban new oil wells within 3200 feet of homes,
schools and hospitals, to protect people from toxic chemicals that
escape into the air.
It would be more thorough to close the existing wells in those areas too.
But it might be politically and legally more difficult.
Oil companies plan to use Carbon Capture and Storage to get separate
CO2 and pump that into oil wells to force out more oil. That cycle
presumes that they
keep pumping out lots of oil -- it doesn't end
overemission, just reduces it a fraction.
(satire) *Worst Ways
Amazon
Exploits Workers During Black Friday.*
(satire) *Conservationist Breaks Down Sobbing While
Going Through Old
Box Of Extinct Species' Things.*
The US is slow to aid owners of rental housing to rebuild after a
disaster, so private
lenders use this as an opportunity for
profiteering.
The National Lawyers Guild in the US sent observers to monitor the
election in Venezuela. They, as well as European observers, found
that the
system was basically legitimate.
The Europeans criticized the disqualification of some candidates
before the election.
The conviction
of Ahmaud Arbery's murderers shows that the US justice
system can in fact work properly.
What is needed is to make that outcome reliable.
The defense lawyers did
everything
possible to appeal to the jury's
presumed bigotry, but the jury rejected the idea.
The organizers of the 2017 Charlottesville rally, which was embued by
them with the spirit of right-wing violence and inspired one supporter
to commit murder, have been
found
liable for 26 million dollars.
Squatters in Glasgow took over an old, vacant homeless shelter and put it into
use as a homeless shelter. (The city does not have enough of them.) Now
they
are fighting eviction.
The US government's Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is expected to
forgive
the college loans of half a million Americans.
That is a significant step, but what needs to be done is much more.
I estimate that there are tens of millions of Americans who have
college debt that they can't hope to pay.
(satire) *Janet Yellen Announces Americans Can
Use
Promo Code "THANKS"
For 10% Off All U.S. Goods And Services.*
*Biden Urged to
Fight
Big Pharma's Vaccine Greed at Key
WTO Meeting.*
*The jailing of a young climate protester is a
prime
example of Australia's authoritarian drift.*
* There is an ongoing effort to restrict what is considered “legitimate”
protest to that which is least effective.*
Ahmaud Arbery fell victim to the
systematic
propensity to persecute
black men, with methods that extend as far as murder. The conviction
of his killers had to cross hurdles of systemic racism.
The US has a shortage
of nitrogen fertilizer, partly caused by global
heating effects.
As long as people interact, society as a system continues to exist;
but the social fabric can become more or less protective, and more or
less constraining. Various movements have made
claims about the
causes of society's problems.
It seems to me that the success of Nordic democratic socialism, with
societies that still cohere, demonstrates that neither liberal
democracy nor socialism is inimical to the social fabric. My
hypothesis is that what tears apart the social fabric is oppressive
power, but the entity that exercises the power varies from situation
to situation.
A new UK law to
increase
the punishment for anyone that commits violence
against emergency service workers which unpredictably proves fatal,
is unlikely to have any deterrent effect.
The writer suggests it is only an occasion for value signaling.
California has legalized
building houses closer together, but various
exclusive areas are taking action to negate its effect.
This law is a good step, but it won't do enough to correct
California's housing shortage. That requires building apartment
buildings — lots of them.
Attorney General Merrick Garland says he will
rapidly
prosecute passengers
that interfere with flights.
Most of these incidents start when someone refuses to wear a mask.
I wonder if Rep. Gosar or Rep. Green ever refuses to wear a mask on a
plane. Probably they don't dare refuse, because they would really go
to jail if they did. Photos of them wearing masks, like decent people,
might show that they are not as heroic as they pretend to be.
People who are vaccinated against Covid-19 erroneously believe
that they are completely safe, and that they can't ever transmit the virus.
Both
beliefs are incorrect.
Vaccinated people are less likely to catch Covid-19 when exposed, and
less likely to transmit the virus if they are infected, but the
probability is not zero. You still need to wear a mask to reduce
those probabilities. You still need to keep distance from others.
These precautions can potentially drive R below 1 and make Covid-19
dwindle, if we keep doing all of them.
The US must bet on
deterring
Russian threats against Ukraine, or
decide to back down to them.
I think Putin is bluffing and will not attack if the US takes purely
defensive actions. He is an opportunist and grabs whatever is easy to
grab. Furthermore, all his threats are only hints; if he does not
attack, he will not have lost face. Thus, I think the US should take
the defensive actions, then negotiate.
A commitment not to invite Ukraine into NATO would not deny Ukraine
sovereignty, so I think it is ok to include in a peace deal, provided
this is matched with Russian concessions. The US could demand Russia
respect Ukraine's sovereignty by withdrawing support from the Donbas
separatists.
However, demanding return of the Crimea would be too much.
It is too late to undo that act of aggression.
*Justice
prevailed in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers. In
America, that’s a shock.*
I will not excoriate the defense attorneys for "playing the race
card", since it is their responsibility to try to obtain an acquittal.
What is significant is that they believed that appealing to racism was
the way to win. We all know that it sometimes does win, and that
reflects the fact that racism continues to be powerful and harmful in
the US.
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 object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The vaccine mandate for federal workers has been
very effective.
It is weakened a little by the policy of granting religious
exemptions. A religious belief is no grounds to give permission to
risk spreading disease. However, it appears that the magniture of this
weakness is fairly small, in the case of federal workers, so perhaps it
is not an important problem.
*US libraries report
spike
in organized attempts to ban books in schools.*
On the issue of whether MPs that are taking care of their babies
should be allowed
to bring them into Parliament.
I'm in favor of allowing MPs to bring infants into Parliament if this
is necessary in order to take care of them, provided the infants are
not disruptive. That way, Ms Creasy's baby would be allowed, but
Bogus Johnson would be kept out. ;-}.
Good news: India's
population has roughly stabilized, and the
traditional prejudice against daughters has decreased somewhat.
However, let's fight the anti-abortion propaganda that talks about
"killing" people "before being born"! "Foeticide" is a word that
right-wing fanatics use when they
imprison
women for having an
abortion,
or for having a miscarriage which they
allege
to have been an abortion.
The general practitioners of the NHS voted to
reduce
their working activities
as a protest (since an actual strike would be unethical and perhaps illegal too).
The UK government's practice of outsourcing government work and
services to private companies allows the work to
escape the scope of
the freedom of information act.
* A joint report by human rights bodies and environment groups has found
activists are increasingly
facing repression by Australian governments.*
The UK has canceled
flights from southern Africa until it has set up
hotel quarantine for passengers coming from there.
But it is too late — the new Covid-19 variant is
already in Belgium
and seems to be spreading there.
The Teamsters union
elected
new officers who know how to make it strong and effective.
Warning that the Ethiopian government
may
be planning to massacre the people
of Tigrayan ethnic origin in places under its control.
At the same time, Tigrayan forces are
120
miles from the Addis
Abeba.
It sounds like the Ethiopian government is on the verge of military
defeat, while the president asks everyone to rush to "the front" and
form a militia. Do they have military training? Fighting experience?
It sounds like bullshit broadcast for foreign consumption, except I
can't see how it is going to be effective for that purpose.
* The prime minister has always been unfit to lead, but now the media —
and even
his own party — are pointing it out.*
Poor neighborhoods in Britain have up to
10
years less life expectancy
than rich neighborhoods.
This seems to be due to the funding cuts for the NHS starting in 2010.
A foundation in the Netherlands accepts donated saplings removed from
paths, and gives
them to landowners that want to plant a tree.
*Rich countries
could
have prevented new Covid variant, say experts.*
They could have done this by liberating vaccine production so as to
vaccinate the whole world quickly.
While I agree with the article's stance, I have to criticize it for
falling for the propaganda trap of "intellectual property". It is a
mistake to say that "intellectual property is bad," or to say that
"intellectual property is good," because the term is an
incoherent
over generalization about laws that have very little in common.
The vaccine production issue is partly about patents. Waiving patent
rights would totally eliminate that problem. The vaccine production
issue also concerns trade secrets — but in a totally different way.
What's needed is to order companies to divulge their secrets.
The WTO can't do that, but maybe national governments can do it.
*Myanmar junta accused
of forcing people to brink of starvation.*
* Climate activists have
blockaded
Amazon distribution centres across
the UK to highlight the company’s treatment of its workforce and what
they say are its "environmentally destructive and wasteful business
practices."*
Spain's socialist government plans to
repeal
the law that prohibited
publishing photos of thugs caught in criminal acts.
More
info about this law.
70% of Democrats, 70% of Republicans and 70% of independents want the
US
government to do more to prosecute crime by corporations.
(Yes, it's 70% in each group.)
(satire) *Serta Recalls
200,000
Mercy Killing Pillows.*
Door-to-door outreach for progressive
Democrats
in rural North Carolina, where Republicans often run unopposed.
The CEO of JP Morgan bank retracted a joke he made that was gently at
the
expense
of the Chinese Communist Party.
Is it good for the US that its biggest banks quiver at the thought of
offending China?
High school students did a class project about V for Vendetta.
The
thugs that patrol the school tore down the project's posters.
It appears they believe their job includes censorship as well as
launching students into the
school-to-prison pipeline.
I hope the students convert their protest into a campaign to make
the school safer help by sending those thugs out of the school.
Amazingly, Republicans are attacking Democrats for the tax cut they
are proposing to
give
to rich people
Republicans officials care nothing for consistency -- they passed
bigger tax cuts for the rich, but that does not inhibit them from
criticizing one when Democrats are responsible. They don't believe
their supporters are coherent enough to criticize the Republican
officials for their own tax cuts for the rich.
Since this tax cut for the rich is indeed a bad thing, the Democrats
should wise up and take it out of the bill.
In addition, Republicans are blaming Biden for the
increase
of Covid-19 in the US, which Republicans caused by opposing masks and vaccination.
What it comes down to is, the America's saboteurs are blaming
America's (far from perfect) defenders for being thwarted by their
sabotage.
The company that proposed the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline is
using NAFTA (the original version) to
sue
the US for 15 billion dollars for cancelling the pipeline.
This exemplifies the danger of
business-supremacy treaties such as
NAFTA to efforts to save the world's ecosphere from fossil fuel.
Too much power in the US is in the
hands
of entities unaccountable to the people.
Republicans are working hard to assure that Congress and the presidency
become unaccountable too.
Netflix dodges taxes using
tax
havens, much like Amazon and other big companies.
China is fuming after the
US
invited Taiwan to participate in a democracy summit.
Taiwan's government is the only democracy in the whole territory that
China claims, so if this summit was to have any participation from
that territory, it could only be from Taiwan.
Residents of Massachusetts: support the bill to
stop suspending
driver's licenses over debt.
Apple has sued
the company NSO that made the notorious crack-and-spy program, Pegasus.
If this were the start of a general campaign by Apple to sue all
companies that make spyware for the iMonsters, it would be admirable
(though it would not excuse making the iMonster software nonfree).
But I don't expect that. I expect it will be limited to the snooping
done by programs that are not authorized to be on the machine at all
— which means, disregarding the bulk of snooping.
Shall we expect Apple to sue Google, Amazon, Zoom and Uber for
snooping on Apple users?
Shall we expect Apple to sue Apple for
snooping
on Apple users?
Cop Julia Crews shot Ashley Fountain Hall and wounded her severely,
through confusion (she thought she was pulling a taser). Afterward,
Ms Hall chose restorative
justice mediation instead of a criminal trial
for Ms Crews.
Five Georgia thugs are charged with murder for
pushing
a handcuffed man
into the pavement.
The left
alliance won the Venezuelan election, while Guaido's
golpista alliance is generally despised and won almost nothing.
The democratic opposition, more popular than the golpistas, did win
some offices.
The child-care funding in the Build Back Better (relief) bill
requires
state approval in each state.
Republicans may use their power in many states to block approval,
because they expect that suffering in the US will be blamed on Biden
and Democrats.
Starbucks workers in some stores are
holding
union elections. The
company has closed some stores, and is calling workers in for pressure
harassment sessions in others.
I have hardly ever done business with Starbucks, simply because their
products don't appeal to my tastes. (I don't like coffee, for
instance.) So I can't boycott Starbucks in any nontrivial way. But
maybe you can. If you go to a Starbucks store where you have often
bought something, ask for the manager, and say that you're going to
boycott Starbucks because of its anti-union harassment.
* DoorDash to pay
$5.3 million to S.F. couriers over alleged violations of past
benefits*
(satire) *NFL Study Finds
Concussion
Symptoms Completely Disappear If
You've Had An Even Number Of Concussions.*
(satire) *Fish Way
Too High On OxyContin Runoff To Give A Shit About
Species' Inevitable Extinction.*
* Lush has announced it is
closing
its accounts on Facebook,
[81]Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok until the social media sites do a
better job of protecting users from harmful [postings].*
Lush will not "ask customers to 'meet us down a dark and dangerous
alleyway'."
Biden raised
the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $15 per hour.
The world's wealthy must now
pay
for providing the vaccine that can
more or less put an end to malaria.
Norwegian journalists in Qatar, reporting on
how
foreign workers are
treated, were arrested and held for 3 days while they tried to go home
to Norway.
Michael Moore explains that the US plans a memorial for the dead of
the "Global War on Terrorism" — to
commemorate
only the Americans
that were killed, not the others that Americans killed.
I disagree with the article's final point. Moore asserts that
imposing poverty and suffering on many people, Americans and others,
constitutes "terrorism." I disagree. The proper word for that is
"oppression."
"Terrorism" is something much more specific — making war on
civilians. For all sorts of other systematic cruelty, the word
"oppression" is strong enough condemnation.
*El Salvador rights groups
fear
repression after raids on seven offices.*
*Atlantic fishing nations agree to
ban
catches of mako, world’s
fastest sharks.*
The killers
of Ahmaud Arbery have been convicted of murder.
Norway's parliament is fractious, but its prime minister
demonstrates
respect for democracy.
India's apple orchards are mainly in Kashmir, and an apparent change
in the climate is
wiping
out the apples year after the year.
Most US officials are quite
reluctant
to reconsider old criminal
convictions based on science that we now know to be false.
In the name of justice, there ought to be a systematic effort to find
these cases and reconsider them.
*Seven doctors
contract
Covid after attending Florida anti-vaccine summit.*
Opposition to vaccines is indicative of an irrational approach towards
medicine, which in a doctor says you shouldn't choose that one.
Keeping Jerome Powell as head of the Federal Reserve will
interfere
with climate defense and can interfere with helping the non-rich.
Keeping inflation down will harm Americans who are in debt, and that is a large fraction.
As for diversity, appointing women or blacks could in principle inject
a little more awareness of what it's like to face individual and
systemic discrimination. That would be the case with a
randomly-chosen woman or black. But these nominees would hardly be
randomly chosen; they would be bankers, and likely to hold
plutocratist views regardless of other personal details.
Kay Raworth's "doughnut model" of
economics
is briefly described near the end of this article.
As presented here, it seems to make a valid point, but I think the
article makes a conceptual error in calling it an "economic model" and
presenting it as an alternative to profit-based behavior economics, as if
the two were different answers to one question. I think they answer
two different questions.
Profit-motivated economics invites people to ask, "How can I get ahead?"
Raworth's economics invites people to ask, "What do we all need?"
The president of Cop26 presents
the
"half full" appraisal of the results of that event.
Teachers can't be neutral in the classroom about politics when
one
political party has declared war on the idea of truth.
The Missouri bill cited in the article is interesting, because it
juxtaposes a valid point with an invalid point, in such a way as to
partly hide the latter.
It is wrong to teach that certain groups of people are inherently or
immutably racist, or inherently or immutably hold any views
whatsoever, because such is prejudice. People vary, and people can learn.
However, teaching that certain groups of people are systemically
oppressed, or that certain institutions are systemically racist, is
legitimate because that is a verifiable fact about existing systems.
Here's
one example of verification.
This truth doesn't conflict with the truth that people vary and that
people can learn. Systems can change, too, but that doesn't deny that
they are now what they are now.
The bill groups people with institutions, and groups "inherently" with
"systemically", so as to confuse.
US citizens:
phone your congresscritter and senators to support the law to restart postal banking.
US citizens: call on
call
on the Senate to pass the For the People Act.
For voting rights reform.
US citizens: call on
Wall
Street to stop funding insurrectionist Republicans.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to insist on
substantial cuts in the military budget, and suggest adding the funds
to the Build Back Better (relief and climate) bill.
I got a campaign you could use to send a message to your senators,
but since it requires nonfree Javascript code, I could not use
it and I will not refer others to it.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
The missiles that Biden wants to sell to
Salafi Arabia this time are
air-to-air missiles.
Since the Houthis have no air force, these missiles would not be
very useful for actual fighting against them. But they could be used
for blockading Yemen's airport.
A wild bee that lives two years
suffers
reduced reproduction in its
second year after a single exposure to imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid
pesticide) in its first year.
The UK has put a
maximum
amount any person must pay for medically
needed home care. Beyond that amount, it will be gratis
until they change the law.
However, the limit is so high that it leaves the poorer old people in a
bad situation where they
will
need to sell their homes.
Australian climate activist Eric Serge Herbert has been
sentenced
to a year in prison for stopping a coal train.
Cuba's independently developed Covid-19 vaccines have
proved effective
protection.
Radio host Joe Madison is
on
hunger strike, demanding the passage of
effective federal voting rights legislation.
The mass poverty caused by the freezing of Afghanistan's assets
is causing the country's
banks
to start to collapse too.
* Environmentalists on Monday hailed the
shutdown
of Portugal's last
coal-fired power plant—a move that came nearly nine years ahead of the
government's 2030 target—while warning against converting the facility
to run on unsustainable biofuel.*
Biofuel made from microbes or from otherwise-worthless agricultural
waste would be a very efficient fuel, but government incentives (in
the US and the EU) promote
growing
crops such as corn with
fertilizer made from oil only to convert them into fuel
-- a practice we could call "biowashing the oil."
(satire) *Tucker Carlson Late To Work After
Being
Murdered By Hordes
Of Violent Minorities Again.*
*Raids, Arrests, and Death Threats: Israel's
Strategy of Silencing
Human Rights Defenders.*
These attacks against Palestinian human rights organizations began
over a decade ago. Arbitrarily labeling them "terrorist" was just
the latest step.
Medea Benjamin claims that the US is
arming
Ukraine offensively
against Russia and looking to start a war.
Her arguments are logical based on the one-sided understanding of the
situation that the article presents -- in which Putin's actions cannot
be judged, and the US is automatically to blame if Putin starts a war.
That approach grants legitimacy to any aggression he might try.
It is Russia that has
launched
armed warfare against Ukraine, first by
seizing Crimea, then by
organizing
a rebellion near the Russian border —
accompanied in both cases by duplicity. There was also the
attempt to
seize power in Odessa.
Putin is an audacious,
opportunistic, power-grabbing bully that despises truth, much like the
wrecker.
Taking an attitude of "make sure
never to cross his red lines" toward Putin is equivalent to "give him
whatever he grabs, and always back down."
The natural way to resist that is to arm Ukraine for defense, but not
start a fight. To confront Putin's red lines with other red lines, so
that both sides will let the situation stabilize and quiet down.
What the US is doing looks like that to me.
*India’s farmers have won — but this
doesn’t
mean Modi is softening.*
China's leaders ask, "Why do you make such a fuss about our
disappearing Peng Shuai, when the
other
things we are doing are
millions of times worse?" ;-{.
Right-wing extremists are
pressuring
the city councils of small cities
to ban abortion.
*Want to fight for climate action but feel daunted or powerless?
Try this.*
*XTRA GUAC: Here’s Everything Enbridge Is
Buying
Cops to Fight Protesters.*
US citizens: call on the Senate to
pass
the Build Back Better (climate
and relief) bill.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to
fully protect
Mexican gray wolves.
US citizens: call on senators to
pass the PRO
Act, to help workers unionize.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
The US has been recognized as a
"backsliding" democracy.
*How the chemicals
industry's [greenhouse gas] pollution slipped under
the radar.*
*I’m a therapist to the super-rich: they are
as
miserable as Succession
makes out.*
Their children can be totally messed up.
However, as a billionaire, you can always spend the rest of your life
developing a line of space ships.
Canadian national thugs
arrested
anti-pipeline protesters
and two journalists who were with them.
High-pressure schooling, pushing children into tutoring, tends to
hurt
the children while giving additional advantage to those with the
richest parents.
If the tutoring is a temporary attempt to make up for time lost while
schools were closed or remote, it may disappear of its own accord.
But if it continues, I think it may be a reflection of too much
competitiveness in society -- a consequence of the large fraction
of people that nowadays are poor.
In the UK, sentences
for crimes are getting longer, but this has not
had any effect on the likelihood of committing another crime.
Yet another one of the few instances of attempted voter fraud in 2020
was traced
to a Republican.
Alas, proving that Republican propaganda was false is ineffective at
thwarting their lie campaign. The campaign had drilled the belief
into millions of Americans' heads, by
organizing
so many sources to
spread the disinformation,
and now they reinforce each others'
beliefs, regardless of evidence.
*Justin Bieber called on by fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi to
cancel Saudi
Arabia concert.*
Most independent US retailers will
shut
their web sites on Friday
to protest "black friday" and Amazon.
People demand that the UK government publish
the
algorithm by which it
decides whom to accuse of welfare fraud.
*Covid Killed
More Americans in 2021 Than 2020, and the GOP Death Cult
Is Mostly to Blame.*
That's some 390,000 in 2021 and some 385,000 in 2020.
Ralph Nader: the
right
to sue big companies for injuries they cause,
and get damages enough to make them avoid injuring people, is getting
chipped away step by step by courts and legislatures.
The EU is considering funding a new gas pipeline to fuel a power plant
in Malta. This should be an outrage -- how dare the EU consider doing
something so dangerous?
This power plant may be linked to
the
assassination of journalist
Daphne Caruana Galizia.
I hope her murderers, including those who plotted the murder, are
caught and convicted, and they should not be allowed to profit from
their crime. But when it comes to whether to subsidize a fossil-fuel
pipeline, we need to focus on the main issue: building fossil fuel
infrastructure endangers everyone. This pipeline can kill thousands
of people, and help kill millions.
Suppose that there had been no assassination and Ms Caruana Galizia
were still alive. Would that make it acceptable to subsidize fossil
fuel infrastructure? Surely not.
Sudan's military government agreed to
release
political prisoners
and share power with the civilian government again.
The article explains how this doesn't mean that all's well in Sudan,
but it's at least a step in the right direction.
Several kinds of medical devices were
designed
based on whites or
based on white males, and can give bad results for other patients.
The UAE has used Interpol for
revenge
against political "crimes".
This is additional reason to be concerned about the possibility that
a UAE official might become president of Interpol.
The problem with Interpol is systemic: other countries have used
Interpol for repression of dissidents, because
it
is effective for
that purpose.
It seems to me that avoiding
the election of one potentially bad president is not enough to address
the problem. Its system for handling red notices needs modification
so that other countries will think twice about a suspect named in one,
rather than reflexively arresting per.
Papua New Guinea is on track to
vaccinate
1/3 of its population
against Covid-19 in five years.
The rest of the world must provide more vaccine.
Australia's government is right-wing in general, not only planet-roaster.
It allowed
hunger to spread in Australia since a decade ago.
The University of Austin's roster of personnel is
full of right-wing
thinkers, and has no progressives. Nadine Strossen says that that's
not by choice.
The author suggests that the progressive propensity to cancellation
has made academics with leftist views scared to get involved. It
would be a shame if the founders really want to welcome all views, and
a self-fulfilling prophecy dooms the University of Austin to be the
right-wing advocacy group that its current roster suggests.
Rio Tinto wants to
open
a large lithium and boron mine in Serbia.
That would be very useful for renewable electricity, but the mine
can be toxic.
We can divide the mine's pollution risks into two kinds: local and
regional. Rio Tinto can avoid harming local residents and farmers by
buying them out at a price sufficiently above the market value that
they will be able to move elsewhere easily.
The regional risks, such as polluting rivers, are more difficult. The
world can't afford to risk the long-term ruination of fresh water
supplies. As one of the farmers said in the article, you can't trust
Rio Tinto's word that the mine will be safe. Serbia must consult
independent experts about what precautions could make sure that the
mine does not pollute them, and then insist on those precautions.
Congresscritters should be
entirely
forbidden to trade in stocks.
Two former prisoners of the UAE, jailed and tortured for supporting
the wrong football team, campaign to
stop
a UAE official from becoming
the head of Interpol, because he was the inspector general in charge
of preventing and stopping torture.
Protesters blocked
three bridges in London in solidarity with the
climate protesters of Insulate Britain,
who were jailed for blocking a
highway as a protest to demand specific climate defense actions.
Insulate Britain's demands are valid, and the inconvenience their
protest caused was trivial compared with the inconvenience they are
trying to avert. However, their method of protest backfired, so they
need to find a more effective method.
Boston has decided to
divest
the city's funds from fossil fuel
companies.
Arguing that resource limits and degradation of the natural world
will put
a limit on economic growth soon.
The US temporarily
transferred some FBI agents to the CIA, and they
tortured prisoners along with the other CIA agents.
Medicare Advantage companies
overcharge
Medicare, and the burden of that
contributes to making Medicare more expensive.
I don't see evidence that there is a plan to abolish basic Medicare,
but even without that, it is still a significant problem.
To reduce greenhouse emissions from transport, electric cars are
just
the first step.
Amazon's lobbying, and funds to buy legislators, has
killed many US state
bills to increase privacy requirements.
Amazon collects so much data about individuals that it
can't keep track
of whether all of it is secure against third parties.
None of it is secure against Amazon itself.
The next world climate conference
will
have no unofficial protests,
because it will be in Egypt.
Holding summits in inaccessible places was one of the ways
plutocratist
leaders prevented
mass protests after the meetings in Seattle.
Studies of Hitler's holocaust show:
the
cumbersome machinery of the state is the last protector of the vulnerable.
Hitler, and likewise other totalitarian rulers, established parallel
structures to work their will, bypassing rule-bound state structures
that were less ready to follow shocking orders. These included the SS
and the Red Guards, and perhaps now the Oath Keepers.
Another similar case: the US destroyed the Iraqi state structure,
and this led to a bloody civil war, followed by
PISSI.
Proposing a simple rule-based system for
funding
support for poor countries to deal with global heating.
I think that all the major emitters should be taxed the same on new emissions.
*Nearly two-thirds of people who migrate to the UK in small boats are
deemed to be
genuine
refugees and allowed to remain.*
Florida, dominated by the Covid-19 party, has passed a law banning
vaccine mandates unless they permit religious exemptions.
before
global heating damage causes it to collapse.
The idea of a religious exemption for vaccination is absurd. Whatever
your religion says, it cannot excuse you from public health
requirements.
A future history for this century: if a new Chinese illiberal world order
replaces the liberal but imperialist US world order, it won't last long
before
global heating damage causes it to collapse.
US citizens:
call
on Twitter to expel Paul Gosar.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to end gerrymandering.
US citizens: call on
Senator
Manchin to pass the Build Back Better Act now.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to
stop
the sale of oil leases in Cook Inlet in Alaska.
Biden supports negotiating
a
treaty to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean.
I've read that the main source of plastic waste in the ocean
is from abandoned
fishing lines and nets.
Some of them go on entangling and killing wildlife until they break down.
A treaty could require all fishing boats to return all unusable lines and nets
for safe disposal.
*Markey Amendment Would
Redirect
1% of Funds From 'Bloated' Pentagon
to Address Climate Crisis.*
This bill would cut the military budget by 8 billion dollars and spend
the money on improving US national security by helping poor countries
cope with global heating effects.
(satire) *Texas Bans Access To
Tall
Staircases In Case Women With
Unwanted Pregnancies Get Any Ideas.*
(satire) *Fannie Mae Issues Billions Of
Mortgage-Backed NFTs.*
The BBC has the same problem as mainstream US media in
trying to be
impartial when covering a party that attacks the idea of truth.
Northern Sweden is
making
large factories for batteries and steel, to
run on copious hydroelectiric power, and seeks 100,000 people to move
there for jobs.
*Pollutionwatch: the
double
benefit of cutting methane emissions.*
Recognizing an
error in the date of the supposed first reported case
of Covid-19 makes it clear that the outbreak started at the Wuhan wet
market.
*White-supremacist prison guards
work
with impunity in Florida.*
It's not much better in the rest of the US. Many prisons (and
thug
departments) make no effort to check whether a job candidate is an
overt racist.
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 object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
Private
kidnapers now add to Afghanistan's suffering.
US citizens: call on your Senators to
oppose
S.A. 4653 and any other
increases in military budget.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*US legislation banning [PFAs]
far
from certain as Senate fight looms.*
Some states have passed laws to ban them in paper products.
*Amazon Will Face
Black Friday Strikes and Protests in 20 Countries.*
Kashmiris accuse Indian thugs of
using
a few Kashmiris as human
shields in a gun-fight with supposed militant separatists, who may
not even have existed.
They buried the victims' bodies secretly, perhaps to prevent an autopsy
from learning the truth of how they were killed.
*US wildfires have
killed
nearly 20% of world's giant sequoias in two years.*
West coast US fishermen are suing fossil fuel companies because the
heating and acidification of the ocean are
interfering
with species to
be fished, and with the safety of catching and eating them.
Encouraging the murder of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made Rep. Gosar
a star
among right-wing fanatics, and won him an endorsement from the wrecker.
Compared with this, being censured and losing committee assignments
was insignificant, a price he considers worth paying. Indeed, he said
as much by tweeting that veiled call to murder a second time. Gosar
is boasting, "You can't stop me."
Democrats need to find a way to punish Gosar and others who stir up a
right-wing coup, one that will make them conclude that it isn't worth
the price.
* Copenhagen was a failure that demotivated activists, while Paris merely
placated them. But
Glasgow
has radicalized a generation.*
Boston has decided to
move
its municipal funds permanently out of
fossil fuels.
The city has no choice about investment of its pension funds, sad to say.
John Deere workers accepted a new contract,
considerably
better than what they were offered before the strike.
Economist Friedrich Hayek is revered by conservatives, who would be
shocked to find that he
endorsed
many aspects of Sanders's democratic
socialism.
Disposable diapers add up to a
large
fraction of plastic waste.
Kyle Rittenhouse was
acquitted
of all charges. It seems that
Rittenhouse made arguable claims of self-defense; which were helped to
dominate the outcome by the possible right-wing prejudice of the
judge, plus the all-white jury.
*Now it’s open
season on protesters.*
After all, lots of white jurors might be eager to acquit right-wingers that
kill protesters. This is a
right-wing
radicalization point.
That article projects the possible consequences of a willingness to let
right-wing vigilantes get away with killing protesters.
*As Kyle Rittenhouse Walks Free,
Republican Lawmakers
Fight
Over Who Loves Him the Most.*
*Austria plans compulsory
Covid vaccination for all.*
However, it will properly allow medical exceptions
for those who have a medical condition that precludes vaccination.
19 years imprisonment and torture, in Guantanamo and elsewhere, seem
to have driven Abdulqadir al Madhfari mad. When he was returned to
Yemen, he said his relatives were impersonators plotting against him,
and ran away.
Australia's planet roasters plan to reduce emissions using the
nonexistent
technology of burning biomass and capturing the CO2.
It might not be a bad thing to do, provided it uses waste plant
material which requires no cultivation, but should civilization bet
its survival on an untried extension of a technology that
so far has
failed?
*No country has met welfare goals in past 30 years
"without putting
planet at risk."*
* Looking at a sample of 148 nations, research by the University of Leeds
found wealthy countries were putting the future of the planet at risk
to make minimal gains in human welfare, while poor countries were
living within ecological boundaries but underachieving in areas such as
life expectancy and access to energy.*
This does not imply that it is impossible to provide everyone with a
good life while operating sustainably, only that the path countries
have taken does not lead there. Reducing luxuries for the rich, and
meat production (though meat is not limited to the rich), would help.
A smaller population would help a lot.
*Sudan pro-democracy activists
call
for escalation after lethal crackdown.*
The US and China have major political influence in Africa. I wonder
what the US is doing to influence developments in Sudan, and what
outcome it is pushing for, and likewise China.
Indian politicians have decided that it is
easier
to ban criticism of
the nation's problems than to do something about them.
In effect, they prefer to make people admire India rather than make
India admirable.
Every country has such exploiters. What is so bad for India is that
the ruling party and its supporters take that stance. Supporters of
the BJP are saying, "Don't make things better, lie to us instead."
That request will surely be granted.
How Republicans are
using
gerrymandering this year to guarantee
they get a majority in legislatures with a minority of votes.
The whole Republican Party has signed on to this "by hook or by crook"
system of seizing illegitimate power. It's not as violent as a military coup,
but in the long term it will kill more people.
Qatar's fancy hotels, recommended by the football association FIFA,
pay their workers
about
a dollar per hour.
Since the government forbids them to leave Qatar, they are effectively
slaves of their employer. To the extent that there are laws to protect
workers, the hotels violate them with impunity.
*The moral
case for destroying fossil fuel infrastructure.*
(And for canceling fossil fuel contracts by fiat.)
I previously suggested that Pacific island nations whose territory is
being inundated by global heating
could declare war on Australia and
counterattack by
sinking
some of Australia's coal-export ships.
It should be possible to do that in ways that allow the ships' crew
to get away in lifeboats.
They are starting to
organize
pressure on Australia and such.
About the Congressional panel that
investigated
the insurrection of 1860.
About Portugal's law
forbidding
employers to contact employees outside
work hours.
This is tremendously important for those for whom work is just a job,
for whom there is something else more important. And that's most
people, I think. But this rule can be devastating for people like me,
we who do work that is the center of our life, we for whom "family
time" usually means forced-to-wait time, and perhaps alone-and-bored
time too.
We need a way we can get out of this rule.
It can't be easy and arbitrary. If it's sufficient for a worker (or
contractor) to say, "Please let my employer contact me 24/7,"
employers will effectively coerce workers into saying that against
their preferences.
Perhaps everyone will have to have a free software volunteer project
to occupy perself with while cut off from the work project.
A country which has a law requiring small companies to respond somehow
within 24 hours — as some real or proposed internet
censorship laws
do — had better not require them to hire several people for this,
just to have someone available at every hour of every day.
*SF received $1.5 million to
explore
online voting. Critics think it’s
a horrible idea.
Using computers to receive and record votes is already
foolish
and dangerous.
Letting those computers communicate with anyone else is totally asking to lose.
*US mountain states
battle
wildfires despite impending winter.*
Biden's nominee for comptroller of the currency moved to the US from
the Soviet Union just after it collapsed. Republican senators tried
to call
her a communist simply because she was born there.
The Build Back Better relief bill includes a new tax on profits of large
corporations, which will
reduce
their tax dodging.
Not as much we ought to reduce it, but it is a step forward.
(satire) *Disney
Acquires
All Of America's Children For $52 Billion.
"Ship Them To Us And We Will Do As We Wish," Says CEO Bob Chapek.*
Experts criticize
Bill Gates's plan for "small" fission reactors
cooled by liquid sodium. The most obvious flaw is that the sodium burns if it gets in contact
with air.
Various
approaches to providing electricity at all times using renewable
sources.
New South Wales reopened activities with most people vaccinated, but kept
test-and-trace and mask requirements. Case rates have
remained very low.
China is flipping
out because Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a trade
office using the name "Taiwan".
Indian farmers made Modi announce he will
repeal
the laws they have
been protesting for a year.
But they don't trust his word on that, and they demand more.
See
for a description of these laws.
Testimony
in Salvini's trial for trying to stop a rescue ship carrying
147 refugees (rescued from small boats) from landing in Italy for a
long time.
The Woman's Tennis Association has shown courage in
standing up for
its disappeared Chinese member Peng Shuai.
Usually western companies and organizations are so desperate for
profits from China that they bow down to whatever China demands.
About several prominent Chinese who have been
disappeared, partly or
totally.
The list does not mention the
Panchen
Lama and his family.
*Climate campaigners
take
South Africa to court over coal policy.*
A large part of the "great resignation" which has caused the US labor
shortage involves working mothers who were forced to quit because they
couldn't
rely on schools as a place to put their children while working.
Perhaps economic considerations will convince states to allow mothers
to leave more children alone at home.
*US faces nurse
shortage from burnout.*
US citizens: call on
colleges
and universities to stop charging students for credits they accrued through unpaid internships.
A company tries to prejudge who is a criminal, or an extremist, or
whatever,
or
will become one of those things, based on people's Facebook social links.
The people that you communicate with on line tend to influence your
actions. Therefore, trying to predict what you will do (for instance,
commit crimes or not) based on such links ought to be more accurate
than chance.
Nonetheless, it is wrong to prejudge people that way. We have to judge
people based on what they actually do, not based on what they seemed
likely to do.
The EU is considering a directive to require companies sending various
agricultural products to the EU to prove
their
products were not related to deforestation.
The products proposed are beef, wood, palm oil, soy, coffee and cocoa.
If other big importers sign on to this, it could make a big difference.
The Tories want to give the British state the power to
cancel
someone's citizenship without even informing the person.
The victim would learn of this arbitrary act when trying to enter the UK.
*Report Finds Gruesome
Medical Malpractice and Death in Arizona Prisons.*
*South Korea has probably the
best
Covid response in the world. What
can the UK [or US] learn?*
*Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will
"legalize
deforestation," say critics.*
The US and China made a
reciprocal
deal about journalists' visas.
I think it is wrong for the US to
require
journalists to get special visas.
If you are allowed to be in the US, you should be allowed to publish
about what you see here.
At least, that should be the case for countries that have the same rules
for Americans.
*AI surveillance
takes
U.S. prisons by storm.*
Bernie Sanders opposes the Senate's plan for a
ten-billion-dollar
consolation prize to Bezos.
A large music venue in Colorado asks concertgoers to speed up the line
by allowing
palm scans.
Amazon says this is safe because the scans are sent over the
internet to an Amazon server. What happens to the data once there is
cloudy.
Many states are passing laws allowing just about anyone to
carry a gun
in public. This adds more danger to any confrontation.
The right to openly carry guns theoretically applies to everyone, but
in practice a black can't dare do it, since the first passing
thug is
likely to kill per.
(satire) *NFT Investor Reminds Skeptics
Everything Else In World
Stupid And Meaningless Too.*
New Zealand's antivax fanatics may be less than 1% of the population,
but they have given over to raving hatred, and
threaten others with
violent death as well as death by Covid-19.
It is everyone's duty to help protect the rest from Covid-19, and
letting this violent hatred stew will encourage them to get more
violent. I suggest that the government adopt a policy that whenever
they arrest someone, they use that opportunity to vaccinate per as well
(in the absence of medical reasons not to). Once anti-vaxxers see that
vaccination is not bad for them, they will find it hard to keep the
hate going.
I reworded the above paragraph on Nov 30 make comprehension easier.
It used to read, "I suggest that the government adopt a policy of
vaccinating everyone that is arrested."
*Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon
rises
by more than a fifth in a year.*
We now need to protect
the northern forests in Canada, Russia and the
US. They store a lot of carbon, and if they burn up, we can't
possibly replace them between now and 2050.
*Sanders Says Deficit Concerns
"Seem
to Melt Away" When It's Time to
Fill Pentagon Coffers.*
Sanders voted
against the military appropriations bill
to protest the Senate's prioritizing that over the spending that the
US really needs.
Belarus has pulled
the migrants out of the border area with Poland and
into Belarus, and given them food. Apparently Lukashenko has given up
on trying to use them to attack Poland.
*Hydrogen produced by fossil fuels is more expensive, will release
more greenhouse gas emissions and comes with a greater risk of
creating stranded assets,
according
to new research from the Australian National University.*
However, the former method of producing hydrogen would offer more
profits to the planet roasters.
The US plans to produce a billion doses of
Covid-19
(or other) vaccine per year.
This is good, but it doesn't make up for the developed world's insistence
on maintaining a monopoly that stops India and Brazil from doing this.
*Fossil fuel companies
owe
reparations to countries they are destroying.*
In principle, they do -- but there is a conflict between the goal of
extracting money from them for some other cause (worthy as it may be)
and the goal of ramping down their operations.
The "QAnon Shaman" has been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison
for
attacking the Capitol.
Two of the people convicted of helping to assassinate Malcolm X
were exonerated after it became clear that
prosecutors
concealed evidence in their trials.
We often find that this has happened in US trials. Correcting the
dishonesty decades later is better than not correcting it, but a
"justice system" that often lies in court is rotten. How can we
make prosecutors stop lying?
Mexican marines, trained by the US, are
disappearing
people for the US war on drugs.
British Columbia and Washington State have suffered a compound climate
disaster: massive fires,
followed
by rains on the denuded slopes which washed away the soil.
I fear that trees won't be able to grow back on those slopes, for want
of soil. Over the next decade, the mountains may become permanently
denuded in this way. To regenerate soil would require thousands of
years.
Both the fires and the rains were caused by
global heating.
"Atmospheric rivers" are more frequent now than they were in the past.
Apple said it would allow purchasers of
iMonsters
to repair them.
This would eliminate ijustices out of the many injustices of the iMonster.
Extreme rain, due to global heating,
has caused disaster in a large
part of British Columbia.
Landslides
have blocked roads.
All land routes into Vancouver are blocked, and railroads will take a long time to repair.
Much of the nearby city of Abbotsford has been flooded.
The flooded houses will probably have to be torn down and rebuilt.
Sudanese soldiers shot pro-democracy protesters in
Khartoum,
killing 14 of them.
The House took away Rep. Gosar's committee assignments to punish him
for posting
a
death threat.
What punishment could change their minds?
I've read that conservatives make moral judgments about people based
on how they obey authority and how much they follow cleanliness rules.
This suggests that an effective form of punishment would be
something that makes him appear disobedient and disgusting.
For instance, requiring him to wear a dirt-smeared rag instead of clothing.
Masks cut the number of Covid-19 cases by half --
even
among vaccinated people.
The Palestinian human rights groups that Israel labeled "terrorist"
still
receiving
support from foreign human rights groups.
Which reject the false labeling of them.
Australian climate activists have blocked a
coal
export terminal and used emergency switches to shut down its operations.
The state has threatened them with 25-year prison sentences. "It’s not
as scary as the future we are heading to" said a protester.
I think that all imprisoned nonviolent climate protesters will be
pardoned in at most 15 years. By then, no government will be able to
deny that they were heroes.
Metaverse schemes seen as new ways of reshaping the
internet
into a system to dominate and shape human beings.
*Patrick Leahy Announces He Won’t Seek
Reelection
To Make Room For Next Generation Of 70-Year-Olds.*
*New Report on "Grocery Cartels"
Details
Exploitive Retailer Monopolies.*
The US has only four major supermarket chains -- although there are
a lot of different brands, many supermarket brands are subsidiaries of
the big four.
Many specific kinds of foods also have too few competitors.
(satire) *Higher Prices May
Force
Americans To Eat Reasonable Portions On Thanksgiving.*
A 14-year-old black Londoner accuses the
thugs of racial profiling
after
they
stopped him on the street and searched him, 30 times.
There is evidence that using marijuana in
pregnancy
may cause aggression and anxiety for the resulting children.
However, this
result is tentative as the sample was small.
Marijuana use during pregnancy seems to cause many other problems for
the resulting children.
(satire) *Americans Assure Pentagon
They
Don't Care Enough To Make Cover Up Drone Strikes Worthwhile.*
The planet roasters'
new alternative to cutting fossil fuels is to
promote use of
natural
gas and call it "low carbon" fossil fuel.
It doesn't actually result in less greenhouse emissions, though.
The article compares this to "low tar" cigarettes, which putatively
reduced the danger of smoking but actually didn't.
Pfizer has licensed its new Covid-19 treatment for generic production
--
for countries containg half the world's population.
The other half, around 90 countries, it will probably gouge to get
the most possible money from each. The way to do that is by setting,
for each country, a price that many of its citizens can't afford.
Global heating effects are destroying the
ancient
rock art of ancient Austrailia
Some TikTok influencers are spreading functional neurological syndrome
(a
disorder including unconcious tics) by showing videos of them.
I believe showing these videos should be prohibited. People must be
free to express any ideas or points of view, but a tic is not a point
of view. People who see the tic videos and start imitating them are not
making a decision based on the video, they are falling prey to it.
The famous US court decision that it is a crime to shout "fire" in a
crowded theater was based on the argument that in such circumstances
people cannot take time to judge rationally how to respond.
This also reminds me of Triolet in "How to talk to girls at parties."
Europe's bird population has
declined
by 16% since 1980.
Germany has delayed certification of the new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
from
Russia
to Germany, on grounds of financial details.
This may not have any bigger significance, but I hope that it does.
Europe must limit its fossil fuel use, not expand it, and it needs to
limit Putin's power, not expand it.
Governments did not agree to a deal to save the ecosphere from global
heeting,
but
there are deals working on some big parts of the problem.
The UK Science Museum is
being
rejected by some scientists for its deals with fossil fuel companies.
US meat companies made workers so powerless, and the regulatory
agencies too, that neither
could
do anything to make the companies protect them from spreading disease to each other.
The four big meat companies crush unions and
bully local governments,
even state governments. It would be a very good thing to break them
up into 40 competing companies.
Acceptable
imitation
meat seems to be on the horizon now.
From the article, it seems some tuning is still needed, but I expect that
a few years of work will get it right.
Meanwhile, where is there a restaurant that will cook wheat gluten
that actually tastes exactly like wheat gluten, instead of pretending
to be meat and failing laughably?
A campaign to lead the staff of the
NHS
to get vaccinated describes
methods that are effective.
I support outreach and communication methods like these. I also
support vaccine mandates with no exceptions other than medical ones.
Both are effective and they are not mutually exclusive.
Several Walgreens stores supported poor people in San Francisco
through massive shoplifting. Now they plan to close the stores,
because
they are losing money.
I can't blame the company for closing these stores, but I also agree
that the poor people of those neighborhoods deserve food to eat. I
think it is the city's responsibility to provide food by setting up
food banks in these areas, and pay for them out of taxes.
Due to increased temperatures, children who stay outdoors in Freetown,
Sierra Leone, now
risk heat rashes.
Another global heating
effect is diminishing crop yields.
Meanwhile, the rising ocean is causing floods.
The city is trying to cope with the various problems, but treating the
symptoms will work only so far. The only real solution is to stop the
cause of the problem, and that is mainly in the big emitters: China,
US, India, Europe, Australia.
*Palm oil land grabs
‘trashing’
environment and displacing people.*
Humans may be able to reduce the world land demand for meat, as we
learn to eat less meat and as its price discourages purchase. But it
will be very hard to do this with palm oil. My recommendation is,
make fewer humans — since that tends to reduce so many other world
problems.
The UK suffers from
a revolving door for ministers,
much like the US.
When Ugandan thugs jailed opposition leaders before the election,
they
jailed the leaders' children too.
They have all been tortured and held in horrible conditions — for instance,
so crowded that they couldn't find a spot of floor to sleep on.
Global heating
has enabled armadillos to spread from their former home
in Texas all
he way to Nebraska and Virginia.
China has disappeared tennis pro Peng Shuai
after
she said that the
former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli coerced her into having sex with him.
*Rising humidity
could
be linked to increase in suicides, report finds.*
*How workers unknowingly
fund [fossil fuel companies] with their
pensions,*
which is risky for the workers as well as the world.
* The Organization of American States is no longer credible. We need a
new body [to scrutinize democratic procedures]
if
we are to protect
democracy [in the Americas].*
The article presents examples of how the OAS has acted duplicitously
to favor US foreign policy.
Four Kenyan thugs
have
been convicted of killing a British visitor in
jail.
It took 9 years to do this, even helped by the aristocratic connections
of the man they killed.
The UK is
running its medical personnel into the ground.
*Alex Jones liable
for damages over Sandy Hook shooting claims, judge rules.*
It's past time to impose a penalty on lying about people.
The EPA found that the pesticide Atrazine
harms
1013 protected species,
while glyphosate harms 1676 of them.
Everyone: call on
Walmart
to raise its minimum wage to $15/hr.
US citizens: call on the EPA to
take
action against polluters that harm frontline communities.
Everyone: reject Amazon --
buy
your gifts (and whatever else you buy) from local stores.
I follow that policy for all my purchases, all year round.
US citizens: call on Congress
to
provide more food to food banks.
US citizens: call
on Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Intel, Target, Dell, Cisco, and Boston Scientific
to stop donating to Anti-Voting Rights
Members of Congress.
US citizens: call
on senators to sponsor the Fossil-Free Finance Act.
Tax dodging reportedly amounted to almost $500 billion last year,
and Britain is
responsible for 200 billion of that.
*Cuba democracy protests thwarted
after
rallies banned and leaders arrested.*
The Cuban government claims this is a proxy for a campaign for
destabilization and regime change. That could be true, or not.
What do these leaders advocate doing about other issues if they
win the political rights that Cubans are entitled to?
*Drug Decriminalization in Oregon, One Year Later: Thousands of Lives Not
Ruined by Possession Arrests,
$300
Million+ in Funding for Services.*
The Tory way to help a depressed area's economy is to give privileges
to businesses in that area —
for
instance, tax exemptions.
There are many ways to use public funds to help rebuild the economy of
a region. I suspect that politicians' enthusiasm for local "enterprise
zones" as a method comes from the desire to reduce taxes on business
and thus shift more wealth to the wealthy. The more parts of a country
enjoy the lower tax rate, the more of a disadvantage other parts will
claim to suffer, until finally they all get the same tax reduction for
business.
Unauthorized immigrants in the UK
are
afraid that they will be deported if
they go to get vaccinated.
US citizens: call
on Biden to cancel the memo with which the wrecker tried
to block approval of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Through the Human Library you can arrange a conversation
with someone who
represents a point of view or way of life that you feel uncomfortable with.
The Capitol thug department's jail housed mainly people of little
influence until this year, and treated them like dirt. Now people are
being jailed for attacking the Capitol on Jan 6,
and complaining
about the same mistreatment — and being heard.
*Rights Group [B'Tselem] Says Israel
Uses
Settler Violence Against
Palestinians to Take Over West Bank Land.*
The US deportation thugs have privatized inspections of their
deportation prisons. The inspection company bends over backwards
to
give every prison a passing grade, no matter how bad it is.
That's what privatization is for — as a way to shrug off accountability.
Global heating
takes Aswan in southern Egypt from dry to drier,
except
when it causes a sudden downpour.
A rain of deadly scorpions happened also, but though 500 people were stung,
they
were all saved with antivenin.
US citizens: call
on the House of Representatives to pass
the Build Back Better act (relief and climate bill) now.
Employers are increasingly turning their workers' computers and homes
into
a digital panopticon.
This article describes a museum's projection of the British home of 2050,
recognizes it as dystopian, and
displays
displeasure only rather mildly.
Some of these automated features could respect your freedom if they
are implemented in libre software and run on your own libre platforms.
If we want that, we had better start rejecting the user-subjugating
platforms now.
One suggestion: when you enter a house, ask whether there are
listening devices such as Alexa, or video insecurity cameras, and as
to unplug them. Even if you don't insist, at least people will learn
that what they are doing is problematical and some people don't like
it.
Russia used an antisatellite weapon against an old Russian satellite.
Such tests create space debris, which we don't have a way to clean up.
That is a
grave, persistent, accumulating problem.
The ultimate danger of space debris is that a chain reaction of
collisions could make so much debris that it would destroy all
satellites, and we could never put up satellites (or spacecraft)
again. An accelerated version of this was shown in the movie Gravity.
I think that was unrealistically fast, but no one would dare build and
launch a spaceship if its collisional half life were as little as ten
years. Everything human would be excluded from space, except for the
hypersonic nuclear missiles that China and the US are testing. (They
don't need to stay in space for very long.)
The US tested an ASAT missile
and was rebuked for wantonly creating space debris.
Every so often I see a proposed system for cleaning up space debris, I
don't think any of them would scale to the amount of debris present in
Earth orbit in recent years.
(satire) *Park Ranger Slips Fat Fish To Bear
Before
Gesturing Towards Littering Family.*
*Lukashenko is a
handy
villain to mask the cruelty of Fortress Europe.*
I disagree with one subtle point: the EU's actions and Lukashenko's
actions are not parallel. Lukashenko actively lures migrants,
so he can use them as weapons; the EU simply wants to keep them out.
*On trial for saving lives:
the
young refugee activist facing a Greek court.*
Americans who provided water and other humanitarian assistance to
migrants in the desert a few years ago were likewise charged with
aiding their entry.
*From Nicaragua to China,
reckless
autocrats betray the promises of revolution.*
*There has been progress at Cop26,
but
the planet’s fate is still in the balance.*
Many Afghans fear reprisals from Taliban or unofficial murderous
Islamist fanatics, and are hiding --
they
don't know for how long.
Civil servants in the UK are going to court to insist on applying the
ministerial
code seriously when ministers violate it and mistreat staff.
Cop26 may have made the climate for
coal
mining too hot in Australia.
Tory undermining of the NHS has reached the point where patients wait in
ambulances
outside emergency rooms because there is no space for them.
*India and China will “have to explain themselves to poor nations”
after
watering down the Glasgow climate pact, warned the Cop26 president.*
In 2019, a US aircraft bombed a mixed group of
PISSI soldiers and
their
families (perhaps held captive by them).
Some officers tried to have this investigated, but the investigation
was quashed and the military never disclosed what had happened.
Based on the article, it seems that the ethical issues were
complicated, but covering this up was certainly wrong.
US citizens: call
on Biden to cancel a substantial part of student
debt.
* Weak EU vehicle emissions targets could allow Europe’s biggest
carmakers to produce
millions
more petrol and diesel cars than
necessary up to 2030.*
*Al Jazeera bureau chief
arrested
in Sudan amid deadly anti-coup protests.*
*Māori tribe tells anti-Covid vaccine protesters
to stop using its
haka.*
To rebuke them for being jerks would be entirely justified.
(As well as disease-spreading lunatics, which they always are.)
However, it is intolerable for anyone to have power over who can use
traditional music and dance. We should not allow that form of power
to advance.
Two million Americans have no running water, and the US water infrastructure
is decaying because
the federal government has cut most of its support
since around 1980.
Water supply is contaminated in many areas;
fracking
is making more of them.
1980 is when President Reagan started redirecting America's income to
rich people and businesses, instead of what most Americans needed.
*Senate Urged to Reject Biden's "Poor Choice" for FDA Chief
Over Ties to Big
Pharma.*
*Five Rich Nations Jeopardizing Future
With
Plans for Fossil Fuel Expansion:
Report.*
The list includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia,
Canada, and Norway. It should include China too, as China is now
rich and powerful.
*Ilhan Omar Unveils Resolution
to
Block 'Unconscionable' Saudi Arms Sale.*
The US should not participate in
Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen, and
that includes providing materiel or support for it.
There are two kinds of resolution that can be used for this: one which
allows the president to veto it and one which does not.
The former kind is ineffective for this purpose.
Which kind of resolution has been filed?
US citizens: call
on Congress to make the corrupter testify about his
involvement in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.
This is presuming there is no hope of prosecuting him for this based
on the testimony of others. Questioning him in Congress would require
giving him immunity for prosecution, and that would be unfortunate
if we could otherwise send him to prison.
Studies show: safety
precautions and regulations are often very effective.
In a wide range of areas, they protect people from harm.
There are denialists who argue that every safety precaution is ultimately
worthless, because it will encourage so much reckless behavior as to
negate the benefit. The figures show they are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Their mistake is not to recognize that the precautions may encourage
some people to be somewhat more reckless, but that isn't a big enough
problem to outweigh the direct benefit of the precaution.
What does encourage recklessness is believing disinformation that
attacks safety measures.
So get vaccinated, and use your seat belt, your helmet, your condom,
and your mask!
* Documents released Friday reveal how in early 2020 the Trump
administration downplayed
the deadly danger posed by the nascent
Covid-19 pandemic, silencing and sidelining top health officials who
tried to warn the public and destroying evidence of political
interference while issuing rosy declarations that the outbreak was
"totally under control" and would soon be over.*
This included gagging the CDC and altering its data reports.
Joseph Stiglitz: *Why the Federal Reserve chair
Jerome
Powell must go.*
*Texas schools resist Republican request
for
records on classroom books.*
Extinction Rebellion protesters
blocked
an event of the City of London.
The City of London is a small neighborhood of the city called London,
or would be if the word "neighborhood" fit an area with very few
residents but lots of offices of big banks and finance companies.
It has been given special legal status
which
enables those companies can
fully dominate it,
and one of the things those companies use their
local domain for is to keep investing in fossil fuels.
A US appeals court decided tentatively to suspend the vaccine mandate
for
medium and large businesses until it decides the question.
This is unfortunate, but what is really unfortunate is that the US
government does not have the power to ensure that Americans protect
each other from a disease that can cause death, and can also cause
lasting medical problems and disabilities for those that don't die of
it.
(satire) *Distracted God Accidentally
Puts
Baby’s Soul In Envelope To
Utility Company.*
(satire) *Teen's
Eyes Begin Glowing Red While Reciting Forbidden
Knowledge From Book On Critical Race Theory.*
Several countries have started
Beyond
Oil and Gas, a campaign to put an end
to fossil fuels.
Grandiose plans to plant millions of trees to cite as "carbon offsets"
will have trouble
finding enough land to put them on.
Not just any land will support a forest.
It supports my conclusion that we must reject "offsets"
and instead really reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
*Flint water crisis costs Michigan $600 million —
preventing
it would have cost $80/day.*
The people who chose the plan that inflicted lead poisoning
in Flint will not have to pay the damages.
*Latvia bans
unvaccinated lawmakers from voting [and discussions].*
*Outrage as AstraZeneca
Ditches
Pledge Not to Profit From Publicly
Funded Vaccine.*
Oxford should have published everything and invited companies to make
its vaccine. It probably has an excuse for not doing that, but we should
call in question the validity of that excuse.
Perhaps we should ask every company that makes a pledge
to sign a contract so that it will have to pay enormous damages
if it violates the pledge.
Hong Kong seems to be
kicking
out many selected foreign journalists,
I suppose to make them all start censoring themselves.
* Where now? Governments have
agreed
to a weak climate deal which gets us a smidgen closer to holding
temperatures to a rise of 1.5C. But as
regards all the most important pledges to phase out coal, reduce
subsidies and protect forests, Glasgow failed.*
I think the progress in this agreement is more than what those words
suggest. But it is still lacking the concrete, clear and firm
commitments to immediate action that we really need.
Here is a less emotional
resume
of the agreement and its good and bad
points.
To protect right whales, Maine lobster fishers need to
switch to
self-lifting lobster pots that don't need a rope and a buoy. But they
are expensive.
The government should fund this equipment.
LA teenagers are charged with making false accusations that sent
thugs
to raid
one of the leaders of Black Lives Matter.
Fanatical hate often leads people to become dishonest
and cruel in a more direct sense.
(satire)
*Climate Summit Sets Ambitious Goal To Phase Out Fossil Fuels
By Time Earth Runs Out Of Them.*
Glasgow University published a paper which criticized Israeli
policies, then published criticism calling it "antisemitic." A
petition signed by hundreds of scholars
convinced
the university to
retract that criticism.
US citizens: call
on your senators to pass the Build Back Better (relief) bill.
Australia's planet-roaster government chose a company that advises
fossil fuel interests to develop a "plan" for how to reduce
Australia's greenhouse emissions. The plan it came up with was,
"Don't bother trying until 2040, then buy so-called 'offsets'
so we
won't really have to do any of the work."
Morrisson has been working for fossil fuel interests all along,
and
lying to protect them.
I speculate he will get a reward based on how long he can delay any
effort to avoid disaster.
*Steve Bannon indicted
for
refusal to comply with Capitol attack subpoena.*
I think that Bannon could spin this out for months before being
convicted. But this may loosen some other tongues.
The ironic relationship between the violent dispossession of Māori in
New Zealand in the 1880s
and
the violent dispossession of Irish in
Ireland in 1649.
* Birds in the Amazon are becoming smaller but growing longer wings, a
study has found, with scientists saying
global
heating is the most
likely explanation.*
I am disappointed in the scientist who legitimized unscientific
thinking about evolution by referring to it as "nature's genius."
Such language panders to people who want to misunderstand evolution in
religious terms.
Evolution does not operate via creativity, planning, or consciousness.
It is the result of randomness systematically skewed by actual conditions.
*Transform approach to Amazon [forest]
or
it will not survive, warns major
report.*
The problem is that the loggers, miners and soy farmers are eager to
eliminate the forest. Eventually their farms will die because they
depended on the rain historically caused by the forest,
but by then it will be too late.
*The US-China climate agreement is imperfect —
but
reason to hope.*
*Trump defended rioters who threatened to ‘hang Mike Pence’,
audio
reveals.*
He did this as an embellishment to hammering on the lie
that the 2020 election was rigged. Republicans tried, of course,
as they do every year,
but they did not succeed.
A campaign calls for a postumous pardon for civil rights activist
Homer Plessy, who
was convicted of riding in a whites-only railroad
car.
His loss in the Supreme Court legitimized the Jim Crow segregation laws.
Flying desperate Syrians to Belarus so they can try to get into
Poland is
a very profitable business for Belarus.
Belarus charges each Syrian 3500 dollars for this service.
Evidently those who accept the deal are not broke.
Is there any sort of business you can start with $3500 in Syria?
Imprisoned Turkish party leader Selahattin Demirtaş's wife has been sentenced
to 30 months in prison
for
a clerical error on a medical form.
This demonstrates the full extent of dictator Erdoğan's contempt for
human rights. When he wants to put you in prison, no excuse is too
absurd.
Shipping companies are starting to respond to pressure to cut their greenhouse
gas emissions, but
actual
changes beyond minor efficiency improvements have
not yet started.
Representatives of environmentalist groups walked out of the Cop26 conference
to
protest its failure to adopt policies that can achieve its mission.
The drought in southern Madagascar has made it
impossible
to grow food.
People eat things with no food value just to fill their stomachs.
If this is indeed the result of
global heating, it will get worse and
worse — just as it will in many other parts of the world, if we
don't stop the heating.
*Chinese agents operating abroad to
get
Uyghur [exiles] deported [to
China], ICC told.*
* Organizers of Glasgow [climate defense] march claim
[thugs] risked
"chaos" by failing
to adhere to pre-agreed arrangements.*
*Oceanographer Sylvia Earle
calls
for industrial fishing ban on high
seas.* The article explains that this refers to international waters, which
would be 200 miles away from any land. So this would not put an end
to most fishing.
*Walmart Delivery Workers Say New Pay Model
Steals
Their Tips.*
A substantial fraction of nitrogenous fertilizer is
converted into
NO2, a powerful greenhouse gas. Making it releases methane. We need
to use much less fertilizer.
Another fraction of the fertilizer runs off into lakes and seas, where
it creates toxic blooms and dead zones.
Biden is about to hold an auction of
oil
leases for sea bottom in the Gulf of Mexico. Climate defenders urge him to cancel the auction.
We used to condemn Hitler and Nazis, but now that's considered
insufficient. Imitating Hitler as mockery is now treated as a
violation
of taboo, reason for someone to be shunned.
This reminds me of the 1942 US propaganda movie, To Be Or Not To Be,
which features a fictional Polish Hitler-impersonator. He is such a
capable impersonator that he can fool even Germans, which proves
useful for fighting them — in a comedy, at least.
Director Ernst Lubitsch was a Jew born in Germany, and he must have
thought of Hitler as the worst of enemies. But he saw no wrong in
presenting a Hitler-impersonator, if that would help to defeat Hitler.
Putin is planning to
shut
down the organization Memorial, which documents
repression of dissidents in the Soviet Union.
A carbon capture and storage project was supposed to capture and store
80% of the CO2 output of a large industrial facility, but
only
handled 40%. It was a failure.
The article criticizes the project for not capturing the CO2 produced
elsewhere by burning the gas prepared by this facility. That is true,
but it's not a failure. Obviously, the power plants that burn it
would need their own capture and storage systems. We could build
those — but maybe electric power storage would be cheaper.
Jens Galschiot made a sculpture to represent the massacre at Tien An
Men, and lent it to the University of Hong Kong. That university is
now compelled to try to get rid of it. Galschiot wants to go and
bring it home, but he is
afraid
he will be jailed if he does.
Australia's planet-roaster prime minister, Morrison, is now
getting
blasted for all the lies. He denies telling the lies, but that fails
to convince his critics.
The climate in Greece has changed drastically; old weather patterns are
gone. The big fires
destroyed
the entire ecosystem of northern Evia
(formerly Euboia).
Balochistan is a part of Pakistan inhabited largely by a minority
ethnic/linguistic group. It has a separatist movement, and faces
repression from the Pakistani government. The repression forces
disappear
people, who show up many years later — perhaps alive, perhaps dead.
Forest rangers in southern California want to
remove
bushes and some
smaller trees to reduce future wildfires.
Some local people demand to save every tree, but that can't be done
except by reversing global heating.
Free
Assange Rally on Monday, November 22 at 4pm in Boston.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
the billionaires' tax
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!.
The International Commission of Jurists concludes that two UN treaties
require
countries to cooperate with removing the patent obstacles
to making vaccines.
These treaties have been ratified by around 170 countries. The US is
not one of them, but that's not a problem since the US is already in
favor of doing this.
The NIH is disputing
with Moderna the rights to the patents that
Moderna has applied for. If it wins the inclusion of its scientists among the inventors,
it will get the power to license manufacture of vaccines.
The death rate from Covid-19 is
3
times as much in US counties that
voted 60% for the wrecker as in counties that voted 60% for Biden.
*More Than Halfway Through COP26, World Leaders
Accused of Delivering
Empty Promises on a Sinking Ship.*
The US wants to require all new cars to have a
system
to determine whether
the driver is drunk.
This threatens to collect more data about all drivers.
I will not object to that system if the only information it reports,
ever, is either "Driver is drunk" or "driver may not be drunk."
That data should not be stored anywhere, only used immediately to decide
whether the car can start.
*"This Must Not Happen": If Unhalted, Permian Basin Fracking Will
Unleash
40 Billion Tons of CO2 by 2050.*
This would be "game over for the climate."
HSBC, working with other big banks, has been lobbying secretly to
reduce
the greenhouse reduction commitment that banks are negotiating.
They all have pledged to reach net-zero by 2050, but that is only lip service.
*If all the announced net-zero commitments are implemented, the global
temperature would
rise
1.8°C by 2100, but this is only IF these targets are fully implemented, and it's a big IF.*
(satire) *Bounty CEO
Rebrands
Business As Metaverse Of Napkins.*
*Flint water crisis victims to
receive
$626m settlement.*
For Democrats to win next year, they need to
win
back voters that were hit
by increasing poverty.
This is one reason why passing the infrastructure bill was important.
However, passing the aid bill (Build Back Better) is also important.
The progressives who insisted on the deal to pass both bills
were trying to do a larger part of what the Democratic Party needs.
A bill in Congress would require web sites to give users an
alternative
to letting opaque algorithms choose what they see.
Specifically, the sites would have to warn users about basing feeds
or search results on any personal data other than what they submitted
specifically to state preferences.
I agree that this would be a step forward — but, when it comes to
searching, I want to make sure the site does not know who I am.
Paleontoligical study of previous mass extinctions suggests that our
rapid CO2 production could rush past a global tipping point, and
unleash
catastrophic global climate oscillations in this century.
Activists outside of Cop26
projected
serious slogans such as "leave
methane in the ground" and "end fracking now" on the side of the
building where discussions are happening.
A company hired by the event to project on the sides of buildings
decided to drown that out by covering the protest with other slogans.
The result was to amplify the protest.
Thai protesters called for reducing the power of the monarch. Now the
constitutional court ruled that such protesters
count
as a rebellion.
Here's an example where indigenous people in modern British Columbia
carefully made
their salmon fishing sustainable over a period of 1,000
years.
*San Francisco’s progressive district attorney
faces
recall election.*
Inflation tends
to be good for poor people, especially those with
debts and those who have to work for a living.
It reduces the value of the debts, and it goes with shortage of
labor, which means you can get a raise.
Thus, the media alarm about inflation may be calculated to serve the
interests of the creditor class.
The Congressional Budget Office
proposes
three ways to cut $100
billion per year from the military budget.
Instead of replacing fossil-fuel automobiles with electric
automobiles, it might be better to
aim
to put an end to use of
automobiles.
I don't think other transport will entirely replace automobiles.
I wish I could use a bicycle, but (1) I don't know how to ride one and
(2) I'd be scared to ride one in a place where cars go. Can we come up
with a way to make bicycles safer, and avoid the need for honed skill
to use one?
A building in LA, with a supermarket in it, demands customers
load a
particular app to pay for parking in the parking lot, and accept
pervasive surveillance.
They also have the option of entering their license plate numbers in a kiosk.
That is an injustice, too.
*Frontline workers cannot expect to
remain
unvaccinated in a pandemic
and to keep working with vulnerable people.*
The first-level federal court
overturned
the Texas rule that school districts
cannot require masks.
Republican officials will appeal this ruling, so I expect it will be months
before there is a final result.
(satire) *Climate Scientists Warn That Fish Will Be
Under Even More
Water By 2065.*
*Campaigners Rip New COP26 Draft as a
"Polite
Request" for Climate
Action Amid Existential Crisis.*
Iran's conditions
for resuming the non-nuclear deal:
The US must commit to remaining in the deal, and it must ease sanctions
in a way that has significant effect. Also, European countries must not
allow US sanctions laws to block them from trading with Iran.
These demands seem acceptable to me. It seems absurd for the US to have
the power to tell other countries whether they can trade with Iran or not.
*Cop26 targets too
weak to stop disaster, say Paris agreement architects.*
* Monitoring of workers and setting performance targets through
algorithms is damaging [UK]
employees'
mental health and needs to
be controlled by new legislation.*
I suppose it harms workers in the US, too, but the report is about the UK.
How America Got (And Lost)
Universal Child Care.
SARS-CoV-2 has spread to
deer
in Iowa and is causing an epidemic
among them.
In principle, humans could catch it from deer. This could make it
hard to eradicate the disease, but humans will not have many
opportunities to catch it from deer. However, we don't know what other
kinds of animals may harbor it.
Tuvalu is looking for a way to retain its status as a country,
and
its maritime zones of exclusive commerce, if its land
is inundated.
*During Brazil's Dictatorship,
Companies Helped Suppress Democracy.*
Famous US and European companies conspired to crush union organizers
by asking the national thugs to arrest them and torture them.
There is a danger that they will prop up Bolsonaro so they can do it
again.
Canada agreed to pay rent to indigenous groups for mining and logging
on land that they ceded, but only paid them a pittance.
Now it will
have to pay them billions.
This is fair, and I hope the indigenous peoples manage it so as to
make a lasting improvement in their lives.
However, it might have the ironic effect of convincing them to lobby
for mining and logging. ;-{.
Home renters in Catalonia are
organizing
to fight evictions.
Democrats in Congress propose to compensate the black soldiers in
World War II (actually their descendents) for
dening
them the education benenfits offered to white soldiers.
One cause of inflation in the US today is that there is
too
little competition to hold prices down.
We need to break up the enormous companies that four decades of
unrestrained merger have produced.
I suggest a way to do this via
taxes.
Ethiopia is arresting thousands of people of Tigrayan origin, even
foreign visitors, on suspicion that they will
support
advancing Tigrayan armies.
*Belarus threatens to cut gas deliveries to EU if sanctioned over
border crisis.*
As long as the EU is dependent on gas from Russia and Belarus, they have the
advantage all the time. This is an important secondary reason for the EU
to build renewable generation capacity at double time. Fortunately
that's exactly what the EU needs to do anyway.
Obama hardly tried to curb global heating
when
he was president, yet now he is publicly pressing for more climate defense.
What should we say about this incongruous situation?
If our goal is to encourage climate defense, we should criticize his
past failure as president, while endorsing his valid points (those
which are valid) of today.
To treat his past failure as more important than the future, as the
article does, is not constructive.
Campaigning to close the oil wells that in
Los
Angeles county that are making local residents badly sick.
Yanis Varoufakis: *
Cop26
is doomed, and the hollow promise of "net zero" is to blame.*
US citizens: call
on the Senate not to vote on the NDAA until we have
passed Build Back Better.
US citizens: call
on Congress to Pass the Polluters Pay Climate Fund
Act.
US citizens: call
on the Canadian government stop subsidizing the
forest biomass industry —
in other words, paying to cut down forests and burn them.
US citizens: call
on Congress to remove insurrectionists, as the
constitution requires.
*The cow in the room: why is no one talking
about
farming at Cop26?*
It is hard for me to comment on issues relating to sustainable
farming, because I don't have a basis to judge whether proposed
methods have a plausible chance of being more sustainable. I know
about many of the worst problems — pesticides, fertilizer, water
demand, and farming crops to feed animals — but when people propose
solutions, I can't tell the rational solutions ones from the newage.
One piece of foolishness can be seen in the article when people
criticize the menus because "60% of dishes include meat or dairy." I
am not impressed by people who equate buttered toast with a steak.
A Kenyan woman was murdered in 2012. Now there is an indication
that the
murderer was a British soldier sent there for training.
I am disappointed that the article raises the question of whether
she was a part-time prostitute — as if that were pertinent.
Condemnation of prostitutes is an example of the conservative
idea of moral values,
which are based on obedience to superiors, loyalty to the group,
and cleanness, and allow those to override fairness and justice.
*Youngkin played the race card in Virginia,
no
Trump card needed.*
A discussion of politics in Hungary and an interview with Peter Márki-Zay,
the
candidate of the united opposition.
I do not admire anyone for being conservative, nor for being Catholic
(though that's ok if perse
is not also conservative). I disapprove
strongly of having seven children,
which
is harmful to civilization's
future;
people should use birth control to avoid overpopulating.
However, if Márki-Zay brings Hungary back to democracy, that will outweigh
my disapproval of the specifics.
Daniel Ellsberg and Norman Solomon: ICBMs are especially likely to
cause an accidental nuclear war — the US
would be safer after
eliminating its land-based ICBMs
even if Russia does not eliminate its own.
The US would still have bombers and submarine-launched missiles.
In the 1970s, the region of Sacramento, California, had an average of
7 days of "fire weather" per year. Last year it was 22;
this year it
was 25.
Distributed Denial of Secrets posted a large collection of photos that
two US surveillance departments leaked through total carelessness.
They show us how
invasive state surveillance has become in "free"
countries.
Trying to restrict the use of this surveillance data will tend to be
ineffective. After all, there is already a law against lying in court
testimony, but that doesn't make thugs stop doing it.
The US has a history of persecuting people by calling them "terrorists",
so limiting the use of the surveillance to "fighting terrorism"
won't protect us.
That is why I advocate prohibiting the installation or operation
of
dangerous surveillance systems that surveil people in general.
*Cop26 sets course
for
disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report.*
*There’s a nearly 1C difference
between
countries’ 2030 commitments and their 2050 targets.*
Is it horrifying for a dead body to be dissected publicly?
It must be gruesome, but if that happens to the corpse of someone
you knew, is
it a reason to take offense?
I don't see that it is. The dissection can't harm the person who died,
or per memory.
If my corpse is someday publicly dissected, I think that will not
be a reason for to take offense on my behalf. Instead, please support
what I have done with my life — the Free Software Movement.
China has
suffered big damage from extreme rainfall.
Will this convince China's
rulers to stop making it worse by building coal-burning generators?
President Piñera of Chile has been
impeached
over using his power to benefit his family financiailly.
The facts were disclosed by
The
Pandora Papers.
I am not surprised he would do this. He generally does what's good
for the rich, and that includes his family.
*[Bogus Johnson] tests the limits of shamelessness,
using
the dignity of his cabinet as a probe.*
Mexico has accused an unidentified "businessman"
for
using the Pegasus spyware to snoop on a journalist.
A man that punched Capitol policemen
during
the Jan 6 insurrection has fled to Belarus for safety
If we can only convince Republican leaders to go to Belarus, the US might
be safer.
*If Build Back Better Fails, AOC Warns,
"We
May Have Just Locked in US Emissions."*
Proposing a way that
capitialism
could end nonviolently.
To eliminate capitalism entirely would mean that excellent specialty
products and services would disappear — including good restaurants
and delicious food products. I love them, and I want them to be there
to buy! What's harmful is when busineses are big enough to shape
society for their ends. Can we get rid of big-time capitalism and
keep the capitalism for things that are not necessitities of life?
Calling on the Edelman advertising agency to
drop
fossil fuel companies as clients.
Major progressive groups warn that Republicans threaten to
overthrow
US democracy in 2022 or 2024
Climate defense rallies of
last
weekend, in photos.
*Progressives to Biden:
If
You Want to Be Popular, Take On Corporate Greed.*
*Survivors of 1965 Indonesia massacres
urge
UK to apologize.*
And the US, of course.
NFT-boosters perversely acknowledge that the buyers are buying only the
opportunity to boast how much they spent. It is
conspicuous consumption
publicly stripped of any possible other good.
Therapists and consultants say that they help their clients by
charging them a lot of money, because that influences them to respect
the service more. By saying this, they are not being irrational
themselves, but they are showing disrespect for their clients by
presuming they judge foolishly.
The NFT boosters that sneer at "right-clicker mentality" take a further
step into absurdity: they claim that the people they manipulate are
right to think in that perverse way.
The FTC has power
to
restrict some of the bad things Facebook does to
zuckers.
I don't think that forbidding Facebook to collect "data on a user's
race, sexual orientation, gender, or national origin" would make
Facebook safe for its useds. Facebook can deduce those things from
what a person likes, or chooses to look at — not with 100% accuracy,
but accurately enough to target people profitably.
PEN reports on Republicans' laws (and bills)
to
impose censorship on
education.
Governments' estimates of their greenhouse gas emissions omit 8 to 13
billions of tons per year. That is
a
substantial fraction of the total
anthropic emissions.
Extreme pessimism about our future
is
as harmful as blind optimism.
The article errs in equating Roger Hallam's warning with fatalistic
pessimism. Extinction Rebellion is the opposite of fatalism. His
warning of what the future will be like if you don't try to change it
is a call to action, and it has inspired thousands — or perhaps
millions — into the struggle.
* Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are
already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including
their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle
changes, an
international survey has found.*
The comparatively painless way for millions of people to change a harmful habit
is to get together and do it at the level of society as a whole. To achieve
the same results by individual sacrifices is a big pain.
28 of the 100 US senators (and their families)
own
substantial holdings
of fossil fuel stocks.
(satire)
*Virginians Who Watched Schools Taken Over By Sharia Law
Refuse To Make Same Mistake With Critical Race Theory.*
A few rich "philanthropists" pledged to spend a around $25 million
a year to help Kalamazoo (however they see fit),
in exchange for
cancellation of a planned tax increase.
Now the city is addicted to their continuing "donations"
and has sold control of its future.
Although Democrats have kept the paid birth leave benefit alive,
the
lowest-paid workers will now be specially excluded.
Taiwan shows that
a
free country can stamp out Covid-19 completely.
If the world maintained this discipline, it could get rid of Covid-19 forever,
and reopen in safety.
The Los Angeles Thug Department
is
accused of outsourcing racial
profiling to algorithms
— for the second time.
I wish I knew to what extent the thug department controls the
algorithms in use, but I can't tell that from the article.
Can anyone find out?
*I have lived under corrupt regimes —
the
cynicism stalking Britain
is all too familiar.*
*Tuvalu minister to address Cop26
knee
deep in seawater to highlight
climate crisis.*
Sergei Savelyev fled to France and
revealed
copies of torture videos
made in the Saratov prison hospital.
These videos were not from always-on "security" cameras. They
specifically recorded acts of torture of prisoners for the delectation
of prison officers.
Russia is trying to imprison Savelyev for this leak. That response is
disgusting and shameful. What's even more shameful for me as an
American is that the US government is doing the same thing to Julian
Assange for a similar "crime".
Manchin and Sinema have
agreed
to let Medicare negotiate bulk purchases of some drugs.
This will be a signal victory if it gets passed into law, even though
it is limited to only some drugs and some patients (those covered by
Medicare), because it will break through the barrier that has held for
50 years. Extending the exception policy should be easier than
creating it.
In more civilized countries, the national medical system provides all
prescription drugs to patients. Italy's system, for example,
distributes insulin gratis to all diabetics that need it.
How China imposes
total
repression on everything that Uyghurs do.
*1bn people will suffer
extreme
heat at just 2C heating, say scientists.*
In New Zealand, a few thousand anti-vaxxers mounted a protest outside
Parliament,
advocating
a twisted mishmash of various right-wing lunacies.
People have a right to rally nonviolently for any views, including
these. But if they violate (or threaten to violate) measures to stop
the spread of Covid-19, they should be subject to immediate
vaccination as a public safety measure.
Singapore will charge for treatment for Covid-19 infection of people
who are
unvaccinated by choice.
This is fair, and will convince many to get vaccinated and thus be safer.
Paternity leave
helps
couples stay together.
Portugal's new law gives new rights to remote workers, including the
penaties to the employer for
contacting
workers outside of their
working day.
*Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Have Larger Presence at COP26 Than Any Single
Country.*
It
totals over 500 people.
Each of them was authorized by some country or other entity. Thus,
Brazil's contingent of 479 people includes some of those 500 fossil
fuel lobbyists.
The demand for copper is increasing and this means more mining.
The mines
often pollute water supplies, and they don't take responsibility for cleaning
up mining or pollution.
US mining law is not effective at making those who profited from the
mine pay for cleaning up its pollution later. The corporation is
likely to go bankrupt as soon as the mine stops producing. I think it
would be more effective put an environmental tax on operating a mine,
which will cover what the government is likely to have to pay to clean
it up later.
US citizens: call on the Senate to end the filibuster.
US
citizens: call on the Senate to end the filibuster.
It is important to keep up the pressure on this point.
*Cop26 leaders blame individuals,
while
supporting a far more destructive system.*
*hellip; we can return to the question of individual consumption and
ask if there are ways of making our personal choices as a way of
developing =– rather than distracting from -– systemic change.*
(satire) *Amazon Assures Customers That Alexas
Far
Too Busy Devising Their Own Plans To Listen In On Private Conversations.*
*When Are We Going to Talk About the Outrageous Cost of
NOT
Passing the Build Back Better Act?*
Analyzing how US troops
mistook
a family for a PIS bomber and then treated it as unquestioable truth.
It would not be just, or useful, to criminalize this mistake, but it
is important to change the system to prevent future similar mistakes.
*If Democrats return to [so-called] centrism,
they
are doomed to lose against Trump.*
"Centrists" is the propaganda word that
plutocratists use to pretend
that the political center of the US is where they are, just as the
communists called themselves "Bolshevik" ("on the big side") to
pretend that they represented the majority of socialists. Let's
not spread that falsehood. According to an opinion polls, an overwhelming
majority of Americans support the main political positions of
progressives Democrats. The proper term for the "centrists" is
"plutocratist."
Rssearch is trying to use snoop phone sensors
to
measure a person's mental state.
If this ever works, it will enable manipulation/marketing companies
to determine which ads work for each person specific who sees them,
and to brainwash people ad lib.
In the "counter climate summit", activists
will
present climate defense proposals that COP26 is not seriously considering.
*Australia's Largest University
Stole
$8.6 Million From Workers' Wages.*
Cities use traffic stops
to
brutally squeeze money out of people that
can barely afford it.
Ultimately, plutocracy is to blame. The rich have escaped most taxation,
so cities have to gouge the poor.
*US citizens v FBI: Will the government
face
charges for illegal surveillance?*
Specifically, snooping on people for being Muslims rather that based on
any evidence of criminal activity.
Psychiatry is opening
to
the idea of psychedelics as treatments.
Sometimes a single dose is enough to treat PTSD.
US citizens: call
on AT&T to stop funding the right-wing OAN network.
*Revealed: how LAPD
targeted
Nipsey Hussle’s street corner and store,*
apparently because he was black and didn't "know his place."
If the thugs
really wanted to reduce crime, they would have encouraged
his efforts to build up honest small business in a depressed area.
The main reason to give workers paid sick-leave is so they don't get
worn down by a hard life. But if that's not enough to convince you,
keep in mind that sick leave for contagious diseases
helps protect
everyone from catching a disease.
*Married lesbian couple
launch
discrimination action against [UK
National Health System].*
It is wrong to discriminate in offering fertility assistance of any
kind. Everyone who applies should get the same answer: "Fertility
services suspended until Earth's human population falls below one
billion. In the mean time, adopt a child instead."
Climate mayhem
has already killed more Americans than terrorism.
And it's going to keep killing increasing numbers of Americans.
The US should
shift to a war on greenhouse gas emissions.
The first step is to stop using an emotionally neutral term such as
"climate change" to describe the threat.
*'I get scared': the young activists
sounding
the alarm from climate
tipping points.*
What they are warning about is not specific tipping points. We
usually don't know exactly where those are located. Rather, it is
the fact that systems are starting to tip.
*Julian Assange and fiancee
claim
they are being blocked from marrying.*
Robert Reich: The US rich have got much richer because their political
clout enabled them to cut their taxes. They have mostly
neutralized the
wealth taxes that the US adopted around 1900.
We can make them function again, if we are determined.
New York City should
deal with anti-vaxx thugs by getting stricter.
I suggest asking the public to send in photos of thugs who are
unmasked in public — and fine the
thugs $100 for each occasion they
are proved to have been maskless. Half of that could be a reward for
whoever took the photo.
Pfizer and Moderna claim that non-rich countries have no ability to
manufacture mRNA vaccines —
but
that is false.
Of course, it would be easy to put this to the test. Tell them what
they need to know, and we will soon see whether they succeed in making
the vaccine.
The article's authors have fallen into the fundamental confusion
spread by the term "intellectual property". If you use that
pseudo-concept, what you say about patents will be false because lots
of things that describe various other laws
will
be mixed into the
mishmash.
Dave Eggers warns that there will be a campaign to put cameras in
every home. The stated purpose
will
be to stamp out domestic violence.
When Americans get out of jail, many of them owe more than $10,000 to
the court, an
amount than a poor person in America can't pay.
Then there is the debt for probation, owed to the private company that
runs probation and charges the not-quite-ex-con a lot of money.
It should be forbidden to privatize any aspect of prisons, courts, or
the justice system.
I was disappointed that this campaign uses an app. It is almost
surely nonfree. Can someone find out if it is possible to deal with
the campaign by phone call?
It is not unusual for a thug to shoot and kill a black man who is
driving a car, then claim, falsely, that the
car
was a deadly weapon
and the victim had threatened the thug's life with it.
Sometimes the thug
jumps in front of the car, notices that the car is
heading straight at him, and then shoots and kills the driver. How
easy it is to turn any driver into a deadly threat that you simply
must shoot.
This explains why it is very helpful to
adopt
a policy that thugs
should not stop a car for a minor traffic violation.
The article linked to at the start of this note displays symbolic
bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing
bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry,
and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I
make exceptions for some articles which give important information
about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of
the exceptions.
Proposing the legal right to decide
who
is allowed to monitor your brain.
Australia spends
$500
million per year holding refugees prisoner on Nauru.
Millions for cruelty, but not one cent for kindness.
There were large rallies for
climate
defense on Saturday in many
cities around the world,
Progressives made a mistake, then suffered a defeat, regarding
the
Build
Back Better (relief and climate) bill.
The mistake was to allow a vote on the infrastructure bill before the
relief and climate bill had been signed into law. I can't understand
why they did this, since they had insisted vehemently that it would
risk allowing plutocratists
to gut or kill the relief and clinate
bill.
Next thing you know, the plutocratists starting doing just that.
Wall Street took the idea of
"natural
capital" literally:
the New York Stock Exchange now offers to list a special type of corporation which represents the
benefits that flow from some natural ecosystem, as a private good.
Blackrock is not altruistic. If it buys land, it will not dedicate
that land to a good purpose. At least, not once there is something
more profitable to do with it.
I suspect this will promote the privatization of state lands so that
their "ecosystem services" can be owned by big companies. Next thing
you know, the lands might be bought up by a "private equity" asset
stripper that will remove
the water, the vegetation, or whatever is profitable to sell off.
Meanwhile, they will resell the land minus its "ecosystem services"
for other uses. If you live in a house on that land, you may find
that the previous owner -- Blackrock? -- signed away your right to
object to the asset stripping or whatever else the owner of the
"natural capital" decides to do there. That's what happens if someone
else owns oil or fracking rights under your house.
A UK official concerned with
bigotry
among cops proposes to monitor
their digital communications,
I have mixed opinions about this proposal.
There are situations in which it is acceptable for the state to open a
person's letters, but I think they call for a court order based on
specific reasons to open that person?'s letters.
On the one hand, it is legitimate to monitor cops systematically in
ways that would be unjust to apply to people in general. It is very
important to fire cops that engage in bigotry, because they are likely
to be thugs.
On the other hand, doing this to cops might encourage the state to do
it to others.
Criticizing Biden's choice for "drug czar"
Biden's
choice for "drug czar"
-- he does not lean towards
harm reduction.
Pakistan's
biometric
national ID database illustrates how such databases
are dangerous.
An overeager algorithm can cancel the citizenship of multiple generations.
The system also serves purposes of repression and bigotry.
The US must take
strong
enough measures to prevent a coup by the
wrecker in 2024.
I love the Churchill quote that fits the wrecker's feigning
supporters: "Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, it
will eat him last."
The US and Canada, but not Japan, South Korea, or China, pledged to
stop
subsidizing foreign fossil fuel projects next year.
*Boston Free Assange Rally Calling on
Merrick
Garland to Stop Criminalization of Journalism*
*
Threadbare
US Social Safety Net: The War on Science, Medicine, and
Equality for All.*
* Where are Biden's trips to West Virginia and Arizona to rally support
for his legislation? Where are the fireside chats with the American
people? Where are Biden's attempts to corral votes among the Republican
Senators on
highly
popular issues including paid family leave, lower
drug prices and a clean-energy future?*
*University of Florida reverses decision, will allow professors to
testify as
paid experts in voting rights case.*
If Big Tech companies such as Apple control cars, they will design them
to collect data on
where
each person goes and how each driver drives.
But it's not just them.
We
know that Tesla cars have told Tesla where
people go in them
and there is no reason to think any other company
is less of a snoop.
*To limit global warming to 1.5°C, the *
U.S.
must ultimately stop
building new export terminals and pipelines that prop up this dangerous
fossil fuel worldwide.
* But Biden plans to continue them.
*The Fossil Free Finance Act would
stop
major banks and other important
financial institutions from funding fossil fuel projects.*
*It's the Democratic Party's job, and Biden's job in particular, to beat
a highly
unpopular
lobby that has poisoned the planet, not to surrender
to it.*
Big Pharma and Big Insurance spent spent $171 million, January through
September,
on
lobbying against giving more Americans adequate medical
care.
*Catapult
Industry Won't Survive Another Year Without
Medieval War Breaking Out.*
Shareholder resolutions call for
Pfizer
and Moderna to teach other
factories how to make RNA vaccines.
Extinction Rebellion: *
Agreed
at COP26 is an inadequate agreement that
allows coal to continue for nearly 20 more years. But that's
excluding major nations who refuse to sign at all.*
*Madagascar is
experiencing
famine due to global heating.*
The US demand that North Korea discard its nuclear weapons is a futile
approach.
The
US should aim for a lesser goal that is achievable.*
Transparency over emissions
remains
a sticking point at Cop26.
*
*Airlines keep
losing
and damaging wheelchairs at an alarming rate.*
The effective way to make your
clothing
purchases sustainable
is to buy a lot less.*
*Bitcoin, Ethereum
Mining
Threatens Paris Climate Agreement:
Swedish
Financial Regulator.*
I think this position is valid. To save the world, we need to
decrease the use of fossil fuel; merely increasing use of renewable
energy won't do the job.
As a means of anonymous purchasing, these cryptocurrencies have
several drawbacks. They are not a real solution.
GNU Taler
can be a real solution.
La Paz is suffering from high levels of UV radiation.
levels
of UV radiation.
It may be caused by global heating;
if so, it is likely happen more
often in coming decades.
US officials have still not found the parents of
270
children that the
bully's officials separated from their parents.
The effort to reunite these families continues, hampered by the
failure to keep records. The bully's border thugs were largely
motivated by cruelty and hatred, and I suspect that they deliberately
acted to prevent ever reuniting these families.
I think these children were too young, at that time, to know things
such as their parents full names and where they lived.
*ExxonMobil and Chevron are the world's most obstructive
organisations when it comes to governments setting climate policies,
according to research into the
‟prolific
and highly sophisticated”*
lobbying ploys used by the fossil fuel industry.*
Toyota is also high up on the list.
*New report
shows
that 10 Facebook pages are responsible for 69% of climate
denial posts.*
Right-wing extremist Rep. Marjorie Greene owes
$48,000 in fines for
going to the House of Representatives without a mask.
This demonstrates that this punishment is insufficient to achieve
its goal. Wearing a mask is a measure to protect the lives and health
of all the members of the House, and their staff. Those who refuse
to wear a mask should not be allowed in, no matter who they are.
US citizens: tell Kaiser Permanente to
give
its workers a raise,
not a pay cut. That company is making big profits and can afford a raise.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
remove
Senator Joe Manchin as
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
US citizens: state your
support
for the Social Security 2100 Act
(the link gives details).
(satire) *Despondent Congressman
Gerrymanders
Self Into Own Isolated District.*
(satire) *Biden Social Spending Bill Whittled Down To
$10 Billion
Check To Joe Manchin.*
*Major U.S. insurers
continue
to underwrite "the reckless expansion of oil and gas
infrastructure."*
The UK is deporting
people to Jamaica who grew up in the UK
and have no contacts in Jamaica.
It's wrong when
the US does this,
and wrong for other countries too.
Italy seems to have adopted a law that
bans
advertisements on the street
that "perpetuate gender stereotypes".
That is extremely broad censorship, since an ad need not disparage
or insult anyone to be banned. It is enough for it to show men and/or
women behaving in a customary way. Showing a party where women wear
dresses and men wear suits would be forbidden. Any scene in which
people are acting in accord with usual Italian sex roles is forbidden.
Advertising a romcom, or a James Bond movie, is almost impossible.
Macron’s ex-bodyguard got a
light
sentence (no prison time) for
attacking protesters.
Bogus Johnson will avoid the issue of the gift holiday he got from a
rich Tory by not
officially declaring it.
A summary of what
is known about the Ethiopia-Tigray war.
Some questions that occur to me:
Thugs in the Oklahoma City jail tortured prisoners by
making them stand
for hours, as well as other methods.
Playing the baby shark song probably won't cause the same physical
pain and damage that standing for hours can cause. But if they play
it too loud, it could damage the victim's hearing.
Arguing that charging
for parking benefits a city in many ways,
because the space near the curb gets made available for better uses
and people use cars less.
To make this truly beneficial, the city has to have copious mass
transit. Buses must be frequent enough that the precise schedule is
of no importance.
Many American women can't work because they
can't find, or can't
afford, childcare.
One could argue that if a parent's can't find work that pays for the
cost of childcare, it's more efficient for the parent to stay home and
take care of per own children. Yes, indeed — provided we have a
welfare system that gives per an income to support the family.
Democrats urged Biden to push for a
nuclear
weapons limitation with
China.
Google seeks to
run
servers for the US military.
Governments must never entrust the operation of their servers to an
outside entity, because
the
state must have control of its computing.
*How These Ultrawealthy [US] Politicians
Avoided
Paying Taxes.*
Replanting destroyed seagrass meadows by hand is a crucial method of
restoring
the ocean's ability to sequester CO2.
It can also provide employment.
The Prison Arts Collective
teaches
art in prisons in the US.
Beyond enriching their lives, it can also help them learn to live
outside prison.
*The Paterson [corruption] debacle shows that Johnson no longer has
advisers —
he
has courtiers.* Bogus Johnson repeatedly shrugs off
criticism of his own corrupt acts, and the Tory MPs just barely learned
to resist this to eliminate all checks on their corruption.
China jailed Zhang Zhan for publishing reports on the initial Covid-19
outbreak in China. She has been on a hunger strike, and reportedly is
weak
and close to dying.
Reporters Without Borders reminds us that other writers and publishers
are in prison in China for publishing.
*Left Coalition Says McAuliffe Campaign Was a
'Controlled Experiment
for What Not to Do in 2022'. Either excite voters with a bold agenda
or risk losing power to the GOP.*
Questioning the goal, the possibility, and the
idea
of economic growth.
Economic growth, if it includes the non-rich, offers the opportunity
of a truce in the class war: if we divide the gains fairly, we can all
work together. But fair division is not assured; indeed, it is
unlikely today. What that suggests is that we had better focus
on how the world's income is divided.
While continued economic growth may be impossible, that doesn't
mean further growth is impossible for the next few decades.
It is true that using more resources has the potential to
backfire — but that result is not inevitably big enough to be
a real problem.
Reducing
the birth rate so as to start reducing the human population
is a safe and ethical way to enable each of us to have more of some
things that make life more comfortable and enjoyable.
Extinction Rebellion protested at Cop26
against
apparent greenwashing.
The thugs are
threatening
protesters and blocking protests.
A year ago, Oregon decriminalized possession of illegal drugs.
This
article describes the benefits
Baltimore's "conviction integrity unit" determined that David Morris
had been convicted of murder
based
on unreliable testimony
and invalid
evidence. He will be freed after 17 years in prison.
*The real lesson of the election results?
Democrats
must go big and bold.
*
Plutocratist
Democrats say that plutocratist Democrat Terry McAuliffe
lost
the Virginia governor's race because progressive Democrats are
stubbornly pushing for the progressive policies most Americans want.
This makes no sense, but you have to expect
plutocratist politicians
to blame progressives for everything.
(satire) *
Democrats
Spooked By Loss In Virginia Vow To Work Twice As Hard To Muddle
Their Agenda.*
The Pentagon investigad its last drone attack in Kabul -- the one thet
killed the Ahmadi family -- and concluded that troops properly
followed the procedures intended to avoid attacking civilians.
Nonetheless,
the
procedures gave the wrong conclusion, and the attack
hit civilians.
What this shows is that the procedures are not entirely reliable.
What is not so clear is whether there is a way to make the procedures
more reliable. A way may exist, but we can't assume a priori that
there is one. It's possible that the procedures are unreliable and
yet there is no way to make them reliable.
That sort of thing happens in war. It is called "the fog of war" --
there are crucial facts that you need to know, which you can't know.
Without them, you have to make decisions based on guesses.
But what if the army changes the question? What if it considers
an option that wasn't considered in August?
For instance, what if one drone hovers in front of the car, making it
slow down and stop, while another drone stays ready to attack? The
reactions of the people in the car might show whether they are
bomb-throwers or harmless civilians.
Senator Schiff
calls
for the US to state clearly its commitment to
defending Taiwan if China attacks,*
The logic of this is obvious: to make sure doesn't someday attack Taiwan
on the supposition that the US will not help Taiwan resist.
I am unable to judge how "strategic ambiguity" might help avoid an
attack, but I won't claim that is impossible. I am no expert on
displomacy.
*Restoring mangrove swamps could be an effective way of
sequestering
large amounts of carbon in the sea.*
I see two possible problems with it.
*NIH Officials Worked With EcoHealth Alliance to
Evade
Restrictions on
Coronavirus Experiments.*
These experiments took place in the Wuhan lab in China, with US
funding specifically to do these experiments, and the experimenters
pushed the safety limits.
These experiments did not cause a pandemic, but there was a risk they
could have done so.
The Senate tried again to hold a vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act, mainly to pressure Manchin and Sinema,
who insist on
maintaining Republicans' power to block laws.
*The Senate needs to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,
and a suite of other democratic protections, in
time for them to be
implemented before the 2022 elections.*
The Federal Election Commission ruled that foreign companies (and
perhaps foreign individials and governments too)
can
contribute to campaigns for and against
ballot questions.
The International Criminal Court will
investigate
accusations of torture
by Venezuelan state suppression forces -- with Maduro's agreement.
Interviews with exiled Nicaraguan opponents of the Ortega couple's
dictatorship,
including
their daughter.
*Why is Trudeau pressuring
Michigan
to keep a dangerous oil pipeline open?
*
Author Jen Wasserstein says,
"My
life without a smartphone is getting
harder and harder."
Good on her to resist, but she should stop doubting the rightness of
her resistance.
It is interesting to compare her account my own experiences this year
without any portable phone whatsoever, in Europe as well as the US.
There were inconvenient moments, but I always got through them.
I am fortified in my resistance by knowing powerful moral reasons to
condemn portable phones. It's not just that I find their effect on
other people alarming. I recognize them as a threat to democracy
due
to their massive general surveillance
as well as an injustice to each user (due to their remotely
modifiable nonfree software). As a result, I never feel abashed about
rejecting them, nor ashamed if the ignorant look askance. I am proud
of my resistance.
When a waiter tells me to scan a QR code, I move my finger slowly over
it while staring at it intently, as if a menu should magically appear.
After sufficient time, I may say, "It doesn't seem to be working."
Try it, it's fun!
Please join me in resisting the pressure to make everyone run nonfree
software.
Even
if you only say no once, saying no even once is helping.
And once you've said no the first time, the second time is easier.
New York City has reduced the debt payments for
taxi
medallion owners
who borrowed to buy a medallion.
One of several contributing causes of the medallion owners' problem is
the arrival of Uber, which was prepared to lose billions of dollars a
year for many years to wipe out the taxi companies.
Uber would have been an injustice simply for the concentration of the
industry of replacing many small local companies with one large
company, even if there were nothing else wrong with it. But its
biggest wrong is to its customers: it makes them run a nonfree app
on a nonfree operating system, and they can't pay anonymously since
the company does not accept cash.
Uber was compelled to stop running at a loss, and raise its prices.
Uber drivers make less than taxi drivers now. Uber is now weak.
So choose a real taxi, and pay in cash!
Warning of potential abuses in
privatizing
access to space.
Communications satellites are already private -- built and operated by
large companies which pay to launch them. It is not clear to me that
SpaceX makes the situation very different. But there may be problems
I do not recognize.
Zillow has given up on the business of
peculating
in houses that other
people need as places to live.
Each state and territory in the US has its own laws that determine how
much it
facilitates
tax dodging and hiding wealth.
*Banks are still financing fossil fuels –-
while
signing up to net zero pledges.*
*"Invisible Toxic Cocktail" in
Tap
Water Across US Due to "Regulatory
Capture".*
Many poisonous substances found in tap water
are
not regulated at
all by the EPA. These include the PFAs plus many more.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
confirm
Jessica Rosenworcel and
Gigi Sohn in the FCC.
If global heating continues,
the
Great Barrier Reef will be toast.
*Q&A: how
fast do we need to cut carbon emissions?*
60% of people from India and vicinity have
a
particular allele (gene
variant) that doubles the chance of death from Covid-19.
However, the allele is also found (though less frequently) in other
human populations.
I wonder whether people should get tested for this allele.
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed posted on Facebook that he would
"bury" the Tigrayan rebels;
Facebook
deleted the post for "inciting
violence".
That is a rather absurd precaution, given that the two armies are at
war.
Why did Facebook do this? I speculate that it is an attempt to ridicule
the idea of trying to stop Facebook from being used to provoke violence.
*A secret
document distributed by Israel to justify its terrorist designations
of six prominent Palestinian human rights groups shows no concrete
evidence of involvement in violent
+activities by any of the groups.*
US citizens: call on JPMorgan Chase and UBS to
divest
from Amazon oil
and gas, to avoid the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
In Siberia's north,
global
heating in the summer is drying up lakes,
cratering the ground, and killing young deer.
*Australia’s Largest Retail Union
Colludes
With Bosses to Exploit Workers.*
Some pizzerias are
using
robots to deliver pizzas, rolling on
sidewalks -- and, horribly, they require the customer to have a
smartphone.
I urge people to reject the
food-delivery
gig economy companies
because they require customers to identify themselves and pay digitally
(as well as other reasons).
By contrast, a human delivery agent working for the pizzeria can
accept payment in cash.
The robot is even worse. You have to identify yourself, and you have to do
it with a phone. Instead of paying workers too little, it gets rid of them.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, has posted signs on the street urging people to
go to the restaurant and pick up their order.
*Cop26's worst outcome would be
giving
the green light to carbon offsetting.*
*Cop26 has to be about
keeping
fossil fuels in the ground. All else is
distraction.*
*Possible
war crimes on all sides in Ethiopian conflict,*
according
to a joint investigation by the UN and Ethiopia.
The EPA must make
sure the packaging of our food is not slowly poisoning us.
The US Supreme Court may
block
all efforts to regulate CO2 emissions;
for instance, the emissions of fossil-fuel-fired generators.
*Ireland would need to
cull
up to 1.3 million cattle to reach climate
targets.*
If civilization's survival depends on it, Ireland must do it.
The world's greenhouse pledges, supposing they are carried out,
might now
limit global heating to 2C.
That's big progress, but not enough to avoid disaster, because (1) 2C
of heating will probably be disaster, and (2) positive feedbacks we
don't know about could come into play.
*The dystopian danger of a
mandatory
biometric database in Mexico.*
In the past 10 years, Australia has
given
fossil fuels 37 billion in subsidy;
renewable energy, only 3 billion.
Trying to curb global heating by
planting
trees will not help much
unless it is done right -- and that's not easy.
Comparing Insulate Britain to the suffragettes shows that
their
annoying tactics are justified.
I don't doubt that the cause of saving civilization justifies blocking
highways as a protest. I just hope it doesn't backfire.
The US has put NSO, the company that makes the Pegasus cracking software,
on a blacklist that
forbids
its use of US technology products.
I wonder if the US will be able to enforce that prohibition. What NSO sells
is software.
Bogus Johnson went by
private
jet from the climate conference in
Glasgow to London for a reunion dinner.
This makes his words about the need to reduce greenhouse emissions
look like total hypocrisy.
Bogus Johnson has joined the effort to
protect
MP charged with corruption
from being investigated through Parliament's system for such investigations.
This is tantamount to a campaign to open Parliament to corruption
without limits, at least for his friends.
Some economists say that if the US were racially integrated, that would
increase
US economic growth a significant amount.
I think the reason to try to end racism is more fundamental -- it's an
injustice.
Iran has agreed
to resume talks on reinstating the non-nuclear deal
that the wrecker cancelled.
*Biden Urged to
Repair
US-Iran Relations With Humanitarian Aid.*
A stage production directed by Terry Gilliam has been
cancelled
because staff at the theater objected to some of his political views.
Cancellationists seek universal support for their political stances,
not by convincing everyone that they are right, but by bullying everyone
who states any doubts.
The President of Palau:
*Frankly speaking, there is no dignity to a slow and
painful death -—
you
might as well bomb our islands instead of making us
suffer only to witness our slow and fateful demise.*
Arguing that the transition to clean energy will inevitably involve
a stage
of using much less energy than now.
Depletion of the easy-extract fossil fuels will make energy more
expensive, years before we have enough green energy capacity to fill
ths shortfall.
Biden has announced
new
EPA regulations to reduce methane emissions.
*Biden's New Methane Rules
"Do
Not Go Far Enough" to Slash Planet-Warming Gas.*
The use of AI should
be regulated, when it affects the public.
Cop26 has launched a fund that aims to
give
1.7 billion dollars to indigenous peoples, and other local
communities, for the sake of ending deforestation.
The money will be used to "support [their] capacity to govern
themselves collectively, assist with mapping and registration work,
back national land reform and help resolve conflict over territories."
This can be a good idea, but it needs to be done carefully.
Indigenous peoples are made up of human beings who have the same moral
and intellectual flexibility as other human beings. After the US
divided up the land of various Indian reservations as private property
of various Indians, many of them agreed to sell that property to
whites. (That was, I think, the US's aim in dividing the land.)
We should give local communities the authority to protect forests and
ecosystems, but not the authority to sell them or despoil them.
Australia's resources minister gave a
subsidy
to a fracking project
without even considering climate effects.
Australia should have a climate defense minister rather than a
"resources" minister.
Bosnian Serbs are
reportedly planning to break away from Bosnia again.
In Sudan, bankers are on strike to protest the military government.
This has brought much of the economy to a standstill,
and is causing
hardship for people who don't have cash to buy food.
Is it correct to think of bankers as part of the people?
Is it a good thing that bankers can bring the country to its knees
by striking, or does it show they are dangerously powerful?
*Mercenaries, the army and Bashir-era business interests
have seized
control and will sell the country’s resources to the highest bidder.*
Afghanistan's improbable history,
from
progressive king to
Communist civil war to religious fanatics.
* UK, US and China among countries representing two-thirds of global
economy to agree to push green energy and cars.* They plan to make
many technologies cheaper and make them available to the whole
world, starting
with clean electricity, electric vehicles, green
steel, elecrolytic hydrogen and sustainable farming.
This won't make the global heating
problem fix itself — we will still need
to end deforestation, and fund quick adoption of these new solutions.
That will require a lot of investment in poor countries.
Yahoo has ceased doing business in China
rather
than obey China's strict state surveillance laws.
When it is impossible for a US company to operate justly in another country,
it should do as Yahoo just did, and cease operating there.
A woman died in Poland as a result of being denied an abortion. This
has
provoked protests.
This was a special case — a late-stage abortion which most European
countries would permit on grounds of medical necessity.
The everyday issue of abortion rights concerns the rights of women who
simply don't want to have a baby.
The US is suing
to
block the merger of Penguin with Simon & Schuster.
Finally, the US government treats big mergers the way it should never have
stopped treating them.
Bacterial infections are becoming ever more dangerous due to
antibiotic resistance,
which
spreads further every year.
In a few decades we will be back where we were in 1940, when there wasn't
much to help people fight fight off an infection in a wound.
The article proposes "more incentives" to develop new antibiotics. I
fear that means "more patent power, as well as subsidies." If we
aren't careful, that will result in antibiotics that are too expensive
for most people to use.
Let's learn a lesson from the other drugs that are so expensive people
die for lack of money. Let's fund more research on antibiotics, and
exclude them from the patent system.
*Facebook to shut facial recognition system and delete 1bn
"faceprints".
*
How significant the deletion of the faceprints is depends on how hard
it would be to regenerate each one.
450 big banks and investment firms will pledge to
reduce
greenhouse emissions,
but it looks like that pledge lacks firm requirements.
A San Francisco thug is charged with manslaughter for
escalating a
nonviolent encounter
with Sean Moore to the point of killing him.
Hong Kong now officially
bans
documentaries
that depict the massive protests.
Some will be released by underground groups.
*Minneapolis voters reject bid to
replace
police with public safety
department.
*
I'm disappointed; this would have made it possible to avoid using armed cops
on most instances.
Liberal justices argued in the Supreme Court that the Texas
bounty-hunter approach to prohibition would, if allowed to stand,
enable
any state to wipe out any constitutional right.
A US woman went to a hospital's emergency room and waited 7 hours
without being seen, so she left.
The
hospital charged her $700 for that.
Just imagine what they might have charged is someone had actually
looked at her problem!
The root of this problem is the structure of the US medical system,
which pressures each clinical unit to try to gouge patients. We need
to replace it with a national medical system funded by the federal
government.
Every year, Britons march in memory of everyone that
died as a
prisoner of the British state.
I don't use the word "custody" to describe this.
Biden urged
OPEC
to increase its oil output
to relieve a temporary
shortfall of oil, and acknowledged the irony of this.
He's right, in a narrow sense. However, I think the economic harm of
capping fossil fuel extraction at the current level would be far less
than the harm done by allowing extraction to increase as the market
would happen.
An intermediate option would be better if it reduces extraction
effectively and soon. Perhaps Biden should have demanded such a deal
before asking OPEC to increase extraction.
The Archbishop of Canterbury presented clearly how much is at stake
when political leaders decide how hard to push to curb
global heating:
inadequate effort could
result
in a much bigger genocide
than the one
Hitler launched.
Apparently some criticized this statement as disrespectful to Jews,
and he apologized for the alleged disrespect. This criticism puzzles
me, because I don't see any disrespect in his words. They seem
entirely valid to me as a statement of the danger that we face.
What are you going to compare the biggest genocide of all time with,
other than the biggest known genocide of the past?
I think that 6 billion deaths from
climate mayhem is plausible. Of
course, that's just handwaving -- we can't know enough to make more
than a rough estimate. If we take effective action and are lucky,
perhaps only a few hundred million will die from climate disorder. If
we run into surprise positive feedbacks, all 7-8 billion humans could
die from climate disorder. All depends on how effectively we curb
global heating.
The US and other main historical greenhouse gas smitters spend more
on keeping migrants out than they spend on
helping poor countries
deal with global heating effects
that drive people to leave.
The jury in Majid Khan's pseudo-trial condemned the
torture
he experienced
and called for him to receive clemency.
Allowing Majid Khan to testify about how the US tortured him served
the cause of justice, but prosecuting him based on a confession that
was tortured out of him is a dangerous precedent. Under the usual
rules of the US legal system, his confession should have been
considered inadmissable, the case against him should have been
dropped, and he should have been released.
Sanders is still fighting to allow Medicare to
negotiate
drug prices
,
as the national medical services of more civilized countries do. He
faces opposition from plutocratist Democrats as well as from
(plutocratist and then some) Republicans.
*New Zealand plan to halve greenhouse gases criticised as an
"accounting trick".
*
It also depends on supposed
"carbon offsets"
that are not reliable.
An analysis of global heating world politics in
terms
of three pressure blocs.
I disagree with the author's final point. The crucial priority in
decarbonizanion is not fairness, it is rapidity.
Going too slow, which the world's governments' current plans would to
do, risks causing the collapse of civilization and the death of nearly
everyone. Even if those deaths are distributed "fairly", that would
still be a bad outcome. We must at all costs act fast enough to
minimize the damage.
Africa is plagued by
anti-vax
Christian churches.
We have observed similar problems with Christian sects in the US and
South Korea, and with Jews sects in the US and in Israel.
Governments democratic in form have not made an adequate effort
to curb global heating
in time, but authoritarian rulers
are
generally
doing much worse.
The article suggests, and I agree, that more and better democracy is
what we need. I put a name to the problem: plutocracy, where
democracy ought to be.
New York State's new greenhouse emissions regulations have
blocked
construction new gas-fired generators.
*The State of the Climate report for 2021:
Extreme
weather events are "the new norm".
*
Debunking the Philadelphia thugs' cynical report: in fact, some
bystanders did take action when a
rape
was committed on a Philadelphia
subway train.
Everyone: call on Hello Fresh to respect its
workers'
unionization drive
and pay its workers enough to live on.
I personally consider it out of the question to be a customer of Hello Fresh
because there is no way to do that anonymously. But that is a separate
and unrelated issue.
US citizens: call on your senators to
defend
abortion access for all.
US citizens: call on the US to unlock
Afghanistan's
assets so it can buy food.
US citizens: call on the EPA to
speed
up regulating PFAs.
New Zealand schools will start teaching the history of
British
colonization of New Zealand.
It is important for New Zealanders to study this history. I hope
however, that the courses will not fall into the widespread modern
myth of nasty Europeans vs the peaceful united native peoples. The
Maori were far from peaceful or united before Europeans arrived, and
the desire to despoil others was not limited to Europeans alone.
Australia will export
"green hydrogen"
to the UK.
That means hydrogen produced without consumption of fossil fuels.
Opponents of Virginia's Republican candidate for governor, a
right-wing extremist,
went
to his rally pretending to be his supporters,
while swinging the torches that rightwing extremists carried
violent
rally in 2017.
It is valid to try to tie right-wing extremists to recent past acts of
violent right-wing extremism, but this way of doing it was wrong and foolish.
It is wrong because it can have the effect of a false-flag attack.
The Republican candidate denounced it as one, and that was easy to do
because the difference was small. If you're going to criticize
someone through a comparison, you must show clearly and visibly that
it is a comparison rather than a falsehood.
Second, it could easily backfire by winning the Republican candidate
more support from white supremacists.
Just as India's extemist Hindus persecute the Muslim minority,
Bangladesh's extremist Muslims
persecute
the Hindu minority.
The persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh is not a new thing.
Taslima Nasrin's book Lajja described that persecution in 1992.
Persecution of Muslims in India is not new either.
I wonder if these two persecuted minorities can help each other.
Could Indian Muslims campaign in Bangladesh, and Bangladeshi Hindus
campaign in India, for respect and coexistence?
Probable extreme-right French presidential candidate Zemmour is
using an anti-semitic dog whistle by
attacking
Alfred Dreyfus.
A Republican Texas legislator has demanded that school districts
describe all the books they have that might make students feel
discomfort (or various other negative feelings) about their race or
gender.
The
aim seems to be censorship.
To illustrate how broad the demand is, consider the plays of
Shakespeare. Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and The Taming of the
Shrew might make students (and others too) uncomfortable for reasons
having to do with race and/or sex.
Will Republicans eventually move to ban them?
If they do, will progressives oppose the move -- or support it?
*New Zealand pledges to halve
greenhouse
gas emissions by 2030.
*
*EPA Withheld Reports
of
Substantial Risk Posed by 1,240 Chemicals.*
* Optimistic assessments of progress on tackling the climate crisis were
“an illusion”, the UN secretary general has said
in
a scathing critique
of world leaders’ efforts so far to cut greenhouse gas emissions and
stave off climate breakdown.*
*Don’t mourn, organise! Politics and poverty
have reached the US
sitcom -– and could change everything.*
India has made a climate commitment
which
won't make major reductions
in greenhouse gas emissions until decades from now.
All countries must push hard to reduce emissions, if we are to have
a chance of avoiding global disaster.
That global disaster will hit India hard. Several major Indian cities
are on the coast, at very low elevation, including Mumbai, Kolkata,
Kochi and Kozhikode.
New York City's order for city employees to get vaccinated
convinced a large
fraction to do so.
However, some occupations have a substantial fraction of workers
who have yielded to right-wng brainwashing; they would rather die
than protect themselves and the public.
I regret that firefighters have fallen into this irrationality,
because a right-wing fireman is probably a good fireman nonetheless.
However, a right-wing cop is likely to be a racist thug,
therefore a threat to public safety. It's good to get some
of them off the force.
*As teens left Facebook,
company
planned to lure 6-year-olds, documents show.*
Let's take care not to focus on manipulation of children
in a way that would excuse Facebook's manipulation of teenagers and adults.
Reporting from Cop26:
*The
sense of purpose at Cop26 is tangible.*
*Biden, Bolsonaro and Xi
among
leaders agreeing deal to end deforestation.*
* Campaigners warn Brazil may make empty promises at Cop26
to gain access
to conservation money.*
The EU and Poland are headed
for
a fundamental conflict which neither
side can afford to lose.
The EU has a grave flaw in that it is not very democratic. In its
structure for legislating, democracy plays a weak role. However, the
Polish right-wing government does not aim to change this. Its goal is
to break the EU's defense of human rights and honest justice.
A summary of
climate-protecting trends
that are seen across the
spectrum of human activity.
They are not growing fast enough -- we need governments to accelerate
them.
The EU and Poland are headed for a
fundamental
conflict which neither
side
The EU has a grave flaw in that it is not very democratic. In its
structure for legislating, democracy plays a weak role. However, the
Polish right-wing government does not aim to change this. Its goal is
to break the EU's defense of human rights and honest justice.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass laws to prevent Facebook from
promoting
right-wing extremism
over other views.
US citizens: call on Biden to ban
offshore
drilling for fossil fuels.
An interview with Steven Donziger,
who
has been sent to prison
for
suing Chevron on behalf of Ecuadorians whose land was poisoned with oil.
UK prosecutors frequently fail to follow the legal requirement to tell
the defendant's lawyers any information that would help per case. When this
becomes known, the case is dismissed. Many cases
are
now being dismissed in
this way.
Prosecutors say that their system
is not set up to carry out the requirement.
*Politicians talk about net zero —
but
not the sacrifices we must make to get
there.*
Announcing a campaign
to
protect Britain's NHS from privatization.
The Corporations United
decision (*) gave every industry the power to
sneer at Congress —
and
at non-rich Americans.
* The official name of the organization was "Citizens United…"
But since it represented corporations' rights, I call it "Corporations
United."
Douglas Rushkoff:
*Exponential
Tech Doesn’t Serve Social Good.*
The UK government wants to film protesters with drones operating 1500
feet up, and
identify them without their being able to tell.
Pelosi helped
Manchin kill the billionaire tax.
Prominent Liberal and Conservative activists and academics
have joined
to condemn the fascist threat to democracy.
This includes condemning the Republican Party as it has become,
despite the fact that some of them supported that party in the past.
*Philadelphia to become first major US city
to
ban police from stopping
drivers for low-level traffic violations.*
The point of this is to protect black drivers from one frequent opportunity
to harass them for
"driving
while black".
The University of Florida told three professors they were forbidden
to testify as expert witnesses
in
a case against Florida's latest
voting restrictions law.
What the state is doing is much worse than an infringement of academic freedom.
It is an attempt to bias the trial about the constitutionality of the
voting restrictions law, and thus a second attack on democracy piled
on the first one.
The history of the
DMCA and other similar unjust laws around the world.
The DMCA's DRM exceptions process, every three years, is a repeated distraction
from campaigning for what we really need to do: legalize breaking DRM,
and make DRM a crime instead.
See also my 1997 science fiction story,
The
Right To Read,
which warned
about the dangers of the DMCA as it was still going through Congress.
As far as I can tell, it was the only science fiction story ever
published in the Communications of the ACM.
Universities in the past welcomed argument about important issues.
Now, it seems, they
let mobs hound those who disagree.
The G20 meeting
did
not agree on aiming for net zero even in 2050.
*Sudan coup protesters
man
barricades on seventh day of unrest.*
This followed a day of large protests
in
which soldiers fired at protesters,
wounding and killing some.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, refuse to have a vote on the
infrastructure bill until the Build Back Better bill is settled and certain
to be adopted.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to
refuse
to vote on the weak infrastructure
compromise without a vote on the Build Back Better Act.
Even though plutocratists
such as Manchin and Sinema got rid of 4/5 of
the original Build Back Better proposal, the Build Back Better act is
still crucial because it has a lot of climate defense. We must insist
that it pass.
Biden offered two California school boards federal funds to compensate
for the salary funds that Disease DeSantis denied them as punishment for
requiring masks. Now DeSantis has
arbitrarily
fined them the same
amount again.
This act violates federal law, so maybe a court will order Florida to deliver
those funds.
Facebook's "metaverse" means many more kinds of sensors
feeding new
kinds of data into each zucker's dossier.
Facebook's attempt to rebrand itself is
much
worse than a distraction.
(satire) *Congress Addresses Child Care Crisis By
Loosening
Restrictions On Locking Children In Car For 8 Hours.*
Venezuela will have another election, with many parties, and the
situation
is complex. The US-supported extreme opposition is less
popular than moderate opposition.
Comparing China's renewable energy with America's: both
grossly
inadequate but in different ways.
(satire) *NRA Accuses ‘Rust’ Producers Of
Endangering
Crew By Not
Giving Everyone Guns.*
(satire) *Exxon Staff Wins
Company-Wide
Pizza Party After Greenhouse
Gas Levels Hit New High.*
Estimating that the wrecker is
responsible
for around 150,000 American deaths,
by his failure to encourage Americans to wear masks from Sep 2020 to Jan 2021.
Proposing the sort of
infrastructure
program that the US really ought
to run, in order to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.
* New research reveals how six fossil fuel giants
captured European
climate politics.*
Likewise in the US.
A company proposes to make
beehive-protection AI systems
to protect beekeepers' hives.
I forecast these will do to beekeepers what John Deere tractors are
doing to farmers.
The Rolling Jubilee Fund frees Americans from
debt-based perpetual
punishment by buying their debt and cancelling it.
Majid Khan, prisoner in Guantanamo,
has
testified about how the US
tortured him.
He has confessed to aiding al-Qa'ida, but we cannot know whether he
really did so. Torture is quite effective at eliciting false
confessions -- that is what it's designed for -- so we cannot presume
he deserved the punishment he has already received.
*Joe Manchin single-handedly denied
US
families paid leave.
*
The companies that created the
world's
biggest environmental problems
also launch PR campaigns to distract individuals into striving to reduce
their personal contributions to these problems, instead of organizing to
change the systems that cause them. They also lull people with the
fantasy that they might someday enjoy the life styles of millionaires.
I disagree with Monbiot's dismissal of a carbon tax. If the tax rate
is big enough, and schduled to grow steadingly year by year, it can
mobilize massive investment in decarbonization along with general
divestment from fossil fuel companies.
What won't work is a small, token carbon tax.
*Outcry after Oklahoma prisoner
vomits
and convulses during execution.
*
I am surprised that people give so much importance to whether the
person being excuted suffers during the process, because in my view
that is a secondary issue. I think the
principal
wrong of the death
penalty is that the prisoner dies from it.
*Cop26 breakthrough will require
require
rich nations to finally make good
Nobody has to suffer from this, if we get the funds by taxing the rich more.
Oil company executives testified to Congress and told
blatant lies
about their past denial
of global heating.
But they did admit to recent lobbying meetings with Manchin.
Rep. Maloney
specifically
accused the Exxon CEO
lying about climate
science. under oath.
There are plans to subpoena more testimony from these companies.
*What Big Oil knew about climate change,
in
its own words.*
Some conclusions about
planet-roaster strategy.
Global heating
effects including fires and droughts, plus deforestation,
have turned some important forests into
net
emitters of greenhouse gases.
This shows several examples of positive-feedback effects that magnify
the consequences of our emissions. These examples are well-known, but
we keep discovering new ones.
Meanwhile, some countries are falsifying their progress by
citing
forests
that don't really exist.
Seven years after a
New
York City thug
killed Eric Garner, the high
officers of the thug
department have refused to testify in an investigation of the killing.
US citizens: call
on the FTC to block the proposed merger of Amazon
and MGM.
Any merger that includes (or results in) a large company is harmful;
the details can make it even more harmful, or not.
New Zealand is buying out the homes that are endangered by the
spreading flood zones. It's much cheaper
than
trying to hold back the
floods.
I would admire the people who stubbornly refuse to move, if their firm
stand could dissuade floods. But the only way to do that is by
curbing global heating.
Canada's supreme court
has
defended the right to mock other people.
This is a central part of freedom of speech. If it were illegal to
mock people and hurt their feelings, you can bet that the first people
you would be punished for mocking would be greedy billionaires and
right-wing politicians.
*Australia's 2050 net zero emissions plan
relies on "gross
manipulation" of data, experts say.*
I am not surprised. The leaders of Australia are
planet roasters.
After the big fires, they have been compelled to give lip service to
climate defense, but getting more than lip service out of them
will be difficult.
California is considering a plan
to
make home solar power more expensive???
Frances Moore Lappé:
*America's
Killer Diet*.
New Zealand is pressuring the people of the Tokelau Islands to vote
for independence from New Zealand, but
they
keep voting to remain
a colony.
The highest elevation in Tokelau is 5 meters above sea level. Maybe
the people figure they will be forced to move to New Zealand later
this century.
AI is advancing rapidly, and
the
dangers that researchers and science
fiction writers have imagined may hit us soon.
(satire)
*Andrew Yang Developing New Fourth Party After Failing To
Gain Support With Third Party.*
(satire)
*Texas School Censors All Of ‘Huck Finn’ Except The N-Words.*
*This move will allow educators to focus on the key elements of an
American classic without fear of trafficking in the novel’s harmful
themes of compassion and racial equality.*
(satire)
*SpaceX Under Fire After Autonomous Rocket Hits Pedestrian.*
(satire)
*Billionaire Buying Sandwich Unfairly Targeted With 5% Sales Tax.*
*The Myth of Redemptive Violence* says that
the
way to solve the
world's problems is by killing.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter to end US support for the
war in Yemen.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call
on Congress to abolish the PAT RIOT Act.
*Beyond Extinction Rebellion: the [specialized] *
protest
groups fighting
on the climate front line.
*
Senator Burr is suspected of
giving
his brother-in-law a secret
warning
to sell stock because Covid-19 was on its way.
* Nothing and everything and
not
nearly enough has changed in the six
years since the Paris climate summit and agreement.
The four players in
our climate future –- climate chaos, climate activism, climate solutions
and climate finance –- are still on a playing field filled with floods,
flames and false solutions.*
*The US should cut the
military budget
to fund Build Back Better programs.*
The UK has
convicted
climate defense activists
for painting "lies,
lies, lies" on the office of a denialist lobbying organization.
Compare this "criminal damage" with inundated cities and burning forests.
An FBI thug rushed into a store in Oakland and seconds later shot
Jonathan
Cortez dead.
The family demand to know why, and have been met
with harassment.
The Sudanese military rulers are arresting
people who supported
democratic government, as well as journalists, and holding them
incommunicado.
Censorship and repression in India reach a lunatic extreme: Indian
Muslims were arrested for celebrating
Pakistan's
cricket victory
over
India.
*Banks Lobby Against Biden Proposal to Crack Down on
Ultra wealthy
Ultra wealthy "Tax
Cheats."*
*Net zero is not enough -–
we
need to build a nature-positive future.
*
*World is failing to make changes needed to avoid climate breakdown,
avoid
climate breakdown,
report
finds.*
*The make-or-break climate summit:
here’s
what’s at stake at Cop26.
*
Everyone: call on Mastercard to
rules
that effectively impose censorship about sex on web sites.
Using the word "adult" as a euphemism for "involving or referring
to sex" is misleading as it attempts to deny the fact
that adolescents are naturally fascinated with these matters.
perhaps we should call them "adolescent" instead of "adult".
Please do not use
"content"
to refer to works of authorship or art --
Not even the ones you have a low opinion of, for whatever reason.
Because that usage inherently disparages all works, or all
publications.
US citizens: demand elimination of
state
laws that restrict abortions.
US citizens: call on Congress to
regulate
collection of data and of
algorithms
to make decisions with it.
US citizens: call on Congress to end
gouging
on prisoners' phone calls.
* Oil and gas companies should be treated like the tobacco industry and
denied routine meetings with
EU officials.
*
Edtech companies are already developing great power over the students
in the schools where they operate, and it will get worse. They use
their
surveillance
power to manipulate students
, and to direct students
into tracks towards various levels of knowledge, power and prestige.
They also structure their relationships so that they are never held responsible
for the consequences.
The article argues that these companies should need to have licenses
to operate. I am not against that, but I would go further. I say
that the data acquired in a school about any student must not leave
the school's control: whatever computers it gets onto must belong to
the school and run free software. That way the school district and/or
parents can control what it does with those data.
*European Investment Bank to
end all loans
to oil and gas firms.*
It will no longer help oil companies develop wind farms, and that is a
good thing, because those projects help the oil company greenwash its
continued fossil fuel operations. The same funds could go to a
wind farm project that is not connected with an oil company.
Facebook says it will
build
a "metaverse".
(Or is that "made it
worse"?) That buzzword is not very precise about its meaning, so if
something does get built, we concretely know hardly anything about
what it might do.
What rhymes with "meta"? "Data". That's what Facebook wants,
and that's what we should refuse to give it. Don't be a zucker!
I won't prejudge it just because Facebook is doing it, but we must suspect
it will mistreat its users. We should pose these questions about it:
A Tennessee Republican state senator, who is one of
ALEC's leaders
,
has been charged with violating campaign finance laws.
Alabama Republicans have made it illegal for schools to teach that any
illegal action is a
legitimate
option.
If interpreted in an evenhanded way, this excludes the American
Revolution from the curriculum, not to mention the civil rights
movement. I expect Republicans to apply the law selectively.
Proper judges would declare it unconstitutional, not because of the
specifics but rather on general principles, but we cannot count on
today's judges to defend academic freedom.
Discounting the value of your own future earnings is economically rational.
But when this is applied to economic models of the future of civilization,
it has the effect of
discounting
future generations down to insignificance.
It is valid to discount our own future income, but it is not valid to
discount someone else's future income as if it were going to be yours.
Background to the
coup in Sudan.
Famine will affect
half
the population
of Afghanistan this winter.
A low-profile
right-wing
lobbying group
guided the bully's "populist"
tax cuts.
to help them benefit the rich more.
Presenting emissions reduction goals in terms of reducing "emissions
intensity" of energy use, for a growing economy that uses ever more
energy, is a
scheme
to disguise failure
That's what India is doing.
We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fast. To hold
emissions steady while using more energy won't save our climate.
The US, in order to get its hands on
Julian
Assange and subject him
to an unfair trial, has promised the UK that it won't imprison him
in brainwashing conditions at the outset.
But it reserves the right to change that decision later.
Wrong as it would be to imprison Assange for journalism, the worst
thing that has happened so far is the UK's decision that it will in
general extradite journalism suspects to the US, agreeing to the US
claim that journalism is "espionage".
Europe's refugee crisis from 1946, with which to
compare that
of the
present day.
US Citizens: call on the house investigation to
demand testimony from
the representatives
accused of helping to plan the attack on the Capitol.
The Brazilian Senate recommends charging Bolsonaro with crimes of
recklessly exposing Brazilians to Covid-19,
and
being responsible for
as much as 300,000 deaths.
Amnesty and Human Rights Watch jointly condemned Israel's
labeling of
Palestinian human rights defenders as "terrorists".
*World’s chief scientists
urge
Cop26 attendees to step up low-carbon policies.*
*Long Beach school safety officer who shot teenager
charged
with murder.*
It's rare that school thugs
actually kill a teenager, but quite common
that they send students to prison. That's the real reason why schools
should not have them.
(satire)
*Construction Finally Complete On Canal Connecting Chemical
Runoff With Mississippi River.*
China will put limits
on constructing very tall buildings.
They divert resources in a direction that isn't useful.
In Honduras, climate disasters
rain
down on the poor and there is nowhere
for them to go.
When I think about this situation, I cannot escape the conclusion
that, in the long term, any solution to the problem of people with
nowhere to go must include limiting the population.
This article argues that oil extraction will collapse in the 2030s,
because the fraction of oil extracted that will
have
to be burned
so
as to extract oil will increase to a level that won't be profitable
to continue.
I don't have the knowledge to judge whether this is true. But if it
is, that may provide the necessary extra impetus to move the world
quickly to renewable energy.
US citizens: support the
Stop
Wall Street Looting Act.
*Sudan coup: US condemns
military takeover
as protests rage overnight.*
China has an agency dedicated to expats from China, including
Tibetans. Its mission is to
spy
on them, pressure them, and occasionally
threaten, attack or kidnap them.
I wonder: When the US catches Chinese agents stalking exiled Chinese
dissidents, what sort of crimes are they charged with, and what sort of
sentences do they serve? Are the sentences long enough to discourage Chinese
from trying such violence, or do they consider it a slap on the wrist?
Mexico is passing a law to impose
government regulation
on traditional
medicine.
*‘Conditioning an entire society’: the
rise
of biometric data
technology.*
Some islands between Australia and New Guinea will be inundated unless
we curb global heating fast. Inhabitants are
suing
Australia to demand this.
US citizens: call on senators to pass the PRO Act, to help workers
unionize.
Half of US Democrats don't want to
"hold
the fossil fuel companies
accountable"
for putting Earth's climate on the path to global
disaster.
More info about the
survey results.
I think that "holding those companies accountable" for the fire they
have started is a secondary issue. What's most important is to push
them aside, and incapacitate them if necessary,. so they can't
interfere as we try to put it out.
*Toxic fracking waste is
leaking
into California groundwater.*
*How the US fails to take away guns from *
domestic abusers.*
*Another Struggle for Long Covid Patients:
Disability Benefits.*
*Half a Million South Korean Workers Walk Off Jobs
Walk Off Jobs
in General Strike.*
It would be great to see American workers do that.
A big Dutch pension fund has decided to
divest
from fossil fuel
companies.
In February 2019 a Facebook employee in India created a test account
to see what Facebook would recommend to new users.
Perse saw the site
recommend a flood of
violent
hatred Pakistan and against Muslims.
Over 20% of women in the UK military report (in a survey) receiving
sexual harassment, and
a
like number report receiving emotional
bullying.
The Democratic Party in Congress has a secret committee in charge
of committee assignments.
Its
rules and its membership are secret.
All we know about its operations is that
it seems very responsive to interests with lots of money.
An FBI document explains
how
it gets tracking data from US phone
companies.
The issue here is not whether phone companies should answer subpoenas.
Rather, it is what data they accumulate.
To track everyone's movements this way is not merely unjust to each
person tracked. It threatens good government by facilitating the
identification of whistleblowers. It threatens democracy itself,
by
facilitating the identification of dissidents.
Therefore, I contend that phone companies should not be allowed to
retain tracking information about any person without first receiving a
specific court order.
As someone once told me, in what kind of state is the job of the
police easy? In a police state.
Rolling Stone says that participants in the attack on the Capitol told
reporters (and the government)
that
they were in planning meetings with
Republican members of Congress.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez called for expulsion of any members of Congress
that
collaborated with the attack on the Capitol.
I agree, but I fear that Republicans lack sufficient patriotism to expel
Republicans for trying to overthrow the government.
I wish it were possible for me to support the campaign, Stop the Money
Pipeline, which aims to get banks to stop investing in fossil fuels.
I can't, because its web site depends on nonfree Javascript code to
the point where I cannot ethically refer anyone to it.
I would like ask them to change this, but the site shows no way to
contact them — no email address, no phone number, no postal address,
nothing.
Can anyone tell me a way to reach them?
In the mean time, they make one concrete recommendation that I can
state here: move your money (and organizations' money) out of Chase,
Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America.
The military have taken over Sudan
and
arrested some or all of
the civilian government.
Funded right-wing groups
are
encouraging anti-maskers to bully school
board meetings.
*Doctors and medical experts say private equity firms and profiteering
corporations are
putting American lives at risk and compromising the
practice of medicine.*
Manchin may have doomed civilization by killing hope of adequate US
climate action. Years before that,
the
first consequence could be a
big economic gain for China at US expense.
Perhaps some businesses and investors, too hard-nosed and
short-signed to care about the future of civilization 40 years from
now, will care enough to try to prevent that.
A campaign aims to clear the name of the thousands of European women
(and some men) who
were executed for imagined witchcraft.
We should not allow fantasy about magic and witches, whether good or
bad, to distort our idea of reality. In reality, there is no such
thing as magic. There is advanced technology which can appear
"indistinguishable from magic", but it isn't really magic, and doesn't
involve devils.
There are real poisons, and are
occasionally
used for murder
or
attempted murder,
but they are physical substances and always administered by
non-magical means.
West Virginia has problems due to
global heating: floods often block
roads and cut towns off from travel. They also often cause long power
outages. It needs both infrastructure improvements and a curb on
global heating.
Thus, Manchin
is serving his state badly.
How can you trust that an app really won't send some company your
location data, when
you tell it not to?
The only way you can trust a program not to do something it isn't supposed
to do is if it is free software,
so
that the user community can check it.
Our awareness of what the world has done to deal with Covid-19 leads
us to envision, for the first time, a global medical system capable of
dealing properly with a global pandemic. Alas,
today's global medical
system is far from sufficient.
It won't be ready for the next pandemic either, unless we make it
a lot more capable.
How can you trust that an app really won't send some company your
location data, when
you tell it
not to?
The only way you can trust a program not to do something it isn't supposed
to do is if it is
free software,
so that the user community can check it.
Our awareness of what the world has done to deal with Covid-19 leads
us to envision, for the first time, a
global
medical system
of
dealing properly with a global pandemic. Alas, today's global medical
system is far from sufficient.
It won't be ready for the next pandemic either, unless we make it
a lot more capable.
Nigeria's population growth has taken up the
land
where herders
used to
move their herds.
DeSantis gave Florida a surgeon general that aims to spread Covid-19.
"Ripper general"
would be a more fitting title for him.
The ripper general went to a meeting in a state senator's office and
refused, by ideology, to wear a mask. The senator told him to leave.
The article doesn't explicitly say so, but I think he did leave.
The fact that this senator has cancer, and therefore is extra
vulnerable to Covid-19, doesn't actually change the moral issue. If
she did not have cancer, she would be no less entitled to have people
wear masks when in a room with her.
*[The corrupter]'s judges will call the shots for years to come. The
[US] judicial system is
broken
[as a result].*
Remember that Republicans in the Senate prepared to do this, by
blocking Obama from appointing any judges for years.
[pol note]
Anthropic emissions have raised
Earth's
CO2 concentration
to a level
not seen for the past 3 million years.
Rare heavy rains in California caused
caused
floods and mudslides,
but may
not leave enough in the soil to end the deep drought.
*Banning anonymous social media accounts would only
stifle
free speech
and democracy.*
I post a reference to that article because it is well-argued, but I
don't agree with it 100%. I think that banning the posting of
"disturbing" language goes too far. Also, it repeatedly refers to
an unspecified hypothetical individual as "them", and I find that
quite annoying.
Dutch right-to-die activist Wim van Dijk announced that he has sold
a suicide powder to 100 people, and
calls
for a national debate about
assisted suicide.
This manner of distributing means for suicide has a drawback: the same
chemical might well serve for murder. It is surely possible to craft
rules that will enable people to commit suicide if they firmly and
persistently want to do that, while making other effects unlikely.
US citizens: phone your senators to support taxing the rich more.
Here's a suggested script to say.
A US court recognized hippopotamoses in Colombia as "legal persons".
The article explains that this means much less the it sounds like,
but
also calls it a "milestone victory".
If hippopotamoses are treated legally as persons, there is no telling
what might be next to receive that privilege. Corporations???
China promises a
substantial decrease in fossil fuel use by 2060.
However, it may not be as much as it sounds like. If China doubles
its power output by 2060, 20% of that power amount would equal 40% of
the current power output. That would still be a substantial decrease
compared with today's fossil fuel use, but China can and must do more.
*Learning the ropes: why Germany
is
building risk into its playgrounds.*
The capture of one cocaine gang leader is
not
likely to make any
important change in the drug smuggling industry.
There may be a temporary increase in violence as gangs reshape their power
relationships, but nothing fundamental.
Similarly, when the leader of a guerrilla organization or terrorist
organization is killed, don't expect that to change much.
Car-tracking license plate cameras are now being sold aggressively to
cities and neighborhoods around the US.
Even
individuals can buy them
and set them up.
The article inexplicably presumes that there's nothing dangerous about
letting thug
departments run these cameras. I think that's the most
dangerous mode of operating them. However, allowing individuals and
businesses to run them is almost as bad, because some business will
start collecting and correlating the data.
Deleting all the data after 30 days is useless as a precaution if it
is practical to copy all the data to another server before it gets
deleted.
To make these cameras safe, getting the data out of the camera should
require physical access to the camera. That will make them
security cameras
rather than surveillance cameras.
The inconvenience of this will
assure that people do it only in the case of real need.
It is ok for the camera to read a list of vehicles being sought
and alert someone when one of those vehicles passes by.
Plastic generates a considerable amount of greenhouse gas emissions,
and
it's increasing.
Comparing the increase of plastic's emissions with the decrease of
coal burning emissions seems beside the point. We need to decrease
them both.
A hundred thousand suckers reportedly
gave
out iris scans to get
a little of a new cryptocurrency.
Ethiopia is
attacking Tigray by air.
Ethiopia says it attacked military targets. Tigray says a bomb hit a
hospital. I have no way of telling what the truth is, because I know
of no source of information I can count on. Even on bigger questions,
such as what the various armies are doing and with what amount of
success, we have very little information compared with (for instance)
Syria and Libya.
Google claimed privately that it had succeeded in slowing down the
European Union's efforts
to
regulate online services (and dis-services)
for users' privacy.
In Canada, an ethnic group with mixed ancestry has applied for (and
been granted) the same legal entitlements that indigenous groups get,
and this
has created a conflict between them and the "pure" indigenous
groups.
Anti-vaxxers now spread the questionable claim that recovering from Covid-19
gives
more immunity than vaccination.
I don't know whether there is a systematic difference between the
levels of immunity that result from Covid-19 infection and from
vaccination, but it's clear that the former is much more risky — the
chance of lasting disability after an infection seems to be more than
10%.
Given the choice between getting vaccinated now, or waiting to catch
the disease, it is far better to get vaccinated.
*The White House released a report on the financial risks associated with
the climate crisis — a document critics say would have been promising
at some earlier point in history
but
that falls "pitifully" short
given the urgency of the crisis.*
Salafi Arabia
says it will achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions by
2060, even
more late than the Paris agreement.
The details hardly matter, given that this refers only to Salafi
Arabia's direct emissions, and does not include the emissions that
result in other countries from using the petroleum that
Salafi Arabia
sells to them.
By contrast, the commitment to cut methane emissions by 2030 will be
significant, if it really happens. Planting billions of trees could
do some good…if they survive global heating.
Russia has installed
censorship boxes
in many Russian ISPS and gatewys.
It can block specific pages of sites, and it can also slow them down.
In the last days of filming the movie Rust, people in the crew
complained of violations of safety rules. Eventually some
union
members walked out, and the prouction replaced them with non-union
workers but did not fix the safety problems. This seems to be
related to the death that occured on the set.
Plastic pollution in waterways is projected to
double
by 2030 and
triple by 2040.
Friends of the Earth has denounced
"carbon offsets"
as a cheap
excuse for avoiding the expensive task of really reducing greenhouse
emissions.
Biden has acknowledged the need to eliminate the
filibuster
*'World conflict and chaos' could be the result of a
[climate]
summit failure.
Ireland is considering making contraception gratis for women of age
18-25, and
later perhaps for other age ranges.
There should be no lower age limit for gratis contraception.
This article argues for denying people help for suicide on the ground
that inadequate
support for sick people would drive them to choose death.
It does happen that some people choose suicide because their options
for living are lousy. It must already happen that, in some cases,
their options for living could be better if they could have certain
kinds of help. I agree it would be good to give them more help. If
this leads more people to choose to stay alive, that's success.
But the question here is whether we should force people to suffer
longer when they would rather die. The article implicitly assumes
that we can compel governments to improve aid for the sick and
disabled by making them people keep suffering. This approach has not
been very effective so far.
Here's a subtle discussion
of
the disagreement over assisted suicide.
*Sen. Joe Manchin Has Been Fighting
to
Keep Billions in Subsidies for
Fossil Fuel Industry.*
*Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity
to
test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public.*
*Luxembourg first in Europe
to
legalise growing and using cannabis.*
Republicans are passing laws
to
reduce the powers of public health
officials.
This has a specific short-term goal, to prevent Americans from
protecting themselves from Republican Covid-spreading policies. Also,
they have a pattern of shifting powers away from local or statewide
officials (safe from gerrymandering) to state legislatures (where the
Republican Party maintains power with a minority of votes via
gerrymandering).
*Self-Proclaimed Pro-Climate Corporations
Have
Been Giving Thousands to
Manchin and Sinema.*
The prevalence of guns in Hollywood movies
has
tripled since 1985.
This can influence people (especially children) who see the movie to
play with guns.
Alleging that the UK-New Zealand business-supremacy treaty
would
cause economic losses and undermine climate defense.
That's in addition to
imposing
a sort of race-based censorship.
*Iranian women journalists, imprisoned journalist’s mother
jailed
arbitrarily.*
*ICE Review of Immigrant's Suicide Finds
Falsified
Documents, Neglect,
and [use of solitary] Confinement.*
*Fate Of Anti-War Journalism
Lies
in Upcoming Assange Hearings.*
Not directly in what happens to Assange himself, but in whether the US
can prosecute journalists and news publishers for "espionage" and entirely
disregard the public's right to know.
Taliban are seizing land and homes from Afghans
because of political
and religious disagreements.
Australia and Japan are lobbying
to
weaken the world's climate defense plans,
alongside OPEC countries such as Salafi Arabia.
If we had all known in the 1970s how dangerous Middle East oil would be
to the Earth's ecosphere, maybe world powers could have made an agreement
to keep most of it in the ground.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reminds Americans not to give up on the fight
for a real climate/relief bill.
It's
not over yet.
*New analysis has suggested that unvaccinated individuals should expect
to be reinfected
with Covid-19 every 16 months, on average.*
US citizens: call on world leaders at COP26 to
adopt a Fossil Fuel
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Covid is increasing in the UK despite most people's being vaccinated.
UK unions and medical officials call for
strict
enforcement of mask
requirements and distancing, to protect their workers.
Israel has labeled
prominent Palestinian human rights organizations
as "terrorist", claiming that they secretly work for the PFLP.
It could perhaps be true that there are people in those organizations
that secretly work with some PFLP activists. It might be difficult
for the organizations to prevent that, or even find out about it.
But given Israel's history of distortions and lies in regard to
Palestinians, and its contempt for their human rights, I don't
consider it plausible. I have more confidence in B'tselem.
The UK and New Zealand have agreed on a business-supremacy treaty that also
imposes
race-based censorship.
UK governments do not hesitate to censor, so the Tories probably
consider this an insignificant concession. But it is an injustice
nonetheless. We must defend the right to mock anyone whatsoever, or
soon we won't be allowed to mock anyone at all.
The idea of "Cultural
appropriation" as wrong is a misguided concept,
so analyze real situations based on better concepts.
Increased heat in some regions is causing an
increase
in kidney disease.
While Manchin demands to eliminate climate defense from the Build Back
Better bill, the chair of House climate panel recognizes that it's
already
inadequate.
UK radio broadcasters have noticed that dis-services such as search
engines, especially voice-controlled ones such as Alexa, can
manipulate
users into not listening to UK radio broadcasts.
*Oil and coal-rich countries
lobbying
to weaken UN climate report, leak shows.*
Democrats are offering Manchin "compromises" that would effectively
vitiate
the climate parts of the Build Back Better bill.
That would give Manchin a total victory that costs him nothing.
It would be better to say that Manchin has blocked passage of the
bill. Then he would receive the blame for that.
*Amazon workers in Staten Island to
file
for union vote.*
New Zealand will require the larger banks to
report
on the climate risks
to their investments.
Billionaires use special kinds of trusts to
hand
billions to their heirs
with no inheritance taxes.
*US Judge Rules Guantánamo [prisoner]'s
Imprisonment Illegal.*
I expect this will be appealed up to the Supreme Court. If it affirms
the decision, I am not confident that will result Asadullah Haroon
Gul's release. That's because the US treats continued imprisonment as
the default, even if it is illegal, unless all the conditions combine
to make the prisoner's release an option.
That is clearly unjust. If the US has no legal basis to
keep someone in prison, it must release per, even if that
means releasing per into the US as an immigrant.
If US officials didn't want that, they should have treated him
justly.
After Virginia ratified the Equal Rights (for women) Amendment,
the bully's
lawyers declared that it was too late, because the deadline
had passed. A congresscritter says that that was mistaken, and that Biden
should reject
that conclusion and allow the ERA to enter the Constitution.
I support the ERA. I am not an expert on the legal question of whether
it is still possible for it to be adopted under the law from the 1970s.
Asylum officers, who interview asylum-seekers, are
told of long lists
of crimes committed against them by US border thugs.
These include beatings, threats of rape, rape, and tricking them into signing
away their legal rights.
*Internet Service Providers
Collect,
Sell Horrifying Amount of Sensitive Data, Government Study Concludes.*
ISPs should be forbidden to install equipment to examine packets to learn
anything about the people talking on the internet.
The Burmese military government released some political prisoners,
then almost
immediately arrested them again. It was apparently just a
cruel mind game.
Research has discovered that Twitter's
algorithm for promoting tweets results in a
large
right-wing bias.
Twitter says it does not know what causes this.
*After Getting 'Stealth Bailout' During Pandemic, US Corporations Try
to Kill
Proposed Tax Hikes.*
US citizens: call
on the Justice Department to prosecute Bannon without delay.
US citizens: call
on Biden to stop approving fossil fuel projects and
declare a climate emergency.
Biden can personally block 24 large fossil
fuel projects, achieving
an enormous reduction in future greenhouse gas
emissions.
US citizens: call
on Biden not to retain Jerome Powell as chair of
the Federal Reserve.
US citizens: call
on John Deere to give fair pay and benefits to
its workers (some of whom are now on strike).
Jurists are concerned that expanding the US Supreme Court
could
undermine the court's legitimacy.
Indeed it could, but Republican
manipulations, and the decisions that result,
are
doing exactly that.
Biden should endorse expanding the court.
Expansion may not be the best solution. I read an article proposing
instead to reduce the size of the court, which would kick the most
recently elected justices down to appeals courts. However, we don't
need "the best solution" — any solution is better than none.
Meanwhile, any such plan will run into Manchin running interference
for the Republicans.
*House Progressives to Pelosi: Reject Divisive Means-Testing
in Favor
of Universal Benefits.*
I sympathize completely with those who say that wealthy people should
be paying more, not receiving more. But the amount we would get from
rich people by denying them these benefits would be minuscule, not
enough to justify the future weakness that would result from limiting
these benefits to poor people.
Instead, we should make the rich pay taxes on all their income and
property. That would bring in far more funds. However, Manchin
specifically opposes that too.
Why does the spending in the Build Back Better bill have to be
specifically "paid for"? It's not something the US needs to do for
economic reasons. Deficit spending is entirely possible, and
economically desirable now. Congress doesn't trouble to make sure
increases in military spending are "paid for" by savings or taxes.
The reason is that plutocratists
adopted an arbitrary "pay as you go"
rule for spending on things that will help Americans, and that applies
to the Build Back Better bill.
*Assange: A
Threat to War Itself.*
Antivax fanaticism
is
now splitting the right wing.
Bolivia accuses the alleged assassins of President Moïse of having
tried to kill Luis Arce in Bolivia,
before
he was elected president.
*If the US could get on a war footing in 1941,
we
can tackle the climate
emergency.*
Some congresscritters always treat proposals to help the non-rich as
dangerous traps to be avoided. Strangely,
they
don't say the same
about military plans.
MIT invited climate scientist Dorian Abbot to give a talk, then
uninvited him under pressure from a mob
who
disapprove of some
of his political views.
I support affirmative action. Experiments show that judging
individuals' scientific work is systematically biased by racism and
sexism,
and they affect people's chances in other ways too.
Affirmative action is a way of trying to counteract those effects.
At the same time, I defend freedom of speech, including the freedom to
state views that disagree with yours or mine. It is wrong to exile
people from the scientific community over of their views about
affirmative action, or other issues. Universities should resist
attempts to force people into conformity by bullying dissenters. No
one in a university is entitled to be "protected" from encountering
expression of "inappropriate" views. If you don't like them, argue
with them.
What about "citational justice"? It stands to reason that racism and
sexism will affect how much any particular person's work gets cited,
since it affects how people judge that work. Some kind of "citational
affirmative action" could be a good countermeasure, but it needs to be
limited, just as affirmative action in admissions is.
Perhaps, "when we cite A, let's also cite B or C."
The article linked to above displays the New York Times' usual
symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid
endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to
bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it.
But I make exceptions for some important articles. Usually, they are
articles that give important information about racism or the fight to
eliminate racism. This article gives important information about the
threat to the freedom to maintain heterodox views about anything that
many people want to censor.
*Ivory poaching has led to
evolution
of tuskless elephants, study finds.*
Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators
marched in Sudan.
This shows that the people are not on the side of the protesters that
want a coup. But even though the military don't have enough support
to make a coup look like "back by public demand", they still might
have a coup.
*House [of Representatives] holds Trump ally Steve Bannon
in criminal
contempt of Congress.*
I am relieved that the House did not shrink from this confrontation,
because the trumpets believe they can get away with anything by
bluffing.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-833-497-4273 and say to
get rid of the filibuster.
Especially if you live in West Virginia or Arizona.
*The United States
Must
Rejoin the Global Biodiversity Conservation Community.*
*The future
of Europe is at stake in the fight for Germany’s finance
ministry.*
The world needs deficit spending, both to help the people rendered
poor by Covid-19, and to curb global heating. Politicians that oppose
this commit mass murder, and that's what the "Free Democrats" advocate.
The US must
establish a national medical system, and not only to give
Americans better health and longer life. There will be many secondary
benefits for the non-rich.
(satire) *Experts Warn Everything That Will Happen Between Now And
November 2022 Could
Spell Trouble For Democrats In Midterms.*
It's only mildly an exaggeration over what I have seen in CNN.
Some congressional Democrats have asked Biden to investigate whether
he has the legal authority to
seize
and publish the recipes for making
Covid vaccines, saying it could be so.
The US has been
reelected
to the UN Human Rights Council, but it still
needs to change policies so as to respect human rights.
The UK and the EU have once again
blocked
a patent waiver for Covid-19
vaccines.
That article is based on total acceptance of the twisted concept of
"intellectual property".
That term is an over generalization and
misrepresents the laws it purports to describe. It also embodies a
perverse choice of values. The term was adopted, a few decades ago,
to make unjust rules seem inevitable and to make patent waivers seem
radical and shocking.
We would help the chances of implementing patent waivers, now and in
the future, by rejecting that term and the premises it promotes.
As for the TRIPES agreement, it implements bogus trickle-down
economics. We should abolish it.
Advances among low-income
voters were crucial for Biden's victories in
several swing states.
The US deportation thugs have a
new
torture device with which they tie a victim up in a painful position
in which perse almost can't breathe.
They used this to deport victims before their asylum hearings
determined whether they were entitled to remain in the US.
Farmers and tractor factory workers should realize they are all in the
same boat against an
exploitative
company such as John Deere.
Extinction Rebellion
protested
the headquarters of the US Chamber of
Commerce, a plutocratist lobby group that helps fossil fuel companies
continue procuring the death of millions of people around the world.
The US is suspected
of inviting Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.
That's a foolish strategy now, just as it was earlier in this century
when the US and Russia still had a mostly friendly relationship.
Indeed, the two might still have one, if the US had not
encouraged
Georgia's belligerence toward Russia.
Having buffer zones between powers is important for peace between them.
Manchin proposed a weakened "compromise" voting rights bill, but he
could
not find ten Republicans to support it. They are determined to
rig the next election.
There's only one question left for Manchin and Sinema: will you let
the Republicans rig the election, or will you support that?
I've seen a rumor that Manchin is threatening to become a Republican.
That somehow doesn't surprise me. But it is a dangerous threat,
as it would be considerably worse than what he is already doing.
Quebec announces the plan to put a
end
to fossil fuel extraction.
Ecuador's new president is a hard-line
plutocratist and extractivist,
who has declared the intention to flood the world with
disastrous
quantities of fossil fuel.
Since global heating
will kill hundreds of millions, or perhaps even
billions, we should think of fossil fuel extraction as a form of war.
Eventually we will need to threaten retaliation with war to stop the
extraction.
The French oil company Total
knew
in 1971 that its extraction of fossil fuels
would lead to global disaster.
(satire) *Biden
Scales
Down $2 Trillion Climate Plan To Single
Reusable Grocery Bag.*
However, that was still too much for Manchin.
Senator Warren and others have proposed a bill to
protect
real businesses
from "private equity".
An extreme
example of how US hospitals prioritize money over human health.
Meeting
in support of Julian Assange, Monday Oct 25 2pm-4pm
First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden St, Cambridge Mass.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for closing the
carried interest loophole. This is explained in a
previous pol note.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Pfizer uses its control over vaccine supply to
bully
governments into
giving it special privileges.
Please keep in mind that
"intellectual
property" is a bogus concept which
misrepresents the various laws it pretends to refer to, and causes confusion
every time it is used.
Hungary's opposition
alliance now faces the ultimate test: the
election for parliament, in which Orbán will either hold or lose
control over the government.
Texas Republicans have
twisted
new census figures to concentrate the increased fraction of Latins
into a smaller number of congressional districts.
*Toxic
algae blooms are multiplying. The [US] government has no plan to help.*
The UK is going to spend millions to pay for building
two large
facilities for CO2 capture,
CCS may eventually work, but we need to remember that (1) it will take
many years to finish these facilities, (2) it can't capture all the CO2
produced in the factory or power plant it is attached to, and (3)
building solar and wind power will avoid a lot more CO2 emissions for the
same amount of energy. It might ultimately be useful, especially for
making concrete, since clean electricity won't help with that.
The UK's plan to fund
replacement
of 90,000 home boilers with heat pumps
is at the same time a substantial step forward, and totally
inadequate.
That happens often because the efforts so far to defend the climate
are several orders of magnitude less than what is needed.
I've also read claims that these heat pumps are not very efficient.
*‘Some call it a circus’: dictator’s son, boxing icon and former actor
vie
to lead Philippines.*
New Zealand is passing a law that will
increase
housing construction
and promote denser housing.
Arguing that paleolithic humans in many parts of the world had a
wide
range of social organizations, and that it was quite usual for a
people to switch during the year between various forms of social
organizations — even between nomadic bands and farmers.
If it was common during hundreds of thousands of years to gain the
status of chief by success in leadership while alternating annually
between two levels of social organization with two different
relationship requirements for success, this would have been a
selective force towards ever greater emotional intelligence.
In London, a last
protest
against the decision that Julian Assange
committed a crime that justifies extradition.
Even more important than whether Assange is punished for publishing
important news about government crimes is whether the UK gets away with
a series of lies
and crimes designed to railroad Assange.
Even more important than that is whether this case establishes a
principle that publishing important news about government crimes is a
crime.
*"Religious exemptions"
threaten
to undermine US Covid vaccine
mandates.*
The reason to require vaccination against Covid-19 is because being
vaccinated protects everyone, not only yourself. For the same reason,
there should be no exceptions for any reason other than medical.
*Let her finish: interruptions of female justices led to
new supreme
court rules.*
(satire) *BREAKING: Concern Mounting Over
Nothing
In Particular.*
How the War on Drugs
represses
Americans in regard to work.
(satire) *Study Finds Big Bang Result Of
Last
Universe Blowing Itself
Up With Fireworks.*
The Hindu-supremacist party (BJP) has convinced Indian Hindus (84% of the
population) that they are
being
oppressed by the Muslims (14%) and
must make violent attacks to avoid being wiped out.
BJP's elected officials legitimize murder of Muslims,
while the former state of Kashmir suffers under a semi-occupation.
(satire) *Florida School Revises Covid Guidelines To
Reflect Latest
Misinformation.*
As Manchin demands to cut climate defense from the Build Back Better bill.
threatening to kill it, other Senate Democrats say they will
kill it
if Manchin gets his way.
If Manchin thought he could cut whatever he likes and the bill will go
through, maybe seeing that this would actually kill it will make him
accept a compromise. At least, I hope so.
After the murder of an MP, there is pressure in the UK to
move MP
meetings with the public to Zoom! People who defend freedom in
their computing would be excluded.
Perhaps it would be wise to move to online meetings, but they must not
limit these meetings to use of nonfree software. Britons, please tell
your MP this ASAP.
*Poland: Thousands
protest
against migrant pushbacks at Belarus border.*
*Biden Faces Deadline
for Release of More JFK Assassination Papers.*
* Five years to the day after a family of Syrian refugees were bundled on
to a plane and deported to Turkey despite having lodged asylum claims
in Greece, they are
taking
their case to the European court of justice.*
Many countries make a habit of deporting people before they have a
chance to apply for asylum and get to the end of the court process to
judge the claim. That cheats them out of their legal rights.
I've see countries including the
USA,
the UK,
Greece and
Poland
accused of this.
This Saturday, Oct 23, Richard Stallman will be giving an online talk for the 8dot8
conference, titled Software libre, tu libertad, y tu ciberseguridad
(Free software, your freedom, and your cybersecurity).
US citizens: call
on Congress to hold Bannon in contempt
for refusing to testify about the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.
The protests in favor of a military coup in Sudan
are linked with
a troll farm.
The UK is investigating the thugs
that infiltrated various protest
movements under false identities decades ago, and had sexual
relationships with women participants,
but
is questioning them in
secret to conceal their identities.
The witness that lied to the US government about Julian Assange is now
in jail in Iceland
for
engaging in a long series of business crimes.
A few UK schools will participate in a pilot project
to
identify students
for school lunches using face recognition.
This is wrong, but so is using fingerprints to do the job.
Schools should not identify students for lunch; they should simply
give lunch to every student in the school.
*Naming Climate Villains
as
the World Burns.*
"Femcels" are women
who
have given up on ever having a sexual
relationship.
Unlike the male "incels", these women don't blame or hate men for not
being attracted to them. They see that as an inevitable a fact of life.
I understand their feelings.
The UK government is aching to respond to the murder of an MP with —
of course —
censorship
(details to be defined), plus surveillance
(putting an end to anonymous communication).
The Supreme Court
upheld
the principle of "qualified immunity" for thugs.
This means that thugs can't be convicted for any sort of violence
unless court cases have already established that it wasn't constitutionally
protected.
I've supported campaigns
to
legislate to change that.
Members of Congress accused Amazon of giving misleading or dishonest
testimony about
unfair competition.
Fossil fuel companies plan to extract fossil fuels
at
an increasing rate,
rather than diminishing it.
And governments are funding this expansion more than they are
funding renewable energy.
The Taliban have agreed
to
restart polio vaccination in Afghanistan.
*Apple’s plan to scan images
will
allow governments into smartphones.*
High-tech methods of producing coffee
are
far more efficient, in terms
of water use and greenhouse gas emissions,
but some oppose using these methods because today's coffee farmers
would no longer have a livelihood.
We must eliminate most greenhouse gas emissions, because the cost of
failing to do so can easily include the collapse of civilization and
billions of deaths. We can't take the risk of continuing dangerous pollution
to make work for people.
Everyone: call
on Bank of America not to finance a toxic plastic
factory in Louisiana's "cancer alley".
After some cities and counties in California sued oil companies over
the damage that sea-level rise will cause them,
the oil companies
alleged a "conspiracy" between the city officials.
In the long term, the only affordable way to cope with the damage that
global heating
will cause if it continues is to stop the heating.
Georgia has undermined the system of tenure in its universities
by
allowing university administrations to fire tenured professors.
This will have the effect of censoring professors who might have considered
endorsing, or even investigating, an idea that lots of people condemn.
Modern-day prudery is so strictly opposed to exhibitionism that
museums can't
use their famous nudes to advertise their exhibitions.
The saddest thing is that the "solution" they found uses TikTok, which
requires people to run nonfree software which will make them identify
themselves.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter to visit a food bank
and see what poverty is doing to millions of Americans.
US citizens: call
on Biden to cancel student debt, as he promised.
The global campaign to reduce methane emissions
has
failed to win support
from some of the biggest emitters.
The US has passed a law
to
set national standards for computer
security in schools.
I expect the standards will disregard the main security threat in
school computing: the widespread use of dis-services run by companies,
including Google, Microsoft, Zoom and others, that collect personal
data about students, starting with their names.
*Labour spending
more
on legal battles than campaigning, say sources.*
This supports my impression that the main goal of Labour's current
plutocratist
leaders is to kill off the idealism of Corbyn and his
supporters.
*Climate crisis
poses
‘serious risks’ to US economy, Biden
administration warns.*
*UK to push plan
to
‘halt and reverse global deforestation by 2030’ at Cop26.*
Everyone: call
for protecting the shortfin mako shark.
The migrants who drive boats across the Mediterranean are not part of
the people-smuggling gangs that run the migration; they are passengers
who do this work in lieu of paying the usual fee. But Italy
prosecutes
them as if they were part of the gang.
Vulture capitalists are buying US newspapers — some prestigious, some
not — and
converting
them into bargain basement aggregators.
*Factory farms of disease: how industrial chicken production
is breeding the
next pandemic.*
The EPA has announced
a
plan to regulate PFAs more strictly.
Accusing Colin Powell of intentionally lying, when he publicly
insisted that the US
had
evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction.
*Women on reality TV shows
get
far more abuse online than men — study.*
"This is our last chance": Biden
urged
to act as climate agenda hangs by a
thread.
A California law, that regulates how much space pigs being raised must
have to move around in,
might
make pork a little more expensive.
With luck, that will reduce Americans' meat consumption a little.
That would be
good for our health.
Inhabitants of Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory are
systematically attacking Palestinians' olive trees.
Often soldiers
join the attack.
This practice has
happened every year for many years.
The government almost never tries to protect Palestinians from
this mob violence.
Parents describe giving their child
one
day of being in charge of the
household.
As usual, the companies that have lent money to poor countries
intend to
squeeze their inhabitants to death.
The Burmese military government is putting Aung San Suu Kyi on "trial"
and gives almost no information about this supposed "legal process".
However, her lawyer
has
given a little information about her, mainly about
her health.
Now he has been forbidden to communicate with the media.
Over a thousand US women have been prosecuted for having miscarriages,
or
for taking drugs (even prescribed by doctors) while pregnant.
The US government wants to develop telemetry to monitor stress and
stress effects,
in
agents that have high-stress jobs.
I don't see anything wrong about this proposed use of the technology,
but I have a hunch that if this system works, the government will also
try to use it as a 24/7 lie detector (whether it is reliable or not).
Private businesses will impose it on their staff too.
British propaganda agents in Indonesia helped bring about the
1965-1966 massacre in which the army and its supporters
murdered
500,000 or more Communists and people thought to support them.
*The debilitating effects of long Covid have just begun to hit
economies.* A study of soccer players
shows the effect is
substantial.
Those who aim to profit by gentrifying a neighborhood find it useful to
bring in interesting food options, as a first step.
That
makes wealthier
people interested in moving there.
Protesters in Sudan
are
demanding military dictatorship.
I have to join those who suspect that this is organized by a military
faction aiming to seize power. Others are planning to rally in favor
of civilian government.
That government has surrendered to oppression by the IMF. If these
protests really mean, "Break the IMF deal," I share the feeling.
The civilian government may have concluded that the loans are necessary
to avoid even worse suffering than the IMF dishes out. However,
if the government doesn't acknowledge what damage the IMF will do,
people will consider it self-serving.
Would a military government reject an IMF "rescue"?
I tend to doubt it. Dictators are generally happy to borrow
money that the people will have to pay back.
Russia and other repressive regimes use Interpol as a system to
trigger repression without trial
against
dissidents, protesters, and
people who only fail to follow orders.
It is strange that the US doesn't make it standard practice to question
what Russia says about people.
(satire)
*Remington Introduces Ammunition For Sensitive Skin.*
British expat Billy Hood made the mistake of living in Dubai. A
friend visited him and then sent him a message about having left
behind some CBD vaping fluid. The
thugs of Dubai saw the message,
arrested Hood, and
tortured him into signing a confession he could not
read.
Why torture and lie to imprison someone for what they knew was
unintentional possession? Is it that the emir of Dubai
set them an
example of sadistic brutality?
Is it that they have to meet a quota of
convictions per month?
Research found that TikTok responds to users that demonstrate interest
in antitransism
by
showing them right-wing extremism.
This gives some confirmation to the idea that the recommendation
algorithms are what we should demand to regulate and control.
Antitransism is a kind of bigotry —
please
don't call it a "phobia".
Please don't call publications "content" —
that disparages all
publications.
The cable company Charter is making veiled threats against
ex-customers — threats
to
harm their credit ratings by alleging
unpaid imaginary debts.
US citizens: call
on Congress to stop future presidents from bullying
the Department of Justice.
Supposedly China needs coal mining
to
provide employment in future
decades.
Supposedly, China needs to encourage more births
to
avoid a shortage
of workers in future decades.
These predictions directly contradict each other, so at least one is
false. But I think that both are false.
If China remains prosperous, and doesn't need everyone to work, it
will have the resources to support everyone with jobs in taking better
care of the old, the young, and the sick, and entertaining each other.
On the contrary, if China has an insufficiency of workers, it will be
able to accelerate the use of robots, delay retirement, and make do
with less conveniences.
What China cannot do is remain prosperous while beset increasingly by
extreme weather, crop failures, and rising seas. The rice-growing
areas of South China are close to sea level and will be inundated,
including major cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Nanjing and
Hangzhou. To the east of Shanxi is the North China Plain which
will encounter fatal weather. China had better focus on avoiding
the catastrophe it is creating with fossil fuels.
*The case
for minting a $1tn coin to deal with America’s debt ceiling.*
This would be equivalent to abolishing the debt ceiling: it would
deprive Republicans of a recurring opportunity to hold America hostage
and demand real concessions that do real harm. Why give them any more
opportunities?
*Privacy fears as Moscow metro
rolls
out facial recognition pay system.*
Supposedly this is safe for passengers because only the state's
repression ministry will have access to the records.
These cameras join almost 200,000 surveillance cameras on the street,
which have already been used for face recognition for purposes of
repression.
A call for regulating
the use of tear gas in the US.
Many US judges have personal or family
conflicts
of interest,
which may have corrupted the outcome of many cases.
The US legal system
rarely
if ever punishes crimes committed by
corporations.
I love the quote from Robert Reich: "I'll believe corporations are
people when Texas executes one."
*Tropical wetlands
reduce
storm impacts and save thousands of lives
and $600bn each year, study suggests.*
*Hawks on all sides
ready
to swoop if Iran drags feet on nuclear talks.*
*Hollywood
strike averted after union and producers reach last-minute deal.*
(satire) *Similac Introduces New
Ghost
Pepper Infant Formula.*
(satire) *Intergalactic Animal Rights Groups
Condemn Use Of Brutal,
Unsanitary Planet To Raise Human Meat.*
The Huntington Beach oil spill that poisoned wetlands was
only
25,000 gallons, much less oil than previously thought. Despite the smaller
quantity, I don't think the damage to wetlands has got less.
Modeling says that the Marshall Islands will be
essentially wiped out
by global heating
effects. Some islands will cease to exist.
Others will be greatly reduced. The capital of the country will become
mostly uninhabitable. even the buildings that are not permanently flooded.
Novelist Sally Rooney expressed support for Palestine by refusing to
allow a Hebrew translation of her latest book, and is being
criticized
with distortions.
As I recall, the BDS movement calls for a boycott of Israeli
institutions, particularly those that support or take advantage of the
occupation of Palestine — not individual Israelis. So I don't think
it suggests refusing to publish in Hebrew.
However, implicit in publishing a Hebrew translation of her book would
be to license that to an Israeli publishing company. The movement
would ask people not to do that.
I myself don't support the Palestinian BDS movement. What I do
support is the boycott,
started by Gush Shalom, of
products made in
Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory.
US citizens: call
on Congress to prohibit Facebook's approach to data
collection.
Note that "collecting, purchasing or otherwise acquiring user
information beyond what is needed to provide the service" is often interpreted
in a weak way. If an organization can justify collecting certain data
because its way of implementing the job requires that data,
it
can easily make any data "necessary".
Bangladesh is moving thousands of Rohingya refugees
to a low-lying
island where they could all drown.
Memorial, a Russian NGO, defends human rights and teaches about
Stalin's crimes against humanity. It showed a movie about the mass
starvation of the 1930s,
and
a gang attacked the showing, apparently
with state backing.
Putin is teaching Russians to admire Stalin, perhaps figuring that if
they admire one tyrant they will be happy with another.
Many organizations are working
to
convince the UK to tax
petroleum-burning vehicles less tax and electric vehicles more.
If the government seeks to promote electric vehicles, this tax change
is foolish.
The construction of a pipeline — even if its contents will be gas —
can cause lasting ecological damage
even
before anything flows through
it.
If these were the only problems of pipelines, they could be prevented
by building it in more expensive ways. But they aren't the only ones,
of course. We can't afford the existence of more fossil fuel
infrastructure.
Refugees trapped between Belarus and Poland
are
dying from hunger and cold.
*Tory austerity caused misery — and now
they
want to make it worse.*
Republicans are attacking the Build Back Better bill
with lies about
what it says.
*NYPD Lawyer Who Oversaw Violent Arrests of Legal Observers
Should Be
Disciplined, Watchdog Says.*
*Chicago mayor files complaint against [thug] union
for defying
vaccine mandate.*
The latest Republican pretext for sabotaging public school
is the
demand for parents to control the curriculum.
I would guess that they demand this only where the parents are white
and right-wing.
A judge in England ruled that using an Amazon Ring snooping device
that watched and listened to a neighbor's property violated her
privacy, so
he awarded her substantial damages.
(She had actually moved to another home to avoid the surveillance.)
As I see it, what makes these "security" cameras in fact surveillance
cameras is that they can transmit the video and audio over the
network. That capability makes them surveillance cameras rather
than security cameras.
(satire)
*Trump Testing 2024 Waters By Inciting Iowans To Burn State
Capitol To Ground.*
*Welcome to the Great Inflation — Or,
Why
We Have to Pay for the Hidden Costs
of the Industrial Age.*
The article argues that inflation is going to run fast for quite a while.
Alongside increasing poverty.
This argument seems plausible to me. If you know of a reputable
counterargument, I'd like to see it. No conspiratorial explanations,
please — I am very skeptical of them.
I don't think this explains all of what is happening — for instance,
although some jobs have disappeared, that doesn't explain why millions
of job offers are unfilled while millions of people need work.
The perverse and dangerous concentration of industry over the past few
decades has exacerbated the problems we face now. For instance, if we
produced chips in 50 places rather than a handful, most of them would
not have problems at once.
Merck wants to charge Americans
$700
for a drug that costs $18 to produce.
That is a ratio of around 39.
The fact that the US government paid for the development of this drug
adds a second kind of unfairness to the issue, but we should not
hammer too much on that, lest people suppose it is OK to gouge on a
life-saving drug in countries that didn't fund its development.
The US should do what more advanced countries have done: set up
a national medical system, fund it well, and empower it to negotiate
the price per dose.
*The five
biggest threats to our natural world … and how we can stop them.*
In Syria, the Kurds of Rojava are
still
fighting the underground
remnants of PISSI, with some help from the US and France.
John Deere exploits its workers as well as the farms that buy its
tractors full of nonfree software. Now the company's US
workers are
on strike.
The fires that burned a large part of the fires of Euboia (pronounced
Evia) led
the way for another disaster: mudslides
on the slopes that no longer have trees to absorb the water and
hold the soil in place.
Uber and Lyft hope the citizens of Massachusetts will vote to reduce
the drivers' rights. If Proposition 22 passes, they
will be paid
effectively 4 dollars per hour while on the job.
(satire) *White House Warns Supply Chain Shortages Could Lead
Americans To Discover
True Meaning Of Christmas.*
(satire) The founders of PISSI
reminisce
about starting in a bombed-out
garage, confident they could outdo the competition.
The freedom to leave children unsupervised for a while is
especially
important for single parents.
US disaster relief
preferentially
aids wealthier households. Poor families
are likely to lose big.
A prisoner in the Washington, DC, jail
had
to sue to get needed surgery.
The story has a fillip of superficial extra interest because the
prisoner in question was in jail for participating in the attack on
the Capitol. But That shouldn't matter. No prisoner should be denied
needed medical care.
The EPA plans to
reform
the departments that deal with chemical
pollution and pesticides, so that they won't be pushovers for business.
In the face of public criticism, the University of Cambridge has
backed
off from the proposed deal with the UAE.
The UK is allowing creditors to
garnish the
welfare benefits for poor people,
which are inadequate to start with.
Los Angeles is clearing
all the homeless people out of its parks, one
by one. It gives housing to some of them, but what are the rest supposed to do?
*Leaked documents reveal [Amazon]'s private-brands team in India
"secretly exploited internal data" to
copy
products from other
sellers, and rigged search results.*
This direct anti-competitive behavior is on top of all the other
unjust things Amazon has done to everyone that it comes in contact with,
including customers.
UK cuts to various systems that protect people's health
seem to kill
around 10,000 people per year.
This doesn't count cuts to welfare support, although those cuts make
people hungry or homeless.
Some Maori activists are trying to
impose
a moral imperative that no
one is allowed to do research that pertains in any way to Maori without
having Maori in the team.
No group is entitled to demand control over all studies of topics that
relate to it. Rather, every human being is morally entitled to
investigate any subject.
For some kinds of studies, it is important to have an expert on Maori
culture. Most of those experts are Maori. But that doesn't apply to
chemical testing of ice cores.
WHO will make a new effort to
pin
down the origin of SARS-COV-2, the virus
that causes Covid-19.
Biden said he will
bring
back the bully's "remain in Mexico" requirement
for people that ask for asylum at the border with Mexico.
The rapid increase in the value of cryptocurrencies and
the suspicion that
people are borrowing money to invest in them makes them a source of financial
instability.
The value of a bitcoin could drop by 10 or 100 in a day.
*EU calls for
Arctic’s oil, coal and gas to stay in the ground.*
It is encouraging to see governments propose the measure that is
obviously correct, even if they propose it just for one part of the
globe.
The US Food and Drug Administration
aims
to reduce the amount of salt
in many kinds of widely eaten foods.
This could save many lives. And it could set a crucial example of
defending people from "market forces" that predictably do harm.
*Chile president Piñera
faces
impeachment after Pandora papers leak.*
I don't know what Piñera actually did, but if he is caught in crime
I will rejoice at his punishment.
This article, like all Guardian articles about the Pandora papers,
equates "do something wrong" with "break a law". Let's take care not
to incorporate that assumption into our thinking. I agree that tax
evasion by the wealthy is unjust, as a general principle. But when
they find lawful ways to dodge taxes, that is not to assume it isn't
wrong.
*The Former Democratic Senators
Now
Lobbying Against Medicare Drug
Price Negotiations.*
I don't know any way to campaign against ex-senators. We can't vote
them out of office.
(satire)
*Atlanta In Chaos After City Changes Names Of All Streets To
"Maple Drive" To Distance Itself From Confederate Past.*
(satire)
*Unhappy Nation Wonders If It Just Projecting 45% Approval
Rating Of Itself Onto President.*
*Is America experiencing
an
unofficial general strike?*
Truck drivers blocked by Insulate Britain activists
tried to break
through barricades with their trucks.
It is clear that this method of protest is backfiring. It is
impossible to win a democratic political conflict by causing pain for
the public, because that alienates them instead of winning their support.
Protesters need to find a method of demanding government funds to
insulate homes that wins the support of people who live in homes.
The UK is planning to address the problem of hate-spreading antisocial
media by censorship based on substance,
rather
than by fixing the
algorithm.
I am not surprised, given
the
many levels of
censorship that the UK
already applies.
They take advantage of Frances Haugan's testimony as an excuse to
disregard what she said and install the repression that they have
always sought.
The EPA continues letting manufacturers of ethylene oxide deny the toxicity
of that substance in EPA events,
without
correcting them.
Millions of Americans
can't
pay their gas or electric bills and
are facing shutoffs.
Dominic Cummings, who was Bogus Johnson's imperious advisor, claims that
the terribly flawed deal about customs duties and Northern Ireland,
was
a political trick all along, intended to fail.
The British people would be far better off with Corbyn as prime minister.
His basic sincerity is the first of various reasons for this.
US citizens: call
on Congress to repeal the Hyde amendment and allow
use of federal funds to pay for abortions.
This is all the more important because the federal government could
pay to help women in Texas get abortions.
US citizens: call
on Congress to end US support for Salafi Arabia's
war in Yemen.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
*Poor housing harms
health of 20% of renters in England, says Shelter.*
*Serious financial problems
afflict
40% of US households in recent months.*
Google and Amazon employees condemn those companies contract to
operate server activities for the Israeli government,
which reportedly
uses them to surveil Palestinians.
I don't call them "cloud services" because there is no "cloud".
That term is
designed to cloud users' minds.
Facebook maintains three levels of blacklists
to
restrain the tendency
of its recommendation/polarization algorithm to promote terrorism and
hate.
The blacklists don't prevent the tendency to polarize, only a
fraction of the situations where it does so.
The New York Thug Department, ironically,
uses
Chinese drones that the
US government considers a surveillance threat.
For most people in New York, surveillance and tracking by the NYPD
through these drones is a bigger danger than surveillance and tracking
by China through the same drones, but a few people will be exceptions.
Why the well-known US billionaires
don't
appear prominently in the
Pandora papers.
Gaggle surveillance of students means an omniscient idiot is ready to
get a student in trouble with the school system or the law at any time,
based
on details of what the student says.
Don't be a fool — don't talk when the school is listening!
The trouble is caused when alerts from the system trigger other systems
that repress students in the name of "protecting" them.
Those other systems are generally intended to protect students from
real dangers of life. If they could reliably tell when a real danger
exists, and if they were designed to "at least do no harm", they might
be helpful. But that's easier said than done. Perhaps we should fix
these systems, and make sure they are not overprotective and harmful,
before we impose them on all children and adolescents.
The UK will be required to allow victims of trafficking to stay and work,
if
and while they are making a claim for asylum.
Given the systemic incompetence of the agency responsible for such
issues, I wonder if this ruling will be carried out, in practice.
Based on previous experience, I suspect that the agency will require
each individual to apply for these rights, and will forget to grant
20% of the requests.
*The City of London
Is
Hiding the World’s Stolen Money.*
Stated without hyperbole, Britain and its territories are operating
tax-dodging schemes that hide a large fraction of the world's
misappropriated wealth.
The world's main producers of cement
have
committed to eliminate
their greenhouse gas contributions by 2050.
If they carry this out, it will make an important difference. I do
wonder how they plan to achieve it. Also, I think they should commit
to achieve a big fraction by 2035.
The governor of Texas claims
to
have forbidden companies in Texas
from exercising a vaccine mandate.
I suspect that the governor has no legal authority to impose this by
executive order. Maybe companies can simply ignore it.
Another reason not to fly Cryin'air. During the pandemic, it refused
refunds to passengers who were forbidden to travel, and they got their
credit cards to refund their payments. Now they had bought new
tickets, and just as they arrived to board those flights,
they
received a last-minute demand to return those refunds.
An experiment with Polis, a democratic discussion system,
found that it helped people
find
points of agreement and did not
magnify polarisation.
Of course, it could not eliminate points of real political
disagreement — nor was it intended to — but it seems to avoid
artificially magnifying them or producing them.
This shows what a corrected Facebook might be like. If it does not
fit Facebook's business model, we should abolish Facebook's business
model.
*Mothers sue after children
catch
Covid at Wisconsin schools with no mandates.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support bills to break
up tech monopolies.
I've found information on five of them:
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act,
which prohibits the
use of a dominant platform to discriminate against rivals by giving
preference to its own products.
Platform Competition and Opportunity Act,
which bars the use of
acquisitions to smother competitive threats.
Ending Platform Monopolies Act,
which restrains dominant platforms
from using their power across multiple types of business to give
themselves unfair advantages.
The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act,
or Access Act, which promotes competition by making it easier for
businesses and consumers to move data when they want to switch
to a new provider.
The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which amends filing fees and
provides the government with funds to pursue antitrust actions.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
A curious series of gaps in evidence about whether Kwamena Ocran did
or did not shoot a gun at a group of plainclothes thugs had the
ultimate effect of
protecting
them from charges for killing him.
Tory supporters are starting to say that the hardship they are now
imposing on millions of poor people will be good for them — it will
build
their character.
The people with the worst character are the rich people that lobby to
impose more hardship on those who already suffer it. Perhaps they
could use some character-building too.
(satire) *Woman In Giddy Honeymoon Stage Of
Hating
Someone New.*
For 150 years, the British Museum has kept Ethiopian altar tablets
hidden and has not allowed them to be studied or photographed.
Ethiopians demand
the return of these tablets.
Regardless of where the tablets end up, it would be a damned shame if
they don't get photographed and studied in the mean time.
*25% of all critical infrastructure in the US is at
risk of failure
due to flooding,*
Getting vaccinated against Covid-19 is
especially
important for the
pregnant.
The shortage of labor is
pushing
wages up in the US.
This will be a big help for many low-paid workers, despite the
increase in prices that will result.
The author is mistaken in claiming that wage increases can never be
taken back. Since the 1990s, we've seen companies impose pay cuts
and painful working conditions.
Jurisdictional rules make make it hard even to try to overturn the Texas
abortion-assistant bounty hunter law, even if the Supreme Court
upholds Roe v Wade. However, there are
other
things Biden could do to
defeat it.
The fact that the law has found a loophole for states to effectively
abolish a constitutional right, with no recourse from federal courts,
indicates that this loophole is a threat to the idea of constitutional
rights in general, and absolutely must be closed.
Brazilian activists asked the International Criminal Court to
investigate
Bolsonaro for the crime of mass deforestation.
Since deforestation endangers the survival of humanity, it ought to be
a crime. But is there any law against it? Could the ICC have legal
grounds to prosecute anyone for this?
A poll found that over 3/4 of the UK public
support
eight strong measures
for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A carbon tax should increase year by year on a preannounced schedule,
to give the vice a turn every year. This way, investors will be able
to estimate what the carbon tax will do to the value of any proposed
investment, ten years or 20 years in the future.
*Living with Covid is not an option in New Zealand — we need
near
universal vaccination.*
None of the arguments made in the article are specific to New Zealand,
as far as I can see.
It could be that new techniques can reduce the rate of infection from
indoor activities. For instance, using UV light to sterilize indoor
air might be helpful.
* The [London thug department]
shelved
plans to reform its unit
dedicated to protecting politicians and diplomats [to avoid sexism
and racism] because of "resistant and uncooperative" officers.*
*US schools gave kids laptops during the pandemic. Then they
spied on them.*
The laptops were full of nonfree software, so the spying was done by
various companies as well as by the school.
It might make sense for parents to permit a counselor to monitor a
child's digital communications, one that has a medical professional's
commitment to confidentiality and normally cannot tell anyone about
what perse finds in them. However, when the child becomes an
adolescent, at some point that should not be allowed with out per
approval.
If the counselor behaves in a way that earns trust, the student may
choose to continue this, seeing that it is not dangerous and may be
helpful.
A village in India reduced strife by
eliminating dowries.
Tory supporters are starting to say that the hardship they are
nowimposing
on millions
of poor people will be good for them — it will build their character
The people with the worst character are the rich people that lobby to
impose more hardship on those who already suffer it. Perhaps they
could use some character-building too.
A curious series of gaps in evidence about
whetherKwamena Ocran
did or did not shoot a gun at a group of plainclothes
thugs had the
ultimate effect of protecting them from charges for killing him.
For 150 years, the British Museum has
keptEthiopian
alter tablets
Regardless of where the tablets end up, it would be a damned shame if
they don't get photographed and studied in the mean time.
US citizens: call
on Treasury Secretary Yellen to stop Wall Street
from fueling the climate crisis.
US citizens: call
on AT&T and DirectTV to stop funding the right-wing
channel OAN.
US citizens: call
on Secretary Haaland to ban the sale of single-use
plastics in national parks.
*Blame the erosion of trade union power, not migrants,
for poor
wages.*
Immigrant workers would not help business drive wages down
if those workers belonged to strong unions.
*The Tories have persuaded voters [that "woke" is]
a
threat worse than
fuel shortages.*
Republicans are using the same approach in the US: using imaginary or
exaggerated bugaboos to distract Americans from the real threats
such as Covid-19, racism, climate mayhem, and starving the poor.
A Singapore journalist says that Singapore's new law, allowing the
government to restrict anyone by calling per a channel for "foreign
interference" based on ungrounded suspicion, and giving the target no
chance to object in court,
will
make it very hard to operate.
*Halt destruction of nature
or
risk "dead planet," leading businesses warn.*
Every day, advertising urges us to do the opposite of what climate
defense requires, and tries
to
reshape our values to make "more
consumption" paramount.
The shortages due to "supply-chain problems"
are
due to "just-in-time"
processing.
The article mentions other shortages of goods that have the same cause.
In addition, we have seen a similar problem due to reducing the
number of hospital beds to the level that tends to be needed in a
normal year.
That too is an example of optimizing the efficiency in the usual case
by reducing the slack needed to handle unusual cases.
I suspect that the delay
in
shutting off the
Huntington Beach oil leak
was due to optimizing for the usual case —
the "no leak today" case. Why pay for the extra equipment and staff
just to save a few hours, in some case, in detecting a leak and
shutting it off?
Relatives of Philippinos killed in President Do-Dirty's war on drugs
are
suing for damages.
The underwater cables that bring electric power from offshore wind farms
generate
magnetic fields that trap one species of crabs.
Engineers will look for ways to protect the crabs.
There is no reason to assume that other species of marine life are
immune to this effect.
New humorous article :
the
berry torture.
*COVID-19 could nudge minds and societies
towards
authoritarianism.*
High levels of diseases that are contagious between humans
tend to make societies more authoritarian.
Nobelist journalist Maria Ressa
says
Facebook is "biased against facts."
I never thought of it that way, but that fits what we know about it.
It does indeed "prioritize the spread of lies laced with anger
and hate over facts."
Explaining Critical Race Theory: Alan Singer explains that it is the
study of how racism influenced the development of the laws,
institutions and structure of the United States and its precursors,
and how those
in turn influenced (and often perpetuated) racism
through the present day.
This is a meaningful and important field of study, and shines a useful
light on history. However, it does not include trying to prejudge any
individuals — how we judge people and their conduct is another
matter. I do not feel guilty because I was born white; I don't think
anyone should feel guilty about the conditions and circumstances of
per birth. However, I do include the elimination of racism among
the
changes I think are important for society.
Singer's article also explains how right-wing disinformationists have
distorted the idea of Critical Race Theory in order to mislead people
into supporting their extremism. As usual, their statements have a
relationship to the real situation, but it is complex and indirect.
It is a mistake to presume that any specific thing they say is
actually true. So don't try to understand the real situation based on
their statements!
Everyone: call
on GM, American Airlines, UPS and other companies not
to fund the campaigns of Republicans that voted to overturn the
election.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Prison Phone Justice Act.
This would stop the price-gouging on prisoners' phone calls.
The University of Cambridge
has
resorted to gig labor for tutoring students.
A used of Facebook developed a browser add-on to make it easier
to unfollow everyone and make one's newsfeed empty. Users loved it,
until
Facebook threatened an absurd lawsuit that he could not afford
to defend.
If the client software for Facebook were free, users could probably make
the newsfeed disappear by modifying that software.
"A used of Facebook" is not a typo. Facebook does not have users,
it has useds.
* Enq has a giant phone bank that floods the IRS help-line with
simultaneous calls, so no one else can get through. Then they sell the
right to take over a mature on-hold call — one that is near to being
answered by a human being —
to
busy tax professionals.*
US textbook publishers are colluding with universities
to bill
students for a subscription to each class's textbooks.
This precludes any chance of avoiding their price gouging.
But there are more important issues at stake than money.
This scheme surely continues the usual injustices of
e-books:
DRM,
identifying the user, and a contract promising to act like jerk.
The first article linked to above advocates "open access".
That term is weak — it asks for too little. We should insist on
free/libre educational resources,
because most "open educational resources" are not free/libre.
It also uses the
misleading term "intellectual property",
a bogus concept that spreads confusion every time it is used.
A campaign asks the users of non-libre apps
to
report which ones report
the user's location.
There is no other straightforward way to make a list of those apps,
and their developers can change their behavior at any time.
A nonfree program gives its developers power over its users,
which makes
it an injustice.
I hope you don't use any non-libre apps, but if you do, it would be useful
to report on them. You can do that and stop using them too.
Fires this year
have
burned hundreds of giant sequoia trees.
That would be around .1% to .2% of the total. Given their life spans,
this many per year, continued in the long term, can easily wipe them
out. Along with hundreds of other species.
If civilization collapses, humans will no longer be able to fight the
fires very much, and they will sweep large parts of the American west
unchecked.
*University defends ‘academic freedoms’
after
calls to sack professor.*
The sad thing is that a university's defending the freedom to state
ones' opinions in a university should constitute news.
Crown Prince Bone Saw earlier demoted Saud al-Qahtani for his
involvement in organizing the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,
but is now
rehabilitating him.
Apparently three years in the cold is long enough punishment.
The developer of the Pegasus spyware package has commanded the program
— for all users, purportedly —
to
refuse to snoop on phone numbers
of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Israel.
Furthermore, these changes seem to have been imposed on preexisting
users of the program.
That would imply that either the program has a back door, or it has a
SaaSS component.
We might consider that the proper solution is to take further steps in
the same direction, until the program is deactivated for all phone
numbers. The manufacturer surely won't do that, though. So let's put
that question aside and consider this from the standpoint of a user of
Pegasus.
Would you want your country's intelligence agency to be limited in
targets by a company that might obey other governments? Should
governments accept being controlled by companies in this way?
Will the countries that are not thus protected start pressuring the
company to protect them, too? For instance, what will France think of
this? French ministers have been snooped on this way.
People who may be targets for spying can easily arrange to get US or
UK phone numbers. If they do, will the company rescind this
protection? If it can remotely protect certain phones, I suppose it
can likewise remotely unprotect certain phones.
The US and UK have a deal: when the US wants to snoop on an American,
since this would be illegal, the UK snoops on per and sends the US the
information. And vice versa. Is there a tweak in Pegasus to allow
the US and UK to continue doing that?
*Fast track to disaster? Brazil’s Grain Train plan
raises
fears for Amazon.*
Hong Kong is
establishing a new court specifically for repression.
*The Amazon rainforest is losing 10,000 acres a day. Soon
it will be
too late.*
"Not 200,000 acres, as the article previously said. But it is still a
very rapid rate of destruction."
US Citizens Urge
Biden to move for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Everyone: call
on GM, American Airlines, UPS and other companies
not to fund the campaigns of Republicans that voted to overturn the election.
Review of the book Hot Air, by climate scientist Peter Stott,
which
describes the battle against global heating denialism.
*When others stay silent about the ills of British capitalism,
liars like
[Bogus] Johnson rush in.*
*Dmitry Muratov: the Nobel winner
shining
light on Russia journalist murders.*
Progressives need to find a clear symbol
to
represent the purpose of
the Build Back Better bill.
The name "Build Back Better" is itself so vague that it fails to say
why that bill should be passed. But I don't like the term "freedom"
as a description for it, because defining "freedom" as "more options"
is a fundamental mistake.
Perhaps "American Dream bill" would fit, because many of the provisions
would make the former "American dream" a plausible hope for most Americans
once again.
Daniel Foote, US envoy to Haiti who resigned in protest, says that
Haiti is so unstable and dangerous
that
it is dangerous to deport
people there.
Senator Menendez represents Big Pharma, and
intends
to torpedo plans to
let Medicare negotiate drug prices.
Other advanced countries have national medical systems which do
negotiate in this way. In the US, the power of plutocracy has blocked this,
and with Menendez's help, may block it again.
However, the underlying problem is the existence of patents that
governments have bound themselves to respect even at the cost of
people's lives.
The argument for medical patents would lose much of its apparent force
if we took the tests for approval of medicines out of the hands
of the drug manufacturers. That way of organizing them makes them
susceptible to corruption.
The funding for these tests should not have
a direct interest in whether the drug is approved or not.
Why the UK's asylum system takes ages to decide and makes horribly
wrong decisions —
explained
by someone who was employed to interview
people and decide.
Since the situation for deciding benefits for disabled people is
basically the same, I think this also explains why that system
mistreats people so badly.
To start with, they were told to judge cases on the curve — more
refusals than approvals.
Contrast that with what I say to guide the volunteers who look at
sites and recommend articles to me. I may say, "From these sites,
please aim to send me around 5 articles per week — on the average."
But if a recommender who understands what I am likely to find
interesting finds 10 interesting articles one week, and only 2 the
next week, perse should send me 10 or 2, as it may be.
Of course, there's less at stake here, because articles don't have
rights the way human beings do. If a recommender decides not to show
me an article. The article won't suffer pain or injustice.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been given
to
two journalists who have persisted
against government repression:
Maria
Ressa in the Philippines,
and Dmitry Muratov in Russia.
Video evidence shows that thugs
in Minneapolis talked about shooting
indiscriminately
with
their plastic-coated metal bullets, before
actually doing so.
They also dismissed and ridiculed the warning that white-supremacists
from out of state were trying to provoke violence.
We now know that
really happened.
Artist Shilpa Gupta
still
celebrates freedom of speech and poets who
were imprisoned by tyranny.
Although I revile what people wish to say nowadays, I don't believe
censorship can lead to anything but tyranny. Frances Haugen's
explanation of Facebook's damage
shows that the remedy for the harm that
Facebook does is not in censoring specific categories of vicious
things, such as QAnonsense, anti-vax, hatred and "Biden stole the election",
but rather in prohibiting the recommendation algorithm that multiplies
and propagates whatever gets the most response. As long as we allow that to
continue, it will polarize society with irrationality along new dimensions.
140,000 minors in the US
lost
a parent or caregiver to Covid-19.
Some of those minors were children; others were adolescents. The article
lumps them together, so we can't tell how many were in each age range.
Please do not call adolescents "children";
that tends to infantilize them.
I expect that such loss tends to hurt children more than it hurts
adolescents. I also expect that the parents of adolescents were more
likely to die from Covid-19, because they were likely to be older.
But this is just guesswork.
Like so many other woes, this woe tended to fall more heavily on
marginalized and disprivileged demographic groups. Why so? Some of
those people may have suffered from bias in the medical treatment they
received.
I would guess that many were deterred from seeking
treatment by worries about how they would pay for it.
We know how
to eliminate that problem.
Surely the comorbidities that are more common among those who are
poor and/or marginalized also had an effect.
The article linked to first in this note displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles which give important information about
racism and its effects, or the fight to eliminate racism. That
article is one of the exceptions.
Poland is headed for a confrontation with the EU
about
whether the EU courts
are superior to Polish courts,
as the EU requires of member countries.
I think the EU have to expel Poland rather than allow it to act as a member
only in the ways that it finds convenient.
The EU has fundamental shortcomings:
its
lack of democracy
and the Euro banking system which forces countries into depressions
by denying them deficit spending.
However, what the Polish government wants is not improvements, but rather
the chance to make things worse.
2/3 of the European Parliament voted for a resolution
calling for stronger
action against tax-dodging via foreign countries.
It is not clear to what extent European countries will follow this.
The EU is
not really very democratic,
and its role in adopting real
directives is rather weak. However, a 2/3 majority could at least override
pressures from the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.
Richard Stallman will be giving a talk in Arles, France, on October 14.
Everyone: log out of Facebook on Nov 10.
The organizers of that campaign aim to send a signal of displeasure.
That may do some good, but I suggest that you do more than that. I
suggest that you refuse to be used by Facebook ever again.
You probably already know why we should refuse to be useds of
Facebook, but in case not, here is a list of lots of reasons.
US citizens: call on support the
Hollywood
non-actor workers' strike.
I hate Hollywood for several reasons including DRM
and unjust copyright laws. Nonetheless I will defend workers from
exploitation.
US citizens: call on Congress to
expand
federal funds for gratis
meals for schoolchildren.
US citizens: call on Gov. Newsom and President Biden to
block new oil
and gas wells and other fossil fuel infrastructure.
US citizens: call on your Senators to
block
the proposed arms sale to
Salafi Arabia.
US citizens: call on the CFPB to
regulate
disguised payday loans like
explicit payday loans.
"Election audits" that find no wrongdoing do not convince the fanatics
who are positive that the wrecker really won in 2000. They react by
demanding
more investigation.
The "steal" has become an article of faith for them, and "audits"
have become a barbaric ritual that they use to propagate the faith.
The "audit" in Arizona confirmed that Biden did win that state,
and with a slightly bigger margin. It appears that the Republicans
who did the auditing were compelled, somehow, to judge each ballot
by impartial standards.
I predict that if Republicans do more of these "audits" they will try to
eliminate whatever factor had that effect. They will look for ways to
report arbitrary, bogus results.
AT&T decided to start the
extreme
right-wing network OAN, and has been
its main impetus.
It is noteworthy that the CEO of OAN refers to mainstream media as
"the other side" from Faux News.
(satire) *Watchdog Group Enjoys
Rare
Night Out After Getting Sitter To
Look After Telecom Industry.*
Republican legislators in Michigan have passed laws to
cut the funding
of school districts that require people in schools to wear masks, or
require quarantine of people that have Covid-19.
Republicans control the Michigan legislature is that they rig the
elections using gerrymandering. A majority of the votes are always
Democratic, and a majority of the legislature always Republican. Now
that Republicanism means spreading disease, maybe it will be possible
for Michiganders to overcome the intentional unfairness of the
electoral system.
The natural inclination in responding to Facebook's amplification of
hate and disinformation is to
propose
to censor specific forms of hate
and disinformation.
However, that is a bad approach, because it would bring the government into
regulating which opinions are acceptable.
I suspect it would also fail to eliminate the opinions it is intended
to eliminate. As long as Facebook continues with its business model
which specifically favors provoking hostility, it will design its
algorithm to promote hatred-provoking postings as much as it can get
away with. It will encourage people to probe the official limits on
how to present hate. They will find ways, just as they have in the
past.
Frances Haugen's testimony confirms my earlier conclusion that the
wrong of Facebook is not in specific nasty statements posted there,
but in the algorithm that promotes statements for being nasty. That
algorithm is what it is because of the fact that spreading nasty
statements is profitable for Facebook.
So let's regulate that algorithm, not the kinds of points people can post
on Facebook.
*House Capitol attack panel
subpoenas
key planners of "Stop the Steal"
rally [on Jan 6].*
*Police killings of civilians in the US have been
undercounted by
more than half in official statistics.*
Australia's court ruled that the trial of Bernard Collaery, the lawyer
who represented Witness K,
can
be public. They are on trial for
whistleblowing about Australia's spying on East Timor's government
while it was negotiating with Australia about ownership of the sea
bottom between the two companies and its resources, including fossil
fuel.
As for the fossil fuel itself, the world must not allow either
Australia or East Timor to extract it. Civilization's survival
requires it to stay in the ground.
Strange that all coverage of this dispute
Various ways the wrecker tried to pressure officials to
undermine the
2020 election last December.
Estimating deaths from Covid-19 from statistics on excess deaths seems
to be more accurate than following various governments' statistics.
It leads to figures from
7
million to 18 millions.
California has prohibited companies from using NDAs to
stop employees
from talking about harassment or discrimination at work.
Is this really limited to employees only? What about other workers,
such as temps, gig workers, and other "independent contractors"?
The other unjust kind of NDA is that which covers generally useful
technical information. My experience with MIT's Xerox laser printer
taught me that it is wrong to sign a nondisclosure agreement covering
generally useful technical information such as software. and I
determined never to agree to them. I have never made an exception
for any software or knowledge I have.
Occasionally I have agreed to a nondisclosure agreement for software
knowing that I would never get a copy pf that software, so the
agreement would be void. After all, it's nonfree software, so I do
not want to run it!
US marshalls beat
up and whipped prisoners who were handcuffed.
The thugs also knocked down, handcuffed and beat up a middle-aged
woman, a house-sitting friend of the family, whom one of the prisoners
called to for assistance.
The prisoners face grave charges, and arresting them may have been
just. However, gratuitously hitting and whipping them in the process,
and injuring them, was not excusable. Nor was beating up the
house-sitter.
Thousands of homes in Ireland were
built
with stone that crumbles.
The state, typically plutocratic, is offering the victims who built the homes
only partial compensation. They can't afford the rest.
Covid-19 restrictions could
exclude
some poor countries from the coming
Cop26 climate conference.
Even new, "low pollution" wood stoves
emit
enormous amounts of
pollution.
Given the intention to phase out fossil fuels, companies will try to
run the existing facilities with the smallest possible investment,
including investment in keeping them running safely. That will tend
to mean more
frequent spills.
The House of Representatives has
subpoena'd
Ali Alexander, who helped
organize the saboteur-in-chief's
rally on Jan 6 and then led people
toward the Capitol.
(satire) *"Can You
Help
The Scab Get Into The Cereal Factory?" Read
Instructions On Back Of Kellogg's Box.*
(satire) *Creepy Old Man Has
Book
Filled With The Home Phone Numbers
Of Everyone In Town.*
I wonder how he gets new editions nowadays. I thought they were no
longer published. I can phone directory information to look up a
number, but I'd much rather be able to do so privately in a book.
*Only
noisy protest makes politicians take action to avoid climate catastrophe.
From the Suffragettes to the anti-apartheid movement, people taking
disruptive action have been on the right side of history.*
2/3 of the European Parliament voted for a resolution calling for
stronger
action against tax-dodging via foreign countries.
It is not clear to what extent European countries will follow this.
The
EU is not really very democratic,
and its role in adopting real
directives is rather weak. However, a 2/3 majority could at least override
pressures from the European Commission and the Council of Ministers.
Everyone: Thank
President Biden for expanding vaccine
requirements to 100+ million Americans.
Everyone: rebuke
companies that support
insurrectionists in Congress.
Now that Interpol has accepted Syria as a member, Assad can use it
to
harass and perhaps even seize exiled Syrian dissidents.
A former Uber driver is suing because
Uber
deactivated his account
when face-recognition software did not recognize his face.
Perhaps he just wasn't himself that day. More likely the software
made a mistake and Uber took it out on him.
The driver is black and alleges that the software has a racially
skewed pattern of error. Such racially skewed errors of face
recognition have
been measured.
As long as face recognition systematically fails for certain people,
more accurate face recognition would avoid harming them. However, if
face recognition gets more accurate and recognizes blacks as
accurately as it does whites, that will not make face recognition
acceptable. The harm to human rights caused by accurately tracking
everyone will get worse.
South Dakota has made itself a place to park hidden wealth,
rivaling
Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.
Merck Sells Federally Financed Covid Pill to U.S.
for
40 Times What It Costs
to Make.
This is the result of the Bayh-Dole Act, which allowed companies and
universities to have monopolies (patents and other kinds) over work
they did under federal contracts. Its harmful effects are seen in the
software field, too.
The supposed reason was to encourage "technology transfer" to
manufacturers, but the harmful effects of that monopoly power were not
considered.
Women in Kabul continue
to defy the Taliban by working, and even
protesting.
Global heating effects have caused the Earth
to
reflect .5% less light
back into space, for the past 3 years.
That excess light may be absorbed by the Earth. Or it might be
reemitted in another frequency range that would not have been measured
by the technique used here.
*Instagram promoted pages
glorifying
eating disorders to teen accounts.*
After an undersea oil pipeline near Los Angeles started leaking oil,
there was an unexplained 12-hour delay
before
the owner started
efforts to keep the oil out of nearby wildlife areas.
One way or another, the company did not give sufficient attention
to the matter of leaks.
The company has had many safety violations:
over
a hundred in 11
years.
It was fined for them, but the fines do not seem to have convinced
the company to do adequate maintenance. Not maintenance adequate to
prevent big leaks, that is.
The general standard of discipline for pipeline maintenance is
inadequate. Some other pipelines have a history of repeated
violations.
What is clear is that the standard pipeline owners are expected to
meet is too low. It assumes that a leak once in a while is ok.
Regulators will shut down a pipeline until a specific flaw is fixed,
but they won't make management learn to proactively detect and fix
problems before inspectors see it.
If the owner leaves it to inspectors to inform it about small
problems, it is effectively leaving it to the world press to inform it
of a disastrous leak. If a pipeline has problems every month that the
company doesn't detect first, its chance of a spectacular problem is
much too high.
Does anyone know how to do maintenance to a level that would assure no
significant oil leaks? Do oil pipelines need to be double, one pipe
inside another, like the double hulls of some tankers? If they were
checked and maintained as carefully as the pipes inside a submarine,
would that be sufficient?
It will take decades for the coastal ecosystems to recover, and they
may not come back the same.
The Philippine government has investigated Do-Dirty's killer
thugs
and
has found around 150 who it may charge with murder.
200 members of the Oath Keepers
identified
themselves to the
organization as cops or retired cops.
A black sports star calls on US blacks to do the rational thing:
get
vaccinated, to protect themselves and others.
*The drowning man doesn’t ask if a racist made the life preserver
keeping him afloat, only that it works to save his life.*
(satire)
*Patriotic Billionaire Only Invests In American-Made Tax Havens.*
It turns out that the London thug
recently convicted of raping and
murdering a woman was accused, six years ago, of driving a car while
wearing nothing below the waist.
If
he did so, does that matter?
As far as I can see, lack of pants while driving has no significance
at all. People a few feet away form the car generally cannot see the
absence of pants. To call this "exposure" is exaggeration of the
facts.
His misogynist communications may well be connected with his crime,
but let's be careful not to demonize every unusual thing he did in
connection with sex. You can't tell that someone will rape or murder
based on quirks, and we risk oppressing people if we suppose you can.
Frances Haugen accused Facebook of
"fanning
ethnic violence" in Ethiopia.
(satire) *Imran Khan Explains Money Saved In Offshore Tax Haven Was To
Buy
Pakistani People A Big Present.*
(satire) *Mark Zuckerberg Vows Employees Responsible For Facebook
Outage Will Be Bullied
To Suicide.*
US officials are trying to
conceal
how the US tortured Abu Zubaydah,
and the Supreme Court will decide the case.
Enbridge, the company building the Line 3 pipeline, paid thugs in
Minnesota over 2 million dollars to
crush
protests against its construction --
often in
especially
thuggish ways.
*Utilities cut
power to US customers while taking huge Covid tax credits.*
The customers whose electricity was cut off were broke because their income
had disappeared.
The Scotland thug department has been
convicted
of pervasive sexual
harassment against females.
The wrecker has told his former officials and advisors to
refuse to testify
in the congressional investigation of the Jan 6 insurrection.
Fossil fuel subsidies, world-wide, amounted to
6
trillion dollars in 2020.
This includes the damage done by heat waves, floods, and fires, and
the harm done to human health, because they are not held responsible
to pay for that. These are not directly "subsidies", but letting them off
the hook for the damages is a form of subsidy.
*Fossil fuel industry gets
subsidies
of $11m a minute, IMF finds.*
Even in Singapore, people are bothered by
an
increase in the already-pervasive
surveillance.
Singapore's government says the robots will not try to identify people
during the trial of these robots. Perhaps it's true, but so what?
I am in favor of reminding people to keep their distance and wear masks.
Identifying them is another matter — it moves towards
a
society in which
unsurveilled activity is impossible.
Global
heating disasters will cost Australia an enormous amount,
estimated at 73 billion dollars (Australian dollars, I am guessing)
per year by 2060, even in the scenario where we curb
global heating.
Since global heating
often goes faster than was predicted, we should
take that as a lower bound.
Legal effects of cultural wrinkles
exclude
the property of some black
families in the US from the aid that might repair flooded their
houses.
This is a short-term issue, because most of those houses cannot be
kept operational in the long term. As floods get worse, eventually
the house will succumb.
*Occupy Wall Street
swept
the world and achieved a lot, even if it may not
feel like it.*
I felt sympathy with Occupy Wall Street, but was disappointed that it
didn't lead to campaigns of a form that I could effectively support.
To shut down the
international
system of wealth-hiding and tax evasion
would not be complex.
The difficult part is not the writing of new laws, but to get them adopted.
I usually group lawful tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion together
under the term "tax dodging" because, morally and structurally, they
are very similar. They often function through the same intermediary
countries.
The Pandora Papers show
the
inaequacy of the EU's action against countries
that aid in disguising property.
Since 2019, Instacart
has reorganizde how it computes workers' pay, to
pay them much less. Now the workers ask users to stop dealing with
the company and delete its app.
I support their demands, as far as that goes -- but in addition to how the
company treats its workers, we must look at how it treats its customers.
It requires them to run nonfree software! And it collects personal data
about them and puts that in a database!
I won't let anyone do that to me. Instead, I go to the store, pick up
what I want, and pay cash.
An investigation of
the
corrupter's attempt to alter Georgia's
election results could result in criminal charges against him.
The Pandora papers show,
*Money
from "world’s biggest bribe
scandal" invested in UK property.*
*Stop Calling the
[US]
Military Budget a "Defense" Budget.*
Burma has jailed
100 journalists since the coup. As a result, we get very
little news about what is happening there now.
*Can we move
our forests in time to save them?*
With most regions becoming too dry or too wet, as well as hotter,
there is no reason to assume there is any place an existing forest
ecosystem can go to.
Senator Graham was booed for
suggesting
to Republicans that they
merely think about getting vaccinated.
Anti-vax has become their core ideology.
*Access to the Tory party is being bought by a new class of tycoon
funders.* The Pandora Papers show how
British
billionaires use the
British government against Britain.
Britain shows that it's possible to be a banana republic without
actually being a republic.
The G7
tax plan to tax multinational companies taxes them far too
little.
Richard Stallman will be giving a talk in Claret, France, on October 16.
Boston area: come to the rally for Julian Assange on Oct 11 from 4pm to 5:30pm in
Boston Common, at the top of the main entrance to Park Street Station.
The leaked "Pandora papers" show how many rich people have set up
international structures of shell companies
to
disguise what property
they own.
For instance, the leaks show that King Abdullah of Jordan has
disguised his owning properties, in various countries,
worth 100
million dollars.
These article make a moral assumption which we should reject:
The invalid assumption is to equate legality with moral legitimacy.
That equation abdicates all moral judgment to the legislature of
whichever country has jurisdiction.
This is what plutocrats want us to assume. If we accept it, then
when they have set up tax laws to assess them little tax, we will
conclude it is right for them to pay little tax. This balderdash
helps plutocrats maintain their dominion, at the expense of everyone
else.
King Abdullah is a slightly unusual case because, in Jordan, he is a
monarch, more powerful than a plutocrat. Internationally, though, he
is a plutocrat like any other. So this applies to him too.
In the US, the tax on a building is charged by local government.
Disguising the owner's identity won't avoid that tax. But if selling
the building brings in a profit, the owner may avoid paying taxes on
that capital gain by not reporting it.
Disguising the "beneficial owner" of a business can enable
the owner to dodge taxes on the income of the business.
What the Texas abortion-restriction law
does
to women in Texas that
need an abortion.
Brazilians living in penury search for food in a heap of animal carcasses.
This reflects the
deep poverty that has struck Brazil.
This was partly caused by Covid-19, and the government could not have
prevented that. But I expect that the Workers' Party would have done
a better job of protecting the poor from hunger.
The Tories want to put climate defense protesters in prison
for 6 months
for blocking highways.
This is, apparently, higher priority than insulating millions of
houses, which is the highly efficient way of reducing greenhouse
emissions that the protesters demand.
When floods block highways, will the Tories put the flood waters in
prison? If a flood continues for a week, they could sentence the
water to 4 years.
The Whitney Plantation in Louisiana is a museum
of
what life was like for
the slaves on plantations.
San Jose, California, has apologized for acts of racism against
Chinese-Americans,
which
included burning down the whole of Chinatown
where they lived.
California has passed a law to decertify
thugs convicted of serious
crimes, so
that they can't jump over to another thug department
elsewhere in the state.
A scientific experiment demonstrates
hiring
bias against minority
racial groups in the UK.
All the applicants sent the same résumé, so there was no reason to
treat them differently except bias.
The amount of bias has not decreased since the 1960s.
Female cops in London say the male cops hit them with persistent
sexism, and
support each other in doing so.
Mobs of Hinduismists in the state of Chhattisgarh, India, are accusing
Christians of forcing Hindus to convert to Christianity,
and using
that as an excuse for violent repression of Christians.
There have been times and places where Christians forced people to
convert. This happened in Spain in 1492 and after: the Spanish
monarchy forced all Jews and Muslims to become Christians. But it is
absurd to imagine that Indian Christians would try to do this today,
since they are a minority surrounded by millions of Hindus. This is
typical right-wing false accusation.
The real threat to religious freedom in Chhattisgarh is from the state
law that requires state approval for changing your religion. I expect
that this was passed
for
repression against Dalits
that want to become
Buddhist,
following Dr. Ambedkar.
Abu Zubaydah, prisoner in Guantanamo, is suing to demand testimony of
agents that tortured him,
to
prove that the US had a torture site in
Poland.
Arguing that the police departments of today
are
fundamentally bad and
harmful.
I find that plausible, but that doesn't necessarily mean that "no
police" would be better. More likely, a gang would take over the role
of "keeping order", whatever order it prefers.
To replace today's thug
departments with something better, we need to have
a clear idea to make a replacement that is indeed better.
*In plain sight, Boris Johnson
is
rigging the system to stay in power.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the
National
Security Reforms
and Accountability Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
The Tories continue to dump the costs of replacing flammable cladding
— and fire prevention in the meantime — on many apartment buildings
on
the residents, who can never pay it.
They rescued the residents of tall buildings but stubbornly refuse to
rescue shorter buildings. I guess they feel a need to avoid giving
people the expectation that the government will help them in
adversity.
Global heating
effects will hasten the decay of America's dilapidated
schools, and make classrooms
too
hot for children to study in.
Many schools already dismiss class when it gets to hot. By 2025,
26,000 schools will need to install or upgrade air conditioning.
Republicans will surely oppose funding for this.
Research into use of Twitter, and mathematical modeling, show that its
structural tendency is to
encourage
polarization and formation of camps
that are hostile to each other.
*Coffee bean price
spike just a taste of what’s to come with [climate mayhem].*
The "Council
for National Policy" secretly brings together Republican
officials with rich right-wing donors and leaders of hate groups.
Any song I listen to,
I can share a copy too.
Hello, my name is _____________ and I'm a constituent of the
senator's. I am calling to urge Senator _________ to support the
tax reform plan being put forward by Senator Wyden and Majority
Leader Schumer.
It will raise the revenue needed to fully fund the Build Back
Better plan by making the rich and corporations begin paying
their fair share of taxes.
Senator Wyden's tax plan includes the Billionaires Income Tax,
which I strongly support. It is critical that billionaires start
paying taxes on their investment gains each year the same as
workers like me pay taxes on our wages each year.
Again, I urge the senator to support Senator Wyden's tax plan and
his Billionaires Income Tax. Thank you.
Has everyone named in the Pandora papers done something wrong?
No. Moving money offshore is not in or of itself illegal,