2019: July - October Political Notes - Richard Stallman

Johnson And Trump's Close Ties Risk Disaster for Planet, Says Corbyn.

California has passed a law requiring all presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to get on the ballot.

There is surely something in his tax returns that might have cost him votes in 2016. But would it have that effect on today's Republicans, who have become inured to lies, hatred and racism? It might seem like small potatoes compared with the vicious things that Republicans are already inured to.

I can imagine that the conman might abandon California (since he has little chance of winning there) to defy this law. But if a swing state does this, he might have to yield.

The Gilroy murderer advocated white supremacists, which suggests that his shooting was an act of white supremacist terrorism.

A father forgot his children in a car all day, and they died. Does it make sense to prosecute him?

Does it make sense to make a law against leaving children in a car for a few minutes?

The Drug Enforcement Agency has been stalling for three years over an application for a permit to grow marijuana for research.

Hong Kong protesters are trying to identify thugs by their faces, now that the thugs have stopped wearing identification badges.

The thugs generally have an advantage in this kind of conflict.

When the NSA says it deleted a database, it sometimes finds another copy later.

The new head of the Bureau of Land Management wants to privatize all public land by selling it to rich people.

I suspect the rich buyers will get it at a very low price.

Tech executives are making a show of apologizing for the damage their companies have done … without having to fix it or even halt it.

The Democratic debate was "Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren v the 'No We Can't' Democrats."

Stop arguing with Bogus Johnson — it only feeds the troll. What is needed is action, not disputation.

José Ramos-Horta, former president of East Timor, calls on Australia to drop charges against the whistleblower that revealed how Australia was spying on the negotiations between those two countries.

I agree completely. I also agree that it was wrong of Australia to steal oil located in what was to become East Timor's waters. But the biggest wrong was that Australia allowed that oil to be burned, contributing to global heating.

If East Timor had extracted this oil and allowed it to be burned, that would have been almost as bad. For a just outcome, just to humanity and nature, we need to leave that oil in the ground.

Pharma companies will be fined 70 million dollars for conspiring to prevent the making of generic drugs.

A student from a town near Detroit faces criminal charges for throwing a ball that injured another student, in a game similar to dodge ball.

I was unable to play volleyball because I was afraid to be hit by the ball. If you are afraid of being hit by a ball — whether for emotional reasons like me, or valid medical reasons like the student that was injured, you really should decline to play.

US border thugs have separated over 900 minors from their parents since a year ago. Almost 200 of them are children under 5 years old.

There are valid reasons why a compassionate state might do this in some cases, but when a state and its officials have explicitly declared hatred for migrants, we must expect it to distort those reasons into excuses to do harm.

The number of remaining vaquita porpoises is between 6 and 19.

The species might survive if Mexico cracks down on use of gillnets. It is too late to be sure of that — if there are just 6, and none is a female capable of reproducing, it's too late — but we should try.

India has almost finished abolishing the one-sided law for divorces among Muslims. Men alone had the right to declare a divorce unilaterally.

People should have equal rights in divorce, but I hope this doesn't result in making divorce too difficult for everyone.

Nigeria shows how extreme inequality of income can spread poverty in an "economic boom".

The European Court of Justice ruled that a web site with a Like button is responsible for the tracking it does.

This ruling won't make a big difference if the site can make the issue go away by adding one more clause to its terms of service. But it might make a small difference, if sites can no longer show a Like button to a visitor who has not yet explicitly accepted the terms of service.

Kamala Harris claims to support Medicare for All, but her version is ersatz.

This year, Earth Overshoot Day is calculated to occur on August 1. After just 7 months, humans have used what the Earth can regenerate in a whole year.

The population of wild boar is exploding in Europe, and many have moved into cities where they injure humans.

Fortunately, they taste great. If you are in Europe, try some.

In Pete Buttigieg, Venture Capitalists See a Campaign to Invest in.

That shows he's on the plutocrats' side, not ours.

Reminder of some arguments against the death penalty.

Tanzania has arrested a famous investigative journalist, Erick Kabendera.

One must suppose he investigated something the government didn't want the public to know about.

Mass Protests in Colombia and Abroad Decry Killings of 500 Activists Since Peace Accords.

Under Geneva conventions, every occupying power has an obligation to compensate any damages it does members of the occupied population, whether to their bodies or their property. Israel has changed its laws so that it almost never gives Palestinians the compensation they are owed.

A local leader of India's ruling Hindu extremist party called for gang-raping Muslim women.

She was expelled from the party, but men who said similar things have generally been tolerated.

When foreigners enter Xinjiang (China) from Kyrgyzstan, Chinese border guards have taken their phones away to put malware on them.

The malware searches files in the phones for various things that China considers hateful. It might do other things as well.

I have to point out that people suspect the US of doing similar things to people entering the US, and in other circumstances as well.

Enforcement of food and drug safety regulations has fallen by 33% under the corruptor.

Ocasio-Cortez pushed past border thugs so she could speak to imprisoned immigrants. This enabled her to find out how they were mistreating the prisoners.

The thugs had gone to extreme lengths to block visiting congresscritters from observing or finding out the prison conditions, and the visitors felt menaced by them. Sounds like a visit to North Korea.

A major US insurance company has announced it will stop insuring coal companies (or investing in them).

Saboteur of the Interior Bernhardt gave his former client influence over the department's decisions.

The department has adopted new secrecy rules, too.

When you buy a record, or pay for music streaming (even via ads), the money usually goes to some company, not to the musicians.

I've proposed systems for supporting musicians without depending on record companies, and in a way that encourages sharing.

Al Franken now regrets resigning from the Senate. Some senators that pushed him to resign now regret that too.

The first (main) article does not state clearly whether Franken touched Tweeden in the process of making the photo, but it seems he did not. If that is correct, it was not a sexual act at all. It was self-mocking humor. The photograph depicted a fictional sexual act without her fictional consent, but making the photo wasn't a sexual act.

If it is true that he persistently pressured her to kiss him, on stage and off, if he stuck his tongue into her mouth despite her objections, that could well be sexual harassment. He should have accepted no for an answer the first time she said it. However, calling a kiss "sexual assault" is an exaggeration, an attempt to equate it to much graver acts, that are crimes.

The term "sexual assault" encourages that injustice, and I believe it has been popularized specifically with that intention. That is why I reject that term.

Meanwhile, Franken says he did not do those things, and the other actors he previously did the same USO skit with said it was not harassment, just acting. Tweeden's store is clearly false in many details.

Should we assume Tweeden was honest? With so many demonstrated falsehoods in her accusations, and given that she planned them with other right-wing activists, and that all of them follow a leader who lies as a tactic every day, I have to suspect that she decided to falsify accusations through exaggeration so as to kick a strong Democrat out of the Senate.

I have no proof of that suspicion. It is possible that she made the accusations honestly. Also, in a hypothetical world, someone might really have done them. Supposing for the moment that those accusations were true, should Franken have resigned over them?

I don't think so. They are misjudgments, not crimes. Franken deserved the chance to learn from the criticism that surprised him. Zero tolerance is a very bad way to judge people.

However, the most important point is to reject the position that if B feels hurt by what A said or did, then automatically A is wrong. People judged Franken that way, and he judged himself that way. But that way degrades the concept of "wrong" into a mere expression of subjective disapproval. What can legitimately be asserted subjectively can legitimately be ignored subjectively too. To judge A that way is to set B up as a tyrant.

If B's feelings were hurt, that's unfortunate -- but is that A's fault? If so, was it culpable, or just a mistake? That is what we have to judge, and if we want others to think our judgments worth following, they must be based on objective facts and objective standards, including objective standards for what words and gestures objectively mean.

Traister is wrestling with a solvable problem. She says, "When you change rules, you end up penalizing people who were caught behaving according to the old rules." Maybe people do, but that is a sign of carelessness. It isn't really hard to change the rules and then judge old actions by the old rules. We just have to remember to do so.

One big danger of surveillance is that people come to believe that breaking a rule is impossible, and then it becomes unthinkable.

If you use Twitter, unfollow the bullshitter. Posting your outrage does not hurt him — it's what he wants.

Your Family Is None of Their Business.

You, too, are none of their business, but that point is more radical.

The Tories have made it easy to get away with mistreating workers in the UK. They have cut the funding to employment tribunals to the point where it takes 8 months for a case to be heard.

The UK privatized applications for student visa renewals. Naturally the company gouges the students, using a dark pattern in which there are supposed to be gratis appointments but in practice they are not available.

This particular work has a peak season in September. In a government office, the staff would focus on this during the peak season, then most would shift to other tasks for the rest or the year. A private business may not have an opportunity to do that. Its staff is less stable than civil servants, and its other contracts come and go.

This adds to the other reasons that government services should never be privatized. Occasionally some government service can simply be eliminated.

Can You Afford To Be Green When You're Not Rich? I Kept a Diary to Find Out.

The article shows that many forms of conservation are made far more difficult by the fact that society's current pushes people in the other direction.

The most important choice, to reduce your contribution to the ecological footprint of humanity, is not mentioned in the article. It is to choose not to have a child. The writer apparently does not recognize that that was a choice.

Isolated, uninhabited Henderson Island receives tons of plastic deposited by the Pacific Ocean. Scientists visited for two weeks and collected 6 tons to study it.

60% comes from fishing. This accords with reports that most plastic waste in the ocean is from fishing. That should be much easier to eliminate than waste from a billion consumers.

If the fishing was done near Henderson, it was illegal. But this trash could have floated for thousands of miles.

How Stonewall Reversed a Long History of Justifying Police Surveillance (and entrapment and jailing) of gays.

Revealed: Rampant Deforestation of Amazon Driven by Global Greed for Meat.

The new business-supremacy treaty between the EU and Mercosur trade blocks could speed up the deforestation.

After mangrove trees die, they emit lots more methane.

(satire) God ordered His followers to swallow cyanide capsules Monday in preparation for their voyage to Alpha Centauri.

ICANN has eliminated the limit on fees for having a .org domain name.

It disregarded almost complete opposition to the move in the public comments it received.

The .org domain overseer would make the same amount of money by collecting $10k for each of 1000 domains as it would by collecting $10 for each of a million domains. And the former would be a lot less hassle. I fear that is what we will see.

Americans, remember the refugees that tried to flee from Hitler. All countries turned them away, and they were killed by Nazis.

Venezuelan navy captain Rafael Acosta was arrested on June 21 and accused of plotting a coup. Since then he has died, showing signs of torture.

Maduro calls for investigation of the accused torture rather than trying to deny it.

The wife of Dubai's emir has fled and wants a divorce. The emir thinks of her as property and wants the UK to forcibly send her back to him.

He got his daughter back by sending commandos to grab her.

An employee of Eli Lilly, a Pharma company, reports on when the goal of maximizing profit replaced that of saving lives.

Bernie Sanders Is Right: 3 Billionaires Really Do Have More Wealth Than Half of America.

Ethiopia is trying plant 4 billion trees this year. Each citizen is supposed to plant 40 at least trees.

If they are planting the right kinds of trees, in places where forests can grow, these trees might do good, if they don't die. Due to global heating, trees may not survive the next 20 years in places where they used to grow. However, it is better to try than not try.

We should ban use of lead shot for hunting. The lead pellets remain lying around, birds eat them, and die of lead poisoning.

Eating the poisoned birds, including the birds shot with lead, poisons people.

Scientists suggest making a Geneva convention to give wildlife and nature reserves protected status in conflicts.

What about museums with unique objects, and libraries of rare books?

I think they should have similar protected status.

Even accidental destruction of these special places should be considered a crime — the crime of negligence.

Barr Says Police Need Encryption Backdoors, Doesn’t Mention [Cracking] Tools They Use All the Time.

China is getting children started early on being tracked all the time.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects web site operators from liability for what their users post, is being attacked in Congress. This puts all sorts of Internet commenting in danger.

An Indian teenager accused a politician of raping her. A truck collided with the car she was in, killing two of her relatives and injuring her and her lawyer.

There is suspicion that thugs beat her father to death.

The UK is forcing women into sex work to get a place to live.

Thugs in Harrisburg have a predilection of beating up prisoners and causing them serious injuries, then not taking care of them.

Measles attacks the immune cells that guard the memory of resisting past infections. It takes 4 or 5 years for those immune cells to regrow and provide immunity again to those past infections.

Thus, if you get measles, you become vulnerable again, for several years, to infections you were previously immune to. And they can kill you.

China's First ‘Cyber-Dissident’ Jailed for 12 Years.

If the UK needs to make a new trade agreement with the US, the US will impose disastrous permanent deregulation.

The bullshitter's billionaire backers want this, and Bogus Johnson will surely rush to obey. But it would not have been much better under Obama, or any previous US president since the 1970s.

Global heating is making whole families flee Guatemala. The seasons have changed, there is less rain, and crops fail.

US citizens: call on CNN to ask the candidates about net neutrality.

If you sign, please spread the word!

US citizens: call on CNN, and its head, Zucker, to stop giving Nazis a platform.

If you sign, please spread the word!

Everyone: call on the European Investment Bank, and the governments that own it, to adopt the fossil fuel divestment proposal and fully implement it.

If you sign, please spread the word!

Bogus Johnson, the new prime minister of the UK, has appointed as his chief aide a man that has been censured by Parliament for refusing to testify about fake news activities.

A study reports: Countries with higher levels of unionization have lower per-capita carbon footprints.

The Supreme Court allowed the cheater to use $2.5bn in Pentagon funds to build a border wall.

British "honours" (non-military medals) named after the no-longer-extant British Empire cause a moral quandary to some recipients, whose ethnic background includes a group that was colonized by said empire.

Rep. Shiff, head of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Mueller's testimony provided the basis to consider impeaching the conman.

It seems to me that we had plenty of basis already.

Moscow thugs have arrested 1300 pro-democracy protesters, but the protesters are not daunted.

All they demand is that the candidates they nominated be allowed to run.

Gold miners in the Brazilian Amazon have attacked and captured an indigenous village and killed the tribe's leader.

Experts Call for Ban on Glass Skyscrapers to Save Energy.

They need extra cooling to make up for the greenhouse effect of the glass.

Hong Kong thugs indiscriminately attacked subway passengers who were simply trying to ride the train.

Some of the passengers had previously been in a protest.

UK women have become more willing to report rape, but only 2% of the cases are actually pursued. This discourages the victims, who say "forget about it."

An analysis of the Hong Kong political situation.

Let's look at the argument that Hong Kongers should surrender their rights to assuage the hurt feelings of a billion Chinese. Are their feelings really hurt? That could be a fiction fabricated by Chinese state.

But let's suppose that 30 million really do have hurt feelings. It could be so. If so, why are their feelings hurt? Why do they even pay attention to Hong Kong? It's because they are more or less Xi-ple; the state media tells them to feel hurt, and they do not doubt what they are told.

Any number of people who demand your surrender because they herded to do so amount to no reason for you to do that.

Extreme Weather Has Damaged Nearly Half Australia's Marine Ecosystems Since 2011. Some were damaged irreversibly.

The crucial points are that (1) this is surely not limited to Australia and (2) it will get a lot worse unless we stop it soon.

MSNBC alters arithmetic to make Sanders look bad.

A big right-wing PAC turned out to be much less effective than it might have been, because the organizers directed much of the money to themselves.

The Department of Justice approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.

The political power of large companies is such a threat to democracy that we should make sure they do not merge with or acquire other companies.

In the EU, online credit card payments will require two-factor identification using a mobile phone.

Many people are up in arms about the inconvenience of this, but that is only the superficial level. A mobile phone tracks you, and buying on the internet tracks you. The wise thing to do is to go to a physical store and pay cash.

The US made Guatemala agree that the US should call it "safe" so that refugees that cross Guatemala (from Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua) have to apply for asylum in Guatemala.

That policy is ridiculous and unjust because it is based on a falsehood.

Australia's ruling planet-roasters are facing pressure from Papua New Guinea to help curb global heating.

Bullshit won't be enough to quell this.

Planting a lot of forests in Europe could reduce severe storms there.

In a human advance, Israeli snipers are now being told to shoot (unarmed) Gaza protesters in the lower leg.

This reinforces the point that when they shoot someone in the head, it is no accident.

US major media continually print interviews with supporters of the bullshitter showing that they have not changed their stance.

This promotes their talking points, but it isn't news any more.

US citizens: call on Harvard to divest from fossil fuels.

If you call, please spread the word!

US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

If you call, please spread the word!

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

US citizens: call on Los Angeles DA Lacey to stop pushing for the death penalty.

If you call, please spread the word!

US citizens: call on Congress to pass the MORE Act to legalize marijuana in a thorough way.

If you call, please spread the word!

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

Everyone: call on Walmart to let staff wear shorts.

If you call, please spread the word!

US citizens: Call on Alabama Governor Ivey to give clemency to Rocky Myers.

The reason he could not present these arguments in an appeal is the law past under President Clinton to sharply limit appeals against death sentences.

If you call, please spread the word!

Why are companies rushing to replace human workers with robots based on machine learning? Because that is a way to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer as a byproduct.

Additional robots are greatly reducing the number of jobs in manufacturing, and are likely to continue doing so.

The fact that one particular factory in the UK has more staff now than in 2007 is neither here nor there. Evidently a bigger fraction of the country's manufacturing has been concentrated there.

The increase in productivity is a benefit to whoever owns the factory, and the small fraction of people employed there. But it is not good for society overall unless those benefits are shared with society overall.

It is a mistake to see the issue in nationalistic terms as a competition with other countries. It does no good to country C to have robot factories there rather than in D, E and F, if the benefits go in each case only to the few owners. What matters to country C is making sure the people there who don't own plenty of stock in robot factories can nonetheless enjoy the products of these factories, and everything else one needs for a good life.

Portland thugs harassed and attacked antifascist counterprotesters, based on accusations that may be phony.

However, it seems they really did attack the right-wing journalist, Andy Ngo. We should not do that.

A sheriff's office and a special gouge-'em prison phone company conspired (in effect) to record prisoners' privileged phone calls with lawyers.

The substantive policies of Mexican President López Obrador put business and the US first.

If this is a "win for Mexico's left", then Clinton was a progressive.

Privatized UK probation officers say bigger caseloads and unrealistic targets prevent them from following their professional standards.

This is the standard result of privatizing a government service. We should renationalize all privatized government services.

China is now ruled by a networked totalitarianism, "Mao 2.0".

When the article says what "we" believed, the author should speak for himself. I never believed that capitalism would by nature bring democracy. Democracy is how the non-rich organize the state to protect them from the power of the rich.

Back when capitalists needed lots of factory workers, that gave the workers one advantage in their fight for democracy. But it did not guarantee victory. And now that advantage is gone.

Courtney Irby took her husband's guns to the thug department because he had been trying to kill her. The thugs charged her with burglary and jailed her.

Trudeau gave Canada's approval to the Transmountain tar sands pipeline. This makes a mockery of the climate emergency declaration Trudeau made this week.

The new NAFTA improves many specific points, but its fundamental effect is still to give businesses more power and democracy less power, and thus to transfer income from workers to business owners.

A mesh network is providing true internet service to large parts of New York City.

I used to think that community mesh networks could not be more than toys, but it's a great surprise to see this is not so.

Senate Republicans blocked bills to improve the security of US elections.

Progressive US district attorneys are making inroads into the cruel "tough on crime" approach to street crime.

Toughness for toughness' sake causes a lot of collateral damage and can backfire by increasing crime.

The case where toughness is exactly what we need is for business crime, whether against workers or against customers. For instance, stealing workers' pay and foreclosing on millions of Americans' homes using fraudulent papers. The perpetrators do this for profit, and if it ceases to be profitable, they will stop doing it.

If we have recourse to a billionaire to defeat the impositions of other billionaires, the result will be to ensconce plutocracy more deeply.

A society where a small number of the powerful compete for power could turn into an empire.

Mulvaney is pushing deregulation of business in many areas of the US government.

By contrast, the bully wants more regulation of activities that help poor people, refugees, and women.

US citizens: call on presidential candidates to commit to ending federal attacks on abortion rights.

If you sign, please spread the word!

Everyone: call on Google to shut down its location tracker Sensorvault.

Sensorvault stores the locations tracked in great detail by Android apps, which do this even when location tracking is "turned off".

This is what you have to expect from nonfree software.

If you sign, please spread the word!

US citizens: call on Democratic and Republican parties to denounce and reject disinformation tactics.

If you sign, please spread the word!

US citizens: call on the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate illegalities in use of soldiers to patrol the border.

If you sign, please spread the word!

Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your Mass legislator to pass the ROE Act.

If you sign, please spread the word!

Hatred of unusual sexuality still causes gratuitous suffering around the world.

Even some "progressive" Congresscritters voted the Pentagon's bloated funding deal.

Jewish religious leaders reminded Congress that rejection and cruelty to refugees can hurt anyone.

(satire) … Russian operative Pavel Artemyev reportedly expressed disappointment Friday that gerrymandering has taken all the fun out of hacking the 2020 election.

Comparing Warren with Sanders on foreign policy.

I disagree with the author on some points. Russia and China do threaten the security of Americans, though not as much as the bullshitter does. I think the US should keep troops in Rojava (the Kurdish part of Syria) for as long as Rojava wants them.

If we care about democracy in the Middle East, we should defend it when it is threatened.

Detroit is playing games to expand the thugs' video surveillance and obfuscate its relationship with face recognition.

The remaining refugees imprisoned on Manus Island have been invited to move to New Zealand, but Australia's right wing hate regime won't let them.

It is good that the bully did not stop the US from accepting many refugees from Manus. As for the ones that have moved to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, I wonder what their lives are like there.

Australia is still ashamed of its actions there. An opposition Australian senator went to Manus Island and asked to visit the prison. Not only was he denied permission, Papua New Guinea immediately deported him.

It is clear that Papua New Guinea's government is acting as a puppet for the Australian minister in charge, Dutton.

By the way, Dutton is the same minister that could have you imprisoned if you disobey secret orders to sabotage your clients or your free software. Don't go to Australia.

The UK parliament voted to authorize abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. These were blocked because the parliament of Northern Ireland ceased to function some years ago.

Important advice about militarism that President Roosevelt received in 1940, but the US is forgetting.

(satire) A woman's soul complains of gender bias in purgatory.

There is surely gender bias in CIA torture, too.

Biden didn't just vote for Dubya's war with Iraq. He championed it.

Israel has decided to legitimize Israelis' houses on Palestinians' land, if the Israelis dealt "in good faith" with the Israeli government.

Israelis are not required to show "good faith" to Palestinians themselves.

Contrast this with how Israel grabs for excuses to make Palestinians demolish their own homes.

The weight of the evidence supports Iran's claim that the US spy drone that Iran shot down was over Iran's waters.

Making war plans and running war games do not strike me as matters of special concern. Those kinds of preparations are, in most cases, not followed by an actual war. Thus, if the bully does attack Iran, I won't consider that planning to be the cause.

The US has cancelled and violated the nonnuclear accord with Iran but still criticizes Iran for not obeying it.

Amazon keeps Alexa recordings and transcripts indefinitely.

"Unprecedented": More Than 100 Arctic Wildfires Burn in Worst Ever Season.

In some places the peat is burning and could burn for months.

The relation between this and global heating is direct in both directions. The Arctic has heated much more than anywhere else on Earth, and that temperature makes for fire. And the fire spews CO2 which will increase global heating.

A person's pattern of using a mobile phone allows deducing a lot about per personality.

Phone companies around the world could use this to help profile people.

In order for planting trees to be environmentally beneficial, they need to be the right trees, in a suitable place.

I conjecture that a good rule would be to plant trees in places that used to be forests a few centuries ago, and plant the trees that used to live there.

The EPA plans to allow polluters to appeal rulings but not allow pollution victims to do so.

Plutocratists have directed that agency to do the opposite of its job. That is why I now call it the Environmental Poisoning Agency.

Moscow Police Arrest up to 200 Ahead of Election Protest.

Putin openly visits contempt on democracy as an act of intimidation, like what the bully does in the US.

In the Guardian we read,

Surely a woman shouldn’t be forced to wax testicles if that makes them feel uncomfortable?

Who or what does "them" refer to? The testicles? The woman?

Notwithstanding my delectation in occasional wildly funny ambiguities such as that one, I continue to advocate systematically avoiding them by using singular gender-neutral pronouns when referring to just one person. In this particular case, since the person is specified as a woman, "her" would also have fit.

Siri Records Fights, Doctor's Appointments, And Sex (and contractors hear it).

The Israeli Who Had to Prove He's Guilty of Beating a Palestinian, and the Palestinian Who Had to Prove He's Innocent of Raping a Jewish Girl.

The workers in Australian mines now have precarious jobs (and, apparently, no unions to defend them). So they are afraid they will be fired if they report how the mine cuts corners and endangers people's lives and health.

The underlying cause of this is right-wing government that lets mines get away with precarious employment. Give miners more power and their union will attend to the safety.

Machine learning / automated classification is going to be loaded down with patents, like other fields of computing.

(The article uses the misleading over-generalization, "IP". It covers a bunch of disparate laws, which in itself is spreads confusion by leading people to think those laws have something significant in common.)

We need laws that directly exclude software and use of software from the domain of patents.

Jewish activists protest the deportation thugs, saying "Never Again Means Close the Camps!"

Jews have two different interpretations of "Never again!" One is narrow: "Never again to us!" The other interpretation is broad: "Never again to anybody!" I admire that side of Judaism (although it won't convince me to believe in supernatural entities).

A strike planned in an Amazon warehouse is meant to draw a contrast between the carefully cultivated image Amazon presents to consumers and the reality for the company's workers.

By contrast, in the Free Software Movement we aim to draw a contrast between that same image and the reality for those who make the mistake of accepting the company's services.

Evidence suggests that excess CO2 in the ocean can reach a tipping point after which the ocean would rapidly become much more acidic.

Legalizing recreational marijuana correlates with decreased use by high school students.

Instagram is testing AI-implemented kind communication guidelines. In the GNU Project we ask people to learn and consciously practice our kind communication guidelines.

(satire) Defense Attorneys Vow To Present Irrefutable Evidence Proving Jeffrey Epstein Billionaire.

The staff of a Chicago medical organization are suing because it identified them with fingerprints for each shift.

I think it is bad that the employer has their fingerprints at all. Is it possible to authenticate people with a biometric that is normally hidden?

US schools are monitoring social media postings of everyone living near by, using Artificial Stupidity to detect "threats". Nearly every alarm is a false alarm.

One thing that the article doesn't mention is that the contracts for using the school's computers and their nonfree software, and the online dis-services that the school wants to let spy on students, are fundamentally unjust.

Christchurch Mayor On Mass Shooter: 'I've no idea what his name is'.

I didn't pay attention to that name either.

Real-Time Facial Recognition Should Never Be Coupled with Body-Worn Cameras.

I agree, but that is not enough. We must also them from being used to make and store videos without limits. My proposed automatic system to decide when to save the recording could take care of this job.

The FBI frequently identifies people by running their photos through many states' data bases of drivers license photos.

The deportation thugs do it too, which means that the states which permit this expose their residents gratuitously to deportation.

Tsipras and Syriza lost the first battle to the global plutocracy. Then, instead of fighting for every inch, they capitulated eagerly.

Then most Greeks did the foolish thing that a defeated people often do: they decided to support a different set of right-wing plutocratists instead. This was pitiful and stupid. Despair can drive a people to do self-mutilation, just as it can drive an individual to it, but don't help your enemies subjugate your people.

Global heating is causing havoc in Somalia, through repeated drought.

As the number of people who can't feed themselves any more increases, it is clear that other countries will eventually let them die. But in the mean time, climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion can present their example of a foretaste of what is coming if we don't decarbonize.

"[Trudeau's] promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research."

There is no room in the carbon budget for strip-mining Alberta's tar sands.

Local disasters due to global heating are happening at a rate of roughly once per week.

Mizutori's stance is misguided. We must give priority to long-term reduction of the harm that global heating will do. We must do all we can in that direction. Defending cities from floods and fires of the 2020s must take second place to reducing the floods and fires of the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s and beyond.

It is good to defend cities better in the short term, provided this is not at the expense of measures to reduce the long-term threat.

Scholars implore San Francisco not to cover up the murals that depict misdeeds of George Washington.

It is true that we can't tell the school's students (or anyone else) how to feel. That doesn't mean we must cater to misguided demands that are motivated by those feelings.

In US concentration camps for immigrants, the officers let thugs vent cruelty at the prisoners.

"The conditions in the border cells are shocking — but the right[-wing] will use public outrage [as an excuse to] to build more jails."

For the bully, threatening massive deportation raids then not carrying them out added up to a successful act of terror. He used cruelty to send a message.

I did not post about this, because it is a mistake to talk about whatever the conman says. Next time he tries to terrify people with a threat, let's please not talk about it. The things has actually does cause enough harm on their own; we need not add to them by quoting his threats.

Wealthy white males in the US today are about as healthy (on the average) as were the wealthy white males of 25 years ago, but all other demographic groups in the US have got less healthy since then.

The study doesn't show the reason for this, but the increasing expense of medical care in the US is surely part of the reason. The increasing stress of living in the US under plutocracy may be another.

The hospital that became famous for suing poor people for medical charges they can't pay has dropped some of the lawsuits. It is going to reconsider that policy.

Maybe after this public outrage the hospital will cease all such lawsuits. Or maybe it won't. If it does stop, it might start again in a year or two and hope nobody notices.

No word on whether it will rename itself as "Le Malheur".

Boris Johnson, an evil clown, may now become prime minister of the UK by burying a real scandal under an assertion so unbelievable that the press got distracted by how unbelievable it was.

The assertion was also apparently calculated to disguise one of his past failures in search engines.

I didn't post any notes about the unbelievable statement, because it was not important. Additional reasons to distrust someone's word are hardly needed when that someone is a Tory.

US border thugs tried to cover up their secret discussion group for posting their hatred of immigrants, but the Intercept saved it and has posted about it.

The quotation, "Fuck the whole country of Honduras," is ironic because that's exactly what the US has done.

US citizens: call on Congress to block Facebook's planned currency.

If you sign, please spread the word!

(satire) … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed concerns Thursday that outspoken progressives could do permanent damage to Democrats’ reputation as ineffectual cowards.

'I Was Ready to Sign' Deportation Papers, Says US Citizen After Three Weeks in Horrific Immigrant Detention Center.

The conditions included denial of medical care.

The deportation thugs released him after negative publicity, but there is no reason to think that they will make the conditions for the other prisoners any less nasty.

All insurance companies in Australia now refuse to insure any new coal projects. This may put an end to most of them, but really large companies might self-insure.

Now what about oil and gas?

A natural gas company in California set up an unnatural astroturf disinformation campaign to keep the methane leaking.

The term "balance" has a powerful irrational appeal. We've seen this in the copyright field for ages, and now in energy as well.

About Boris Johnson, the British bullshitter that is allied with the US bullshitter.

If we don't curb global heating, many tropical regions will experience deadly heat every year. Often this will follow storms that cut the electric supply to the air conditioning that would be necessary to save people's lives.

Mueller's testimony did not deal a political blow to the bullshitter, because he gave little if any new explanation.

I think the bullshitter deserves to be impeached and removed from office, for treating the US political system with contempt, as well as multiple crimes and acts of cruelty and dishonesty. But it is impossible to do that, and without that possibility, whether to impeach is simply a matter of political tactics.

How RT TV designs its disinformation to serve Russia's interest.

An opioids executive was convicted of bribing doctors to prescribe the opioid "subsys."

Extinction Rebellion: "Fashion Week Should Be a Declaration of Emergency."

It is bizarre to think that clothing makes a big contribution to global heating, but it is true: "fast fashion", the practice of wearing clothes just a little and discarding them, has turned clothing into something to consume rather than a durable good.

Sanders and Warren advocate right to repair for farm equipment.

Barcelona will try to prevent expansion of its airport.

Bravo! The world cannot sustain the increase of air travel.

The UK is trying — again — to corrupt charities that help homeless people by getting them to participate in a scheme to identify foreigners and deport them.

In doublespeak, this scheme is called "support" for homeless people.

India is shipping water by train from Kerala to Chennai. But since the lack of water is due to global heating, the shortfall will increase over time.

If Delhi runs out of water next year, I doubt that shipping water from Kerala will be a solution.

In the long term, IUDs can help prevent the need for water from increasing, and solar-powered desalinators can compensate (a little) for the decrease in supply. But farms need water, too. I fear India is headed for massive starvation.

Debunking Microsoft's anti-Right-to-Repair FUD.

Bravo for the article, but one quotation falls into a widespread confusion: that spread by the term "intellectual property".

and "If you hire a managed service provider to do your network security they could, instead,... steal your intellectual property."

In general, that statement is false. It could not steal your copyrights, or your patents, or your trademarks, or your plant variety monopolies, or your IC mask monopolies, or your publicity rights — those are legal privileges, so they can't be "stolen". I think the only things it could possibly steal that way are trade secrets.

Please don't ever say "intellectual property" if what you mean is "trade secrets" or if what you mean is "copyrights", or if what you mean is any other specific thing, because that is a big generalization. It is likely to convert a narrow true statement into a broad false one.

If you think that what you mean is all of them, then please study the issue more carefully — a statement so general is usually false, and probably most of them are not even relevant to the issue at hand.

If you want to quote a statement where someone else used the term "intellectual property", please check whether the statement was false due to this confusion. Any statement that used that term probably was confused.

To make Amazon pay its fair share of taxes, and Apple, Google, Facebook and others too, we need to see their tax returns. Let's change tax law to publish the tax returns of corporations.

We could extend this to every company that files a separate tax return, or to every company that isn't a sole proprietorship.

With that exception, it would respect personal privacy adequately,

Private use of face tracking is widespread and dangerous, but the proposed regulations only aim at use by public agencies. Not enough!

Government surveillance cameras watching the street are a great disguise for private surveillance cameras put up by nobody-knows-who.

Surveillance cameras — cameras transmitting video somewhere else — should be illegal except when authorized by a court for a specific place and period of time.

Pressuring Bahrain to cancel executions of people whose trials were thoroughly unfair.

Battle Against Tobacco Epidemic Is Far from Won.

The European Investment Bank will stop funding fossil duel projects.

This could make a real difference if other investors follow this example.

An interview with Manual Zelaya, who was president of Honduras until the coup that appears to have been approved by Hilary Clinton.

Contrasting codes of conduct and accusations with trying to be kind to other people.

California now has a law requiring bots to identify themselves as such when used for advertising or electioneering.

I think this is a good idea, but I wonder whether enforcing the law will prove difficult.

Brazil is a big exporter of frozen chicken, and 1/5 of it is infested with salmonella.

The EU should blacklist Brazil until its infestation rate gets down to the achievable level? I doubt it will do so, but why not? Is it only lack of moral commitment, or is there some legal obstacle?

I wonder if some business-supremacy treaties forbid this.

Can anyone suggest who to ask?

Plants exchange signals and respond to some stimuli. Don't leap to the conclusion that this means they can feel or think.

An independent expert group sponsored by the European Union has published a plan for promoting "trustworthy AI".

It does not seem to propose how to develop an AI to be trustworthy, how to determine whether a given AI program is infact trustworthy, or how any AI program can be trustworthy. As far as I know, these are totally unsolved problems, but the report takes for granted some solution is used.

The British navy captured an Iranian oil tanker said to be taking oil to Syria.

This was clearly an act of war, and justifies military action Iran's part.

The capture took place in disputed waters near Gibraltar, and Spain has objected to it.

I can't see what relevance EU sanctions have. If the are sanctions, they prohibit certain dealings between EU entities and Syria. I don't see how an Iranian ship would come under EU sanctions, unless it is owned by a European company.

Only a blockade would purport go that far, and a blockade, if there were one, would be an act of war in itself. (Remember when Egypt blockaded Elat? Israel responded to that, legitimately, by capturing the Sinai.)

I don't think the EU has announced a blockade of Syria. Indeed, it is unable to do such a thing; the whole field of war is outside the EU's scope.

So there is some bullshit here. I hope someone sorts out the facts.

China is taking thousands of Uighur children away from their parents and putting them into boarding schools designed to assimilate them.

This resembles what the US and Canada did to indigenous peoples during much of the 20th century. Public opinion made the US and Canada stop this, but in China public opinion is not allowed to exist.

Even fairly mild reproach of China for putting a million Uighurs in brainwash camps has discomfited China. Firm pressure might accomplish a great deal.

Perhaps Hong Kong should be the main target of the pressure, for now.

An explicitly plutocratist party is expected to win the elections in Greece.

I think Syriza's surrender discredited the idea of resistance. Perhaps Greeks have thrown in the towel, and are now telling themselves that surrender will get them some trickle-down. However, we've seen that that's bullshit. The plutocrats will be nice to you until you have swallowed the hook, but then they squeeze ever harder.

Getting a little more privileges in the labor camp, through assiduous obedience, will never get you freedom.

ACLU: beware dis-services that say, "We'll pay for your personal data" — that would only legitimize the basis of their power, not weaken it.

Shushana Zuboff's take on why "owning the data about you" would be ineffective as protection from surveillance capitalism.

Canada required social media companies to keep information on who paid for each ad political. Google responded by not running any political ads.

The author seems to think that Google somehow defeated Canada. I say it's just the opposite: Canada achieved a bigger success than it aimed for!

This suggests it may be possible for one country to succeed in defeating a system that spreads fake news, if it can identify the crucial nexus at which to operate. Different networks function differently.

Shell's Sleazy Censorship: arranging a joint event with climate defenders, then cancelling the participation of the researcher who was going to show how Shell is still working to hamper climate defense.

Less well-off areas have least to lose from restricting diesel fuel, and most to gain from clean-air zones, study finds.

The University of New South Wales has told teachers not to talk about the fact that the Australian aboriginals reached and colonized Australia around 40,000 years ago. Science is to be suppressed so as to respect their nonscientific traditional views.

I think that lying to children is likely to backfire on them. I resent when parents demand I support their lies about Santa Claus, because I think I'd be doing wrong.

Lying to adults about their group's origin could be even worse.

OPEC acknowledged that climate defense campaigns including the school strike for climate threaten fossil fuel extraction industry's future profits.

Greta Thunberg called this "our biggest compliment yet".

OPEC calls criticism "unscientific", but that can only mean that the likely fragments of the coming disaster have not been specifically proved. It would be irrational to wait for such detailed proof before protecting ourselves.

Striking students can influence officials even in right-wing parts of the US. They can mobilize their parents, too.

A study covers 1300 lawsuits against governments and businesses over damage caused by global heating.

Situations of high stress cause fetuses to miscarry. The effect is stronger for male fetuses.

I wonder whether in Alabama anyone that imposes stress on a pregnant woman who subsequently has a miscarriage could be prosecuted for homicide.

US farmers are growing a lot of food but making little money. At the same time, they are exhausting and losing the soil and spreading toxins. Here are ideas for how to fix both.

Another cause of the failure of farms is being compelled to sell to a few large middleman companies. Many farms have gone broke recently. The pressure means farmers cannot invest in regenerative agriculture.

Sanders proposes how to restructure agriculture in the US for the sake of farmers.

A UN human rights report says that Venezuela's suppression forces have killed almost 7000 people since Jan 2018 for "resisting arrest". This is the government's own figure, so it is clear they were all killed in raids, but it is inconceivable that they all died in that way.

More information about torture discovered by the UN visit.

Brazil has thoroughly condemned corrupt judge Sergio Moro.

In the past, this sort of exposure would compel an official to resign. Nowadays, corrupt officials have discovered that trying to tough it out may succeed. What will it take to kick Moro out of office?

US Judge Shira Scheindlin pronounces on racist stop-and-frisk in Israel based on her decisions about racist stop-and-frisk in New York City.

Israeli right-wing extremists, from Netanyahu on down, have decided to deny the fact that Palestine is under Israeli military occupation.

When anyone points out this fact, they call it "anti-semitism". They do so, while maintaining an alliance with real anti-semites in the US.

"Influencers" try to extort gratis food from restaurants, even ice cream trucks.

The best way to deal with them is to stay away from Instagram. It's a branch of Facebook and participating in it is for zuckers.

House Democrats put an amendment into a military bill that would strictly forbid fighting with Iran, other than defending against attacks.

If your school provides you with an iBad, it's not merely imposing user-subjugating software and online dis-services. It may also be tracking your movements in the school.

Tree planting could be a big part of preventing climate disaster.

However, I have to raise two questions:

One of Libya's governments imprisoned migrants next to a military base. Haftar's army attacked the base and bombed the prison too. This caused over 100 casualties.

An Italian judge rebuked Salvini and releasing Captain Rackete from arrest. It is not clear whether any of the charges have been dropped.

A hundred or so protesters took over the building of the Hong Kong legislature, after bashing down its door. Then they destroyed computers and other facilities.

That legislature is elected through a biased system; it is not democratic. It does not deserve much respect; I won't say that damaging its property is inherently wrong, But this violent action, and the subsequent vandalism, play into China's hands.

New York State has authorized the head of a congressional committee to demand anyone's New York state tax returns. That congresscritter should now demand the conman's tax returns.

This won't have immediate results — I suppose the conman will sue, hoping to get the Supreme Court to overturn that law.

USDA Indefinitely Suspends Honey Bee Tracking Survey as [eleven] States Get [special emergency] Approval to Use Bee-Killing Pesticide.

I wish this were satire.

Many "biodegradable" and even "compostable" plastics remain inert and undamaged in home composting, or in the ocean.

The UK ambassador to the US has been sending his government an honest appraisal of the conman.

If ministers continue fawning on the conman, it's not due to ignorance.

Business-supremacy treaties are a big screw. If the UK pulls out of one (the EU), another one (the WTO) will clobber it.

Right-wing policies make people homeless, and right-wing politicians make an excuse not to care: they regard the homeless people as a disgusting nuisance, to dehumanize them.

The Green New Deal can do more than avoid disaster. It can be an opportunity to make the world better in other ways.

The UK makes it easy to set up a company with phony information about the owners. It doesn't even bother to check whatever information it is given.

1/3 of gamers reportedly refuse to pay for anything in games simply because of the risk of fraud.

However, there is a deeper reason to refuse to pay for anything in a game: because that enables the game company to track you. And the deepest reason is that the game is a proprietary program.

Playing against someone who buys better skill or better equipment is equivalent to playing against someone who cheats.

Let's Be Honest about Britain's Obsession with "anti-Semitism".

We [Americans] Have the Money to Fix Our Food System.

The Chicago Medical Center is being sued for giving patient data to Google, in a form that can be reidentified easily.

I think that clinics and schools should be required to keep their personal data on their own computers, located in their own facilities, not in servers run by companies that operate them in a cloudy way. A contract in which the company says how it can use the data is not enough to trust that it will remain private.

Norway focused its prison system on rehabilitation, and recidivism declined from 60-70% to 20-25%.

Rehabilitation costs more per prisoner but results in having much fewer prisons.

I suspect that lowering recidivism that much depends on having a society that offers ex-cons a way to get by, other than through crime. My impression is that in the US it is so hard to get a job with an income you can live on, if you have a criminal record, that many ex-cons that want to go straight are unable to make a go of it. If the goal is to reduce the harm done by crime, this is self-defeating.

But then, the US also puts a terrible burden on poor people, and on various disprivileged demographics, even if they don't have a criminal record. It is a general pattern of dehumanization, rather than a constructive attempt to address a problem.

For years I've recommended that the way to defeat extortion through nude photos is by posting the nude photos. Now the idea is catching on.

If defeating extortion nudes (and revenge porn, which differs by its motive) were the only benefit, perhaps it would not be crucial. However, it will also help decrease the general nudity taboo, and that is very important.

Please don't refer to the people who carry out extortion via nudes as &mdath;hackers—. There is no reason to think that they are hackers; in any case, routine extortion is not hacking.

A Starbucks worker asked a few thugs (who were there as customers) to move because someone felt threatened by them. Starbucks apologized.

If the representative of the thug association really can't imagine why some customers felt threatened, he is mentally deficient, but I think it more likely he is covering up that side of the truth. I know, from reading the news and talking with acquaintances, why blacks may feel endangered by the presence of thugs. Other people, with less grounds, may feel endangered by the presence of blacks.

A store should not ask customers to leave, or to move, because "someone feels threatened by you" — not blacks, and not thugs — because people should not be judged based on how someone else feels about them.

FAQ for evidence-based defense of letting children play freely.

Persistent Tory cuts to the National Health Service has pushed some doctors to refuse overtime.

Under new pension rules, they will have to pay to work overtime.

Meanwhile, non-medical staff are going on strike against privatization.

I think it is the Tories' intention to destroy the NHS by cutting its funds to the point it cannot possibly function. Then they will claim, as right-wingers like to do, that government programs can't work right.

Korea's made-from-zero "smart city" replicates The Village, complete with audio announcements that people can't shut off.

I mear The Village from the TV show, The Prisoner.

A survey of sales sites, checking for use of dark patterns, found them in 1200 out of the 10000 sites tested.

I think these practices should be regulated, just like other practices of retail stores.

I think that my decision not to buy anything on line has saved me more practical annoyance than it has caused me.

That is in addition to protecting my freedom.

The Veterans Administration has its own thug department, and these thugs occasionally turn on veterans seeking medical care — causing grave injuries and even death.

Naturally these thugs lie to protect each other. The article recounts that one of them tried to act like a police officer rather than a thug and was attacked by the thugs.

The VA officials protect them, too.

Israel has forced Gaza into a pollution crisis which is now spreading to Israel.

Israel is systematically seizing and hiding public archives to eliminate evidence of threatening Palestinians in 1948 to make them flee.

Here's more about the important vanished document about atrocities against Palestinians.

There is now a campaign to prohibit government use of automated face recognition in the US.

This would be an important step forward, but not enough to protect human rights. We need to prohibit systematic use of automated face recognition by business, also.

New options for disposal of corpses are less polluting than cremation and ordinary burial.

Attenborough: climate defense measures "cannot be radical enough".

I think he meant "cannot be too radical".

Amnesty International denounced the Taliban's "chilling disregard for human life."

The US makes some effort to avoid killing Afghan civilians, but it does not consistently try hard.

And when it does kill civilians, it tends to try to cover that up.

Boris Johnson, whose contempt for truth matches that of his US buddy, looks to be the next prime minister of the UK. By refusing to defend Ambassador Darroch for commenting honestly and privately on that buddy, he effectively forced Darroch to resign.

Darroch's resignation may have been necessary anyway. An ambassador that is detested by the head of the receiving state cannot be very effective. However, Johnson has demonstrated he wants to be prime minister of a puppet government.

If there have to be school uniforms, at least the rules should not be gender-biased.

I never wore a school uniform. Public schools in New York in the 1950s did not have uniforms, nor did the private secondary schools I went to. Some schools had them; but in the 70s, counterculture youth rebelled against uniforms and more or less did away with them. I was repulsed when I heard, a decade ago, that the practice was spreading in the US.

France's medical system will stop covering homeopathic "treatment".

It is no more than a placebo, based only on irrational pseudoscience.

The EU has a goofy idea: promoting competition in the field of surveillance capitalism by requiring big companies to make their data bases available to other companies.

If done right, this could reduce the special political influence of the biggest companies. But it will do privacy no good at all.

As India dries out, one of the bad consequences could be war between India and China.

Congress's ethics rules allow lots of conflict of interest.

A congresscritter can even trade stock in companies knowing that per actions as congresscritter will drive the stock price up or down.

Congress is considering a law to censor the press to protect the CIA — including its torturers.

(satire) ICE Sends Agents Home With Sacks Of Flour To Practice What It Like Detaining Real Baby.

Some parks play a constant high-pitched sound intended to drive away people under 25 years of age.

They should play classical music instead.

As extreme weather events become common, being hit by two at once is no longer ridiculously unlikely.

Bill McKibben: The Climate Movement: What's Next?

Burning some of the methane produced by pigs in factory farms is being offered as an excuse to make more factory farms.

Sanders has proudly published a list of billionaires who call him an enemy.

If you don't earn their hatred, you're not worth voting for.

The US government lobbies internationally for increasing pharma companies' power to use patents to overcharge.

It has been doing this for decades.

I must criticize, however, the basic confusion spread by use of the term "intellectual property", which misrepresents the facts about various disparate laws by leading people to think of them as one single thing.

Patent law is different from copyright law on nearly every point. Neither of them has any similarity to trade secrecy, and they have hardly any relationship with trademark law. If you have a category of "intellectual property" in your thinking, it will always mislead you.

Please join me in shunning that term. See https://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.

As for the World Trade Organization, it is a business-supremacy treaty, designed to give business more power over society.

We must either change it so it ceases to have that effect, or get rid of it entirely.

[The bullshitter] Praises Boris Johnson, Who Once Called Him "Unfit to Hold the Office of President of the United States."

The bullshitter looks for submission, not for sincerity. He does not care what Johnson said 4 years ago, as long as Johnson obeys today. Likewise, praise from the bullshitter means, simply, "You're obeying now; keep it up and I will keep praising you."

By the end of this century, if we don't curb global heating, humans won't be able to work safely outside in the southern US for half the year.

I wonder if people will still be able to do agriculture in tropical regions.

The Poor People's Campaign endorses challenging the lobbying power of the military-industrial-oligopoly complex.

The company behind a big planned coal mine in Australia demanded to know the names of the scientists participating in environmental evaluation.

This was, we must suppose, for the sake of trying to intimidate them or gag them.

The bully has started training his followers in undisguised racism.

No matter how "modestly" an Indonesian woman dresses, she can still be raped at home.

I can't begin to understand why men want to demand sex with someone who isn't thrilled by it.

Francisco Santiago Jr. is one of the few victims of the Do-dirty's murder campaigns who by luck survived his arrest and torture, and was not shot.

His case shows that thugs pick people more or less arbitrarily, shoot them while they are prisoners, then decide what to accuse them of. In the US. thugs typically do this to black males, but but the Philippines thugs are not bigots -- any Filipino can be the victim.

"Charitable" donations from the rich are not really donations: they are attempts to buy public admiration. And often they get enough by just announcing the donation — they see no need to actually give the money.

Sudan's protesters and military have signed an agreement about governing the country.

The bully has done a devastating blow to Planned Parenthood. It will not be able to accept federal funding for any services unless it complies with requirements that would be a surrender of its mission.

US students will be pressured to rent textbooks on subscription, which require proprietary malware with DRM to read them.

(satire) Trump Claims He Tried To Warn Public About Epstein By Praising Him As A Terrific Guy.

(satire) Amazon Workers Attempting Walkout Enter 7th Hour Wandering In Ever-Expanding, Labyrinth Warehouse.

Ecuador has surrendered to the IMF, and the non-rich will suffer greatly as a result.

Whole Foods Workers Say Conditions Deteriorated after Amazon Takeover.

For instance, they have been told to pressure customers to make deals with Amazon. This would subject them to Amazon's many abusive practices.

Biden's health plan is estimated to fall short of Medicare for All by 125,000 avoidable deaths.

Sanders Accuses Biden of Parroting Pharma and Insurance Industry Script With Attacks on Medicare for All.

We should give domestic workers the same rights that other employees have.

Israel requires students traveling on school-sponsored foreign trips to pass a class in exaggerated political propaganda which insults Palestinians. Even Arab students are required to learn how to give these answers.

Israel is blocking foreign academics from working at (or visiting) Palestinian universities.

By contrast, the Palestinian boycott asks people not to work at Israeli universities, and does not try to stop any individual from doing anything.

McDonalds exploits public school teachers to market junk food to their students.

In Nepal, babies under 2 years old are eating junk food, and it leads to malnutrition which stunts their growth.

A direct neural interface for controlling a computer could be a very good thing, provided that you the user are the only one who controls the interface.

In order for that to be reliably true, the software must be free.

I think testing this on animals is legitimate. It can't be developed without testing, and testing on animals is better than testing on humans.

The head of the border patrol was a member of the private Facebook group for venting hatred at immigrants. Then she told us she found it abhorrent.

One thing that the US does to some immigrants is demand passwords to their Facebook accounts. This is supposedly done for our "safety". Perhaps the people this should be done to are officials.

"Multilevel marketing" is not identical to a pyramid scheme, but in practice it often works out that way. This article shows how they lure people with promises of profits that few participants get. Many lose a lot of money instead.

(satire) "It's Not So Bad," Mike Pence Reports On Conditions Of Detainment Center While Hazmat Suit Disinfected.

Reevaluating Apple's reputation for good design: design for nonrepairability is not good design.

Journalists obtained 1000 leaked audio recordings and showed some of them to the people who were speaking.

150 of the recordings were made when the device was not supposed to be recording.

If you're in a place with Google a listening device (or Apple, or Amazon), disconnect it! Note that every portable phone is a potential listening device.

Finally, wildlife defenders recognize the crucial need to limit the human population, in order to leave some land wild.

Investment by plutocracy also plays a role in eliminating wilderness, but the two work hand in hand (in deforestation in Brazil, for instance), so reducing births will help.

Israeli right-wing extremists set upon anti-occupation activist Jonathan Pollak on the street and beat him up, then stabbed him.

As for the charges made by the right-wing extremists, they are the friends and allies of US right-wing extremists. I do not believe their accusations.

As Putin imprisons historians that study Stalin's terror, Stalin receives public praise promoted by the state.

Jeffrey Epstein intimidated the whole US press into silence about his rape career, starting in 2003.

New Zealand is buying the now-illegal semiautomatic rifles that people already own.

Any thug in parts of the US can immediately get a large dossier about most Americans from just a name or other identifier.

What bothers me is not that they can get it quickly, but that so much information has been collected about millions of people who are not suspects and about which no search has been authorized.

If we don't ban commercial use of face recognition to track people, this commercial data base will be extended to include people's movements as recorded by billions of surveillance cameras spread across US cities and roads.

How to relieve the worries some parents have about vaccination.

A bigger and deeper question: how can we fix the systems that make it so easy to stir up conspiracy theories about anything whatsoever, especially if it relates to children, or adolescents being called "children"?

People with damaged immune systems can die from measles even if they were vaccinated against it. They depend on the rest of society to get vaccinated.

There is now a whistleblower site for tech company staff to report their employer's egregious attacks on human rights.

Unfortunately this will do nothing to push back on those kinds of attacks on human rights that have become standard practice -- for instance, proprietary malware and internet dis-services that spy, manipulate, restrict, swindle and addict people.

Disabled people in the UK are now crippled — by the stinginess of Tories.

Planting trees in a pasture can make it stay usable through 9 months without rain, and produce other crops too.

Microsoft Office 365: Banned in [some] German Schools over Privacy Fears.

It is a bit silly that the legal objection is limited to sending data to servers in the US. Snooping software should be eliminated, inside and outside of schools, no matter who it spies on people for.

Thugs crashed their vehicle into that of a passerby, then pulled him out and handcuffed him.

It is vitally important to punish thugs for everything they do wrong in nonfatal attacks like this. We can't convert thugs into police officers by punishing them only on the rare occasions when they murder someone, not even if the punishment is severe. Most of them will never murder someone, and never know another thug who murdered someone, so they will not feel any pressure to change their ways. To achieve that, we must punish the many small incidents.

(satire) Trump Honors Brave Heroes Who Slept With Wives Of Deployed Soldiers.

The UK held an inquiry into the killing of Anthony Grainger (shot dead by a thug) and determined that systemic flaws in the thug department were to blame.

Resourceful grandchildren figured out how to max out their grandfather's credit card buying special players for a predatory fantasy soccer game. The random element of loot boxes strengthens their activeness,

but the fact that players must keep spending in order to win is enough reason to classify it as predatory. Any game of competitive spending makes each player pressure the other players to spend more.

The fact that the game is proprietary software is enough reason to refuse to run it, and not to get a copy of it for yourself or anyone else. The only good reason to have such a game is to study it for free software development.

The ACLU warns of a legislative campaign to legitimize selling people's medical records by giving the patient a cut of the revenue.

That money won't come anywhere near compensating for the advantage that companies will take of you given that knowledge about you.

Japan's music licensing gang is demanding royalties from music schools, calling music lessons "public performance".

Extinction Rebellion protesters glued themselves to doors in the US capitol building, blocking legislators from getting to the chamber to vote.

The person who decided perse "can't bring a child into this world" has understood the situation thoroughly. But I wonder what "I broke down my car" means. "I disassembled it"? That is the proper grammatical interpretation but seems implausible. If the article garbled the words a little, it could mean "I caused it to malfunction" or "I started crying at the wheel".

More information.

The US government is going to try again to ban secure communication for users.

They think they can get Americans so frightened of the terrorists (who do exist, but are not a big danger as dangers go) that we will surrender our privacy to a state which can be far more dangerous.

Amazon servers save transcripts of some Alexa conversations indefinitely.

It would be absurd to delete a reminder before reminding you, but a privacy-respecting reminder system would keep that reminder only on your own computers, so it would protect your privacy both before and after.

You probably want to save a record of your purchases, but a privacy-respecting system would keep that record private by keeping it only on your own computers. With a proper anonymous payment system, such as GNU Taler, no one but you would ever know who made the purchase.

How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt (and then back into jail).

Pfizer's new experiment with regulatory capture: putting the former Saboteur of the FDA on its board.

Why Peace and Climate Justice Are the Same Project.

Cory Booker supports war with Iran.

Stiglitz: "Only a fool would trust Facebook with his or her financial well being. But maybe that’s the point: with so much personal data on some 2.4bn monthly active users, who knows better than Facebook just how many suckers are born every minute?"

The border thugs are supposed to transfer prisoners to immigration agencies within 72 hours, but the bully's orders have made this difficult to do — so prisoners accumulate in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.

Australia has mismanaged a major regional river system to the point where fish regularly die in large numbers.

The cause, of course, is putting the short-term demands of profit over the long-term needs. This is what leads to dangerous mining, deforestation, and fertilizer runoff that harms the Great Barrier Reef.

Senator Warren proposes measures to steer the US away from risk of another financial crisis — notably to limit leveraged loans to businesses, as well as to help poor people reduce their debt.

An advance in how a snoopphone (if you carry one) can read sensors on or in your body.

It may be that this method would actually protect you from those sensors as long as you don't carry a snoopphone. What is not clear is how far away from other people's snoopphones you would need to stay.

A shopping mall that serves as a testbed for "smart" city technology doesn't collect personal data except through an app.

If a real "smart" city does that, it might be acceptable — unless it puts pressure on everyone to use the app so as to get convenience.

UK Hosts Press Freedom Summit While Fighting for Right to Spy on Media.

If the UK wins that case, the outcome will affect all of Europe.

Cubans trying to move to the US now get treated like people from other countries in Latin America.

This despite the fact that at home they face the effects of US sanctions.

(satire) … the average American must have [per] life destroyed by a natural [sic] disaster every six minutes in order to finally fear climate change.

Meanwhile, back in reality, New York City got two within two days.

Iowa, North Dakota and Maryland Lead the Way on Curbing the Revolving Door Between Government and Industry.

More about the danger of the bully's "expedited deportations" plan.

Border thugs could deport US citizens fast, rather than giving them time to establish their citizenship.

When men with sticks attacked people in Hong Kong's remote Yuen Long train station, the victims were not protesters, just passersby.

Why they attacked people there is not clear, unless China just wanted to make people in Hong Kong afraid.

The Tories are so determined to kick out European citizens that they have planned to keep the data on which they base the decisions secret.

In other words, they are planning to make lots of mistakes and don't want them to be corrected.

A Palestinian medic, Muhammad al-Judaili, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper, and he eventually died from this.

Rubber-coated bullets are said to be "non-lethal", but we know and snipers know that they can kill if they hit someone's head. Snipers don't hit someone's head by accident.

Israeli soldiers demolished 16 Palestinian apartment buildings on the pretext that they were too close to the annexation wall.

There must be hundreds of apartments buildings that the wall was built close to. Now they may all be demolished.

The Guardian censored its regular cartoonist for satirizing the crusade to cleanse the Labour Party of what is accused of being anti-semitism.

As fungi adapt to living outside in temperatures close to human body temperature, some of them may become able to colonize the human body.

This may be the reason that a new fungal disease with no known treatment is spreading on several continents.

A woman in a car crash is more likely to be injured than a man in a similar crash. Could that be because crash test dummies have mainly been designed to simulate men?

LinkedIn has staged a surveillance coup against libraries through an education service set up specifically for libraries.

For instance, it demands that users make individual LinkedIn accounts so that it can profile them.

That page represents libraries' pushback; some have dropped the service and others surely will if LinkedIn does not retreat.

I have no other details about that service, but simply based on knowing the usual practices I expect it is a disservice in other ways.

Moe about Senator Warren's plans to stop abuse by "private equity" takeovers.

(satire) the solar system’s real estate agents have begun trying to attract home buyers to the neglected, run-down planet of Earth by renaming it "West Saturn."

Big climate defense rallies are planned world-wide for Sep 20-27.

Suggestions for what progressive trade policy should look like: putting human beings and nature first.

What it says about "intellectual property" tries to go in the right direction, but it is flawed by taking the bogus concept of "intellectual property" as a basis.

After the FTC's slap on Facebook's wrist, we can expect it to abuse personal data over and over.

However, even a bigger fine could at best have limited how Facebook abuses personal data. The real problem is that Facebook collects personal data.

So don't be a zucker — don't give Facebook any data. And use a browser such as IceCat that blocks Like buttons, so Facebook can't get data about you in any other way.

Puerto Rico's governor has finally agreed to resign, after many protests including 1/3 of the island's population, plus plans to impeach him.

The sad thing about Puerto Rico is that the US has saddled it with so much debt, and imposed so much privatization, that good politicians wouldn't have much chance to do a good job.

"I'm a scientist. Under [the saboteur] I lost my job for refusing to hide climate crisis facts."

Use of AI techniques whose functioning nobody understands puts society in a state of "intellectual debt". That is not necessarily bad, but it can easily lead to bad consequences when competition and conflict get into the matter.

By contrast, the fact that we did not understand how aspirin reduced headaches did offer anyone an opportunity to cause mysterious headaches that aspirin would make worse.

Megadroughts Are Likely Coming to the U.S. Southwest Within Decades, Scientists Say.

Long droughts wiped out the small cities that existed in parts of the southwest. The big cities that need a lot more water would have more trouble surviving. Unless perhaps solar-powered condensers can save the day.

Violent porn has made the idea of strangling a woman and calling it "sex" appear normal, so women go along with it. If that's not disgusting enough, men that murder their lovers or wives can now pretend that "it was just a sex game".

A school in Texas says that it will require all students in extracurricular activities to submit to random drug tests.

I hope many students will refuse.

Bolsonaro has succeeded at accelerated destruction of the Amazon forest.

Scientists warn that this may kill the trees that remain.

UK public schools require specific uniforms, which can be so expensive that poor families cut back on food. Or else find another school which isn't trying to keep poor people out.

This is one of the symptoms of the policy of making schools compete to avoid being forcibly privatized as "academies".

I consider the very idea of requiring a uniform outrageous.

The US Needs a Marshall Plan for Central America.

(Instead of the current martial plan that drives people to flee.)

(satire) … Phoenix law enforcement officials confirmed Tuesday local man Rod Cleighborn had been hired as a cop for posting a racist rant on social media.

It's a custom in the Netherlands to drop a group of children in the woods and challenge them to find their way back to civilization.

They succeed, and in the process learn self-confidence.

"Stijn is 11," she said. "The time window in which we can teach him is closing. He is going into adolescence, and then he will make decisions for himself."

Pelosi made a deal with the Republicans that will backfire against any progressive president in 2021.

Sanders will have to cut harmful spending, such as nuclear weapons development and secret foreign wars, if he can't get a debt increase or a tax increase through the Senate.

Increasing industrial agriculture is not the way to feed more poor people.

In the US, it doesn't seriously try.

Growing corn or soybeans to make fuel is especially foolish since it uses petroleum-based fertilizer. When that's subsidized, it is a handout for agribusiness. Biofuel is efficient only when it's made from byproducts of growing something else that's worth growing in its own right.

US citizens: call on the Senate to vote to support research into the sociology of gun violence.

Confirmation bias, group think and pressure to find the perpetrator quickly are major factors in convicting innocent people.

"Smart" diapers spy on the baby and maybe the rest of the family.

If the manufacturers wanted to, they could make this info available directly and solely to the parents.

Today's global heating, affecting the whole globe, has no parallel in historical temperature changes.

US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management not to allow oil drilling in Chaco Canyon.

If you sign, please spread the word!

In the UK it is a crime to do something in public that people in the vicinity find "disgusting".

I too would find it disgusting, but so what?

The bully has a new plan to take food stamps away from some poor Americans.

The UK is so desperate to build new nuclear power plants that it will pay in advance from the treasury.

This is a decision of the same Tory government that has pretty much put an end to land-based wind power and cut subsidies for solar power.

There is a report that the reason is a disguised subsidy for the UK's planned new nuclear missile submarines.

Economists studied the effects of increasing the minimum wage in many low-wage US counties and found no sign that this causes loss of work.

The world's planned natural gas projects won't fit in the carbon budget.

Indeed, the world cannot afford any new fossil fuel infrastructure, because once new infrastructure is built there will be tremendous pressure to use it and roast Earth's ecosphere.

The idea of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" is an excuse, which appeared plausible only because we did not know the amount of methane leaks.

ACLU: Bogus “Aggression Detectors” Are Audio-Recording People In Public.

If we had proper laws, anyone trying to sell a system for aggression detection would be required to make it send nothing except reports about aggressions — not recordings of ordinary conversations.

The audio recordings on buses in San Francisco (and maybe elsewhere) should be illegal too.

Congress and the bully have passed a law to stop the IRS from seizing people's money without a trial on mere suspicion that they were evading the requirement to report depositing more than $10,000 by depositing smaller amounts.

Yes, it was as absurd as it looks.

US citizens: call on Congress to pass the BOOST Act, which would give a sum of money to each poor person or family in the US.

If you sign, please spread the word!

San Francisco will cover up murals that were painted to show how some of the US founding fathers participated in owning slaves and in conquest of indigenous peoples.

People who can't bear to see a depiction of an injustice are useless for fighting it. Schools should lead people to face moral issues, not cower helplessly from them.

Author Richard Zimler reports that some of his talks in Britain have been cancelled because the hosts fear protests or violence because he is Jewish. They seem to fear they will meet with protests if they invite a Jew to speak.

I am not convinced that his friends are correct in blaming Palestinian activists for this. That claim is not based on direct evidence.

When Australia brings its refugees from Nauru or Manus because it can no longer deny they need medical treatment, it guards them like dangerous criminals.

They are not allowed to see their families.

Australia even exposes them to bedbugs, which it could easily avoid.

Why do thugs often gratuitously shoot and threaten blacks? It seems that some thugs literally think of blacks as subhuman.

Solar Foods makes a protein supplement from electricity, water and air.

Extinction Rebellion blocked a bridge in Paris to call attention to the implications of the hottest day ever recorded there.

'The Damage Has Been Done': Despite Court Ruling, Experts Say Trump Succeeded in Making Immigrant Communities Fearful of Census.

10% of the workers in Britain have been captured by the piecework sweatshop dis-services.

We must extend all the rights and benefits of employees to cover these forms of work.

Thousands of Americans — perhaps hundreds of thousands — have been killed because judges sealed evidence of deadly defects in products and kept the defects secret for years as more people died. The dangerous flaws of OxyContin, which spread opioid addiction, were concealed for 12 years.

Trade secrecy is always bad for the public. Occasionally it is deadly, but usually merely harmful. We should change the law so that no significant problem can be concealed in this way.

Businesses should not be allowed to enforce an NDA to conceal mistreatment of workers, customers, or the public.

Agreeing to nondisclosure of generally useful technical information, such as software, is betrayal of society as a whole. I refuse on principle to do this.

A woman in Alabama has been charged with manslaughter for getting shot while pregnant. The state treats the fetus as a person.

More information.

This is the natural conclusion of the twisted premises of those who treat fetuses as sacred.

But the problem may be broader than that. Suppose she had been shot while carrying a three-year-old child in her arms? Suppose someone else had shot at her and killed the child.

I don't think people should be prosecuted for the effects of being shot at.

The conman's appointees on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission want to inspect nuclear power plants less often.

The owners won't need to fix problems if they can avoid finding out about them. The only way we will know about them is if they lead to an accident.

A nuclear power plan accident typically results from a combination of factors, each one of which might have seemed not to be a big deal by itself. Just the sort of the things that the owners would suggest could be ignored.

An appeals court decided it had no authority over whether the conman could effectively eliminate federal workers right to operate a union.

I wonder how many of the judges involved were appointed recently by Republicans.

Twitter will give "prominent politicians" an exception from its rules against posting hatred.

I think this is a combination of circumstances in which there is simply no choice that Twitter can make which isn't bad.

Americans are ready to stop trying to dominate the world. Most Democratic politicians have yet to catch up.

China pressured the British state to arrest an exiled Chinese dissident preemptively for Xi's visit in 2015.

The bullshitter is making progress with North Korea — progress towards a deal that would accept its possession of nuclear weapons.

This is the only possible avenue towards any sort of deal, since Dictator Kim will not give up those nuclear weapons. Thus, in a way this is a wise policy. But the bullshitter can't acknowledge it, as it would highlight the absurdity of his policy towards Iran.

A two-part interview with British whistleblower Katharine Gun, who revealed how the UK was helping Dubya try to bully UN security council members into approving his attack on Iraq.