| Time |
Event |
| 1:33a |
Supreme court ethics, US
*When Alito and most of his colleagues were trying to secure their
confirmations to the high court,
they promised the Senate Judiciary
Committee
they would adhere to ethics laws from Congress that regulate justices’
acceptance and disclosure of gifts, limit their outside employment
income, and mandate recusal in some circumstances.*
Now Alito claims the Senate has no right to set ethics requirements for the Supreme Court. |
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| 1:33a |
Deleting journalistic works en mass
*CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles
to Game Google Search.*
This is an atrocity to records of the past. It is bad for secondary reasons
too, as the article says, but the harm to society is the principal issue.
I hope these pages are all saved in archive.org.
Google ought to provide instructions for new sites about how how they
can obtain, in some other way that deletes nothing, whatever SEO
benefit (albeit small) they might have obtained by deleting anything.
|
| 1:33a |
World's most brutal system, AFG
*Gordon Brown [ex-PM of UK] calls for Taliban to face crimes against
humanity charges; urges UK and allies
to impose sanctions
on Afghan
regime over its "brutalisation" of women and girls.*
That policy is a massive denial of human rights. But those responses
are less effective than one might hope for — especially on
Afghanistan. It is not clear to me that they would do any good.
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| 1:33a |
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| 10:03a |
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| 10:03a |
Tintin series of graphic novels
The famous Tintin series of graphic novels from Belgium included
adventures in the Belgian Congo, and they depicted realities of
colonization. There have been demands to censor the books over that.
When it comes to judging Belgian colonialism, we need not bother
thinking of Tintin. The realities of the Congo were oppression from
beginning to end. Initially, the Congo was King Leopold's personal
possession, and he treated the inhabitants so cruelly that even the
main European colonial powers (exploiters themselves) were ashamed of
it. That took some doing.
We can't change the past, but that part of the past calls for vigorous
condemnation.
The question here, though, is whether to attack the fictional Tintin
books today as a stand-in for the real exploitation of real people in
the past.
The passages criticized in the article clearly depict aspects of the
colonial system. Whether they were specifically vicious, or merely
illustrated aspects of a system which was vicious overall, depends on
the specific context, which the article does not go into.
Be that as it may, to try to "sanitize" Tintin by falsifying the parts
that refer in passing to the colonial system would be pointless
damage, that would not do any good against present and future
injustice, let alone past injustice.
What could do good is to add an appendix to point out the glimpses of
the colonial system in the story, and give the start of an overall
picture of the oppression that those glimpses showed parts of. Today's
readers could learn something important from that. |
| 10:03a |
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| 10:03a |
San Francisco approved driverless taxis
San Francisco approved driverless taxis for commercial service,
ignoring objections that they drive over fire hoses and cut crime scene
lines,
and also delay various sorts of emergency vehicles.
They also do lots of surveillance. And since you can't hail one
on the street, or get it with an ordinary phone call, they
surely imitate Guber's injustice
by identifying the customer and making per run nonfree software. |
| 10:03a |
HCA hospitals pushing patients to hospice
*Doctors and patient families say HCA hospitals push [patients into
hospice].*
Staff are sent to convince patients, and those making choices for
patients, that treatment is futile and they should give up on aiming
for survival. |
| 10:03a |
Businesses choosing health care
Most US doctors are now employees of businesses, in many cases
very large private-equity exploitationist businesses. And these
businesses decide whether a patient gets to see a doctor at all.
The article's main topic is that some of the MD employees are
responding to this by unionizing. I applaud that — but that won't
necessarily help the patients.
It may not help the doctors at the deep level, because
the corporate power that stops doctors form treating patients
properly is unbearable to many of them.
They quit, or they become mentally ill, and some commit suicide.
We need to restore management by people committed to medicine rather
than profit, and likewise break up the large chains. But how?
One way is to establish a national medical system that will cut the
profit out and thus provide medical treatment to everyone. |
| 10:03a |
Marine heat wave spreading
The marine heat wave in Florida has spread around the Caribbean, and
so has massive coral bleaching. Some of the corals are dying
immediately.
With 1/4 of marine species depending on coral, we are seeing a mass
extinction actually happen. This heat wave is not killing all the
world's coral, but there are surely species of animals, dependent on
coral and endemic to the Caribbean, that are becoming extinct now. |
| 10:03a |
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| 10:03a |
Concealed gun licenses and homicides
*Concealed gun licenses and homicides rise in tandem.*
In other words, the evidence says that more people with concealed guns
does not prevent or discourage killings with guns. |