| Time |
Event |
| 12:28a |
Climate crisis income study
*Climate crisis: average world incomes to drop by
nearly a fifth by 2050.
Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2°C, study finds.*
|
| 12:28a |
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| 12:28a |
Settlement-building
*Israel has sped up settlement-building in East Jerusalem
since
Gaza war began.*
|
| 12:58a |
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| 12:58a |
British politics
*Britain’s latest descent into authoritarianism fits a depressingly familiar pattern. This is
how it tends to work: a subversive group is identified by political elites and presented as a
danger to the nation, often being additionally labelled as allies or dupes of hostile foreign
enemies. An air of national emergency is contrived, with exaggerated, distorted, or simply
invented evidence used to justify claims of an imminent threat. The ensuing repressive measures
are supposedly to defend the security of both
individual
citizens and the nation alike.*
This year's target is "supporters of Palestine", a term that covers a wide range of views.
|
| 12:58a |
Oil sanctions
*US reimposes sanctions on Venezuela as hope for
democracy
crumbles.*
Maduro and his lieutenants deserve sanctions, but US trade sanctions
tend to fall on the people who are victims, not culprits.
|
| 12:58a |
Undercover officer
St Louis thugs went on a rampage at a protest, attacking based on no grounds. Oops!
They
attacked an undercover thug.
Some of the attackers were jailed for this, which is good. But what we really should demand is
that thugs be jailed for rampaging against innocent people even when those are not
actually thugs in disguise.
|
| 12:58a |
Unsafe oil fleet
Russia exports lots of oil from the Baltic Sea in ships that go through the narrow passages
around Denmark. These ships are badly maintained, and likely to cause disaster even
without
an intention to do so.
Whether the ships are insured is almost irrelevant, since an insurance company could hardly
make up for the damage that a big oil spill could do in those confided waters. The crucial
issue is to stop allowing unseaworth ships to pass through.
Regardless of future between Ukraine and Russia, it would be wise to require all oil shipments
between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to be sent through pipelines across Denmark, not by
ship. Pipeline leaks on land will make smaller spills than ship disasters.
|
| 12:58a |
Olympian cruelty
Paris is displaying the usual Olympian cruelty by "cleaning up"
homeless people and squats to
look
pretty for the games.
These games tend to do permanent harm to street vendors, due to new strict laws, and to
everyone that travels on streets, due to new surveillance measures. In addition they tend to
enrich companies at the expense of the public.
If your city proposes to host the Olympic Games,
I
urge you organize to defeat the proposal.
|
| 12:58a |
Kari Lake
Kari Lake, an insurrectionist Republican candidate for the US Senate, called on Republicans to
carry guns around the time of the election. We know that will lead to killings, which
insurrectionists hope will give them a
chance
to steal the election.
Lake said that Washington is a swamp. Evidently she is an alligator
that can't wait to get in and bite people.
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| 12:58a |
|
| 3:27a |
Homelessness as a profit center, CA
California cities have privatized destruction of homeless encampments.
Companies
have been paid at least $100 million, and perhaps much more.
Privatizing a government activity tends to make it more expensive. It also tends to become
less accountable, leading to more cruel abuse and more callous careless abuse.
|
| 3:27a |
Park Güell tourist crowds, Barcelona
Barcelona has removed bus line 116 (which goes to the beautiful Parc Güell) from Google and
Apple maps,
to
discourage the tourists from using it to get to the park.
This seems perverse to me. Do they want the tourists not to visit Parc Güell? To take taxis
to get there? To travel by a more circuitous route? To walk a long distance?
If lots of people use line 116, the sensible and helpful thing to do is to run more frequent
buses on part or all of that line.
|
| 3:27a |
First hemp-lime facility, MN
The
Lower
Sioux tribe has developed hempcrete as a building material, and reports that it saves
energy in summer and winter, as well as being low cost.
|
| 11:56a |
Urgent: The conscripted surveillance provision
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the surveillance bill that would allow government agencies to
conscript any conveniently available American to start spying on whoever the agency directs.
Alas, I don't have any more details about this. But we should treat it as a real danger.
Please phone each of your senators at 202-688-0628 and urge per to oppose that bill.
While you are at it, you could also urge those same senators to refuse
to extend section 702
mass surveillance.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
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