| Time |
Event |
| 8:49a |
A US authoritarian legacy
J Edgar Hoover spent his career building and running
America's
repressive secret police.
I love this quote from Justice Brandeis: "The greatest dangers to liberty lie in
insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." But
they are generally aided by people motivated simply by unscrupulous ambition —
people eager to create and use terrorism scares, antisemitism scares, or whatever it
may be, in order to gain power
This is why I condemn the digital systems that provide all the infrastructure for
Chinese-style total surveillance. All the more-or-less free countries today are
threatened by this. You can fight back by insisting on buying only with
cash, and by not carrying a portable phone.
|
| 8:49a |
Overzealous utopianists dangerous
The American Communist Party "attracted egalitarian idealists, and
it
bred authoritarian zealots."
Nowadays what
breeds
authoritarian zealots is the right-wing MAGA movement. I wonder if it is possible
to identify which common points are responsible for that result.
The author regrets American Communists' "willingness to subvert their own best
instincts in their devotion to a flawed and irrelevant historical model." The
American right-wing today can be described with similar words — their model
includes laissez faire /
laissez mourir,
balanced budgets, minimizing taxes on the rich, and scapegoating minorities and immigrants.
|
| 8:49a |
States' officials battling over abortion
*The Nationwide Right-Wing
Attack on Reform Prosecutors
Is Now an Attack on Abortion Rights [as well].*
|
| 8:49a |
Aid convoy's IDF-escort self-sabotaged
The aid convoy attacked by Israeli nationalist fanatics was escorted by Israeli soldiers. They did nothing
to
stop the attack.
|
| 8:49a |
Migratory birds
Global heating is making seasons unpredictable. Some birds
starve because after migration the
things they would eat are not available;
in some years the food has not appeared, and in other years it has already
disappeared or changed form.
|
| 8:49a |
Global heating target
The target of limiting global heating to no more than 1.5°C was
proposed as an ambitious plan. The evident failure to reach it does
not mean all is lost.
does
not mean all is lost.
Not yet.
|
| 8:49a |
Loathsomeness of Trump
The corrupter's criminal trial is a tour through a world of pervasive
corruption and immorality — the world he
imposes on those around him.
|
| 8:49a |
Lifeguard shortage
Night-Mayor Adams argued for allowing unauthorized immigrants to work
in the US by saying that they could fill
New York City's lifeguard
shortage.
I see no racism in that statement. (By the way, Adams is black; for
most political issues that makes no difference, but in regard to
whether his statements express racism it might be pertinent.)
It is true that only a small fraction of unauthorized immigrants reach
the US by swimming, or by water at all. His words may have suggested
otherwise; if so, that was inaccurate. But perhaps he did not intend
that implication. His words say that many of them say they can swim.
Anyway, if he was serious rather than sarcastic about the political
suggestion of allowing them to work, I think we can pardon that
inaccurate possible point.
|
| 8:50p |
|
| 8:50p |
South China Sea
The Philippines found
a clever nonviolent way
to respond to China's naval
provocations in the disputed sea between them, which China is trying to seize.
|
| 8:50p |
Patient recovery
*Hospital surgical teams that include more female doctors improve
patient outcomes, lower the risk of serious complications and could in
turn reduce healthcare costs, according to the
world’s largest study
of its kind.*
|