| Time |
Event |
| 2:50a |
Butterfly numbers
Butterfly populations in Britain dropped by 50% this year — *probably
the consequence of habitat loss and the use of pesticides, making
the insects less resilient to extreme weather fluctuations: the
scorching heat and wetter weather
driven by global heating.*
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| 2:50a |
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| 2:50a |
Putin regime
Vladimir Kara-Murza studied and wrote about dissidents in the Soviet
Union and the workings of the system of repression. When he became a
dissident and Putin imprisoned him, he observed directly
what he had
learned in his studies.
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| 2:50a |
JD Vance
* The vice-presidential candidate [Vance] seems to feel no remorse about
spreading dangerous misinformation
that has put lives at risk.*
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| 2:50a |
Al Jazeera
*Israeli military shuts down Al Jazeera bureau in
West Bank raid.*
Al Jazeera reports are sometimes slander in favor of Palestinians,
but no more slanted than is usual in journalism, That should no be
a reason to shut it down. At least this time Israel did not do so
using explosives, as
it did in Gaza.
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| 8:50a |
Kennedy’s remarks
Right-wing demagogues have long used hatred against scapegoat groups
as a way to distract and madden the people. Today they are
using
antimuslimism for this purpose.
I reject the term "islamophobia" because a phobia is an anxiety
disorder, and we can't blame people for suffering from one. We can
and should blame people for bigotry and hatred. So the word I use for
that is
"antimuslimism".
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| 8:50a |
UN resolution
Kenneth Roht: *The US and all nations must respect the UN resolution
against
Israeli occupation.*
* The general assembly confirmed the ICJ ruling that Israel’s
prolonged occupation constitutes a de facto annexation and hence a
violation of the “principle of the non-acquisition of territory by
force”. In other words, although the term was not explicitly used,
the endless occupation is an act of aggression — no different from
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.*
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| 8:50a |
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| 8:50a |
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| 8:50a |
Springfield smear
* The Republicans desperately need to distract voters away from abortion. They've now
found the perfect new scapegoat.*
Specifically, authorized Haitian immigrants that they can lie about.
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| 8:50a |
Overtourism
The limit on tourists visiting
Soain's Atlantic Islands National Park
Requires every visitor to give name and national ID number (or
passport number). And the only way to apply is on a web form.
This is one more little brick in a wall of Orwellian surveillance,
imposed gratuitously.
It would be very little work to sell permits at some physical stores
and avoid the surveillance. But once a country gives everyone a
national ID number, every activity's managers find it convenient to
add another brick to the wall of Orwellian surveillance. It comes to
seem "normal", so no one hesitates to impose this on everyone else.
Contrast Spain's park with the Boston Aquarium, which I visited
recently. It sells entry tickets for specific times, and encourages
people to buy them by internet — but you can go there and buy a
ticket for whatever future slots are available. I did that
anonymously, paying cash.
This shows the need to organize to demand the right to be anonymous.
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| 8:50a |
Protesters killed
Shooting protesters who are not threatening anyone is a repeating
passtime of israeli snipers near the village of Beita.
A report lists
15 other instances.
Typically the victims are not near any Israelis, and walking away
from them.
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| 8:50a |
Protest arrest
Nassau County (just east of New York City) has arrested a protester
for wearing a keffiyeh, and
allegedly concealing his face with it.
To harass nonviolent protesters who are not menacing anyone for
concealing their identity is an attack on human rights.
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| 8:50a |
Veronika Cohen
*Holocaust survivor marks 80th birthday with protest outside Israeli
prison* about maltreatment of Palestinian
prisoners in that prison.
What Palestinians need to do, to get the Israeli army to insist they
should be treated with
some respect, is die.
My view is different. I think the living are the people who we should
treat with some basic respect so as not to cause them gratuitous,
avoidable suffering. For the dead, that issue does not arise.
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| 8:50a |
Death row
*South Carolina to execute man despite bombshell admission from key witness*
that his crucial testimony for the
prosecution was a lie.
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| 8:50a |
Bat deaths cause pesticides spike, US
A plague of
fungus
killed many bats across the US. Without the bats to eat the insect pests, farmers increased use
of pesticides. The pesticides are estimated to have killed 1300 children
since
then.
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| 8:50a |
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| 8:50a |
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| 8:50a |
Carbon Market
The Commodity Futures and Exchange Commission proposed guidelines for
trading of carbon offsets. Public Citizen says it should instead
eliminate
such trading entirely.
I agree.
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| 8:50a |
Greenpeace activists
Climate defense protesters in the UK climbed the former prime
minister's house as part of a protest, but did no harm. Charges
against
them were dropped by the judge.
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| 8:50a |
UC Faculty
*Faculty from seven University of California campuses took a stand
against the repression of protest over Israel’s war on Gaza on
Thursday, taking the historic step of filing a joint unfair labor
practice
charge against their employer.*
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| 8:50a |
Amber Thurman
*Amber Thurman was killed by Georgia’s abortion ban.
There will be
others.*
Banning abortion tends to cause various sorts of bad consequences.
Being compelled to have a baby can ruin your life in many ways, and
some of them (combined with poverty) could later cause your death.
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| 8:50a |
Vast’ carbon sink
* Landmark research finds 244m tons of organic carbon is stored in top
10cm of marine sediment in British waters.* And it will steadily
capture more carbon if
we prevent it from being disturbed.
|
| 8:50a |
Data center emissions
* Emissions from in-house data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and
Apple may be [almost 8 times the]
official tally.*
For the survival of civilization we must prevent the expansion
of these data centers. A sufficiently large tax could do it.
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| 8:50a |
Case of Springfield
In American politics, and British politics, signaling an attitude or
membership in a tribe tends to take precedence over choosing a policy
that
will have good results.
That is unfortunate because signaling is not a cogent reason for any policy.
Thus, policies chosen based on signaling will tend to be bad ones.
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| 8:50a |
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| 8:50a |
Costs of moving houses to higher ground
Florida is coming to recognize it must help people whose houses are
going to be flooded by paying the cost of their moving to higher
ground.
In the long run, that is cheaper than paying to build a new house in
the same doomed place, where it in turn will be flooded.
</li> |
| 8:50a |
Water bosses could be jailed
*Water bosses could be jailed if they cover up sewage dumping under new law.*
The government looked into the causes of a deadly fire in an apartment building and
found that several companies were jointly dishonest and many government
bodies failed to do their job of insisting on safe construction.
All sorts of regulations to protect the environment and people's
health and safety, should carry criminal penalties for intentional
conduct that significantly endangers people. The punishment for a
serious violation should include prison, for individuals, and for
corporations seizure and liquidation.
Anyone can make a mistake — even a CEO who has acted wrongly may have
done it unknowingly — so everyone accused must have a fair trial to
judge culpability. But intentional disregard for those regulations,
when it occurs to a significant extent, should be grounds for severe
punishment.
This should not be limited to cases where serious injury to specific
actually persons occurred as a result. When that was avoided by sheer
luck, the crime should be the same.
Merely banning a company from operating in a country may have no
effect. Even shutting down the corporation directly involved may be
insufficient. Many construction businesses do (or at least used to)
start a new corporation each year as a scheme to shrug off subsequent
fines or judgments. The law should refuse to be thwarted by such
schemes.
If this helps drive the UK's formerly public but nowadays private
water companies into bankruptcy, so much the better, since it will
avoid the need to "compensate" their stockholders when renationalizing
them.
We need capitalism so it can drive people's desire for profit into
competing to do a good job for society. However, they will face
constant temptation to cheat their customers, their workers and the
general public. We must make sure they recognize those methods are
too dangerous to try.
</li> |
| 8:50a |
Documentary presenting Russian soldiers as victims
A documentary is being criticized for presenting the Russian soldiers in
the Putin forces as victims.
Those soldiers are victims … of Putin's tyranny, alongside
the Ukrainians. And some of them used to know this — which is why
some Russians fled and joined the Ukrainian army
rather than fight for Putin.
But Putin's tight censorship is brainwashing many Russians, especially
young ones that get drafted.
</li> |
| 8:50a |
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| 8:50a |
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| 8:51a |
Appearance of fairness in the press
* The press is still pursuing the appearance of fairness [in covering
the US election] by treating the true and the false, normal and
outrageous, as equally valid.*
</li> |
| 8:51a |
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