| Time |
Event |
| 6:38a |
|
| 6:38a |
Urgent: Fossil fuels investments meeting
US citizens:
call
on Vanguard CEO to meet with front line climate campaigners
affected by Vanguard's "investments" in fossil fuels.
|
| 6:38a |
(Satire) Sale of luggage banned, TX
(satire) *Texas Bans Sale Of Luggage
To Pregnant Women.*
|
| 6:38a |
Abortion no longer banned, MO
An initiative petition has eliminated the Missouri laws that banned
abortion, but the fanatics also legislated a gratuitous and onerous
licensing requirement
that blocks opening abortion clinics.
|
| 6:38a |
Undersea cables sabotage, CHI, RUS
China's refusal of Sweden's polite request to investigate whether the
Yi Peng 3 sabotaged undersea cables is effective corroboration or the
suspicion
that China was responsible.
Now the question is how to respond so as to prevent or deter further
sabotage.
|
| 12:32p |
Musk donations
The UK government is too timid to legislate to block
the muskrat from
buying the next UK election for
right-wing
extremists.
The ministers believe that the measures they were considering could
backfire (because they could be bypassed). Well, look for stronger
measures.
I suggest making it a crime, punishable by imprisonment, to
participate in transferring money (your own or from someone else) or
equivalent into UK political campaigning, except when it comes from UK
citizens who reside in the UK, and the total amount coming from each
one of them under a certain limit.
To de-fang antisocial media platforms, the UK should prohibit platforms
from operating recommendation engines.
Both of these measures have the virtue that they block systems of
influence that are available only to the rich, without explicit
explicit political bias.
|
| 12:32p |
Delays to refunds
Australia was gong to require airlines to compensate
passengers whose
flights are cancelled.
The airlines want this burden to fall on passengers, who are
not as wealthy as an airline.
Having a flight cancelled is usually not much of a problem for me, as
long as I get on another flight by the next day. Perhaps a good
compromise would be to require compensation in the cases when the
cancellation causes some concrete significant loss. For instance, if
the delay makes it a waste for that passenger to make the trip, and
person prefers to cancel it entirely, that passenger should get their
money back.
|
| 12:32p |
House Ethics report
Ex-rep Matt Gaetz was found to have violated many rules of the
House
of Representatives.
He clearly did not expect to be held accountable for that.
So I wonder whether it a normal for congresscritters to do that.
|
| 12:32p |
Toyota inauguration donation
GM, Ford, and Toyota are giving
the corrupter million-dollar gifts
as the moral
equivalent of bribes.
I speculate that he has passed the word that companies that want in on
the gravy train must pay these not-officially-bribes.
|
| 12:32p |
Hundreds protest
A group of Islamists burned a Christmas tree in Syria. Christians
protested peacefully, and a leader from HTS said the attackers were
foreigners and assured
the
Christians
they would be safe.
As they carry out this old northern European pagan custom.
The custom is ironic, but what is important is that HTS is standing
clearly for peaceful relations between religious groups, and against
Islamism.
|
| 12:32p |
|
| 12:32p |
A workers' union in British politics
A major British union requires members to sign confidentiality
agreements in which they commit not to talk about harassment (or
worse) suffered inside the union to
anyone
except the state.
Such practices abound in other sorts of organizations and businesses.
The point is that unions are not immune to such injustices.
|
| 12:32p |
New Syria and the Kurds
On the
prospects
of the Kurds in Syria, given the ascendant power of despotic
Erdoğan in Turkey.
I do not have an ethnic prejudice for Arabs, for Kurds, or for Turks.
Nor particularly against any of those ethnic groups. What wins my
support for Rojava is that (from what I have read) it welcomes all
those groups and endorses equal rights for them, recognizing human
rights including religious freedom.
By contrast, the best you can say for Erdoğan is that he had carried
out less persecution and less repression than Assad. He even
started
a civil war against the Kurds of Turkey so as to rerun an election
and get more votes.
Could HTS take the step forward to recognize human rights as Rojava
does? Perhaps then the two could form a united Syria that would
deserve full support.
It would be a stretch, but we can hope for it.
|
| 12:32p |
Nisan as Honda as Mitsubishi
Not two but three major Japanese
car
companies are considering merging.
I suspect this was unleashed when Republicans removed Lina Khan as
head of the FTC. Those companies have enough activities in the US
that (I suspect) the FTC could have blocked them from merging, and
Khan had the gumption to do it. Republicans work for the rich,
especially the billionaires and near billionaires, so they see
concentration of business as a victory.
A victory over whom? Over their enemy — the non-rich.
|
| 4:39p |
Weakening of Putin
Arguing that the defeat in Syria, together with tightening of oil
export sanctions, has
weakened
Putin to the point that he may lose power.
I ted to think that this article has some validity but maybe not to
the extent it claims; that it overstates the difficulties Putin is in.
It also presumes that the wrecker
regards Putin as an enemy and that
he would deal Putin knockout blows if given the chance. I doubt that,
because the wrecker
has generally acted like a
supporter
and protege of
Putin.
</li>
|
| 4:39p |
Influential Americans selling their souls to corrupter
Influential Americans are already
selling
their souls to the corrupter.
They want to be on the winning side, even if the winning side is
to replace the republic with an empire.
</li> |
| 4:39p |
Climate tipping points irreversible on human timelines
* The shift of Arctic tundra and other carbon sinks to carbon sources
(Arctic tundra is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs, US
agency says) reminds us that
tipping
points are largely
irreversible on human timelines.*
</li> |
| 4:39p |
Louisiana's prison system
*Louisiana’s prison system routinely holds people weeks and months
after they have completed their sentences, the US justice department
alleged
in a lawsuit filed on Friday.*
I have a sad suspicion that the wrecker's attorney general, whoever
it turns out to be, will drop this case, Most prisoners are poor,
and their rights count for nothing with right-wing politicians.
Does Louisiana use privatized prisons? I would expect it does,
and their owners could donate to right-wing politicians campaigns.
</li> |
| 4:39p |
|
| 4:39p |
Blocking import of missiles and drones into Houthi ports
The US is asking the UN to
increase
the approved powers for blocking import
of missiles and drones into Houthi ports.
</li> |