*Rampant Biden Administration Oil, Gas Drilling Approvals Continue to Undermine U.S. Climate Commitments.*

No amount of renewable electric generation will avert global heating disaster unless it leads to reducing total greenhouse gas emissions. For civilization's survival, that must be the goal.

Apple has announced a plan for allowing other app stores for the iMonsters, and it seems likely to exclude free (libre) software.

The problem is that users will have to pay a fee, and it sounds like the redistributor will have to collect that fee — but there is no way to do that without using nonfree software and insisting that users run it.

That is not certain, though. Depending on details, the problem may exist or not.

The operating system of the iMonsters is full of nonfree software (which is, as usual, malware). That is unfortunate and unjust, but it's Apple's doing, not ours. Distributing free software that can run on iMonsters would not make us culpable for what Apple does. If Apple charges the user money to install our free programs, Apple would be culpable for that too, but again we would not be.

If Apple requires whoever redistributes the code to pay a fee and collect it from the users, participation in that would be odious, and perhaps (depending on details) financially prohibitive, but supposing it is possible it would not be culpable for us. This culpability would naturally fall on Apple, along with all the rest.

However, if collecting that fee from the users requires us to ask the user to run nonfree software — for instance, the nonfree JavaScript code sent by Stripe for payment — we would be culpable for that. There is no getting around this.

Compare with the Android situation. The site f-droid.org uses free/libre programs which you can download and install with free software. The Android/Linux operating system includes nonfree software, and even malware, but that is not f-droid's doing nor that of the developers of the free programs distributed there.

Why hasn't the EU required Apple to permit an Fdroid-like distributor for free/libre software for iMonsters? It is because the EU directive is based on the concept of more "competition" and not on "freedom for users." In the competition framing, all people need is "more choices", never mind if all of the choices are unjust.

The military rulers of Burma have suffered major defeats; large units have surrendered.

The local toxic air pollution released by tar sands oil extraction has been underestimated by a large factor because of a flaw in the system used to measure it.

The article misuses the concept of percent; as a result, I can't tell for sure what the factor might be. As best I can tell, the factor of underestimation ranges from 18 to 62, but I can't be sure.

In 2008, Israel and Palestine came very close to agreeing on peace and mutual recognition. The deal they almost accepted then could be modified into a deal for today.