Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal

Assange rally

Rally for Julian Assange on Monday, August 1, from 11 to 12:30, at Park Street Station on the Boston Common. People will remain near the Park St station entrance for an hour, then march through the Common, giving out literature and talking to people on the way.

You can also support the campaign by phone or email.

Arizona bogus audit

Trumppets in Arizona organized a bogus "audit" of the presidential election in Arizona, evidently aiming to blow smoke so they could claim there was a fire. They later reported 282 supposed cases of dead people who had cast votes.

A subsequent investigation by Arizona's attorney general found that 281 of them were in fact alive.

FBI luring

The FBI continues luring vulnerable people (generally Muslims) into fantasy terrorism schemes and sentencing them to 20 years in prison.

If the FBI goes after right-wing extremists it could start protecting us from real terrorism.

Australia inflation

Australia's inflation is like America's inflation: caused by big businesses that have the power to impose price increases because they want to.

Antisocialism

Antisocialism (so-called "Libertarianism") attracts mainly white males, and a large part of its attraction for them is their wish to be allowed to put bigotry into practice.

Climate endgame

Looking at some of the ways global heating's effects could possibly cause extinction of humanity.

I think that result is unlikely. Humans are quite flexible, and have survived in drastically different situations. So I think various small groups of humans will remain, without high technology. But I can't claim that extinction is impossible.

Urgent: Network neutrality

US citizens: call on Congress to act to let the FCC restore the past network neutrality requirements on ISPs.

As explained before, the Obama-era network neutrality requirements that the corrupter abolished were weak and inadequate. Nonetheless, they would do some good.

Nuclear war risk

UN Secretary General Guterres warns that the risk of nuclear war is slowly increasing. The world's nuclear disarmament efforts are weakening.

Putin is trying to threaten nuclear war and pretending that he isn't -- much as US Republicans (also known as the Christian Taliban) are threatening civil war and pretending they aren't.

Shell

Shell is using its windfall profits for stock buybacks -- not investing them in renewable electric generation.

Tracking through phones

US government "security" agencies track people's movements through their phones, without getting search warrants, by buying location data from companies that accumulate them.

We must forbid companies from collecting, or accumulating, people's location data.

US Covid policies

The US has adopted policies that encourage the public to ignore Covid-19 and abandon the effective, low-tech methods of reducing transmission. This has allowed transmission to increase enormously, which puts vulnerable people at great danger. Politicians say, implicitly, that it doesn't matter if those people die, that they are not important enough to wear a mask for.

There are two side points in the article that I take issue with. First. eugenics means an active effort to control who can reproduce. Letting people get sick and perhaps die is not eugenics. It is wrong, but it is a different wrong. This is an example of a pattern of stretching terminology for condemning a wrong that has excited special ire, to apply it to other things and carry some of that ire to them.

Second, the article describes the US practices as "American exceptionalism", but I've seen similar practices in several European countries, and I think most of them have adopted the policy of "Imagine there's no Covid."

I asked the mayor of Boston to start a PR campaign to convince people to wear masks in enclosed places. Even if it's not a legal requirement, there are ways of convincing people to do it -- and in this case, it doesn't require any deception. Obviously, this has not been done.

Marcos Martial Law: Never Again

Filipinos, including expats, are buying lots of copies of the book Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, fearing that the new president, son of the late dictator Marcos, will suppress the memory of his crimes.

Asim Ghafoor

The UAE has convicted democracy campaigner Asim Ghafoor, who is a US citizen, of money laundering after a suspect trial.

He was arrested in a flight connection in Abu Dhabi. I recommend people avoid setting foot in Abu Dhabi's airport.

Another bizarre thing in this report is that it the accusation appears to have come initially from the US; but the US did not arrested him, instead it let him fly to Abu Dhabi airport and he was arrested there.

I suspect this represents dirty work.

The US has a pattern, since 2001, of persecuting Muslims that raise money in the US for charity in other countries. Try as they might, they get accused of terrorism, or violating financial regulations. Is that what happened here?

(Satire) Apparitions

(satire) *New Windex Formula Removes Menacing Apparitions From Mirror.*

If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.

Senate funding

Sanders: *I say to Senator Toomey, if you don't believe we can afford to take care of our veterans suffering from toxic burn pit exposure, then you should not have approved funding to go to war.*

(Satire) Speeding tickets

(satire) *Police Experimenting With Nonlethal Methods To Give Speeding Ticket.*

Gas prices and climate crisis

*Corporate Media [Fail] to Connect Gas Price Surge and Climate Crisis.*

According to Russian law, it is illegal to jail volunteer soldiers.

According to Russian law, it is illegal to jail volunteer soldiers (as distinct from conscripts) for refusing to fight in Ukraine. However, Putin is using the puppet governments of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Wagner mercenaries, to jail hundreds of refusil soldiers and pretend that Russia isn't doing it.

Is it possible to establish in international law that Russia is responsible for crimes supposedly committed by those puppets?

Nancy Pelosi lands in Taiwan amid soaring tensions with China

China responded to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan with the typical bluster with which it tries to pressure other countries not to support Taiwan, and the usual displays of military strength.

These are the way China tries to intimidate and threaten. If we don't want to let China conquer Taiwan, we must not be influenced by China's pressure.

China is a real military threat, but that's not due to Pelosi's visit, and Pelosi could not have made China less of a real threat by staying away from Taiwan. We cannot defend Taiwan from China's military power by tiptoeing.

Republicans’ agenda for a second Trump term is far more radical than the first

Republicans seek to purge the employees of federal agencies and replace them with inexperienced Republicans who will do whatever they are told.

Due to their lack of experience, they won't respect traditional rules that were adopted to restrain abuse of power.

In the FBI, the extremist agents will investigate whoever the president tells them to investigate. In the DoJ, the extremist staff will prosecute whoever the president tells them to prosecute.

No single crisis will be enough to shut this [planet roasting] machine down naturally

* No single crisis, no matter how existential, will be enough to shut this [planet roasting] machine down naturally. We must break it or it will break us.*

* The fossil fuel industry as a whole is not just another business, providing a service to meet a demand; it is a predatory drug dealer that works every day to keep the world addicted to its poisonous product, knowing full well that it will eventually prove fatal.*

(Satire) *15-Year-Old Finds Summer Job As BetterHelp Therapist.*

(satire) *15-Year-Old Finds Summer Job As BetterHelp Therapist.*

A large music festival in Atlanta has been cancelled

A large music festival in Atlanta has been cancelled because Georgia does not permit music festivals in parks to exclude guns.

The direct cause of cancellation seems to be that Atlanta refused to authorized it, but I expect the city invited the festival to change its rules to permit guns in order to get approval. I expect that the organizers were wise to stand by their policy.

Several new business-supremacy treaties are being negotiated.

Several new business-supremacy treaties are being negotiated. In addition to the usual kinds of oppression, these may also restrict governments' in blocking massive surveillance by networks of businesses.

(satire) *Democrats Worried Biden Will Be Healthy Enough To Run Again In 2024.*

The military budget passed by the House of Representatives is a big give-away to the military-industrial complex

The military budget passed by the House of Representatives is a big give-away to the military-industrial complex, including systems that are useless.

What should we say about the people who started out supporting the wrecker?

What should we say about the people who started out supporting the wrecker when he was a hate-spewing right-wing extremist, and stopped only when they saw he was an enemy of our system of government?

I don't think that either the good or the bad erases the other. I can't deny that Pence is actively campaigning against sedition. I can't refuse to recognize that he is a religious extremist that seeks to impose his religious extremism on everyone in the US. He is a hero and he is atrocious, both at once.

*AIPAC Defeats Andy Levin, the Most Progressive Jewish Representative.*

*AIPAC Defeats Andy Levin, the Most Progressive Jewish Representative.*

AIPAC is a big danger to the US fight against plutocracy. Americans who care about injustice to persecuted minorities tend to be concerned with Israel's occupation policies, so AIPAC essentially campaigns for disdain towards persecuted minorities.

Yet more gratuitous cruelty by the US border thugs.

Yet more gratuitous cruelty by the US border thugs.

This article mentions a policy of making asylum seekers throw away all their personal possessions, as well as specific cruelty towards Sikh men — forcing them to violate religious commandments for no rational reason.

Religion is not an excuse for someone to violate safety requirements or mistreat anyone else. But these particular Sikh religious practices don't hurt or endanger anyone.

When "security forces" display a persistent habit of gratuitous cruelty, we cannot take their word about what they do. Their punishment should be a requirement to document how they treat each asylum seeker.

Kansas voted to keep abortion rights into the state constitution

The citizens of Kansas voted to keep abortion rights into the state constitution, by a landslide.

*Organizers said treating reproductive rights as a non-partisan issue was key to success in a Republican-leaning state.*

The vote was on a right-wing initiative to ban abortion in Kansas, but initiatives to legalize abortion are also possible, in the states that allow them.

backed Summit Learning platform suggests schools 'listen' to parents' 'online conversations'

*Zuckerberg-backed Summit Learning platform suggests schools 'listen' to parents' 'online conversations'.*

Coalition Representing 24 Million Workers Blasts 'Dangerous' Cuellar Bill

Right-wing Democrat Cuellar joined Republicans in proposing a law that would allow companies to eliminate important workers' rights, by extending the piecework sweatshop economy to more kinds of work.

This would also stop states from requiring better wages and working conditions for existing gig-work companies such as Uber

and Lyft.