Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal

Urgent: Open App Markets Act

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support the Open App Markets Act. It would require Apple to allow users to install apps obtained from places other than Apple's store.

It looks like this would make it possible to distribute free software for the iThings which users could build from source. That means iThings would no longer be jails.

Of course, they would still be nasty in many other ways, so I would still urge everyone to reject iThings, along with Android.

Urgent: American Innovation and Choice Online Act

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would prohibit some of the harmful practices of Amazon and some other platforms.

This bill would not do anything to make anonymous purchase possible, or insist that the sites work without sending nonfree software to the user's browser, so I would sill refuse more or less to do use those sites. But their overall injustice would be reduced.

Contempt for the Constitution

Some Republican senators are condemning the wrecker for showing contempt for the Constitution.

It could be that they are looking for a chance to publicly split from him, having seen that his endorsements of candidates turned out to be disadvantageous for them. They may have decided they will be better off with a new, fresh fascist leader.

Thug killer robots banned

San Francisco responded to public revulsion and reversed its recent decision to authorize the thug department to use robots for killing people.

To halt (and then reverse) the general militarization of US thug departments is a much bigger job.

Prohibiting NHS strikes

The Tories plan to deal with strikes by NHS workers by prohibiting strikes.

This approach would be of little use for fixing the broken NHS, but assuming their real goal is to ruin it, this could be quite effective.

Conspiracy to attack Parliament

A right-wing conspiracy in Germany plotted to attack Parliament and overthrow the government.

Their ideology was a strange mixture of Nazism, anarchism, and superstition. But they had real weapons and could surely have done real killing.

Urgent: Abolish tax ceiling

US citizens: call on Congress to abolish the debt ceiling now.

Government documents in storage unit

Lawyers hired by the corrupter searched a rented storage unit and found additional secret government documents.

Daniel Ellsberg dares US to prosecute him

Great 1970s whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg dares the US to prosecute him like Julian Assange. He wants to challenge the constitutionality of such prosecutions.

Ellsberg faced the threat of prosecution at the time, but ultimately officials decided not to prosecute him.

(Satire) Raid apology

(satire) *SWAT Team Busts Down Door Of Denver Woman's Home To Apologize For Previous Raid.*

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

Haitians have temporary protected status

The Biden administration has given Haitians in the US temporary protected status through August, 2024.

Israel fires at reporter

Al Jazeera asserts it has proof that Israeli forces fired directly at reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, and has filed a case with the International Criminal Court about this.

Manchin's dirty deal defeated

Climate defense activists defeated Manchin's "dirty deal" to undermine environmental regulations in the US Senate.

He could try again to pass it in another way, so the fight is not conclusively finished.

DoJ subpoenas

*DOJ subpoenas officials in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona for communications with [the wrecker] around 2020 election.*

Global Heating

Global heating is causing sea animals to move to different habitats. The result will be to wipe out most of the seabirds in western Europe.

Urgent: Don't allow oil drilling near Chaco Canyon

US citizens: call on the Biden administration not to allow oil drilling near Chaco Canyon.

Chaco Canyon is beautiful, as well as having great historic significance.

Urgent: Keep Ilhan Omar

US citizens: call on your congresscritter to stand up for keeping Ilhan Omar on the foreign affairs committee.i

The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.

If you phone, please spread the word!

Urgent: Block One Medical purchase

US citizens: call on the US government to block Amazon's planned merger with One Medical.

Qatar

Qatar promises to vastly expand its fossil fuel exports; the resulting greenhouse gas emissions would imply global disaster.

The specific point that the total emissions from Qatar's exports would eventually add up to more than one year of the whole world's emissions seems like a red herring to me. I would expect that the same is true for the US too, and perhaps several other countries.

But even though this is just a red herring, I think the article's conclusions are plausible anyway.

Independent state legislature theory

At least four on the Supreme Court seem to lean towards the bizarre "independent state legislature" theory. The confrontation in Arizona, in which one country refused to certify its vote, is exactly the kind of situation where a state legislature could (under this theory) arbitrarily make up its own presidential election results.

The revised Electoral Count Act could close that mad loophole, if Congress passes it this month.

Anti-vaxxers convinced "vaccinated blood" is risky

Superstitious anti-vaxxers have convinced each other that a blood transfusion with "vaccinated blood" is somehow dangerous. One couple tried to prevent their baby from getting a transfusion unless it was with "unvaccinated blood"; since the baby would have died without surgery and a transfusion, the state intervened and took guardianship to authorize the operation.

Altruism

[Effective altruism] is "profoundly individualistic" and reliant on the status quo. EA's calculations assume that humans won't change. But humans have to change if we are going to [save] life on Earth.*

Fate of the entire living world

*The "fate of the entire living world" will be determined at the Cop15 UN biodiversity summit, according to leading scientists.* It is considering a partly concrete plan to slow the destruction of the Earth's natural ecosystems.

Coking coal

The Tories plan to open a new coal mine in England. Supposedly the reason is to reduce the cost of electricity, but the mine will produce coking coal to be exported to make steel. Meanwhile, the steel industry is looking to replace the use of coking coal to reduce its emissions.