Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal

Two-tier healthcare, UK

*Gordon Brown warns of Tories "testing the water" for two-tier healthcare.* He also warns that this would destroy the NHS. I warned of this years ago -- that the Tories seemed to intend to destroy the NHS.

I wish he were wrong, and I were wrong too.

Debt crises stablization

Ellen Brown looks at various ways to change the US banking and monetary system that would stabilize it and eliminate the problems caused by the current handling of national debt.

Most of then would require legislation, but the "trillion-dollar platinum coin" may actually be feasible without Congress.

Leadership protests, Bangladesh

Protesters called for Bangladesh's prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to resign. After years of state violence against journalists and opposition, they don't believe she will run an honest election.

Republican veracity recently

How the Republican Party has sunk: from Honest Abe to Ever-Lie Santos.

The bullshitter lied about many things, but not the basics of his life story. When he lied, Republicans coped with those lies by insisting that the lies were true.

That won't work when Santos falsifies the events of his own life. To support him, Republicans in Congress have to deny blatant facts. Thus, their continued support for him demonstrates that no lie is too low for a Republican in Congress.

Chinese psyche

On Mao's Cultural Revolution, and how the years of suffering affected Chinese people's psyche and thinking, including that of the father of Distator Xi, and the totally contrary thinking of the dictator himself.

If I understand the article right, the women in the Educated Youth Friendship Group are hardly "fond" of the lives they led during the Cultural Revolution. On the contrary, it says they are pretending together to live the "normal" adolescence that the Cultural Revolution denied them in real life.

Debt crises stabilization

Ellen Brown looks at various ways to change the US banking and monetary system that would stabilize it and eliminate the problems caused by the current handling of national debt.

Most of then would require legislation, but the "trillion-dollar platinum coin" may actually be feasible without Congress.

Tories' "hostile environment" policy

The Tories plan to tighten their "hostile environment" policy, which is meant to make life in the UK unlivable for anyone who doesn't have official permission to be there.

Restaurant workers' wages

*How Restaurant Workers Help Pay for Lobbying to Keep Their Wages Low.*

Shell's worthless carbon credits

*Shell to spend $450m on carbon offsetting as fears grow that [such carbon] credits may be worthless.*

Hunger strike

Dozens of prisoners in Texas are on hunger strike to protest against protracted solitary confinement, in some cases lasting for decades.

The policy is that if a prisoner shows certain signs, that the state interprets as indicating a gang member, they put per in isolation permanently. Isolation is almost total -- for instance, one phone call per month, and exercise outdoors alone two days a month.

BBC documentary banned

Modi's government has banned a BBC documentary about Modi's connections with the 2002 sectarian pogrom in Gujarat, when Modi was the head of that state's government.

I read articles about this at the time.

The Hindu-nationalist right-wing in India has made it a strategy for decades to stir up violence between Hindus and Muslims, just as the American right-wing has done (with more success since 2001).

Uber bullied to eliminate workers' rights protections

GUber has bullied and seduced its way to eliminate protections for workers' rights in several African countries, shifting governments toward neoliberalism and allowing businesses (including foreign businesses) to exploit as they wish.

Australia and publicly expressing ideas

Parts of Australia make it a crime to publicly express certain ideas.

I think the world would be a better place if it did not contain Nazism. Also if it did not contain hatred against religions, or religions for that matter.

However, censorship can threaten any idea, and can oppress everyone. Once one idea is censored, censorship tends to spread to ban other ideas as well.

Since the rich tend to control governments, they are likely to turn the gun of censorship on opposition to the power of the rich.

Right to repair in New York

New York State has adopted a right-to-repair law, though Governor Hochul imposed limits on the products it applies to.

Even for those products, the law is only a step towards giving users control over the devices they "own". The law won't stop manufacturers from designing devices so that they control what users can do with them and restrict what users can change.

Environmental activists murdered

Brazil has accused a businessman of ordering the murder of two environmental activists last year.

Several countries in Latin America are ineffective in preventing or prosecuting the murder of environmental activists. Under Bolsonaro's encouragement, Brazil was extremely ineffective.

Capitalizing the adjective "indigenous" is a way of symbolically placing indigenous people above other people -- in effect, designating them as the higher group. I think it is wrong to put any ethnic group over the others.

Assassination in Germany stopped

A second far-right plan to assassinate a German minister has been caught and stopped.

Their stated goal is to restore the German empire under the Prussian dynasty, but perhaps omitting the limited democracy it implemented in its last few decades.

They hate the minister of health for ordering measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 and protect the people in general. Ironically, I expect Bismarck would not have hesitated to use quarantine and mandatory vaccination, and anything else necessary, in a totally authoritarian way, to protect the strength of the reich.

Pentagon

*Pentagon No Match for Biggest China Threat: Massive Carbon Emissions.*

Biden should step down

Arguing that Biden's retention of a few secret documents has diminished his chances of victory in 2024, so he should step down for someone else.

Who could that be, though? Sanders is the only person that occurs to me, the only one I am confident would struggle persistently for most of the causes I believe in. But he too is old now.

Public land and oil price gouging

*New GOP Majority Aims to Give Away Public Lands & Further Enable Big Oil's Price Gouging.*

National medical system

57% of Americans want a national medical system. 70% of Democrats support it.

Professors as gig workers

Adjunct professors at Oxford University will sue the university for treating them like gig workers.

I hope they win. Nobody who works a substantial amount of time for a platform should be treated as a gig worker.

Verbal circumlocutions

We observe nowadays a tendency to invent verbal circumlocutions, and pressure people to use these circumlocutions instead of the simpler everyday words. In particular, every noun that describes a category of persons is liable to get this treatment. The circumlocution typically consists of some adjective followed by "person".

The newest target is the word "mummy". The campaign pressures us to say "mummified person" instead.

I object to that, and not only because there is no good reason for the inconvenience of the change. A corpse (mummified or not) is not any type of person; it is not a person. Death ends a person's existence; a corpse is what a person's body becomes after the person dies. I will continue to use the noun, "mummy."

Speaking of which, I have a hunch that sooner or later a similar demand will target the word "corpse".

I think persons deserve certain respect, but that is no reason to pressure people to perform a ceremony to demonstrate it, every time we use a noun which refers to a set of persons. Doing so a nuisance.

Wagner army

The Wagner army of ex-convicts has become effective at taking small areas of territory, at the cost of very high casualties.

Wagner doesn't care about the casualties, because its soldiers came from prison, released to be cannon fodder. Russians don't care how many ex-convicts get killed this way.

I wonder, how many convicts does Russia have that Putin could send to Wagner? How long before he uses them up?

Putin could force any Russians into Wagner, including those who are not convicts. But if he does that, Russians will care whether they live or die.

Thugs are enemies

Tory plans to authorize uniformed thugs to attack protests can create a dynamic in which protesters know that the thugs are their enemies, and expect a fight from the beginning. That will means a lot of fights.

It may also drive those who don't want a fight to give up on protesting and wait despondently for global heating to kill them.

Manchin agrees to progressive proposal

Manchin has agreed to a progressive proposal: to lift or eliminate the limit on the amount of a worker's income that is subject to Social Security tax.

This would fix a future insufficiency in Social Security funds, which certainly has to be fixed sooner or later, though not urgently. Of course, "moderate" politicians (plutocratists) want to fix it by cutting benefits, and they'd prefer to do this as soon as possible.

The hyper-rich get most of their income through paths other than wages, and not covered by payroll taxes. Thus, even after this change, they will still get a tax break that they do not deserve. (The same thing happens with income tax, though the details are different.) Nonetheless, the change will be a step forward.

Pence's classified documents

*Classified documents discovered at Mike Pence's home in Indiana.*

The Republicans that (following the bullshitter) hate Pence will say, "Pence is just as horrible as Biden." Those that support Pence will have to find an excuse to argue that it was ok for Pence to neglect secret documents at home but not ok for Biden to do so.

AI eliminating jobs

AI is eliminating jobs in a number of areas. It may soon eliminate jobs faster that the economy can come up with new kinds of work for people to do.

Tory repression

Tory harshness to the weak has inspired anger since before they got into power in 2010. But they and the press have carefully controlled whether people were allowed to express anger, and at whom. Repression of protesters has been harsh all along.

Electric cars and social problems

The planned increase in electric cars would require so much lithium that mining it is expected to cause great social problems. However, investing to encourage walking and use of other kinds of transport could avoid the problem by reducing the number of cars needed.

I don't know whether this research takes account of the need for lithium for power storage to have power available for times with little wind and little sun. Or for the possibility of using people's cars' batteries for that purpose.

Nationalist population approaches

Politicians in many countries adopt a nationalist approach towards present and projected population decline: they exaggerate how difficult it will be to cope with a decrease, and presume that the solution is to persuade young people to have more children. They don't recognize the future danger of a larger (or even unchanged) population, and disregard immigration as a way of reducing future decrease.

It is true that Japanese culture is very unfriendly to immigrants, but the state could do things to reduce that and help immigrants surmount the obstacle.

Ibogaine

*The psychedelic ibogaine can treat addiction.* It can also be damaging, even fatal, when used without proper precautions.

Ranked Choice Voting

Robert Reich explains the benefits of Ranked Choice Voting.

Virginia teacher shot by six-year-old

*Concerned teachers and employees warned administrators at a Virginia elementary school three times that a six-year-old boy had a gun and was threatening other students in the hours before he shot and wounded a teacher, "but the administration could not be bothered"*.

Azerbaijan's "environmental activists"

Azerbaijan is sending soldiers that pretend to be "environmental activists" to blockade the road between Nagorno-Karabakh and the main territory of Armenia. (The idea that "environmental activists" can take any sort of initiative in an oil-funded dictatorship is bullshit.) Russian peacekeepers that under the treaty that ended the last war there are not authorized to fight a war, so they cannot in practice make those "activists" leave.

Ukraine pulls from Soledar

Ukraine has pulled its forces out of Soledar.

There is nothing particularly important about Soledar, nor Bakhmut, nor the towns behind them. The rational thing for Ukraine to do is to retreat slowly and steadily, so as to maximize the cost to Wagner while limiting Ukrainian casualties.

Australia ID checks

Australia is considering measures to reduce mistreatment and violence by users of dating apps against people they meet through the apps. One measure being considered is to require checking users' ID and "background". (I am not sure what "background" would include. Criminal record?)

The violence is a serious problem, and it is necessary to do something to reduce it. However, the proposed requirements would be enough to convince me to reject the apps.

On the other hand, the fact that they are nonfree programs that require a nonfree snoop-phone operating system is also enough to convince me to reject them. Naturally, both are malware too. The apps collect lots of personal data, which no data base should have; that alone is enough to convince me to reject them.

They have other problems, too. I don't entirely understand them because I have never experienced them -- I've never used programs like these. But I've read articles in which people who do use them report that the apps are generally horrible in social terms. Their culture encourages people to look for shallow sex; if what you seek is a love relationship, "Lots of luck!"

It would not surprise me if the violence and outright nastiness are simply the long tail of what the apps more generally encourage. A few people try to get away with violence; most people won't do that, but they do engage in shallowness and unkindness, which is "how everyone acts here," and besides, "what other option is there?"

I think that the real solution for this problem is a bigger change than the one that is proposed: to get rid of these apps and encourage other ways that enable people to meet and get to know each other.

Superintendent fired

Three time, school staff warned the school administration that a 6-year-old pupil was carrying a gun. The administration did not take it away from him, and eventually he fired it at a teacher.

Now the superintendent of the school district has been fired.

I've read that someone on the staff searched his bag at some point, but did not find the gun. Perhaps the student had put it in his pocket by then. So perhaps the administration did make some effort.

Parental rights

The term "parental rights" is typically used in US discourse to justify denying children, and adolescents too, thing they have a right to. And even things, such as abortions, that are necessary to avoid a terrible and irreversible change.

Pharmaceutical profits

US pharmaceutical companies have spent more on stock buybacks and dividends than drug research and development over the past decade.

Cambodian "president" puts insulters on trial

Hun Sen, "president" of Cambodia, regularly puts Cambodians on trial for posting words that insult him.

Cambodia isn't the only country that fails to recognize that freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult people -- even to insult the highest officials. France has prosecuted people for insulting President Sarkozy -- for instance, one defendant had said "Sarkozy, I see you" when the topic was an injustice. Some of these defendants were acquitted for various reasons, but the fact that the prosecution were not dismissed outright in the name of freedom of speech shows that respect for freedom of speech is lacking there.

I used to refer to Sarkozy as "Sarcômë", which means "cancer". Fortunately for me, I was never prosecuted.

Fast food wages

A new California law that requires a decent minimum wage for fast food workers is has fast-food chains protesting, "We will go broke!" Chipotle, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, In-N-Out Burger and (effectively) KFC gave a million dollar each to advance an initiative petition to repeal the law.

Treat that "fast food" as it deserves -- by fasting from it!

Urgent: Ban the use of facial recognition and other biometric technology in places of public accommodation

Everyone: call on legislatures at all levels to ban the use of facial recognition and other biometric technology in places of public accommodation.

Threats to press

Reporters without Borders warns Americans of the threat to freedom of the press posed by right-wing authoritarians, in particular the corrupter.

Miscarriage

A woman in Idaho started to miscarry, but the ban on abortion prohibited physicians from treating her until her problem put her at risk of death.

We should not focus too much on these harmful and unjust side effects of the ban, because they could become a distraction from the harmful and unjust goal of the ban: prohibiting abortion itself.

Ukraine uranium shells

Along with the Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, the US may supply Ukraine with shells made from toxic depleted uranium. When one of those shells explodes, it spreads dust of depleted uranium, which when inhaled or swallowed by humans leads to cancer, birth defects, and other severe medical problems.

Chevron stock buybacks

Chevron, a Big Oil company, is spending $75 billion on stock buybacks.

This demonstrates that Chevron has no valid use for all those profits, so we should increase the taxes the company pays and spend the funds on something useful.

However, I do not believe we should deduce that gasoline should have a lower price. If we tax Chevron that much more, we can instead use those funds to aid poor people. The poor people who need to drive will benefit just the same -- but those poor people who can avoid driving will benefit even more.

European germs

The death of most indigenous Americans, due to the importation of European germs, cause their farm fields to grow trees. The result was significant global cooling starting in the late 1500s.

The cooling was reversed by population growth some two centuries later.

Sadiiq Long

Sadiiq Long, US citizen is harassed frequently by local thugs because they see, when they check his license plate, that he is on the US "terrorist watch list." The US government won't tell him why, and offers no way to get taken off the list, so he is suing the local thug department for harassing him based on that listing.

The harassment varies and is sometimes very frightening; he could easily envision being shot next time.

Tenant protection

Biden has proposed a collection of measures intended to help people who rent their homes and have trouble affording the expense.

I am not able to evaluate it, but I suspect (as do others) that it is not enough to solve the problem. I think we need to build a lot more housing, dense enough to make mass transit efficient. That will take years, so it is better if we get started now and push it hard.

Reportedly some big corporations that have bought up millions of rental units are content with the proposal -- which suggests it is insufficient.

Tyre Nichols

All the Memphis thugs involved in killing Tyre Nichols have been charged with second-degree murder.

Obesity in girls

The UK's conditional tax on overly sweetened drinks brings about a significant (though not revolutionary) reduction of obesity in girls.