Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal

Landlords and anonymous corporations

Landlords that hide their names and addresses behind anonymous corporations find that a convenient way to get away with illegal harassment and eviction.

The obvious solution is to make it a felony to register such a corporation as the owner of a rental property, and punish it with confiscation of the property. There is no reason for leniency in stopping abuse of power.

Corporate diversity programs

According to Cory Doctorow, corporations push diversity programs as a way of convincing workers that *their grievances are best addressed by trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways –- and not by forming a union.*

I made the article link above it tells us something important about fighting unjust business power, and secondarily racism too.

Ironically, that article embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce all forms of bigotry, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Here I am doing that.

Meat overpriced

*Lawsuit Highlights Why Meat Has Been Overpriced [in the US] for 40 Years.*

It is good to increase the price of meat, so that people will eat less of it (and live longer) and we will produce less of it (and reduce global heating and deforestation). But the extra should go to taxes, not profits.

Tories want to consider Rwanda safe

Since the British supreme court has ruled that Rwanda is not a safe place to deport inconvenient foreigners, the Tories are trying to rush through a law to declare it "safe".

Protesting climate destruction

Protesters intentionally destroyed fancy windows in the headquarters of HSBC to protest its funding climate destruction. They were charged and tried, and the jury ruled to acquit them.

It seems the jury accepted the protesters' argument that they were trying to prevent a much graver crime.

UCS findings on climate goals

*UCS Study Finds US Can Reap Significant Economic, Health Benefits from Meeting Climate Goals.*

Bombardment threats

*Israel drops leaflets warning people to flee southern Gaza towns.*

Most people in Gaza have had little food and water for weeks. How are they supposed to be capable of walking for miles, carrying or dragging the possessions they have saved? And where could they find other shelter?

Even if they were provided with the wherewithal to move, to order thousands of civilians to move or be bombarded is, as I understand it, a war crime which nothing can possibly excuse.

AI control plan

*Tech companies are pushing the idea that the only way to make AI safe is to leave them in control. Trusting them could lead to disaster.*

The author doesn't fully appreciate to what extent this is true. The only way they would _not_ be in control is if they release the software and make it libre -- so we change it for ourselves.

Ban surveillance

Surveillance advertising's data collection makes people vulnerable fraud.

Doctorow says we should ban surveillance advertising. I say we should ban the surveillance, period. Regardless of what the surveiller's motivation is, collecting personal data in a database harms people.

For instance, suppose the data is not used for advertising but is used to set what you pay for medical insurance. If the data collected from a fitbit includes _where you are_ -- and it can hardly fail to do so -- that is a grave attack on your privacy.

Rwanda untrustworthy

The UK Supreme Court recognized that Rwanda proved untrustworthy when it allowed Israel to park asylum-seekers there.

(Satire) Sex education

(satire) *Only Sex Education In Country Now Just Pressing Ear To Shared Wall To Hear Noises From Next Door.*

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.

Al-Shifa hospital

*IDF evidence so far falls well short of al-Shifa hospital's being Hamas HQ.*

Thus, Israel has not demonstrated sufficient grounds to designate al-Shifa hospital as a "military objective" and attack it. The attack remains a war crime.

But not as big a war crime as starving the population of Gaza. *Gaza faces "immediate possibility" of starvation as disease spreads, UN [World Food Program] says.*

Environment secretary donations from climate denialist thinktank funder

*UK environment secretary took donation from funder of climate [denialist] thinktank.*

"Climate skeptic" is what global heating denialists like to call themselves, so that they sound respectable. As soon as I saw that term, I suspected they were denialists. But before asserting that they are, I verified that the article actually says so.

Crisis pregnancy centers

Ohio Republicans plan to increase subsidize the "crisis pregnancy centers" that use trickery to lead women away from getting abortions.

They use trickery to fool women into consulting them, rather than consulting a real abortion clinic as those women set out to do. And once that first trickery gives them an opportunity, they use trickery to convince women not to get abortions.

Then they use trickery to deny their use of trickery.

I call the proposal a "subsidy" because it seems to go beyond making private donations to those disinformationists deductible.

The article says that several states subsidize this disinformation -- all of them Republican-controlled, I presume. The Republican slogan should be Disinformation Я Us.

Ex-convict policies

Australia is rushing to make new policies for ex-convicts who are foreigners that it is impossible to legally deport. But they seem to be based on confusion of purpose.

The imprisonment policy that the court rejected was used ex-convicts who would be deported if that were allowable. However, they have been mixed with policies that seem to be directed at a possible threat to the community posed by the convict.

Each of those two purposes calls for its own response; mixing them up is a mistake.

For making sure the state can find the ex-convict in case deporting per ever becomes an option, keeping track of per movements is justified and should be sufficient.

As for protecting the community from a possible threat posed by the ex-convict, whatever Australia does with Australian ex-convicts is presumably adequate (or Australia should change that policy). So it should be adequate for non-Australian criminals too.

I presume that Australia makes these decisions for specific ex-convicts based on what crime each committed. For instance, if the crime was bank robbery or embezzling, there is probably no need to care whether the criminal goes near a school.

If Australian courts accept a certain restriction for a certain category ex-convicts when they are Australians, I expect it will accept the same restriction for the same category of foreign ex-convicts.

Fortified tunnel

Israel has published a video showing a fortified tunnel under al-Shifa hospital which it asserts was made by HAMAS.

If this is true, as it may be, HAMAS may have violated the rules of war by building that tunnel. Using the tunnel for fighting would surely have violated them.

That would not however imply open season on patients and doctors in al-Shifa for the Israeli army.

Direct air capture

Direct air capture of CO2 is useful in principle. But since it takes a lot of energy, would it reduce atmospheric CO2 more than reducing fossil fuel generation by that same amount of energy?

Dictatorship supporter elected in Argentina

A right-wing supporter of the murderous 1970s military dictatorship was elected president in Argentina. I fear for that country.

Nonviolent protest in Atlanta

400 or so people came to Atlanta for a nonviolent protest against Cop City. They held a nonviolence training first. They brought gas masks because they expected the thugs to attack them with violence.

That's exactly what the thugs did. They started attacking as soon as the protesters came close. The thugs also attacked press.

The thug department seems to be run by Putin. Is it perhaps run by a follower of a supporter of Putin? That would be, a follower of the insurrectionist -- a Republican.

Tweet accusing Jews of "hatred against whites"

*Elon Musk agrees with tweet accusing Jews of "hatred against whites".*

There's no way of understanding that as anything other than antisemitism.

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Public pension money funding private firms

* Billions of dollars in public pension fund money flow to private equity–owned firms that union-bust, violate labor laws, and put workers’ safety at risk.*

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Judge in insurrectionist's case

The judge in the insurrectionist's criminal case for misuse of secret documents is allowing a lot of slippage in the trial.

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Google antitrust trial

*Here are seven ways that Judge Mehta is allowing Google to hide the Google antitrust trial.*

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Ideological Subversion of Biology

The Ideological Subversion of Biology.

It contains this quotation from Ernst Mayr:

Equality [of rights] in spite of evident non-identity is a somewhat sophisticated concept and requires a moral stature of which many individuals seem to be incapable. They rather deny human variability and equate equality with identity. Or they claim that the human species is exceptional in the organic world in that only morphological characters are controlled by genes and all other traits of the mind or character are due to “conditioning” or other non-genetic factors. … An ideology based on such obviously wrong premises can only lead to disaster. Its championship of human equality is based on a claim of identity. As soon as it is proved that the latter does not exist, the support of equality [of rights] is likewise lost. (Mayr 1963)

I agree with Mayr, as do the authors of the paper. I advocate equal rights for all humans, though we should and do impose practical tests of ability and knowledge for specific activities such as driving a motor vehicle and practicing medicine. As for facts, about individual humans or about biology and medicine, we can ascertain them by observation and by scientific inquiry, and we should respect the facts we find.

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Georgia concealing evidence on shooting of protester

The state of Georgia is concealing the evidence about the thugs that shot a protester who was in the forest near Cop City.

Since state officials give no valid reason for doing this, we are entitled to suspect the worst: that Georgia is covering up a felony committed by the thugs.

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Punishing cases of environmental damage

*[A new EU] directive punishes [the] most serious cases of environmental damage, including habitat loss and illegal logging.*

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Threat of boycott north-east Atlantic mackerel

* Seafood companies and retailers threaten to boycott north-east Atlantic [mackerel] catch after two-decade failure to agree sustainable quotas.*

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School strike 4 climate

*School Strike 4 Climate: Australian students skip classes en masse to call for action.*

I wish the web site for climate actions permitted access without running nonfree software. If it did, I could post a link to it, and I could even join actions sometimes myself.

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Crossing border without papers

Texas is about to make it a crime, under state law, to cross the border from Mexico without papers. Also, thugs will be allowed arrest anyone on vague suspicion of having entered Texas by crossing the border without papers. We know that they will make that judgment based on racial profiling.

Since immigration is normally a federal matter, it is not clear states are allowed to make laws about it. But we cannot trust today's Supreme Court to insist on that.

But even if it does, that decision will probably take months, during which thugs will eagerly arrest anyone who looks or sounds foreign.

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Textbooks rejected in Texas

Republicans in a Texas school committee rejected some textbooks for teaching about global heating.

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Political donations by rich right-wingers

Rich right-wingers anonymously donated $134 million to political campaigns in 2022.

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HAMAS and Netanyahu unwilling to contemplate peace

Jonathan Freedland: Neither HAMAS nor Netanyahu (and his government) is willing to contemplate peace. The only way to have peace in Israel/Palestine is to get rid of both of them.

Freedland thinks Israel can eliminate HAMAS, and says that various other powers expect this, but I don't think that is possible. An underground guerrilla movement is almost impossible to eradicate as long as new supporters want to join. I do not think that Israel should be allowed to commit enormous war crimes in the name of attempting to do that.

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Australian whistle-blower forbidden to state defense

Australia's equivalent of Chelsea Manning, who revealed war crimes by soldiers in Afghanistan, was forbidden to state his defense or enter documents in evidence. He responded by pleading guilty to three of the five charges.

I don't quite understand why he responded that way, but the article does not say what happened to the other two charges. Was this a sort of plea bargain? That would make sense.

In any case, he has boosted the campaign for changing the law so that whistleblowers like him will bot be prosecuted.

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Murder organizer of prison strikes

*Alabama [prison thug] accused of encouraging prisoners to murder organizer of [prison] strikes.*

They did not actually try to kill that organizer, it seems. But he is in considerable danger of violence from the thugs.

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Urgent: Keep the insurrectionist off the ballot

US citizens: call on state officials to keep the insurrectionist off the ballot for the next election — for engaging in insurrection.

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Urgent: Ban racist gerrymandering

US citizens: call on Congress to protect democracy by banning racist gerrymandering.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

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Urgent: Eliminate legal obstacles to abortions

US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate the legal obstacles that make abortions hard to get even when they are not prohibited.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

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