Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal
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Wednesday, May 8th, 2024
| Time |
Event |
| 8:46a |
University protests allowed, AU
*[A group of prestigious] Australian universities reject calls for
police
to break up Gaza protests.*
That bespeaks thoughtful attention to their various responsibilities.
| | 8:46a |
Heat disrupts schools, farms, THL, PHI, BGD
A general
heat
wave in south-east Asia, stretching from Bangladesh to the Philippines, is
killing people and destroying crops.
It is clear that our global heating activities are part of the cause. Even worse,
they are sure to make it hotter in the future. People can't survive if
farming
does not work.
| | 8:46a |
Arbitrary repression, Columbia Uni., NY
The Columbia College Student Council accuses the university administration of
imposing a policy of arbitrary repression ever since October, and become ever more
cruel, arbitrary and
unjust
in the past weeks.
The university
directed
violent uniformed thugs at students it was falsely accusing of violence, all the
while interfering with video recording of their violence. While claiming it was
striving to "keep all members of our community physically safe", it opened the door to
physical
danger to them. This is part of a broad pattern of
thugs committing violence against nonviolent protesters.
Some protesters were
not
entirely nonviolent — throwing things at
thugs is aggressive, as well as self-defeating since it gives
thugs an excuse to commit violence against those
protesters and others too. It may also provoke them to the point that they lose
self-control. That is not an excuse for their violence, but it is a reason not to provoke them.
The protest movement needs to develop nonviolence discipline, and marshals to
enforce it, just as the civil rights movement and Vietnam peace movement did.
| | 8:46a |
Many universities' true American values
*The US universities that
allow
protest encampments — and even negotiate.*
A university president who rushes to call the thug department is not fit for the office.
| | 8:46a |
Top Gaza-witness speaker banned, DE, EU
Surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sitta volunteered to work in Gaza, and has testified about
Israeli attacks he has seen. French senators invited him to speak to them, but
Germany has banned him from entering anywhere in
the
Schengen zone.
Did Germany
present any basis claimed to justify this, or is it purely arbitrary?
| | 8:46a |
Irony, metaphor, misunderstood plays, UK
When Fawlty Towers was made, it was possible to have a character use a racial insult
as a way of
presenting
that character as racist. John Cleese reports that this has become impossible,
and *said some people "don't understand metaphor, irony or comedy exaggeration."*
I suggest that their deficiency is in "theory of mind": the faculty of distinguishing
between what you think, what your interlocutor thinks, and what some other persons think.
| | 8:46a |
| | 8:46a |
Parsi burial rites lacking vultures
The drug diclofenac is
poisonous
to vultures. They eat dead cattle that were given diclofenac, and eventually
they die from it. This has mostly wiped out vultures in India. As a result, Parsis
cannot practice any more their religious duty to give corpses to the vultures.
I know a computing professor who told me he was a Parsi. I asked him, "Did you have
a bad interaction with a Parser?" He collapsed in irresistible laughter — it
was a delight.
| | 8:46a |
Election information crisis, 2024
* Job losses
[in
US journalism], declining circulations and local newspaper closures could mean
spread of misinformation in pivotal election year.*
|
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