Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal
 
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Tuesday, January 21st, 2025

    Time Event
    4:37p
    Empire of billionaires

    George Monbiot: The empire of the billionaires is likely to destroy the lives of millions of Americans, starting very soon, and no institutions seem to be ready to resist this. We can see in Argentina what it will do.

    </li>

    4:37p
    Houses of families of Palestinian prisoners' raided

    *Palestinian prisoners’ families say their houses were raided by Israeli forces.

    [Also] Israel says it will prevent "public displays of joy" by families when Palestinians are released as part of Gaza ceasefire.*

    Given the reports of released Palestinian prisoners who had been crushed by months of physical or psychological torture, these prisoners' families may hardly feel any job on seeing what has been don't to them.

    (satire) Will Israel create a new Department of Palestinian Misery?

    </li>
    4:37p
    Iranian singer sentenced to death

    Iranian popular singer sentenced to death for "blasphemy".

    </li>
    4:37p
    Drone limitations on flying in prohibited areas

    Drone-manufacturer DJI has decided to put an end to including software to forcibly prevent the drone from flying into prohibited areas.

    That proprietary software was the spacial equivalent of DRM, and that made it unjust. I have nothing against the rule to keep one's drone out of prohibited areas, and except in purely theoretical special cases I would willingly comply with it. But the idea that someone could take control of my drone, perhaps by remotely altering its geofence, is repugnant.

    I suspect that all the rest of the software in those products is nonfree also. My conscience would rebel at having one of those drones, either before or after the recent change.

    Fortunately I have never felt any particular wish to have a drone.

    </li>
    4:37p
    "Wanted" posters about medical insurance executives

    "Wanted" posters about medical insurance executives are great HHOS.

    </li>
    4:37p
    How to get rid of American oligarchy

    Robert Reich: *How we get rid of the American oligarchy.*

    </li>
    4:37p
    Urgent: Rein in political spending

    US citizens: call on Congress to rein in political spending — pass the Democracy for All amendment.

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

    4:37p
    Urgent: Restore fact-checking in Facebook and Instagram

    Useds of Facebook or Instagram: call on Zuckerburg to restore fact-checking in Facebook and Instagram.

    </li>
    10:37p
    Urgent: Reform the John Deere company

    In the US: write to the CEO of John Deere to tell the company to stop closing factories and moving production to low-wage companies.

    I included text to support the right to repair tractors:

    Turning America farmers into digital serfs with the restrictive systems in your tractors is even worse. Farmers deserve the right to fix and change the hardware and software of their tractors.

    At this rate, John Deere is making more detractors than tractors.

    Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)

    First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.

    I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"

    They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.

    To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.

    Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code by editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:

    First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.

    This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.

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