Richard Stallman's Political Notes' Journal

Charlie Kirk comments

Republicans are trying to use the killing of Charles Kirk to spread

fear of informants. This article compares that with what the Assad

dynasty did in Syria.

International law concern in Gaza

*The consensus is clear: it’s genocide. Now will international law die

in Gaza too?*

I am sure that is what right-wing dictators hope for. Some don't

care particularly about Gaza or Israel, but they want to get rid

of anything that might restrain their own violence, regardless of

what purpose they do it for.

False Trump claim on painkillers

It is as foolish to trust the bullshitter when he talks about medicines

as it is when he ialks about government policies.

US TikTok deal explained

Americans had a moral panic about how the Chinese government could

snoop on their private lives through TikTok.

Surveillance of what you watch is a real danger, but if you live in

the United States, the biggest surveillance threat is from repressive

US politicians. I expect that this deal will enable to get at records

of who uses TikTok and what each user watched.

Safe painkiller during pregnancy

Explaining why evidence argues that acetaminophen (tylenol) does not

cause asperger's syndrome, but that rather genes that make women more

likely to need a painkiller during pregnancy also make

asperger's syndrome a little bit more likely

— whether they use acetaminophen or not.

In any case, the effect is so small mdash; 0.2% of the babies they have —

that one shouldn't worry about it.

Copenhagen drone incursion

An unidentified drone flying near Copenhagen airport compelled it

to shut down.

One can suspect it was done by the Putin forces, but that is not certain.

It is legitimate to knock down a drone which is doing that, regardless

of who is controlling it. The question is whether there is a safe

enough method to use. Could it be possible to develop a net of metal

cables to catch a drone in and pull it away? This could be deployed

by a heaver and more powerful drone, or drones, that would not have

far to travel.

Rabble-rousing

* Rabble-rousing of far-right demagogues is a reminder that the battle

for a fair and habitable planet cannot be fought alone.*

Myka Sanders’ gender identity

Here's an example of the messed-up English prose that results

when people use plural pronouns for individuals:

They said if they had the opportunity to use their correct pronouns, it would “feel like the first time” they could “properly breathe out” since they had started working at the school.

How many individuals or groups are being referred to in that sentence?

I willingly use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to a person of

non-binary gender, but I do it with singular gender-neutral pronouns

when the referent is one person. They are person (perse for short), per, and pers.

American economic system no longer failing by accident

*The American economic system is no longer failing by accident; it is succeeding at its new design: concentrating wealth and power for the few while dismantling the foundations of a dignified life for the many.*

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More than a quarter million people displaced from Gaza City

*More than a quarter of a million people displaced from Gaza City in past month, UN figures show.*

This is, in itself, an enormous atrocity.

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Judges rule against deporting Guatemalan minors and Venezuelans

*Judges rule against Trump administration on deporting Guatemalan [minors] and Venezuelans.*

Using the word "children" to describe the Guatemalans protected by this decision fails to express its full scope. It protects Guatemalan minors who are adolescents as well as Guatemalan minors who are children.

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Bill to prohibit medical corporations buying independent clinics

Democrats in Congress have introduced a bill to prohibit giant medical corporations from buying independent clinics.

It ought to prevent mergers too, perhaps by setting a maximum total turnover for any one medical organization.

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LA protester found not guilty of assaulting border patrol agent

*Jury finds LA protester not guilty of assaulting border patrol agent.* It seems the jury did not trust the testimony against the protester.

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Do you go to a clinic which urges you to sign up for Mychart?

Do you go to a clinic which urges you to sign up for Mychart? If so, it is already mistreating you by making you run nonfree software. But the developer, Epic, wants to do worse: lead users to sign away their right to sue if Epic misuses or leaks their personal medical data.

The old terms and conditions were already unacceptable in my view, and so was running nonfree software, so I never did sign up. But if you did in the past, this should be the point at which you won't stand for any more.

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Bully filed frivolous lawsuit against New York Times

The bully has filed a frivolous lawsuit against the New York Times demanding 16 billion dollars damages for publishing things he did not like.

I say "frivolous" because lawyers say he has no valid grounds and can't win in a fair trial. The point, however, is to ensure it can't be fair.

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Deportation thugs find people by subpoenas for data

The deportation thugs often find people by subpoenas for data from dis-services that the targets are dependent on. This included graduate students with visas, who were accused of the non-crime of speaking up for Palestinians' lives and rights.

In the early years of the century I learned about the listening and tracking capabilities of portable phones, and concluded people should refuse to carry these surveillance devices. So that's what I have done.

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Convincing evidence Israel has committed genocide

The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel has published convincing evidence to show that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and its leaders did that intentionally.

This article goes through the case, describing the kinds of evidence and how they relate to the genocide treaty.

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Therapy sessions given to bullshit generators

Psychotherapists are invited to give recordings of therapy sessions to a bullshit generator service to summarize them. They must agree to give the company a "non-exclusive, transferable, assignable, perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide license" to patients’ anonymized therapy sessions.

With so much data to work with, I expect that these recordings will often be deanonymized.

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MSNBC strict standard to staff critical of Charles Kirk

MSNBC is applying a ridiculously strict standard to staff that post criticizing Charles Kirk for his politics.

I have a suspicion that MSNBC is not applying the same strictness to statements that support the bully. But I don't watch MSNBC (I don't have a cable hookup since they use DRM and track people), so I don't really know.

Does anyone know first hand if this is true?

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People arrested in UK for projecting Epstein and bully images

The UK has arrested people for projecting large images of the bully and Epstein. This is outrageous censorship.

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(satire) Nonthreatening Eunuch Driver

(satire) *New Uber Feature Allows Women To Request Nonthreatening Eunuch Driver.*

(satire) To make this work, Uber contracted to Google the development of an app to recognize automatically whether a driver is a eunuch. Reports say that it got confused when first used by women drivers, because it had not encountered any in its training.

(serious) Why not to do business with Uber.

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The Israeli army is attacking Gaza City

The Israeli army is attacking Gaza City, apparently trying to force out the million civilians living there.

The army says that HAMAS is using apartment buildings for "surveillance", and has bombed some of those buildings to destroy them. Based on this logic, the army might bomb every tall building in Gaza City with the large bombs that the US is providing.

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Lab tests confirm Navalny was poisoned

*Widow of Alexei Navalny says lab tests confirm he was poisoned in prison.*

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UK "trade deal"

The UK just agreed to a "trade deal" in which computing megacorporations made a "commitment" to invest large sums in the UK, including the construction of hypothetical future small nuclear reactors a decade or two from now.

In effect, the deal gives the UK a promise to implement lots of malicious technology (bullshit generators and computer chips whose instruction sets are secret) along with the risks and wastes of a new type of nuclear reactor (instead of renewable generators).

It is possible that these "commitments" to impose problems will not be carried out.

When a big company makes a "commitment" for future investment, it can break that commitment later after receiving the benefit it already received "in exchange". Corporations have no consciences and are happy to swindle states and their workers if they can't be punished. This is why I proposed that the 50 states should form a union so as to replace their negotiations over tax breaks for "investors" with collective bargaining.

It is not clear to me what benefit the companies are getting in exchange for this "commitment". If it is nothing other than the profit they might later get from these investments, why call it a "deal"?

I suspect that the benefit they got is a change in policies, this year — that the UK government dropped some important objections to some of what the companies plan to do there. If so, they have already received their side of the deal, and if they later invest less than they "promised", it will be impossible to take back what they were given.

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European Commission calls for freezing of free trade with Israel

*European Commission calls for freezing of free trade with Israel over Gaza.*

It seems there is no guarantee that a majority of EU countries will vote in favor of this.

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Ratio of right-wing to left-wing domestic attacks

A US government investigation determined that domestic right-wing extremists had committed, since 1990, over 200 violent attacks and killed over 520 people, since 1990. In the same period, left-wing extremists had committed 42 attacks and killed 78 people.

This disagreed with the persecutor's official propaganda line, so the Department of "Justice" deleted it. But it is available on the Internet Archive so you can see the facts that the bully wishes to suppress.

Unofficial political violence seems to be decreasing this year. Maybe the unofficial right-wing thugs have decided that the official masked right-wing thugs are doing enough persecution.

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Future in which Israel is economically isolated

Netanyahu is planning for a future in which Israel is economically isolated.

I think that is lunacy — that it will push Israeli business into opposition and that he will lose power. But we can't be certain.

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Improperly issued subpoena

The persecutor's agents are using an improperly issued subpoena to try

to identify the person who published the identity of agents of the

secret police, who were marauding near Los Angeles.

How the nation is turning on Trump

Robert Reich: A massive boycott of Disney (owner of ABC) and its

subsidiary HULU made Disney decide to put Jimmy Kimmel back on TV.

Populist right and the image of Dubai

*Dubai presents the hard-right vision of utopia: a place stripped of

workers’ protections or the right to protest, a place of pure

environmental dereliction, a place where everyone drives everywhere, a

place where the queer and the gender-fluid are told from birth that

they simply do not exist, a place where citizenship is defined along

narrow ethnic lines and everyone else is there on sufferance, where the

super-rich and well-connected can simply do and consume as they please.

A place where the poor are simply cleared out of sight.

But of course, the poor do exist in Dubai. They live in often squalid

camps on the baking peripheries of the city, working long hours for low

wages with no protections, indentured if not always by law then by

circumstance. Migrant workers [110]form almost 90% of the UAE

population, most from south Asia or the Philippines. And unlike the

small and gilded class of native Emiratis who enjoy free healthcare and

a generous welfare state, they must toil unquestioningly in a system

engineered to embed their subservience.*

Antoinette Lattouf's unlawful termination

*ABC ordered to pay Antoinette Lattouf another $150,000 for unlawful

termination over Gaza Instagram post.*

This is the operation of a system intended to preserve freedom of the press.

Under ordinary circumstances, a media outlet would hesitate to fire someone

for invalid reasons knowing that it would probably face such a penalty.

But a company faced with enormous threats wielded by fascist officials

who demand that certain views be suppressed will treat such penalties

as the normal cost of sucking up.

US border patrol collected DNA

The US border thugs sometimes collect DNA samples of US citizens

without legal grounds to do so.

These DNA sequences go into a permanent database.