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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Ebola resurgence

lundi 15 juin 2015 à 14:00

Ebola has resurged in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

You're not safe until it's 100% over. And not even entirely then; men who have recovered must use condoms for months to avoid passing on the virus.

Human population growth

lundi 15 juin 2015 à 14:00

A town in Portugal has started paying substantial bonuses for having a baby.

Spain has a similar policy. The satirical magazine El Jueves was fined for publishing a cartoon showing the then crown prince (now king) having sex with his wife and saying, "This is the closest thing to working that I've done in my whole life."

Some countries, such as Iran, try to force women to have more babies by making birth control harder to get.

In a world where human population growth combines with global heating to threaten the survival of civilization, any policy to promote births is suicidal insanity.

That town is not special. To keep that town in existence is not important enough to justify taking any extra risk.

Correcting wrongful convictions

lundi 15 juin 2015 à 14:00

Students at Cardiff University exonerated a real murder conviction, enabling a wrongly convicted man to go free. Now the group is working on another case.

It is good to correct these mistakes, but there are so many mistakes that we need to look at correcting the systems that so often produce them.

"Free trade" working conditions

lundi 15 juin 2015 à 14:00

Rosa Moreno lost both her hands in an industrial accident, working for a contractor for a multinational brand. She was lucky to get help to sue for compensation, but lost the suit on a technicality.

Ms Moreno is not entirely innocent. Lacking a sure income, she did wrong to have six children. Indeed, it is wrong for anyone to have six children. But that is a separate issue and in no way justifies the way she has been treated after her injury, nor the dangerous conditions maintained at her workplace.

This is what "free trade" does: it enables the multinational to make countries compete to attract production by allowing the worst possible working conditions and workers' rights.

If Mexico had had a real compensation system for accidents at work, the company would have maintained Machine 19 carefully and followed proper safety procedures, and this accident would probably not have happened.

That is the basic reason why we must get rid of those treaties. We must require companies to situate their production somewhere and leave it there, so that governments will respond to public pressure to start protecting workers' rights.

Incompetence of the TSA

lundi 15 juin 2015 à 14:00

The persistent incompetence of the TSA, combined with the complete absence of attacks on US airliners, shows that we don't need so much effort at airline security.