PROJET AUTOBLOG


Richard Stallman's Political Notes

Site original : Richard Stallman's Political Notes

⇐ retour index

Pardoning

jeudi 28 novembre 2019 à 01:00

Should Congress investigate the conman's practice of pardoning military personnel convicted of war crimes as possible grounds for impeachment?

Pardoning them was wrong — war crimes call for punishment, and the US usually fails to try the perpetrators.

Whether a politically controversial pardon should be grounds for impeachment is a different question. I think a president ought to pardon whistleblowers and journalists, including Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. That too is politically controversial. Should a president be impeached for pardoning them?

Should Governor Altgeld have been impeached for pardoning the union leaders wrongly convicted of the Haymarket bombing? (Their "trial" didn't try to prove they had anything to do with it.) He was quite unpopular after pardoning them, but the act was not treated a crime.

Black Friday

jeudi 28 novembre 2019 à 01:00

A survey found that Black Friday is almost all phony, in the UK at least. 95% of the deals do not really offer a specially low price.

There is a deeper fault in Black Friday: it focuses people's attention on yearning to buy things they surely don't need. Some of the things may be of actual use, and I wouldn't say nobody should buy any of them. (Though some of them are full of proprietary malware which may spy on users, or restrict them with DRM, and nobody should buy those.) However, even if there is nothing immoral about a particular product, and it is of some use, you should not let yourself be manipulated so by sales campaigns.

President's aide must testify

jeudi 28 novembre 2019 à 01:00

A judge ruled in clear and strong terms that the president's aides must testify to Congress under subpoena.

Will the Republican-appointed judges on the Supreme Court heed this obvious principle, or will they fabricate an excuse to protect the bullshitter?

Labour and suffering

jeudi 28 novembre 2019 à 01:00

Corbyn and the Labour Party plan to tackle Tory-imposed suffering firmly and thoroughly.

The cost will not be exorbitant. Other countries' examples show that businesses and rich people will have no trouble paying for this.

Corruption

jeudi 28 novembre 2019 à 01:00

Senator Warren called the conman's secret meeting with Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel "corruption". This is correct.

This may well be corruption in the narrowest moral sense; campaign funds from the rich are effectively bribes. However, there is a broader sense of corruption: even in the absence of an outright bribe, the power of the rich corrupts Democracy. This meeting is certainly a part of that.