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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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MP Rosena Allin-Khan

mardi 6 août 2019 à 02:00

Trolls attacked MP Rosena Allin-Khan for trying to convince Israel to let Gazan parents of sick children getting medical care in Israel to visit their children.

MP Allin-Khan describes the abuse as "antisemitic", but what I see in the examples quoted is condemnation of Israel rather than anti-semitism as such. I agree, however, that these examples were unjustified exaggeration. Her attempts to convince Israel to loosen some of the restrictions of the occupation is not support for the occupation.

It is one thing to say that a small step is not a full solution to a problem. It is another to say that the small step is bad. We should make sure campaigns for small steps don't distract us from advocating a full solution, but that doesn't require condemning them.

EU refugee agreement

mardi 6 août 2019 à 02:00

An EU agreement provides for southern coastal countries to receive refugees who will be distributed to other EU countries.

Freezing ovarian tissue

mardi 6 août 2019 à 02:00

Freezing ovarian tissue and reimplanting it later could enable women to delay menopause for decades.

I hope this won't require them to actually menstruate. I also hope it won't lead to more births.

Tick populations

mardi 6 août 2019 à 02:00

Global heating helps tick populations grow, and this makes Lyme disease more prevalent.

Conjoined daughters

mardi 6 août 2019 à 02:00

A father plans to let his two conjoined daughters die rather than approve an operation that would probably save one of them.

This is a real-life variant of the trolley problem, with a crucial difference: in this case there was time to study the issue carefully and establish with near certainty what each choice would lead to before making the decision. He cannot rationally deny that his choice of "do nothing" means death for both of daughters.

His choice is a form of moral cowardice. The kind of cowardice that makes someone lose a tooth rather than get a filling. The kind of cowardice that makes someone die of late-stage cancer rather than get early treatment and survive. So even though I empathize with his distress at the need to choose between horrible and doubly horrible, I can't excuse his decision. The daughters deserve life. If you can't save both, at least save one.

I don't think that we should be more concerned about the couple because they have four other children. Having so many is a bad thing to do, but it has no effect on the issue of saving these daughters.