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RMS Protest Song On Gitmo
An anonymous reader tipped us to a protest song RMS has written and recorded (while visiting Cuba) and is hosting on stallman.org. It's a sort of parody, although it's too serious really to be called that, in Spanish of the song "Guantanamera," in which a Gitmo prisoner talks about his experiences and mourns his fate. RMS wrote the lyrics in 2006 after learning what "Guantanamera" actually means. The lyrics are moving, and the recording, in Ogg, is competent — RMS sings well and he's got some amateur musicians from Cuba backing him up. Here are the lyrics and an English translation.
First the visit to Cuba (bitch and moan about the embargo how much you want, folks, but it's NOT a democratic and free country), now this?
Why hasn't Stallman said anything about other non democratic countries that treat people even worse? Like Cuba, or China, for example. Because they use free software so they're "friends"? What a lame hypocrite. I'm glad the whole Free Software movement is not like him.
I openly despise such a raving fanatic, that I thought had sunk already low with his babbling mention of "liberating everyone in the cyberspace" (don't have the link at hand, but it's on Groklaw).
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
Yes, the level of obliviousness is amazing.
Stall visits an island, run by a homicidel dictator, that most native people
are trying to escape in whatever (non)sea-worthy craft they can create.
He then "protests" about a detention facility which provides halal food, Korans wrapped in plastic, delivered by glove wearing guards (so the Koran will not be "defiled" by the "infidel") are provided to the "prisoners".
Meanwhile,in Pakistan, a 12 year old jihadist sawed of the head of a "spy".
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/ap_on_re_as/p
Will Stall go to the scene to protest this atrocity? I think not. It might require actual being in a danger zone.
Wanker.
He then "protests" about a detention facility which provides halal food, Korans wrapped in plastic, delivered by glove wearing guards (so the Koran will not be "defiled" by the "infidel") are provided to the "prisoners".
Of course this same detention center is keeping these people against their will without any kind of means to challenge their incarceration. Plus water boarding and sleep deprivation don't sound all that pleasant and most would call this kind of treatment torture.
Yes the regime in Cuba does terrible things to its citizenry and is one the world could do without. This, however, does not mean that RMS is "oblivious" in protesting the plight of these inmates at the hands of a country that is suppose to be above such practices. Likewise, his not going into a "danger-zone" to observe other deplorable acts for which to create a protest song about does not discredit what he has written about the prisoners in Cuba.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
So, RMS becomes Castro's latest "useful idiot".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There is a reason why family members of some victim, specially ones with a common axe to grind and a sympathetic audience, are not reliable witnesses in court.
But then again I am sure you would extend the same type of welcoming attitude to Palestinians with the same stories, except featuring Israel instad of Cuba as the villain, also based merely on the word of "family members", right?
Most of the political attrocities in the USSR occured in the period of 1930s-1960s. Very few of the more recent horror stories actually turned out to be true. Most were bogus tales concocted in hopes of gaining importance, political power, influence and ultimately money by the so-called "dissidents" in the West. A situation which sadly repeated itself with Iraq, to much more disastrous consequence. Think Russian versions of Ahmed Chelabi.
None of which corraborate what the GP is saying.
Because the *real* reason they give people OGG is so, when those people come back and say "I can't play this," they can give a long, boring lecture about how evil proprietary software and formats are. If they just used ACC, it'd work a lot more often and they wouldn't be able to give the lecture. Incidentally, this is also why open source users have so few friends. :)
Comment of the year
So the Isralies were justified in taking Palestinian land by force because....
Clever, very clever, but I'm sure you know as well as I do that the Jews bought the land they live on, over a period of many years before declaring their independence. Many Arabs fled Israel when Israel was attacked, in no small part because the Arab kings and other thugs running the countries all around Israel told them that they'd be considered traitors if they stayed.
There were also a lot of Jewish refugees who fled Arab countries, and unlike the Arabs, the Jews settled them instead of keeping them in squalid camps as a sympathy ploy.
How does the fact that Arabs killing each other absolve Israel's undeniable, verifiable crimes against the Palestinians?
Ooh, you're really good at those questions, Mr. Goebbels. The trouble is, you're ignoring the fact that when IDF troops commit crimes, they actually get tried and punished by Israeli courts. Care to fill us in on the last time an Arab was prosecuted by his own country for committing a crime against a Jew?
BTW, which "undeniable, verifiable" crimes are you talking about? Staged explosions on beaches in Gaza that turn out to be hoaxes don't count, you know.
Your whole point seems to be that Arabs kill each other all the time - so Israel killing some more is no big deal.
Nope. My point is that the palestinians' misery is due primarily to two things: their vicious, insane leaders starting with Arafat and continuing with Hamas, and the other Arabs prodding them to continuously wage a war they can't win. Arafat pissed away their best chance at peace, because he was afraid that if he actually had to run a country, someone might ask him where all the money went.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
you americans think you are free? here in the UK . . .
You're in the UK? The country whose prime minister sucks Bush's dick? Go outside and wave at the police cameras you retarded limey.
Say what you want about my country, but I already KNOW that it's a police state. You're so deluded that you think the UK is better?
Get real. You're the 51st state. The only difference is that you're money has a bitch printed on it and you talk like there's a turd in your mouth. Other than that, you're in the same boat.
Nothing of the sort. Mutliple White House, Pentagon and DOJ officials went on air to bloviate about the Geneva Provisions being quaint and pontificate on virtues of water-boarding and "stress positions". Following which the DOJ concocted letters advising the president that somehow torture was acceptable when applied by the "unitary executive". Etc and so on for years on end.
And then of course Abu Ghraib happened and the last shreds of credibility of the admistration/Pentagon/CIA/Haliburton "contractors" flew right out of the window.
Again, multiple officials discussed waterboarding on TV no less.
The White House officials, including Cheney have been caught in so many lies, flip-flops and "misstatements" that it is beyond comical to try to use one them to indicate "firmness" of any policy on their part. Unfortunately they did manage in their dodging and weaving to project a general image of ruthlessness and "ends justify the means", a state of affairs wich was applauded laudly by the whole right-wing punditosphere. No weasling out of this one now.
You are quite amusing. That is not only an endorsment it is an acknowldgment of an official policy of torture!
Let me translate it from faux-journalist-lackey-groveling-before-his-master speak:
Q: It is a no-brainer to me to torture people using water as long as it is some worthless brown bastard being drowned on an odd chance to save lives of us important Americans, do you agree?
Note that this is how that question really sounds to anyone who understands the context. The question is specially crafted to downplay the significance of torture by calling it "dunking in water" and tries to imply that such a thing would only happen to "save lives" -- American lives implicitely -- while the torturee is of course, also implicitely, a "raghead". All that before Cheyney has even a chance to open his mouth. Not bad for a court-servant "journalist".
Yes we do torture to 'save' all-important Americans ...
But we cannot use the word "torture" to describe it. It is a loaded word with all sorts of connotations and we must make sure that it is not used to describe what we do. Of course any sane person will know that waterboarding and torture are one and the same but as long as we keep the pretense and cleverly word our replies, our base will know the truth and agree while we
Hey dumbass, here's a conundrum for you: why the fuck would anybody else bother to create an independent implementation when the one the Xiph people made already exists, works perfectly well, and is free in both senses of the word? Maybe you're stupid enough to waste your time doing something like that, but the rest of the world isn't.
Having only one implementation doesn't make the thing "proprietary," except perhaps in your twisted little mind!
http://www.webster.com/dictionary/proprietaryAll works regardless of license are copyright of the original authors and no license can revoke/modify the rights of the original author. They can only grant rights to others. Without a complete specification, the BSD code will not help someone much if they need to implement the codec in silicon via an FPGA.
While this original authors of OGG may claim that they did not copy code, having a specification to implement a decoder using clean room techniques can help protect manufacturers from potential copyright infringement suits if it turns out that one of the programmers did copy someone's code "accidentally".
PS. Calling someone you don't know from Adam a "dumbass" makes you look pretty stupid asshole.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.