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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.
"it is totally legal to visit Cuba (up to X times per year, [IIRC X is one])"
You know, having grown up in an Eastern Block country where a symptom of the dictatorship we had was that we were allowed to go to the "West" only once in every four yours, I find this limit in the "Land of Free" totally hilarious (and, on the other hand, totally sad).
Real life is overrated.
Eh? If you don't approve of the Guantanamo detentions, it means you like communism?? What kind of bizarre logic is that?
Look, I don't approve of the Guantanamo detentions, or the war in Iraq. I also happen to think that Fidel Castro is a raging deluded asshole, yet I also think that the embargo on Cuba is embarrassingly stupid and should stop.
And I didn't see anything at that website that indicated that RMS had actually visited Cuba, but speaking of that, it's also bizarre that an American citizen cannot go wherever the hell he pleases whenever he pleases.
He should stick to what he's good at, writing software.
Next you're going to say country music singers should just shut up and sing.
It's bullshit. Being good at something does not take away your right to hold or express political views.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
One of the things that separate civilization from barbary is that we, generally, try to play fair -EVEN- with those people who would not extend the same courtesy to us.
Yeah, the human-rigths situation is (much) worse in Pakistan than it is USA, and on US-run detention-centres. That make you particularily proud ? Your ambition is to beat Pakistan, so aslong as you're ahead of them, you're a happy camper ?
The fact that the United States is playing international law games in order to facilitate the holding of prisoners indefinitely without trial is something that no US citizen should consider even slightly acceptable. The United States was founded on the ideal of freedom, and the founders thought that the issue of imprisonment without trial was so important that they dedicated an item to it in the Bill of Rights.
If other countries want to torture their prisoners that's bad. But for the United States to hold prisoners indefinitely in the name of defending the country - that makes a mockery of the very values that make the country worth defending at all.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Translation: EEUU is Spanish for The US.
Indeed you're right. The US has sabotaged its own good name and goodwill over and over again. And they just keep at it, over and over, again and again.
The most stunning example of this is how they gained sympathy all over the world after 9/11 and then somehow managed to squander it all in a few months, simply by showing an astonishingly bullying attitude rather than looking for co-operation regarding the Iraq war.
They had such amazing goodwill and sympathy, even in Islamic countries. Sadly, their propaganda machine refused to portray this goodwill, preferring to stir up conflict. But outside the US and its propaganda machine there was so much goodwill, it felt like some kind of world-wide friendship among nations was growing forth. So many past mistakes were being forgiven.
And yet somehow they managed to squander almost all of this in just a few months, by showing an amazingly bullying attitude and disdainfully neglecting all the persistent warnings about the chaos and surging terrorism that would unavoidably ensue if they went forth with their Iraq adventure.
*Sigh!* For a while it looked so promising!
I suppose their war industry didn't like that promising outlook.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.