muckrights-sans-merde
bonum fabula frat
### credit-where-credit-is-due-even-to-muckrights
*originally posted:* may 2021
i realise that the title itself and some of whats said here, may on the surface appear to contradict a previous article. i dont think that it does, as that article was intended generally and this notes an exception. either way, im aware of the potential appearance of contradiction.
i dont like the (main) author of muckrights-- i think hes a compulsive liar who (literally) gets a thrill from manipulating people. which never means that everything muckrights says is a lie; its a lot easier to tell lies if you tell a bunch of true things first. politicians do that all the time.
with that said, there are actually two things muckrights is brave enough to cover that i dont spend time or focus on: government spooks, and bill gates and the weird people he associates with. but if i respect anything muckrights does at this point, its having the guts to post and repost on those subjects.
its not that i approve of mass spying-- im a huge fan of william binney, and im glad there are people like julian assange and edward snowden and chelsea manning in the world. im glad people talk about these things online, and ive certainly spent time on those subjects now and then. these issues ARE relevant to software freedom, indeed, but i talk about the software freedom aspects more and those are my focus.
you can say muckrights is brave to do that if you want-- im not saying this to be nice, im certainly not saying it as a fan (muckrights still lies, uses people and misleads the public on important issues) but i hope to clarify my stance on these topics.
i may not approve of a lot of what muckrights does, but there are connections implied by muckrights that are worth exploring. im not against them exploring that, nor am i against other people doing that.
while i DONT think its a waste of time to cover those subjects, my personal preference (you can even call it a bias if you like, though imo it doesnt explain why i approve of other people-- even those i disapprove of in more general terms-- covering these topics at length) is to cover free software closer to the topic of free software, and the politics more immediately tied to that software. i may make exceptions to this of course, im talking about the general scope of what i do.
these other things are indeed also important and relevant, in a way. for example, i find the timing of the stallman ousting just as suspect as muckrights does. its a point (one of many) that we agree on. in fact at one point, sometime in december or january, i believe ron started to exaggerate the number of things we disagree on-- things he used to agree with but now has "moved" more to one side or away from his original position. i think painting that as disagreement (particularly without mentioning positions he had held until fairly recently) rather than his own change (even waffling) of position is somewhat dishonest and unfair.
its this if-by-muckrights approach that i protest with ferocity. ron is a waffling yes man, and hes like that to get more of what he wants from people.
and its not to say there was ever a time that we agreed on everything-- because who does? at this point im quite certain the number of disagreements has grown more recently, but that happens when one or two parties change their positions-- or the strength of their stance on one thing or another.
at any rate, there are lots of people who like to focus on these connections more, and i applaud them for doing so-- from assange to greenwald to individual bloggers who spread knowledge about these injustices.
ultimately, anybody who governs through terror and mass surveillance has violated any agreement that LENDS them the authority which which to govern. and without that agreement, they never had the right to govern in the first place. a government that bullies its citizens (or its neighbours) with a contrived excuse of "defence"-- and ceases to be a true servant of the people, is the very worst sort of terrorist.
i have processed most of 2013 (and the years before it), and 2013 is the year that muckrights really gets into these topics, coinciding with the first leak from edward snowden.
my hope for humanity in general is that it will continue to reject and work to mitigate technology that assists mass surveillance, just as hypocrite mark zuckerberg covers his laptop camera with tape. although i may not talk about those topics in the same level of detail that muckrights does, i strongly support the broader goal of everyone having control over their computing-- it is the true meaning of free software. that means also that you have control over whether your computing spies on you-- regardless of whether it is the government doing it through mandatory applications, or the proprietary gsm stack on your phone, or through laws made to give immunity to corporations that help to bypass constitutional protections from surveillance.
control of your computing means privacy too-- and while perfect privacy may remain a goal (like freedom) which is forever worth striving for (one requiring "eternal vigilance") the lack of it also proves that we have a long way to go towards having control of our computing. my own coverage of such topics is less direct, more abstract-- but it is most certainly an important discussion.
my feelings about bill gates as a person are very similar. hes not a person i focus on, but imo hes probably one of the worst people alive today-- not for any one particular reason, but for a long and growing list of reasons that so many people are talking about openly. and i applaud their doing so-- even when muckrights does it. for all the things i say about them in disapproval, this is one thing they do which i truly cannot help but approve of. to say otherwise would be a lie, against a cause i already think matters.
=> https://muckrights-sans-merde.neocities.org