Showing posts with label rt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rt. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Remembrance: Red Army’s role in liberating Europe
RTD | RTD | Remembrance. Rewriting history: Red Army’s role in liberating Europe censored in the West
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
RT: Cell Phones & Child Brains
RT:My name's Daniel Bushell. Class action lawsuits filed against cell phone manufacturers. Coming up…
Announcer:
Insurers refuse public liability for cell phone use.
The warning buried deep inside your mobile.
And the next 'casualty catastrophe' after tobacco and asbestos.
Keith Philips, brain tumor survivor: I would hold my cell phone here and the tumor was right there.
Stuart Cobb, brain tumor survivor: I always held it on my right side, right here. The industry should have put these warnings on these phones a long time ago.
RT:Professor Dariusz Leszczynski is one of the world's leading radiation biologists, and brave. He knew phone manufacturers would try to end his career for printing groundbreaking research, proving cell phones do cause biological damage.
Professor Leszczynski joins us, great to see you. How did the industry react?
Prof. Dariusz Leszczynski, Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Finland:So far I think I didn’t experience any smear campaign. But in my case it was just that the industry used their influence to prevent funding of my research projects.
RT:But studies like Professor Leszczynski’s now allow top neurosurgeons to issue a stark cell phone warning.
Dr. Keith Black, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center neurosurgeon: It's essentially cooking the brain.
RT:Ellie Marks' husband Alan suffered serious memory loss after years of using a mobile.
At 2am one night he had a massive seizure. Surgeons found a tumor the size of a golf ball right where he held the phone.
Ellie, thank you so much for joining us. Why are you and so many others suing the industry?
Ellie Marks, wife of brain tumor victim:There’s many many many others that are already deceased from this and are dying from this, younger than my husband. Some as young as 28 who are deceased and their neurosurgeons actually told them that it was probably their cell phone use.
We had about 20 cities and states that wanted to legislate as San Francisco had and they were all threatened with lawsuits by this industry.
RT:This is a photo of Bret Bocook's brain. The top quarter responsible for body balance has had to be removed after surgeons found this vast tumor right where he held the phone.
A US national rowing champion, now he can barely move.
Bret, great to speak to you, tell us about the class action lawsuit against the phone industry.
Bret Bocook, brain tumor victim:The only way you can educate the public against big business is through lawsuits. That was how they did it with smoking. It was not until the District Attorneys in the United States got involved and sued the cigarette industry that they actually had a huge settlement, had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for public education as to the dangers of smoking.
That’s what’s going to happen with cell phones. It’s just unequivocal categorical that these things cause cancer. And also, they don’t want you to know that.
This is on the same trajectory as smoking. Because if you look at smoking in the '60s they had doctors coming on TV and saying 'Hey, smoke Marlboro, smoke this brand, because it's good for your cough.'
Camel cigarette commercial: And see how well Camels agree with your throat!
The Flintstones cigarette commercial: Winston, America's best selling best tasting filtered cigarette!
Bret Bocook, brain tumor victim: And more dangerous for children, because their skulls are a lot thinner. At least you can’t buy cigarettes unless you’re 18. But even a five-year-old can go and buy a phone.
RT:For phone manufacturers young children are targets. There are now working cell phones even for babies.
PCMag phone review: The glowPhone is for kids maybe five to eight and the flyPhone is for tweens.
RT:Samantha Miller's funeral was on her 18thbirthday.
Phone use through childhood first gave her headaches, reports the Daily Mail, then the brain tumor that killed her.
In the West, brain tumors have overtaken leukemia, notes Senator Lyn Allison, as the number one child killer illness.
But doctors warn that's the tip of the iceberg.
Clinical studies find young men who keep phones in their pockets have much lower chances of producing offspring, while women often store them on their chest.
Tiffany Frantz, breast cancer victim: I would just tuck it right into my bra.
RT:Tiffany Frantz got breast cancer aged just 21, right where since childhood she's stored her phone.
These spots mark the areas of Donna Jaynes' cancer. Her doctors call this a ‘new breed of distribution’ that exactly matches where women keep their phone.
Dr. John West, Chairman, Breast Care Center:It’s a very unusual pattern where these multiple small cancers were confined to the upper inner aspect of the breast, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.
RT:This is a radiation detector, in normal surroundings around 30 microvolts/meter (µV/m).
Microwave ovens reach 800 µV/m. Wi-Fi routers use the same radiation technology.
Loading a film on a tablet PC reaches 2,000 µV/m.
Some of the world's best selling smartphones register over a thousand times above normal levels.
Insurers have in fact stopped covering cell phone manufacturers for public health.
Insurance firms privately call cell phones the next public ‘casualty catastrophe’ after asbestos and cigarettes.
Phone manufacturers have now quietly inserted a legal disclaimer.
On iPhones you have to go to Settings, General, About, at the bottom scroll down to Legal and at the end – RF Exposure, Radiofrequency Exposure.
Unlike most pages, the small print here can't be enlarged, but it reads: ‘Carry iPhone at least 10mm away from your body’
At the same time the industry says all its studies show phones are perfectly safe.
Thomas Wheeler, CTIA phone lobby head:Radio waves from cellular phones are safe.
RT:A 'conflict of interest' Harvard ethics professor Lawrence Lessig calls industry paid studies, which consistently conclude phone radiation is harmless.
Independent scientists meanwhile overwhelmingly find the most serious problems, from DNA damage to three times lower sperm counts, 290% more brain tumors, autism and birth defects.
Former senior White House advisor and leading epidemiologist Dr. Devra Davis has testified to Senate on the subject she joins us, great to see you.
How do you explain the completely opposite findings between industry and independent studies?
Dr. Devra Davis, author of Disconnect: Anytime there was independent research, what industry would do was three things: first they would go attack the scientists who have done the studies, they would try to get them fired, they’d try to get their funding taken away or they would accuse them of fraud.
When that didn’t work they hired other scientists who knew nothing about the field to do studies that looked like they were replicating the other studies but they really weren't.
And when all of those things failed, they wrote a memo in which they said if the cellular industry has done its job we think we war-gamed the science. That’s a quote - ‘war-gamed’ the science. Now science is not a matter of war, and it’s not a matter of games; we’re deadly serious about our health and that of our children.
RT:War-gaming, reveals this leaked Motorola document, is industry paid studies purely for reassuring the public.
Norman Sandler, Motorola: We have sufficiently war-gamed the issue.
RT:A sting has exposed how easy to get phoney studies in print.
Posing as a serious scientist, John Bohannon sent in a paper full of schoolboy errors, offering payment for publication.
Incredibly more than half the journals in these countries all around the world published it, even lying to the public that the study had been peer reviewed.
Investigative journalist Anthony Gucciardi has broken numerous health scandals, great to see you.
Surely big business wouldn't fake studies to put millions of lives at risk. Do we have documented precedents?
Anthony Gucciardi, Storyleak editor: This is exactly like Eli Lilly which in the 1980s knew that Prozac was leading to suicides and aggressive behavior, the exact opposite effect ofwhat they wanted. They knew that in the 1980s after they conducted the research. They hid the research and it wasn’t exposed until 2005 from the BBC.
But then they would have their corporate interests do studies and talk about how great it was. Now of course they’re required to admit that antidepressants do cause suicide, aggressive behavior, pretty much every shooter is on them.
When these cell phone companies are forced to admit that cell phone radiation does cause brain tumors, that it does do all this, and they’re already saying this in their manuals, so it’s already coming up. But once the public is aware of this fact, it will be even worse than antidepressants, it will be even worse than tobacco.
RT:We invited the powerful phone industry lobby CTIA to discuss the issues raised in this report.
They sent this one-line refusal.
CTIA phone industry lobby:Thank you for contacting us, but we will not be able to do this interview.
RT:The industry's most respected journalist is Dr. Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News since 1981.
Louis, great to speak to you, there seems to be a parallel universe of what the industry says and everyone else.
Dr. Louis Slesin, Microwave News editor: The whole system is broken. People are not being told the truth, it's crazy. You know it's easy to say we made a mistake on tobacco after we know that tobacco’s a killer.The point is to take action.
RT:Action IS being taken outside the US.
France is moving schools back from Wi-Fi to cabled Internet.
Countries from Germany to Israel and Finland are moving to stop cell phone sales to kids.
But Obama just made industry chief lobbyist Thomas Wheeler head of the regulator itself, the FCC.
A former administration official calls it another astonishing conflict of interest.
So doctors who want parents at least informed of cell phone dangers to their kids say they aren't holding their breath.
Seek truth from facts. This is The Truthseeker.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Who Has Nukes in the Middle East
RT: Who has nuclear weapons in the Middle East and is threatening to use them. Coming up.
Announcer: Benjamin Netanyahu revealing what he really thinks about America.
The world's top war crimes prosecutor tells us why he helped convict Israel for genocide.
And Wikipedia becomes a battlefield as lobbies try to rewrite history.
RT: The Kuala Lumpur war crimes commission on November 26 found Israel guilty of genocide against the Palestinians. The tribunal states that consistent evidence it heard from eyewitnesses concluded since 1948 there have been:
Mass killings through air and naval strikes, forced expulsion from Israel of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian survivors, massacres of those who refused to leave, and the continued seizure of Palestinian lands for Jewish settlements. Some public roads In Israel itself are for Jews only. Non-white jews are also officially discriminated. Blood banks refuse to accept blood from Ethiopian Jews.
Use against Palestinian civilians of illegal white phosphorus, which the tribunal notes "tears out the insides of human bodies." Land and sea blockades of Palestinian territory, leading to a state of "siege and imprisonment" of the entire nation. Denial of food and drinking water, the stealing of Palestinian water resources, and hundreds of checkpoints on Palestinian lands that create "impossible" conditions of life.
Some see the War Crimes Tribunal as a highly controversial body, and question its authority and legitimacy. We asked Israel's Foreign Ministry for a response. This was their summary:
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Distorting historical reality by calling Israel's actions "crimes" is an insult to intelligence. There is no siege on Gaza, but a naval blockade had been declared in accordance with international law.
RT: However, The Independent reports that top Israeli officials are on the record admitting a premeditated intention.
Rabbi Eli Yishai, former Israeli interior minister: The goal is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages.
Gilad Sharon, IDF reserve forces major and son of ex-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: We need to flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn't stop with Hiroshima, they hit Nagasaki too.
RT: Unaware he's being filmed, Israel's prime minister reveals he wants to inflict "unbearable" pain on Arabs, and claims he's manipulating America.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister: The main thing is to hit the Arabs so painful that it will be unbearable. The world will say we're defending. America is something that can be very easily moved.
RT: Without urgent action, the UN's report finds that Gaza will be "unlivable" by 2020.
Ynet news reports that Israel repeatedly bombs Gaza's only power station.
When treatment plants ran out of fuel last week, thousands of liters of raw sewage again ran in Gaza's streets.
Al Jazeera report: It's not flood waters which this man is struggling to walk through, but human waste and sewage.
Gaza resident: Even our children, if they want to go to school or to the shops, we’re forced to carry them. We've become sick and have trouble breathing and new skin diseases emerging because of this situation.
RT:The past year, says Israeli Defense Force Brigadier Michael Edelstein,"was a great one." Retaliation rocket attacks from Gaza on settlements have stopped, he notes. Yet Israel's reciprocal pledge to help Gaza hasn't been kept, writes The Economist.
The UN's special rapporteur on human rights warns "the world is slouching towards nothing less than a Palestinian Holocaust." Professor Richard Falk thank you very much for joining us. Why is this behavior actually genocidal?
Professor Richard Falk, UN human rights rapporteur: When you target a group, an ethnic group, and inflict this kind of punishment upon them, you are in effect nurturing a kind of criminal intention that is genocidal.
RT: The world's leading war crimes prosecutor helped establish the Genocide Tribunal. Professor Francis Boyle sent President Milosevic to the Hague, he is now working for the creation of the Hague International Criminal Tribunal for Israel.
Professor Boyle, thanks so much for joining us, Israel's now threatened pre-emptive conventional and nuclear strikes on Tehran, what is its legal basis?
Professor Francis Boyle, war crimes prosecutor: Absolutely none. The world court already decided that in the legality of nuclear weapons case that the threat stands on the same footing as the actuality.
'Preventive'or'pre-emptive'warfare was condemned by the NurembergTribunal, but the bottom line is Israel uses its nuclear weapons to terrorize and intimidate the surrounding states in the region, it has nothing to do with defence.
RT: The Guardian reports how close we’ve already come to all-out war.
Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered a'P Plus'alert on Iran's energy facilities in 2010 that would make an Israeli military strike"inevitable." The country's spy chief Meir Dagan notes it was an "illegal move without the authorization of the cabinet," and that Netanyahu was trying to "steal a war."
It's not known what stopped Netanyahu's order being carried out, but it received extremely forceful opposition from two people who were informed - army head Gabi Ashkenazi, and Meir Dagan, who called Netanyahu's plan "the stupidest idea I have ever heard." Both have now left their posts.
Israel's Institute for National Security Studies wargamed precisely the attack ordered by Netanyahu and found two outcomes possible: one - a contained reaction, the other - World War III.
Top saxophonist, producer and author Gilad Atzmon renounced his Jewish religion and Israeli citizenship-the core of Jewish identity, he says, has become racism.
Gilad joins us now it's great to speak to you, why do we keep getting these unprovoked apocalyptic crises?
Gilad Atzmon, author of The Wandering Who?: The more murderous the Israelis are, the more they are horrified that the Palestinians may as well be as murderous as they happen to be. And this is a vicious circle.
RT: Former US Intelligence Estimate Chairman Ray McGovern estimates four in five Americans don't know Israel might even have an atomic bomb, thanks to complete distortions by mainstream media suggesting Iran's the nuclear power.
Fox News report: Iran with their nuclear programme ready to aim those missiles straight at the country.
RT: According to both Jane's Defence Weekly and the Institute of Strategic Studies, Israel's estimated to have 200-300 nuclear warheads.All 16 US intelligence agencies admit Iran's not even trying to build one.
In an article entitled Middle East Pop Quiz syndicated journalist Charley Reese noted simple facts you'd be sure referred to Iran if you relied on mainstream media, when they actually apply to Israel.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting notes absent of any evidence against Iran,mainstream media are now resorting to astonishingly crude racist slurs they'd never dare print about Jews, currently being printed in all seriousness about the entire Persian peoples.
The New York Times claims that "Iran's a land where straight talk and virtue are not widely seen to overlap."
"Persians lie like a rug," smirks The Washington Post.
Investigative journalist and New Yorker contributor Jon Schwarz says we shouldn't be surprised.He found throughout history when officials need the public's support for unprovoked brutality against a weaker victim, they say there's just something fishy about the whole race.
Ex-CIA chief Richard Helms claimed to Congress that "unlike Asiatics[sic]and Eastern Europeans, Americans are raised to tell the truth."
When India refused to join the US in war in Pakistan, President Nixon said it was because all Indians are just "slippery, treacherous people."
James Adair wrote black slavery should remain in place as "savage African nations are cunning and use various artifices and pretexts."
And Native Indians are "naturally given to treachery."
Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak says "Palestinians don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture."
But the top anti-Iranian smear claimed in today's US mainstream is bazaar trickery.
CNN concludes the US-Iran deal must be a "trick in the spirit of the Persian bazaar."
The New York Times solemnly concludes Obama must have been "out negotiated" in the"Persian nuclear bazaar."
"Fooling foreigners is an ancient Persian art form," insists The Washington Post.
Even The Economist magazine, which usually supports US bombing campaigns, from Libya to Syria and Iraq, found it's gone a bit far.
The Economist: Have any of these people tried to negotiate with, say, Mitch McConnell? Somebody has got to put a stop to this whole "Persian bazaar" rhetorical fixation. It's ridiculous, it's ethnically offensive, and its entire purpose is to serve as a smokescreen for disastrously violent policies backed by militarists in Israel and neo-conservatives in America.
RT: Wikipedia is a key battlefield in this war. The Telegraph reports Israeli lobbies building"armies"of editors that rewrite the history books, such as this article on why Palestinians fled Israel. These leaked emails expose the lobby's plans, including infiltration of Wiki's administrators.
CAMERA, pro-Israel lobby: Make relationships with Wikipedia editors and super-editors known as 'administrators.' After we have built our army, we will go to war.
RT: Let's talk with Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar, it’s great to see you. How to explain these coordinated campaigns denigrating an entire ethnic group.
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times correspondent: Obviously they’re being paid, working for the Israeli lobby, paid by their agents in US. It’s very easy to identify these people, especially in the US mainstream media, you know, the usual columnists for Washington Post or the usual people who write op-ed pages for The Wall Street Journal.Fox News, it goes without saying.
RT: Could the deal show Israel's last sponsor America's getting fed up with its behavior?
Escobar: It’s the first time that an American administration’s actually thinking first about US national interests and not trying to do something that would be Israeli first, so this is also a real game changer in terms of US-Israeli relations.
RT: When President Obama was caught with his mic switched on agreeing he can't stand "liar" Benjamin Netanyahu, reports ABC News, there were already signs Israel's losing support from the US.
John Kerry, US secretary of state: The United States has said that they believe the settlements are not helpful and are illegitimate.
RT: America's public censure against Israel's occupation of the West Bank, notes NBC, breaks decades of official tacit approval.
So Prime Minister Netanyahu's claim that he can "move" the United States any direction he likes, no longer seems quite as kosher.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
RT: Richard Stallman
Interview begins at: 1:14
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Our guest today is Doctor Richard Stallman, software freedom activist and programmer, recently inducted into the internet hall of fame, he's joining us live from Brussels. It’s really great to have you with us today, Dr. Stallman.
Richard Stallman:
Thank you.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Now, we know that you don’t own a phone – why is that?
Richard Stallman:
Well, I do have a phone, but it’s not a mobile phone. The reason is. Mobile phones are surveillance and tracking devices. The phone system is constantly finding out where the phone is, and they generally keep a record of this, for months or years – and that information is available to Big Brother, very easily. I consider that oppressive. But it's worse – they can be remotely converted into listening devices, because the software in the phone, even if it’s not a Smartphone – it’s a computer with a software that can be changed remotely, through what’s called a “back door”, which means it receives commands from somebody else to do something, and what this “back door” can do is install software changes without asking the supposed owner of the phone. This has been used to remotely convert them to the listening devices. The book “Murder in Samarkand” by Craig Murray describes one example of this. So, basically, once it’s converted, it listens all the time and it transmits all the time, and if you try to turn it off – well, it doesn’t really turn off, it pretends to be off and continues listening and transmitting. And this is part of why…
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Then what are you using – how do people get in touch with you?
Richard Stallman:
Well, mostly through email. I also have a phone in my office. In cause I am not there, people can phone the free software foundation which will then connect them with me in one way or another – so people do reach me.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
If the NSA wanted to track you down right now – they wouldn’t be able to trace you?
Richard Stallman:
Not so easily. I am not trying to prevent an investigation of me, I am not against the ability of the state to investigate people when there are some grounds, suspicion that they can take to the court, and say “please approve various kinds of searches of this person” – that needs to be done, because we need a state to do a lot of things, including catching criminals and prosecuting them. Unfortunately, the plutocratic states today, they only want to catch the small criminals, the giant criminals, they are too big for jail. But, we do need that, and I don’t want to make that impossible – what I object to is making a dossier about everyone all the time, because then, if the state wants to get somebody, even for a bad reason, the state can get tremendous amounts of data, and can always find something to punish that person for. So, we should design our digital systems so they are not recording data about everybody all the time. They should be able to start recording data about somebody when a court gives an order to investigate that person. They shouldn’t make a giant dossier of months or years of information about everybody. Because that starts to resemble what secret police did, and I guess, in fact, still does in lots of countries.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
You’ve been saying this for many many years – you’ve been talking about PRISM-like programs five, ten years ago. Snowden made that point right now – and everyone is now up in the air with it, going crazy about the revelations… How does it make you feel, that nobody listened to you?
Richard Stallman:
I am very happy, that Snowden told us what the U.S. government and some other governments are really doing. I had no proof - I’ve been saying for many years that if we look at the Pa-Triot Act – I won’t call it “patriot” because its as unpatriotic as you can get in a country based on a idea of freedom – I said, “look at this, I would guess that they are collecting all the data about everyone, regularly, fast enough so it doesn’t get erased between collections – but that was just a guess. Thanks to Snowden, we know that in some cases, specifically phone calls, the U.S. government is actually doing this, and we know that there are other governments that do surveillance without even the flimsy limits of the U.S. governments – so I’m tremendously happy to see that Snowden has called the publics attention to this injustice, because our cause now has more momentum, we might, maybe, be able to stop this.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
How far can this surveillance system with such political support, and as gigantic as this, be rolled back?
Richard Stallman:
I don’t know! You see, this depends on you. This depends on the people who are watching. I am not interested in asking “are we going to win?”, “can we win?”. I am interested in doing whatever I can to win. Our freedom is at the stake, and this is true for people all around the world. I would guess that every country is increasing surveillance through digital technology, to a level that is unprecedented in a world’s history. Unless we had a great insufficiency of surveillance before, we should regard this as intolerable. We must start rejecting the so-called internet services that demand to know all about us. So don’t use facebook for instance. There are some services that are important, and we need to make sure that the surveillance that they can do on people is limited.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
We’re going to talk about facebook a little bit later. When this whole surveillance scheme was uncovered, everyone was in shock, I was disturbed – but at the end of the day everyone is, like, “okay, there’s nothing we can do about it”, and we continue using facebook, and we are thinking we are not doing anything wrong... People around me, I am talking about them – people keep thinking, we are not doing anything wrong, so what’s wrong about being looked after?
Richard Stallman:
First of all, this idea, that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide is ridiculous. Lots of people have things they want to hide from somebody. Some people, for instance, are gay, and in certain countries they might get prosecuted for that. You might think that you do something that your boss wouldn’t like if he knew, maybe he wouldn’t like what party you vote for. Lots of people have reasons not to want everybody to know everything about them. With total surveillance, though, the state knows everything, and some companies know everything and they call tell it whomever they want. So, if you want to have the possibility of some privacy someday, you’d better join the fight now, because now a bunch of other people are joining the fight, now is the moment, when you can make a difference. If you wait until the day you wish you had some privacy and only then try to do something…well, that day you will be one a few people doing it and that won’t be enough. You’ve got to help make a critical mass when other people are doing it – and that’s now.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
But what if you end up like Assange or Snowden, I mean, look at these guys – they are outcasts, they are trapped, facing charges.
Richard Stallman:
Well they are not outcasts. Assange is not an outcast, millions of people including me admire him, and Snowden is not an outcast, millions of people in the U.S. and elsewhere admire him...Please, don’t exaggerate. They have been besieged by the empire, but not defeated.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
But they are so limited in their life, in what they do...
Richard Stallman:
They decided to take these risks – for our freedom. But, they can’t win by themselves; it’s up to us to carry the fight forward. And in any case, by the way, Snowden will find a way to get the asylum.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Companies and the government – how close are they? Are they one with the other, what is driving the relationship there?
Richard Stallman:
There’s no simple answer, but they work hand in hand. In the U.S., thanks to the Patriot Act, all the data that companies collect about people they are required to turn over to the FBI without even a court order. The FBI just has to say “we want this data, we say it’s relevant to something” and then the company has to turn it over secretly. So any time a company is collecting data about you, it’s collecting it for its own purposes, but also for the state. So we must consider that corporate surveillance about us is a part of state surveillance – of course, both options are bad, I don’t want companies have tremendous amounts of information about me either, and I generally don’t use the services that would give them that information.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
You’ve said earlier “Don’t use Facebook” – talking about social media, platform people use to communicate with each other – it is not all that bad, right?
Richard Stallman:
Its horrible. Facebook is a monstrous surveillance engine…
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Is there an alternative?
Richard Stallman:
When people take photos of me, I say “please, don’t photos on Facebook”. At the beginning of my speeches I say “If you take photo of me, please don’t put it on Facebook”.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
What’s an alternative for facebook or other social media?
Richard Stallman:
An alternative? Are you demanding an alternative that is very similar to facebook? Because that’s not my alternative. My alternative to a nasty system is just don’t use it. If you start with a premise that you have to use one of those things, so if they all are nasty I just have to pick one, well, you are basically deciding to loose in advance. I don’t use facebook and I don’t want an alternative to Facebook.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
But it connects people, and what about those who were saved by a mere tap of a button – it’s a good thing, no?
Richard Stallman:
So what?
Sophie Shevardnadze:
People are connected to the world…
Richard Stallman:
Sorry, but people can be connected in lots of ways. But, from what I’ve read, by the way, the book “Alone Together” is very interesting, what people do in Facebook, they carefully construct a false picture of themselves.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
I gather that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates aren’t exactly your heroes, but do you acknowledge their contribution in bringing so many people together and creating this global community? They embraced and nurtured innovation, huge progress.
Richard Stallman:
Malicious technology can’t be excused if it had some good effects. We’ve got to realize that first of all Microsoft and Apple software is proprietary. That means the users don’t control the program, rather than the program controls the users – well that’s an injustice. And the existence of proprietary, although it wasn’t for Microsoft or Apple back then, is why I started with free software movement. In addition to setting things up so that they control the program and the program controls the users, they started putting in malicious functionality that spy on users, intentionally restrict users, and there are even “back doors” in that software, so, literally speaking, Apple and Microsoft software are malware. Windows 8.1 we call “Windows Prison Edition”, because it’s designed to require people to send data to Microsoft servers, and of course, Microsoft will handle any of that data to the U.S. government on request. It puts the users in prison. That’s the nastiness that is the natural result of letting a company to have a control over the software that the users are running instead of the users themselves. So – no, I wish they hadn’t done anything. Although I realize, somebody else might have done it if they hadn’t, that’s no excuse for them doing it.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Can free software generate the same level of digital innovation that proprietary software has done?
Richard Stallman:
I don’t know, I think it’s a secondary question. I think freedom is more important than innovation. And when you look at the a lot of the innovations that proprietary software generates, they are harmful, like X-Box One, which has camera that’s designed to determine who is in the room, how many people there are at least, where they are looking at the X-Box. That’s an innovation – one that we shouldn’t stand for. Of course, the X-Box is nasty in lots of ways before that. This is an example of how it is a mistake to make innovation our goal.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Do you think that people had voluntarily traded their freedom for gadgets and form?
Richard Stallman:
Well, partly – yes, but remember that companies are steering them by saying “You could have this convenience but only if you let us be nasty to you in that way”. And, yes, people who are not sensitized to the issue, they might say “yes”, but there’s no fundamental reason why this convenience has to require that nastiness. It’s that a company figures maybe they can get you to accept that nastiness by attaching it to this convenience. Now, if had control of how things were built, we could have this convenience in most cases without that nastiness. Sometimes it’s difficult, but mostly, they are connected artificially. So the point is that we need more control over our technology.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
You’ve said innovation should be our primary goal, but secondary. Does it mean that personal success should also not be the people’s priority?
Richard Stallman:
I think it’s a mistake. I may mean for something higher… I want to live a life I would be proud to have lived.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
But not everyone, by their nature, is a freedom fighter. You can want a personal success and be a decent human being…
Richard Stallman:
Who knows? I wasn’t a freedom fighter until 1983, and if you’d met me in 1970 you would never have guessed that I had that it in me, and I wouldn’t have thought I had it in me. Anybody can surprise yourself.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Can you ever see free software superseding or replacing proprietary software?
Richard Stallman:
I don’t know, it depends on you basically, depends on when you have a practical decision to make, whether you say “I’ll use this proprietary program because it does something for me that I want to do today” or will you say “No, I won’t use it because the price is my freedom and that’s too much to pay”.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
All I am asking is that if the free software is all that great, and it’s out there, why does so few people use it?
Richard Stallman:
Partly because of social inertia. You’ll notice that most PC’s are sold with Windows already in them. That’s a current flowing towards Windows and most people let themselves be carried by this current. Schools are teaching people proprietary software whether it’s from Microsoft or Apple, it doesn’t matter, they are both bad. The point is that with so much current artificially generated, people have to swim against it if they want to get to freedom. Not everybody is determined enough. We, in our free software movement, we try to make it easier for people; we try to change the current. Will we win? Who knows! The point is – let’s do our best.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Your key project is the GNU project aimed at giving people complete freedom over their software. You launched it in 1984. Thirty years down – would you say it has been a success?
Richard Stallman:
Partly. Lots of people use the GNU Operating System, because GNU is an Operating System, and no computer will do anything without an operating system in it. In fact, millions of people use GNU operating system, but mostly they don’t know it, because they think its Linux. Linux is actually one essential component that’s used in the system today, so it’s really GNU + Linux. Yes, we achieved our initial goal, and we had a considerable success – but we haven’t liberated everybody…
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Kim Dotcom says he wants to encrypt half of the Internet – can you give me and our users some quick tips on how to encrypt e-mail, to protect myself and my privacy?
Richard Stallman:
We have free software for encrypting email or other files, and you shouldn’t trust any encryption program unless it’s free software, and encryption is being done by your copy on your computer. Encryption on a server is not trustworthy. How do you know they are not saving a copy before they encrypted it and giving it to NSA? So you got to encrypt it on your machine. Our program for doing this is called the GNU Privacy Guard or GNU PG.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
I see you are wearing a little sign that says “Don’t be tracked, pay cash”. Do you always pay cash?
Richard Stallman:
Just about always. I will use my credit card to buy airline tickets, as they insist on identifying me anyway; I don’t lose anything by paying with credit card then.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
What do you make of the whole bitcoin concept?
Richard Stallman:
Bitcoin seems like a solution to some problems, but it’s not anonymous. I think we need a payment system where the payer is anonymous. The payee doesn’t have to be anonymous, but it has to be so you can pay to access a webpage and do so anonymously.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Is there such thing as complete anonymity?
Richard Stallman:
Well, there is in theory, but I’m not saying we need total anonymity; we need anonymity for the one who’s paying to access the website. However it’s okay if the website operators are not anonymous in receiving this money – after all we want them to pay their taxes.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Dr. Stallman, what would you say to people, who in light of the recent events are saying “Privacy is dead, that’s it, and everything else is an illusion”?
Richard Stallman:
They are being defeatist. Or, maybe, they are suffering from a shock that leads them into despair. The fact is privacy has a better chance now, that it has had for the past decade or so, because now we have a lot of people who know that there’s a problem and how big it is. We need to establish sufficient privacy in our communications that a government official can talk to a journalist without being caught. That’s the amount of privacy that society absolutely needs if we want to keep control over what the government is doing.
Sophie Shevardnadze:
Dr. Richard Stallman, thank you very much for those interesting insights. That’s it for today; you were with Sophie & Co, and me, Sophie Shevardnadze. I will see you next time, thanks for watching us.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
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