William Faulkner: Fear and Tyranny

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What threatens us today is fear.

Not the atom bomb, nor even fear of it, because if the atom bomb fell on Oxford tonight, all it could do would be to kill us, which is nothing, since in doing that, it would have robbed itself of its only power over us — which is fear of it, the being afraid of it.

Our danger is not that. Our danger is in the forces of the world today which are trying to use man’s fear to rob him of his individuality, his soul, trying to reduce him to an unthinking mass by fear and bribery — giving him free food which he has not earned, easy and valueless money which he has not worked for.

That is what we must resist, if we are to change the world for man’s peace and security.

It is not men in the mass who can and will save Man; it is Man himself, created in the image of God so that he shall have the power and the will to choose right from wrong, and so be able to save himself because he is worth saving.

Man, the individual men and women, who will refuse always to be tricked or frightened or bribed into surrendering, not just the right but the duty too, to choose between justice and injustice, courage and cowardice, sacrifice and greed, pity and self — who will believe always not only in the right of man to be free of injustice and rapacity and deception, but the duty and responsibility of man to see that justice and truth and pity and compassion are done.

So never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed.

If you, not just you in this room tonight but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as but individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.

In one generation, all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Caesars and Mussolinis and Stalins, and all the other tyrants who want power and aggrandizement, and all the simple politicians and time-servers who themselves are merely baffled or ignorant or afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslavement, will have vanished from the face of it.

About passwords

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For years, we have used passwords to protect our security. We used different kinds of passwords. From mechanical locks and keys to digital ones and of course current passwords for our accounts.

Setting passwords helped us to secure our accounts but as we had progress in safe passwords, others made progress to break them. For years, we protected our accounts and goods against humans but what we’re facing now is computers.

We’ve been trained to set passwords hard to remember for humans but easy for computers to find. This should be changed.

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About Ruby Bridges

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Ruby Bridges was the first Black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the US South when she was 6 years old.
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For her to attend school her first day, federal marshals with guns had to make way through a crowd of grown men and women screaming “nigger”, spitting on her, threatening her life, and waving confederate flags. They even carried a small coffin with a Black baby doll inside, which caused Ruby nightmares at the time. ⁠
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In her classroom, all her classmates were either withdrawn by angry parents or abandoned the class refusing to sit with the 6-year-old.⁠
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Nearly all the teachers abandoned the school except for one. For the entire school year, Ruby went to school to a classroom that was just her and the one teacher that didn’t refuse her.⁠
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She refused to eat any food that wasn’t pre-packaged and sealed because they threatened to poison her.⁠
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Ruby is only 65 years old today. It wasn’t a long time ago that a lot of racist people were living among us; now many people consider racism a crime. However, we are facing a systematic racism and discrimination everyday and we should fight against it.

We should know that there’s a lot of people like Ruby who we should support to make changes. Our fight continues.

  • Marshals protecting Ruby Bridges at age six
    Marshals protecting Ruby Bridges at age six
  • Racist whites protesting against Ruby Bridges
    Racist white people protesting against Ruby Bridges going to all-white school
  • Ruby Bridges
    Ruby Bridges

How to move to GNU+Linux

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You may have notice that one of my emphasis is the use of free software and GNU operating system. Almost all of GNU distros come with a Linux kernel so we’ll call it GNU+Linux, and not only GNU.

Free software is one of the most important parts of my digital life. There’s no proprietary software running on my computers but what makes that happen is the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel (GNU+Linux).

For some people, migrating to GNU+Linux is easy and some even know the benefits. However, some people still don’t know why they should migrate to GNU+Linux. If you feel your computer works fine but you are

  • tired of major unwanted forced updates
  • tired of your slow operating system
  • tired of not being able to use a new technology
  • tired of viruses and spywares
  • tired of your privacy being violated
  • tired of being limited
  • tired of not owning your software
  • tired of not being free (as in freedom) about your software

then GNU+Linux is a wise choice for you. If you don’t know how you should start using free software and a free (as in freedom and most of the times as in price) operating system, then this small guide would be helpful.

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Discriminatory laws must be broken

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As a person who lives in a country under heavy U.S. sanctions, I know how discrimination feels and looks. What the United States has done to us is a good example of how discrimination affects people. My country is under heavy sanctions from U.S. and even basic stuff are facing troubles for import or export.

Whenever I talk about computers or software services, people suggest me different stuff to use or buy and every time I explain how I, like another people here, are deprived from having those stuff because of U.S sanctions.

U.S has the power over a lot of countries to force them do what it likes but this is unacceptable. I agree that Unites States wants to make sure they and their allies are safe but setting unfair laws and rules is not only unacceptable but also a terrible way and reason.

After Microsoft owned GitHub, a lot of Iranian users were banned from using it because of U.S. trade laws. A lot of people from different countries are still unable to use private repositories or buying GitHub plans.

What might they do? Storing nuclear codes or programs in private repos? This is what I’m talking about. A lot of rules and limitations are only ridiculous. I wrote about the GNU+Linux distro Fedora and the notice on its download page before. What? Iranians may use Fedora to build a nuclear bomb and they won’t download it because if this notice?

Some rules are only stupid and ridicules. They are discriminatory and offensive to human beings. Currently, the software community of Iran is experiencing a lot of difficulties and suffers from these discriminatory laws.

I believe discriminatory laws should not be respected. We should not obey them. We should fight for better.

About IndieWeb

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If you follow this blog using your web browser, you probably realize blog’s theme and some other stuff are changed. My blog is now compatible with IndieWeb via these changes. You probably saw the “IndieWeb” links in the footer before, those links will forward you to another member of IndieWeb randomly.

The IndieWeb is a people-focused alternative to the “corporate web”. IndieWeb is a community of individual personal websites, connected by simple standards, based on the principles of owning your domain, using it as your primary identity, to publish on your own site (optionally syndicate elsewhere), and own your data.

IndieWeb tries to help people make their domain their primary online identity. This can help us to have our own identity no matter what services we use and no matter the services we use last or not. Our domains are our passports to IndieWeb.

IndieWeb has its principles to build a community of individuals who don’t want to be owned by corporate web. This community tries to have its own freedom and independence.

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Do as you say to make people believe you

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One of the problems in the libre community is that some (or many) people still use proprietary and nonfree software while they’re encouraging others to use free software.

It was few years ago that It’s FOSS reported that Jim Zemlin, the executive director of The Linux Foundation, is not using a [GNU+]Linux desktop and uses Apple’s macOS. This is what I’m talking about.

How can we expect people to use free software on their computers when some of the key people of libre community are using proprietary software? There’s a lot more than that.

I know many people who are using GNU+Linux desktop and only run free software programs on their personal computer but also use some proprietary stuff such as Microsoft’s Xbox.

We can’t be free software advocates and use proprietary software too. If we believe in software lire, we should use free software always. Free software is not just about operating sytstems such as GNU or libre kernels such as Linux.

If we believe in a libre community we should avoid proprietary stuff all the time. Liberating our community and devices is not something easy nor cheap. It’s something hard and necessary. We should fight for it and sometime sacrifice some stuff, such as some of our hubbies, to make people believe it can be achieved.

We can achieve complete freedom for our world and software if we all support free software and libre community and if we avoid proprietary stuff.

Some people say that achieving this goal is far or dreamy. Even if it’s true, it’s not a good reason for us to use proprietary stuff. Being far from our goals only means we should put more effort to it and continue fighting for it.

If a sculptor finds a hard rock, it won’t stop making sculptures. It’ll put more effort and tries more to prepare the hard stone to make a brilliant sculpture.