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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman.
The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of
the Free Software Foundation or
the GNU Project.
For the sake of separation, this site has always been
hosted elsewhere and managed separately.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
If you want to send me GPG-encrypted mail, do not trust key servers! Some of them have phony keys under my name and email address, made by someone else as a trick. See gpg.html for my real key.
Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphoma. Treatment put it into remission, and he can expect to live many more years. However, he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "october" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
US citizens: call for stopping the persecutor's illegal deportations and renditions to foreign prisons, and freeing Kilmar Abrego from deportation prison.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
This campaign is an unusual kind of letter campaign, in that you can't edit the letter text. I agreed with the short text that was supplied, so I signed. It was addressed to my representative, Ayanna. Pressley, and the two Massachusetts senators.
US citizens: Stop the saboteur in chief from eliminating mail-in voting.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on congress to save Veterans' medical treatment — Stop VA Privatization.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: demand answers about the terrorist's unauthorized military attack in the Caribbean.
US citizens: call on the DOE to make a coal plant close as scheduled.
US citizens: Submit an official comment Against the EPA's plan to rescind its ability to limit greenhouse gas emissions from any industry and gut vehicle standards needed to fight global heating.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to tell RFK jr to resign.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Tell Costco’s Board of Directors and CEO Ron Vachris: Don’t cave to extremists. Allow your pharmacies to carry mifepristone nationwide now.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
I'm looking for a cartoonist who would like to draw cartoons for me once in a while. If you're interested, please write to rms, which refers to me, at the location gnu period org.
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
* Abandoned coalmines and oil and gas wells are now one of the biggest sources of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, new data shows, and little effort is being made to clean them up.*
I expect that the fossil fuel companies to divest themselves from old mines and wells in ways that will avoid liability for them — just as they sometimes disconnect themselves from responsibility for supporting former workers.
So I suggest making it a felony to implement a restructuring of business or assets in a way that is likely to result predictably in strand assets that carry financial responsibilities with no one capable of shouldering the responsibilities.
A pitifully weak attempt to solve a real problem: asking for a federal law that would permit victims of domestic abuse and stalking to demand that data brokers delete information about them.
Data, once collected, will be abused. The way to prevent that abuse is to facilitate refusing to hand it over in the first place.
Here is my proposal for protecting the specific people known to be in particular danger, and everyone else who could be harmed if individuals, businesses or governments use their personal data against them without a search warrant: require services to be available anonymously.
The selfish interest of those who keep trade secrets is rational but antisocial. In many cases the only harm it does is to hold back the general advance of technology. But sometimes it does really nasty things. For digital hardware and software, it often gives companies a way to subjugate their users. Regarding use of toxic chemicals, it endangers public health.
Why would legislators pass laws to "protect" companies instead of protecting the people they harm? I suspect it is partly because these companies are influential and the legislators seek their support, and partly because the legislators ask them for campaign funds.
But it is also partly the result of the mindset of "trickle down", which assumes that the only way to get more funds for the state is to let increase the size of the economy by letting companies have what they want. Unfortunately, what they want is often to be allowed to harm the public.
Most Democrats in Congress got corrupted this way in the 80s and 90s. (The exceptions are the progressive Democrats.) Now in the UK Starmer is guiding Labour into that sort of corruption.
Clearly our laws should say that any public need to know about the presence of toxic substances in a business facility overrides the desire to keep them secret.
Whether the owners are Chinese is a question that there is no need to ask, because the state should never give money to a business "to support it." Instead it should offer to lend money to the company for suitable repayment, or else buy equity at a fair price.
These two ways of supporting a company avoid giving the owners an opporunity to rip off the state -- which the company's owners are likely to try to do, if they can, regardless of which country they are from.
With a policy like this, it wouldn't matter which country the company's owners are from.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
Various former officials reproach the US government for choosing killing the people in a boat in the Caribbean, in disregard of US law, rather than arresting them and perhaps charging them with crimes (supposing there was evidence they were committing any crimes).
The bully's tariffs caused inflation to rise in August.
I am not a supporter of the free-trade ideology, that gives capital the power to bully and dominate countries that don't bow down and obey. Tariffs can help a country build up its domestic industry, provided they are used in a well-designed plan.
Of course, that is not what the bully did. His goal was to make other countries' governments submit to him.
A suggestion to make it a crime to publish output from an LLM without explicitly labeling it as such.
This could be a good idea, provided it avoids the marketing campaign of calling LLMs "intelligence" and referring to the output as "content" as if that were a sort of commodity.
Bolsonaro and seven of his highest officials have been convicted of trying to launch a coup.
The plan included assassinating the just-reelected former president Lula, and others too. It failed because the army and air force commanders refused to join it.
Bolsonaro's followers are pleasing for the government to pardon him in the name of "peace", but the right-wing supporters of racist nationalism and absolutism never make peace — they never stop scheming and lying to take power,
*Some US senators said that the US is complicit in Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza.*
This is clearly true. Ethnic cleansing is the clearest term I know of to describe what Israel is doing to Gaza.
(satire) *Witnesses Assumed Charlie Kirk Shooter Was Just Ordinary Gunman On School Campus.*
Robert Reich: *If it's to have a future, the Democratic Party must not only condemn Trumpism but explain why so many Americans are struggling and provide a credible way for most people to share in the nation's prosperity.*
There is a wave of antisemitism accusations against professors who criticize Israel's injustice toward Palestinians.
The same rules against atrocities that apply to other countries apply to Israel as well, and talking about those atrocities is not antisemitic at all.
Arguing that Britain's situation allows it to resist being bullied into surrender to rich lenders.
The article also argues that the Euro and its rules are responsible for France's current mass poverty.
*It’s not about [accused politicians] Rayner or Farage: the real tax story is how the super-rich avoid paying their share.*
The bully's war on Harvard was proposed decades earlier by a right-wing congresscritter.
The bullshitter hates wind turbines, and promotes a wide range of imaginary reasons to get rid of them. This article checks the facts of them. Some are based on partial truth, but it isn't enough truth to justify rejecting wind power.
He might have some rational reason — rational for him, that is: his fossil-fool backers will make more money if we fail to make and use enough wind power.
The article leaves me wondering whether Britain is painting its wind farm blades black to protect birds, and also whether it is upgrading its electrical grid and battery storage so that it can utilize all the electric energy that its wind farms can generate.
*IDF soldiers deliberately wounding children in Gaza "like a game", says British doctor.* The doctor reached this conclusion in Gaza based on treating many wounded children and noting the day-to-day variation in what kind of wounds were being made that day.
He also reported that many of the patients he operated on later died because they did not get enough food to recover properly.
Would-be Republican candidates demonstrate perverse cruelty to win Republican votes in primary elections.
*Payment platforms [in Australia] [including credit card companies] demand services remove NSFW [games] after open letter from Australian anti-porn group Collective Shout, triggering accusations of censorship
This censorship is one added injustice in an aspect of life that is unjust through and through.
The platforms that were forced to remove some games make users identify themselves and run nonfree software to get games, and track what each person does. They are unjust.
Likewise for the payment platforms — using them to pay online requires running nonfree software, except on a few sites such as fsf.org where we avoid that for moral reasons.
The games themselves are also unjust nonfree software. That applies to all the games there, those that were removed, and those that have not been removed.
They have DRM, too, to prevent forbidden sharing; DRM is unjust.
change.org partakes of the same injustice — one needs to run nonfree software to sign any of its petitions. I've seen petitions there that I agreed with, but I won't sign them that way.
I do not tolerate any of these injustices — I "just say no." As a result, I will never have any of the games from those platforms on my computer.
But even though this new censorship will never affect me directly. I am concerned about it. When censorship is accepted in any area of life, it tends to spread. Some day it may spread to activities which are not inherently unjust. And it illustrates the danger of the design of digital payment system, and of nonfree software that users can't just share with each other.
By the way, where in Australia is NSFW? Has it anything to do with NSW? ;-}.
Putin attacked Poland with drones launched from Belarus.
*Russia is brazenly provoking the west. Putin must be left in no doubt of the consequences.*
I can't see what Putin hopes to achieve by that. The natural result would be that Polish and NATO forces prepare for war, and that will not be convenient for whatever Putin wants to do. NATO troops might to to Poland to help.
Nothing requires them to be limited to air defense forces. Since Belarus has attacked Poland, it would be legitimate to respond by counterattacking Belarus. Is that a good idea? Do Belarusian troops feel like fighting to maintain the tyrant Lukashenko's rule, or would they eagerly surrender to get rid of him? I don't know.
*Ex-FBI officials sue Kash Patel over claims they were fired for investigating Trump.*
*A new survey of nearly 70,000 college students across the United States has found that a majority oppose allowing speakers with controversial viewpoints, whether liberal or conservative, to speak on their campuses.*
*Anti-Islamic biker gang members hired to run security at controversial Gaza aid sites More than 10 Infidels MC members deployed to sites run by US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.*
Israel makes no effort to disguise the massacres that are part of the plan for these "humanitarian" activities. It only repeats, in the teeth of the evidence, the claim that they are not. Why would it not hire these gang members?
Various political activists are joined by one Republican senator in condemning the deadly US drone attack on a boat allegedly carrying addictive drugs, calling it "an extrajudicial execution."
This shows what the trance demands — the power to kill at will.
The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.
Non-oppressive Commercial E-books
Facebook's face recognition demonstrates a threat to everyone's privacy. I therefore ask people not to put photos of me on Facebook; you can do likewise.
Of course, Facebook is bad for many other reasons as well.
I'd like to make a list of countries that do not require a national identity card, and have no plans to adopt one. If you live in or have confirmed knowledge of such a country, please send email to rms at gnu.org.
Here's my list of countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. Australia's previous government tried to institute national ID cards, but the Labor government dropped the plan.
India has mostly finished imposing a national biometric ID number in a grand act of oppression.
Switzerland has national ID cards which are optional, but they or some other government ID card are needed for some purposes.
Iceland doesn't have ID cards as such, but they have ID numbers that citizens are forced to use frequently. For example, the national ID number is often required to rent a video or use a gym.
Denmark issues non-photo ID cards with a "person number", and many services use this card to identify people.
Norway will impose a national biometric ID card.
Ireland - national ID card by stealth.
ACLU: the five dangers of national ID cards.
Wikipedia has a list of identity card policies by country.
Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.
Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.
People often ask how I manage to continue devoting myself to progressive activism (such as the free software movement) for years without burning out. The best way I can answer is by recommending a book, The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.
I disagree with the book on one theoretical point in the last part of the book: we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics is something much more important than mere business. However, this doesn't diminish the value of the book's practical advice about borrowing techniques from marketing and sales.
Disclosure: I am friends with the author.
Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.
I have reposted some of Rick Falkvinge's articles. As posted on his site, you can't see them in a browser without running some nonfree Javascript code which is apparently non-free. These versions show the same text, without the obstacle.
These are my political articles that are not related to the GNU operating system or free software. For GNU-related articles, see the GNU philosophy directory. You can also download copies of my book, Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition.
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
Here are notes about various issues I care about, usually with links to
more information. The current notes are
here. For all previous
notes, see this page.
See this page for information on efforts to maintain links in the political notes.
Political notes about the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy are being archived on their own page.
Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.
The Free Software Song, by Richard M. Stallman. You can listen to a performance of the song: Free Software Song performed by Thor Here is a variant of this song called "The Free Firmware Song".
Earth under attack from planet Koch.On doxing, and how to spell it.
A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta
Española. 
Here I am wearing my "power tie".
Wine snobs get their comeuppance.
Here I am struggling to open a bottle of water.
My application to an join Marian Henley's ex-boyfriends list.
My funny poetry and song parodies.
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
The text to a filk song, Johnny v. N., by Paul Rubin.
My Puns in English (Little Leaguer, August 2019).
My Puns in Spanish (New pun: Apostasía April 2019)
My Puns in French (New pun: Microsoft à l'école July 2019)
My Puns in Italian (New pun: Quale pesce fa starnutire? New 10/2018)
My Puns in German (New 02/2016)
Linguistic Swifties (Now with: Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.)
--Saint
IGNUcius-- The Church of Emacs will soon
be officially listed by at least one person as his religion for
census purposes.
There are no godfathers in the Church of Emacs, since there are no gods, but you can be someone's editorfather.
Stallman Does Dallas: "I have to warn you that Texans have been known to have an adverse reaction to my personality…"
The Dalai Lama today announced the official release of Yellow Hat GNU/Linux.
I found a funny song about the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act (officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Act) which extended copyright retroactively by 20 years on works made as early as the 1920s.
If you are a geek and read Spanish, you will love Raulito el Friki, who said "Hello, world!" immediately after he was born. Here's an archive of this now-defunct comic strip.
Sleeping with Stallman at MIT.
ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation
A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.
Avec des chapeaux French song parody.
My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.
Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights
A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.
On Hacking: In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker".
Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor
I would like to thank:
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