The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"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.
I am thinking of making another trip to Europe during February - April. If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "feb-apr" as the subject.
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
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the VISIBLE Act, which would prohibit deportation thugs from concealing their identities.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your state's attorney general to keep deportation thugs out of public schools.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Apple and Google to stop censoring apps — and let users freely release and install free/libre apps.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your elected officials to oppose all funding for the deportation thugs in the absence of systemic reforms.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code—not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on CBS: Don't Let Bari Weiss Censor Debate.
Us citizens: call on Congress to stop funding DHS and ICE inhumane and lethal tactics amidst ongoing investigations into those practices.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block the voter-ID bill and protect poor citizens' right to vote against arbitrary interference.
Many poor people need to move often. Many can't afford to take a couple of hours off work to officially update ID cards. And these requirements are not satisfied by proof that you're a US citizen -- the demand is always for "up to date, currently valid" proof.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Democratic leaders in Congress to block funds for the deportation thugs.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose military action against Greenland.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel medical debt and student debt, and make medical treatment and public colleges gratis for all.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect officials of the Federal Reserve from harassment prosecutions meant to bully them on questions of policy.
This does not mean I agree with the de-facto "mainstream" consensus of the past two decades, that the Fed should be totally independent on basic political questions, Fed chairs must be Republicans to insure that their independent decisions will be right-wing, and investors "comfort" must take priority over employment.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
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.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the VISIBLE Act, which would prohibit deportation thugs from concealing their identities.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your state's attorney general to keep deportation thugs out of public schools.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Apple and Google to stop censoring apps — and let users freely release and install free/libre apps.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your elected officials to oppose all funding for the deportation thugs in the absence of systemic reforms.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code—not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
A UK official banned the fans of an Israeli team from a football match, believing that they had got involved in fights with fans of another team in a previous match.
It turns out that previous match had never taken place — the report was bullshit, output by a bullshit generator.
Please don't call these errors "hallucinations" — that term is designed to maintain the claim that those systems really perceive (whether correctly or incorrectly) events that they then understand.
The Injustice Department (formerly called the Justice Department) is now investigating the governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis for "obstructing" the federal terror campaign in Minneapolis.
Governor Walz said,
Two days ago it was [Senator] Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, [Senator] Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system against your opponents is an authoritarian tactic. The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.
That is not precisely valid. Neither Slotkin nor Kelly is being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good, though that was a real crime and its real perpetrator really should be investigated. Kelly and Slotkin are being investigated for correctly citing US law, which is not a crime at all.
The Chicago Teachers Union is being investigated too, but nothing to do with Renee Good.
*US cities [are] increasingly compelled to police abuses by [deportation thugs]* because the officials in charge of the deportation thugs encourage them to commit crimes against the public.
Magats in the Pentagon plan to make the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, follow the strict party line.
The bully demands that HAMAS hand over its heavy weapons, while saying nothing about Israel's heavy weapons.
*US mixed messaging on flu shots alarms experts: "Children should not be dying."*
The UN committee against torture has found Australia responsible for torture carried out in an immigration prison in Papua New Guinea on an immigrant that Australia paid Papua New Guinea to jail.
Australia pioneered the idea of denying asylum to refugees who arrive by small boat, no matter how repressive the country they escaped.
Texas A&M ordered a philosophy professor to drop readings from Plato's Symposium, and a discussion of the issues they raise, from his class on the grounds that they "advocate" about "race theory" and "gender theory".
This article explains what those readings from Plato talk about and show why magats want to quash such discussion — even though the professor had no intention of "advocating" anything, only holding rational discussion about the issues raised.
I am disappointed that he ultimately obeyed rather than suing. But since he did that after consulting his lawyer, I suppose that suing was not likely to fix the problem.
That makes the tragedy even worse, and shows that the saboteur in chief is the enemy of the thinking and knowledge, not only human rights and the well-being of the poor.
The president of the university defended the university's order by misrepresenting and evading the issue. This page shows what he wrote and precisely explains the dishonesty.
Philosophy professors' resistance is not enough to save freedom in the US, but they can clearly explain why we need to save it, and that helps.
Prison thugs in many or all US states often carry out illegal violence towards prisoners, causing suffering, damage and occasionally death.
*DHS Used Neo-Nazi Anthem for Recruitment After [killing of Renee Good].* We know that they are looking for the personality profile of violent right-wing loonies.
Deportation thugs blinded or half-blinded two protesters by shooting them in the face with "less-lethal" munitions. They barely survived the attack.
One of them, Rummler, still has one working eye, it seems. For the other, Rodriguez, I can't tell from the article.
Naturally, the thugs' PR person misrepresented the situation, pretending they were under heavy attack.
It makes sense that they do the opposite of standard techniques for de-escalation. The persecutor's strategy is to spread terror among the public, so teaching thugs tactics that create opportunities for terror serves the purpose.
On the division of Iran's opposition between supporters of the son of the Shah and those who oppose him.
Scientists disagree about measurements of microplastics in human bodies. By studying the conflicting results, they will find methods to work out the correct facts.
European countries, and the UN, have discovered that depending on US companies for digital services puts them at risk of harassment or attack.
The marketing term "the cloud" is used to lull people into disregarding the question of where their data is really kept, and who controls it. We have been saying for ten years that "There is no cloud — only computers belonging to others." When the "other" is a US company, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, you're making a mistake by using it.
But the US is not the only country that might attack you. When the "other" is a non-US company, that too may be a mistake.
So do your computing on your own computers, running only free software (since that's the software that users can control), and keep your data on your own computers too.
It is safe to encrypt an archive on your own computer with the GNU Privacy Guard then save the encrypted file on someone else's computer. But don't let the only copies be saved like that.
*RFK Jr's new diet guidelines pose risks for health and the environment, experts say.*
*Rushed laws after a tragedy are "never good", warns father [and mother] of youngest [Bondi Beach mass shooting] victim.* They show wisdom by resisting the temptation to go overboard into their own loss and preferring that society choose the best response.
In the same way, a law named (even unofficially) after a person who suffered injustice tends to be insufficiently thought out.
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:
Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.
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