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.
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.
It will run 14:00 to 16:00 in Haaga-Helia University in Pasila. Specifically, Ratapihantie 13 Helsinki, in the auditorium on the ground floor.
Admission is gratis and there is no need to register.
Everyone: call on the Washington Post to rehire the columnist who criticized Kirk.
US citizens: call on Democrats to stand firm against the Republican demands to agree to permanent budget cuts in what should be a "continuing resolution."
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter and urge per to support Rep. Ilhan Omar's resolution invoking the War Powers Act to halt the wrecker's undeclared war against Venezuela.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your state governor to pass a millionaires’ surtax law.
See here for the simple editing step needed to make this campaign function properly without running nonfree JavaScript. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov. If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to make medical business profiteers pay their fair (large) share of taxes and cancel this year's massive tax cuts for the rich.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your state governor to keep mifepristone legal in your state.
US citizens: call on federal and state officials to shut down the Everglades torture immigration prison.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Israel end the Gaza famine now, by stopping US military aid to Israel.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to reject the misnamed "CLARITY Act" and any other bill that would deregulate cryptocurrency businesses.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to oppose the so-called "Modern Worker Empowerment Act", which would "empower" delivery companies workers to be blocked from unionizing.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Grassroots Dissent! Tell the Supreme Court Racial Profiling is Unconstitutional.
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.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to support the Equal Tax Act, which would block the use of certain tax breaks by the very rich. (The name of the bill can give the wrong idea, but the actual substance is good.)
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.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the forest Service to defend the roadless rule that protects some forests from logging and mining. What's at stake is not just their ecosystems, but the potentially devastating masses of carbon that they keep out of the atmosphere.
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.
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Helsinki on Oct 9: Free software, Crucial for Freedom in a Digital World
It will run 14:00 to 16:00 in Haaga-Helia University in Pasila. Specifically, Ratapihantie 13 Helsinki, in the auditorium on the ground floor.
Admission is gratis and there is no need to register.
The bully-in-chief ordered the Justice Department to prosecute James Comey, former head of the FBI, for investigating the bully's suspected crimes.
Comey said the trial will find him innocent.
*Civilian [nonfatal] injuries in Gaza similar to those of soldiers in war zones, study finds.* Or perhaps they tend to be even worse that injuries of soldiers in other wars.
This could be because Israeli soldiers sometimes specifically aim to cause grave wounds.
The US government has proposed a plan to give Gaza autonomy over a span of five years
I trust Tony B'liar almost as little as I trust the saboteur in chief. A plan with a trustworthy administrator would be much better. At the same time, I think that this plan might lead to a just result if it is properly carried out.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the cheater would carry out this plan honestly. But the same would be true with any conceivable plan. He might sabotage anything he agrees to.
Former French president Sarkozi has been convicted for a corrupt scheme to get campaign funds from then-dictator Ghaddafi of Libya.
How delightfully appropriate. However, the worst thing about Sarkozi, in my view, is not his corruption but his repression of criticism.
Microsoft says it has somehow limited Israel's ability to do mass surveillance storing the data in Microsoft's servers.
If this actually limits Israel's massive surveillance of all Palestinians, that would be a good thing, but I am skeptical that it could really achieves that result. (Can't Israel bypass the limitation?)
And we can hardly rely on powerful companies to restrain the wrongdoing of even more powerful governments. The only way I can think of to restrain this is by designing the systems people use so that they don't lend themselves to massive surveillance.
*US is violating human rights laws by backing fossil fuels, say young activists in new petition [to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights].*
Following the example of Orbán in Hungary, the persecutor has ordered systematic efforts to persecute Soros's Open Society Foundation.
There is no reason to suppose the accusations vaguely stated here have any truth to them, but with so many investigators they will surely find something they can stretch into an excuse to prosecute someone. (It has been said that the average American commits three felonies per day, and if they can't find any real ones, they can invent some.)
UN sanctions against Iran have been reactivated after nuclear negotiations aiming at resolving the dispute failed.
I don't know enough about the cause of the breakdown to assign blame for the failure.
The bully, speaking to the UN, rejected all its positive goals to support rule of the world by raw power, especially that of the rich.
There is no organization in the US that calls itself "Antifa", so the bully's designation of the supposed organization as "terrorist" is an absurd lie.
But there is an informal movement that opposes fascism, and this lie may help the fascist leader use those willing to adopt his lies to put those anti-fascist activists in jail. There is no organization in the US that calls itself "Antifa", but in Austria there was (and maybe still is) the organization Rosa Antifa Wien. It did delightfully funny things to embarrass Austrian fascists. I wonder if it still exists.
Prisoners in a very new privatized deportation prison in California City report a host of forms of mistreatment, some of which could make them sick and occasionally kill them.
As long as the prison guards won't let reporters in to check for themselves, we have every reason to trust the prisoners. On general principles, it is likely that those companies mistreat prisoners because they can increase their profits that way.
*The corrupter is brazenly flaunting his corruption – and getting away with it.*
Part of why he gets away with it is that he is doing other things that damage democracy even more, so we have to give priority to fighting them.
*More than 1.6m sign petition opposing Starmer’s plan for digital ID cards.*
Bravo for Britons, resisting government ID cards. But the petition won't change the plan by itself. They need to organize to pressure MPs to vote it down.
People are supposed to use snoop phones to prove they have ID. What happens to people who don't have one? Aside from people like me who reject them on principle, many Britons are so poor they could hardly afford one.
*Israel's ecocide in Gaza sends this message: even if we stopped dropping bombs, you couldn't live here.*
Putin has cut the external power supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The reactors need electric power to remain safe. If the on-site emergency generators break down, that could cause a nuclear disaster.
This seems to be an instance of Putin's insane escalation.
An "AI" tool that supposedly detects sins that students discussing dangerous topics in their high school chat systems is reporting annoying false positives and violating students' privacy.
It may be a type of system that generally qualifies as artificial intelligence, since it seems to learn patterns to recognize, rather than an LLM. But it doesn't really understand the meaning of text in context, so inevitably in makes the mistakes outsiders tend to make.
I suggest that students not use a network run by the school to discuss anything relating to their feelings or heir private lives.
The use of automated pattern matchers to refuse to pay for medical treatments (including surgery) is being extended from private US medical insurance to basic Medicare.
If such systems are trained based on whether the treatment succeeds, so as to approve treatments when they are likely to help and reject them when unlikely, all to optimize the results for the patients, they might be a good thing. But [private medical insurance tends to be profiteering, and that means its main goal is to increase the insurance companies' profits.
Is it wrong to move some old buried bones to build a golf course?
The writer presumes that Europeans would have a taboo against moving the bones of Europeans, but that is not so. In the late 1800s, Paris was running out of space for building because of a plethora of cemeteries. The government collected the bones (mostly anonymous) and assembled them into ossuaries in tunnels under the streets. These are now a tourist attraction. As far as I can see, this did no harm to anyone.
People really matter, but the bones of former people do not.
In my view, humanity loses nothing whatsoever when anonymous remains are moved. But if some are relevant to forensic or archaeological investigation, it is important to label them and record their provenance.
When bones are labeled by gravestones, the value of leaving them in place may be somewhat more important for human knowledge. At least the markers should be recorded for scientific use.
I think the conclusion depends on how important the proposed project is. A golf course is rather unimportant, as projects go.
*[A former lawyer for the president] says president using Comey indictment to conceal being ‘criminal’.*
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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