The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
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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.
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.
I urge you to vote in Democratic primaries for the progressive candidate, if there is one. And in the final election I urge you to vote for Democrats, unless a liberal independent had a good chance of winning.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to hold an independent investigation of the killing of protester Ayşenur Eygi.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Support the proposed FDIC regulation that would limit how "asset manager" companies such as Blackrock use their deposits for political influence.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript 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 some of them.
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.) 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. Enter 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 compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Israel to comply with the UN General Assembly vote calling for Israel to withdraw its army from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Everyone: call on Coca-Cola to stop sponsoring neo-segregationist Chris Rufo.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to block voter intimidation in Florida.
US citizens: We have a right to safety, privacy, and protest. Say no to mask bans.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Bernie Sanders's resolution to end weapons sales to Israel.
Explain I might have proposed to adjust some details, of this, but I have confidence in Sanders and I trust him to know such matters better than I do.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on US agencies to shut down for-profit immigration prisons.
The petition calls them "detention centers", but I think that term is desensitizing.
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.
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.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these options should not be limited to minors — every user should have this choice. (Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them like children and retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again.
Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up and running. That's where the real fault is.
I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on their boards. Perhaps 66%.
Private equity is gobbling up large parts of the US nursing home business. This puts patients in danger since private equity can amass lots of money, create an oligopoly, and get away with abuses.
The study suggests that "regulation may be needed." I will take a stronger stand and call for firm limits — perhaps even prohibiting private equity combinations from owning home nursing businesses.
I'v also proposed prohibiting private equity from buying up lots of rental housing.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
Marieha Hussain was charged with a crime for calling some Tory ministers "coconuts".
Ms Hussain is right that the thug department should make up for the harm it did to her with this evidently unjust charge. Criticizing politicians by calling them "coconuts" must not be a crime.
That criticism is, however, an example of a morally misguided assumption: that people of a certain demographic group have an obligation to hold certain political views, and are somehow betraying that group if they do not.
People are members of demographic groups, but thoughts are not. No one has an obligation to hold the views of the group perse was descended from.
The Tories Richi Sunak and Suella Braverman are very wrong to stand for plutocratist and repressive policies, and they are responsible for personally (as ministers of state) helping to impose those views on Britain. But that has nothing to do with their ethnicity. Those views are wrong no matter who holds them.
An additional reason to reject the "coconuts" approach of criticing people's views as "betrayal of their demographic group" is that it tends to legitimize those views for people of other groups.
NYC's night-mayor Adams has been indicted for taking bribes and foreign campaign contributions.
Here is more of suspicions about him.
This reminds me of what Pseudolus said about being insensitive to physical pain. "I am going to crack down on crime … Not my own!"
*Mexico’s ‘anti-monuments’ force country to remember its [tens of thousands of people who are] missing.*
The world's countries pledged to reduce the death rate due to antibiotic resistance by 10% by 2030.
there is a simple way to slow the increase in antibiotic resistance: simply end the mass use of antibiotics in livestock.
What makes this difficult to do in practice is that massive use of antibiotics in livestock is what makes factory farms profitable, so their owners lobby hard against it. Will this pledge help overcome the lobbying?
Most people in wealthy countries endanger their health by eating too much meat. Discouraging that practice could help slow the increase in antibiotic resistance, but that too faces a powerful lobby.
To achieve more than that will require advances in medicine. But in order for them to do the good we would hope for, we must keep them safe from patents. If the US government subsidizes the research, it could keep them un-patented in the US.
Could it prevent US companies from patenting them in other countries? Maybe that requires in world patent treaties — which ought to be made anyway.
That research is a very important project to subsidize. Secondary to [pol note] curbing global heating,
because if climate disaster destroys civilization I expect humanity will completely lose 20th century technology including antibiotics.
7 to 15% of mothers regret that they had children.
*Pakistan says police orchestrated killing of doctor [Shah Nawaz] accused of blasphemy.*
This practice, which repeats frequently, shows how Pakistan is dominated by brutal, drooling religious fanaticism. This is of of the reasons to refuse to visit Pakistan, and why I have never gone there.
Typhoid fever is becoming a dangerous disease again as is bacteria have become resistant to antibiotics. People who catch it once again often die.
The same is in various stages of happening with other diseases.
* [Egyptian dissident] Alaa Abd el-Fattah is due to complete five-year sentence over social media post but family fear further charges.*
His relatives ask the British government to press Egypt to release him.
Harris has stated economic policies that focus on helping Americans become and remain middle class.
I am in favor of these plans, but I would put more emphasis on helping the poor, the people who have to survive on the lowest paid jobs or who are unable to work. To pay for this, we should tax the rich — not only to reverse the grab by rich they got so rich at the expense of everyone else, but to reduce the power that they get from their wealth.
California has legislated to make antisocial media less addictive.
The law forbids (1) showing the user posts chronologically rather than choosing them for manipulative purposes and (2) sending notifications during the usual sleep and work hours.
These limits on sites could be a big help for reducing the harmful effects of those sites' behavior, but the law has the flaw of limiting these protections to users that are children. This causes two problems:
Applying these rules to all users would protect society better and avoid unjust restrictions.
The problems that the law aims to prevent did not occur by happenstance. The tech companies impose them on the user by requiring per to run nonfree client-side software to access the platform. If that software were free/libre,
as by rights it ought to be,
users could enable these protections for themselves by choosing a suitably modified version of the client-side software.
For instance, they could run modified versions which (1) reorder the posts to be shown or discard some of them, according to rules the user could select, and/or (2) block or delay notifications in certain periods of the day. Some users who know how to program would make these and release them, and all users would then be able to use them.
Al Jazeeera: *By storming our Al Jazeera offices in Ramallah, Israel has stepped up its assault on press freedom.*
Delegates at Britain's Labour Party congress voted to call on the party to reverse what did in Parliament — cutting poor people's winter home heating subsidy.
Subsidizing fossil fuel use is, in general, a bad policy. But when it's a subsidy for poor people and is needed for them to stay alive and well, cutting it is dangerous and heartless. The safe way to reduce this subsidy is through helping the poor in other ways, not through harming them.
One way is to invest in insulating their homes so that they don't need as much artificial heating. Starmer keeps talking about "investment", so invest here.
The other way I know of is to increase welfare payments for the poor as a substitute for subsidizing their heating costs.
*Washington state to keep abortion pill stockpile in case [the wrecker grabs the presidency].*
A surveillance resister in India describes the gratuitous and purposeless ways in which Indians are pressured to submit to the national ID system Aadhar, and clever ways people are resisting.
His persistence in refusing to use Aadhar is inspiring, and he does win some victories.
Several countries are suing Afghanistan in the International Court of Justice for discrimination against women.
The case would seem to be so strong that the court must surely find against Afghanistan. But the Taliban will surely not obey any judgment, so why hold hearings to prove the obvious? It seems that the aim is to discourage other countries from recognizing the Taliban government.
The bully said that Ukraine should have surrendered immediately and let Putin seize part of Ukraine.
This is more evidence that the bully is a supporter of Putin.
If he seizes the US presidency, he may make the US an ally of Putin, or a vassal of Putin.
The wrecking crew want to deregulate medical insurance so that most Americans who are sick won't be able to afford it.
It is a mistake to think of medical care as "insurance" since that implies that each subscriber pays the amount perse is predicted probably to need spent on per. What we need is a national medical system that will be funded by taxing those with lots of money.
The company that publishes The Economist (magazine) has been secretly taking tobacco money to support events about medicine. When this became known, many organizations decided to refuse to participate.
This pressure has made the company commit to taking no further money from tobacco.
Side issue: the phrase "editorial content" causes me revulsion, like any use of "content" in that sense.
Some of the wrecker's campaign events are being wrecked by effects of global heating, and some of the attendees are becoming ill from them.
If Israel attacks Hezbollah on the ground, it is likely to have trouble seizing all the territory it seeks to occupy.
Hezbollah succeeded in resisting Israel's invasion in 2006, and is likely to have even better fortifications now.
In Gaza, Israeli units can occupy any piece of ground but can't wipe out HAMAS in its tunnels. Hezbollah's tunnels are designed for fighting from, not only for hiding in, so Israel can't expect to have control of the surface as it does in Gaza.
I think this threat represents Netanyahu's scheme to stay in power by unceasing escalation.
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".
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
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.
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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