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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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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.
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)
Everyone: call on the directors of 23 and Me to protect the privacy of their customers.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "Hold town-hall meetings with the public, in your district and maybe in other districts too."
When Democrats do this, it wins support. But when Republicans do this, it exposes what they really are.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators at (202) 224-3121 and call on them to save Social Security, by rehiring the staff that the DOSE(*) got rid of and reversing all other recent changes made by the bully and the muskrat.
* Depredations of Swinging Evisceration.
US citizens: Call for breaking up Big Medicine.
US citizens: call on Congress to resist the saboteur-in-chief firmly — don't look for a compromise.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress not to allow the DOSE to wipe out post office staff.
DOSE stands for Department of Sabotage and Evisceration.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the muskrat from replacing the rural broadband access with Starlink.
US citizens: call on Amazon to drop its lawsuit attacking the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
US citizens: call on states not to require ID checks to access any web sites.
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov. If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to block $8 billion in weapons for Israel.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support these bills designed to prevent Republicans from wrecking the Social Security Administration.
If that happens, I suggest Congress also legislate to require rehiring of all the fired SSA workers who are willing to return.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to reject the saboteur's nominee for Social Security commissioner (Bisignano), and insist on a commissioner who is loyal to the Social Security system and the Americans who do or may depend on it. Fire the muskrat!
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (888) 853-7037 and urge per to oppose any cuts to Medicaid.
US citizens: call on the bully to insist that Israel allow humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: Demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil.
(I reject the emotionless word "custody" to describe being in jail.)
US citizens: call for the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil a nonviolent protester who demonstrated against Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza. He has not been charged with a crime, but the bully wants to cancel his green card and expel him from the US without showing any grounds for that.
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.
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.
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.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "Hold town-hall meetings with the public, in your district and maybe in other districts too."
When Democrats do this, it wins support. But when Republicans do this, it exposes what they really are.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators at (202) 224-3121 and call on them to save Social Security, by rehiring the staff that the DOSE(*) got rid of and reversing all other recent changes made by the bully and the muskrat.
* Depredations of Swinging Evisceration.
Israel broke the cease-fire with Lebanon by destroying a specific building by bombing. It gave warnings first, but that doesn't mean the attack was justified.
(satire) *New Law Requires Texans To Show ID To Buy Phallic Foods.*
*🤯Hegseth should go to jail for war plan leaks, according to Hegseth.*
*Open letter: we call on Columbia to stand up to authoritarianism.*
*Ukraine ceasefire deal looks like a Russian wishlist tied with a US bow.*
(satire) *Big Bird Seen Working At Local Starbucks After PBS Funding Cuts.*
Putin has enthusiastically supported the US intention to seize Greenland, probably expecting the corrupter to support his intention to seize Ukraine.
*Oscar-winning Palestinian director released from Israeli detention.*
The "Academy" that gives these awards has persistently refused to comment on the attack.
This attack by extremist bullies and the arrest by the Israeli state are not unusual in the West Bank. They happen to plenty of Palestinians. They are just as vicious when they are done to people who have not won awards. However, the fact of the award has one significant implication: it shows that the attackers have completely quashed their consciences.
8 more Turkish journalists have been jailed for covering nationwide protests against Erdoğan.
(satire) *Elon Musk Amazed At How Much Cheaper Bribing Voters Is In Midwest.*
New pun: The virus nobody notices
Tennessee proposes to make it a crime for local legislators to vote for sanctuary city policies.
It is clear that the state could pass a law that overrides any local law of this sort, but no state should be allowed to criminalize the act of voting as such.
The "five eyes" intelligence network between the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US is fraying after the US accidentally revealed to the others that they could not rely on it to help them.
Experiments show that many people who believe they are sensitive to eating gluten are having a reaction which is not triggered by gluten.
House speaker proposes to eliminate official "federal courts" and replacing them with new courts that would be subject to the president's control.
*Biodiversity loss in all species and every ecosystem linked to humans.*
The US military and spy officials who leaked their conversation about attacking the Houthis were deficient in competence and deficient in respect for human rights. But this should be no surprise.
The corrupter chose them, not for loyalty to conscience or to country, but only for loyalty to the corrupter. That's what they have, and that's how he will judge them.
Canadian officials accuse India of a disinformation campaign to put a Indian-Canadian politician in position to become prime minister.
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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