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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.
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For the sake of separation, this site has always been
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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)
US citizens: call on your state governor and attorney general to hold Big Oil accountable for its climate crimes.
US citizens: call on The Senate to reject the "SAVE" Act, short for Suppress All sorts of Voters Explicitly.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to get billionaire money out of politics.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say not to privatize the US Postal Service.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to stand up against the wrecker's tariffs.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress, federal courts, and the U.S. Marshals Service to defend the right of due process of law against the bully.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the FEC to investigate Elon Musk's election bribery in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per fight against any budget that cuts critical human needs programs to fund more tax breaks for billionaires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
If you have a way to communicate with a person in the organization Our Revolution, and are willing to help me make contact, please write to me, rms, at the GNU domain (gnu.org).
I would like to donate to Our Revolution, but I can't find a morally acceptable way to send the donation. The only way they publish is through the web, and their payment system (as is usual on the web) works by sending nonfree software to the user's browser. Running such software is unjust and insecure, so I refuse absolutely — no exceptions, not even for an organization that follows Bernie Sanders.
If I can reach anyone there, I will try to work out a way to donate by check.
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.
Harvard has refused to surrender to the bully/cheater's political demands and will fight them in court. Bravo!
*Harvard University faculty sue to block Trump review of nearly $9bn in funding.*
It is futile to make a deal with the bully/cheater, since he does not hesitate to cancel a deal, or cheat. Once you choose the path of appeasement, he will demand more and more appeasement.
The bully/cheater told Columbia that giving him all he had demanded was not enough to have its research funds reinstated.
The wrecker has ended prosecution of US companies for paying bribes in other countries. He claims that, in places where bribery is normal, the US companies should not be at a disadvantage in that game.
This article argues that the game is bad for the companies that play it, and that US companies will be better off if corruption is kept down.
The bully claims that Chairman Xi is in Vietnam to develop ways to screw the US. He might very well want to screw the US, but he no longer needs to figure out ways to do it. It suffices to pick up the opportunities that the bully throws his way.
US citizens: call on your state governor and attorney general to hold Big Oil accountable for its climate crimes.
US citizens: call on The Senate to reject the "SAVE" Act, short for Suppress All sorts of Voters Explicitly.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An attempt to make sense of what the corrupter means by what he says. It proposes a model of how he thinks about his actions and their aims: he has no principles, no values except gain, and no loyalty except for mutual gain.
When he causes havoc, it is not always that he is unaware of the damage his acts can do to others. Sometimes he just doesn't care.
It makes sense that he inclines towards promoting prejudice, hatred and cruelty: because they insulate a person from values and loyalty other than taking away from others.
The hardest challenge for those who wish to restore the former (partial and insufficient) role of principle, loyalty and justice will be how to defeat that empire without sinking to the corrupter's level and thus replacing one corrupter with another.
A survivor among the group of Palestinian medics massacred in Gaza, who was missing afterward, has been found — imprisoned by Israel.
Being erroneously recorded as "dead" by the Social Security Agency can be disastrous. The problems it causes might kill you.
(satire) *[Pregnancy] Test Comes With Flight Voucher In Case Result Positive.*
The wrecker is eager to do damage to California. Could that be one of his reasons for provoking trade war?
A British man who has no connections with Venezuela or gangs found his own unusual tattoo listed in the Department of Horror and Suffering's supposed gang tattoo photo catalog. The tattoo depicts a clock showing the hour of his daughter's birth.
Now he is afraid to visit Miami with his family, afraid he might be imprisoned by the bully's cunning nincompoops.
Starting in 2028, ships will be required to pay for their carbon emissions.
This is important for pressuring to make ships more efficient.
Republicans love the children of unauthorized immigrants … until they are born.
People who made small campaign contributions to Senator Fetterman's campaign when he pretended to be progressive are asking for return of their donations.
*How Much Did Congress Make Off Market Turmoil and Why're They Allowed to Make Anything at All?*
Panama's opposition party accuses the bully of sending US troops to former US military bases in Panama — in effect, a clandestine invasion, though the government denies that it is one.
It reminds me of Putin's conquest of Crimea, though there are differences.
The Israeli army unit that attacked a column of ambulances in Rafah, and murdered captured paramedics afterward, is under the command of a general who has encouraged killing any Arab whatsoever, and so have other officers.
*White House may seek legally binding control over Columbia through consent decree – report.*
I don't think the wrecker aims to destroy Columbia; he wants to make it subservient. I wonder if New York State could pass a law forbidding the accreditation of a university that doesn't respect academic freedom, such that agreeing to such a consent decree would force it to cease to operate. (This would be something like the liberty-or-death-for-this-code clause of the GNU General Public License.)
If the wrecker wants to destroy that university, he could do it this way, but that changes little since he could destroy it in other ways. But if what he wants is to have it continue to exist in a subservient way, this could prevent it.
*Taiwan charges Chinese captain with damaging undersea cables.*
Bravo for taking action against this covert form of warfare.
The corrupter ordered federal prosecutors to avert their eyes from cryptocurrency corruption.
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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