Richard Stallman's Personal Site


The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019"
by Ruben Rodriguez

I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project.
This is my long-term commitment and I plan to continue.
You may have heard or read critical statements about me; please make up your own mind.

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RSS site feed for the most recent political notes and new material.

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.

FSF Giving Guide

Robert Reich explains how the bullshitter and Republicans are trying to spread chaos to discourage non-fascists from voting. After creating as much real chaos as they can, they pretend there is even more of it, hoping Americans will give up and not vote, or support a fascist strong man.

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.

Canadians: I suggest you seek election advice at a local chapter of a group that pushes to curb global heating and has the courage to say, "Canada should stop exporting fossil fuel." It will at least use the right goals to suggest who to vote for in your area.

Join a Friday climate strike.
That page is made by scraping Fridays for Future so you can get the information without running any Javascript code. I would be very glad if they made the information on their own site accessible from the Free World; then we could simply refer people to their site and do without the scraping etc.

I am limiting the number of new political notes per day so as not to overload the volunteers who install new notes. If you'd like to help, please write to rms at gnu period org.

Is your bank pressuring you to use biometric ID? If so, please write to rms at gnu dot org. It could be useful if you document what is happening.

Please join the Free Software Foundation to support its work for your freedom.

"They" is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.

Link Policy

The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.

I'm looking for people to If you would like to help me in any of these ways, please write to rms at gnu dot o r g.

Civil Liberties Minute:

[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting 
             Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]
graphic by Susan Henson
Americans, you may wish to copy this icon to your own page, as a way of showing what patriotism means to you.

Upcoming talks

Urgent action items

Recording of Guantanamero

Listen to the recording of Guantanamero, a protest song written in Spanish. The recording is in Ogg Vorbis format. To install an Ogg Vorbis player, see the FSF's Ogg Players page.

There Ought to Be a Law

More items where there ought to be a law.

Quotes

Here are some quotations that I particularly like.

Most recent Political Notes and News Items

(RSS Feed)

You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.

Urgent: guns at polling places
12 October 2024

US citizens: call on Congress to ban carrying guns at polling places.

Meaningful dialogue
12 October 2024

US universities are confused and conflicted about how to deal with strongly opinionated students and their disagreeing view.

Escalation with Iran
12 October 2024

Since Iran's missiles have shown they can hit Israel and do damage, further escalation by Israel could result in a long war of attrition

55,000 Bibles
12 October 2024

Oklahoma Republicans have found a clever way to corrupt the election: by buying bibles from the corrupter's campaign. The price will be over 3 million dollars.

They don't openly admit that the purchase has to be from his campaign, but they make that inevitable by specifying details that other printed bibles don't fit.

Government purchases coming directly or indirectly from electoral campaigns ought to be illegal.

Brett Kavanaugh
12 October 2024

Accusing the wrecker of restraining the FBI from thoroughly investigating the rape accusation against Brett Kavanaugh when he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

Energy industry
12 October 2024

The head of the UK "energy industry" has been chosen as the new head of the "Climate Change Committee.

I know nothing more about her besides that point about her previous experience, but that one point is enough to make me suspect that the fox is now in charge of keeping us chickens safe.

Project 2025
12 October 2024

*Project 2025 would "unequivocally" lead to more hurricane deaths, experts warn.*

Activist’s visa
12 October 2024

An Australian official is moving to revoke the visa of a visiting Palestinian who said, speaking in an event this Oct 7, that it was the occasion for “considerable celebration” as the anniversary of HAMAS's hostage taking and killings. Now the Australian is considering revoking his visa on grounds that he advocated terrorism.

The official said, "But he did prove the point that many of us are making in the lead up to the rallies on Monday, which is that the only reason you would organize a pro-Palestinian protest on Monday, is if you thought it was worthy of celebration." This seems to be valid.

Both HAMAS and subsequently Israel were responding to terror attacks. Both had grounds for belligerence if it were in accord with international humanitarian law. Both entities' retaliations instead violated that law, committing atrocities.

I defend freedom of speech in a very firm way. I don't think anyone, whether citizen or visitor, should be prohibited to express those views, even though I strongly disagree with those views.

Shasta county
12 October 2024

A Republican official, extreme right-wing by the standards of 2022, is now organizing the fight to defend some basic idea of truth and justice against the wave of trumpery.

Lead Pipe Rule
12 October 2024

The corrupter ordered the US to adopt a nearly no-op rule about poisonous lead and copper pipes. Now it has been replaced with a plan to eliminate nearly all lead in American's faucet water.

Harris Medicare plan
12 October 2024

*Harris announces plan for Medicare to cover long-term care at home.*

This would be a big help for partially or completely disabled Americans, and not just those 65 years old or older.

Dirty Truth Report
12 October 2024

*Utilities Only Planning Enough Clean Energy to Replace Half of Fossil Fuel Generation by 2035, New Sierra Club Report Finds.*

They still plan to build lots of gas-fired power plants. Using fossil gas cause more global heating than coal.

This demonstrates that existing laws, plus existing pressure from well-informed public opinion, are not sufficient to decarbonize rapidly.

Environmental reforms
12 October 2024

A government can be far better than blatant plutocracy and still be weak in resisting plutocracy's destruction of the eco-sphere. Australia's Labor Party seems to be an example.

Chris Minns’ plan
12 October 2024

*NSW [(a state in Australia)] premier says police should be able to ban pro-Palestine protests because they are too expensive.*

This has met with opposition.

Bravo for resisting this.

I agree that we should avoid the terms "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine" because those terms tend to push society into a dichotomous choice.

My wish is well-being, peace and freedom for both peoples.

Decades ago, large demonstrations were run by organizations, and the organizations appointed and trained Marshalls to keep the protest on the track of nonviolence. I am sure that practice greatly reduced the cost of policing, as well as the probability that the official thugs would go on a rampage against protesters.

That isn't 100% effective at preventing rampages,

but it surely helps.

Deforestation
12 October 2024

*Demand for beef, soy, palm oil and nickel hindering efforts to halt demolition by 2030, global report finds.*

Maim and kill
12 October 2024

Robert Reich described how Bridgestone defeated the US government legal effort to compel Bridgestone keep its factory workers safe. Bridgestone responded by saying it would shut the factory rather than install the safety measures.

It announced that threat by making a false assertion: that it would be "uneconomical" to run the plant if it had safety measures. With the usual meaning of those words, that was not true: Bridgestone would have made a profit even with the safety measures installed. But it might have made less from that plant than from a hypothetical replacement plant somewhere else, without the safety measure.

To put an end to this sort of practice, we need laws that will prevent businesses from winning disputes in that way. Reich explains other changes that would have strengthened his hand.

Timor Sea gas project
12 October 2024

Australia and East Timor were formerly very hostile, but now they are making joint plans to collaborate in planet roasting by extracting undersea fossil gas.

The world must hope that they can't come to agreement on the details.

Narges Mohammadi
12 October 2024

Narges Mohammadi has been imprisoned in Iran since 3 years ago. A year ago she received Nobel peace prize, and the screws made her imprisonment harsher.

Gut Environmental Law
12 October 2024

*An Oil Giant Railroads Its SCOTUS Connection To Gut Environmental Law.*

Vehicle-To-Everything
12 October 2024

Engineers are proposing a system for every car to communicate constantly with every other nearby car, as well as with nearby pedestrians (does that mean, their snoop-phones?) and local non-mobile surveillance systems.

The result would be total surveillance of everyone.

It may be possible to design such a system such that it doesn't identify any car or any person. That could be safe as well as beneficial. But we cannot expect the manufacturers of today's "connected cars" to value their customers' privacy.

If I were going to buy a "connected" car such as are made today, I would choose a model that people know how to disconnect. I expect that each antenna needs to be either removed or covered with a Faraday cage such that it cannot receive or transmit.


The four factors of the apocalypse:
   global heating, global hating,
   global eating, global mating.


[More Cartoons]


Not f'd. You won't find us on Facebook

Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.


E-books

Non-oppressive Commercial E-books


Don't use Facebook

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.


Boycott Harry Potter Books, Movies, etc.



Internet Music EULAS



Business Supremacy Treaties



Countries to Stay Away From



No national identity cards

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.


Borders

Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.


Flight connections

Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.


The Lifelong Activist

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.


Bob Chassell

Writing (mostly science fiction) by my friend Bob Chassell who recently died.


Solidarity Economy and Free Software

Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.


Falkvinge articles

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.


Long-term action items


Political Articles

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.

Political notes

"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."

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.

Media/Press/Bios

Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.

Travel experiences

Photos about my travels

Scientific Links


Some humor

The berry torture.

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.

Futon Physics

A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta Española. thumbnail

The Night before M-x-mas

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 Cartoons

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 Portuguese

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.)

I am a
     Saint In the Church Of Emacs --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.

Pre-Zen Studies.

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.

Un malentendido gracioso.

ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.

American Extremists

My Small Mouth

The huns and the writs.

No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)

Hammer into Anvil

Fiction

Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation

A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).

The Right to Read

Books

My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.

Stallman on Love

Love and Dance

My Childhood Sweetheart

Made for You

My Former Personal Ad

Non-Political Articles

Am I Doctor Stallman?

Avec des chapeaux French song parody.

My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.

Resolving the trolley problem

Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights

A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.

Origin of the POSIX name.

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".

My Childhood Sweetheart

Love and Dance

Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor

Certificate of confusion

Links

Thanks

I would like to thank:


Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of any of the photos in the photos subdirectory is permitted under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0 or later. You can copy and redistribute the photo of me playing music to the butterfly under the Creative Commons Noderivs Nocommercial license version 3.0 or later. Any other photos of me in this (the toplevel) directory may be copied and redistributed under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0