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"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)
Everyone: call on major news networks to cover project 2025.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
I have done the first 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, in the personal information 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. You will get a page that does not function (assuming you have blocked nonfree JavaScript code), but by editing its URL in the browser's address bar you can finish sending your letter.
First, delete everything from `&redirect' to the end. Then insert, instead of what you deleted, `&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 text for your letter and click on the "SEND LETTER" button.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send 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 Teamsters president to oppose Republicans if they won't match Biden's bold support for workers.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass reforms to place limits on massive government surveillance. See past articles about this issue.
Republicans claim to be for "small government", but that is only as regards serving and aiding the public. Where mistreatment of non-rich people is concerned, they stand for "heavy government".
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act.
More information: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/359
US citizens: call on the Federal Trace Commission to oppose the billion-dollar Koch fertilizer merger.
Biden created the possibility for the FTC to block his merger by appointing the competition law champion, Lina Khan, to head the FTC. Previous Democratic presidents, Clinton and Obama, did little more than Republican presidents to oppose concentration of industry.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect abortion and birth control by repealing the Comstock Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Thank the FCC commissioners for stopping companies from gouging prisoners for their phone calls.
Because prisoners are a captive market, US companies impose unconscionable fees that cut them off from their families — and make it more likely they will commit further crimes once released.
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.
The new UK government said it would stop using a barge to house asylum seekers.
This raises two big questions which I do not recall much writing about.
For (2) I have seen little concrete coverage of what makes it so bad to live there. There may be aspects of its arrangements and policies that make life on board painful, but I have no idea what they are.
The one thing I do understand is the barge's remote location and consequent inconvenience of access. I think that makes it unfeasible for anyone living there to visit most parts of the UK without staying away overnight — and they can't afford to rent a room for that. I think that would in most cases cut them off from meeting friends, relatives and support organizations.
If that is the main problem, could it be solved by mooring the barge in London, convenient to public transit?
If there are other major problems of living there, I would like to understand them.
*Human Rights Groups Call on Biden to Investigate Israeli Influence Campaign Against American Lawmakers.*
*"Oil Kills" protesters disrupt flights at airports across Europe in wave of action.*
Causing many flights to be canceled is quite annoying, but since the alternative is the collapse of civilization into suffering and death…
*Tree bark plays vital role in removing methane from atmosphere.* Especially in the tropical forests that people are busy cutting down.
A report on the two main human sources of methane in the air: fossil fuel fracking and corporate factory farming.
Starmer's party has renamed itself to "belabour" by provisionally expelling seven MPs from party endorsement, after they voted to repeal a much-hated Tory poverty generating law.
*By disciplining MPs for voting to pull children out of poverty, Keir Starmer has shown us who he really is.*
This authoritarian attitude shows that there is little chance of leading Starmer Labour back to the values and priorities that the Labour Party previously stood for. Former Labour voters, and former labour MPs, may be able to unite with Jeremy Corbyn to be the nucleus of a new democratic leftist party for Britain.
*JD Vance writes foreword for Project 2025 leader's upcoming book.*
Identifying the biggest falsehoods in Netanyahu's speech to the US Congress.
*[Rep.] Rashida Tlaib holds up "war criminal" sign during Netanyahu address.*
Bravo, Rep. Tlaib.
An Illinois thug deputy has been charged with first degree murder for shooting dead a black woman he had been sent to help.
At least it is good to see the state authorities filed the appropriate charges without trying to avoid it.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important -- and I label them like this.
Kamala Harris strongly called for reforms to stop the unjust violence of uniformed thugs.
Scientific surprise: metallic nodules (lump of mixed meals) that rest on some flat areas of ocean bottoms generate oxygen in a slow but steady way.
They may be crucial for some life on the bottom.
Scientists already warn that mining them could destroy sea-bottom life. This shows another way it could have that effect.
Forecasting what advanced bullshit generators will do to society under the control of antisocial media platforms financed by advertising.
It confuses the issue by calling them "AI".
*Developing countries face worst debt crisis in history, study shows. Spending on health and education being cut as nearly half of budgets are used to pay creditors, campaigners say.*
Side point: I dislike the euphemism of "developing countries." But that doesn't diminish the importance of the injustice.
Everyone: call on major news networks to cover project 2025.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
I have done the first 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, in the personal information 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. You will get a page that does not function (assuming you have blocked nonfree JavaScript code), but by editing its URL in the browser's address bar you can finish sending your letter.
First, delete everything from `&redirect' to the end. Then insert, instead of what you deleted, `&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 text for your letter and click on the "SEND LETTER" button.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send 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.
Dr. Mark Perlmutter went to Gaza for a week to do surgery. He reports being amazed by the number of children who were killed, and in particular the children who were shot by snipers. That proves an Israeli soldier looked at an evident noncombatant who posed no threat and decided, calmly, to kill per. Not in the heat of battle, not in the fog of war, but with unhurried murderous dehumanization.
Perlmutter reports photographing two dead children who were each shot once in the middle of the chest and once in the middle of the side of the head. This makes the unhurried dehumanization even more clear.
Some Israeli right-wing extremists post recordings of their hatred for Palestinians. I think that others become snipers and commit war crimes.
*Seven major US labor unions call on Biden to "shut off military aid to Israel."*
US citizens: call on Teamsters president to oppose Republicans if they won't match Biden's bold support for workers.
The history of Republican censorship of teaching history in the US began with an executive order made by the corrupter when he was president.
Biden subsequently reversed it, but many states have passed similar censorship laws, and the Republican Party platform calls for one. Most teachers in the US are now afraid of being punished for teaching the wrong part of history.
Learning about the wrongs of history, almost always committed by people other than me, can lead me to feel discomfort, or even anger, but not on account of my race or sex. They have nothing to do with the wrong. And likewise for you. As for guilt, I can feel that about things I myself have done.
It's the same for you, whoever you are.
As for Governor Kemp, he is not responsible for his ancestors' role in slavery, but he is responsible for his own role in censorship.
*Bangladeshi students allege police tortured them after protests crackdown.*
*Israeli parliament voted to label UNRWA a terror organisation. UNRWA is the UN agency that provides aid to Palestinians.
I have said for years that it is unjust and illegitimate to "designate" any person or organization "terrorist". Terrorism is a serious crime and anyone accused of this crime deserves a fair trial.
I think this accusation is meant to create a strained excuse to block relief supplies to Palestinians in occupied territory — in other words, an excuse for more grave crime.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
A magat who openly threatened to start a civil war if the wrecker loses this election has apologized.
Republican leaders often say this with dog-whistles. and Americans are aware of this danger, but Republicans try to avoid admitting it clearly.
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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