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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.
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)
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The petition fails to mention that online resource hubs must not require people to run JS code.
I suggest several ways to push back:
US citizens: call on Congress to ban carrying guns at polling places.
US citizens: call on CNN to apologize to Rep. Rashida Tlaib for falsely claiming she had attacked the Michigan Attorney General for bring Jewish.
In fact, Rep. Tlaib reproached her for arresting peaceful protesters.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass Sanders's resolution to block weapons sales to Israel.
When Sanders was young, he went to Israel and lived in a kibbutz. That he now advocates refusing to arm Israel is proof of how clear the case is for that policy.
US citizens: call on NYC Mayor Adams to stop trying to force retiress onto Medicare "Advantage" plans.
These insurance plans are convenient for people who are basically well, but can get incredibly expensive for people who are sicker. When that happens they are far more expensive than basic Medicare.
US citizens: call on Michigan Attorney General Nessel: Drop charges against campus protesters.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax Elon Musk before he becomes a trillionaire.
If the wrecker grabs the presidency, he will twist laws to help Musk become a multi-trillionaire by the end of the wrecker's fourth term in office.
US citizens: call on Georgia officials to sue to stop MAGA election interference.
US citizens: call for abolition of the death penalty.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster to restore reproductive rights.
US citizens: call on DoorDash, Google, Walmart, CVS, and other major corporations to stop funding Mark Robinson's Nazi-excusing and queer-hating campeign for governor of North Carolina.
US citizens: Support the USDA's proposed regulations to limit the amounts of added sugar in foods included in school meals.
US citizens: call on Comcast to stop funding anti-abortion campaigns.
US citizens: call on Networks, Media, and Press to stop "sane-washing" the corrupter.
In the US: call on CNN and Josh Kraushaar to issue a retraction to correct their false reporting on Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
US citizens: call on the Pentagon to stop funding Elon Musk's anti-democracy power grab.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Texas Republicans' voter purge.
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.
How can people continue to live in fire-prone areas?
In China, there seems to be only one way to criticize the government which is not forbidden: by stock trading.
The US government responds to right-wing irrational attacks by taking special care to give no cash aid to victims who don't have papers to prove citizenship.
What does it actually take to evacuate during a weather crisis? For many Americans, it is far beyond their means.
Everyone: call on airlines to desist from surge pricing.
As average [wildlife] population falls reach 95% in some regions, experts call for urgent action but insist "nature can recover."*
A right-wing conspiracy theory claims that Hurricane Helene was brought about by a business plot, intended to eliminate obstacles for a lithium mine.
The inventors of that myth are, it seems, trying to demonize building batteries to facilitate decarbonization.
It is surprising how close the myth is to the truth. There was no conspiracy to cause Hurricane Helene -- nobody would know how to do that intentionally. But there is a conspiracy of fossil fuel interests to maximize global heating, and that did cause this hurricane to be so powerful and damaging. The existence of this conspiracy is well documented.
The difference between the truth and the myth is just enough for the latter to put the blame on the wrong side.
*Study confirms Hurricane Helene fueled by Big Oil’s emissions: Greenpeace calls for climate polluters to pay.*
A British official wants to abolish privacy in the UK just to make each motorist pay tax exactly in proportion to per driving.
The short-term solution for the shortfall in tax funds is simple: increase the tax rate on gasoline and diesel fuel. until the total revenue reaches the former level. That will speed the elimination of all fossil fuel vehicles.
In a few years, when those are mostly gone, that method will no longer solve the problem. At that point Britain could tax all electricity usage to get the money to pay for road maintenance. Or tax the rich in one way or another.
Armitt seems to treat as sacred the goal of measuring everyone's use of roads so as to compute precisely how much value each person gets from them. Such exactitude is an improvement in theory, but it is not crucial. We should not accept Orwellian surveillance just to make the tax perfectly fit the usage.
*MI5 chief: UK facing growing threat from Islamic State, Russia and Iran.*
The threat includes assassinations and terror attacks.
*Two of the [Philippines'] most powerful political families, the Dutertes and the Marcoses, are set for an epic struggle for power.*
I expect that one of them will seek support from China. It is the obvious thing to do, for anyone that would sacrifice his country to gain power over it.
* Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, … rising from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022.*
There should never be foreign aid to spend on increased planet roasting. No matter what pain is caused by a local scarcity of fossil fuel, it is not as bad as death for nearly everyone.
The UK will have a new agency whose staff will actively enforce penalties for violating workers' rights.
I've called for the US to do this. Stealing N dollars from your employee should be as serious a crime as stealing N dollars from a business, and enforced similarly.
*Croatian police accused of burning asylum seekers' phones and passports.*
Non-rich Americans who want to stop the elite from impoverishing them see little to support in "centrist" Democrats. Meanwhile, the wrecker falsely claims to oppose the elites even as he appears on stage with them.
Republicans want to make Social Security payments decrease in real value every year. They would do this by eliminating the cost of living adjustment Thus they would drive old people into penury.
Israel ordered the only children's hospital in North Gaza to evacuate, but there is no way to evacuate the children in intensive care, and no place to bring them to.
To attack that hospital would be an atrocity, but such atrocities have become normal for Israel.
To attack a hospital is generally a war crime. Th attack the one and only hospital is even worse.
*On Thursday, UN investigators accused Israel of deliberately targeting health facilities and killing and torturing medical personnel in Gaza.*
The mainstream media double standard: criticizing Harris any time she does not reply to a point, while letting the bullshitter duck all real issues all the time.
The US says that North Korean military engineers are deployed in Putin's war against Ukraine.
The ex-CEO of a company that sells carbon offsets has been charged with fraud for systematically exaggeration how much greenhouse emissions a project would avoid.
The idea of emissions offsets is full of loopholes. Most of the exaggeration is a matter of making high estimates; since there are no facts to compare with, it can't quite be called "fraud". But it does undermine the intended result.
*Fema chief warns ‘dangerous’ Trump falsehoods hampering Helene response.*
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:
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