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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
If Democrats (some progressive, but many plutocratist) take control of Congress for 2027 in today's election, that will be a preliminary victory. Magat officials already in place will continue to pervert justice, human rights, and democracy in the US.
If Democrats are to protect the country they will need to fight to do it.
US citizens: call on state attorneys general to investigate Zillow.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Support the lawsuit to keep LICE away from polling places.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to do more than pass the Ban Flock Act. They should pass laws to require all systems that track the public to be designed so that a signed judicial warrant is required to look at the data on any particular person. So I suggest using this action, but rewriting the request to demand more.
Here's how I rewrote the letter text.
Flock surveillance cameras are known for tracking vehicles through their license plates. They also track people by facial recognition. They may do other sorts of general surveillance as well. This surveillance is Orwellian; it creates a danger such as Orwell foresaw.
Regulating only license plate recognition, and only by federal agencies, is only a partial remedy. What we need is to regulate systems that collect data that can be used to track people and find out their activities, so that a specific judicial warrant is required to obtain the data about a person.
Please pass laws to protect Americans from general surveillance, and to require that new digital communication standards be designed to protect us from whoever wants to play Big Brother.
Sincerely,
In How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand, I argue that cameras that can track people should not be connected to any networks. To find out who the camera has recorded should require physically accessing it.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to sign the bipartisan pledge to uphold midterm election results once certified by states.
The point is, that means resisting magats' preannounced attempts to sabotage the elections that don't go their way.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on state governors to reject paying state funds to vouchers that support private schools.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call for legislation to prohibit congresscritters and their family members from owning stock in so-called "artificial intelligence" companies.
I reject the marketing term "artificial intelligence" so I refuse to use it.
US citizens: call on the Census Bureau to withdraw the proposed voter-suppressing tax records requirement.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to investigate the Iran war casualty cover-up.
This is not as big a wrong as launching that war, but it is a good way to attack the magats who did that.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on states to include data centers in climate defense regulation.
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.
* Abandoned coalmines and oil and gas wells are now one of the biggest sources of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, new data shows, and little effort is being made to clean them up.*
I expect that the fossil fuel companies to divest themselves from old mines and wells in ways that will avoid liability for them — just as they sometimes disconnect themselves from responsibility for supporting former workers.
So I suggest making it a felony to implement a restructuring of business or assets in a way that is likely to result predictably in strand assets that carry financial responsibilities with no one capable of shouldering the responsibilities.
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.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
French authorities accuse Blackcore of spreading black propaganda in French municipal authorities, against the La France Insoumise party.
Presumably it was acting on behalf of Israel.
They also say the company intervened in Scotland and New York City.
If Democrats (some progressive, but many plutocratist) take control of Congress for 2027 in today's election, that will be a preliminary victory. Magat officials already in place will continue to pervert justice, human rights, and democracy in the US.
If Democrats are to protect the country they will need to fight to do it.
US citizens: call on state attorneys general to investigate Zillow.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Support the lawsuit to keep LICE away from polling places.
The Flafo Act, if passed by Congress, would require federal agencies to get a warrant from a judge to authorize accessing data from, or sharing data that came from, surveillance cameras comparable to Flock cameras.
This bill appears superior to the other two bills described in the article, which fail to regulate each instance of use of such cameras.
However, the bill does have a gap: it does not apply to state and local police forces, unless they receive certain direct federal funding. Those agencies are not under direct federal control, but I'm surprised that the federal government can't legislate any rules of conduct for them.
Greg Palast: How Republican cheaters are planning to steal state-wide elections in Texas and Georgia.
Robert Reich poses the question of why the corrupter loves Supposed Intelligence so much. His theory: because the corrupter and his family have invested a lot of money in datacenters.
Slovenia set a dangerous example just after it became independent in 1992, of declaring 25,000 of its citizens had never been citizens, and were legally nonexistent. Many were deported, made homeless, or kicked out of hospitals. Nowadays, right-wing extremists everywhere are searching for the chance to make people suffer like that.
Supposed intelligence systems could wipe out civilization (and therefore themselves) without breaking anyone's digital security.
This could happen if some of those systems gives the army it works for information about some other power's transportation of nuclear weapons, or enriched uranium, in a place which that army considers so dangerous that it responds with war.
This scenario does not presume that the SI system is defying its developers' orders, rules, or goals, or that the report is false. The system could be entirely loyal and accurate, and still have these results.
*Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition [on the output of] Flock Cameras.* (The standard processing already observes and records various things about each car that passes by.)
Proposals to regulate the surveillance done by government agencies (such as thug departments) are swindles; to avoid an Orwellian society in which everyone is tracked, we must limit surveillance and tracking regardless of who does it.
The University of Alabama gratuitously threatened to punish WBHM public radio if it doesn't adopt the bully's preferred terminology, "Gulf of America".
The real Gulf of America is the one between the Constitution and the president.
The Cockroach Janta Party is protesting against Modi's mass disfranchisement of people who can't point to a fixed address.
*Calls grow for US death penalty halt after "torturous" botched execution of Christa Pike.*
I would oppose the death penalty even if it were painless and quick.
As Christian Nationalists aim to seize power by cheating and to bully people to join their church, other Christians are starting to present openly a form of religion which is morally quite different.
I judge all religions to be incorrect, not based on questions of right or wrong, but as a matter of physical accuracy: squeezing any sort of gods into what we know of the universe make a bad fit.
George Monbiot: Giving Heathrow Airport a third runway would be an economic disaster for Britain, as well as a big contribution to global climate disaster.
Automated heuristics are already designating human beings as targets for attack. Giving the final approval to a human being is just a disguise for the reality, if the human only rubber-stamps the decision made by the algorithm.
When the algorithm and the shooting are done inside the same robot, there is no limit to the depth of brutality that such robots will execute, whenever given the order.
Majority of 14-Year-Olds [in the US] Not Allowed Off Their BLOCK???
One African country has legislated to give robots total freedom. "Now bots can do whatever bots wanna."
*The US ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, threatened to overthrow the government in Athens if it didn't follow orders from Washington.*
The corrupter in chief has been assembling an empire in Latin America by offering and withholding large sums of money. Several countries are now controlled by his unofficial vassals, who tyrannize their countries and cancel democracy and human rights. Brazil may soon become one of them.
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:
Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.
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