The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
Political Articles | Political Notes | Talks | Airlines | Anti-Glossary | Archive | Ban face recognition | Books | Comics | Empire of the Megacorporations | Fiction | Glossary | GPG Key | Humor | Humorous Bio | Links | Media/Press/Bio | Non-Political Articles | The Four Factors of the Apocalypse | There Ought to Be a Law | Travel Experiences | Travel Photos | How I Do My Computing | RMS personal FAQ | Sayings | Scientific Links | Stallman on Love | Thanks |
Send comments/questions about the search engine to: rms at gnu dot org
RSS site feed for the most recent
political notes and new material.
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
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to oppose any renewal of the famous section 702 unless it requires a warrant for surveilling or questioning any American.
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 Congress to block the deportation thugs' mass DNA database.
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 your senators to Protect the CFPB from Vought.
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 Tell Fortune 500 CEOs: Take the Hands Off Our Vote Pledge
When I sent the letter, I put the word "black" in lower case, because I would equally put the word "white" in lower case.
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 medical associations to publicly report on dangerous and deadly conditions in US deportation prisons.
In my letter I urged these associations reject the cover-up euphemisms such as "ICE" and "detention center", and I replaced them in the text of my letter to set an example of not using them.
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 Congress to block the corrupter from taking the power to cancel federal grants arbitrarily, regardless of what activity or department.
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 Boston Dynamics to stop selling robot "dogs" to the deportation thugs, which would use them to indiscriminately threaten and attack people in the US.
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 Congress to impeach Brendan Carr, head of the FCC, for being loyal to the wrecker rather that to the US and its constitution.
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 Congress to reject KOSA and its internet surveillance.
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 senators to block the sale of bombs to Israel.
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 US government regulators to drop their plan to make digital delivery of personal financial data the default.
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 Congress to investigate the FCC for censorship of broadcasters.
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: State your support for California's proposed billionaire wealth tax.
Only California voters can vote on this initiative, but you and I can support it through this petition.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to pass the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act.
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 senators to reject the corrupter's Nominees for the USPS Postal Board.
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 senators to support S.Res.852, which would require the State Department to report to the Senate about Israel's violence toward Palestinians in the West Bank.
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: Sign the petition to keep VPNs legal in the US.
US citizens: call on Congress not to let Medicare Advantage insurers dump seniors.
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 the Office of Personnel Management to keep the corrupter's loyalty tests out of federal hiring.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the Pentagon from raiding NIH medical research funds.
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.
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.
The corrupter is negotiating with drug companies, supposedly to reduce the price of some medicines in the US, but after a year of this they have amounted to little change.
Ralph Nader rebukes Rep. Jeffries, leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives, for refusing to oppose plutocratist politics very much.
Republican Missouri state legislative candidate Thomas Ross, who lost the Republican primary, has been charged with plotting to stash drugs on rival Louise Secker.
*Imagine living in a country that can arrest and imprison you whenever it wants, without any judge or jury deciding you did anything wrong. It can call you a “domestic terrorist” and put you in prison for life. It can even execute you on the basis of nothing more than its own decision that you’re dangerous.*
That is what the persecutor is doing to the United States, Robert Reich says.
The Deform UK party's main media presenter worked on propaganda for the Chinese government a year ago, presenting its policies in Xinjiang in a favorable light and not mentioning the repression against the Uyghurs.
Patients notice dangerous errors in the visit records generated by Supposed Intelligence "scribes".
The practitioner whose words were thus summarized was supposed to review them, and I suppose perse did so, but must have failed to notice these errors.
That is natural: if you review 30 such textual recordings a day, your eyes will glaze over when you check them for errors.
The Israeli army has given an explanation of how its complex rules led it to the (erroneous) suspicion that Hamas had taken over the World Central Kitchen's food delivery on 1 April 2024, and it responded to that suspicion by killing them all.
There was no care to verify positively that anything bad had happened, and no effort to protect the food delivery volunteers in the event that something bad had happened.
This was based on a policy of "guilt by association".
In effect, their rules reflect an overall policy of, "When in doubt, wipe them all out!"
The wrecker seems to be inviting, even aiming for a big defeat for Republicans in this year's elections. What might his motivation be?
This article presents a conjecture about why.
Another reason he does not fear impeachment is that he knows Vance might be a more effective enemy of our freedom.
Prime Minister Burnham is giving a more leftist impression of Labour's policy, without much concrete change in the policies it proposes.
European governments find that the Putin forces are remotely organizing sabotage attacks, and investigating how to punish him for them.
Evidence is increasing that MDMA can help treat PTSD.
A description of the kinds of video and audio data Flock surveillance cameras can record — much more than merely license plate numbers — and how their system uses data mining to follow individual people and cars to some extent.
How city governments were surprised that the data collected in any one city could be search from anywhere.
These cameras track everyone that passes by, and even the most sadistic government agencies can use them to track people.
With the US government hell-bent on using any available system to track and repress critics and protest groups, we cannot tolerate surveillance systems such as Flock unless we can make them safe for dissenters.
A whistleblower in the USPS says that the agency is unable to implement its ballot-blocking order accurately — that it will inevitably block other ballots too.
Fanatic antiarabite minister Ben-Gvir proposes a plan for expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza.
Bernie Sanders has proposed a bill to ban development of machine-learning models that scientists don't understand enough to control them.
These systems can be dangerous, and can go "out of control", and their developers do not entirely understand what can happen. And perhaps their development should be restricted.
However, it is a mistake to describe them as "artificial intelligence". Indeed, one of the things that leads them to ignore rules is that they do not semantically understand the words and phrases that they play with. They understand rules in a superficial syntactic way that makes it easy for them to violate the spirit of their rules, without noticing the contradiction.
This is why I >denounce the practice of labeling them as "AI" as a motor for misunderstanding them.
Around 10 US thugs a year shoot and kill people who are doing nothing wrong. Almost half get convicted for this.
US deported people to Equatorial GuineaSome refused to get off the plane there, so the US took them to totally tyrannical Equatorial Guinea. They had no connection with Equatorial Guinea either, but thugs there imprisoned them and they are still stuck.
I suppose that the persecutor is paying the dictator of Equatorial Guinea to use his country as a privatized prison.
Magats propose to limit US Clean Water Act protections to a small fraction of streams and wetlands. Any stream or wetland that is occasionally dry would be excluded.
Robert Reich reports the level of employment in the US is falling while wages are not rising. He speculates that this is due to what I call "Supposed Intelligence".
He might be right about that, but let's not boost those companies by calling their product "Artificial Intelligence".
An expert witness gave testimony in 2002 that convicted Jeffrey Prible of murder; he was sentenced to death.
The witness, William Watson, says that based on better knowledge about DNA matching, his 2002 testimony was incorrect -- and it was erroneously summarized during the trial itself.
It's a good thing for justice that the execution was not swiftly carried out.
The most noteworthy thing in the article is how Prible's other evidence was already found sufficient to vacate his conviction, but a higher court found an excuse to disregard that evidence.
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.
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
