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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
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer and Rep. Jeffries to be leaders for climate defense.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the perverse "SAVE America" that would require voters to show up-to-date federal ID cards with their current addresses.
Poor US citizens can't afford the fees to update them when they change address (which they are compelled to do often), so this would have an effect resembling that of the "poll tax" that southern states used to disenfranchise blacks. Those states achieved racial discrimination indirectly by using a "grandfather clause" to exempt whites from the tax. Its proposed new replacement would, I expect, disenfranchise poor people regardless of race.
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 Federal Reserve to block obscure local banks from setting up nationwide high-interest loan businesses.
Us citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the resolution to protect voting rights.
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 support what is being called the "AI for the people" act, but to remove the marketing hype term "AI" from the bill.
Here is what I wrote about the term "Artificial Intelligence" in the letter I sent.
Please join me in refusing to repeat the marketing hype slogan, "Artificial Intelligence", that the companies like to use. Let's limit the term "intelligence" to systems that can know and understand, within some domain — which the chatbots of today can't do. For more explanation, see https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#ArtificialIntelligence.Despite the technology's great flaws, a handful of billionaires and tech oligarchs stand to capture trillions of dollars in wealth that needs to be shared with the rest of society.
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 the Senate to investigate corruption and cryptocurrency, so as to block deregulation plans which threaten to increase the corruption.
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 state's Secretary of State and Attorney General: Stop Last-Minute Voter Purges.
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 senators to extend temporary protected status for the 350,000 Haitian refugees 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: 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 saboteur in chief from wrecking Social Security.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Find Our Families Act, which would require the deportation thugs to give their prisoners' relatives accurate information about where the prisoners are, and about their medical emergencies.
It would also ban torturing the prisoners and their relatives by keeping the one from communicating with the other.
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 for the release of whistleblower Courtney Williams, charged with "espionage" for disclosing discrimination and harassment she experienced as a contractor at Fort Bragg.
Don't forget that that military base is named after a traitor, Braxton Bragg.
US citizens: More than 4 million people have lost SNAP (food benefits) since last summer. Call on Congress to reject farm legislation that leaves families behind.
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 Congress to stop Education Sec. Linda McMahon from transferring special education and student civil rights out of the Education 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 Congress to require deportation thugs to continue reporting cases where someone dies within 30 days after release from deportation prison.
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 Congress to Abolish Super PACs.
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 fully fund public TV and radio.
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.
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.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer and Rep. Jeffries to be leaders for climate defense.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the perverse "SAVE America" that would require voters to show up-to-date federal ID cards with their current addresses.
Poor US citizens can't afford the fees to update them when they change address (which they are compelled to do often), so this would have an effect resembling that of the "poll tax" that southern states used to disenfranchise blacks. Those states achieved racial discrimination indirectly by using a "grandfather clause" to exempt whites from the tax. Its proposed new replacement would, I expect, disenfranchise poor people regardless of race.
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 Federal Reserve to block obscure local banks from setting up nationwide high-interest loan businesses.
Us citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the resolution to protect voting rights.
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 support what is being called the "AI for the people" act, but to remove the marketing hype term "AI" from the bill.
Here is what I wrote about the term "Artificial Intelligence" in the letter I sent.
Please join me in refusing to repeat the marketing hype slogan, "Artificial Intelligence", that the companies like to use. Let's limit the term "intelligence" to systems that can know and understand, within some domain — which the chatbots of today can't do. For more explanation, see https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#ArtificialIntelligence.Despite the technology's great flaws, a handful of billionaires and tech oligarchs stand to capture trillions of dollars in wealth that needs to be shared with the rest of society.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
A number of tech bros argue that total surveillance will make everyone "be good". The implicit assumption is that the people that can use the data to punish you are good, and will always and only punish bad acts. The reality of surveillance is the opposite of that. Massive surveillance helps deportation thugs find immigrants and attack them, sometimes lawfully and sometimes not. But it doesn't deter the deportation thugs from murdering people[1] [2] on the street. The trumppets who control the surveillance don't allow access to the surveillance data to catch a killer who is on their side.
Right-wing Christians in the US are seeking ways to restrict abortions in the name of doctors' religious freedom.
Will they stop with doctors? They could give every employee in the hospital the "right" to opt out of an abortion, especially one that was not planned in advance. Unplanned abortions are sometimes needed to save a woman's life threatened by complications in pregnancy, and state laws that prohibit abortions put women's lives in danger when that happens.
A last-minute veto by a pious worker could have the same effect.
Snoop phones have lured people into surveilling and tracking their relatives, friends, even coworkers — with their consent, which it does not occur to them to refuse.
Businesses and governments started the tracking, but the relatives and friends impose bonds that feel more personal, so some people won't dare to say no. Which is why it is good practice to start saying no and make a principle of it.
Keeping the snoop phone in a Faraday bag most of the time can also be a step towards ceasing to carry one.
*[The persecutor] has "succeeded in completely politicizing" justice department, experts say, using it to punish his enemies.*
The US lost the core of its democracy in the 1970s-80s. After that, inertia kept parts of the democratic system sort of working. What we are seeing now is the delayed manifestation of the full consequences of that loss.
Britain's environmental protection laws focus on limiting construction, including projects for decarbonization and protection of endangered species. The article argues for focusing endangered species protection spending on projects that will do a lot of that kind of good, will do it efficiently.
The argument is convincing, but it risks encouraging a big mistake: a vague general weakening of environmental protection regulations, aiming simply to "reduce red tape". Instead of making protection more efficient, that would allow developers to trash the environment massively.
LLMs can sometimes identify a person who posts anonymously by correlating details in the anonymous posts with details posted non-anonymously on other sites.
Please don't assume that LLMs constitute "intelligence"!
Ford fired experienced engineers and replaced them with automation, which harmed the quality of production. The company was compelled to rehire many of the engineers.
I wonder if Ford will fire them again if it gets the automation to work better.
*[The persecutor] will cause some of you to die from the heat.*
The just-ended US heat wave could never have happened before global heating.
Due to overfishing in the Adriatic Sea between Italy and the Balkans, dolphins must follow fishing boats hoping for scraps.
*[Plutocratist Supreme Court] Campaign Finance Ruling Opens New Avenues for Billionaires and Corporations to Buy Elections.*
Businesses are increasingly requiring workers to act like robots under the control of the employer's software.
Cory Doctorow calls this the "reverse centaur" metaphor, suggesting that the human becomes the legs of some combined organism, while the boss becomes its human-like intelligence. But I think that metaphor exaggerates: the worker and the boss do not become one organism, and a real centaur would not despise its legs, or the horse-like part of its body.
The proper metaphor, I suggest, is that of a human riding a horse. The employee is reduced to the role of the horse, while the boss enjoys the role of the rider.
Naturally, nonfree software plays a crucial role in this subjugation. The natural tendency release of nonfree software is to give the owner (or the owner's allies) power over its useds; in this scenario, that is the primary purpose of developing the program.
Perhaps we should pass laws to prohibit employers from requiring or compelling employees to run any particular or special software.
What an employer could require is that the employee run some software that supports a particular protocol — but only if the protocol is supported by free software. This condition prevents the employer from choosing a requirement that would in practice force the employee into use of nonfree software.
Robert Reich: America should offer asylum for the persecuted — not persecute those seeking asylum.
He quotes a moving part of Zohran Mamdani's recent speech.
The corrupter has exposed a weakness in the US Constitution. Now that we have seen it, and how dangerous it is, we cannot un-see it.
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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