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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, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.
Canadians: I suggest you seek election advice at a local chapter of a group that pushes to curb global heating and has the courage to say, "Canada should stop exporting fossil fuel." It will at least use the right goals to suggest who to vote for in your area.
Join a Friday climate strike.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)
[ No upcoming talks. ]
In addition to preventing the harm to wildlife that the blasting itself would do, it would impede the extraction of additional fossil fuels from that region.
Supreme Court members Roberts and Alito own stock in companies that could win around 30 billion dollars from a decision they will soon participate in.
There were apparent falsehoods in the claims made in the case.
I’m a constituent, and I’m calling to ask [name of official] to publicly speak out against the so-called fiscal commission. Social Security and Medicare are popular and vital programs to our nation’s economic security. Any changes to those programs should be handled through regular order, not behind closed doors. Voters want to see Social Security expanded, not cut!
This means that waiters would receive the same minimum wage as other workers, and tipping would not be de rigueur.
*UK mental health charities handed sensitive data to Facebook [with a tracking pixel].*
Let's start the attack on massive surveillance by making it illegal for a server to include a tracking pixel.
There should be a law requiring online services, if they close a user's account, to permit the user to continue to download whatever information perse had left in the account.
To be sure, it is foolish to rely on an online service to hold any data for you; you should store it locally, and use online services only as backups (encrypted). Preferably more than one online service in parallel, for redundancy. But we should not allow online services to cite this as an excuse for arbitrarily causing people great avoidable harm.
It should be a crime to knowingly approach a person while maskless inside a building or vehicle.
The extreme of this is represented by the Amazon warehouse, where a worker's every move is controlled by the computer system. This is one of many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Unfortunately, surveillance of workers is not limited to Amazon. I think states should pass laws to limit surveillance of workers. It should cover independent contractors as well as employees.
The law should completely forbid demanding that workers run any specific software on their own computers (keep in mind that portable phones are computers); the employer who wants that must furnish the computer at no charge.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
There are now real treatments for cystic fibrosis -- but so expensive that most people even in wealthy countries cannot benefit from them.
It is self-defeating to encourage development of new and better drugs with a system that tells patients to drop dead. We should abolish patents on medicines and fund the research with public funds instead.
The UN says that Israel's bombardment and attacks in Gaza make it impossible to do anything to protect civilians there.
* Dual Haitian-American citizen attended meetings in south Florida and Haiti ahead of the assassination [of Haiti's president] and faces life imprisonment.*
*Texas woman files emergency lawsuit to terminate her non-viable pregnancy.*
(satire) *Horse Without Health Insurance Unable To Afford Being Shot In The Head.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
(satire) *Company Wellness Seminar Teaches Mindful Acceptance Of Pay Cuts.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
*White House warns it is ‘out of money and nearly out of time’ to aid Ukraine.*
America's right-wing extremists have come to the rescue of Russia's right-wing extremists, and I fear they will continue their alliance in an attempt to subjugate the US completely.
*Joan Donovan says [her funding from Harvard] was cut off for criticizing [Meta-Facebook] when university was receiving $500m from Mark Zuckerberg’s charity.*
Israeli intelligence had copious information about HAMAS's plans for the attack, but dismissed it all as an impossible fantasy.
This has no effect on moral questions. Not on judging the war crimes (murder and hostage-taking) that were committed in that attack (and planned in writing).
Nor on the war crimes of Israel's response, the siege and bombardment.
It appears that the proposed UK law about who can access porn sites will require all visitors to identify themselves, or run nonfree software which is likely to snoop on them.
The intended purpose of that law is to prevent minors from accessing porn sites. To exclude everyone under 18 is unreasonably strict. They try to justify this by referring to all minors as "children". Even a person of age 17 is a "child" according to them.
To exclude only children -- real children -- from porn sites might be ok in principle. But how to determine whether a given user is under the specified age? The methods mentioned in the article either directly require a user to identify perself, or indirectly require per to make perself vulnerable to being identified.
"Contacting your mobile network provider to allow your phone to access [porn]" would seem to permit only access through devices that are untrustworthy: mobile phones, communicating through a cellular network).
Regarding "Facial age estimation technology", one question is, will that glimpse of your face enable identifying you by facial recognition? Another question is, how will they make sure it is operating on a real-time image of your own face rather than someone else's? I suspect that will depend on locked-down nonfree software, simply because I don't see how else it could work.
I don't have a concrete idea of what a "digital identity wallet" would do, but I have a hunch that only locked-down nonfree software will be accepted.
If you know more about those last two approaches, and if you can tell whether they can be made to work without unjust surveillance or unjust nonfree software, I would appreciate your telling me about them.
GNU Taler can be used for age verification in a way that does not permit web sites to identify the user, and does not require nonfree software.
US citizens: call on the Interior Department to refuse to approve seismic blasting in northern Alaska.
In addition to preventing the harm to wildlife that the blasting itself would do, it would impede the extraction of additional fossil fuels from that region.
US citizens: call on Biden to pressure HAMAS and Israel to accept a cease fire.
*Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels reached record levels again in 2023, as experts warned that the projected rate of warming had not improved over the past two years.*
*Leading News Outlets Are Doing the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Greenwashing.*
*Israel’s use of disproportionate force is a long-established tactic –- with a clear aim.
The strategy goes well beyond defeating an opponent: it seeks to destroy key infrastructure and the economy, with many civilian casualties.*
Australia has stepped up the investigation of accusations of corruption against federal functionaries. Bravo, Australia!
France is on the way to banning disposable vapes. I support this measure. For a given intensity of use, vaping nicotine may be less dangerous than smoking tobacco, but it seems to spread addiction among masses of people.
Danish unions are supporting Swedish unions that are demanding recognition from Tesla. Imagine what workers could achieve if US unions could do this with European unions.
The UAW is aiming to reach the jumping-off point for that by organizing the remaining US car manufacturers.
Archaeologists at Cambridge University have reconstructed the "biographies" of hundreds of the city's ordinary medieval residents by examining their skeletons in detail.*
Such research would be impossible in the US, due to the law NAGPRA which declares that any indigenous religion or nationalism trumps science and history.
Indigenous people are entitled to the same rights as anyone else, including to practice their religions, but it does not follow that the wishes suggested by their religions should be our commands.
The Israeli army is using a computer system to choose which houses to bomb in Gaza.
The opacity provided by the magic word "AI" provides plenty of opportunity to paint the system as trying to avoid collateral damage, while tuning it so that such efforts are cursory and predictably inadequate. We could equally well describe it as accepting a considerable risk of killing civilians.
The input to the system includes a list of houses in which some inhabitant is suspected of being a HAMAS fighter. That is a recipe for blowing up lots of houses, in which probably no HAMAS fighter is in residence during the bombardment, and killing tens or hundreds of thousands of relatives or bystanders.
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 order copies of my book, Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition', signed or not signed.
"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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