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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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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 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 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.
The Labour Party has rejected its leader, Starmer, who has driven the party to the right-wing. Here is the story of his many injustices.
The new leader, Andy Burnham, should soon have a chance to reverse the absurd classification of Palestine Action as a "terrorist group". But in addition to correcting that one wrong decision, there needs to be a change in the law to prevent anything like this from happening again.
The UN inquiry into Gaza has concluded that Israel has systematically attacked Gaza civilians in ways that predictably kill many Palestinian children.
This amounts to intentional genocide.
About John Barnett, the Boeing safety inspector who exposed numerous ways of cutting corners to increase profits at the expense of safety.
My condolences to Iranians for the damage that the bully has done to them, but I ask them to understand that he has done deeper damage to Americans.
The child that cried "Victory"! *What the US president succeeded in obliterating was any rationale he offered for going to war.*
Global heating is resulting in more frequent wildfires in Greenland!
Limiting vehicle emissions in London has reduced deaths from air pollution in the affected zone by 40%, saving thousands of lives per year.
This can now be done anywhere in the world, if governments can stand up to the businesses that sell death.
One crucial secondary point: charging for use of a highly polluting vehicle in a city requires detecting when they drive in the city. The easiest way to do that is with a system of massive surveillance, and such a system is a threat to political freedom. Laws must be designed to avoid systematic tracking.
Britain's record-setting heatwave of 1976 is now mere normality, due to 50 years of global heating.
El Super-Niño is likely to cause a variety of disasters around the world. Here are some of them.
*The Washington Post Loves Data Centers.* It doesn't talk about the business reasons its owner, Bezos, has for loving them.
US Democrats have rejected the business-subservient stance that has dominated the Democratic Party since President Clinton endorsed it.
The corporate Democrats always argue that we should vote for them because they are "electable", in effect presuming that progressive Democrats can't win. But what good is it if a politician is "electable", if perse doesn't intend to make society better?
Nowadays, we see that progressive Democrats can win.
Prominent Israelis, including former government ministers, have denounced the government for permitting "terrorism" against Palestinians.
Bravo, though they should have done this many years ago. I wonder if the recent harsh words from the Tr-ance to Netanyahu showed them an opening for this campaign to be effective.
Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill to reduce housing costs.
Some of the provisions sound good, from the general descriptions here. Others, such as to "reduce federal regulations" and "streamline environmental reviews", make me suspect that this was a change for the worse, a concession to construction businesses, and that it purchased those businesses' support for the bill.
Weakening environmental protection is likely to lead to major long-term harm. However, I don't know enough to judge whether the good exceeds the bad.
The bully said initially that he would sign the bill. Then he changed his mind, saying he would not sign the bill unless Congress agrees to restrict voting rights with the "SAVE Act".
If he sticks with that stance—who knows whether he will change his mind again—what will that mean?
Either way, I don't see much point in his refusal, except to maintain a level of anxiety among Americans.
*Whistleblower investigating Ecuadorian president's [very large] family business was murdered.* The murder was disguised as suicide by hanging, but examination of the corpse revealed she had had a blow to the head just before.
*California drivers sue gas stations for allegedly* using computers to survey the prices of other gas stations and following the pattern discerned therein.
It is more or less equivalent to fixing prices.
*FBI Tried to Flip [Anti-Deportation-Thug] Protesters Into Informants.*
A British court tried protesters for criminal damage, but then sentenced them for terrorism, a charge that was never presented to the jury. This proceeding contravenes a fundamental principle of law.
Israel killed Mona Khalil, famed marine conservation leader, by bombarding her house.
PISSI has revived. Rojava was keeping it suppressed; the new Syrian government drove Rojava out of most of its territory without replacing its system to suppress PISSI.
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:
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