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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"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 news media to cover the subpoenas to Breakthrough News as an attack on freedom of the press.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the bully's scheme for making deportation profitable for some of his backers.
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 terminate the bully's NSPM-7 political persecution crusade.
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 investigate military contracts in which the corrupter and his family would personally profit.
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 Florida's legislature to stop the state from spying on wildlife advocates.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the Paramount media takeover.
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 the bully's illegal bombing of civilian boats.
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 Amazon to end its contracts with the deportation thugs.
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 House to pass the Stop CHEATERS Act to restore Biden's increased funding to making rich people and corporations pay their taxes.
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 Congress to defund Flock's Orwellian camera network!
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 pass the Social Security 2100 Act.
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 no Pretend Intelligence data centers on federal lands!
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 proposed autocratic grant rule, protect scientific independence, and stop political appointees from turning federal funding into an ideological loyalty test.
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: Thank the New York Times for Fighting Back against the magats' subpoenas against journalism.
US citizens: call on Tell Congress: vote to keep DACA going so that people who grew up in the US can stay here.
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 the Dept of Transportation to release the billions of dollars already appropriated by Congress for public transit projects.
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 news media to cover the bully's Department of Injustice as a rule of law crisis.
US citizens: call on Congress to end the corrupter's tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations.
Take action.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to stop the healthcare heist, reverse Medicaid cuts.
Take action at action network.
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.
Madison Square Garden uses surveillance cameras to recognize people. It specifically tracks people on its enemies list, such as journalist Rachel Maddow. But it normally tracks everyone who enters and perhaps recognizes them all.
However, they made an exception for the audience at Taylor Swift's wedding, apparently because she had the clout to demand this.
People must be free to take photos in public places occasionally and publish them. But no one, and especially no business or organization or government, should be allowed to systematically record everyone that passes before a camera and put the records into a internet-connected system.
A grass-roots campaign is pressuring Democratic candidates to stop avoiding the issue of growing climate disaster.
Focusing on "affordability" of everyday life is partly a mistake, and partly a response to pressure from billionaires who figure that will lead towards weak palliative measures rather to any big change to transfer wealth.
The increasing cost of living is a consequence of deeper injustices, one of which is the growing cost of climate disaster (including food plagued by agricultural failure). Another is the growing cost of medical treatment, which stems largely from the big role of businesses in it. Another is the long and slow shift that leaves the non-rich with less and less of society's productive capacity.
*Andy Burnham signals he will scrap plans to curb jury trials [in the UK].*
This is a victory, even though it only prevents a plan to make things worse.
The supposed "need" for restricting the right to a jury was a shortage of funds. I think Burnham has some plan to increase taxes on non-poor people so as to pay for this and other things to make the UK better.
(satire) *[The bully] Warns Iran To Accept His Ultimatum Or Face Wrath Of Next Ultimatum.*
*A senior policymaker at the European Central Bank has said the climate emergency and the breakdown of nature poses a dramatically growing risk to the global economy.*
If we are unable to grow enough food, or if calamities substantially reduce the life expectancy, it is going to be hard for anything to be stable or predictable.
What we need to make sure of is that the billionaires won't be able to insulate themselves (and their servants) from sharing the fate the impose on us. And that they know they won't be able to.
Ben and Jerry sold their ice cream company to Unilever under an agreement to preserve the company's independence and social activism. They now say that Unilever has violated the agreement in several ways, and finally by reselling it to Magnum (as far as I can tell, without any ethical requirements). They call on supporters to boycott Magnum to pressure for it to sell Ben and Jerry's to someone who will restore them.
It is not a simple matter to draw up a contract that will prevent the buyer of a company, or of a program, from slipping out of agreements to follow ethical standards by transferring control in increments.
John Davidson, who has Tourette's syndrome, said the taboo word "nigger" with no conscious intention while two blacks were on stage. People freaked out.
A few decades ago, antiracists understood the word as an unjust insult — when it was meant to characterize someone. But people could contemplate the word in the abstract, and discuss its meaning and implications (such as, a racist attitude) without losing their wits. They could criticize the word's racist attitude without terror of violating the taboo if they said which word they were criticizing. If they heard a touretter say it, and understood that the touretter did not mean to characterize anyone with it, they did not hold that against per.
The change to regard the word "nigger" as a shocking profanity rather than as an unjust racist attack has made it harder for society to cope with situations like this one, and harder to clearly express condemnation of racism.
(satire) *Small Town’s Make-Out Point Purchased By Multinational Make-Out Conglomerate.*
(satire) *U.S. Instates Military Wife Draft.*
An underground report from Iran about torture and killing of imprisoned protesters.
Ticketmaster was required by law to stop adding certain junk fees to ticket prices, so in some cases it increased the base price so that the total remained the same.
Is this a scandal? I don't think so. The scandal is that they would tell you a lower price, not including the junk fees, then charge you a higher price which includes the junk fees. Now they have to be more honest about the real price.
If we want to do something about the high price of concerts, we should adopt strict laws against overconsolidation of industry, and break up businesses that are too big. This would include the Ticketmaster/Live Nation near-monopoly and many others that mergers have created in the past few decades.
The corrupter's henchmen are encouraging new monopolies.
The corrupter, seeking to have his personal lawyer Blanche confirmed as Attorney General, made sham promises to the Senate that Blanche would not approve the corrupter's slush fund and tax return immunity deal.
The promises are a sham because they are only temporary — if the Senate approves Blanche, he and the corrupter can cancel these promises and approve the deal anyway.
* Pupils who open [antisocial media] accounts [at the age of] 11 to 12 score lower in some subjects [at age 16] than those who wait a few years [to open such accounts], study finds.*
"Climate change kills": [Prime Minister] Pedro Sánchez speaks plain truth to Spain's deniers.
Israel is prosecuting one of the violent right-wing "settlers" for killing a Palestinian journalist in the West Bank.
Such a prosecution ought to regularly follow their crimes, but instead it is news, because Israel generally protects those killers.
US citizens: call on news media to cover the subpoenas to Breakthrough News as an attack on freedom of the press.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the bully's scheme for making deportation profitable for some of his backers.
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 terminate the bully's NSPM-7 political persecution crusade.
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 investigate military contracts in which the corrupter and his family would personally profit.
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 Florida's legislature to stop the state from spying on wildlife advocates.
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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