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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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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.
I am thinking of making another trip to Europe during February - April. If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "feb-apr" as the subject.
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
The war in the Middle East is having major repercussions, including strengthening ties between Russia and China. Robert Reich calls on Americans to phone their members of Congress in support of invoking Congress's power to stop the US intervention.
There is no need to worry about how this might affect subsequent events in Iran, because nobody in the US government has a plan anyway. One more random shuffle won't make it any more random than it already is.
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 transfer military spending to human needs.
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 shut down the US deportation prisons rather than permit them to continue torturing.
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 and the FCC to protect local news, by blocking the Nexstar-TEGNA merger.
US citizens: call on CBS to stop yielding to magat bullying.
US citizens: Call on Congress to stop the deportation thug department from using Palantir's massive surveillance system to track and target immigrants.
US citizens: call on your congressional officials not to accept campaign funds from Palantir.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Everyone: Tell the IEA: Ignore Chris Wright’s Threats, Follow the Science on Climate Change.
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 state legislators to block construction of deportation prison-warehouses in your state.
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 Protect Vote by Mail. Tell Congress to act now! Demand the USPS Restore Real-Time Postmarks.
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 CBS to stop engaging in political censorship to fawn at magat officials.
More information: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/21/cbs-trump-anderson-cooper-stephen-colbert-paramount
Everyone: Tell the IEA: Ignore Chris Wright’s Threats, Follow the Science on Climate Change.
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 congressional officials not to accept campaign funds from Palantir.
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 the deportation thug department from using Palantir's massive surveillance system to track and target immigrants.
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 CBS to stop yielding to magat bullying.
US citizens: call on Congress and the FCC to protect local news, by blocking the Nexstar-TEGNA merger.
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 congressional representatives to fight to impeach Bondi.
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 representatives and senators to take action to stop the next great recession!
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Here is what I used as my letter text. I hope it inspires you.
The wrecker's henchmen at the Securities and Exchange Commission are laying the groundwork to bring back one of the core financial products that led to millions of foreclosures during the 2008 crash — even as economic and climate conditions make its return all the more destabilizing. The SEC is intended to act as Wall Street’s top regulator, but they want to do the opposite of their job. Then the megabanks will "need" another big bailout, and Republicans will eagerly give them one. Please fight hard to prevent this big theft.
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.
I just saw Zohran Mamdani's comments on "globalize the intifada" from last October, and his stance had much in common with mine.
I also recognize the tone of the criticism he received for discouraging that phrase. There are people whose attitude is, "If you reject my method of expressing disapproval of X, you're weak, and effectively a supporter of X." This reasoning is not valid.
The war in the Middle East is having major repercussions, including strengthening ties between Russia and China. Robert Reich calls on Americans to phone their members of Congress in support of invoking Congress's power to stop the US intervention.
There is no need to worry about how this might affect subsequent events in Iran, because nobody in the US government has a plan anyway. One more random shuffle won't make it any more random than it already is.
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 transfer military spending to human needs.
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 shut down the US deportation prisons rather than permit them to continue torturing.
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.
A billionaire supporter of the wrecker told the employees of Conn Selmer's factory that it will move production to China.
You can't expect a bullshitter to be sincere when he says he cares about your jobs.
After the US military attacked three unarmed boats on Dec 30, 8 people jumped into the stormy and dangerous water, and needed immediate rescue. The US military waited 40 hours to send a plane to try to rescue them. It did not find anyone.
No survivors have been rescued after any of these murder missions.
The article speculates that this was intentional — that commanders intended the survivors to die. What is indisputable is that they did not make a competent attempt to rescue the survivors.
Volunteer medics in UK and US who have denounced atrocities committed by Israelis that they witness while in Gaza say that Israel has refused to let them return to Gaza to work as medics again.
This retribution seems designed to intimidate present and future medics in Gaza so that they will help Israel cover up atrocities.
The FBI is investigating members of Extinction Rebellion.
This is an instance of how the wrecker aims to get things backwards. The FBI ought to investigate those who are contributing, knowingly, to the danger of extinction.
Many plug-in hybrid cars use considerably more fuel than manufacturers claim. How much more, varies from model to model.
The Food and Drug Administration tried to reject the new mRNA flu vaccine without even examining it, in accord with antivax ideology, but has changed its mind and will now examine it.
The US told Europe it still wants an alliance — but only with tyrannical, right-wing countries.
The EU should avoid agreeing to this, and avoid being scared by the threats, while accepting the alliance as if it didn't have those conditions. This way it can play for time hoping the US kicks out these right-wing jerks, and use the time to prepare for the US to break off with them.
Aside from the danger of remote surveillance and control, digital systems to control parts of your home have a tendency to be too smart for your own good.
When I looked for an apartment in 2019, I rejected outright any building with digital rather than metal keys. I do not trust whoever controls the system not to track residents' movements. I also rejected outright any building with a security camera.
Despite the bully's attacks on unions and unionizing rights, there was a small increase in 2025 in the number of union workers.
The US government's museum about the US Constitution has fired its president, and people suspect he was fired because he wasn't a magat.
*Long Covid is still here. I know – my life came to a stop because of it.*
Someone asked Amazon for a report on everything that their Alexa listening device had listened to since they first got it. It was enormous.
Think about which words Amazon might have set it up to alert various US government departments about — and which departments those might be. (That might depend on which country you are in.)
Amazon never hears anything in my home.
*The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reviewed dozens of testimonies, photographs and medical records documenting what it describes as serious abuses by Israeli soldiers and prison guards against Palestinian reporters. The report draws on in-depth interviews from 59 Palestinian journalists. Of those interviewed, 58 reported being subjected to what they described as torture [in prison].
"While conditions varied at different facilities, the methods those interviewed recounted – physical assaults, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, sexual violence, and medical neglect – were strikingly consistent," the report states.*
As part of the bullshitter's War on Truth, social media sites that suck up to him have eliminated fact checking. Since he equates fact-checking to censorship, they do too.
The difference between fact-checking and censorship is that the latter blocks or prohibits saying something, while the former labels it with a criticism that is labeled as such.
There is no absolute and inherently inerrant source of truth. Therefore, freedom of speech must include the freedom to make statements that others call "false". (If that becomes prohibited, everything that magats call "lies" will be censored.)
But that is no reason to get rid of fact checking.
The US Department of Hatred and Sadism, parent organization of the deportation thugs, makes a practice of subpoenas to demand antisocial media hand over identifying information about users who post, track, or criticize deportation thugs.
This comes after convincing Google and Amazon to censor the special apps for exchanging information about where thug operations are taking place.
The pretext the thugs give is that this information might perhaps be used for planning violence against the thugs. That is a rather weak pretext, since violence started by protesters is very rare, whereas violence (sometimes deadly) by thugs against protesters and journalists is frequent.
That might be an argument for quashing the subpoenas, if anyone went to court to try to do that. But these companies, since they suck up to the persecutor anyway, don't resist the subpoenas very hard.
The long-term lesson from this is not to trust your data to a cloudy storage system under the influence of a Big Tech company. Especially not if company makes users identify themselves, or blocks them from connecting via Tor. Such a company is generally a willing tool for a fascist regime such as the persecutor is trying to impose on the US.
Deportation thugs use special apps for facial recognition and iris scanning.
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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