The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"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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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
US citizens: call on Tell Congress: Reject Republican plans for massive increases in Pentagon spending at the expense of human needs.
I called for paying for any increases in military spending by increasing taxes on the rich.
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 Medicaid not to impose requirements that would kick lots of people off.
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 governor and state legislators to make plug-in solar accessible for everyone.
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 lawmakers to ban the deportation thugs from public school property.
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 Maine AG to hold VICE accountable for murder.
"VICE" stands for Violent Institution for Contemptuous Execution.
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 Vote NO on CORCA – the “Retail Crime” Bill that hands VICE power.
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 pass the No Troops at the Polls Act.
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 NYT, CNN, WaPo to cover Prairieland prosecution as silencing dissent.
US citizens: State your solidarity with the United Auto Workers and its president, Shawn Fain, who is facing persecution by the bully for criticizing him.
US citizens: call on the Smithsonian Board of Regents to reject attempts by the bullshitter to influence the historical record of America.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop Trump from bullying states over elections.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to investigate the FBI raid on a voter registration drive.
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 McDonalds and other fast food giants to take responsibility for protecting their workers.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to vote to block 3.3 billion dollars in funds for Israel's military.
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: Encourage states to sue to stop the Paramount-Warner Bros Merger.
US citizens: call on the SEC to maintain shareholders' power to vote on motions to control the actions of a business.
US citizens: call on Harris County DA Sean Teare to arrest the deportation thug that killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
US citizens: call on Congress to Abolish Super PACs.
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: submit a public comment to protect Medicaid.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: More than 4 million people have lost SNAP food aid since last summer. Tell your congresscritter and senators: don't 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.
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.
When a US missile hit an Iranian girls' school, the CIA at first said that the missile in the photos did not look like an American missile. A day later they corrected that and said it indeed was one. But he stuck to the appealing but impossible claim that Iran had fired it.
I'm pretty sure the US military did not choose to attack that building knowing it had been carved out of the adjoining naval base and converted into a school. Even a monster who cared nothing about killing Iranian civilians would have sought to avoid the bad publicity that would result. Meanwhile, the circumstances, including the pressure to attack fast, facilitated such mistakes.
The tendency for belligerent acts to cause unintended consequences due to ignorance of facts is called the "fog of war". It is inescapable: war implies mistakes with consequences, no matter how much one tries to avoid them. The implication of that is, one should try hard to choose a path other than war.
Deportation thugs approached Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán, a Mexican tourist, and terrified him so much that he ran away into traffic and was killed by a truck.
Coronillo had a valid tourist visa, so if our legal system were functioning properly he should not have felt threatened by them. But our legal system has been messed up intentionally by magats to the point that no one can be confident of safety around them.
*Extreme heat supercharged by the climate crisis is sucking Europe dry in summer and intensifying the drought hitting the continent, a scientific analysis has found.*
The greatly increased rate of launching satellites is polluting the upper atmosphere. Building datacenters in space would lead to much more pollution.
I can't believe that space datacenters could be cost-competitive with datacenters on Earth. I think the idea is not serious, and that oligarchs are using it as an excuse for manipulating stock prices, The idea doesn't need to be workable to achieve that purpose.
The bully's nuclear deal with Salafi Arabia makes a concession he was ready to fight to deny to Iran. His actions make no sense except as means to portray himself as "the winner".
*Israeli Settler-Soldiers Took Me on a West Bank Tour Celebrating Evictions of Palestinians.*
(satire) *New Geneva Convention Allows Use Of Child Soldiers With Signed Permission Slip.*
*[The saboteur in chief]'s deep public health cuts hinder response to record US cyclosporiasis outbreak. Experts say layoffs, reduced disease surveillance and Medicaid cuts have made the foodborne parasite more difficult to track and contain.*
Calling on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president.
I will support her campaign. But I will point out to her that the quandary of choosing between «latino» and «latina» is limited to Spanish. In English we already have a gender-neutral word to use: "Latin". (When a noun, its plural is "Latins".)
For Spanish, I have proposed a solution.
*The Israeli government is blocking medical workers from entering or leaving Gaza, twice canceling the departure of seven U.S.-based physicians on a medical mission there, according to a group of doctors in Gaza who spoke to The Intercept.*
The saboteur in chief's proposed new system for federal science grants would allow grants to be canceled easily on many different "grounds", including political opinions and associations of the researchers, and even arbitrarily (saying "we're no longer interested in that research").
Even before any grant gets canceled, many large projects will become unfeasible because of the uncertainty that the new system imposes on a grant that has been imposed. And scientists will not trust the US government to carry a grant through. Some of the best will move to other countries which they can trust more.
Some, however, will be afraid to speak about political issues -- and that must be what the saboteur in chief aims for.
A large experiment releasing bacteria-sterilized male mosquitos was very effective in reducing the population of that mosquito species.
Snoop-phones are the last step in reducing children to physical isolation under control, so taking them away is just the first step in restoring their access to the world.
(satire) *RFK Jr. Hosts Meet-And-Greet With Infectious Diseases.*
Cutting down the Amazon forest for raising cattle has massively spread screwworm, as well as perhaps dooming what remains of the forest.
Italian thugs killed immigrant Abderrahim Fakir in the process of "restraining" him after he became somehow upset.
This has stimulated large protests, to which right-wing hate leaders respond by saying it is unthinkable to doubt the rightness of the thugs' actions.
Globally well-known chatbots displayed a drastic failure to understand the parties running in the Hungarian election.
Given that ChatGPT hid the main opposition to Orbán, I have to worry that this was intentionally set up to help reelect him.
Many young people are giving up hope on close relationships with other people and turning to chatbots for an imitation or substitute.
The deportation thugs have adopted a dress code and require wearing of badges.
This is a change for the better, but can't overcome what's wrong with the mission they have been directed to carry out.
Congress Should Reject Bill That Would Block a Federal Workplace Heat Standard. Republicans are trying to do just that.
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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