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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. ]
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.
If the wrecker becomes president again in 2025, that would postpone his trial for trying to steal the 2020 election until he ceases to be president.
That could mean, until he dies, since he would surely block any fair election if he gets that much power again.
Israel's "new" military approach to attacking southern Gaza is not all that different from the way it attacked northern Gaza.
Examining heavy damage done to 10 hospitals in Gaza, mostly done by Israeli bombardment.
High levels of air pollution in Rome have been related to high levels of some mental disorders.
Studying the history of racism through art donated to Cambridge University.
An Australian official calls for changes in "national security" laws that permitted an accused official to be secretly prosecuted, secretly convicted and secretly kept in jail, based on evidence that was kept secret from him and his lawyers.
Meta-Facebook is suing to wipe out the Federal Trade Commission.
With our current Supreme Court, dominated by right-wing members some of whom are corrupt and have personal interests in the decision, that is not guaranteed to fail.
How Ex-Rep Santos responded when confronted about some of his lies.
Two Tory ministers successively disregarded a court decision that foreigners who had been trafficked into the UK were entitled to stay there. Those ministers simply did not give them permission to stay.
*Extreme weather could [temporarily] shut down one in 12 hospitals worldwide, report warns.*
Reportedly Israel is defying US pressure to avoid killing massive numbers of Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel's plans to attack HAMAS are based on the assumption that killing its leaders will destroy the organization.
This approach to a guerrilla organization with popular support basically never works.
HAMAS hopes that Israel will lose the war by being unable to wipe out HAMAS, while committing more and more atrocities. That could happen.
Israel would be wiser to refrain by choice from massacring Palestinians, based on recognizing the moral (and legal) obligation to do so.
*Iran "using Gaza conflict as cover" for execution of 127 people since war began.*
The oil emir who is president of Cop28 has proposed voluntary pledges to reduce greenhouse emissions. Climate defense activists have denounced this as insufficient and demand commitments for reductions.
Activists are using nonviolent obstruction to block deep sea mining. The deep sea has ecosystems, and mining can wipe them out.
Honduras has accused someone of organizing the murder of Berta Cáceres. He was an executive of the company building the dam that she organized protests against.
*US outlines measures to cut methane emissions by 80% in next 15 years.*
A kiosk using a laser could check people's heartbeats and detect some sorts of illnesses Then it could send the information to various commercial partners of the company that installed the kiosk.
I don't think that approach is trustworthy. It is better to have this medical device in a clinic, since the clinic would have at least a minimal obligation to protect your privacy.
Countries seem to have ceased being willing to pander to China in order to obtain the loan of a few pandas to a zoo.
China used to be able to get substantial concessions in exchange for the loan of pandas.
*In countries that criminalise gay sex, HIV infection rates are higher and access to lifesaving drugs and services are denied.*
US citizens: To avoid another bank bailout, support the Federal Reserve's proposal to increase capital requirements on large banks.
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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