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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 your congresscritter and senators to reject the "Great American AI Act" and the propaganda terminology that appears in its name.
In my letter I explained that "AI" is a marketing hype term that the big tech companies use to make the public yield, and urged the legislators to reject it. I included the URL
https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#ArtificialIntelligance
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 media outlets to cease climate hushing.
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 US Postal Service to continue delivering mail to anyone and everyone — to reject the plan to control whom states can mail ballots to.
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 tax the pretend-intelligence hype industry.
In my letter, I denounced the hype term "artificial intelligence" and called for the taxes to be high enough to make human-based customer service, which is superior, competitive again. I deleted the paragraphs that presumed "AI" was a good thing.
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 oppose the BUILD America 250 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 the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine to defend climate science from political interference and industry pressure.
US citizens: call on the US Postal Service to continue delivering to anyone.
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 congresscritter and senators to make billionaires and trillionaires pay their fair share.
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 Senate to reject Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence. He is loyal to the corrupter rather than to the country he ought to serve, and that makes him unfit.
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 bully's threat-backed demand for the complete voting list of each state.
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 support Bernie and AOC's AI Data Center Moratorium Act.
In my letter I stated my support for the bill, then denounced the term "AI" as a marketing hype campaign, naming the URL https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#ArtificialIntelligance.
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 plan to save democracy 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 Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard to stop blocking customers' donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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 congresscritter and senators to make the rich pay more into Social Security, and not cap or reduce what retirees receive.
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.
The persecutors's scheme to label protests as "terrorism" had a terrible success, as protesters were sentenced to prison for 30 years and more for nonviolent protest activities.
The persecutor's henchmen had declared (arbitrarily) that this was organized terrorism on behalf of the nonexistent "organization", "Antifa". But the arbitrary designation as "terrorism" was not challenged in court — the judges silently accepted it.
Companies are advertising products using simulated video depicting simulated customers.
All satisfied, naturally.
Is there an important moral difference between using a machine learning system to generate video of an apparent customer who praises a product, and filming video of an actor giving a performance depicting such a customer? I don't see a significant difference, is there something I am missing?
If there is no significant difference, that doesn't mean they are morally acceptable. Maybe both should be considered fraud unless labeled with how they were produced.
*Papua New Guinea faces severe food shortages as El [Super]Niño brings frost and drought.*
The European Union, under pressure from right-wing immigrant-haters, is negotiating with the Taliban about returning refugees to Afghanistan.
This threatens to aid the Taliban in carrying out their policies of oppression. Every woman in Afghanistan is oppressed; many men are, too. The EU should give asylum to every Afghan women who can reach there, and many Afghan men will deserve it too.
Senator Warren calls for reversing some of the many large mergers that have subjected the US to drastic industrial concentration.
Even before the wrecker became president again, the US had a lot less business competition than it did a few decades ago. Several years ago I needed a new condensation pump to pump the air conditioner's water condensation out of the basement. There had traditionally been two competing manufacturers, but the government had allowed them to merge, so there was only one. That merger should have been blocked to maintain competition in that small field.
Often the US appears to have a lot more competition than it really has. The supermarket company Albertsons uses all these names:
Robert Reich: Mourning the great ideals which America had partly achieved, but which the wrecker is trashing.
"Age verification" requirements threaten to identify whistleblowers. They generally require that all users of a site prove their identities, or present video selfies which governments could use to identify them.
Any attempt by a whistleblower to contact a reporter through a site that does age verification is likely to enable tyrannical rulers to identify per and crush per.
This will also prohibit reporters from using anonymous accounts to follow what others are posting or enable sources to contact them.
*Anti-deportation-thug organizers shift focus to defend democracy from [the persecutor's] assault.
Citizens in Minnesota using lessons learned from migrant crackdown to protect elections from president's threats.*
Unsurprisingly, disagreements about vague or unspecified crucial details of the draft US-Iran peace deal have led once again to an exchange of fire.
Which is more useful, to pose a question to a chatbot, or pose it to a deity?
The chatbot has the advantages that it actually exists, and that its answers are not entirely filtered through the mind of the one who asks.
But it has the disadvantage of not actually understanding the questions
(or most anything else).
US citizens: call on the US Postal Service to continue delivering mail to anyone and everyone — to reject the plan to control whom states can mail ballots to.
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 tax the pretend-intelligence hype industry.
In my letter, I denounced the hype term "artificial intelligence" and called for the taxes to be high enough to make human-based customer service, which is superior, competitive again. I deleted the paragraphs that presumed "AI" was a good thing.
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 oppose the BUILD America 250 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.
We need laws to stop companies from enforcing nondisclosure agreements on employees who report wrongdoing.
Part of Bangladesh has emptied its aquifer and is running out of water. Farmers are likely to go broke and become paupers, and likely many will die.
Will this teach the rest of us to take conservation seriously before we meet a similar fate?
*Israel puts Palestinian doctor in solitary confinement after 17 months held without charge.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya now in cell barely big enough to sit in, says son, after UN experts demanded his release in March.*
Imprisonment without trial is unjust. Solitary confinement is a form of torture. The tiny cell is a form of torture. Denying him medical treatment is an injustice.
Apparently the real accusation against him is providing medical treatment to Palestinians.
10 aspects of disaster to expect from a "super" El Niño.
* The world's largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an "unfathomable" increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.*
Frighteningly high temperatures in Antarctica — you could walk around outdoors without a coat. Lots of ice must be melting.
*[The bullshitter], ever the unreliable narrator, is unable to force reality to match his preferred story on Iran.*
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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Richard Stallman
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