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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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.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
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
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "october" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to extend the tax credits for Medicaid and undo the recent cuts in Medicaid.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your members of the House and Senate to keep medical debt off credit reports.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: press your congresscritter to protect affordable medical treatment by signing a discharge petition, or thank per if perse already did so.
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 to make the state tax system fair for everyone. That means closing loopholes that benefit the rich, taxing extreme wealth appropriately, and investing those revenues back into education, healthcare, infrastructure, and other public goods that strengthen our communities.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the deportation prisons and end the deportation thugs' violent raids.
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you sign or phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Brazil to lead the world towards preventing climate disaster.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to stop US arms for Israel, because the Israeli army keeps killing Palestinian civilians.
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you sign or phone, please spread the word!
In the US: call on NBC to stand With Seth Meyers — Don't let the bully make you take him off the air.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Tell the Starbucks CEO that you won’t cross the picket line.
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 continue to require confirmation hearings for the heads of US spy agencies, so it can impose at least minimal accountability in how they spy on Americans.
US citizens: call on the US Surface Transportation Board to block the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Mega-Merger.
Everyone: call for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan.
If you sign 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.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to extend the tax credits for Medicaid and undo the recent cuts in Medicaid.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A poll of US children found that they would rather see other children in physical presence, without constant adult monitoring, and it's because that is not allowed that they talk via online dis-services instead.
Democrats had a chance to restore medical Funding for millions of poor people, but a few of them chickened out and threw away the month-long struggle.
Robert Reich's explanation of why Republicans stick to the party line more than Democrats do is a matter of basic values.
I suppose there is some truth in this, but it is not the whole story, What causes some Democrats to block progressive measures that most Americans want is lobbying by rich people and even richer corporations.
This doesn't divide Republicans because Republican positions are chosen mostly to suit those rich bastards. The Republican ideas based on hatred of disprivileged groups or imposing Christian extremist morality don't conflict much with the ideas based on serving the rich.
So they have little reason to disagree.
By contrast, among Democrats there is a pervasive conflict between the progressive policies that most Americans support and the plutocratist policies that the lobbyists advocate. That is what pulls Democratic elected officials apart. Each one decides how much to support the rich and how much to support the party's base.
Too much support for the rich alienates the base, which is why this year some of them turned to the magats in desperation.
The way to change this situation is to choose exciting progressive Democratic candidates in Democratic primary elections. By strengthening the Democrats' will to overcome the plutocrats, we will reduce the division that they can sow in the party.
* Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who is one of the chief scientific advisers to the UN and the Cop30 presidency, said 10bn tonnes of carbon dioxide needed to be removed from the air every year even to limit global heating to 1.7C (3.1F) above preindustrial levels.*
How we could remove that much CO2 from the atmosphere is not clear.
Tobacco companies are lobbying hard to prevent the tax increases that could save many lives.
*Venezuelans sent by the persecutor to El Salvador endured systematic torture, report finds.*
Human rights groups accuse his henchmen of complicity.
Two professors at the University of Texas, Dallas, are suing the university for restricting their teaching after they were arrested at a peaceful protest.
George Monbiot: *Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage.*
*Once a global leader on climate action, the EU has given in to the right’s green-bashing.*
Likewise the UK.
*Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here.*
Concretely, what in their way of thinking tends to find "solutions" that create new problems? I see a few reasons.
Tech billionaires tend to be overoptimistic, so they underestimate the likelihood and magnitude of problems and failures in their schemes.
Some of these acts of hubris are predictable. Consider, for instance, the idea of a car with no mechanical way to open a door. Why did governments not simply reject them in advance?
Tech billionaires do not understand the needs or wants of people that struggle with poverty and that live among people that don't cater much to their needs or desired.
The changes needed to address mega-problems are so large that they tend to have unforeseen side effects, and some of those will be big new problems. The changes may seem approximately safe when studied to first order, but second-order effects may be big too.
Some of those problems could not have been predicted. For instance, PFAS solved a lot of problems, but we could only learn that some of them cause medical problems by trying them in large quantities for a long time. Long enough that now it would be hard to stop.
*Turkish disaster response specialists sent to help locate Palestinian and Israeli [dead] bodies inside Gaza remained near Egypt's border with the strip on Thursday, awaiting Israeli authorization to enter.
The 81-member team from Turkey’s AFAD disaster management authority are waiting to enter with life-detection devices and trained search dogs.*
Israel is citing HAMAS's failure to return the remaining 10 corpses as an excuse to continue limiting food brought into Gaza -- punishing the whole population. It would seem that Netanyahu intentionally prolongs the problem as an excuse to prolong the punishment.
*[The corrupter] has built a regime of retribution and reward.* In effect, a tyrant's regime.
Some machine learning systems that recognize patterns work very well. But some are not reliable enough to be used in real life.
A school's "gun detection system" that analyzes camera images saw a student's bag of potato chips and recognized it as a gun, whereupon thugs were sent to handcuff him and search him.
A conscientious human could have watched what happened after signaling an alarm, and noticed if the supposed gun turned into something else.
The tyrant's illegal summary executions.
Proposing that the UK ban donations to political campaigns and parties via cryptocurrency, and also the laundering of anonymous donations through intermediate organizations that receive it anonymously.
This would protect elections from being bought by foreign countries and foreign rich people, but the best thing would be to put an end to private campaign financing and give all registered candidates an equal means of publicity that doesn't depend on any private money.
Various music and movie stars that formerly spoke up against the persecutor are now not taking a stand.
They knew how bad he is and they cannot have forgotten it. I suspect that they see speaking up as dangerous or unprofitable.
Global heating is causing bigger droughts and bigger floods.
Iran is one place that tends to get drought.
You could say that the oil Iran has exported has brought the drought, but oversimplified recrimination about past mistakes is a distraction. Every country has participated in extracting and using fossil rules to the extent that it was profitable or useful.
Those most responsible are the fossil fuel companies and their owners. They have lobbied hard to thwart efforts to curb global heating, and they are doing it even now at the Cop30 conference to make sure it doesn't achieve its purpose.
Various countries blocked the EU's Orwellian "chat control" proposal, so they have redrawn the proposed legislation to achieve similar pervasive surveillance with changes in the details.
For instance, companies offering email or messaging accounts would have to make clients scan their faces. Anonymity in email would be impossible.
These would almost surely be done using nonfree cr…apps, which is an injustice in itself -- using a nonfree program is inviting the entity that controls it to mistreat you through malicious functionality.
The article refers to a decision which might be made on Nov 12. Since that is now in the past, can anyone tell me what was decided?
*The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a "green zone" under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a "red zone" to be left in ruins.*
This plan seems designed to allow Israel to annex half of the Gaza Strip, while driving the Palestinians in the other half are driven to beg to leave.
The latest propaganda term for drilling for fossil gas is "nation building".
Global heating disaster will generally tear down nations, not build them.
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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