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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
![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
I have not announced it because the event is fully subscribed. I regret that others cannot get in.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Social Security Expansion Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: tell the saboteur in chief that you condemn the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop fake abortion clinics' deceptive and predatory practices.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on The FDA not to end routine food safety inspections — change would lead to sickness and death.
US citizens: call on Congress not to attack Section 230 — that is dangerous for people's freedom of speech.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Oppose McDonald's lobbying campaign against local laws to require reusable packaging.
US citizens: Denounce any attempt to arrest and imprison nonviolent activists. Protesting Tesla is not "domestic terrorism".
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 202-224-3121 to support the Medicare for All act.
It would
US citizens: call on Congress to protect federal disaster relief from the wrecker's attacks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Call on Congress to make sure Kilmar Ábrego can return to the US from El Salvador.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
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.
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.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these options should not be limited to minors — every user should have this choice. (Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them like children and retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Social Security Expansion Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The muskrat *appears to be laying the groundwork to privatize some space and satellite operations now under the authority of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), or steer lucrative contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency employees say.*
This shows us a directly corrupt potential in the DOSE (Depredations of Sabotage and Evisceration).
*UNRWA says Israel has abused [jailed UNRWA] staff and used some as human shields.*
UNRWA says that Israeli prison guards subjected some of them to brainwashing techniques and obtained some forced confessions. This is what Israeli prisons generally do to Palestinian prisoners.
Bernie Sanders: *It's time for the US to guarantee healthcare to all.*
US farms switched to no-till farming to reduce loss of topsoil, which prevents harmful environmental degradation. Friends of the Earth warns that this has led to much more use of dangerous herbicides.
So what should we do? The loss of topsoil is permanent and we need to prevent that. We need to keep people safe from the herbicides too &mdash but how do we do both?
The muskrat's companies benefited greatly from government subsidies. Now he wants to end such subsidies for the future.
But I don't think we should continue being ripped off to subsidize businesses. [Below, for each area, link to an example of foolish subsidies that should not have been given]
In my view, no government should ever subsidize a business without getting a fair amount of debt or shares in exchange. This includes manufacturing, stadiums(including Olympic games), movies, and other things. Otherwise, the people are being cheated. In the case of paying for research, the government should make sure that the discoveries can be used by anyone.
The Putin forces kept a Ukrainian civilian journalist prisoner almost totally incommunicado, Eventually they handed over her dead body, which showed signs of torture.
I am puzzle by the people on the left who are included to excuse this. They would not excuse Israel for torturing Palestinian civilians in its jails.
Former Israeli military chiefs warn Israelis that their government is threatened by extremism.
This is one of the things that are gravely wrong in the Israeli government. The other is repression and persecution of Palestinians. I think the two are causally related.
Let Benevolence Shine
Richard Stallman, 2023-12-14
Twixt the river and the sea,
Palestine nigh Israel be.
Both in peace, let both be free;
Be lands of democracy.
We should not get so caught up in how to take the difficult next step that we forget where we are trying to get to.
*Deportation thugs seeking out unaccompanied immigrant [minors] to deport or prosecute them.*
The article's title says "children", but I think that is an example of the misleading practice of calling adolescents "children". If I am right about that, the fact that the victims are over 18 does not make the actions any less wrong. But real children are the ones least likely to be able to stand up to such pressure.
Using "welfare checks", supposedly meant to protect people, to find excuses to persecute them is even more vicious. That will teach people to distrust real efforts to protect them, much like the fake "vaccination campaign" which the US set up to look for Osama bin Laden.
*Two women who were deported to ]Honduras alongside their US citizen children were held in “complete isolation” and denied any opportunity to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put on a flight, according to one of the lawyers representing them.*
The effect was to forcibly deport their US citizen children too.
They experienced several other forms of unjust treatment from the US government, described in the article. The government is using its mistakes as excuses for unjust treatment.
But that's Republicans for you. If a person is in a group they have decided to start, when some nasty treatment gives them an excuse to do more harm, they grasp the opportunity gleefully.
A survey of noteworthy recent instances of cruelty by the US deportation thugs.
(satire) *FBI Claims Gavel, Black Gowns Prove Ties To MS-13 Gang.*
*Elon Musk's DOPE conflicts of interest worth $2.37bn, Senate report says.*
DOPE = Depredation's of Perverse Evisceration.
Arguing that the recent idea of using psychedelics to treat people in mental distress comes from shamans who told tourists what tourists wanted to hear, in the last century.
Australia's coal exports have reached a record level, as the coal companies fund ads to promote the right-wing planet roaster parties.
The money trail was visible in that instance, but I am sure they are doing far more of this than people can trace.
*Labor and Coalition accused of being on fossil fuel ‘unity ticket’ as thermal coal exports hit record high.*
The government's foot is on the coal pedal as well as the gas pedal as the world accelerates towards the climate cliff. We can't see how far away the cliff actually is, but there are signs it will be difficult to slow nature in falling in.
The wrecker ordered reducing tariffs on cars from Canada, in a selective way that helps Tesla most of all.
A New York Times article took evidence that Muslims are the religion most targeted by prejudice in universities, but spun it to give the impression that Jews are most targeted.
Here is a careful account of the report they are talking about.
Note: I criticize using the term "Islamophobia" to refer to bigotry against Muslims, or to refer to criticism of Islam. That bigotry is nasty (like other bigotries), while criticism of that religion is a legitimate issue for discussion (like criticism of other religions), and neither of them is a "phobia".
There is information that suggests that the British government helped the Israeli government meddle to bring about prosecution of protesters in Britain.
The corrupter's choice for undersecretary of the army says he will end all his conflicts of interest except one: all the stock he owns in one arms company.
This is enough to conclude he is not serious about doing the job honestly; enough reason to reject him. But I don't think that magat senators object seriously to corruption. If they did, they would not serve the corrupter.
A judge has ruled that the *Alien Enemies Act does not allow White House to deport alleged gang members* in the southern district of Texas.
Eventually appeals courts will rule on this.
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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