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
Political Articles | Political Notes | Talks | Airlines | Anti-Glossary | Archive | Ban face recognition | Books | Comics | Empire of the Megacorporations | Fiction | Glossary | GPG Key | Humor | Humorous Bio | Links | Media/Press/Bio | Non-Political Articles | The Four Factors of the Apocalypse | There Ought to Be a Law | Travel Experiences | Travel Photos | How I Do My Computing | RMS personal FAQ | Sayings | Scientific Links | Stallman on Love | Thanks |
Send comments/questions about the search engine to: rms at gnu dot org
RSS site feed for the most recent
political notes and new material.
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.
I expect to have a trip to Europe in May - June. The start and end dates remain to be decided.
If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me now so we can start discussing it. Write to `-invitation' following my three-letter username.
My talks consist of an hour of presentation and an hour of Q&A. The overall focus is software and freedom, but generally the talk includes various subtopics; we can discuss which subtopics together.
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
Richard Stallman will give a talk titled "Free/Libre Software and Freedom in the Digital Society" at 4pm on April 15 at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas.
US citizens: call on universities to join UPenn in the case to overturn an order to identify its Jewish employees to the government.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: thank the senators who voted to block weapons for Israel and hold the rest accountable.
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 protect our voting rights — reject the corrupter's takeover of our elections.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: applaud the court decision insisting Pentagon respect freedom of the press.
Main switchboard: +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your governor and attorney general to arrest federal deportation thugs who break state laws.
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 protect our voting rights — to reject the corrupter's takeover of our elections.
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 Congress not to renew FISA section 702 with its indirect authorization for snooping on Americans with no warrants.
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 Take action: Congress must investigate DOGE’s Social Security data breach!
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 state's Secretary of State not to allow deportation thugs to loiter near polling places in your state.
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.
A rant by an old-time personal computer user who loathes today's big tech and briefly suggests he might be using a Libre operating system — seems to be completely unaware of the free software movement.
I think he might sympathize with it if he knew it.
Bernie Sanders: *We need a 5% wealth tax on America's 938 billionaires. … The richest people in America have never ever had it so good. … The American working class has been under savage attack for years.*
Each state of the US has the power to reverse the Corporations United decision for corporations incorporated in that state.
Over 20 state attorneys general are suing to overturn public enemy #1's executive order to mostly ban voting by mail.
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 universities to join UPenn in the case to overturn an order to identify its Jewish employees to the government.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: thank the senators who voted to block weapons for Israel and hold the rest accountable.
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.
*No Israel prosecutions for killing Palestinian civilians in occupied West Bank since start of decade.* Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel, hopes to spur the International Criminal Court to intervene.
Several former heads of the army, the police and the spy agencies are supporting the campaign.
An Israeli lawyer (whose name I don't recognize) responds, "The system is programmed to manufacture impunity, not accountability. But it was smart enough to also have very rare occasions of accountability, that could be referred to as examples of how law enforcement was working" (so as to convince the ICC it had no basis to get involved).
A Palestinian (whose name I don't recognize) responds, "Such Israeli critics often give the impression that settler violence could be tamed by simply ousting the (current) far right government. That would certainly have an effect, but it doesn’t recognise that the settlements are a project of the state that was shaped and led across the political spectrum."
That is true; indeed, Olmert was a right-wing politician. Nonetheless, what he is doing now takes courage.
The bully's minions fire immigration judges who uphold the first amendment rights of immigrants, and praise judges who deport people for exercising those rights.
A psychiatrist studied the imprisoned surviving Nazi leaders and wrote that such people were not a special problem of Germany — rather, people inclined toward tyranny and enormous crimes could be found in any country, including the US.
Proposing a plausible peace deal for Iran and the US — if they are willing to accept it.
*Utah reports more than 600 measles cases as outbreak spreads across US.*
Utah is full of Republicans, and many of them are now magats. I hope the rest of the country learns from this example of stupidity not to believe magats.
Bernie Sanders's speech to the senate calling for an end to arms transfers to Israel.
The resolutions were defeated, but it is only a matter of time before public opinion prevails.
A court has voided the protest ban law of New South Wales, which was used to ban protests against the president of Israel while he was visiting.
Australian lawyers rushed to use LLMs, but encountered the risk that the argument presented in court might cite a nonexistent decision in a nonexistent case.
*Lawsuit in Norway alleges Telenor passed on data helping Myanmar military arrest 1,200 [opposition] activists, some in safe houses.*
Telenor should have considered the question of how it would respond to demands like this before deciding to do business in Burma. If it could not come up with a response it could justify, it should have stayed out. Norway and other countries should pass laws making it clear how telecommunications countries must protect dissidents in situations like this.
*It is no fluke that social media platforms are addictive and causing harm. They were designed that way.*
Empirically, Google Search so-called "AI" Overviews have a 10% chance of giving incorrect answers.
Google says users should check them before trusting them, but this is just an excuse to avoid being liable for the errors. At the same time, Google uses the hype term "AI" so that users will trust them.
If you don't want to be misled by them, don't look at them. Even better, don't use Google search at all.
I can't use Google search because it doesn't work at all, for me. It requires users to run nonfree JavaScript programs, and my browser is set to refuse to run such programs, so if a link ever takes me to Google search, it has no chance to mislead me.
The CDC is nearly paralyzed, as 80% of the group leadership positions are vacant. This adds to a lot of other damage — 1/5 of the staff were fired (or quit).
The previous acting director, Bhattacharya, was previously infamous for advocating allowing Covid-19 to spread unhindered and advising old people to protect themselves by avoiding contact with other people.
Either RFK jr is nuts or he is committing intentional sabotage — I can't see any way around it. But neither alternative fully makes sense.
Most Democratic senators now oppose providing arms to Israel, like most Democratic voters.
Israel's callous chain of atrocities had to have an effect, and it has.
Rümeysa Öztürk, Tufts student who was jailed for publishing in support of Palestinians' rights, has finished her PhD and returned to Turkey.
That is a good and just outcome for her, but the US won't be a safe place to live in until we remove the officials who are inclined to persecute people for criticizing government policies.
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.
Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are
permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of any of the photos in the
photos subdirectory is permitted under the
Creative
Commons Noderivs license version 3.0 or later. You can copy and
redistribute the photo of me playing music to
the butterfly under the
Creative Commons Noderivs
Nocommercial license version 3.0 or later. Any other photos of
me in this (the toplevel) directory may be copied and redistributed under
the
Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0
