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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 the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to expand the practice of negotiating lower prices on prescription medicines. We need to counteract massive lobbying by Big Pharma.
Deadline for commenting, Aug 17!
US citizens: call on your senators to save funding for Medicaid.
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 news media to cover the subpoenas to Breakthrough News as an attack on freedom of the press.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the bully's scheme for making deportation profitable for some of his backers.
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 terminate the bully's NSPM-7 political persecution crusade.
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 investigate military contracts in which the corrupter and his family would personally profit.
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 Florida's legislature to stop the state from spying on wildlife advocates.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the Paramount media takeover.
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 stop the bully's illegal bombing of civilian boats.
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 Amazon to end its contracts with the deportation thugs.
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 House to pass the Stop CHEATERS Act to restore Biden's increased funding to making rich people and corporations pay their taxes.
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 Tell Congress to defund Flock's Orwellian camera network!
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.
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US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Social Security 2100 Act.
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 for no Pretend Intelligence data centers on federal lands!
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.
US citizens, call on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to expand the practice of negotiating lower prices on prescription medicines. We need to counteract massive lobbying by Big Pharma.
Deadline for commenting, Aug 17!
US citizens: call on your senators to save funding for Medicaid.
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.
E-scooters turn out to be especially dangerous to ride — much more dangerous than bicycles.
Comparing the magats' efforts to seize power, and embed themselves irreversibly in it, with the efforts of Nazis in 1933.
*Why making Anthony Fauci the enemy will harm US public health for years.*
*US senators urge crackdown on wildfire betting amid warnings of arson risk.*
Betting on other government actions is dangerous too, because it can offer magats the temptation to burn down good government.
*While many leaders compare the wildfire crisis to the second world war, governments fail to adopt the real lessons of pre-emptive wartime action.*
Extreme weather and extreme climate are *attacks on our soil. They are a call to mobilize.* But governments today are barely beginning to mobilize for full action to slow and stop the slowly developing climate disaster.
I conjecture that the reason they don't do this is the presence of a highly influential group of traitors: the fossil fuel industry.
*Human-driven climate crisis fuels Canada’s deadly wildfires, study finds.*
Many restaurants and pubs in the UK have banned wearing of snooper glasses. Theaters, too.
*Human Rights Watch and Amnesty* accuse Israel of knowingly attacking journalists in Lebanon — a war crime.
Pakistan has prohibited anyone from reporting internationally on what happens there. It has also blocked access to Al Jazeera's web site from Pakistan.
*[Progressive Democrat] Abdul El-Sayed offers a model for successfully turning a non-progressive opponent's richly funded campaign against that opponent's rich backers, and thus against the opponent.
Many butterfly species are shifting their habitats — some as fast as 135km per year. Some species' habitats have expanded, and others have shrunk.
All of this measures the rapidity of potentially dangerous ecosystem changes caused by global heating.
*[In Europe,] droughts that were once a century now happen every year, and the impact on wildlife, industrial output and culture itself is catastrophic.*
Underlying the random fluctuation from year to year, the trend (as long as global heating continues) is to get worse.
Joseph Stiglitz: the bully's new tariffs, supposedly meant to pressure for an end to forced labor, hypocritically omit two countries that do enormous amounts of that: China and the US.
Rebecca Solnit: *We launched a war on nature. Now we are in a climate war zone.
George Monbiot: *Murderous heat, an endangered food supply and no [efforts to slow the disaster]: this is the life the radical right wants you to have.
How the Cockroach Janata Party overcame the power of Modi's captive mass media.
*El Niño could push 50m people into acute hunger before end of next year.*
If so, it will mean that the disasters that climate scientists have forecast for many years are arriving.
Madison Square Garden uses surveillance cameras to recognize people. It specifically tracks people on its enemies list, such as journalist Rachel Maddow. But it normally tracks everyone who enters and perhaps recognizes them all.
However, they made an exception for the audience at Taylor Swift's wedding, apparently because she had the clout to demand this.
People must be free to take photos in public places occasionally and publish them. But no one, and especially no business or organization or government, should be allowed to systematically record everyone that passes before a camera and put the records into a internet-connected system.
A grass-roots campaign is pressuring Democratic candidates to stop avoiding the issue of growing climate disaster.
Focusing on "affordability" of everyday life is partly a mistake, and partly a response to pressure from billionaires who figure that will lead towards weak palliative measures rather to any big change to transfer wealth.
The increasing cost of living is a consequence of deeper injustices, one of which is the growing cost of climate disaster (including food plagued by agricultural failure). Another is the growing cost of medical treatment, which stems largely from the big role of businesses in it. Another is the long and slow shift that leaves the non-rich with less and less of society's productive capacity.
*Andy Burnham signals he will scrap plans to curb jury trials [in the UK].*
This is a victory, even though it only prevents a plan to make things worse.
The supposed "need" for restricting the right to a jury was a shortage of funds. I think Burnham has some plan to increase taxes on non-poor people so as to pay for this and other things to make the UK better.
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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