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.
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.
I urge you to vote in Democratic primaries for the progressive candidate, if there is one. And in the final election I urge you to vote for Democrats, unless a liberal independent had a good chance of winning.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to
Many of America's problems can be corrected by this, both those that call for spending money and those that involve weakness of democracy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on COP29 to remove the head of Azerbaijan's state oil company from the position of its organizer.
US citizens: call on the IRS to make a libre site for filing tax returns.
US citizens: call on The Department of Justice to sue big fossil fuel for denying global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to side with working people, not billionaires and Big Business.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your senators to support the FOREST Act, which would ban imports made with products of illegally deforested land.
See the detailed, general issue.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to protect abortion and birth control by repealing the Comstock Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on ISO-New England to stop funding fossil fuel "peaker" plants.
US citizens: call on Biden to close the gun-show loophole and ban sale of assault-like rifles.
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve to support curbing global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop insurance companies from vetoing treatments ordered by doctors.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to send no more weapons to Israel until it ceases atrocities in Gaza.
US citizens: call on Biden to end the broad sanctions against Venezuela.
Maduro has no respect for democracy, but the sanctions against Venezuela harm the people rather than the rulers.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to extend the "pause" on new fossil gas export facilities into a permanent ban.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Biden to end all fossil fuel subsidies.
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to recuses himself in Trump's immunity case.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Biden's budget for the IRS.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax to limit the political power of America's richest families.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: support the Resolution Recognizing the Human Right to Utilities.
Everyone: call on Universities to divest from the war industry.
US citizens: call on Discussion and comment platforms to protect election integrity.
The petition misuses the term "AI".
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Ted Cruz for apparent campaign finance violations
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
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.
The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again.
Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up and running. That's where the real fault is.
I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on their boards. Perhaps 66%.
Private equity is gobbling up large parts of the US nursing home business. This puts patients in danger since private equity can amass lots of money, create an oligopoly, and get away with abuses.
The study suggests that "regulation may be needed." I will take a stronger stand and call for firm limits — perhaps even prohibiting private equity combinations from owning home nursing businesses.
I'v also proposed prohibiting private equity from buying up lots of rental housing.
It should be illegal for a store to charge different prices to customers depending on whether they identify themselves and/or hand over demanded personal data.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
Various drugs, some legal and some illegal, used in large quantities by humans get into waterways and alter wildlife.
*More intense, frequent tropical cyclones may devastate seabird colonies.*
Tornadoes in Maryland??? That has not been normal, but the pattern is shifting.
Reading Netanyahu, a former Israeli official says that he killed a peace plan that Israel had privately agreed to, because he is determined not to have peace in Gaza.
I think the only way Biden can make progress from here is with pressure that Netanyuahu cannot defy -- such as, to cut off arms supplies to Israel. As people in Gaza are suffering death and permanent damage from the lack of food, Biden must not dither.
*Incoming ministers "will face UK public services on brink of collapse."*
It may be necessary to raise taxes to prevent the collapse.
Musk increasingly imitates the bully/corrupter's behavior as well as supporting his politics.
US citizens: call on Biden to end support for the Israeli military's atrocities.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect public servants' retirement.
US citizens: call on Congress to get rid of the wrecker's tax cuts and end tax loopholes for big corporations.
*One young child in [every four in the world] at risk of ‘irreversible’ harm due to restricted diet, UN report says.* These children rarely get vegetables, let alone meat.
Local shortages of food are one of the main causes, but heavy marketing of non-nutritious foods to parents who don't know what is bad about them is also a cause. In Gaza, the Israeli siege is the main cause.
*Starvation already causing mass death and lasting harm in Gaza, agencies say.*
Children that live through this may suffer lifelong damage from their current malnutrition.
Secretary General Guterres calls for a global ban on fossil-fuel advertising.
I support the idea. The challenge is to overcome the domination of the planet roasters and their PR funds.
Perhaps this suggests a new idea for climate defense protests: covering or tearing off the advertisements for fossil fuels and the products that use them, and the companies involved with those.
That should include greenwashing, whose message is, "Forget about our enormous fossil fuel business, please associate us with our comparatively small renewable electricity business."
*Fast food chains are successfully influencing news outlets [in Australia] to produce "covert marketing" for their brands, a new study has found.*
*French military instructors in Ukraine would be "legitimate target",* according to the Putin forces.
They should bring anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses with them so they can protect themselves if attacked. These defenses will not escalate the war, since they could not engage any of the Putin forces except when said Putin forces are attacking them.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich.
Many of America's problems can be corrected by this, both those that call for spending money and those that involve weakness of democracy.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on COP29 to remove the head of Azerbaijan's state oil company from the position of its organizer.
US citizens: call on the IRS to make a libre site for filing tax returns.
US citizens: call on The Department of Justice to sue big fossil fuel for denying global heating.
Georgia Republicans are arranging systematically to challenge the voting credentials of large numbers of black voters, just as the KKK did in 1946.
Robert Reich: Billionaires including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Michael Milken and Steven Mnuchin are working together to make the corrupter president again. Reich contends that their aim is to roll back democracy itself.
Musk has x-terminated the truth on Ex-Twitter by repeatedly endorsing the corrupter's lies about the 2020 election. That makes him systematically and fundamentally dishonest, like the corrupter himself.
US citizens: call on Congress to side with working people, not billionaires and Big Business.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
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".
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
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.
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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