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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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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 am thinking of making another trip to Europe during February - April. If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "feb-apr" as the subject.
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
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal qualified immunity for federal officers.
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 the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep its promise to retire coal plants.
US citizens: call on major news organizations to cover the bully's action on the Department of Justice as a system of lobbying, revolving-door influence, and regulatory capture — examining financial ties, past clients, and enforcement outcomes.
US citizens: Call on Congress to pass the Qualified Immunity Abolition Act, to end qualified immunity for federal officers, including deportation thugs. This will give the victims of their violence a real chance of winning lawsuits about said violence.
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 Attorney General Bondi to drop the charges against Georgia Fort and Don Lemon now.
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 end Big Tech tax breaks.
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: No deportation thugs at our polls.
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 investigate why the IRS gave taxpayers' personal data to the Department of Hatred and Sadism.
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 media to stop supporting the bully's false picture which denies the cruelty of sending deportation thugs, and soldiers, to occupy American cities.
US citizens: call on local and state officials to stop cooperating with the deportation thugs.
US citizens: call on the Social Security Administration not to let the deportation thugs weaponize Social Security.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the corrupter from getting government money for his bogus board of peace.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Support Rashida Tlaib's Defund the Oligarchs, Fund Our Communities resolution.
US citizens: call on the Florida Senate to end state funding for Alligator Alcatraz.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the deportation thugs' 400 arrests ruled by courts to be illegal, and their defiance of court orders to free the people arrested.
US citizens: call on Tell Congress: Investigate DOGE's Misuse of voters' private Social Security records.
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 investigate the corrupter in chief's $1.4 billion profit from the presidency.
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 to protect the Arctic by stopping reckless oil exploration there.
Exploration for fossil fuel should be pretty much stopped entirely because we can't extract it without destroying ourselves; but this threat to the Arctic is an additional reason.
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: Demand insurance commissioners stop hiding insurance industry report data from the public.
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 and everyone else with influence to defend the recognition that global heating endangers the the world and specifically the US.
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 deportation thugs from from terrorizing children.
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.
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 Congress to repeal qualified immunity for federal officers.
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 the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep its promise to retire coal plants.
US citizens: call on major news organizations to cover the bully's action on the Department of Justice as a system of lobbying, revolving-door influence, and regulatory capture — examining financial ties, past clients, and enforcement outcomes.
US citizens: Call on Congress to pass the Qualified Immunity Abolition Act, to end qualified immunity for federal officers, including deportation thugs. This will give the victims of their violence a real chance of winning lawsuits about said violence.
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.
From October: *Growing number of US veterans face arrest over protests [against deportation thugs].*
An ordinary perjurer lies about facts and expects there will be no proof that perse lied. These federal prosecutors did blatant blackwhiting about basic notions of right and wrong.
The epitome of an arrogant, dishonest bully punches you, then accuses you of "Hitting my fist with your face." Prosecutors did essentially that when they knocked over Briggs and then charged him with having "made physical contact with an agent's arm."
Teaching prosecutors to blackwhite on command is moral damage that many will not recover from. If we ever regain control, we will need to disbar them and replace them. Justice requires prosecutors who will prosecute thugs for documented attacks on protesters and other innocent people, not the thugs' victims.
With luck there will be former a pool of prosecutors who resigned rather than do such things, whom we could reappoint.
*Merrily we bring microplastics into the wilderness with our hiking shoes.*
Starmer's plans for prohibiting protests would have prohibited the creation of the Labour Party, if they had been in effect at that time.
Scientists can create incomplete embryos cloned from an adult human. They lack the beginnings of a brain, but develop plenty of important parts that could, if they can develop far enough, be transplanted into that human to save per life.
Antibiotic resistance in disease bacteria is reaching a tipping point leading to danger for everyone, but governments are still not addressing the danger strongly or systematically.
*Australian tropical rainforest trees [have changed] from carbon sink to emissions source.*
A court found the UK's banning of Palestine Action to be illegal because it was a major interference with the right to protest.
But this has not yet translated into the lifting of the ban.
*Nothing says love like roses coated in a fine chemical cocktail.* Especially when many of the pesticides on it are banned in your country for reasons of toxicity.
An Australian police force decided to disregard accusations of domestic violence against one of its thugs because he had already been fired. This left his wife still in danger from him.
The inJustice Department keeps on persecuting people chosen solely because of their political opinions. Leakers keep on proving this by revealing the raw data that the department has.
New York City must stop giving patients' medical data to Palantir, since Palantir can't be trusted not to use it against them.
The bully has returned to bullying Ukraine to offer Putin quasi-surrender.
This demonstrates once again that if he seems to have accepted some sort of reasonable compromise deal with you, he will break it later and demand servitude.
*The Palestine Action ruling vindicates the courageous – and shames the complicit.*
The ruling, if sustained by the appeals court, will put an end to the ban on the organization.
The article compares Palestine Action to the suffragettes and finds that their tactics were similar.
A British bank closed the personal savings account of a retired British couple of activists for Palestine, and refuses to give them any justification for this. They believe it must be political repression.
T-Mobile will implement the feature of passing everything said in a phone call to a powerful computer system.
The advertised feature is to translate between languages using "Artificial Intelligence", though it might really be mere Pretend Intelligence.
But if it can do that, with millions of conversations at once, what else can it do to everyone at once?
It can try to recognize you from your voice. It can convert your conversation into text, with a scattering of errors, and save that for Big Brother.
The bully is trying to focus self-important Americans' hostility on Democrats by shutting down two faster manners of going through airport security checkpoints, supposedly because of Democrats' refusal to fund the Department of Hatred and Sadism.
These two programs give preference to passengers who sign up and give their fingerprints. However, in the 2000s, the TSA would sometimes route some frequent fliers through the TSA Pre line even though we had not signed up. Apparently they didn't really need passengers' fingerprints to send them through the faster scan. So why demand fingerprints?
I suspect that was meant to teach Americans to be happy to be fingerprinted in exchange for saving some time.
The Democrats who criticize the government for halting these programs are being foolish and shallow. The bully is doing so many cruel, damaging and vindictive things; it is lacking a sense of proportion to complain about something that only causes a little more delay.
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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