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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.
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 Stop [the wrecker]'s Authoritarian Troop Deployment.
The line between military and civilian government is among the critical protections for democracy.
US citizens: call on Congress to *Stop [the wrecker]'s Authoritarian Troop Deployment.*
*The line between military and civilian government is among the critical protections for democracy.*
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to delete the $50B tax increase on nonprofits from the Big Bad Bill.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on RFK Jr to revert the cancellation of the bird flu vaccine contract.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on the Smithsonian Institution to stand firm against pressure to slant American history.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to defund DOPE (so-called "DOGE").
US citizens: call on Congress to reject cuts in funding for medical treatment, and instead extend this to a universal national medical system.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the JUDGES bill which would let Republicans pack the federal courts.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Call for the resignation of acting FEMA head David Richardson.
US citizens: call on state Democratic parties to ban super-PACs from Democratic primaries.
US citizens: call on AG Bondi to give no taxpayer money to Proud Boys.
US citizens: call on the Senate to preserve the authority of federal courts over unconstitutional or illegal executive actions, by defeating the No Rogue Rulings act.
US citizens: call on the Cop30 president to pay attention to cutting fossil fuel use.
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 Stop [the wrecker]'s Authoritarian Troop Deployment.
The line between military and civilian government is among the critical protections for democracy.
(satire) *Trump Orders All Children Born Under Biden To Be Renamed After Confederate Generals.*
Commercial "period tracker" apps, which connect to servers, collect users personal data and then store them in the servers for others to obtain.
A bizarre alternative has been proposed: governments would run these apps and store the data in their own servers.
One might wish we could trust those governments not to use that data against the users who entered them — but if the government is taken over by right-wing fanatics, it will use those data in all the nastiest ways — including punishing abortion.
The real solution to this problem is to keep the data encrypted on your own computer. But in order for users to rationally trust it, it needs to be free software, so that no one is in a position to corrupt the program.
A man who said he was a deportation thug tied up a sales clerk and took $1000 in cash.
The article asserts that he was an impostor and not a real deportation thug. Perhaps so — but can anyone verify that? Can we be sure he wasn't an authentic deportation thug?
The deportation thugs are practicing deceit and cruelty — for instance, tricking people into signing papers that accept deportation.
On June 8-9, Israel attacked the Madleen, a ship bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza, operated by the Hind Rajab Foundation. The foundation has formally filed a war crimes complaint about this attack,
*Eyewitnesses report that passengers were physically assaulted, exposed to choking white substances sprayed from drones, and denied communication with the outside world.*
The ship and its personnel did not try to commit any violence or any damage against Israel, so there is no possible excuse for the violence that Israel committed against the ship and the personnel.
Israel attacked vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza several years ago.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of the executive order to reject grant applications that talk about DEI or mention the existence of trans people.
* As the Earth heats up, the amount of algae in our waterways is rapidly increasing, transforming the colour of lakes and killing entire ecosystems.*
Several massive human outputs combine to cause algae blooms, and human economic growth increases all of them.
*[The Big Bad Bill] is built on falsehoods about low-income families.*
Poor people don't make bad decisions out of laziness. They do it out of high levels of stress in their lives.
(Satire) *[Saboteur-in-chief] Issues Executive Order Reversing All Vasectomies.*
Orwellian planet roasters are labeling fossil gas (methane) as "clean energy".
The wrecker is planning to label US greenhouse emissions from power plants as "not significant", showing his usual disregard for facts, as an excuse to permit increasing them.
What Chicago does to protect its residents from deportation.
I must rebuke the article's author for saying that the bullshitter has *worked to fulfill campaign pledges to carry out mass deportations after promising to remove "millions".* Yes, he said that, but he has no sense of obligation to carry out promises, whether campaign promises or any other kind.
He sticks to this line of attack because he thinks it is an effective strategy for reducing the US to submission. Part of the reason for that is that magats are mad for it. That has a superficial partial resemblance to "carrying out a promise," but they are fundamentally different.
Vast areas of Britain have been taken over by a grass that forms a mono culture. No birds or insects can live in those areas.
Two former prisoners in Guantánamo are suing the UK government, claiming it was complicit in the torture they suffered at the hands of the US government.
Remeasuring ocean acidification has found it is worse than scientists had believed.
This will soon start wiping out corals, crustaceans, and mollusks with shells, by dissolving their shells. This will also wipe out thousands of species that depend on corals.
US citizens: call on Congress to *Stop [the wrecker]'s Authoritarian Troop Deployment.*
*The line between military and civilian government is among the critical protections for democracy.*
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An Argentine political activist, who was disappeared in 1977 by the military which had seized power, sees in the bully's tyranny a resemblance to the tyranny in Argentina.
Exiled Russian human rights activists teach Americans several terms that Russians developed to refer to phenomena of Putin's developing dictatorship, so that Americans can use them to understand them when the would-be dictator of our country does them.
The bullshitter's go-to distraction technique is to accuse his victims and enemies of doing the wrongs he is doing.
With enough of a mindless chorus of supporters, people who don't have a clear orientation have trouble seeing the ground through the fog of similar-looking counter-accusations.
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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