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.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
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
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "october" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
It will run 14:00 to 16:00 in Haaga-Helia University in Pasila. Specifically, Ratapihantie 13 Helsinki, in the auditorium on the ground floor.
Admission is gratis and there is no need to register.
US citizens: call on companies to stop feeding data to Shadowdragon's massive surveillance.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the persecutor from attacking Americans' freedom of speech and freedom to protest.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject any government funding bill that doesn't address our medical funding crisis or hold the wrecker's officials accountable.
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 local officials to build clean energy now.
Everyone: call on the Washington Post to rehire the columnist who criticized Kirk.
US citizens: call on Democrats to stand firm against the Republican demands to agree to permanent budget cuts in what should be a "continuing resolution."
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter and urge per to support Rep. Ilhan Omar's resolution invoking the War Powers Act to halt the wrecker's undeclared war against Venezuela.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your state governor to pass a millionaires’ surtax law.
See here for the simple editing step needed to make this campaign function properly without running nonfree JavaScript. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov. If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to make medical business profiteers pay their fair (large) share of taxes and cancel this year's massive tax cuts for the rich.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your state governor to keep mifepristone legal in your state.
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 companies to stop feeding data to Shadowdragon's massive surveillance.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the persecutor from attacking Americans' freedom of speech and freedom to protest.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject any government funding bill that doesn't address our medical funding crisis or hold the wrecker's officials accountable.
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 local officials to build clean energy now.
The Anti-Defamation League used to publish information on a range of forms of potentially dangerous extremism. Right-wing extremism objected to its listing of Charles Kirk's brand of extremism, as well as Christian Nationalism (another Christian hate movement).
The ADL responded by deleting the whole catalog.
The muskrat repeated the usual double standard of right-wing extremists: if you criticize Charles Kirk, they say you're a hate group and advocating murder. If you dehumanize disprivileged minority groups and hint at killing them, they see no wrong in that.
The ADL has been moving closer to right-wing extremism itself, for instance in demonizing people who criticize Israel's massive killing in Gaza as "antisemites". Perhaps its leadership took this as an opportunity to cut itself off from its past.
In Australia, *"nominee companies" — paid to be listed as shareholders on behalf of unnamed investors — could be reducing accountability over financial support of [fossil fuel] industry.*
There is a simple solution: legislate a requirement to identify their shareholders.
A general strike in Italy shut down ports to demand Italy stop cooperating with Israel's assault on Gaza.
*The [bully's henchmen] evidently seek to transform the US military into a partisan tool of the president's regime.*
There is no legal validity to that argument.
*Israeli naval forces board pro-Palestinian flotilla 75 miles from Gaza.*
That sounds like international waters.
One important side point in the bully's proposed peace deal for Gaza is that if HAMAS doesn't agree to it, the plan would encourage Israel's massive killing practices.
*A security [(or should we say "murder"?)] contractor serving the Gaza "Humanitarian" Foundation has hired a lobbying firm tied to [the corrupter].*
This sort of corrupt dealing with him has become standard practice ever since he first invited contributions to his inaugural fund.
which were, in effect, bribes. Sometimes they are done by settling frivolous lawsuits with a large payment to him.
There are various other methods of labeling so as not to call it "bribe", but they do not really attempt to disguise it.
As Britons considered Starmer's plan for mandatory digital ID cards, they have mostly turned against it.
Hooray!
Now they only need to make sure he can't impose that law against public opposition.
The persecutor's proposed increase in employers' fees to get a visa to hire a foreign worker would make hospitals shut down.
It might be a good idea to ramp up US medical education and teach more Americans to do medical jobs. But such training takes years — it can't happen between now and next year.
To make a success of this, the US would need to increase training capacity and spend years training hundreds of thousands of medical professionals. Then it could reduce the number of work visas granted for foreign medical workers without causing a problem.
Extending the term "autism" to cover such a range of different syndromes seems to be an overgeneralization.
Australia's offshore immigration prison on Nauru does not give prisoners enough money to buy food.
And they face violent persecution by the locals.
*Today, Public Citizen filed against the Small Business Administration (SBA) for a message on its homepage blaming "Senate Democrats" for causing a government shutdown. The complaint alleges this is a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of taxpayer money for partisan political purposes.*
Global heating is drying up the region of Tehran, and the president of Iran says it must move the capital (which has 10 million inhabitants) to another region.
The article fails to mention global heating and population growth as causes of this problem.
*Scientists say they have shown unambiguously that the numbers of "societally disastrous" wildfires — the ones that hit economies hard and take lives — have increased around the world as global heating bites.*
*Jane Fonda relaunches free speech group backed by her father during the McCarthy era*: The Committee for the First Amendment.
*Veterans react to Hegseth's "insulting" address to generals and admirals.*
The word "insulting" is an understatement. It calls on them to disregard their oath to "defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic." In effect, it is a call to treason — a call for US soldiers to redirect their loyalty towards the fascist usurpers.
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
