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.
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.
Phone the White House at (202) 456-1111
(only Tues-Thur 11 to 3) to call for dropping the changes.
Write to Biden at
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Wash DC 20500
Please phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 or write to Reps at US House of Representatives, Wash, DC 20515.
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![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
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.
The right-wing judges that dominate the Supreme Court have decided to use the corrupter's ridiculous claim of immunity as an excuse to delay his trial for insurrection.
Using the terms "pro-Palestine" and "pro-Israel" leads people to think of those two nations as pure enemies, and assume that one's gain is always the other's loss. This is the feeling with which I've stated that I am pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
I love the call, quoted at the end of the article for *liberation for everyone "between every river and every sea."*
I like the spirit shown by celebrating Jewish and Muslim holidays in encampments. That makes their total rejection of antisemitism and antimuslimism as clear as can be. However, I don't want my rejection of antisemitism and antimuslimism to submerge my peaceful and persistent advocacy of Atheism.
Hmm. If and when it is normal to have a 4-day work week, people could (if they wish) celebrate the Muslim sabbath on Friday, the Jewish sabbath on Saturday, and the Christian sabbath on Sunday. The fanatics of each religion could rage against that.
That sort of combine-them-all approach can be good for things that are mainly symbolic, like sabbath. It is not applicable, however, to substantive questions of right and wrong — for those, we need to think about each issue in substance.
Doctors without Borders carried out a large drug trial, seeking approval of a treatment for tuberculosis, was able to do it for only 34 million dollars, Big Pharma claims they cost billions, and use that as an excuse for making drugs so expensive.
It seems that is one more reason for taking drug trials away from pharma companies. The main reason is that their influence corrupts the results.
The research should also be funded by governments or noncommercial organizations. That would eliminate all the supposed arguments for patents on medicines.
The EPA has made a rule that coal-powered generators must in the future capture most of the greenhouse pollution they emit, or shut down.
The article is not clear about exactly which kinds of pollution this covers. Does it include all particulates? Does it include toxic chemicals? Does it include the fallout that consists of uranium naturally present in coal?
The coal industry continues demanding to be given billions for development of "carbon capture and storage", but when it sees a demand to start using that everywhere 15 years from now, it wants to fight. That demonstrates that their unending "development" of such capture is not meant as a serious solution, but rather as an excuse to let it continue.
*Fears grow over rising number of oil lobbyists at UN plastic pollution talks.*
Allowing any representatives of oil companies in events intended to reduce the dangerous uses of petroleum simply invites their sabotage. Even if they claim that it is impossible for them to change faster, we can be sure that the real reason it is impossible is because they are trying hard to resist it.
Slovakia's new right-wing government is moving to exert political control over government support for independent media.
Thugs fired rubber-coated hard bullets at protesters in Emery University, as well as tear gas.
USC cancelled its combined graduation ceremony entirely, claiming this was because of "safety measures."
That is balderdash. The only new safety concern on the USC campus comes from the thugs that are arresting students at the behest of those same administrators. They can cure the safety problems easily by simply resigning.
There are several standard kinds of falsehood that are normally used as excuses for repression.
Brazilian indigenous groups rallied together in Brasilia against the construction of a railroad through Amazonia, intended by its backers to facilitate mining and deforestation.
It disturbs me that Lula was not there. We was formerly a strong protector of the forest. I hope he has not surrendered to the deforesters.
*Council of Europe human rights watchdog condemns UK's Rwanda bill.*
Various countries are trying to make it difficult for people to ask for asylum there. Sending them to another place to wait for years while their cases are considered is a popular method, which has been used by Australia, the UK and the US. It is an injustice regardless of details.
But that's not the only method in use. Another is to slow down the processing of each case. Reducing the funding for handling cases will generally achieve that. If each asylum seeker has to wait for years while forbidden to work, it will drive many to give up.
An experiment on one species of bird found that traffic noise stunts their growth even in the egg. And continues to do so after they hatch, too.
Robert Reich: a university's mission is to encourage students to debate and consider ideas. Shutting down protest is betrayal of its mission.
A "new government" was installed in Haiti. The article says nothing about who chose the members of the new government. The previous one was chosen, more or less, by the US government.
The House Anti-Education Committee (not its official name) has called the New York City School Chancellor to testify. Here is advice for him.
*UK accused by Amnesty of ‘deliberately destabilizing’ human rights globally* for political reasons.
*The damning Amnesty report also criticizes Israel's allies for the failure to stop the "indescribable civilian bloodshed" in Gaza.*
The European Parliament has voted to take the EU out of the Energy Charter Treaty.
That treaty is a threat to civilization because it penalizes member countries for effective measures to reduce use or extraction of fossil fuels.
Even worse, it was designed to be impossible to effectively get out of. It says that countries that abrogate it are still subject to the treaty's punishments for reducing the profits of petroleum companies.
If the EU decides to defy that, it may be powerful enough to kill the ghost of the treaty.
Word is that TikTok will shut down in the US rather than sell its US business to some other company.
To shut down TikTok would be a great start. Maybe then we could shut down the other sites that use "recommendation engines" programmed to maximize "engagement with the site" — in other words, addiction.
However, much of the harm done by addictiveness could be prevented by taking recommendation engines out of the control of the platform itself.
The US is building a pier in Gaza to receive aid. But Biden has given Israel plenty of opportunity to choke off the flow of aid once it gets onto the pier.
I also wonder if there will really be a "third party" available to transport the aid into Gaza. It would not surprise me if the amount of aid that really arrives is far too little.
Biden should have taken Netanyahu down a peg by showing that the US does not need Israel's approval to deliver aid to Gaza.
Being a woman in Afghanistan is so horrible that even being a woman in Iran is a big step up.
I'd be tempted to support forcibly removing the Taliban from power so that they can't do these things any more. But that is not a real solution. We tried that already, and it led to 20 years of war that we were slowly but steadily losing.
I don't think we know a way to fight that war and win.
This is why I still believe that removing US troops from Afghanistan was the right thing to do.
If you thought that the insertion of a back door in XZ indicates a problem with free software, please compare that with the worse problem of nonfree software. Microsoft's servers are in far worse shape.
And that's not to mention the ways the developers/owners of those programs can break those programs' "security" — that exists only if they choose to let it exist.
India drove out an Australian journalist for the ABC network by various sorts of harassment including sending DMCA take down notices for her stories. The government objected to what she said in news coverage.
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:
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
