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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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I expect to have a trip to Europe in May - June. The start and end dates remain to be decided.
If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me now so we can start discussing it. Write to `-invitation' following my three-letter username.
My talks consist of an hour of presentation and an hour of Q&A. The overall focus is software and freedom, but generally the talk includes various subtopics; we can discuss which subtopics together.
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
Sad news: Robert Reich's site has become paywalled. As a result, access to an article there requires running nonfree JavaScript code (https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html) and requires identifying oneself by using a payment account. Each of these consequences is unjust, and I have a moral obligation not to refer people to pages that require such things.
I can't let the links remain here as they are, but they are numerous and it will take time to deal with all of them.
The articles I linked to did not have that problem when I made the links.
US citizens: call on Congress to refuse to fund Trump’s executive order that could label millions of Americans as domestic terrorists, or in any fashion block it.
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 stand up for science, not polluter profits.
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: denounce the DOJ's Attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center.
US citizens: call on the Department of supposed Justice to drop bogus charges against James Comey and stop persecuting political speech.
US citizens: call ABC to resist the bully's censorship demands.
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 pass a war powers resolution about Cuba and end the humanitarian crisis that the US is causing there.
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 restore the gerrymandering limitations that the Supreme Court just abolished.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
One question is, how can this be done? Passing the same law that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional would not work.
Perhaps it would work to require states to use the algorithm that finds the fairest possible set of districts.
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 ban gambling on war and on government policies.
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 block privatization of the US Postal Service.
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 EPA to stop trying to weaken coal ash protections.
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 your congresscritter and senators to block war with Cuba, and end the humanitarian crisis there.
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 congresscritter and senators to pass a Farm Bill that helps families put food on the table.
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 senators to vote for S. J. Res. 99, which would protect authorized foreign workers who have filed for renewal of that authorization from being expelled because government agencies were late in responding.
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 congresscritter and senators to block the corrupter's UAE bailout.
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 representative and senators to support Rashida Tlaib's Lebanon War Powers Resolution.
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 impeach FBI director Patel.
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 Instead of Capping Social Security Benefits, Tax the Rich and EXPAND Social Security.
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 your state Attorney General to shut down the corrupter's prescription drug scam.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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.
Sad news: Robert Reich's site has become paywalled. As a result, access to an article there requires running nonfree JavaScript code (https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html) and requires identifying oneself by using a payment account. Each of these consequences is unjust, and I have a moral obligation not to refer people to pages that require such things.
I can't let the links remain here as they are, but they are numerous and it will take time to deal with all of them.
The articles I linked to did not have that problem when I made the links.
US citizens: call on Congress to refuse to fund Trump’s executive order that could label millions of Americans as domestic terrorists, or in any fashion block it.
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 stand up for science, not polluter profits.
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: denounce the DOJ's Attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center.
US citizens: call on the Department of supposed Justice to drop bogus charges against James Comey and stop persecuting political speech.
*There were 279 FBI personnel working on "immigration-related matters" [i.e., persecution] before [the persecutor] took office in January 2025, according to bureau records The Intercept obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. By September, that number had ballooned to more than 6,500.
Global heating will isolate New Orleans and Baton Rough in the middle of the sea, miles away from land. New Orleans must start now to move to higher ground.
*Want a green card? Better make sure you haven't criticized Israel on social media.*
*Six supreme court justices handed down a ruling built, ostensibly, on the belief that the US has changed so much as to render the protections of the Voting Rights Act unnecessary. No one should be that gullible.*
Activists Israel captured on the recent Gaza aid flotilla are being jailed in Israel. They told their lawyers that they are being held in solitary confinement, blindfolded.
Israel claims they are part of a group which it accuses of working secretly with HAMAS. That would be a bad thing if true, but I won't believe it on Israel's say-so. That is a standard way that right-wing extremists in the US and Israel try to smear anyone that defends the rights of Palestinians.
Even supposing that is true, it can't justify abuse of prisoners by Israel.
*[Executive agencies are] increasingly ignoring US courts, new analysis shows.
Critics warn that respect for rule of law could break down as executive branch flouts judicial decisions.*
Zambia agreed to hold the RightsCon conference this May, but canceled it shortly before it happened.
The article speculates this was due to pressure from China, and there may have been such pressure, but I have a hunch that the Zambian ruler objected to the event's support for equal rights for queer people. Zambia is very repressive in that area.
Starmer is seeking a path to label defense of Palestine as antisemitism.
Once you accept that identification, you will inevitably take an unjust stance on at least one of the two issues.
Starmer Labour called itself the "adults", meaning the ones who would prevent adoption of mad policies such as raising taxes on the rich. Rich people from increases in taxation, thus leaving a choice of various policies that won't solve the big problem of impoverishing the non-rich.
With a right-wing party in power, the "adults" may try to stop it from tearing up the legal system and constitution. However, with an ostensibly left-wing party in power, the "adults" try to prevent any major economic changes that could once again direct a large part of the country's productive capacity to the non-rich.
* Researchers found that TikTok's "For You" pages prioritized pro-Republican [messages] in New York, Texas and Georgia.*
The research operated many dummy accounts and tallied how what the site showed them, comparing that with the preferences that the account showed by which videos it cut off.
The experiment does not reveal how the site chose the videos it chose to present to each user. We don't know whether the site was specifically programmed to show more right-wing messages. Perhaps the site prefers characteristics that are more often found in right-wing messages.
But ultimately that design detail is not very important. What matter is that TikTok spreads right-wing bias.
The leftist premier of West Bengal has accused Modi's party of stealing the election.
This is plausible, given the laws they adopted to deprive Muslims of Indian citizenship if they don't have written proof of it. One of the two laws (which operate together) is explicitly biased against Muslims.
British cops have arrested two Green Party candidates, accusing them of promoting antisemitism.
The statement attributed to Sabine Mairey is flagrantly antisemitic. Aside from being inherently bad, it is also foolish and self-defeating to try to support Palestinians' rights by attacking the Jews that support Palestinians' rights.
The statement attributed to Saiqa Ali supports HAMAS. Since HAMAS is a terrorist organization, arguably the statement supports terrorism. However, HAMAS does not advocate antisemitism. HAMAS is is Islamist, meaning it seeks to impose the rules of Islam on everyone, including non-Muslims. That would be unjust, but does not imply treating Jews worse than Christians. However, HAMAS would be likely to treat Atheists such as me worse than either Christians or Jews.
According to Wikipedia, HAMAS was formerly antisemitic, but ended that about 10 years ago.
Flock license plate cameras are networked to facilitate tracking of all cars' travel.
This is ideal for all sorts of abuses, from "running a plate for a date" to repression of protest groups once they have been identified as part of the mythical "terrorist" organization "Antifa".
The UK set up a national car tracking network over 20 years ago, and used it to find specific people and stop them from traveling to a protest.
Do you expect the persecutor to be less unjust than Tony B'liar?
Arguing that banning or interfering with taking trophies from hunting wild animals is a misguided policy that interferes with protection of wildlife.
*Democrats say EPA head's budget cut proposal "reads like climate change deniers' manifesto".*
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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