It's the Grav-Mass season!
Grav-Mass
is the celebration of physical laws.
December 25
Isaac Newton's birthday.
¡Feliz Gravidad!
Political Articles | Political Notes | Travel Experiences | Travel Photos | Fiction | Books | Sayings | Personal Ad | Humor | Non-Political Articles | RMS personal FAQ | GPG Key | Scientific Links | Airlines | Humorous Bio | Comics | Empire of the Megacorporations | There Ought to Be a Law | Media/Press/Bio | Links | Archive | Glossary | Anti-Glossary | 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.
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.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to…
Please email rms at the gnu site if you want to volunteer for any of those activities. For the Grav-mass decorations, please write if you come up with a good way.
![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter to oppose making the registrar of copyrights a presidential political appointment.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to censure Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith for apoligizing for slavery and supporting bigotry.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: call on Sinclair Broadcasting to fire Epshteyn.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on powerful Congresscritters to return large campaign donations from the military-industrial complex.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to protect the INF nuclear treaty and don't fund the weapons systems that would violate it.
To sign this without running nonfree software, use the Salsalabs method.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
US citizens: Urge Bernie Sanders to run for president in 2020.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your legislators to protect abortion rights.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on companies to stop advertising in Sinclair Broadcast Group's TV channels.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Thank your senators for voting to take the Yemen resolution out of committee (if they did so).
US citizens: phone your senators to urge them to vote for the resolution to cut off US support for Salafi Arabia's bombardment and invasion of Yemen.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democratic representatives to support establishing a Green New Deal committee.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Secretary of Labor Acosta to resign.
Also call on the House of Representatives to impeach him.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone Senator Schumer's office and call on him to choose someone other than planet roaster Manchin for the ranking Democrat in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
If you phone, please spread the word!
We should make participation in cheating employees a crime for the individuals that do it, to threaten the managers responsible with jail, rather than merely the corporation with a small fine.
The article describes two alternative plans for choosing who to punish in this way, but the effect would be the same: to punish ordinary users of bitcoins effectively at random. Ostensibly it is not random, but rather based on a criterion that ordinary users couldn't hope to check, so it's effectively equivalent to punishment at random.
It is fundamentally unjust to subject people to punishment at random. Constitutions ought to insist that no one can be punished, or legally discriminated against, or have property seized, based on circumstances not feasible for them to have recognized and avoided.
Even if many small countries do not adopt this requirement, large countries could effectively make it compulsory by denying the tax deduction as a business expense for payments to companies whose ultimate beneficial owner is not registered.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
See the current pol-notes page for more.
(You may need to scroll down for more text if there is blank space in this column.)
The four causes 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.
The Mimi and Eunice book by Nina Paley is great.
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 order copies of my book, 'Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition', signed or not signed.
"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.
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".
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
New song (06/2016) - Si la face ay pale.
My Puns in English (Sports car, October 2018).
My Puns in Spanish (New pun: hacer un trio November 2018)
My Puns in French (New pun: Un artiste fait March 2018)
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.
The huns and the writs. I don't know who wrote this, but I hope he does not object to sharing it here.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).
Made for You (December 2012) (local copy)
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 (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
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
