Richard Stallman's Personal Site


The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019"
by Ruben Rodriguez

I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project.
This is my long-term commitment and I plan to continue.
You may have heard or read critical statements about me; please make up your own mind.

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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.

FSF Giving Guide

Robert Reich explains how the bullshitter and Republicans are trying to spread chaos to discourage non-fascists from voting. After creating as much real chaos as they can, they pretend there is even more of it, hoping Americans will give up and not vote, or support a fascist strong man.

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.

Canadians: I suggest you seek election advice at a local chapter of a group that pushes to curb global heating and has the courage to say, "Canada should stop exporting fossil fuel." It will at least use the right goals to suggest who to vote for in your area.

Join a Friday climate strike.
That page is made by scraping Fridays for Future so you can get the information without running any Javascript code. I would be very glad if they made the information on their own site accessible from the Free World; then we could simply refer people to their site and do without the scraping etc.

I am limiting the number of new political notes per day so as not to overload the volunteers who install new notes. If you'd like to help, please write to rms at gnu period org.

Is your bank pressuring you to use biometric ID? If so, please write to rms at gnu dot org. It could be useful if you document what is happening.

Please join the Free Software Foundation to support its work for your freedom.

"They" is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.

Link Policy

The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.

I'm looking for people to If you would like to help me in any of these ways, please write to rms at gnu dot o r g.

Civil Liberties Minute:

[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting 
             Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]
graphic by Susan Henson
Americans, you may wish to copy this icon to your own page, as a way of showing what patriotism means to you.

Upcoming talks

Urgent action items

Recording of Guantanamero

Listen to the recording of Guantanamero, a protest song written in Spanish. The recording is in Ogg Vorbis format. To install an Ogg Vorbis player, see the FSF's Ogg Players page.

There Ought to Be a Law

More items where there ought to be a law.

Quotes

Here are some quotations that I particularly like.

Most recent Political Notes and News Items

(RSS Feed)

You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.

Arms exports
8 October 2024

President Macron of France is seriously trying to press the US to cut off arms for Israel to use in Gaza.

I disagree with Macron on many issues, but it is good to see the president of a significant country taking this stand.

Tiktok misinformation
8 October 2024

Fake testimonials on TikTok, purporting to be from unauthorized immigrants and made in their own languages, are designed to fool people back home to think they would be welcomed if they were smuggled into the US.

So it's not just minors that TikTok is likely to harm, and it isn't mainly a mater of being owned by a Chinese company.

Google's AI Mushrooms
8 October 2024

Google is using artificial stupidity to generate false and misleading "images" for recognizing particular species of mushrooms.

I once had a friend who was learning to collect mushrooms, and I looked at his very long study book. For distinguishing species of mushrooms, including distinguishing edible ones from deadly ones, one needed to recognize subtle traits, and sometimes perform physical tests.

Visa debit-card monopoly
8 October 2024

*US sues Visa for monopoly on debit-card use affecting "price of nearly everything".*

It may be true that this affects the price that most purchasers pay for most products. More generally, monopolistic behavior does great harm to society by giving big business too much power. Prosecuting is crucial and we need to make these laws stricter. But it may not affects the price of things I buy for cash — which is almost every product I buy.

The exceptions are when I ask a friend to order something for me, and later reimburse person. Person will normally use a payment card to order it, and the card's fee will be part of the amount I reimburse. But that does not happen often.

The reason I avoid paying with a card is not about that small fee. It is a negligible part of my spending, and not worth worrying about. The reason is privacy. I don't want the store to collect any personal data for their data bases.

If the employee who receives my money gets interested in free software or surveillance resistance, I don't mind telling person my name. I will even give her my pleasure card if that is useful. It is unlikely the employee would enter that data in the company's data base.

Silent departure
8 October 2024

The demographic triumph in Israel of extreme right-wing Jews and religious fanatic Jews has made secularist and peace-minded Jews seek to move to other countries.

for years, some have been moving away, but now it has become a stream.

I suggested that secularist, non fanatical Jews should make common cause with Palestinians so as to outvote the fanatics.

I knew, of course, that that would be be difficult and unlikely, but it seemed at least thinkable. I am not sure it is even thinkable now.

Helene’s devastation
8 October 2024

Some of the cities devastated by Hurricane Helene will take years to rebuild. Some are too wrecked to even try.

Those who can try may face devastating storms every year, so they will never finish the job.

Perhaps it is necessary to adopt new construction methods, such as concrete supported on pillars talk enough to keep the building dry.

President Saied
8 October 2024

Saied, dictator of Tunisia, seems likely to "win" an unfair election with his critics and main opposing candidate in prison.

He was elected when the voters were unhappy with the Islamist ruling party and found in Saied the opposition that seemed to have a chance of winning. Some Americans voted for the corrupter in 2016 following similar reasoning. In both cases that was a disastrous mistake.

The lesson: never help elect an anti-democracy candidate or party, no matter what the flaws of the incumbent government.

Israel’s lack of vision
8 October 2024

Iran's big missile attack did little harm to civilians because it was carefully aimed at Israel's military facilities — and it did damage to them.

This might turn into a war of attrition.

Particle pollution
8 October 2024

* Tests show adding just 10% of waste to a wood burner indoors can double its particle pollution.*

Burning wood inside a house is quite dangerous even without this increment.

Harmful to climate
8 October 2024

*More than £494bn subsidies a year are harmful to the climate, says report.*

I think that is the total of subsidies paid by many different countries.

Fair taxes
8 October 2024

Proposing a tax on visits by private jets and super yachts.

It could be a good idea, but there's no reason to limit it to private jets. Some years ago the EU decided to tax commercial flights as a kind of carbon tax. It was a good idea, but other countries did not join in and instead applied diplomatic pressure to make the EU cancel it.

Taxing solely the private jets could be a first step towards taxing them all.

Racial disparities
8 October 2024

California has apologized for its role in the system of slavery, and has adopted a new system to give black students better education.

I was surprised to learn, from the article above, that California before the Civil War had a law that supported slavery. That was a concrete reason for the apology.

Where laws discriminated against blacks, the governments that once enacted and enforced them ought to pay reparations to the descendants of those who were the victims of them. But we should reject the line of thought which imposes a sort of original sin on all whites.

Houthis’ capability
8 October 2024

A leader of a Yemeni faction that opposes the Houthis says that the US/UK attacks on the Houthis are totally ineffective at stopping the Houthis from attacking shipping — and instead give the Houthis an opportunity to boast that the US can't stop them from attacking shipping.

I wonder why the US can't stop them from attacking shipping. What kinds of targets has the US been attacking in Yemen? Is it trying to deny the Houthis the means to attack shipping, or is it only trying to cause "damage" that it supposed might make the Houthis stop attacking? If the latter, of course that was ineffective. If you think you're on a mission from "god", damage won't make you abandon a fight.

And how is it that ships can come and go in Houthi ports without being stopped and inspected for missiles and drones?

Has the US considered seizing the Houthi ports?

Bruce Zuchowski
8 October 2024

Elected sheriffs in the US tend to be right-wing white men, and tend to impose right-wing political views using the power of their office.

Arms firm protests
7 October 2024

*Activists say they have proof [Tory] ministers tried to influence police over [protests against] Israeli arms firm [Elbit].*

Indict Blinken
7 October 2024

Leaked documents show that Blinken lied when he stated, in an official report, that "we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Veterans for Peace calls for him to be prosecuted. I'd be satisfied if the US government officially reversed that false statement and began applying the law to arms shipments to Israel.

Tuvalu climate minister
7 October 2024

Island countries in the Pacific are denouncing Australia for authorizing expansion of some existing coal mines. One leader accuses Australia of proceeding to drown them.

This is true in the deepest sense, but superficially an exaggeration.

Humanity is indeed carrying out the inundation of the atolls. Of their habitable land, nothing atoll will remain. Later, after global heating and ocean acidification have caused the extinction of coral (along with most mollusks and crustaceans), there will never be atolls again.

The exaggeration is that this is not specifically the fault of coal, nor specifically the fault of Australia. All fossil fuels contribute. and so does deforestation. Australia participates in bringing global disaster, but so do the US, China, Brazil, and many other countries.

It's inaccurate to put the blame on Australia alone. Every country that opens new mines or wells for fossil fuel is more or less to blame for this crime-in-progress. However, since Australia is one of the major perpetrators, and located in the Pacific, it is entirely legitimate for those victims-to-be to focus their ire there.

Water industry analysis
7 October 2024

* Labour used “economically illiterate” analysis paid for by water companies in order to argue against the nationalisation [of the water companies] in England.*

I am not surprised by this — it is the soft of thing that Tory Lite would do.

Ex-Trump advisers
7 October 2024

*[The corrupters' former] advisers help to grow pro-Russia website that spreads misinformation.*

PACE hearing
7 October 2024

Julian Assange spoke to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

about how the US actions against him and others related to Wikileaks put freedom of the press globally in danger.

The Council of Europe

predates the European Union and has more countries as members.


The four factors of the apocalypse:
   global heating, global hating,
   global eating, global mating.


[More Cartoons]


Not f'd. You won't find us on Facebook

Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.


E-books

Non-oppressive Commercial E-books


Don't use Facebook

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.


Boycott Harry Potter Books, Movies, etc.



Internet Music EULAS



Business Supremacy Treaties



Countries to Stay Away From



No national identity cards

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.


Borders

Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.


Flight connections

Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.


The Lifelong Activist

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.


Bob Chassell

Writing (mostly science fiction) by my friend Bob Chassell who recently died.


Solidarity Economy and Free Software

Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.


Falkvinge articles

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.


Long-term action items


Political Articles

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.

Political notes

"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."

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.

Media/Press/Bios

Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.

Travel experiences

Photos about my travels

Scientific Links


Some humor

The berry torture.

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.

Futon Physics

A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta Española. thumbnail

The Night before M-x-mas

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 Cartoons

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 Portuguese

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.)

I am a
     Saint In the Church Of Emacs --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.

Pre-Zen Studies.

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.

Un malentendido gracioso.

ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.

American Extremists

My Small Mouth

The huns and the writs.

No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)

Hammer into Anvil

Fiction

Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation

A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).

The Right to Read

Books

My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.

Stallman on Love

Love and Dance

My Childhood Sweetheart

Made for You

My Former Personal Ad

Non-Political Articles

Am I Doctor Stallman?

Avec des chapeaux French song parody.

My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.

Resolving the trolley problem

Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights

A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.

Origin of the POSIX name.

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".

My Childhood Sweetheart

Love and Dance

Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor

Certificate of confusion

Links

Thanks

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