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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.
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.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
[ No upcoming talks. ]
That criterion for what to prohibit may not be exactly ideal, but that's a side issue -- it would be a step in the right direction.
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
There should be a law requiring online services, if they close a user's account, to permit the user to continue to download whatever information perse had left in the account.
To be sure, it is foolish to rely on an online service to hold any data for you; you should store it locally, and use online services only as backups (encrypted). Preferably more than one online service in parallel, for redundancy. But we should not allow online services to cite this as an excuse for arbitrarily causing people great avoidable harm.
It should be a crime to knowingly approach a person while maskless inside a building or vehicle.
The extreme of this is represented by the Amazon warehouse, where a worker's every move is controlled by the computer system. This is one of many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Unfortunately, surveillance of workers is not limited to Amazon. I think states should pass laws to limit surveillance of workers. It should cover independent contractors as well as employees.
The law should completely forbid demanding that workers run any specific software on their own computers (keep in mind that portable phones are computers); the employer who wants that must furnish the computer at no charge.
Now it can cause you to be arrested randomly for walking down the street.
If stores use face recognition inside the store, they should not be allowed to use photos for matching against people in the store except for photos they have taken in that store, and photos of people convicted of theft and fraud.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to take concrete action to reintroduce sea otters off the California and Oregon coast.
US citizens: call on Congress and state legislatures to investigate election-winners who seem to be constitutionally excluded from office.
Thousands of Israelis are protesting for democracy, and against Netanyahu's plans to subordinate the Supreme Court to the government.
How Republicans falsified Critical Race Theory and African American Studies in the interest of political censorship.
(satire) *Florida Board Of Education Removes Africa From World Maps.*
Hypereager Trademark Enforcement: nasty, excessive and stupid.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban assault weapons.
That criterion for what to prohibit may not be exactly ideal, but that's a side issue -- it would be a step in the right direction.
US citizens: call on the EPA to make a strong standard for limiting soot exposure.
In the UK, a whole generation is learning the value of unionization. Strikes are spreading, and so are victories.
The main resistance is from the Tories, who have aimed for centuries to keep wages down and workers poor.
The US is seeing something similar, but not so many victories, as a big company can stall concessions for years.
Robert Reich: *Friday's Surprisingly Positive Jobs Report Does Not Mean Fed Should Keep Raising Rates.*
Proposing to legislate that corporations' directors have a duty "not to severely harm the public interest."
Early in the 20th century, Germany colonized Namibia and carried out genocide against two tribes that resisted. Now they demand reparations, not to the Namibian government but to the people of those two tribes.
The right-wing, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms.
That court is right-wing because the preponderance of Republican senators from the states in that circuit have blocked the appointment of any new judges there. That makes the 5th circuit ideal for Republicans to get the results they seek.
The shooting of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was part of an US crackdown on environmental defenders, which includes charging them with "terrorism" for nonviolent protest.
Bogus Johnson promised to build 40 new hospitals, to win the 2019 election. Now it's almost time for another election, and only 10 of them have approved construction plans.
Promise them anything, but give them tax cuts for the rich.
*Once Again, DNC Panel Blocks Vote on Dark Money Ban in Democratic Primaries.*
*Tackle "Abuse of Water" by Big Ag and Big Oil, Advocates Say Amid Colorado River Fight*
I think that "abuse" is the wrong word for this. It should be "misuse". But it is a very big misuse. Fracking misuses enormous amounts of water. So does growing feed for cattle.
*ACLU Sues CIA, DOJ, and NSA for Records About Warrantless Spying on Americans.*
Dubya's solicitor-general, who argued in the Supreme Court in favor of trying the prisoners in Guantánamo in "military commissions" (kangaroo courts), now says that that was a terrible mistake. The US should have brought them to a real US court for trial.
He also says it was self-defeating to ask for the death penalty for any of them, and that the US should offer them plea deals now.
I think that after the many years in prison and torture they have suffered, the US should offer them a plea deal for time already served, and let them go.
Five years ago, the wrecker's officials separated thousands of migrant children from their parents. Despite persistent efforts, 1000 of them still not been reunited with those parents, because the wrecker's officials preserved no usable information about who those parents were and how to find them.
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 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.
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:
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