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.
I am thinking of making another trip to Europe during February - April. If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "feb-apr" as the subject.
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
US citizens: support Rashida Tlaib's resolution to acknowledge and put an end to the genocide in Gaza.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the members of Congress who reminded the US military that their legal and moral duty is to disobey illegal orders.
The criminal in chief threatened to have them killed for making this statement, so they need our support.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for holding the deportation thugs accountable for surveillance abuses.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the members of Congress who reminded the US military that their legal and moral duty is to disobey illegal orders.
The criminal in chief threatened to have them killed for making this statement, so they need our support.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for holding the deportation thugs accountable for surveillance abuses.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Senator Warren's EXPERTS act, which would hinder lobbyists from serving as "experts" in government consultations.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: Condemn the persecutor's death threats against Democrats.
If you sign this petition going to House and Senate leaders, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bill to make organizing protests a crime.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to sign the discharge petition for the bill to restore the Medicaid funds that were cut by the Big Bad Bill.
If half of the House signs this discharge petition, it will have to be voted on.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
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.
US citizens: support Rashida Tlaib's resolution to acknowledge and put an end to the genocide in Gaza.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
Zohran Mamdani is blazing a trail for criticism of Israel's crimes in New York City.
The BBC has ordered its presenters , when reporting on how it deleted some words from a speech it was going to broadcast, that they are forbidden to say what those words were.
They were, "The most openly corrupt president in American history".
How rich people dominate British politics, notwithstanding that it is suppose to be democratic.
You can see the results in the Labour Party's mostly right-wing policies, which they maintain _despite_ what their voters want.
Canada's new version of planet-roaster government has decided to push through another pipeline for exporting tar sands oil.
The party was re-elected because it stood up to the bully, but in regard to actual political issues it is plutocratist.
*The [UK] criminal cases backlog requires radical action, but the problem has been caused by government cuts , not by an ancient and fundamental liberty [the right to a jury trial].*
Putin says, no peace without conquest of territory.
The bully has started war with Venezuela by threatening to attack any civilian airplanes flying in its airspace.
He couched the threat falsely as some sort of legitimate order to "close that airspace". The US government has authority to declare parts of US airspace closed, but has no such authority over Venezuelan airspace.
Many of the airlines (perhaps all of them) that fly in and out of Venezuela responded to the threat by canceling all flights to and from there.
US citizens: support the members of Congress who reminded the US military that their legal and moral duty is to disobey illegal orders.
The criminal in chief threatened to have them killed for making this statement, so they need our support.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for holding the deportation thugs accountable for surveillance abuses.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
Wild turkeys and deer in various US states have PFAS levels so high that the state recommends not eating them.
To support his claims about "antifa" as a terrorist group, the bullshitter is trying to create a legend: he has arbitrarily designated a few names of supposed foreign terrorist groups, as magical "proof" that they are real terrorists.
*"The whole thing is a bit ridiculous," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which tracks extremist movements worldwide, "because the groups designated by the administration barely exist and certainly aren’t terrorists."*
The BBC has become terrified of the bully's libel lawsuit threat, and is trying secretly to censor its broadcasts to avoid irritating him.
The BBC should stop distributing its broadcasts through any US companies, rather than cover up criticism of the bully.
*Noise from ships can disrupt the animals' ability to communicate and find food.*
We know how end fossil fuels, even if we aren't pushing hard to do it. But we are in an early stage of figuring out how to make our food without greenhouse emissions.
The internet mandatory user-identification bill, KOSA, will provide right-wing officials a means to block access to information about queer people.
Democrats who support the bill don't realize that.
*Why Is [the corrupter] Trump Hiding Economic Reports?*
It might be due to the shutdown. If so, the reports should resume soon. But one agency canceled some reports back in the summer. Speculation that he is trying to hide from Americans how much economic damage he has done to the US.
Arguments for taxing wealth, in the UK and any other country.
There are other means of redirecting the flow of wealth back to the many. For instance, regulating "private equity" combinations like public corporations, and the progressive income tax on corporations. Over the long term, these complement the direct taxation of the wealthy to make the wealth distribution more even.
*The Feds Want to Make It Illegal to Even Possess an Anarchist Zine.* They are launching an absurd prosecution and hoping that the Supreme Court will let them shred the First Amendment.
Students in the University of Staffordshire are protesting vociferously that their programming course's course materials were generated by a bullshit generator.
Even the "instructor feedback" on their homework is produced by a bullshit generator. In effect, the human "professor" is giving only thin supervision to a robot that can't understand the subject.
The students have a valid point in saying that the university has violated its own code of academic misconduct. But that could be excused if there were no substantial reason to reject this practice. In fact, there is a substantial reason: because chatbots are not intelligent. Whatever topic their output seems to be "about", they don't really understand it.
If someday we create a true artificial intelligence that can indeed understand a subject, and human discourse in its various levels, it would surely be able to understand how to teach humans, supposing there were still a call for teaching humans. I am sure any of us could learn a lot from the insight of a humane superintelligence that wishes to help us learn.
But the chatbots to which people are led to apply the "AI" marketing buzzword come nowhere near qualifying for that.
Please join me in refusing to call them that! Please stand firm in this and don't let anyone make you give in!
Can anyone find a way to communicate this political note to some of those students?
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.
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
