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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
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It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
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
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "october" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
It will be at:
Sapienza University of Rome
Aula Magna of the Rectorate
Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
Registration: https://www.di.uniroma1.it/it/distinguished-lectures
The address is Batterigatan #2, Göteborg.
Admission is gratis. To register, send email to bahnhofbunker@bahnhof.net or visit bahnhofbunker.se/rsvp.html. The hosts say that the list will not be given to the state.
It will run 14:00 to 16:00 in Haaga-Helia University in Pasila. Specifically, Ratapihantie 13 Helsinki, in the auditorium on the ground floor.
Admission is gratis and there is no need to register, but you may wish to register to reserve a seat. You can do that through reservations.
US citizens: oppose the "Show-Your-Papers" voter suppression rule.
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 senators to compel FCC Chair Carr to testify now about using the FCC's regulatory power for partisan censorship.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Washington Post to rehire the columnist who criticized Kirk.
US citizens: call on companies to stop feeding data to Shadowdragon's massive surveillance.
US citizens: call on local officials to build clean energy now.
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.
The greedy privatized UK water companies want the state to charge the public to build unnatural walled reservoirs and give them as a gift to those water companies.
The UK should nationalize those companies, not build assets to inflate their valuation. If indeed those reservoirs need building, the state should own them, and drown the water companies in them.
The wrecker said that Illinois Governor Pritzker should be jailed for "not protecting" deportation thugs.
They are masked and armed, and hardly in danger. The people who need protection are their victims.
That's an instance of the wrecker's usual absurd extreme double-standard premise. He goes beyond denying the truth, by proclaiming an extreme opposite of it. This will fool the people who try to find the truth by looking for the two extremes and taking the average.
The deportation thugs are not merely failing to protect the people who encounter them (including unauthorized immigrants, authorized immigrants, and US citizens), some of them are cruelly attacking innocent people.
*Sierra Club Blasts Report of "Concierge, White Glove Service" for Fossil Fuel Companies.*
That fits with everything the saboteur in chief is saying and doing for them.
A new scheme to borrow money to pay medical bills will make it easy for poor Americans the transition from Medicaid (which Republicans have cut) to unpayable medical debt whose interest will drain them constantly.
Concert tickets have exploded in price for the last few decades. It is a disaster for music.
CBS has appointed a right-wing extremist as head of its news department. This is a declaration of submission to the bully. I expect this to result in blatant bias that shows contempt for the idea of truth, but that is not inevitable. They could make the right-wing bias more subtle instead, to make the bias look "centrist".
Either way, we should not trust it.
*CBS News staffers react to Barri Weiss being named editor-in-chief: "It's utterly depressing."*
Starmer says he is investigating how to punish protests that express hatred of Jews.
He singled out a chant that calls for some analysis: "globalize the intifada". It has a problem but Starmer seems to have misidentified what the problem is. I don't see any antisemitism in that phrase, but it is a dog whistle that hints at support for terrorism.
The word "intifada" means "uprising"; it does not specifically imply terrorism, or violence at all. But we all know that the Palestinian second intifada often used suicide attacks on victims who were not fighting, and that was terrorism. That is what makes the slogan a dog whistle.
To make dog-whistling a crime is dangerous; it could enable all sorts of censorship. But we ought to reject that slogan and its hazy implications.
The vindictiveness of deportation thugs: Kapil Raghu was released from deportation prison after they determined that the bottle labeled "opium" contained perfume, not a drug, but 30 days in prison was not enough persecution to satisfy them.
Kansas has charged a thug with murder for pressing his knee into a handcuffed man's back for 93 seconds.
Kansas is known for right-wing attitudes including cruelty to the weak or outcast, but his shows at least some decrease in its influence.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I present this comment about them.
*[Magat] officials cut nearly 8ドルbn in clean energy projects in Democratic states.*
The fact that they are selecting victims based on political manipulation rather than any sort of national interest demonstrates their corrupt spirit.
*Judge Finds Rubio and Noem Intentionally Targeted Pro-Palestine Activists to Chill Speech.*
He called the wrecker's spade a spade, based on the constitutional principle that freedom of speech applies to non-citizens just as to citizens.
*Gaza flotilla members allege beatings and insults in Israeli [prison]. Some of those held say guns were pointed at them, they were threatened with dogs and deprived of sleep.*
*The producer of a film about medics in Gaza that was dropped by the BBC has accused the corporation of attempting to gag him and others over its decision not to show the documentary..*
Various countries support the bully's peace plan for Gaza but only in the sense that they are willing to start negotiations from there. It has some fundamental problems.
*It starts with Palestine protests. But where will the crackdown on Britain's democratic freedoms end?*
*[Department of Injustice] sues pro-Palestinian activists under law often used to protect abortion clinics.*
In general, to hold a protest at a synagogue against something done by Israel is an instance of trying to hold all Jews responsible for Israel's actions. That is a kind of antisemitism. However, this protest was against an event at that synagogue, and the event participated in expropriation of Palestinian land. It is legitimate to protest that kind of event no matter where it is held.
The rightwing extremists have followed that up with one of their frequent tactics: to start violence and then blame the victims for starting it. Not a new thing, since right-wing extremists generally consider lying legitimate, but now the US government is broadcasting the lie.
Richard Stallman will give a two hour talk in Rome, Italy tomorrow, Monday, Oct 13, starting at 4PM: Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
It will be at:
Sapienza University of Rome
Aula Magna of the Rectorate
Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
Registration: https://www.di.uniroma1.it/it/distinguished-lectures
*She Sent Money to Family in Gaza. ICE Claimed It’s Evidence She Supports Hamas.*
A senior British journalist who has repeatedly asked leaders of Labour hard questions has been banned from the Labour Party Conference and told he was considered a threat to safety.
Does Starmer-Labour now equate the asking of probing questions to a threat of violence?
The US Energy department has meticulously regulated what its staff may say, so that it cannot even hint at global heating and its effects.
Meanwhile, various shutdown government offices are set with outgoing messages that make a partisan statement blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
On this one and the same issue, magats have applied the Hatch Act to two different situations and drawn opposing conclusions. Why the chasm? I suggest it is based on the partisan design to get advantage for the magats in each case.
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. thumbnail
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.)
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.
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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