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.
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.
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.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
Talk in Braga, Portugal, Free Software and Freedom in a Digital Society at University of Minho, April 17, 16H00 at Campus de Gualtar.
In the US: join rallies for curbing global heating on April 19 and April 22.
See assangedefense.org/press-releases for more information
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these options should not be limited to minors — every user should have this choice. (Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them like children and retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again.
Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up and running. That's where the real fault is.
I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on their boards. Perhaps 66%.
Private equity is gobbling up large parts of the US nursing home business. This puts patients in danger since private equity can amass lots of money, create an oligopoly, and get away with abuses.
The study suggests that "regulation may be needed." I will take a stronger stand and call for firm limits — perhaps even prohibiting private equity combinations from owning home nursing businesses.
I'v also proposed prohibiting private equity from buying up lots of rental housing.
It should be illegal for a store to charge different prices to customers depending on whether they identify themselves and/or hand over demanded personal data.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
The UK has banned the destructive fishing method of bottom trawling. giving some real protection to several "protected" marine areas. The ban applies to all fishing boats, including French ones.
[irony]
France should retaliate by banning bottom trawling in some French
waters. Eventually the two countries could entirely eliminate
that practice near their coasts.
[/irony]
Iran is reportedly threatening to attack Jordan if it does not allow Iran's attack drones to cross Jordanian airspace to get at Israel.
The New York Times stated rules of word usage that support Israel's point of view about Gaza and its inhabitants.
Communications companies plan to launch a total of a million satellites by the 2040s. So many satellites could damage the ionosphere or Earth's magnetic fields.
This is in addition to the danger that some will be hit by space junk, creating a chain reaction that will block humanity off from space travel for millenia.
Investigating the Los Angeles thug deparment for a series of shootings in which thugs encountered people who were carrying various harmless objects and jumped to the conclusion that they had weapons.
Reportedly US, UK and Jordanian planes shot down Iranian attack drones before they reached Israel.
That was a good way to defeat the Iranian attack — not attacking any Iranians, only their machines.
Modi is weaponizing Hindu pilgrimage sites in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, and trying out repression of Muslims.
Explaining and puncturing the fossil fuel industry's five principal disinformation approaches.
Here's another one: politicians who want to act fast enough to avert disaster are overeager -- the "grown-ups" are the ones who will move slowly, surely, and therefore arrive too late."
Perhaps these grown-ups would buy a fire engine that can't go faster than 10 miles per hour.
Israel used the influence of its American supporters to quash American Jews' criticism of treatment of Palestinians.
*To Save US Democracy, Prioritize the Common Good.*
Democracy is weakened (and then threatened) by policies that serve specifically the plutocrats, rather than people in general.
Iran launched many missiles and drones against Israel.
Israel's attack on the Iranian consulate was not, in and of itself, a war crime. It was an attack on military personnel of a country which was already at war with Israel.
I don't know what specific targets Iran's missiles and drones were aimed at, but I don't see a reason why that attack would be a war crime. It seems that this is simply war.
Judged in terms of its effects in the current context, Israel's attack was a manipulative provocation. Netanyahu must have figured that Iran would retaliate, and that this would give Israel an opportunity to attack Iran in a much bigger way and justify it as "retaliation". He may have hoped that this would talk western countries into "standing by Israel" in war against Iran.
I am not the only one to suspect that.
I hope those countries' governments are wise enough to refuse to fall for Netanyahu's efforts to lure them into war, or lure them into disregarding the urgency of ending the siege of Gaza.
This could be an opportunity to squeeze Netanyahu out of the Israeli government. They could tell Israel, "We will support Israel against Iranian attack, provided it adopts a defensive posture and provided Netanyahu is not its prime minister."
In the US: join rallies for curbing global heating on April 19 and April 22.
(satire) *Residents [of a Gated Community] Establish More Exclusive Gated [Nested] Community Within First.*
*The UN-backed Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which certifies whether a company is on track to help limit global heating to under 1.5°C,* has bought into the idea that "carbon offsets" are valid methods for curbing global heating.
The organization's staff condemn the plan and say it is not in fact based on science.
I've said for many years that we cannot trust a company to achieve the goal, because it is easy to set up bogus offsets that won't really reduce emissions but only pretend to.
For similar reasons, a "carbon market" would be easy to game and therefore to render ineffective. It appeals to the worshipers of the Invisible Hand.
By contrast, a carbon tax really would pressure companies to emit less greenhouse gas.
*"What we’re seeing is not tele[medicine]": alarm over doctors using AI and prescribing without seeing patients.*
Medicine is intended to result in better health (better than it would otherwise have been), but it is misleading to refer to medicine as "health", and likewise to refer to telemedicine as "telehealth".
Ocean temperatures of 25°C lead to the premature death of octopus mothers, from heat stress, before their eggs have hatched.
The article is confused when it talks about "unborn offspring". Octopus eggs are not "born", any more than birds' chicks are "born" when they hatch. Baby octopuses do not develop inside their mother. However, the mother must circulate water for them constantly until they are ready to swim away.
It is too bad that the experiment did not report on the visual capabilities of octopuses that did hatch at 25°C. That is the only way to tell for certain whether that water high temperature will damage their vision.
It is possible that octopuses can evolve to adopt to warmer conditions, if the change is not terribly fast. Or they can survive farther from the equator.
Amazon's notorious checkout-less stores supposedly used secret scanning and AI systems to figure out what each shopper bought. Actually they used remote workers in low-wage countries to watch the shoppers.
What Amazon had invented was a new method of replacing workers in the US with outsourcing to low-wage workers. But if they ever succeed in really automating this, workers will lose even more.
Hong Kong's people have been silenced by China, which is using many different laws to disguise the extent of repression.
This repression is what China today means. This is why we must defend whatever targets China aims to conquer in the future.
*Starmer is courting Tory voters so hard it’s almost as though he wants to lose his own.*
I think he wants to convert the Labour Party into a competent but mainly plutocratist party, which would make policies mainly to benefit the wealthy, and carry them out competently. This would occupy the space that the Tory Party has abandoned to become the party of cruel rigidity.
Labour would then try to win elections by preventing any non-plutocratist opposition party from becoming a real alternative.
It is true that victory for a political cause usually requires compromises. The crucial thing is to distinguish the compromises that you can safely make from the compromises that would undermine your values.
The cheater is about to be tried for violating campaign finance laws to hush up a scandal that could have interfered with his chances of getting elected. Describing it as a matter of a "sex scandal" covers up what is really at stake.
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".
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:
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
