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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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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.
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)
Conférence à Paris France, Logiciel libre et liberté dans une société numérique à Centrale Supélec à Saclay.
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.
US citizens: call on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth ahead of the G20 summit.
The UK has granted a license for a new nuclear power plant, Sizewell C.
It probably will never be finished, because at some point the government will have a crisis which will prevent it from continuing to pay for it. But the unfinished reactor will play a part in bringing the country to that disaster.
In the mean time, it will do plenty of harm to non-rich Britons.
Right-wing Senator Britt proposed a bill to set up a honey trap to lure pregnant Americans to giving their personal details to the US government. It would then send them right-wing-biased advice.
The AstraZeneca Covid vaccine has been withdrawn; it was effectively obsolete since it had not been updated,
A very rare side effect killed one person who took the vaccine. We should not forget that it saved millions of lives in 2021-2022.
I saw an article that crowed about the end of this vaccine as a victory. Over what, I must ask? Vaccination, it seems. To an anti-vaxxer, one death from being vaccinated counts more than hundreds of thousands of likely deaths that vaccination prevented.
Starmer has been surprised by the strength of criticism from within the Labour Party for allowing a right-wing Tory to join the Labour ranks.
Some of them still remember the moral crusade that Labour used to be.
She condemned firemen for going on strike. Unions reminded Starmer that that contradicts a Labour Party commitment to restore the right to strike
If the government considers some public employees so essential that they must not go on strike, the right way to avoid that is by paying the workers better without waiting for a strike. Rather than singling them out, it could pay all working people better.
*Righteous fury over Gaza must allow empathy for fearful Jewish students.*
Jewish students ought to be able to feel safe (and be safe) on campus. Likewise, students rallying to end an avoidable deadly war ought to be able to feel safe (and be safe) on campus. Safe, especially, from uniformed thugs.
We can do the right thing for both groups at once, if we think about it. Many of the Gaza protest rallies in the US are thinking about that.
*Faith groups want more say in secular Britain. Labour should tell them to go to hell.*
The principle of religious freedom says that that is the right way to treat any group of citizens' rituals: regardless of details, they have no right on push those on other people. Now, how to convince Starmer Labour to have principles other than "We must win"?
*National sovereignty is little defense against the global hunt for profits Capitalism seems to enable companies to see staff as expendable units, not humans [or people].*
Expanding US financial sanctions on certain named Israeli participants in occupation violence could eventually cause big difficulties
for continued colonization of Palestine.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
US courts have given cops immunity for any destruction of property that they cause in the course of their activity.
I agree that the government should compensate those whose property government agents destroy except pursuant to a court order to do so.
As I see it, this conclusion does not require calling the damage "taking of property." It's enough that it is damage. If you or I destroyed a house, even if it were in the course of some activity that was not wrong in itself, you or I would be liable. So should the city.
Robert Reich says that his conversations with US student protesters showed him that their protests are meant as a rebuke to Israel's deadly violence in Gaza. He reports that Biden said he has cut off supply of artillery shells for Israel to use in attacking Rafah, and credits this as an achievement for the protesters.
His article does not report the fine print of Biden's decision. Israel surely has lots of artillery shells already. Is this decision going to actually hamper Israel's current attack?
Even if it doesn't do that, it must help convince some of the Israeli government that Israel cannot continue down this path. Maybe that will suffice to change the government and end the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Israel is fighting resurgent HAMAS in northern Gaza again.
As I've noted many times, it is impossible to defeat an underground guerrilla movement that has the popular support to recruit new members. HAMAS has that support.
Israel should recognize this and end the useless and deadly attempt to do the impossible. HAMAS is an evil group of terrorists, but there is no use in futile efforts to eradicate it, and the effort is no excuse for killing thousands of civilians.
Israel has also announced plans to attack central Rafah.
The "tens of thousands" reported fleeing sound like a small fraction of the people who have fled to Rafah. It seems that many must have decided not to leave,
I can see various reasons a Palestinian might conclude that per chances of survival are not much better there than in Rafah itself. So I think only a fraction will go there. A substantial fraction will stay in Rafah, where Israel has invented an excuse to define their lives as forfeit.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Reporters Without Borders accuses Italy's government of repressing journalists who criticize the government.
*H5N1 has been found in commercially available milk – but gaps in testing of cattle and humans are hampering effort to stop virus.*
It is crucial for public health to find out how many of the people working with infected cattle are catching the virus from them. Without that, we don't know whether one human can catch it from another. We need a law authorizing public health authorities to test cows and dairy workers for this virus.
The article does not say much about what we might do to slow the spread, if we find it is happening. I'm in favor of compensating farmers for cattle that have to be slaughtered, if that's the solution, but is it?
*Rise in Chinese espionage arrests alarms Europe. Increase in cases reflects changing mood across continent towards Chinese threats, say experts.*
An ex-thug known for harassment has been welcomed into Governor DeMentis's politicizable militia.
People like that are public dangers. He should not be in the National Guard either, nor any thug department.
* The former director of [UK] public prosecutions for England and Wales has warned against the risk of creating “thought crimes” amid the recent clampdown on protesters and demonization of demonstrators by politicians.*
*The Guardian view on Israel's far right: occupation of Palestinian territory feeds its extremism.*
*The State Department lays out numerous suspected international humanitarian violations by Israel in its war on Gaza, yet suggests no changes in policy or consequences.*
This is a peculiar sort of mental blindness, the blindness of he who will not see.
*Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism — but they're part of a rightwing plan.*
*US campus protests give [the fascist leader] a target for his violent rhetoric of vengeance.*
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:
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