Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman's Political Notes -

US SecDef: "No quarter", no survivors - 2026-03-18T08:38:40+00:00

Henchman Hegseth ordered "no quarter" at war, which means to execute any enemy soldiers that surrender. Doing that would be a war crime: killing prisoners.

Urgent: War as "operations", "campaigns" - 2026-03-18T08:38:40+00:00

In the US: call on the media to call the war with Iran a "war".

Iran war: war-lover's distraction tactic - 2026-03-18T08:38:40+00:00

*Why would the bully launch a foreign war when he is so domestically weak? Precisely because he is weak.* The article presents the war as a distraction from how weak he is, and from his plans to rig the election in November.

Iran war images faked - 2026-03-18T08:38:39+00:00

*[Pretend Intelligence]-generated Iran images are widespread. How do we know what to believe?*

I think the advice in that article is wise.

Iran war as "wishful thinking" - 2026-03-18T08:38:39+00:00

*Israel did not have a realistic plan for regime change when it attacked Iran, multiple Israeli security sources have said, with expectations that airstrikes could lead to a popular uprising having been driven by "wishful thinking" rather than hard intelligence.*

Iran war damaging heritage sites - 2026-03-18T08:38:39+00:00

*Dismay as ancient heritage sites across Iran damaged in US-Israel bombing*

The most serious confirmed damage to date has been to Tehran’s Golestan Palace, dating back to the 14th century, and the 17th-century Chehel Sotoon Palace in Isfahan.

Judging from videos and public statements, neither historic building was hit by a missile directly but the shock wave from nearby blasts and possibly some missile debris shattered glass and brought down tiles and masonry.*

Why aim a missile that close to a unique ancient treasure? Whatever legitimate target was near either of those palaces, it could not have been so militarily important as to justify the risk of damage to them, nor the risk of alienating Iranians.

Unwanted Iran-war failure points, fixes - 2026-03-18T08:38:39+00:00

Robert Reich: *The best way for us to respond to the devastation of this war … is to strengthen the mechanisms that should never have allowed it to occur in the first place.*

Iran War images illegal, UAE - 2026-03-18T08:38:39+00:00

Dubai is especially repressive about posting photos or videos of anything related to the war, and even commenting on such postings. Foreigners are shocked when they face many years in prison for that.

Iran's defiant stance - 2026-03-18T08:38:39+00:00

Iran's rulers believe that they can hold out despite US attacks, and are unwilling to agree to any concessions.

The article reports an expert as saying that Israel bombed Iran's infrastructure, with that the people now see this war as an attack against their country rather than as an attempt to liberate them from religious tyranny.

I speculated a few days ago that Iranians would be torn between these two perspectives.

Predicting this result, *Iranians living in UK tell Starmer that war will only strengthen Tehran regime.*

Thus, it seems that Netanyahu and the wrecker were carried away by foolish overconfidence and defeated themselves: they turned a potential ally, the Iranian people, against them.

US aerial attack on Iranian school - 2026-03-18T08:38:38+00:00

Available evidence shows that the Minab school was attacked by the US, as part of an attack on the Iranian military buildings right nearby.

I think this convincing proof that US fired at a missile at that school, not intentionally, but through assuming erroneously that it was a military structure.

The US military had pictures that should have indicated the building was a school, so it had the responsibility to recognize this and spare the school. I think that makes the attack a culpable error, but that is not as bad as an intentional atrocity.

DSHS head was recently fired - 2026-03-18T08:38:38+00:00

The gnome has been fired as head of the Department of Hatred and Sadism. *She committed the cardinal sin of making [the bully] look stupid.*

Bait-and-kill-medics tactic in Iran war - 2026-03-18T08:38:38+00:00

The US and Israel are using in Iran the terrorist tactic of dropping a second bomb just when medics have had time to attend victims of the first bomb.

Iran war ideologies - 2026-03-18T08:38:38+00:00

Arguing that the bully and Netanyahu have misunderstood Iran's governmental system and Iranian people's attitudes.

The writer suggests they are not likely to collapse. If Iran does at last fall apart, it won't be the way they expect.

Kurds asked to join Iran war - 2026-03-18T08:38:38+00:00

I have a hunch that any non-Persian group in Iran that allies itself with the US will arouse hostility among Persians.

Iran war startings and endings - 2026-03-18T08:38:37+00:00

The wrecker's bombings have made Iran unstable, but he and his henchmen have no clear idea of how this will end, or even how they wish it will. At some point he will say, "It's over, we won."

But it may not be "over" in any meaningful sense. The repressive Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian people, the Gulf states and Israel have conflicting ideas of how they want Iran to end up, and they may fight over this for months or decades.

The US is encouraging Kurdish and Balochi separatists outside Iran's borders to enter Iran and destabilize the border areas.

Perhaps the US commanders see this as a way to make the situation even more tactically complex for Iran's military. But it could also give the Revolutionary Guards a way to rally the support of Iranians whose sense of nationalism takes offense at the possibility of "dismembering" Iran.

To come out of this crises with peace and respect for freedom calls for someone with the understanding of statemanship together with the political strength to win people over to an outcome. I don't see who that could be, or what the outcome might be.

Why war with Iran? - 2026-03-18T08:38:36+00:00

*[The bully and his henchmen have] still not settled on reasons for going to war with Iran.*

Iran War: escalation paths - 2026-03-17T14:37:52+00:00

The wrecker and Iran have different escalation paths available, and both include making the war broader and harder to halt.

The Society of Authors - 2026-03-15T02:37:41+00:00

*UK Society of Authors launches logo to identify books written by humans.*

I support this specific campaign, because it is a campaign for honesty and against worthless Pretend Intelligence. It may help people reject PI slop.

However, I continue to reject the selfishness of most of the same authors, when they demand the power to stop human readers from honestly and truthfully sharing copies of human-authored books with other humans.

Plan to cut jury trials - 2026-03-15T02:37:40+00:00

*MP [Charlotte Nichols] tells Commons she waited 1,088 days for her rape case to reach court. [Nonetheless,] Charlotte Nichols opposes plan to cut jury trials in England and Wales and calls [instead] for creation of special courts to hear rape cases.*

I basically agree with her: prosecuting crime is vital and so is the right to a trial by jury. There is no fundamental conflict between them — all that's needed is to tax the rich enough to pay for these and the other things that even non-rich people deserve.

LYNX bus routes - 2026-03-15T02:37:40+00:00

A county in Florida has replaced some bus routes with an ULU system (Unjust Like Uber) that requires an individual user to make a request via a snoop-phone.

Missing 1.5C climate target - 2026-03-15T02:37:39+00:00

*The failure to limit global heating to 1.5C is a "moral failure and deadly negligence," the UN secretary general [said] at the opening session of the COP30 climate summit.*

Alas, COP30 proceeded to (in effect) abandon that goal, which many countries had abandoned already in the preceding year.

The causes of that abandonment are not visible, but I suspect the impetus comes from billionaires who are sucking up to governments that are more or less fascist and in cahoots with the fossil fuel companies.

One of them is Bill Gates, who has called for offering palliative care to the billions of poor who will be wiped over coming decades by accelerating global heating.

By the way, I do not endorse the straw man claim that global heating could literally render humanity extinct. Humans, even without science and the technology it led to, were very flexible about surviving in a wide range of environments. But the number who could survive would be far less than today.

Urgent: call on US media - 2026-03-14T20:37:49+00:00

US citizens: call on US media to take seriously the threates by the saboteur in chief and his henchmen to sabotage the 2026 congressional election.

Urgent: Save Act voter suppression - 2026-03-14T20:37:49+00:00

Everyone: call on news organizations to cover the SAVE Act clearly and directly as a voter suppression measure — examining who would be blocked from voting, how implementation would work, and why these requirements are being advanced now.

Iran as a threat, UK - 2026-03-14T02:37:37+00:00

Britain's right-wing extremist politician, Farage, bizarrely says that Iran is a bigger threat to the UK than Putin.

This seems bizarre and irrational, but it is understandable seeing that that's what the corrupter thinks of the question. Farage is simply acting as a repeater for him.

Media for the Iran war, UK - 2026-03-14T02:37:37+00:00

The influential spokespeople of the British political class are pushing for joining the wrecker's war with Iran, giving absurd reasons that the people are solidly rejecting.

Why, I ask, are people with those views the ones highlighted in the media?

The British major media are mostly right-wing, often viciously so. I conjecture that the media's owners, and those of big advertisers, want to keep business in charge, and they have decided that if Britain swears fealty to the wrecker, he will reward those owners. What happens to the rest of Britain counts for little with them.

Iran bombs' environmental impact - 2026-03-14T02:37:37+00:00

*Bombing of Iran's oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn.*

Nuke-less in Iran - 2026-03-14T02:37:36+00:00

*[The bully's Iran war will reinforce North Korea's view that nuclear weapons are the only path to security.*

Urgent: Section 702 of PAT RIOT act - 2026-03-14T00:45:24+00:00

How section 702 of the PAT RIOT act allows the US government to collect and search Americans' communications without warrants.

Section 702 will expire soon unless renewed.

Please phone your senators to call on let this section expire, by refusing to extend it.

US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.

To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.

Please spread the word.

National Public Health Coalition - 2026-03-14T00:45:24+00:00

Fired CDC workers have organized the National Public Health Coalition to advocate for public health, despite the wrecker's damage to the CDC.

Passport services in illegal West Bank settlements - 2026-03-14T00:45:24+00:00

*US to offer passport services to citizens in illegal West Bank settlements.* Step the US moves towards legitimizing mass expulsion and annexation.

German state fired head of Berlin film festival - 2026-03-14T00:45:23+00:00

The German state has fired the head of the Berlin film festival, apparently for refusing to ban criticism of Israel there.

She had opposed calls for the festival itself to take a specific stand, instead saying that artists presenting films there should be free to express their views. Apparently such freedom is now considered "antisemitic".

Germany abandoning laws on future fossil fuel use - 2026-03-14T00:45:23+00:00

Germany is abandoning laws designed to decrease future fossil fuel use.

This can only be called a surrender to planet roasters. The US and UK are doing similar things. The inevitable result is disaster.

Taliban have banned music - 2026-03-14T00:45:23+00:00

The Taliban have banned music, and have a campaign to destroy all the musical instruments in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's traditional musical styles are now threatened, as they can only be passed on outside the country.

Islam has had a thread of such fanaticism for a thousand years, at least. Muslim fanatics, the Almohads, took over Morocco in the 12th century, then parts of Spain. The Wikipedia entry does not mention this, but they banned music too.

If you want to listen to the example linked in the article, please don't simply follow the link to Youtube! Use invidio.us or yt-dlp, preferably through a proxy so that it can't be tracked to you.

Later in the article, there is a link for a different kind of music. I warn you, it is on Spotify.

Out, out, damned Spotify!

(satire) Kash Patel partying with Nancy Guthrie's captors - 2026-03-14T00:45:23+00:00

(satire) *Kash Patel Faces Backlash After Partying With Nancy Guthrie's Captors.*

Deportation thugs claimed to be city cops - 2026-03-14T00:45:23+00:00

Deportation thugs falsely claimed to be city cops in order to enter a Columbia University dorm and seize an international student.

Was this an instance of the crime of impersonating an officer? Can they be prosecuted and imprisoned for this?

Bomb threats on Shen Yun performances - 2026-03-14T00:45:22+00:00

Performances of Shen Yun are encountering bomb threats emanating from China.

I watched a Shen Yun performance once in Paris with a French friend. The impression it produced on me was curious: it reproached the Chinese government as cruelly repressive (which indeed it is), and spread on such a thick layer of this teaching that I began to find it annoying, despite the fact that I agreed in advance with that reproach.

I told this to my friend, and she had felt the same. "It preaches too much," she said.

I still condemn China's repression and threats — like what the bully is trying to impose in the US — but I have no appetite to see another Shen Yun performance.

Hillary Clinton testified at congressional committee - 2026-03-14T00:45:22+00:00

Hillary Clinton testified at a congressional committee hearing in which the questions were meant primarily as harassment and distraction.

She had to repeat that she did not know Epstein, and was asked repeatedly about UFOs and about Pizzagate.

Republicans imposed a rule against releasing photos, then Rep. Boebert (Republican) secretly took a photo and released it, violating that rule.

US banks may be required to check citizenship - 2026-03-14T00:45:22+00:00

The saboteur in chief is thinking of requiring US banks to check the citizenship of all their clients. This might imply that some non-citizens could no longer have bank accounts, who now are permitted to have them.

States can deny corporate support of political campaigns - 2026-03-14T00:45:22+00:00

Individual US states can deny corporations the power to support political campaigns.

Montana is planning to do this, and soon maybe California too.

Ancient stepwells in India - 2026-03-14T00:45:21+00:00

*Ancient stepwells brought back to life as India begins to run out of water.*

This is a nice form of historical preservation, but it can't get more than a tiny fraction of the water that's needed for India's rapidly growing population. India (and the world as a whole) need to stop population growth.

Women arrested for kissing in public - 2026-03-14T00:45:21+00:00

*Two women arrested in Uganda for allegedly kissing in public could face life sentence.*

That is one item in a long catalog of unjustified cruel bigotry that is fueled by various religions.

Carbon levy on shipping - 2026-03-14T00:45:20+00:00

*US ‘bullying’ could scupper carbon levy on shipping, warn experts.*

I can only envision one motive for this: the saboteur in chief is determined to maximize fossil fuel consumption.

Would it be possible for countries to impose a tax on importation of goods based on the computed fuel use for transporting those goods from the place where they were produced? From the ship's actual consumption one can calculate the fuel use per gram of cargo along that trajectory, and make the tax proportional to that. The fuel needed to move the ship over that trajectory without cargo could be "charged" to the actual cargo through some formula.

British cops to start using facial recognition - 2026-03-14T00:45:20+00:00

British cops will start using facial recognition implemented in snoop phones.

Nothing will stop them from using it to identify protesters and then place grave charges against their protests. The efficiency of the system will help them repress many more protesters than before.

Kansas invalidated trans people's driver's licenses - 2026-03-14T00:45:20+00:00

Kansas has arbitrarily and abruptly invalidated all trans people's driver's licenses.

Such arbitrary and abrupt invalidation of anyone's credentials is cruel and unjust regardless of the criteria for which licenses to invalidate, but cruel injustice is precisely right-wing extremists' goal: it is performative cruelty, naturally aimed at one of their usual hate targets.

Some of the people targeted are suing.

US laser weapon to knock down threats - 2026-03-14T00:45:20+00:00

Twice, the US army used a laser weapon to knock down a supposed "threat from Mexico." Each time, the flying object had not come from Mexico and it was not a threat at all. The second one was a US government drone.

It could just be a series of human incompetence events. But it could also be worse than that. I wonder if they are basing their targeting on pretend intelligence generated by a Pretend Intelligence system.

Israel used to do that when bombing Gaza. They seemed to consider that method a success, but perhaps that is they preferred to kill any Palestinians in Gaza rather than none.

Hannah Spencer elected to Parliament for Green Party - 2026-03-14T00:45:20+00:00

Hannah Spencer, plumber, has just been elected to Parliament for the Green Party. Her victory speech presents a person who would have been a Labour activist, and then a Labour MP, back when Labour was true to its founding ideals and goals.

Starmer Labour has completed the discarding of them, and put the rich firmly in the driver's seat, after expelling or driving away many of its elected officials who still believed in those ideals.

These ideals fit well with a Green Party, since the rule of the billionaires, which Starmer Labour supports, and the global environmental disaster they have decided to impose, is likely to kill of most of the world's population and reduce to serfs most of the survivors.

A Green Party would naturally oppose both aspects of that.

Rules requiring chemical companies to prepare for chemical disasters - 2026-03-14T00:45:19+00:00

The EPA has cancelled the recently adopted rules requiring chemical companies to prepare for chemical disasters, so as to protect workers, rescuers and people living within miles of the company's plant.

Palestinian solidarity in the UK - 2026-03-14T00:45:19+00:00

*Palestinian solidarity in the UK is being "silenced, criminalised and sanctioned," with more than 900 examples of repression [recorded] across Britain in the last six years.

People had been targeted with smears, disinformation, harassment, doxing, visa cancellations, financial blacklisting, loss of employment and arrest.*

Urgent: Investigate facial recognition - 2026-03-13T02:37:36+00:00

US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the deportation thugs' mass surveillance and use of widespread face recognition.

Iran VS Israel plus USA - 2026-03-13T02:37:36+00:00

Iran's government has a planned long-term strategy for winning the war. US officials didn't bother to think about one, assuming that resistance was impossible.

Since the Iranian regime and the US regime are both cruel and repressive, it would be unjust for either of them to control Iran. But there is no evident way for Iran to avoid both of those outcomes.

*Democrats must defund [the fascist's] Imperial war.*