Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman's Political Notes -

Urgent: Preserve Medicaid - 2025-02-23T04:38:44+00:00

US citizens: call on Republicans not to cut Medicaid.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

IRS systems' civilian handover - 2025-02-23T04:38:44+00:00

The IRS is reportedly considering giving the muskrat's agents access to tax returns. We can hardly take for granted that his or their sense of duty would restrain them from using this data for illegal purposes such as revenge or extortion.

Ukraine war dealings, US, RUS - 2025-02-23T04:38:44+00:00

*Ukraine and Europe made to sit outside as US and Russia sharpen their carving knives.*

Zelenskyy says that the corrupter is "appeasing" Putin, which compares Putin to Hitler and the corrupter to Neville Chamberlain. I think that is putting a nice face on something far worse. A better comparison would be with Hitler and Stalin in 1939, when they made an agreement to attack Poland and carve it up.

Before the election I thought the two might get into cahoots like this.

Zelenskyy and Ukraine facts - 2025-02-23T04:38:43+00:00

Debunking the bullshitter's disinformation about President Zelenskyy.

Senate approves Kash Patel - 2025-02-23T04:38:43+00:00

The Senate approved allowing Kash Patel to corrupt the FBI. Seeing what the wrecker's crew have done in other agencies, I expect that the FBI will henceforth focus on persecuting the wrecker's enemies list.

Deportees' due process - 2025-02-23T04:38:43+00:00

The wrecker is denying deportees due process of law by deporting them before their lawyers can even get in touch with them. This is done using Guantanamo to hold them during the deportation process in a place which lawyers cannot get through to.

Immigrants, pillar of economy, fearful - 2025-02-23T04:38:43+00:00

Many immigrants in the US who do not have permanent residency did have various forms of temporary official permission to stay and work in the US. They were authorized immigrants, of a kind. But the wrecker abruptly canceled these permissions for hundreds of thousands.

USPS Postmaster resigns - 2025-02-23T04:38:43+00:00

Postmaster DeJoy has resigned, after so many years of clinging to power.

It is surely not a coincidence that he has done this less than a month after the saboteur-in-chief became president again. I think he was told to wait until Republicans would choose his successor.

Triggered, systemic collapse to locality - 2025-02-23T04:38:43+00:00

George Monbiot: as the wrecker tears up various measures that protect the governments and economies from various sorts of collapse. Collapse (even global collapse) will become increasingly likely. He recommends making local connections so we can help each other in that case.

Head prosecutor of Washington DC - 2025-02-23T04:38:42+00:00

The corrupter expressed contempt for Congress, law and police at once, by appointing as the head prosecutor of Washington DC the ideological lawyer who defended Jan 6 attackers when they were prosecuted.

He has expressed that he believes prosecutors work for the president rather than for the country. Given how the president is the enemy of the country, it is clear that this prosecutor is not on the country's side.

Fetterman wishes - 2025-02-23T04:38:42+00:00

Senator Fetterman is a Democrat that supports the corrupter.

He claims to wish to be the senator for all Pennsylvanians, those that support the Constitution and rule of law, and those that support the corrupter.

Climate tipping point detectors, UK - 2025-02-23T04:38:42+00:00

*Ambitious UK project aims to forecast climate catastrophes using fleets of drones, cosmic ray detection, patterns of plankton blooms and more.*

It is ambitious, but what is most significant is that it is aimed at trying to survive the many local disasters that global heating has started to cause. If the world's governments were serious about preventing these tippings, they already know what must be done.

Our cybersecurity in election systems - 2025-02-23T04:38:42+00:00

It seems that the wrecker has ordered the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to stop its efforts to help secure state election systems and countering mis- and dis-information.

It should not surprise us, now that the foxes have taken control of the electoral hen house, that they choose to reduce security of it.

Facebook VS GNU/Linux distros - 2025-02-20T22:47:32+00:00

Facebook says that blocking posts about Linux or "Linux" was an unintentional error.

Urgent: Remove NYC Mayor Adams - 2025-02-20T22:47:32+00:00

US citizens: call on New York governor Hochul to remove NYC night-mayor Adams for his deal to escape federal corruption charges.

The National Campaign for Justice mailed out this:

It's a corrupt quid pro quo, and New Yorkers are the bargaining chip. This isn't speculation. [The corrupter]'s ICE henchman Tom Homan basically admitted it on FOX News, practically waving the deal in our faces:

"If he doesn’t come through ... I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’"

Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)

First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.

I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"

They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.

To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.

Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript before going there.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:

First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.

This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.

OOPS firing nuclear weapons workers - 2025-02-20T22:47:32+00:00

The wrecker's agents fired some of the workers that maintain security for US nuclear weapons. Then it realized that this was stupid, but it can't figure out how to reach them to offer them their jobs back.

If you do things without careful thought, you are likely to make mistakes. I am sure the wrecker's destruction workers have made many mistakes in its haste. But usually they don't care, and say nothing.

What is newsworthy this time is that they care enough to try to undo it.

Urgent: Consumer financial protection - 2025-02-20T22:47:32+00:00

US citizens: call on Congress to protect the CFPB from sabotage by the muskrat's dog(e)s.

Fighting corruption, recent history - 2025-02-20T22:47:31+00:00

For decades the US has been systematically trying to curb global corruption, but the corrupter has eliminated many of the programs that contributed to the campaign. It looks like the US government has flipped to the pro-corruption side.

Supporting Israel, a story - 2025-02-20T22:47:31+00:00

Alan Singer describes the history over time of his relationship with Israel, developing from intense support to moral reproach.

The fascism label - 2025-02-20T22:47:31+00:00

Rejecting the superstition that if we refuse to call it "fascism" that will somehow restrain the regime from going all the way there.

Dismantling a fragile democracy - 2025-02-20T22:47:31+00:00

*In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy.*

DOE ignoring accessibility requirements - 2025-02-20T22:47:31+00:00

The Department of Education used to be responsible for enforcing accessibility requirements for US schools, as to ensure disabled students could attend school. Now it has more or less stopped doing this.

The wrecker wants to eliminate the Department of Education, so we must expect the US government will abandon the goal as well as the means.

I made the above link to an article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.

Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.

I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected -- hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.

Unqualified heads of state, US - 2025-02-20T22:47:30+00:00

*By voting in favor of nominees they knew should never be approved, Republican senators became [the corrupter's] subjects.*

Posting negatively online on ICE - 2025-02-20T22:47:30+00:00

The US government plans to scan the internet for postings that express hostility to the deportation thugs, then search high and low for all information it can get about the person who posted them.

We cannot at this point expect that this search will confine itself to legal methods.

Library censorship, US military - 2025-02-20T22:47:30+00:00

The right-wing-controlled Pentagon is imposing right-wing censorship on the libraries of the schools for military personnel.

Vance's insulting speech in Europe - 2025-02-20T22:47:30+00:00

Vance distorted edge-cases of European laws to attack crucial human rights, and to promote his allies in Europe — European far-right extremists-Nazis — and encourage them to seize repressive power there as the Trusk regime is doing in the US.

European anti-Nazis need to be bold, not hesitate and rely on measures that aim only to oppose them.

Since the US appreciates Putin more than Europe, and is as likely to behave like Europe's enemy than like Europe's friend, Europe urgently needs to re-arm.

The lesson from this is that European governments must ensure their weapons production does not depend significantly on US industry. They could be cut off by sanctions at any time. Europe must cease buying US weapons systems that depend on US spare parts, US maintenance, or software that Europe cannot maintain and change.

NATO no longer makes sense with the US as a member, so perhaps the other members of NATO should construct a new alliance without the US. That could be a framework to facilitate joint defense of Greenland, for instance. With luck, that would deter the wrecker from actually invading Greenland.

(Satire) Unitary executive - 2025-02-20T22:47:29+00:00

(satire) *[The saboteur-in-chief] Unsure What Department He Has To Cut To Make JD Vance Go Away.*

New York sued over letting unauthorized immigrants drive - 2025-02-20T04:38:55+00:00

Attorney General Bondi is suing New York State to overturn laws that permit unauthorized immigrants to get driver's licenses, and to inform them if the federal government asks the state registry of motor vehicles about them.

The practical reason for this law is to improve road safety, but Bondi is a fanatic and sees no loss if Americans die to achieve her goals of deportation.

Homelessness illegal in Fremont - 2025-02-20T04:38:54+00:00

Fremont, California, has made it a crime to be homeless there.

I wonder what Fremont will do to people found to be homeless there. Jail them? That would be expensive. Forcibly transport them to out of the city? The city which does that would be shirking its share of the burden of housing people, and dumping it on other cities.

Perhaps it will transport them by helicopter to a wilderness area, where no one will notice if they can't make it out. That fits the cruel spirit of the repression of the homeless.

West Bank land grab - 2025-02-20T04:38:54+00:00

Right-wing Israelis are proceeding parcel by parcel with driving Palestinians off their land and seizing the land.

Carbon bomb - 2025-02-20T04:38:54+00:00

*World’s largely unprotected peatlands are ticking "carbon bomb", warns study.*

Nature protections - 2025-02-20T04:38:53+00:00

The wrecker is eliminating a broad range of protections for nature, to allow more fossil fuel extraction.

Put that together with the additional global heating caused by burning those fossil fuels, and the result is a double danger.

The idea of an "energy emergency" that could be addressed by rapidly burning up the Earth's remaining fossil fuels is doubly nonsense. Keeping fossil fuel inexpensive for a couple of decades would be followed by rapid price increases, and in the mean time we would suffer from the air pollution and the heat.

Gulf of America dispute - 2025-02-20T04:38:53+00:00

*White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued … dispute* the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

The wrecker is hoping to teach all news organizations that he will damage them if they don't completely obey. The AP is carrying out heroic resistance to that threat.

I too have declines to do interviews with people if they did not commitments about whet names to use. But my declining to give someone an interview is not a threat to per freedom to work, because I am not so important or influential that anyone would imagine perse could not do without it.

US and Europe - 2025-02-20T04:38:53+00:00

European countries are starting to address the need to organize a strong defense, without (and perhaps from) the United States.

*The US president's bullying of allies and partners is short-termist and will boost Beijing's power, not Washington's.*

I think Tr-usk are too focused on breaking and subjugating the American people, especially nonwhites and women, to be concerned about anything as remote as a future contest with China.

Ukraine war negotiations - 2025-02-19T22:38:35+00:00

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would not recognize any peace deal negotiated by the Putin regime with the Tr-usk regime.

Urgent: Protect the CFPB - 2025-02-19T10:38:29+00:00

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to protect the CFPB so it can continue to protect Americans from gouging by banks and other financial dis-services.

Here is what the wrecker has been doing to the CFPB.

The senators in the Senate Banking Committee are well paid by banksters and want to get it out of the way so they can gouge using junk fees.

Another way US banks gouge the public is by pushing credit card interest rates up to loan shark levels. This happens because the Supreme Court eliminated states' ability to regulate the interest rates they can charge.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

Urgent: Defeat HR 899 - 2025-02-19T10:38:29+00:00

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to defeat HR 899, which would abolish the Department of Education. This would be a big blow to the children in non-rich US families. The children of poor people would have even less chance of getting good jobs, and they might have to go without some meals.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

Urgent: No drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Reserve - 2025-02-19T10:38:29+00:00

US citizens: demand no oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

Urgent: Block funding for deportation machine - 2025-02-19T10:38:29+00:00

US citizens: call on Congress to block funding for the wrecker's deportation machine.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

Threats of violence to lawyers of Jimmy Lai - 2025-02-19T10:38:29+00:00

The British lawyers working in Britain to defend Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai have been hit by a campaign of threats of violence and cracking attacks on their bank accounts as well as other forms of cracking and physical harassment.

We have to presume that what the wrecker and the muskrat are aiming to do with the US is something like this.

Defying court orders to restart government agencies - 2025-02-19T10:38:29+00:00

The duumvirs are defying some of the court orders that told them to restart some of the government activities and agencies they have shut or wrecked. They are pushing for absolute power.

They openly say that laws and judges are supposed to serve them, never limit them. This fully justifies the terms "fascist" and "coup".

The Guantanamo prison was a previous Republican president's excuse for disregarding human rights and the laws that protect some of them, even for people accused of grave crimes. Because it was outside the US, he could argue that it was a zone in which human rights did not apply.

So it is natural that the persecutor would seek to put those he aims to persecute into Guantanamo prison as another way to evade the rule of law.

Federal workers being thrown to the dogs - 2025-02-19T10:38:28+00:00

Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers are being thrown to the dog…s. *Some were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices.*

The muskrat us treating them with special vindictiveness, not for anything that they did, but because he can (due to a gap in civil service protection).

Why would he do this? It could be that he simply revels in the chance to be cruel to someone, anyone. But I don't think he has let his emotions run away with them completely. I think this is a calculated maneuver meant to make other federal employees scared and weak.

Federal employees, at any moment you may be told you can't see that office ever again, so be ready for it — remove immediately from your offices everything you would be sad to lose. And remain ostentatiously ready for that, for as long as the haters remain in power.

It will be a way of saying, "Yes, I know you could fire me in a vindictive way, but I'm prepared for that and you don't scare me!"

Muskrat not cutting government spending to his own company - 2025-02-19T10:38:28+00:00

The muskrat is determined to cut government spending, except when it is buying from his own company.

RMS talk in Bolzano on Feb 24 - 2025-02-21T10:38:30+00:00

Richard Stallman will give a talk on Feb 24 in Bolzano, Italy. Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society, in English, 18:00–20:00, at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.

Registration and program: fuss.bz.it

Muskrat spreading political disinformation - 2025-02-18T10:50:28+00:00

The muskrat is directly spreading political disinformation to attack foreign politicians. It includes weaponizing antisemitism through false accusations.

This is on top of his other efforts to support European neo-Nazis.

I disagree with Robert Reich on one pertinent question. I think it is an injustice to prohibit expression of certain views and attitudes — even those that I condemn, such as antisemitism, racism and sexism — and even to prohibit insulting a person. This is one of the aspects of European countries that make me uncomfortable.

Another similar injustice in European countries is prohibition of blasphemy — or its secular, ecumenical version, prohibition against expression that would hurt the feelings of believers in some religion or other.

I suggest that countries instead pass laws forbidding the operation of a social network that is owned by hateful foreigners. In other words, treat ex-Twitter and Facebook the way the US for a while treated TikTok. Also, to prohibit operating a social network so as to drive people to use a specific recommendation engine.

This would not censor any kind of views, but it would prevent managing a social network so as to boost particular kinds of views.

Systematically planning to suppress resistance - 2025-02-18T10:50:27+00:00

A month ago, the US fascists were systematically planning to suppress four main areas of resistance to their power: universities, nonprofits, the media, and unions.

Women sentenced to prison "for their own protection" - 2025-02-18T10:50:27+00:00

The UK regularly sentences women to prison supposedly "for their own protection".

That is obviously an injustice, and it often has the opposite effect.

(Humor) Manipulation paradox of personality-training systems - 2025-02-18T10:50:26+00:00

(Humor) The manipulation paradox of personality-training systems.

Missouri sues Starbucks - 2025-02-18T10:50:25+00:00

*Missouri sues Starbucks, claiming "systemic discrimination" via DEI. [In it's suit] claiming — without evidence — coffee chain's hiring policies cause higher prices.*

This is an example of a widely repeated harassment tactic: sue until the victim can't stand more lawsuits.

British court canceled new oilfields - 2025-02-18T10:50:24+00:00

A British court canceled licenses for new oilfields on the ground that the decision disregarded the effects of greenhouse emissions from burning the products that would be pumped out.