Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman's Political Notes -

Urgent: Discharge petition to force vote on release of Epstein files - 2025-07-27T14:38:52+00:00

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to sign the discharge petition to force a vote on whether to release the Epstein files.

Concealing them is far from he worst thing magats are doing to our country, and we should not forget about the greatest dangers. But that doesn't mean we should disregard this.

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

Urgent: Cancel contract for use of Musk's artificial stupidity system - 2025-07-27T14:38:52+00:00

US citizens: call on Hegseth to cancel the $200-million contract for the use of Musk's artificial stupidity system.

I edited the message not to use the term "artificial intelligence" or "AI", and not to cite the corrupter as an authority on what to do.

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 for why that issue matters.)

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 can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) 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.

Urgent: Call on Democratic leadership to back Mamdani - 2025-07-27T14:38:51+00:00

US citizens: call on Jeffries and the Democratic leadership to back Mamdani.

Don't let the Democratic establishment side with AIPAC and billionaire interests over democracy and equality.

Urgent: Tax billionaire wealth gains - 2025-07-27T14:38:51+00:00

US citizens: call on Congress to tax billionaire wealth gains.

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

Urgent: Ban stock trading by members of Congress - 2025-07-27T14:38:51+00:00

US citizens: call on Congress to ban stock trading by members of Congress.

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

Urgent: Call on Wells Fargo to stop practices that cheat public - 2025-07-27T14:38:51+00:00

US citizens: call on Wells Fargo to stop various nasty practices that cheat the public.

UK organisations aiming to support Palestinians have bank accounts frozen - 2025-07-27T14:38:51+00:00

Two UK organisations that aim to support Palestinians have had their bank accounts frozen. They have lost access to their money, without any sort of trial, and without any clear path for recourse.

Facebook data center in rural Georgia - 2025-07-27T14:38:50+00:00

Facebook build a data center in rural Georgia, near some houses, and once it started sucking lots of ground water, those houses' wells dried up.

The company could easily afford to compensate them for this damage, but the law seems to be biased in favor of the data center owner.

The article describes what the data center is doing as "AI", but that is a misleading hype campaign. Probably what it mostly does is run bullshit generators. To call things like chatbots "AI" is to boost that marketing campaign.

Please do as I do and make a distinction between true (albeit narrow) artificial intelligence and bullshit generators.

Brain engagement of people using ChatGPT - 2025-07-27T14:38:50+00:00

A controlled experiment found that people who repeatedly used ChatGPT to do a task (writing essays) manifested less brain engagement, and didn't do the task as well as people who focused their own minds on it.

Australian who worked in the US - 2025-07-27T14:38:50+00:00

An Australian who worked in the US, and lived there with his sweetheart, all with a suitable visa, was inexplicably deported when he returned from a short visit to Australia. It seemed that the border agents did not try to understand that he had permission for what he did.

Now he has been separated from his work, his apartment, his possessions, and his sweetheart — exiled from home with no way to appeal.

The article reveals nothing about him that I would expect border thugs to hate. So why did they do this? It could be that the needed to meet their daily quota. Or maybe management encourages them to persecute people randomly — perhaps to increase the general level of terror.

Does anyone know of further developments in this case?

Hungary opposition figures urge Democrats organize against autocratic takeover - 2025-07-27T14:38:50+00:00

*Hungary opposition figures urge Democrats to organize against autocratic takeover by [the saboteur in chief],* saying that his actions now resemble what Orbán did at the start.

Google deal to buy hydroelectric electricity - 2025-07-27T14:38:50+00:00

Google has made a large deal to buy he electricity produced by existing hydroelectric facilities.

I don't see that this promotes renewable generation or reduces greenhouse emissions at all. The electricity those generators will make would certainly have been used. This deal won't fund development of more.

It will shuffle the money around, as Google buys current from those generators and the rest of us are compelled to buy current from other generators — perhaps at a higher price.

Lunatic plan for income for future State of Palestine - 2025-07-27T14:38:50+00:00

The most lunatic possible plan for income for the future State of Palestine: from exporting fossil gas!

Since Palestine is a hot and arid land, I doubt it will survive till 2100 even if it gets started, unless the world curbs global heating. And neither will the rest of us! Proposing to solve a problem through more fossil fuel extraction is madness.

President Correa of Ecuador famously invited the wealthy to pay Ecuador not to develop a fossil gas deposit — but rather to leave the gas in the ground. The wealthy were not interested in helping to prevent global disaster, so they didn't accept. It shows that the death of billions of non-rich is no skin off their backs.

Kenya accuses protest leader of "terrorism" - 2025-07-27T14:38:49+00:00

Kenya has imitated Britain by accusing a protest leader of "terrorism".

Increase of Syphilis in the US - 2025-07-27T14:38:49+00:00

Syphilis has been increasing in the US for years, a sign of a generally poor medical system. This includes congenital syphilis, which is easy to prevent if pregnant women receive medical attention — so the increase shows a failure to give them any.

Naturally, the saboteur in chief has wiped out federal programs to help in the measurement, detection and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.

Digital systems imposed on teachers, students and parents of students - 2025-07-27T14:38:49+00:00

A teacher and parent reproaches schools and the digital systems they imposes on teachers, students, and parents of students.

She complains that using them is a pain. She is not aware that they are also unjust (since they are nonfree client programs, and often talking to surveillance servers).

Sentencing for thug who shot Breonna Taylor - 2025-07-27T14:38:49+00:00

The thug who shot Breonna Taylor (by firing blindly into the house) was convicted for that. The corrupter's "Justice department" recommended sentencing him to supervised release, but the judge disregarded this and sentenced him to three years in prison.

I am glad the judge disregarded the slanted advice, but I have a hunch that the corrupter will pardon that ex-thug. He has pardoned many people for violent crimes committed in causes that he supports.

Reactor operator doing unauthorized work on nuclear plant - 2025-07-27T14:38:49+00:00

When he Nuclear Regulatory Commission found out that a reactor operator was doing work on a nuclear plant that the NRC had not authorized, it said, "Oh dear!".

Australian man with work visa sent home - 2025-07-27T14:38:48+00:00

An Australian man with a US work visa was working in the US and living there with his sweetheart. He made a short visit home for a funeral ceremony, and border thugs sent him back to Australia, saying nothing coherent that pretended to be a reason.

I speculate that this was part of the push to meet the quota for deportations. I think that each airport has a daily quota for deportations, and agents are supposed to fake reasons when they don't have any real ones.

Ukraine law weakening independence of anticorruption prosecutors - 2025-07-27T14:38:48+00:00

Ukraine passed a law weakening the independence of anticorruption prosecutors.

That is an unfortunate action, but it has no effect on the moral issues about Putin's invasion and Ukraine's independence. I expect Putin will try to use it to prove that he should rule Ukraine, but that would be as irrational as the rest of his propaganda.

Imprisonment of reporter Mario Guevara - 2025-07-27T14:38:48+00:00

Reporter Mario Guevara, lawful US resident, was covering a No Kings protest when he was arrested on bogus minor charges. An official dismissed the charges, but the deportation thugs insist on keeping him in prison.

Bias efforts in LLM models - 2025-07-27T02:38:45+00:00

The bully is getting exercised about biases in LLM output, when they don't align with his biases, so he seeks the power to punish their developers for it.

He also objected to the term "artificial intelligence" on the grounds that "artificial" has negative connotation. However, no one can deny that these systems are artificial — they were designed and made by humans. It's "intelligence" that misrepresents them.

Let's call them "bullshit generators"; that avoids both of those words and is more accurate as a description.

Holding a sign as a crime, UK - 2025-07-27T02:38:45+00:00

British thugs violently arrested protester Susan White, 74 years old and fragile, for holding some sort of sign. I have not seen a concrete description of what the sign said, but thugs interpreted it as support for Palestine Action. Thus, the act of blackwhiting that declared Palestine Action to be "terrorist" has thus provided an excuse for additional, similar blackwhiting.

Terrorism is a crime. It is fundamentally unjust to label a group (or individual) as "terrorist" without a fair trial.

Ms White has been placed under house arrest, not officially but in a disguised, dishonest fashion: she is forbidden to go to Liverpool Center, but outside her door is Liverpool Center, so she can't leave.

The authorities didn't provide her with a jetpack with which to fly to a point outside Liverpool Center. But I have a feeling she could not use it. She says she has injuries from the attack; I presume she needs to visit clinics and pharmacies. Is that forbidden too?

Censoring "60 minutes" show - 2025-07-27T02:38:45+00:00

CBS gave the bully the power to censor 60 Minutes; the producer resigned in protest.

Testing of raw milk deregulated - 2025-07-27T02:38:44+00:00

The FDA has discontinued some tests for milk and dairy products, as well as testing for bird flu in cows, due to the reductions in staff that the DOSE inflicted.

Gang prison descriptions, SLV - 2025-07-26T11:11:22+00:00

Venezuelans that the bully deported to El Salvador to be imprisoned for months in the special prison for alleged gangsters report on the special cruelty and violence carried out there. They made this report after being sent to Venezuela.

It is unjust to subject anyone to that, no matter how heinous per crimes. Even the corrupter and his officials do not deserve it.

Palestine recognized, FRA - 2025-07-26T11:11:22+00:00

France will recognize Palestine as a state.

Rightwing canceling of citizenships - 2025-07-26T11:11:21+00:00

Right-wing politicians in various countries are proposing to cancel citizenship of dual nationals if they are convicted of crimes.

This says to all dual nationals, "You don't really belong here, so we will exile you if you do anything wrong." It is an effective way of drumming up hatred of immigrants, which right-wing haters can take advantage of.

France already has legislated this for terrorism.

Deregulating US product safety - 2025-07-26T11:11:21+00:00

*The US supreme court let Donald Trump on Wednesday remove three Democratic members of the government’s top consumer product safety watchdog, boosting his power over federal agencies set up by Congress to be independent from presidential control.*

This decision strikes directly at a part of the system of checks and balances, explicitly set up by Congress and the then president.

ICE secretly deports green card holder - 2025-07-26T11:11:21+00:00

Chilean Luis León received asylum in the US; but recently he lost the physical green card that represented his right to live in the US. He visited the INS to get a replacement. The deportation thugs were waiting; they jailed him and deported him to Guatemala, failed to make any record of doing so, and told the family that León was dead.

I don't think such a chain of nonstandard events could happen by mistake. Some official must have decided to break rules in order to cause suffering. A variety of such incidents have happened this year, all different. The only explanation I can think of is that magats have encouraged the deportation thugs to use their imagination to invent new ways to make immigrants suffer.

Every official who participated in choosing this treatment of Mr. León ought to be fired, at least. Their mission is to do their work justly, not cruelly, and they neglected that completely.

I have a theory that might explain part of it. it is standard practice nowadays to arrange for an authorized immigrant to come to an appointment as w way to arrest per. When León made that appointment, officials could have seen some irregularity and chosen to respond in the most horrible way.

I wonder why Guatemala accepted a Chilean deported by the US, and why they didn't send him to Chile, now that that country respects human rights and is no longer the murderous dictatorship he fled in 1987.

UK channel crossings - 2025-07-26T11:11:21+00:00

If the UK wants to discourage refugees from crossing the Channel in small overloaded boats, it needs to convince them long before they reach the French shore. By that time, they have put themselves in great debt for the channel crossing and can't afford to change plans.

Those refugees generally do not come from Europe. I wonder if they had to put themselves in unbearable debt just for the first stage, getting into the EU.

Weaponized FCC - 2025-07-26T11:11:20+00:00

The bully has weaponized the FCC, and uses it as an instrument of arbitrary power, according to a former head of the FCC.

Trump and henchmen's court defiance - 2025-07-26T11:11:20+00:00

The underminer's henchmen have a practice of creating uncertainty to use as an excuse to defy court orders.

UK repression - 2025-07-26T11:11:19+00:00

Thugs in Britain have taken a further step into repression, beyond prosecuting people for stating support for the prohibited organization Palestine Action. Now they assert that it is a crime to endorse any of the positions that it stood for, such as "free Gaza" or talking about "genocide".

The leap that the thug made is irrational, and not logically valid. We can easily see that the decision to ban that organization, unjust though it was, does not imply what the thug asserted.

That does not guarantee that his error will not become government policy. Repression often advances by leaps of illogical like this one.

North Carolina voter purge - 2025-07-26T11:11:18+00:00

*DNC threatens to sue North Carolina elections board over [Republican] plan to purge 100,000 voters.*

Republican candidates occasionally win legitimately, but usually they win by rigging the election. Voter suppression is a big part, and Greg Palast presents evidence that that's how the bully "won" in 2024, but they have other methods too, such as gerrymandering.

Magats vs environment - 2025-07-26T11:11:18+00:00

The magat bill to fund environmental agencies undermines or weakens various specific means of protecting the environment and wildlife.

Temporary protected status - 2025-07-26T11:11:18+00:00

A US court extended Afghan refugees' temporary protested status. A final ruling is coming later.

Mangrove forest restoration - 2025-07-26T11:11:18+00:00

Restoring the threatened mangrove forests that grow in shallow sea water at the edge of the land -- in this case, in the Solomons.

Measles vaccination rates too low - 2025-07-26T11:11:18+00:00

Around 100,000 children died from measles in 2023. That's a consequence of having 10 million who did not get vaccinated.

World Health Organization bombed, Gaza - 2025-07-25T02:45:27+00:00

*Israel bombs WHO facilities in Gaza as global outcry grows.*

I cannot believe that the Israeli army did not know exactly where to find the WHO facilities. Whether it sought to bomb WHO or neglected to take care to avoid that, it is culpable.

Israel has attacked the UN in another way, by expelling an envoy of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

International condemnation of Israel - 2025-07-25T02:45:26+00:00

* The UK has joined 30 other nations in condemning Israel for depriving Palestinians of "human dignity" as they issued a call for an immediate end to the war in Gaza.*

I am glad to see them ramp up the confrontation with Netanyahu's massive war crimes, but I think it will take more than this to make Israel stop them.

There are the various injustices of the siege of Gaza, and the distribution of food supplies under the control of the same occupying army that causes the shortage.

Supreme Court DOE ruling unconstitutional - 2025-07-25T02:45:26+00:00

*The Supreme Court is giving a lawless president the green light.*

Immigrants and public services, US - 2025-07-25T02:45:26+00:00

The persecutor plans to expel mixed families (one citizen parent and one non-citizen) out of public housing support.

He will not care whether they end up homeless on the street, or are forced to separate, as long as it causes them plenty suffering and encourages whoever despises others for suffering despise them. Every time he succeeds in causing suffering to people among his designated hate targets, he strengthens his hold over his supporters.

Alligator Alcatraz conditions shock MEX - 2025-07-25T02:45:25+00:00

The prisoners in Alligator Alcatraz are *denied medical [treatment] and living in "cages flooded with feces".*

The president of Mexico says she is trying to get the Mexican citizens in that prison returned to Mexico, because of the inhuman conditions in that prison.

Homeless living, RVs in San Francisco - 2025-07-25T02:45:25+00:00

San Francisco will kick out the people living RVs and offer to perhaps provide subsidized housing to 400 of them. As for the rest, they are welcome to drop dead.

Global climate crisis response loses US - 2025-07-25T02:45:25+00:00

Scientists say that the wrecker has wrecked the capacity of the US to research and respond to global heating.

So much destruction is coming, and apparently the only reason is to boost the profits of planet roasters.

Google buying hydroelectricity - 2025-07-25T02:45:25+00:00

Google has made a large deal to buy the electricity produced by existing hydroelectric facilities.

I don't see that this promotes renewable generation or reduces greenhouse emissions at all. The electricity those generators will make would certainly have been used. This deal won't fund development of more.

It will shift the the money around, as Google buys current from those generators and the rest of us are compelled to buy current from other generators — perhaps at a higher price.

New pun - 2025-07-25T02:45:25+00:00

New pun:   Interns in the Soviet Union

Urgent: Discharge petition for vote on Protect America's Workforce Act - 2025-07-24T14:38:34+00:00

US citizens: phone your Congresscritter at 844-994-4554 and urge her to sign the discharge petition so the House can vote on the Protect America's Workforce Act.

History of American superheroes - 2025-07-24T14:38:34+00:00

The history of American superheroes — fighting injustice including bigotry, and expressing respect for immigrants, from the 1930s to today.

Inventing a character named "Superman" in 1938 who is an immigrant can be seen as a way of giving Nazis the finger.