Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman's Political Notes -

US health institutions no longer dependable - 2026-01-07T10:37:15+00:00

Canada warns that US government institutions should not be trusted for medical advice.

I've urged my clinics and my state government to refer to something reliable rather than US institutions such as the CDC.

Venezuelan oil focus - 2026-01-07T10:37:15+00:00

The bully no longer tries to justify the war with Venezuela based on alleged drug trade, but rather claims that the US (or US oil companies?) owns Venezuelan oil deposits.

US intervention in Venezuela - 2026-01-07T10:37:14+00:00

It is unlikely that the US intervention in Venezuela will have a simple resolution.

The wrecker and his henchmen have stated no plan for what to do next, which suggests that whatever they do will make an even bigger mess.

The US used to intervene militarily often in weaker countries in the Americas.

Self defense - 2026-01-07T10:37:14+00:00

The US government is expected to claim that its attack on Venezuela was justified self-defense by pretending that smuggling of drugs — mostly not even from Venezuela — constituted making war on the US.

The US will surely veto any effort in the Security Council to oppose this act of US aggression. But demonstrating the weakness of the UN in restraining the great powers from making war will be nothing new. The UN's effectiveness for keeping peace has long been limited, and it will remain limited, but it is not zero.

What will be next? Maybe China will attack Taiwan.

Urgent: Require environmental impact statements on data centers - 2026-01-07T10:37:14+00:00

US citizens: call on the US government to require comprehensive environmental impact statements from proposed data centers. Don't let them lock in fossil fuels.

Urgent: Fully staff Federal Election Commission - 2026-01-07T10:37:14+00:00

US citizens: call on the corruptor to fully staff the Federal Election Commission.

Urgent: Stop news media presenting oversimplified statements about inflation - 2026-01-07T10:37:14+00:00

US citizens: call on news media to stop presenting oversimplified statements about inflation and its effects.

Arbitrary denial of US visas to five Europeans - 2026-01-07T10:37:14+00:00

The bully's henchmen arbitrarily ordered denial of US visas to five Europeans who campaign against online hatred. One of them, Imran Ahmed, lives with his wife in the US as a permanent resident, and they want to jail him and deport him. A judge ruled he is entitled to a court hearing about that.

Robert Reich on American Bar Association and American Medical Association and saboteur in chief - 2026-01-07T10:37:13+00:00

Robert Reich asks why the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association have not taken action against lawyers and medical professionals who violate the ethical rules of their professions obeying the saboteur in chief.

Working Americans and Medicaid - 2026-01-07T10:37:13+00:00

Most of the Americans that magats seek to kick off Medicaid for "not working" do in fact work, but the difficulty of proving this over and over will kick them off anyway.

Israel doesn't bother to lie about killing journalists - 2026-01-07T10:37:12+00:00

*Israel used to lie about killing journalists; now it barely bothers to do so. What happened?*

Banksy image on side of court building - 2026-01-07T10:37:11+00:00

*Court staff cover up Banksy image of judge beating a protester.* Banksy painted in on the side of a court building.

(satire) Condoms cause autism - 2026-01-07T10:37:11+00:00

(satire) *RFK Jr. Warns Mistress That Condoms Cause Autism.*

Right-wing extremists trying to eliminate equal rights - 2026-01-07T10:37:10+00:00

Right-wing extremists are trying to eliminate all vestige of the 20th century ideas of equal rights for non-whites, for non-Christians, and for women.

Waymo driverless taxis during power outage - 2026-01-07T10:37:10+00:00

When part of San Francisco had a power outage, and traffic lights shut off, Waymo driverless taxis (which are not "autonomous") were commanded simply to stop at intersections. That was better than driving normally without traffic lights, but it blocked intersections and they stayed blocked.

Crisis Intervention Training for cops - 2026-01-07T10:37:10+00:00

Crisis Intervention Training for cops, teaching them how to treat someone having a drug overdose, makes for a decrease in overall deaths from drug overdose.

Cyrillic letters as "funny" stand-ins for other letters - 2026-01-07T10:37:10+00:00

Writing Cyrillic letters as "funny" stand-ins for similar-looking letters in the Roman alphabet is annoying to some people whose languages use that alphabet. And it has no wittiness to make up for that.

I too look down on mockery of the Cyrillic alphabet, or of umlauts. Not as strongly as Viv Groskop does, but enough to give me a low opinion of whoever did it. Likewise for mockery of Chinese characters and Indian alphabets. The first time someone did these things, it may have been clever, but nowadays it is merely silly and trite.

I was just a little more clever when I pronounced Toys-Я-Us as if the Я were Cyrillic — as Toys-Ya-Us. I wasn't the one who chose to write it that way, rather I mocked the company by pronouncing its name in the correct way which it probably did not expect.

Plain text transfer of confidential documents - 2026-01-07T10:37:10+00:00

European institutions including hospitals and courts have been using a company called Zivver to transmit and save confidential documents and records. Investigators report finding that documents are sent to Zivver's server in plain text, and encrypted only on the server. That is fundamentally insecure and untrustworthy.

However, things have got worse. Zivver was recently sold to a US company, so now the US government can access all those documents, including before they are encrypted.

Making it even worse, the executives of that US company are associated with Israeli Intelligence. So the Israeli government can get that access too.

Europe should insist that purchasers of companies that hold European people's personal data be European companies, with no exceptions.

But this is a secondary issue compared with how bad Zivver itself did. Even before Kiteworks purchased Zivver, Zivver was offering fundamentally weak security, which no one should have accepted.

Threats of military trial of Senator Kelly - 2026-01-07T10:37:09+00:00

Secretary of Politicized Justice Hegseth threatened a military trial of Senator Kelly (a former Navy officer) for reminding the US military that it is lawful to disobey an illegal order, but the Pentagon shows no particular interest in prosecuting Americans who committed war crimes in Vietnam.

White House refuses to rule out summary executions - 2026-01-07T10:37:09+00:00

*White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List.*

Maximum temperature reduction managed by carbon capture - 2026-01-07T10:37:09+00:00

A new report says that worldwide, the maximum [temperature] reduction that carbon capture and storage could manage for the atmosphere would be 0.7C, far short of the 5C to 6C industry and governments claim.

In effect, CC&S is a distraction that enables planet roasters to reduce the social pressure to reduce their greenhouse emissions.

Warnings that machine learning is ripe for abuse - 2026-01-07T10:37:09+00:00

*[In 2017,] Kate Crawford of Microsoft Research warned that [machine learning] is ripe for abuse. Crawford, who researches the social impact of large-scale data systems and machine learning, described how encoded biases in [machine learning] systems could be abused to target certain populations and centralize power in the hands of authoritarian regimes.*

The article uses the term "artificial intelligence", and it seems to use it properly, to refer to systems that try to know and understand some (perhaps narrow) aspect the world, and not about LLMs which understand nothing.

Upcoming talk: Atlanta, Georgia - 2026-01-06T10:36:42+00:00

On Friday, January 23rd, RMS will give a talk, "Free/Libre Software And Our Freedom: Our shield against many digital injustices." at Scheller College of Business.

Seats are unreserved. Please bring cash to get FSF merchandise.

EU: New Rules on Asylum - 2026-01-04T04:37:00+00:00

Amnesty International rebuked the EU for strict new asylum policies that can arbitrarily send a refugee to an unrelated country with which person has no connections.

They define many countries as "safe" including Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco and Tunisia. India denies the citizenship of Muslims, Morocco and Tunisia are more or less Islamist, Bangladesh is wracked by Islamist mobs, and Egypt imprisons dissidents.

Investigation of political interference - 2026-01-04T04:37:00+00:00

A UK political party calls for investigation of political interference by hostile foreign states to include interference by the US.

It needs to include the US if its results are to be meaningful.

Trump threatens to move olympics and world cup - 2026-01-04T04:37:00+00:00

The bully threatens to move highly profitable global sporting events out of US cities that don't bow down to him.

The head of FIFA has been sucking up to him so much as to suggest it would willingly cooperate with being used as a stick to beat US cities with. This article suggests that FIFA and the corrupt US government have become a partnership for plunder.

As for the Olympic Games, they have a decades-long history of demanding and getting laws that are unfair to the non-rich, including general surveillance of the public.

Meanwhile, the great expense to taxpayers goes to boost some local businesses.

This is why I support citizens' campaigns against hosting the games.

I make myself invulnerable to being bribed or manipulated by Big Sports by resisting the impulse to care who wins a sports match. The matches that I care about are elections for office, and I always root for the progressive-green-human rights defender. And, beyond just caring about the outcome, I can help them win.

SNAP food work requirements - 2026-01-04T04:37:00+00:00

*In many parts of the country, there are new work requirements to get food aid. But starving people doesn’t motivate them — despite centuries of this rhetoric.* In other words, poor people who can work will work, if work is doable.

Trump plan to vet visitors’ social media - 2026-01-04T04:37:00+00:00

The persecutor plans to impose fear and self-censorship on visitors from many countries (the ones whose citizens don't need visas to visit the US) by demanding almost full cooperation with monitoring of their past and future communications.

The one thing not demanded is your GPG keys.

There will surely be no stated criterion for what things it is forbidden to say, so no one could be sure that anything is safe. This pressure people to hush up any and all forms of opposition to the persecutor, other magats, and their cruel laws and policies.

Perennial grains - 2026-01-04T04:37:00+00:00

Progress in breeding perennial grains has already resulted in a commercially grown wheat-relative. Breeders hope to produce one with the same yield as ordinary wheat, but more efficient to grow.

Vouchers fuel private school tuition hikes - 2026-01-04T04:36:59+00:00

"Private school voucher" systems, where a US state pays a fixed amount towards the fees of a private school, generally do not enable poor people's children to attend a private school. They typically charge substantially more than the voucher amount. The real effect of the voucher system is to subsidize the private schools attended by children of fairly wealthy parents.

These schools typically inculcate an extreme version of Christianity, which should not be able to get a subsidy.

20 years ago, even in the most right-wing states the voters defeated proposals for voucher systems.

Returning to the west bank after 20 years - 2026-01-04T04:36:59+00:00

*I used to report from the West Bank. Twenty years after my last visit, I was shocked by how much worse it is today.*

Israel has made hundreds more checkpoints to impede Palestinians' movement, the number of "settlers" has gone from 400,000 to 700,000, and their attacks to expel Palestinians are more violent.

Safe drinking water bill veto - 2026-01-03T22:36:56+00:00

The persecutor vetoed two bills to fund regional improvements in safety of drinking water, as apparent political retaliation for unrelated lack of submission.

One of them was passed unanimously by the House and Senate. It will be interesting to see if his sycophants dare vote to override the veto.

60 Minutes planned segment pulled - 2026-01-03T22:36:56+00:00

It appears that CBS omitted the 60 minutes segment about El Salvador's brainwashing prison because of an arbitrary decision not to cover that topic without a statement from the persecutor or a henchman.

This decision is foolish submission — which is surely what CBS intended by putting a well-known magat in charge of news.

Record wealth in 2025 - 2026-01-03T22:36:55+00:00

The world economy is rapidly centralizing ownership of the world by enriching billionaires.

Trump admin childcare funding freeze - 2026-01-03T22:36:55+00:00

Henchmen have suspended childcare payments to all 50 states.

This is ostensibly a response to vague accusations of funding irregularities; he demands that states prove they have done nothing wrong.

Kennedy Center bylaws - 2026-01-03T22:36:55+00:00

How the perverter's new appointees in the Kennedy Center board arranged to block the other board members from voting.

Disturbing reality of US prison food - 2026-01-03T22:36:55+00:00

* In Eating Behind Bars, author Leslie Soble details how food is used to further punish incarcerated people in the US.*

Dire climate change outcomes - 2026-01-03T22:36:55+00:00

*[Australian] officials warned in 2005 of major economic, environmental and social disruption to Australia [in the future] due to its dependence on coal.*

Climate Crisis year in review - 2026-01-03T22:36:54+00:00

Americans report how global heating is impacting various aspects of life. No more snow in the winter in Washington, no natural water for 30 miles in the Appalachian Trail. The garden no longer grows well in Sacramento. Butterfly species endangered in Santa Cruz.

EU legislation on deforestation - 2026-01-03T22:36:54+00:00

*EU legislation intended to fight deforestation has been effectively "dismantled".* Without verification of sources of supply, it invites fraud.

The loss of the world's forests will cause a massive extinction and increase greenhouse gas concentrations, and that threatens to wipe out civilization.

Protesters against ICE - 2026-01-03T22:36:54+00:00

Several of the magats' retaliatory prosecutions have failed for lack of any basis for convicting the accused.

Bad cops and cultural silence - 2026-01-03T22:36:53+00:00

*Mukund Krishna, chief executive of the Police Federation of England & Wales: Bad cops prey on the public — and their fellow officers. To stop them, we must break the culture of silence.*

The biggest cause of injustice by cops is, I conjecture, bigotry of various kinds. A cop who despises a certain group of people will find many excuses to treat them unjustly. When that bigotry is shared by most cops, they will encourage each other. I am sure Mukund Krishna, being of Indian origin, has experienced being the victim of this.

Even when bigotry is not a factor, individual thugs can commit heinous crimes, even rape and murder, and other cops miss it because they don't want to look closely at it. That is what he is writing about.

Israel to ban aid organisations - 2026-01-03T22:36:53+00:00

Israel made an extreme demand — that Gaza aid agencies hand over a lot of personal data about all their staff — and uses this as a pretext to exclude them.

The aid organizations thus excluded include ActionAid, International Rescue Committee and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), as well as others.

Bragg soldiers - 2026-01-03T22:36:53+00:00

The wrecker is trying to corrupt the nonpartisan stance of the US military.

Consumer watchdog funding - 2026-01-03T22:36:53+00:00

A judge rejected the magats' artificial excuse for cutting off funding to the CFPB.

Extreme floods and droughts - 2026-01-03T22:36:52+00:00

*Only a third of world's river basins experienced normal conditions in 2024.*

Honey bee study - 2026-01-03T22:36:52+00:00

Feral honeybees establish themselves in wild areas and are so successful that they leave insufficient food for all the other bee species.

Urgent: Impeach RFK Jr. - 2026-01-03T04:36:54+00:00

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for impeaching RFK Jr.

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.

Urgent: Reject renaming the Kennedy Center - 2026-01-03T04:36:53+00:00

US citizens: call on Congress to reject renaming the Kennedy Center as the "Trump-Kennedy Center".

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.

Urgent: Reject digital state ID systems - 2026-01-03T04:36:53+00:00

US citizens: phone your state legislators and call on them to reject digital state ID systems. Details may vary, but those systems will surely require people to run nonfree software to use them; in addition, they will enable government agencies to identify people more often.

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.