Richard Stallman's personal site.
For current political commentary, see
the daily
political notes.
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The GNU Project
Political Articles
●
Beyond Intimidation
of Journalists (August 2013)
●
The Apology That Calls For An
Apology (August 2013)
●
Turkey has woken up from its sleep
during the AKP's fascist regime.
-- Cansu Colakoglu in Taksim Square, 1 June 2013 (Updated 26, June 2013)
●
Vote for Benjamin Kallos for New York City Council (March 2013).
●
Free Scientific Publishing (January 2013)
French
Translation, Brazilian
Portuguese Translation
●
Why being able to
watch your boss's lifeis
no compensation
for his being able to watch yours. (December 2012)
(local copy)
●
Why I can't support
Obama. (September 2012)
●
Why it is
important not to have children. (September 2012)
French Translation
●Aresponse
to an inquiry about the September 11 note. (September 2012)
●
We need a new
911 investigation. (September 2012)
●
Response to Emily -- the NPR music intern. (July 2012)
●
Suggestions for National Constitutions. (Updated July 2013)
Albanian
Translation.
●
ACTA Threatens Your Freedom (first published in Poland, by
Tygodnik Powszechny) (February 2012)
●
Internet Privacy
(inGerman).
●
Italy's Choice:
Sharing or Censorship
(in Italian)
●A
video message in Spanish supporting the protests in Spain in 2011.
Also in webm format.
(June 2011)
Regarding Mark Vernon's attack on Peter Singer's philosophy. (May 2011)
How Egypt can help Libya. (Feb 2011)
Protect Your Friends — Protect Julian Assange (Jan 2011).
Global Patronage:
This describes
the Global Patronage system of supporting artists on
the Internet. Francis Muguet and I were working on it together at the
time of his death in September 2009. He sent me a draft for version
1.2.1, and I responded with this modified version which I call 1.3.
The principal change was to describe correctly what sort of function
would be used to calculate the shares of the non-attributed funds.
I did not expect him to have any objections, but he died before
responding. (French
Translation)
●
Kettling Wikileaks:
the Anonymous protests are the Internet equivalent of protests
on the street. (Spanish
Translation and Norwegian
Translation)
●Internet
Sharing License in Brazil.
Internet taxa de
licença para o compartilhamento (Portuguese version).
Spanish version.
Also see compartilhamentolegal.org.
●
Response to the climate change
email leak.
●
End the War on Sharing
(Spanish translation).
●
A letter to Costa Rica (about the
referendum on the proposed sweatshop treaty with the US).
●
An interview about the
Steamed Bread Murder Case
and what it implies about right and wrong and copyright.
(This is the English version—it was also
published in Chinese.)
●
A letter on the Animal Rights movement.
●Aresponse to Financial Times
article on "intellectual property rights".
●
The Conundrum of the Bush Forces Soldier
●
Here are my responses to the
consultation in
this link.
They might interest some readers.
●
Here's a
recording of a radio show that I was on.
●
The Knife- Stupid Airport Security
Tricks
●
What Should the US do in Iraq?
●
Biopiracy or Bioprivateering?
(Spanish translation,
French translation,
and,
German translation.
●Aslightly revised version of an
article that appeared
in Salon Magazine on 11 September 2002.
●
Dear President Musharraf...
●
On July 22, Israel killed a Hamas
leader, Salah Shaheda, who was in charge of many Hamas attacks.
●
Is the US killing many Afghan
civilians to save one US soldier?
●
Political fencing in Israel.
●
I got a message with a series of points criticizing Americans for
blaming companies and institutions rather than themselves. I partly
agree with the underlying message that people should take charge and
solve problems, rather than just cast blame on others. However, the
points go too far—they whitewash
companies and institutions that really did something wrong.
●
British book publishers plan to put
a microchip into every book to record who owns it — an
unprecedented surveillance measure. Given the publishers' opposition to
such institutions as free lending libraries and used book stores, we
must suspect that this scheme is aimed at them. Will they try to
collect a fee every time a used book is resold, as part of storing the
new owner's name on the chip?
●
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors. I was
shocked to learn recently that there is no border fence dividing Israel
from the occupied Palestinian territories. The reason is that
expansionists want to annex these territories permanently. In their
eyes, a fence would be an admission that those territories are not part
of Israel, so they won't allow it.
●
When President Chavez of Venezuela was ousted in a military coup,
newspaper coverage in the US hinted that Chavez was mentally unstable.
He thought he could make his country independent of the IMF.
He thought that the generals of his
Venezuela would be loyal to Venezuela instead of Washington. A
man would have to be crazy to believe such things—or would he?
●
When police say "No witnesses", one
must suspect they are up to some kind of dirty work that they don't
want to admit to the public. An encounter in a Paris airport.
●
Human Rights in the US, and in
China. The Chinese government has released a report detailing human
rights violations in the US. The abuses include torture of
detainees by police, sometimes resulting in death. All governments
should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights; from
Bolivia to Spain, from the US to China, no government should escape.
●
Someone to watch over me. Nowadays,
just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you aren't really under
surveillance.
●
Stopping terrorists before they
start. Making sure that the CIA does not create new enemies to
attack us tomorrow surely deserves high priority in any sincere "War on
Terrorism".
●
Bush has proposed a large increase in military spending, including pay
raises for soldiers, reserves to cover the expenses of possible combat,
unmanned vehicles, and ballistic missile defense. Some of these make
sense, more or less — but ballistic missile defense? It's clear what
is happening here: Bush is at his old
tricks.
●
The Injustice of Military Courts.
Bush has a plan to try alleged terrorists in
military courts—-courts where the prosecutor, the defense lawyer,
and the judges all work for Bush. If we could only be sure that the
accused are really guilty, shoddy trials would not matter—we wouldn't
need trials at all. But accusations against innocent people happen with
terrible regularity, and the danger of false convictions is immense.
●
Police State Minus One Day And
Counting. In late October Congress signed an anti-terrorism bill
that undermined basic protections against police intrusion. It also
attacks freedom of assembly. This article was originally published on
Newsforge the day before the bill (S.1510) was passed. The only
proposed provision that Congress rejected was that for indefinite
detention of noncitizens without trial; Bush then proposed military
trials as a way to get the same job done.
●
Who watches the watchmen? Whenever police
ask to be allowed to bypass search warrants, we must be on guard. First
published on Newsforge.
●
If we are not careful, the deadly attacks on New York and Washington
will lead to far worse secondary damage, if the U.S. Congress adopts
"preventive measures" that take away the freedom that America stands
for. Thousands are dead — but millions could
be deprived of civil liberties. First published on Newsforge.
●
While traveling from South Africa to Sweden in June, I became a victim of the War on Drugs. First
published on Newsforge.
●
Science must "push
copyright aside." Written for a debate
about electronic access to scientific literature. First published 8
June 2001.
●
The antidemocratic suppression of public
protest is now a standard part of the effort to impose
antidemocratic trade treaties.
●
Waiting for the Knock, an article about
Britain's plans for secret police raids to seize decryption keys. First
published in the Guardian (London), 25 November 1999.
Sad to say, this law was adopted in Britain in July 2000. Residents
of the UK must now start using steganography to protect themselves
from secret raids.
●
Although generally supportive of President
Hugo Chávez, Stallman has criticised some policies on television
broadcasting, free speech rights, and personal privacy rights, in
meetings with Chávez and in public speeches in Venezuela.
Copyright (c) 2016 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are
permitted provided this notice is preserved.