People should be outraged that a nobody working on automated vehicles for the US military (AKA drones) believes she on a higher moral ground than Stallman, that never hurt anybody.
People should be outraged that said nobody wrote "Remove Stallman and all the other toxic people in tech" like if "removing" people is ok, like she knows who they are, 'cause she's the ultimate judge, and as if building weapons is not toxic...
BTW
RMS has been much more brave and clear than that.
He wrote
"if someone in csail says in this discussion group that Minsky was accused of sexual assault, a very serious accusation, and someone else in csail thinks that he was not, should the latter person refrain from saying so in this same discussion group out of concern that the conversation will leak and be misconstrued by the press?"
The in stands for "science". The job of scientists is to evaluate evidence and seek truth. We have a social responsibility to do that as well. I hope that we scientists will never evade our social responsibility to seek and defend the truth out of fear that the press will misconstrue our search. That would not be a reputation I would like attached to my affiliation.
I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone.
He was doing it to protect the movement and the protest from
a - leaks to the press
b - bad PR, if they used sexual assault people could spin it as "but he didn't assault her, it was consensual sex" like they usually do: they shoot the messenger or the form of the message to not address the real issue and divert the attention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts)
c - he was UNDOUBTEDLY right! nobody is talking about the protest against Epstein-MIT involvement.
good job Selam, good job everybody
Somehow I missed this, so a person literally working on helping the government kill people was the one asking to remove RMS? Interestingly enough, such hypocrisy came up in all the deplatforming cases too, where they removed some relatively innocent stuff claiming it had bad impact on people, but ignored and keep ignoring all the weapons promoting content, war propaganda, etc. that literally causes death and destruction.
Yep
Regardless of whether these allegations are true or false, there is a lesson to be learned here. The lesson here is that [some] men have a severe weakness related to their sexuality. I'd assume US HUMINT knows about this lesson, very well.
There's a huge difference though.
Assange after he was accused of rape escaped from the process and started rambling about a “radical feminist conspiracy”
Stallman is not accused of anything, never escaped and if you write to him (he still answer to everybody) will ask you to support the FSF because it's important
And this is the man women and students should be afraid of...
Rape implies... rape. He is just accused of removing a condom.
> escaped from the process
Wasn't that due to the (rightful imo) fear of being sent to the US?
1) That's rape and 2) he's accused of more than that.
Here's the case: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html
This sounds pretty rapey to me.
> As regards offence 1, AA said in her statement that she had offered the use of her apartment to Mr Assange from 11-14 August 2010 when she was away. She had returned on 13 August 2010 earlier than planned and then met him for the first time. They went out to dinner and returned to her apartment. As they drank tea, he started to fondle her leg which she welcomed. Everything happened fast. Mr Assange ripped off her clothes and at the same time broke her necklace. She tried to put her clothes on again, but Mr Assange had immediately removed them again. She had thought that she did not really want to continue, but it was too late to tell Mr Assange to stop as she had consented so far. Accordingly she let Mr Assange take off all her clothes. Thereafter they laid down on the bed naked with AA on her back and Mr Assange on top. Mr Assange wanted to insert his penis into her vagina, but she did not want him to do that as he was not using a condom. She therefore squeezed her legs together in order to avoid him penetrating her. She tried to reach several times for a condom which Mr Assange had stopped her from doing by holding her arms and bending her legs open and trying to penetrate her with his penis without a condom. Mr Assange must have known it was a condom AA was reaching for and he had held her arms to stop her. After a while Mr Assange had asked AA what she was doing and why she was squeezing her legs together; AA told him she wanted him to put on a condom before he entered her. Mr Assange let go of AA's arms and put on a condom which AA found for him. AA felt a strong sense of unexpressed resistance on Mr Assange' s part against using a condom.
Legally in Sweden? Sure, but in everyday speech rape implies a lot of things which did not happen in the Assange case. I would say that Stallman's argument about sexual assault would apply perfectly here.
Was Stallman right (again!) when he wrote
"I think it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17,"
Of course he was!
According to Swedish law, that's rape.
Welcome to the rest of the world, where the US laws do not apply.
> Wasn't that due to the (rightful imo) fear of being sent to the US?
Still escaped and blamed "feminists"
Would Epstein be right to escape because US wanted to prosecute him on the account of trafficking young girls?
I think I’d argue that yes, from his perspective, in hindsight, that would probably have been a good idea.
DJB too, see https://blog.cr.yp.to/20160607-dueprocess.html and https://eindhoven.cr.yp.to/false-statements-by-henry-de-vale...
You're arguing that defending a statutory rapist isn't supporting pedophilia BUT working on the guidance systems for an autonomous ground vehicle is "help the government kill people"?
Wrong.
I'm saying that Stallman never defended a statutory rapist.
He tried to defend the protest from the backlash of using the wrong terms and a dead person from an accusation that is hard to prove anyway now that he's dead.
Statutory rape is just a safer option given the circumstances.
BTW defending a statutory rapist is not supporting pedophilia or any attorney who defended an alleged (there is no official accusation yet) statutory rapist was also supporting pedophilia?
> for an autonomous ground vehicle is "help the government kill people"?
That's what drones are for...
And I've never said that either.
I've only said that she works there.
The fact Stallman doesn't understand what assault means, and then used his lack of understanding of the word assault to defend Minsky, is exactly why people are annoyed with him.
Assault does not require force or violence.
he knows very well.
He meant, and it's obvious from the emails, that the term is slippery if used to accuse someone.
It would have been better something like "statutory rape"
because it's not disputable.
B. One could quite reasonably object to the use of a term whose legal definition is very different from the everyday meaning or connotations.
> The injustice is in the word “assaulting”. The term “sexual assault” is so vague and slippery that it facilitates accusation inflation: taking claims that someone did X and leading people to think of it as Y, which is much worse than X.
> The accusation quoted is a clear example of inflation. The reference reports the claim that Minsky had sex with one of Epstein’s harem. (See https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jef... records-unsealed.) Let’s presume that was true (I see no reason to disbelieve it).
> The word “assaulting” presumes that he applied force or violence, in some unspecified way, but the article itself says no such thing. Only that they had sex.
Read this last paragraph.
Now read an English definition of assault. English words have several meanings. Stallman is ignoring the every day English meaning of the word assault because he doesn't understand how English works.
> Assault:
> 1) violent physical or verbal attack
> 2) any act that causes someone to feel physically threatened, which is considered reckless or intentional, and which need not necessarily involve any physical violence
> 3) rape or attempted rape
I don't understand why you'd say this...
> One could quite reasonably object to the use of a term whose legal definition is very different from the everyday meaning or connotations.
The legal definition isn't different to the everyday meaning, but even if it is Stallman needs to understand which definition is being used before he launches into his rape-apology, and he made no effort to do that, did he?
To the minds of the majority of people sure it does.