Richard Stallman Gets SJW'd

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Sun Oct 13 00:29:16 PDT 2019


On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 09:49:55PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>   Richard Stallman and the GNU project
>   > And that is the problem. To Stallman — GNU project is a
>   > technological freedom project. But for most maintainers — it's
>   > “purely technical” project.
> 
>   And **that** is the problem with most humans - life to most humans
>   is about maximising [ efficiency | productivity | entertainment |
>   wealth | health | pleasure ].
> 
>   Life is purely "a technical project" and how to extract the most
>   out of life, for **me**.
> 
>   Freedoms be damned!


The following is a mostly text (one small image of Stallman)
relatively comprehensive/ abundantly linked summary of the present
campaign against RMS, notwithstanding some virtue signalling on the
part of the collator, who correctly notes that in much of Europe the
age of consent is 14 and notwithstanding the age of consent in other
areas:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America


  Justice for Dr. Richard Matthew Stallman
   #rms #justiceforRMS #freesoftware #freespeech #supportRMS
  https://jorgemorais.gitlab.io/justice-for-rms/

  Dr. Richard Matthew Stallman (born 16 March 1953), often known by
  his initials rms, and occasionally upper-case RMS, is an American
  free (libre) software movement activist, hacker and programmer. He
  campaigns for software to be distributed in a manner such that its
  users receive the freedoms to use, study, distribute, and modify
  that software. Software that ensures these four freedoms is termed
  free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free
  Software Foundation, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU
  Emacs, and wrote the GNU General Public License.

  Richard Stallman is currently the object of an Internet defamatory
  campaign which forced him to resign from his position at MIT and
  even from the FSF which he founded himself. He has actual flaws,
  but the campaign is largely motivated by mischaracterizations,
  disproportionality and intolerance.

  2 Mischaracterizations

  The following two false accusations were made against Stallman
  based on severe mischaracterizations of an email thread (see here
  the original) about the connections of Jeffrey Epstein1 with MIT:

  2.1 Stallman as an Epstein supporter

  At least one large website published a article claiming that
  Stallman defended Epstein. No cogent argument was presented for the
  accusation, only a severe misquotation (see below). In truth, on 25
  April 2019 he had called Epstein a “serial rapist” who got an
  “extremely lenient” plea deal; in fact, “so lenient that it was
  illegal.” Stallman then wondered “whether this makes it possible to
  resentence him to a longer prison term.”

  2.2 Stallman as a victim blamer

  Many large websites wrote articles accusing Stallman of considering
  Epstein victims as “entirely willing”, in a shocking failure of
  reading comprehension.

  In truth, talking about Virginia Giuffre (the Epstein victim whom
  Stallman wrote about), he said the “most plausible scenario” was
  that “she presented herself to him as entirely willing” [my
  emphasis] even if actually she was under coercion from Epstein,
  because the trafficker “had every reason to tell her to conceal
  that”. Then in his second email from that same discussion, Stallman
  said “given the circumstances, that implies she was coerced by
  Epstein”[my emphasis].  A few paragraphs later he reiterated:

      We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein.
      She was being harmed. But the details do affect whether, and to
      what extent, Minsky was responsible for that.

  [my emphasis]

  Therefore, Stallman said multiple times that Giuffre was a victim
  of coercion into sex. He just did not see evidence that Marvin
  Minsky2 knew about the coercion. Stallman presumed Minsky not to
  have been responsible. He did not presume Giuffre to have been
  actually willing.

  3 Extremely liberal opinions about sex on his personal website

  A true part of the story is that Stallman’s personal website has
  extremely liberal opinions about sex and related subjects. Some
  excerpts from many years ago did defend the alleged liberty of
  children to have sex – even with adults – “if the child accepted
  it”.  For example, in 2003 Stallman wrote

      I think that everyone age 14 or above ought to take part in
      sex, though not indiscriminately. (Some people are ready
      earlier.)

  In 2006 he was skeptical of the claim that “voluntary” pedophilia
  harmed children. He wrote something similar in January 2013, but
  within limits.

  This author opposes such an opinion! However, Stallman later
  changed his mind and, on 14 September 2019, (belatedly) retracted
  it.

  4 Sex with a 17 year old

  One of Stallman’s recent leaked emails did still imply that sex
  between an adult and a 17 year old is not rape – but so does all of
  Europe. In fact, the BBC informs that Austria, Germany, Hungary,
  Italy and Portugal set the age of consent at 14 and nowhere in
  Europe is it over 17. In this context, while I strongly oppose sex
  with prepubescent children or young teenagers, I suspect 3 17 years
  old should be enough to legally consent to sex.

  I emphasize the word legally. Legality, morality and social
  acceptability are different things. Even those of us who think it
  was immoral for an adult2 to have casual sex with a 17 year old
  might, taking into account that Minsky presumedly thought she was
  willing, consider it disproportional to posthumously make him a
  pariah.

  And even people who support 18 as the legal age of consent should
  agree that consensual sex with a 17 year old is far less grave than
  forcing a person into sex, which is why it should be described with
  a separate word, not “rape”. Perhaps sex with an actual child can
  be called “rape”, but a 17 year old (who Minsky presumedly thought
  was willing) is not a child. This was Stallman’s point. He is known
  for demanding terminological precision.

  5 Perfect storm

  Stallman’s first email contained an excerpt that, when taken
  outside the context of the two emails and his earlier strong
  condemnation of Epstein but mixed with his old (belatedly
  retracted) opinion about tolerance of pedophilia as well as his
  actual flaws and eccentricity, made him appear to be saying that
  Giuffre was actually “entirely willing”. This widespread
  interpretation is utterly false and has caused grave injustice to
  Stallman.

  He does have extremely liberal opinions about sex and did take too
  long to retract his previous defense of tolerance for pedophilia,
  but does that justify expelling him from both MIT and the FSF which
  he founded?

  6 Free speech and open mindedness

  The author does not ask the reader to agree with every Stallman
  opinion. If fact, I am an orthodox married Catholic who, within the
  limits of reasonable tolerance, am very pro-family – within a
  coherent worldview inspired by the great Pope Francis. I oppose
  many of Stallman’s views about sex and related subjects. Yet I
  believe in free speech and also in “test everything and hold on to
  what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). One learns a lot from
  Stallman views about civil liberties, privacy, environmentalism,
  social and economic justice and politics, specially (of course)
  software freedom and digital rights. I reject many of his extremely
  liberal opinions about sex, particularly that previous opinion
  which he thankfully retracted, but those are opinions on his
  personal website which he clearly separates from FSF and MIT. And I
  support many of the other opinions on that same website, just as I
  reject the excessive violence of the French Revolution but support
  separation of Church and State and the metric system.

  Regarding the two emails that destroyed Stallman’s reputation:
  presuming (as we must, in the absence of evidence of guilt) that
  Minsky thought he was having consensual casual sex with a 17 year
  old (which is legal in every European country), then is that act so
  socially unacceptable that we should (posthumously) make a pariah
  of Minsky and even of those who dare defend his memory?

  And if people like Stallman are made pariahs for their opinions –
  and in this case he even retracted the most shocking one – then how
  can we have an honest debate and ascertain the Truth? What happened
  to freedom of inquiry?

  7 Fair character assessment

  The author also does not ask the reader to overlook Stallman’s
  other sins – that is, those that are real and corroborated, since
  the Internet defamatory campaign generated or amplified lots of
  hearsay.  However, the assessment of Stallman’s character ought to
  be based on an accurate interpretation of real evidence considered
  in the context of his real life. The Internet defamatory campaign
  leads to an atmosphere in which people exaggerate his real sins –
  besides believing and disseminating clearly false or uncorroborated
  accusations – and overlook favorable evidence, testimony and
  circumstances. This is unjust. It is similar to a jury trial in
  which the jury is contaminated by a strong campaign of character
  assassination.

  8 Parting words

  Please tolerate English mistakes (constructive feedback highly
  welcome!) – I am Brazilian. By the way, the current Brazilian
  president is incompetent, misguided, lacks respect for women,
  minorities, science and the sanctity of life and did not have my
  vote. He currently has little popular support.

  9 Help wanted

  This initiative needs help – for example, text improvements,
  publicity, translations. Please contribute via issues, patches,
  merge requests4, contact me via diaspora*
  (jorgemorais at pod.disroot.org) or simply publicize this initiative!

  10 Attribution and copyleft

  This website is partly based on
  https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ (accessed [2019-09-28
  sáb]), this copy of the email thread, information from this BBC
  article, the English Wikipedia articles about Stallman and Marvin
  Minsky (both accessed [2019-10-01 ter]), and quotes from
  stallman.org. It is published under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
  Generic (CC BY-SA 4.0) License. The picture (published under the
  same license) of Richard Stallman is from Wikimedia Commons (I
  scaled and recompressed it). I believe the quotes from stallman.org
  are covered by fair use.

  Footnotes:

  1

  A wealthy trafficker of women (many underage) for sex

  2

  Marvin Lee Minsky (9 August 1927 – 24 January 2016), a pioneer of
  artificial intelligence and friend of Stallman. The first email in
  the thread accuses Minsky of sexually assaulting Virginia Giuffre.
  The author of this article has not carefully studied the evidence
  about Minsky and therefore at this moment has no position regarding
  whether or not Minsky did in fact have sex with any of Epstein’s
  victims (see the email thread for arguments for and against this
  hypothesis).

  3

  I say suspect because I have not studied the applicable legal
  doctrine and theory and therefore I cannot have a conviction.

  4

  If you cannot create an account on GitLab.com then you can still
  send me patches or suggestions via diaspora* or email. I also take
  suggestions of better hosting.

  Author: Jorge P. de Morais Neto

  Created: 2019-10-09 qua 18:56

  Validate



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