Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Is Stallman nuts?

[Thomas Lord]

Remarkably, in order to make their allegations against Stallman, both
Selam G. and Edward Ongweso Jr. must speak untruthfully about what
Stallman wrote. 

Selam G., for example, writes:  "…and then [Stallman] says that an
enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing"."   Yet, what
Stallman actually  wrote was that if the victim were being coerced by
Epstein, he thinks it most likely that she would have been directed to
conceal that coercion from Minsky and others.    The two statements are
very different.   What Salem G. falsely attributes to Stallman would
indeed be very damning -- but it is not what Stallman wrote at all. 

Edward Ongweso Jr. offers this slander:  "Early in the thread, Stallman
insists that the "most plausible scenario" is that Epstein's underage
victims were "entirely willing" while being trafficked."   The truth,
however, is that Stallman wrote: "We can imagine many scenarios, but the
most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely
willing."   Two two statements are, again, very different.  Ongweso
Jr.'s false paraphrase is about whether the young woman was willing. 
Stallman's is about how, under the circumstances, the young woman might
have appeared to Minsky to be willing, for example if she were directed
to conceal the coercion. 

Accusations such as Salem G. and Ongweso Jr. make are made to cause harm
to the accused.  That is how  they appear to be made in this context:
with the aim of harming Stallman.  Yet in order to accomplish this harm,
both Salem G. and Ongweso Jr. must abandon the truth in favor of
statements falsely attributed to Stallman. 

It would be appropriate, in my opinion, for both writers to retract
their critical misstatements of fact. 

-t 

On 2019-09-15 10:35, MARY-ANNE WOLF wrote:

> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing
> 
> https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794
> 
> I have been a financial supporter of FSF since... 2011 at least.  I first 
> used emacs in... the 1980's I think it was.
> 
> Way to drive away any female supporter of FSF and Libre software generally, 
> Richard! I really did think you were smarter than that.
> 
> Look!  A person underage (and the age is defined differently in different 
> states) CANNOT give consent to sex.  That is why there is such a thing as 
> statutory rape.  Thus, whether the young lady was paid (and prostitution is 
> also illegal in most places, and transporting someone for purpose of 
> prostitution also) and whether she was willing in any other sense, if she was 
> too young, she CANNOT have given consent to sex, so the sex MUST have been 
> rape as legally defined.
> 
> If Stallman is too stupid to understand that, the FSF needs to throw him out 
> with force and distance itself from him as fast as they can, before FSF loses 
> the support of most of its female supporters and a large fraction of its more 
> woke male supporters.
> 
> Is Stallman nuts?
> 
> Mary-Anne
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