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RMS Robbed of Passport and Other Belongings In Argentina
New submitter Progman3K writes "Richard Stallman, father of the FSF, had his bag containing his laptop, medicine, money and passport stolen after his talk at the University of Buenos Aires on Friday, June 8." Adds reader jones_supa, excerpting from the same linked story: "As a result of this occurrence, he was forced to cancel his talk in Cordoba, and it's still unknown how this will impact the rest of his speaking engagements throughout the world."
If you're going to be a smartass, at least do it properly.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
University of Buenos Aires is a free, public university recognized as one of the best in the world. Anyone can attend and it's also filled with students from other South American countries that travel to Buenos Aires to study. Courses are usually huge, with ~200 students each, and anyone is free to attend them as a listener, even if you are not a student. Teachers, by tradition, are expected to be professionals that excelled in their respective fields and for them it is an honor to be able to be there, all this in the spirit of having the best public education.
This much freedom has the obvious drawback that, as no one checks your student ID at the entrance, anyone can go in including thieves, which often mix up with other students to steal stuff. I've seen this happening several times myself so you have to watch out for strange people and your belongings all the time.
As pro human rights groups are so strong here (product of opposition to US-Sponsored dictatorships during most of the past century), law is lax and stronger security measures are often seen in a negative light, as the population don't know anymore where to draw the line.
It is a unique laptop - one of the few in the US from Lemote Yeedong, and based on the Loongson CPU. But it's not running Hurd - Stallman has pretty much abandoned that in favor of his favorite GNewSense. But yeah, the user will have to be an Emacs expert to find it of any use.
He was going well until he said:
That's an extremely ignorant comment. RMS has been to Argentina (and around Latin America) plenty of times without any problems. Shit happens. And it can happen in your beloved first-world New York too.
Fuck condescending comments about the third world.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
"The malvinas/falklands issue goes waaaaaay back, centuries back."
Hardly. Argentina issued initial disputes up until 1849 and once in 1885, but then accepted British sovereignty. It was only in 1941 that Argentina decided to bring it up again because as it does now, and as it did in '82 it had a weak government that desperately needed to stir nationalist sentiment to try and bolster it's standing and the Falklands is an easy target. It's really no coincidence that the issue only ever comes up again each time Argentina has a government that's managed to completely fuck up the country through political incompetence.
"But anyway, why does england claim a couple of islands on the other fucking side of the world and nobody thinks that's strange?"
Because it's been inhabited by British people since the 1640s with only a couple of breaks hundreds of years ago?
You could similarly ask why Alaska isn't Russian or Canadian when it's geographically closer to those nations than it is the US.
There's a number of ways to determine the nationality of a nation and geographical proximity is only one of these, others include who got there first, what the population wants, who won it militarily and the fact of the matter is that Britain wins out hands down in all of these - it's questionable whether the British or French got there first, but the French support the British claim regardless, the British have clearly won it militarily when Argentina tried that tactic, and the population is British, and has been for hundreds of years.
Fundamentally though, the United Nation's key point in terms of determining sovereignty is the will of the people living there. This is important, because no one should have to be ruled against their will, and whilst it does get abused (i.e. Russia pushing pro-Georgian people out of Georgian breakaway regions whilst making pro-Russian people Russian citizens to claim the will of the people) it is for the most part the most sensible option. It's also not as if Britain annexed it by pushing out an Argentine population, the British population has been there as long as any (including when the Spanish were there), the Spanish left, Argentina tried to settle elsewhere there on the island but with no British interference failed to do so because they were not prepared for the harsh weather and so gave up and left it.
The fact is the people living there are living their legitimately, their ancestors settled their legitimately, and they did not use any kind of force to push anyone else out. Everyone else that settled/tried to settle left of their own accord. So if the population is there legitimately, and the population wants to be British the case is pretty clear cut - Argentina just doesn't have an argument.
Again, Argentina's claim is about absolutely nothing more than bolstering a weak incompetent government with the time tested tactics of winning over the ignorant amongst society by using nationalism and populism.
It's also worth noting that Britain even offered to work with Argentina on oil exploration etc. around the islands in the late 90s to at least try and improve relations which it did not have to do, but the Argentine government at the time, again, having fucked up the economy, decided it needed to ramp up the populist rhetoric and pulled out going on about sovereignty.
Again, Argentina's arguments would have far more merit if it weren't for the fact that any claims continuously coincide with bad governance and decreasing popularity of the party in government at the time. When Argentinian governments have been doing well in the polls, they've not even brought up the issue, and have even sought to improve relationships, but every time an Argentinian government starts to struggle, it brings it up. It's pathetic.