Avicenna did publicly mention the email TAM allegation before oolon decided to make his 26th August post, accusing the slymepit of sending it.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/amilliongod ... l-justice/
So, looking at the timeline, there's almost two weeks between the time Avicenna mentioned the email and the point that oolon brought it up again, and in that time window it was not mentioned
once here on the pit?
But it
has to be the slymepit's fault because, well, anything bad that happens is always associated with the slymepit - and we know that because you can't prove that all incidents of online evil aren't associated with the slymepit!
Unfortunately, because they've managed to define basic skepticism as a marker of evil, we are left with this kind of fundie-level logic.
I think Sanderson was mistaken, not because he mentioned oolons lie, but because he apologised for doing so.
Look at oolon crowing on that thread - implying he was right all along and that Sanderson's apology is proof of that fact.
Essentially oolon is saying: "Sanderson is bad because his tweet helped to spread a lie" - and ignoring the fact that the lie was written by oolon himself.
It reminds me of that scene in 'The Simpsons' where Sideshow Bob campaigns against Mayor Quimby - "
who even released Sideshow Bob, a man twice convicted of attempted murder"... ..."
Vote Sideshow Bob for Mayor!"
[youtube]Vey7GKNpl4Q[/youtube]
If you read the comments on that thread you'll notice that there while it is blindingly obvious that Sanderson's source was oolon's butterflies and wheels comment, there is absolutely no sense that the commenters - or indeed the blog author Avicenna - see anything wrong with oolon spreading a rumor about accusations being made about Avicenna.
Avicenna himself does himself no favors in my eyes by blatantly lying about the situation - "quoting" things from the slymepit that haven't been said here and seemingly accepting any unevidenced charge against us without the slightest hesitation.
And if he finds lying so easy they why on earth should we accept the rest of his testimony about even receiving an email in the first place - or at the very least, his description of him reporting accusations to the authorities where he is currently working and the subsequent two week emergency security procedures that resulted.
Frankly, I don't buy his story, and for a very simple set of reasons.
Avicenna is pseudonymous.
He is currently working in India, I guess as part of his medical training - a placement in a charity that deals with womens health issues.
Are we supposed to believe that his current employers are glued to his blog and twitter account and are likely to believe everything that is written about him - by any anonymous online individual?
And that they would instigate a two week investigation beacuse of an anonymous accusation against a pseudonymous online name, involving a time period they could verify in a second?
(Remember, Avicenna was working at their clinic in India at the time the allegations concern.)
Lets go back again to the beginning.
It starts with Avicenna's post about the morewillbenamed tumblr blog:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/amilliongod ... waking-up/
It started with a kiss… I mean a Tumblr account which posted “Anonymous†claims about sexual harassment within atheism and skepticism. But the problem here was that anyone could make a claim.
“Avicenna Groped me at CONvergence!â€
See it’s that easy.
So, the first allegation against Avicenna - comes from Avicenna himself!
It's obviously a hypothetical, presumably chosen as one that cannot possibly be used against him in future.
He also mentions another hypothetical allegation about misconduct at TAM - again seemingly chosen as a safe example.
"(I use it as an example as I have never been to TAM and/or any other skeptic/atheist conference)"
The article linked, from the 8th of August, is rather incoherent - mixing up both the fact that anonymous accusations are easy to make, along with some kind of argument that they are useful, and a bit of SJW pro-feminist preening from Avicenna talking about how he gets hit upon by women who sleep on his couch and are "amazed that I didn’t sleep with them. That was their method of “hitting†on me. Why didn’t it work? Because fucking hell! That’s rape!"
He gets two comments on this article - both complaining that a linked picture wont load!
So nothing happens publicly until the Skeptical Justice post of the 13th of August.
Here Avicenna says the following:
I received an e-mail falsely accusing me of sexual harassment and rape at TAM 2013. More long term readers will know I have been ill for the past few days and so missed out on all the lovely too and fro. I don’t have any opinions on that. I do know that my detractors sent in an allegation that I consider stupid.
It’s simple. I was not at TAM. I have never been to TAM. I was not even in the USA and if asked to demonstrate so I can post pictures of my Passport which will have travel stamps and dates. In short? I have an alibi courtesy of the governments of the UK and India and such an allegation is blatantly stupid.
But remind me again? Why should I have any discourse with such people. You see, the reason for this was no to silence me. No that is just a by product of their dickery. It’s to poison the well. Oh look, people are making accusations. We can do the same! Hur Hur Hur! Aren’t we clever.
You aren’t. You are a fucking well poisoner. You set out specifically to make a faux accusation either knowing it would force me offline (since posting my passport would entail losing my anonymity) and ironically silencing one of the few voices from the ex-hindu atheist movement. Hurray for Diversity Eh? Or the other outcome is that you will dangle my defence as “SEE! YOUR ACCUSATIONS ARE LIKE MINE!â€.
If that’s the case then I recant my defence. You can run around telling people that I am the second coming of goddamn Hitler if it fucking pleases you. If I can survive the worst India’s thrown at me, then I can survive these silly little accusations. Sure women will be more cautious around me, but if that’s the price we have to pay for women to be secure and come out of their hiding place and become equals in the atheist and skeptic movement then it’s a rather small price. But it’s a price that I will have to pay because the anti-FTB brigade decided to poison the well.
But here is the thing. Most of my readers know I have NEVER been to any conference. Most don’t know what I look like (hence the requests for that joke erotic calendar) and most know that I am too busy to be a direct participant. So to make such a claim is quite indicative of how horrid some of the members of the anti-FTB anti-A+ group are.
I'm sorry but my spidey sense is all a tinglin'.
Five days prior to this post he mentions 'safe' hypotheticals that includes allegations about an incident at TAM.
He then receives an email that accuses him of the very same thing - and he doesn't mention the fact that he himself talked about the very same incident as a hypothetical false accusation just five days previously?
Despite this, he seems to regard the false allegation as a kind of cross he has to carry,
"Sure women will be more cautious around me, but if that’s the price we have to pay for women to be secure and come out of their hiding place and become equals in the atheist and skeptic movement then it’s a rather small price. But it’s a price that I will have to pay because the anti-FTB brigade decided to poison the well."
In other words, he is repeating the SJW line that the only consequence of false rape accusations is that some women may be a little cautious around him at conferences.
And yet what happens two weeks later?
oolon, on his usual quest to accuse the slymepit of every possible example of online evil, decides to accuse us of making allegations against Avicenna.
The response from Avicenna?
Nothing.
A day later Sanderson tweets a link to oolons accusation - including the word "false" in his tweet.
Suddenly Avicenna decides we are at Defcon4 - he goes back to his email and suddenly discovers another email accusation about TAM was sent at the same time as the previous one, and therefore he decides to inform his employers. From being a stupid hypothetical false allegation just a couple of weeks before (and presumably even just one day before, given the fact that Avicenna then, and now, thinks oolons mention of it is not a problem) we suddenly have a transformation into the most serious thing ever.
We can only guess at the steps his employers took once they heard about Richard Sanderson's tweet but I'm pretty sure it involved plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and twenty-seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, to be used as evidence against him. No doubt including pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.
Who the fuck brings their employers attention to private emails by obvious trolls - in particular trolls making easy to refute allegations about a pseudonymous internet name?
I would be shocked if his employers are even aware 'Avicenna' is the same person as their employee (or if they ever heard of Avicenna in the first place - he is just not that interesting.)
You might, at this point, guess that I'm more than a little suspicious about Avicenna's story. :snooty:
