Hello everyone,
My name is Zlatin Balevsky. I was involved in the development of Freenet
sometime around 2001-2003. I've kept a relatively close eye on what's been
going on since then.
I want to say that I consider Ian Clarke / Sanity a great man, and even
though I've never met him in person, I consider him a close friend. He
gave me a very good professional recommendation when I was applying for my
job at Lime Wire LLC (you may remember there was a file-sharing P2P program
called Limewire).
Therefore, I fully support Ian's decision to look for an "offensively
racist" domain name. Ian, do not give up! It is of paramount importance
that you offend as many people as possible! You DA MAN!
Thank you for your attention.
Zlatin Balevsky
P.S. Since I like to practice what I preach, I have a tweet on my Twitter
timeline where I expose some seriously evil things about the Invisible
Internet Project ("I2P" for short). As you may already guess, I do my best
to offend as many people as possible in the pastebin linked from that
tweet. I'm not going to post a direct link to the tweet just so I don't
trip some mailing list safeguard.
On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 5:38 PM craig mcgee <
craig.mc...@guilt-management.org.uk> wrote:
> I have to admit I was confused by the statement Ian made. Joke or not, it
> wasn't funny.
> but this is as far as I will go on the matter as I don't wish to get
> involved in the freenet dispute.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Russell Glenn <rusgl...@swismail.com>
> *To:* devl@freenetproject.org
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 22, 2023 3:33 PM
> *Subject:* Racist statement of Ian Clarke on this list
>
> Mr. Ian Clarke,
>
> when discussing your acquisition of a secondary domain,
> "freenet.org", for your highly controversial unilateral decision
> to rewrite the Freenet Project which has always been hosted
> on "freenetproject.org", you said the following:
>
> > Yeah, all of the provocatively racist domain names were taken anyway.
>
> Notice that this is a VERBATIM quote, and the email of yours did
> not contain ANY other content, nothing to reduce the gravity of
> this statement; the gravity of which cannot be reduced anyway.
> Proof: https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg55336.html
>
> As a black person, but not only as such, I inform you that racism
> is NOT tolerable by any means whatsoever on this planet and will
> NEVER be.
>
> And before you attempt to dismiss this as a joke:
> Millions of people died due to racism.
> You, especially as a white person, are not entitled to joke about that.
> Nobody is.
>
> And this piles onto the provable falsehoods and other insults you have
> produced on this list in the previous days.
>
> Therefore, it is my duty to join the ranks of people who request
> you to:
> * immediately step down as leader of the Freenet Project and
> * leave its board and
> * transfer ownership of the domains to the Freenet developer team and
> * transfer ownership of all other related accounts and
> * cease to use the name "Freenet" for any of your new projects.
>
> Racists, or those who joke about racism, do not belong into positions
> where power is wielded.
>
> As you have failed to prove that the board of the project is still
> constructed of active members of the community,
> and not of those who have been inactive for decades as Mr. Daigniere
> stated,
> I join those who request leadership is transferred to the
> leading developer.
> To my knowledge, this is Mr. Babenhauserheide.
>
> Should he not accept the position, I would vouch for the previous lead
> developer Mr. Dougherty, or anyone of the choice of the two.
>
> Finally, I urgently implore anyone who reads this email to state
> their support. We must stand united against racism.
>
> - Russell Glenn
>
>
