Bonum Certa Men Certa

Alexander Wirt, Bucha executions & Debian political prisoners

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 04, 2024

[Article 2 years old]

Reprinted with permission from disguised.work.

When we heard the news about the Bucha massacre this week, civilians bound with cable ties, executed and dumped in mass graves, we couldn't help thinking about the sinister tactics Debian uses to silence dissent.

On 5 September 2014, Don Armstrong wrote on the public debian-project mailing list that every censorship decision is notified to all Debian volunteers subscribed to debian-private:

If anything more than a warning occurs, it is announced on debian-private@, which enables Debian Developers to review the actions that listmaster@ has taken, and override them via GR.

One of the listmasters, Alexander Wirt (formorer) admits in a post on debian-private that he hasn't been following the procedure. In about 10 cases he didn't notify other volunteers on debian-private, he had to look in his sent mail folder to find the bodies:

Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2014 17:31:58 +0100
From: Alexander Wirt <formorer@debian.org>
Subject: Re: Ban for thilos.rich@aol.com posting to to 727708@bugs.debian.org
To: Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
CC: Ean Schuessler <ean@debian.org>, debian-private@lists.debian.org

... snip ...

just for curiousness I checked my sent box how many bans I raised since I got listmaster (which is more or less 5 years ago) and I raised ~10 bans, most of them temporay, in that time. I know that other listmaster raised not as "much" bans in that time. ... snip ... So please can we stop insulting listmasters about censorship, I personally find this disgusting and offending.

Wirt has commented on the censorship of Thilos Rich in the systemd debate but he has 10 skeletons in the closet that he deliberately kept hidden.

Who are these mysterious 10 people? Are we talking about Linus Torvalds, who is banned from DebConf or maybe Dr Richard Stallman?

These are political prisoners. Victims typically receive a message telling them that if they tell anybody about the ban they will be subject to public humiliation.

Dr Norbert Preining came forward publicly on 26 December 2018 and admitted being the subject of censorship. Nobody had informed debian-private when they started trying to squeeze Dr Preining into a body bag, they hoped to make him disappear anonymously, like the bodies in mass graves.

When and why are these tactics used in Debian? It usually involves questions about money. If you ask why a woman who had a shared travel history with the Debian leader received a $6,000 internship, you are almost certain to be subject to one of these secret bans/censorship too. Debian oligarchs do not want to draw any attention to these cases, not even on debian-private so they blackmail people to disappear quietly.

debian, mailing list, banned, censored

Debian Social Contract point #3: We will not hide problems

debian, mailing list, banned, censored

Debian Diversity Statement: The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone

debian, mailing list, banned, censored

Joseph Goebbels: Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

alexander wirt, formorer, debian

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Australia: Windows Fell to All-Time Low, Even Lower Than iOS
There's a good reason why next week there will be so many Microsoft layoffs
 
Links 29/06/2025: Data Breaches and Online Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/06/2025: "The Price Of Eggs" and Gemini 3D Tic Tac Toe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 28, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 28, 2025
The "News" You Saw About Canonical is Misleading, It Made Only 18 Million Dollars Last Year and Barely Paid Any Taxes
Lies are the norm these days...
Pushing Wayland Using Straw Man Arguments
phoronix.com has long promoted the talking point of "Wayland people" (for at least a decade already)
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, WebProNews, and Google News Boosting Slopfarms as 'News'
People who don't recognise the slopfarms and don't know which sites are fake would struggle to understand what's really going on
Links 28/06/2025: Hardware/GPU Wars, GAFAM Throws Money (Borrowed Cash) at Hopeless Slop Pipe Dream
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/06/2025: Shellshock and Network UPS Tools
Links for the day
Links 28/06/2025: The Age of Integrity and FreeBSD Foundation Added John Baldwin as Board Member
Links for the day
Fedora 44
IBM now does to Fedora what it did to RHEL
Microsoft Already Shaved Off Costs Anywhere It Could. It Was Not Enough.
Office and Windows aren't "selling" (licences) like they used to
Scheduled Maintenance Next Week
Our community is alive and well
BetaNews: We're Publishing LLM Slop About LLM Slop
Beta version of a slopfarm?
3-Month Updates on Our Complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
In short, the complaint remains open, updated, and is advancing
IBM Red States Hat (Project 2025): Our "New Thing" Replaces This "Old Thing"
The new replaces the old. That's how IBM frames it.
Start X
Just because something is old does not mean it is bad
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, Google News Slopfarms, and Linux Journal (LJ)
Today we take a quick look at 3 slopfarms
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 27, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 27, 2025
Links 28/06/2025: "CC Signals" Virtue-Signals to Slop Ponzi Schemes, North Korea Aims for Tourism
Links for the day
Links 27/06/2025: International Tensions and Contentions Over Plagiarism Perfumed as "Hey Hi" and "Fair Use"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: Poetry and Censorship by Social Control Media Centralisation
Links for the day
Links 27/06/2025: Journalists Under Fire and Microsoft Has Serious Slop Problems
Links for the day
X is Dying, But Not XServer/X11. Twitter X.com is Dying.
People or businesses or government officials (and departments) that still rely on Social Control Media are playing Russian Roulette with their future online
Wayland is About Less Choice, About Removing Choices, It's Not About Freedom
IBM insists that it cares about "diversity"
Keeping Things Accessible
Gemini Protocol seems to be growing
Escaping Colonialism (or 'Hegemony') Requires Abandoning GAFAM, Microsoft in Particular
Europe is already in the process of abandoning Microsoft
Microsoft Will Shut Down More Studios This Week, Its Media Operatives Will Tell Lies About the Magnitude of the Shutdowns and Layoffs (They Always Do)
Many people who get counted as "workforce" are "temps" or similar
Not Much Better Than LLM Slop: Linux Foundation-Funded 'News' Site Writes Linux Foundation 'News', Composed by Linux Foundation Operative, Quoting Linux Foundation Staff
...they get paid (sponsored) to produce this spam. Then they call it "journalism".
What Linux Foundation 'Research' is: Paid Marketing
What is Linux Foundation 'Research'?
Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 22x) 'Bought' by Microsoft and Microsoft Exceeded Sponsorship Limits by Giving Double the Maximum Permitted Amount
When people get bribed they tend to forget how to utter a simple word: "No."
No, IBM Does Not Care About People With Disabilities
"Aktion T4" did not seem to bother Watson
Microsoft's Financial Problems Mean Shutdowns, Not Just Mass Layoffs
If the original rumour is true, then expect almost 30,000 Microsoft workers to be let go this year
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 26, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 26, 2025
The Netherlands: GNU/Linux Measured at All-Time High
Are any Dutch cities going to announce dumping Microsoft?
Gemini Links 27/06/2025: "Interstitial Existence" and Autocorrect
Links for the day