Close friends of Bill Gates have partial ownership of the media outlet that started this whole thing and continues to defame Richard Stallman (even several times so far this week)

Last month: James Murdoch Buys a Stake in Vice Media

Six years ago: Rupert Murdoch firm dips into hipsters' bible with $70m stake in Vice

Summary: The media that caused Dr. Stallman to lose his place at MIT and also at the FSF (which he had founded) still libels him, having just -- yet again -- wrongly asserted that Stallman "defended" the person whom he actually called "serial rapist"

THE Bill Gates-Epstein scandal is nowadays treated by media like "old news". As if there's "nothing to see here, people, move along..."

Neither Gates nor Epstein are 'friends' with Stallman (or anyone in the Free software movement), yet guess who the media was so eager to connect to paedophilia. Is this fair? Is this real journalism?

We've become accustomed to 'conspiracies of silence' (instructions not to cover, akin to DSMA-Notice) in mainstream media; we've seen that in European Patent Office (EPO) coverage, more so in the António Campinos days (under Battistelli the media did occasionally cover the scandals).

"Neither Gates nor Epstein are 'friends' with Stallman (or anyone in the Free software movement), yet guess who the media was so eager to connect to paedophilia."We have plenty of things we can write about, but it would be morally wrong to leave the injustices behind. "Until then," as one reader put it, "it would be good to focus on the Gates Epstein connection. I think you hit it when you said Gates shuffled money to Epstein to ruin the MIT Media Lab and FSF. You should get some details and get in touch with other journalists who are wondering why Gates had anything to do with Epstein. A pretty good explanation is that Gates wanted to destroy his most effective idealogical competitor and eliminate the home of the One Laptop Per Child project, both of which would send a strong signal to the academic community that resistance is futile."

We decided to have a chat with Richard Stallman. It's a sensitive subject, but we were eager to bring up the subject, seeing that the media was doing so anyway.

This thing was published less than 2 days ago. VICE (Murdoch) continues to help distract from what Bill Gates did with Epstein -- not just in prison but also in MIT. Hours ago the same slander reached "VICE UK" and it's already spreading to other sites. "Now, Motherboard reports..." (it's another 'branch' of VICE). And VICE's defamation of Stallman continues (never mind calling him "open source" something -- which in itself is like an insult): "The fallout was swift. MIT Media Lab leader Joichi Ito resigned after it came out that he’d helped hide the donations, and famed open source advocate Richard Stallman left as well after defending Epstein’s sex trafficking on an MIT listserv."

He did NOT defend that! He NEVER did. One might add that the article shows or reveals a degree of double standards as well. It does, after all, seem like a "race to the bottom" (how to associate with Epstein a lot of people, except Gates). As one person put it:

this really isnt entirely reasonable.

they keep going after smaller and smaller offenses, this isnt zero tolerance policy it is -1, -2, -3 policy.

i can understand a few people not wanting to take this class. but why is everything (EVERYTHING) a fire-able offense? a bunch of people decide to hold signs, and now theyre in charge of everybody else? why dont more people think thats a bit nuts? (i realise theyre afraid to say anything.)

“im unhappy, fire this guy.”

“why?”

“he dealt with a bad man. then he had the nerve to say so.”

he sounded like he was being apologetic for it, like a disclaimer.

maybe it was a stupid move. why does every conversation start with "im going to disrupt the campus until you fire someone?"

why the fuck do we pretend an enlightened society is one where we have to have run such a question through a series of fucking political experts just to ask a simple fucking question without having your entire life ruined out of spite?

if this was only happening to bad people-- hey, whatever. but its very clear this can happen over so many misunderstandings and mischaracterisations, it becomes nearly arbitrary.

thats injustice, but also its stupid. this is just people pushing people around. thats got to stop sooner or later, because sooner or later people are going to realise this is either bullshit, or close enough. please, stop the insanity while there are still people with jobs left to do them.

when do people decide theres been enough mob justice and one-sided conversations demanding hasty responses and no deliberation? we arent there yet? really? nope, i guess not. the solution to everything is “youre fired.” really, thats the only option, the only tool available. its that or everybody holds signs forever and bother everybody who disagrees.

well, fuck. i guess theres no society left then. good job, everybody. pat yourselves on the back for ending the entire concept of society itself. supposedly there is only mobs and mob justice, this is how we do everything now.

 As Tom Grz put it: "Can we fire Bill Gates? No more interviews perhaps?"

One reader from Germany, citing the FSFE's controversial statement ("Richard Stallman resigns as president of the Free Software Foundation"), wrote to us to say:

one wrong tweet... Elon Musk needs to go as CEO of Tesla...

one wrong Mail... Stallman needs to go...

who's next?

what do you think? (maybe the NSA knows already but would like to know as well X-D)

In the case of Stallman, his mail was distorted and he was slandered in the media. We still have this almost-complete list of blog posts and press 'reports' about it (mostly perpetuating the lie, but there are some rebuttals among those too). For quite some time we said that Techrights would do a detailed dissection of this slander campaign (once it has reached a halt, including that dissent from a couple dozen GNU people). One IRC regular of ours looked closely at these and examined further what had happened. Yesterday he reported "no new findings" and said he "just searched a little from the MIT angle."

"There were protesters against MIT president, there are videos in twitterland, so in that context Selam's timely article really paints itself as a smokescreen that HAD to be done hastily [and] that explains even why she can't answer to the simple argument why she didn't try to civilly discuss it with RMS but hastily jumped or should I say stepped forward... that's also why the last few days seeing Selam's article from that general (MIT damage control angle) I [was] getting suspicious even for the hot lady photo and in that context the Selam's really provocative article makes perfect sense... a diversion was needed fast... that's why I think that essentially RMS was fired from MIT in a pretext that MIT's board could leverage a little its really bad position... so basically the Selam initiative helped both in damage control and also helped change the weboshphere agenda... and you know what's more serious than discussing about Epstein MIT laundry.... discussing about a pedophile that was exposed and MIT pushed him out."

Was Stallman more of a scapegoat than anything? Why did Selam choose VICE to leak E-mails to (to be distorted)? It's partly owned by a very close friend of Bill Gates, whose MIT scandal had unfolded days if not weeks prior.

We've been chatting with Stallman about this and may elaborate with his input in a future part/sequel. ⬆