TODAY we press on with a series long in the making ("EPO Bundestagate") and we're mostly leaving behind the FSF affairs, kindly reminding readers that the mainstream/corporate/'tech' (Big Tech-funded) media keeps lying about the whole thing. RMS is back to the FSF and he's staying there, also at a public (as in public-facing) capacity. DEAL WITH IT.

"As a quick recap, there's speculation that Gates wants a whole lot of noise about him, especially nonfactual nonsense. Because it drowns out the signal, such as his strong connections to Epstein, among other scandalous things."We're meanwhile exploring some political affairs at the level of technology, seeing that there has been lots of meddling in recent years. We wrote about some examples a couple of days ago; Bill Gates has long been meddling in the US government. We wrote a lot more about this in the Obama days, not that Trump has truly changed anything. What's interesting is that according to our South/Latin American reader -- a very longtime reader -- there seems to be meddling in America as a whole and the subject is worth debating. "Techrights' associate (TA from now on) opinion about Gates and his will to be in the middle of all this is valid," the reader told us. "yet it has its twists."

As a quick recap, there's speculation that Gates wants a whole lot of noise about him, especially nonfactual nonsense. Because it drowns out the signal, such as his strong connections to Epstein, among other scandalous things. He could really use a distraction. Factual criticism and strong critics pose a threat to him (potential re-arrest and FBI investigations).

"I was trying to put the guy in a position of discomfort," our reader told us, "so this whole conspiranoia thing would be kinda collateral consequence of his actions (calling some political campaign friends to help him) while trying to defend himself. But if that's not the case, and he willingly does this, then that means active polarization: the game is no longer about anything else other than being on Gates' side or against Gates' side. That's what every right-wing political campaign is focusing on worldwide. Here we have Cristina Kirchner, let's say in a center-left position, and the right-wing is all about "if you're not with us, you're with her". So, anything you do that doesn't seem like the right-wing instantly means that you're some kind of Kirchner minion, and the media bombards the whole country with that idea. And of course that category implies lots of relations: "Kirchner = communism = corruption = the state will take your stuff = totalitarianism", and so on. It's ugly. And it's nothing new: that pattern can be found everywhere. Yet, the point is to be able to focus in a 50% game instead of having to handle multiple 15% to 25% fronts. And that is NOT "defending from revelations": that's running for a position. Which is exactly what TA says."

To sum up, partisan political tricks set the tone or pave a path to public office.

"If that's true," our reader continued, "I guess he will fail miserably. Nothing is certain, specially in these times, but I believe doing that after Trump will only make him a Trump wannabe in the eyes of everybody, and will actually work in favour of Trump the day he wants to come back. Too little, too late; Gates is now in the shadow of another more charismatic billionaire bully. So one way or another this all feels sloppy, and the guy looks more like a moron rather than some brilliant strategist."

"Whatever the case, the damage is done," the reader asserted, "look at our societies. And the means he's using only make this social-breakage industry/corporation/whatever stronger: every single operation is at the same time a social experiment that makes the next operation more likely successful, and this knowledge will still be there after Gates is long gone. That's my fear. I don't fear for RMS or the Free Software movement: that's a fight we can all fight in the same way it always was fought, with its wins and losses. That fight actually IS about "facts vs lies". But this is different. We're talking about the same tools that subjugate generations of people under debt, fear, hunger, disease, and even war. When you're hungry, the only fact is the hunger: everything else is just words. Fear has similar effects. This should be taboo tech even for some of the most ruthless people: it's basically doing deals with the devil. I can't see Gates as anything but desperate to resort to this."

To remind readers who missed the two prior 'parts', it seems like Gates may have once again hired political strategists to seed discord and divide the population. This was done before, back when we covered such things more closely.

"Adding to TA's opinion of "other interests involved"," our reader said, "I believe it's very important to understand something about the right-wing political parties. I consider myself leftist, so I could obviously tell you tons of bad stuff about the right. Yet, there's something about them that has been historically a virtue, at least in strategic terms: they ALWAYS attack in a solid block. Very rarely the right wing has the fissures and fragmentation the left constantly has. We could debate to what extent this may or may not be true, but the point is that it makes them extremely efficient in politics, even when they rarely have anything to add to the board. These days, neo-liberalism is so much in crisis that the only thing the right can do is to tell lies and generate lots of noise. Yet, they do that in unison, as they always did. So much is like that, that when TA says "pull off what happened in the 1970s but on a global scale this time", my answer is this: the 1970s actions were already on a global scale. What happened in LATAM [Latin America] was staged in the US and UK: it was Thatcher and Reagan, not some banana republic dictators. And neo-liberalism wasn't a LATAM thing but a worldwide thing. Sure, the rest of the world didn't suffered exactly the same consequences as LATAM (that's debatable actually), but they successfully destroyed communists and progressives all around the world anyway, and infected every single culture with poison, all in a coordinated way. And every crisis after that was systematically used to become stronger, no matter the social consequences. So, the stage is global, has been since a long time ago, and these people were already THAT good in what they did 50 years ago. Bill Gates is totally out of his league here IMHO."

Maybe one day more will be known about who manages the messaging directly and indirectly for Gates. We know some names (people whom he hired from Microsoft). He already hides behind proxies when responding to queries about his Epstein scandal.

"TA's correct about social control media and communications," the reader added. "The government here (centrist) is BLEEDING on the communications front (its weakest aspect so far): they have lots of communication to do, yet it goes just as a blip under the flood of noise from social media and classical mass media. I once heard somewhere a theory about how Hitler's rise to power would have been much more difficult with TVs, yet it was successful thanks to the radio. The theory was about Hitler's way of expressing himself with his body, and how he looked, and stuff like that, which differed much from the way he spoke. Whatever, I bring that up because of this: It's known that Bolsonaro is Brazil's president because of WhatsApp. And today, I'm being told, while Brazil is the country doing it the worst against COVID in the whole world, in the places of Brazil where the most people are dying Bolsonaro is doing well for the next elections. You should see the videos of gay people during the previous elections, before COVID, saying "I don't care the guy's homophobia, I'll vote for him because he doesn't lie". People are voting explicitly against their own interests; classical political (mostly economical) ideas are in crisis. And WhatsApp is in the middle of it here in LATAM. So, communication is always political, and always social control-related: the point is how to work with it. The rules seem to have changed again since the papers and the radios and the TVs. Yet, the owners didn't."

And to conclude: "It's in light of experiences like those with Bolsonaro that I wrote about (several times against) qualifying people regarding "honesty" or distance from "corruption": because that's a primitive political mindset that the right already knows how to use against their enemies, and it's very easy to polarize using that. Trump did the same: lots of people voted for him "bEcaUsE hE teLlS tHe tRuTh!!1!", and suddenly everybody else was a liar, and every thing Trump said was true no matter how lunatic it could really be. The whole 'affaire RMS' is a shining example of this; they used our morals against us, and now discord thrives in our communities. So, I don't say "let's welcome corruption" but something more like "be careful judging people, and focus on several traits at the same time instead of just a single one". It's not a solved thing to me, but I'm surely not in the "corruption" bandwagon anymore after all that."

We remind again (to all readers) that a lot the press coverage about RMS has been flawed, false, and sometimes outright defamatory. They have an agenda. So does Gates. All that rage serves to misdirect outrage and critical inquiry.

We intend to focus more on the EPO scandals in the coming days. ⬆