Bonum Certa Men Certa

Why GNU/Linux Users (and the Public at Large) Should Support Leaking/Whistleblowing Sites (Including Wikileaks)

We all need transparency to understand who and what we're truly dealing with

Video download link

[video width="480" height="340" webm="http://techrights.org/videos/wikileaks-redhat.webm"][/video]

Summary: To demonstrate the value of "scientific journalism" (a term apparently coined by Wikileaks) we take a look at Red Hat's response to embarrassing leaks (demonstrating what a scam their certification and examination programmes really are)

MANY articles and video clips have been published lately about why Julian Assange should be supported. We too published a few. Some were published earlier this month regarding extradition of a journalist (from the UK to the US), which was denied.

"Ignore the PR platitudes."This video is not about Assange and not necessarily about Wikileaks either. It's in more general terms about sites that expose the truth and reveal the degree to which powerful people try to bury and suppress the truth, usually by means of baseless and overly broad legal threats. We use the example of Red Hat, now part of IBM. Why now? Because last night Red Hat published this blog post (which I struggled to find when I recorded the above video).

As noted in the video, this is the sort of Red Hat we're dealing with in 2021:

Red Hat at GitHub



This morning we wrote about the similarities between Red Hat/IBM and Microsoft, two companies that faced government actions for monopoly abuse. They ended up colluding. Red Hat even considered selling itself to Microsoft and Microsoft reportedly stayed away for fear of more antitrust action.

Certification and examination riggedFor quite some time now we've warned about the litigious nature of Red Hat, truly compatible with that of Microsoft and IBM. This isn't really the "open org" it wants us to believe that it is. Ignore the PR platitudes. Just like the threats sent to us by law firms hired by EPO management (even late on a Friday), threats were sent to Wikileaks (in the UK apparently) later on a Friday, with a deadline window narrow enough to discourage legal consultation (it's difficult to seek lawyers during weekends as offices are shut).

The summary of the video would be something along the lines of, leaks in sites that engage in "Scientific Journalism" help society at large better understand world affairs, peeling off the many layers of PR, e.g. hegemony spin (colonialism), oligarchs as "job creators" and "philanthropists", corporations as charities/public services, and corporate-centrists being "the left".

Scientific Journalism

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