Anupa Ann Joseph & Debian defamation gang

Earlier this year, the Debianism elections had only one candidate. She refuses to comment on being the wife of a male developer while insisting that she wants to promote diversity. This is disturbing because Debianism has a history of using these women as stooges to spread gossip about political rivals. As the women are wives and girlfriends, they are considered to be disposable. Nobody cares if these women burn their own reputations by spreading lies because they can replace them with other women.

Some of the most dramatic evidence of this pattern is the email from Paul Tagliamonte. At the time, he was employed in the White House under the administration of Barack Obama. Here is that email again:

Subject: 	Re: Expulsion of Jacob Appelbaum 
Date: 	Tue, 21 Jun 2016 07:37:43 -0400
From: 	Paul R. Tagliamonte <paultag@gmail.com>
To: 	Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au>
CC: 	Debian Private List <debian-private@lists.debian.org>



Seems like a thing the Press team could help coordinate.

On Jun 21, 2016 7:27 AM, "Russell Coker" <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:

http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/73441-appelbaum-banned-from-debian-events-after-sexual-misconduct-charges.html

Well the DPL has decided to go public about it after all.

In future I think it would be better to have a plan for these
things. To have an argument on this list about whether information
should be released while the DPL is sending it all to a journalist
isn't the way things should go.

On 21 June 2016 8:57:56 PM AEST, Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> wrote:
>Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
>
>On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 08:04:01PM +1000, Russell Coker wrote:
>> Mattia suggests that it's already public that he was expelled for
>anyone who
>> knows how to interpret it.
>>
>> Why can't we just state it outright instead of leaving clues in
>Wikipedia?
>> The social contract says that we won't hide problems. Why are we
>trying to
>> hide this problem?
>
>I don't think Debian has taken ownership of whatever is written on
>Wikipedia,
>but we certainly aren't hiding it: It's there on the NM page in plain
>sight.
>There's a big difference between hiding something and making an active
>effort
>to draw attention to it.
>
>The action that has been taken has been for the sake of the safety and
>well
>being of other Debian members, NOT as some kind of white-knight
>publicity
>stunt. There's no *need* to shout it from the rooftops as that does not
>further the former goal.

--
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with K-9 Mail.

In fact, we can see an example of how women are used as weapons in the press team during the Debian Christmas lynchings. That was immediately before the death of Lucy Wayland.

Laura Arjona was conscripted into the press team in August 2015.

Remember, Adrian von Bidder-Senn died on our wedding day in 2011. There is a detailed history of his life and death here. As he died in super-secret Switzerland, there is no public confirmation of the cause of death. However, we know he died in the middle of the Debian suicide cluster. During the Debian Christmas lynchings, one of the gangmasters, Chris Lamb has sent messages to various people telling them not to talk to me because of "secret crimes". At the same time they are doing these psychological tricks, Laura Arjona from the Debian Press Team sent me this message with reference to her own suicide thoughts:

Subject: Personal mail
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2018 02:15:17 +0100
From: Laura Arjona Reina <larjona@debian.org>
To: Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro>

Daniel

This is a personal mail.

I'm very worried about you, your feelings and your health.

I would like to have a calm meeting with you (if you also want) and listen and maybe try to mediate but I really cannot these days; I'm in the middle of family visits. Also there is the language barrier (I'm much worse at listening/speaking that writing English). And my brain mostly in another place.

But I fear something bad (worse) happens to you or to any of the people involved in the situation.

She was right about that: Adrian von Bidder-Senn had died on our wedding day, the email was sent on the anniversary of Ian Murdock's suicide and Lucy Wayland died four weeks after Laura sent the email.

I probably should have seen this much earlier but I'm bad at that, and everything happens at a speed that is very hard for me to follow. But your last mail to -project triggered an alarm in me. I know that hackers' world is very fragile and even without knowing them I felt deeply sorry for A.Swartz and Ian Murdock, maybe because I've had that bad temptation of finishing with everything several times in my life, and also I've seen people in that situation too (but thanks God they/we managed to stay alive after all). 
Please, stay alive and look for a safe place where brain can calm down and stop engaging in blue/black thoughts.

I am not a professional and can only talk about what worked in my case and the 2 other 'crisis' I've been witness.

I know it's difficult to escape from the pain, from how we see things, from those blue/black thoughts.  OTOH try to calm down, switch context (e.g. stop any contact with the persons involved in the pain) and avoid the things that trigger bad thoughts some times help. Not stay alone much time, even not very close friends may be better than staying alone. Some times professional aid is needed (at least a general doctor and a psycholog were able to help me in recovering sleep, removing some black thoughts or fears, and become to a calmer situation in which my brain and soul work better).

Laura's arguments are very similar to the tricks Jeffrey Epstein used to mind-fuck his victims into silence. People have plagiarised my work and failed to give me equal credit for it. Victims have a right to assert ownership of our work and stop plagiarism taking place.

But most of these women have never contributed any code to free software projects like Debian so they simply don't get the point about the plagiarism.

The comparison to Jeffrey Epstein's psychological tricks is particularly relevant because we have the case of Jeremy Bicha, who is a registered sex offender, being a part of the Debianism cult for more than ten years.

I know our relationship is not of friendship in a traditional way (we don't know in person, never talked about private life for example) and I don't know even if you would trust in my words. I hope you receive them as I send: sincere, trying to empathise with whatever you are feeling, and just to tell that personal safety is first and please try to keep yourself alive and calm. No matter how difficult is the situation, with time and maybe third party help it can be improved.

I've offered my house several times as working space for a web team sprint that never happened. I've also invited some (very few) people to stay here if they want to visit me or Madrid. I extend this offer to you and your family. I can grant different topics of conversation and humble day to day life that may help to just take a break. My kid is 9 years old but good at chess (and soccer and videogames). I'm good at cooking and can share some recipes. Here's sunny, too, and that usually helps, too.

I don't know what else to say, except "take care", and "if I don't answer further mails it means probably that I'm far from phone and busy with family, but you are in my mind and I hope we can talk when I am back".

Kind regards
-- 
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona
Sent with K-9 mail

At the time I received that email, I had already known for some weeks that people had been encouraged to play psychological tricks on me. However, I could also see the possibility that Laura's email was completely innocent. I could also see a third possibility, that is, the possibility that while Laura may have thought she was sending the email in good faith, the people who control her may have been using her to lure me into a discussion that could be dangerous for one or both of us. While it sounds paranoid, that is exactly how I've seen these groups using women over and over again over the years.

When we talk about diversity we need to look at the facts. We have seen numerous cases over the years where women are used and exploited for the purposes of spreading defamation and blackmailing male developers.

What about the companies that employ people to engage in Debianism? If the controlling companies are not employing women in the first place, why should women work on Debianism for free?

One of those companies is Freexian. They publicly declare how much money they pay their developers. This comment is fascinating:

The rate offered to paid contributors is the same for all (75 EUR/hour), it’s based on a correct rate for independent contractors in western Europe. If the rate is very high for your own country, then be happy to be able to invoice Freexian at this rate and use this opportunity to work less (for money) and contribute more to Debian on your (now copious) free time.

Raphael Hertzog is telling us that he pays people the same salary whether they are located in France or in India. Does the same parity hold true for gender? Does every woman receive the same payment as every man?

They have a team list on their web site. They put the title Debian Developer next to every team member. Does that mean every Debian Developer is paid the same, regardless of whether they are a man or a woman? As we already discussed, one of the two women is actually the wife of Raphael Hertzog but when she applied for her Debian Developer title she used a different name and her husband wrote the advocacy without declaring the relationship. The other woman in the team list is Anupa Ann Joseph from India.

 

Is Anupa Ann Joseph her real name? We have seen some women in the Debianism cult using their maiden name or pseudonyms to conceal their romances and conflicts of interest. Examples include the case of Sophie Hertzog Brun's application to be a Debian Developer using her maiden name and the French government employee Amandine "cryptie" Jambert.

Remember Galia Mancheva's abuse report. The FSFE misfits sacked all the women as soon as they asked about equal pay:

I took FSFE to court. This is my story ... A female colleague and me had dared to discuss wage transparency and gender pay gap in the office. ... our boss Matthias was beyond furious ... “there will be consequences” ... My aforementioned female colleague, who had also backed me up, was fired just a few days later. ... fired all the full-time women in the office in the two months leading up to the elections ... He even texted telling me I should answer my phone, for my own better. Even after my lawyer warned him to terminate all attempts to communicate with me and send someone else to pick up my work laptop, he came in person to my house, and was very irritated that I was not alone.

If Sruthi Chandran insists on making diversity the pillar of her election campaign then we need to make a laser focus on the hiring decisions and the firing decisions of the controlling corporations who suffocate Debianism today. In most organisations, the work history of employees and volunteers is private but in Debianism it is all public. The Debian Publicity Team gangsters have taken a key role in publicly humiliating volunteers and our families so it becomes particularly relevant to look at the credibility of the people in that gang.

In 2018, the Indians organised an event Debutsav Kochi 2018 and they recruited a new girl, Anupa Ann Joseph. They helped Anupa use Debian for her job. During the pandemic, Anupa volunteered to do remote work in the fully online DebConf20. She was given an account (aaj) on Salsa, the Git hosting service. In November 2020, also during the pandemic, there was a MiniDebConf Online Gaming Edition. At this point, Anupa Ann Joseph became part of the Debian Publicity Team, that is, the defamation gang.

Most of the time, when new developers get involved in Debianism, their goal is to create a package or improve some of the tools in Debian itself.

Anupa Ann Joseph appears to express no interest in such technical work. We need to be suspicious when a woman wants to join Debian only to join a team known for spreading gossip. Somebody may be controlling the woman and planning to use her as a cyberweapon.

Looking at Debian Publicity Team mailing list archives from that time we see other people who volunteered to join but we don't see how Anupa Ann Joseph joined.

In January 2021, there was a MiniDebConf India (schedule) where we can see Anupa Ann Joseph gave the opening address but there is not a lot of detail about what she actually does. Abraham Raji participated in multiple sessions, he subsequently died at DebConf23.

21 March 2021, Molly de Blanc used her former employer edX email address to start a hate campaign against Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) under the guise of an "open letter" on Github. Link to the initial commit using the edX.org address. Molly's vendetta backfired. The Github activity logs allowed us to see that various people like Molly de Blanc and Neil McGovern at GNOME and Elena Hashman at IBM Red Hat spend an enormous amount of time on this crap while real developers are doing our work, fixing problems for real customers. Human rights activists set up a rival petition to support Dr Stallman's dignity as a human and it got far more signatures than Molly de Blanc's hate campaign. In the end, GNOME Foundation decided to terminate both Molly de Blanc and Neil McGovern. In fact, pretty much every woman like Molly de Blanc is used and thrown away like this. If you want to know the future of Anupa Ann Joseph, look at this tweet from Molly de Blanc:

Will the day come when Anupa Ann Joseph is used up and discarded like Molly de Blanc?

Later in 2021, we can see that Donald Norwood was used to spread defamation and libel under the name of the Debian press team. He was subsequently removed from the team.

We can browse her public history in Git (Salsa). The earliest commit it shows us was on 15 May 2023 in the DebConf23 repository. Most of her commits are for the Debian micronews repository and they look like this:

commit 285a2280c465fb58549d6155ac663c71e9b4afbd
Author: Anupa Ann Joseph 
Date:   Wed Aug 30 09:13:44 2023 +0200

    Confirmed events for DebConf23 is on our website https://debconf23.debconf.org/talks/ #debian #debconf #freesoftware #dc23 #debconf23 #kochi #debconfkochi #debianindia

diff --git a/content/2023/08/1693386801.md b/content/2023/08/1693386801.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..10889b9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/2023/08/1693386801.md
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+Title: Confirmed events for DebConf23 is on our website https://debconf23.debconf.org/talks/ #debian #debconf #freesoftware #dc23 #debconf23 #kochi #debconfkochi #debianindia
+Slug: 1693386801
+Date: 2023-08-30 09:13
+Author: Anupa Ann Joseph
+Status: published
+
+Confirmed events for DebConf23 is on our website [https://debconf23.debconf.org/talks/](https://debconf23.debconf.org/talks/) #debian #debconf #freesoftware #dc23 #debconf23 #kochi #debconfkochi #debianindia

Many organisations are now giving payments to influencers and similar people who promote their products or services on social control media.

There are two key differences between the work done by regular influencers and the work being done by Anupa Ann Joseph.

First of all, the regular influencers normally create their own content spontaneously. Looking at all the announcements Anupa Ann Joseph has committed, she is making tweets about other peoples' speeches and content.

Secondly, the regular influencers normally have thousands of their own followers. They help bring new followers to a brand. Anupa Ann Joseph is sending tweets to people who already follow Debian directly.

Therefore, on both counts, Anupa Ann Joseph does not add any value. She is just doing a chore, cutting and pasting announcements from other people into an existing group of followers and she is receiving huge benefits in return for work.

In January 2022, Anupa Ann Joseph submits a request to be a Debian Developer. We can browse her request and advocacies in the mailing list archive:

I would like to apply to change my status in Debian to Debian Developer, non-uploading. I have been part of the Debian community for past 3 years. I have worked on organizing the local track in DebConf 20 and DebConf 21, volunteered in the debian-publicity team for MiniDebConf Gaming edition and MiniDebConf India. Organized MiniDebConf India 2021, and also organized Debian release parties locally for Buster release and online for Bullseye release. I would like to be able to contribute more towards publicizing Debian in India and strengthen the diversity in community, it will also help us organize DebConf India.

For real developers, male or female, the "non-uploading" status is a sham that makes them feel inferior to the gangmasters. A lot of the women in the Debianism cult have been "parked" with this "non-uploading"/"non-developing Developer" status.

This dubious stratification of volunteers reduces the incentive for the women to go further in the development of their technical skills. Many of the people given this status simply languish at this level and never progress to becoming a "real" Debian Developer, whatever that means today. As a non-developing developer, they get a minor certificate they can use for job hunting and they don't try to progress any further.

Her first advocacy is from Laura Arjona Reina. We already examined the role of Laura Arjona Reina in blackmailing other women. From my earlier report about transgender threats to transgender deaths:

Laura: ... we are considering requesting a rejection of your application to the bursaries team.

Laura: ... Sadly, time is short, so we kindly request you to reply to this message as soon as possible, so the bursaries processing can be unblocked.

Here are the comments Laura Arjona Reina wrote for Anupa Ann Joseph:

I have worked with Anupa Ann Joseph on DebConf and MiniDebConf publicity, and also other publicity tasks since September 2020 and I consider them as having sufficient technical competence and sufficient social knowledge of the project.

Sruthi Chandran and Pirate Praveen are the other two people who wrote advocacies for Anupa Ann Joseph. Remember that Sruthi Chandran only became a Debian Developer herself when she received an advocacy from her husband, Pirate Praveen. Therefore, those are not really two independent advocacies.

I have worked with Anupa Ann Joseph on organizing Debian Release parties, online Debian conferences (minidebconfs and DebConfs), and preparing a successful bid for DebConf in India, for many years and I consider her as having sufficient technical competence.

She also coordinated printing and shipping T shirts for these events.

They all make reference to her "technical competence". When male developers apply to have the same recognition, they are expected to publish copies of their source code to prove their technical competence. In the case of Anupa Ann Joseph, we are being asked to trust that she has technical competence without seeing the code anywhere.

In fact, look at the story of Phil Wyett. He spent many years publishing his Debian packages and they rudely refused to recognise his status as a joint author on the list of Debian Developers. All of his packages can be found using contributors.debian.org.

If some random girl in India uses her account on social control media to spread rumours about Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) or some other senior male developer, nobody is going to pay any attention to that girl. If you give the girl a big title like Debian Developer then it makes her gossip look more important. But gossip is still gossip, no matter how many titles the girls are giving themselves.

Look past the Debian Developer title and remember this is just one of millions of twenty-something year-old girls in India who have never published any source code.

When you go to the full list of people known to contributors.debian.org and search for the name Anupa you don't find her at all. She is like a ghost.

When other volunteers ask for funding to travel to DebConf, the bursaries team usually wants to look at contributors.debian.org to find their history and decide if the funding is justified. Yet this ghost has received numerous free trips without her name being listed there at all.

If Anupa Ann Joseph was listed on contributors.debian.org we would be able to look there and see a direct link to her Salsa profile, we could browse her history in Git and we would see the cut-and-paste social media posts and nothing else. It seems to be better for her if people can't find a direct link to that activity in the usual place.

There are other ways we can try to find evidence of her participation, constructing a direct link to her username on contributors.debian.org, which currently gives a "Page not found" error or looking at for example, this DDPortfolio report.

While they were considering her request to have her name on the list of Debian Developers, they brought her from India to Kosovo for DebConf22. She was not a speaker and her name is only listed as a participant in a discussion with other Indians about the next DebConf. We can look at the video to see if her travel expenses were justified. In fact, two of the men do most of the talking in that session.

Finally, after all that travel and whatever else, in October 2022 they announced she had ingratiated herself to the group sufficiently to use the non-Developing Debian Developer title.

After her name was added to the list of Debian Developers, Anupa Ann Joseph was given funding for DebConf23 in India. She only participated in one session, where other people are talking about where to travel for the next two DebConfs.

In June 2024, Jean-Pierre Giraud was used to spread defamation and a falsified judgment about another volunteer, myself, competing in the European Parliament elections.

In 2024, at DebConf24 in South Korea, we do not find any speaker profile for Anupa Ann Joseph.

On 11 September 2024, the Wayback Machine captures the first snapshot of the team page for Freexian. We can see Anupa Ann Joseph is listed near the top beside Sophie Hertzog Brun who is actually the wife of Raphael Hertzog.

During the current Debianism elections, people have been talking about how to get women to do work for Debian. Many people only do work for Debian if some company is paying them. The companies that pay those people haven't chosen to employ many women. When they do employ women, those companies have a tendency to hire their wives and girlfriends.

Voting for Sruthi Chandran and her hot air about diversity does not change the way all these other companies decide which women, if any, to employ.

Once again, does Raphael Hertzog really pay the Indian girl Anupa Ann Joseph EUR 75 per hour as he promised when he launched his business? Or is there some reason this girl is different from the male Debian Developers?

Going back to the death of Adrian von Bidder-Senn, we can see that his wife, Diana von Bidder, also works in computing. Why didn't they ever try to make her a Debian Developer like the other wives? It looks like she has a PhD and therefore she is not in the same category as the other women who are easier for the men to control. On top of that, they prefer to recruit "female developers" while they are still single, young and naive about their status in the workforce. Married women and women with children are totally invisible to these internship programs.

Was Anupa Ann Joseph really a Freexian employee all along and did she receive free trips paid for out of Debian bank accounts prior to them adding her to their public staff list?

On 10 September 2024, we find her name in a Freexian report about the activity of their staff during August 2024:

Anupa attended Debian Publicity team meeting and is moderating and posting on Debian Administrators LinkedIn group.

It looks like this is the first time her name appears in a report. Therefore, it looks like Raphael Hertzog has bought an existing member of the Debian Publicity Team.

Remember, in May 2011, Raphael Hertzog bought the domain name debian-handbook.info which includes the trademark debian. Why doesn't the Debian Publicity Team publish a "Statement on Raphael Hertzog" accusing him of stealing the trademark? It seems that if you pay money to people in the Debian Publicity Team you are less likely to become a victim of defamation. This is how conspiracy and blackmail works.

In 2025, she has a DebConf25 speaker profile. We can see her in the video for the Publicity Team BoF. Anupa Ann Joseph is there to operate the computer displaying slides for the speaker. She is invited to speak once for about thirty seconds. The room is almost totally empty. Nobody cares what these people have to gossip about but we all have to pay for their flights and hotels anyway.

 

In France, young men and women compete to enter universities and find public sector jobs using a process known as the Concours, which is based on merit. We don't see that in Debian.

There are thousands of young women in France who would have been willing to do exactly the same job at DebConf25. Think about all the carbon emissions wasted when somebody is brought from India to do chores like cutting and pasting.

Looking at it from another angle, if the Freexian insiders hadn't given this Indian girl a "Debian Developer" certificate, it is very unlikely that any other free software organisation would give her conference tickets and speaking opportunities. The whole free software ecosystem has descended into farce when it comes to the status of women.

Take a moment to think about all the highly experienced men who have been removed and censored, for example, Phil Wyett, Dr Norbert Preining, Dr Jacob Appelbaum, Branden Robinson and Dr Richard Stallman (RMS). Is the young Indian girl Anupa Ann Joseph really a valid substitute for serious developers like that? Of course not.

At some point, either Anupa Ann Joseph will be in a relationship with a male developer or she will leave this nonsense because she will be in a relationship with a man who doesn't have time for Debianism. If she hangs around too long she will eventually become the subject of inappropriate gossip like Molly de Blanc.

Remember the story of the Boy who cried wolf? Each woman can only be used to attack one or two men and then she loses all her credibility. That is one reason we have this nonsense about hiding the identity of women who are used to make silly rumor-complaints about male colleauges. The fact is, after a woman has been used to start some rumors, she is cast aside and replaced with another woman.

After the men use a woman like this, in some cases, the woman simply disappears and in other cases, the woman ends up having a pregnancy with somebody and her reputation for gossip gets a reset because she is a wife now.

Look at the case of Anisa Kuci in the world of GNOME Foundation. Why did they park this girl there with an anonymous profile in the staff list? Everybody knows but nobody is allowed to say it out loud.

This isn't meant to be a report about Anupa Ann Joseph herself. This is a report about how cults like Debianism use and abuse vulnerbale women. There is nothing new about this. Anupa Ann Joseph is one of those women who appears to become quite tame, obedient, submissive and in awe of the Google employees in Debian. That is just what cults are looking for. Look at the example of the DebConf6 fight, which revolves around the rumor that Ted Walther's partner at the dinner was a prostitute. In fact, she was the local dentist.

In fact, the reference to the DebConf6 fight is no coincidence. Notice how in the case of the DebConf6 fight, it was a man who started the rumor but two women, Amaya Rodrigo Sastre and Ana Guerrero Lopez were used to spread the rumor so the men could evade responsibility. Finally, two other men, Holger Levsen and Moray Allen were worked up into a violent frenzy against the victim.

Look at it from another angle. If the DebConf25 was your own small business, would you use your own funds to pay for this girl to fly from India and operate the slide projector for you? Or would you just pay a local woman to do that task?

People are starting to raise serious ethical concerns that places in Google Summer of Code have been used to mentor the Freexian recruits. In the case of women, it is even more sinister because the Outreachy funding is coming out of Debian's own bank account.

Now have a fresh look at the way Sruthi Chandran and Molly de Blanc have been signing up various people to do various tasks. Sruthi Chandran and Molly de Blanc do not personally understand the tasks they are assigning to people. This is a huge concern for the reliability and security of the Debian software:

Subject: 	Re: Google Summer of Code 2018
Date: 	Sun, 21 Jan 2018 20:25:22 -0500
From: 	mollydb <deblanc@riseup.net>
To: 	debian-outreach@lists.debian.org

I mmissed this on the application before! We need 2-5 administrators for the application. Who else wants to be one?

Cheers,
Molly

Even the more talented interns could see that Debian had descended into a farce:

Subject: Re: Upcoming Outreachy Round
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2018 09:49:55 +0000
From: Kira Obrezkova <kiraobrezkova@gmail.com>
To: Molly de Blanc <deblanc@riseup.net>
CC: Debian Outreach Team <outreach@debian.org>

Dear Molly,

I thank you for your job during Outreachy round. At the same time I
have some feedback. The main thing I want to note is that you do your
work not so good. You haven't responded to me and also during the last
round of Outreachy you have provide almost to no response to
applicants of Outreachy FSF project. I asked some of them and they
said that you haven't helped them:
https://lists.fsf.org/archive/html/esd-translators/2018-03/index.html
. Though, you were a mentor of this project.
At the same time, I can't see where you were useful for me. You
haven't answered to me, you haven't answered to applicants. So, it
would be great if you can improve your usefulness.

At the same time, I want to thank my mentor Thorsten Alteholz. He did
a great job helping me and I was able to find a new job that fits my
interests well.

Sruthi Chandran and Molly de Blanc do not understand the tasks they are signing people up to do. How many people did they incorrectly sign up to tasks that may have negative consequences for the rest of us?

Please watch my crowdfunding video to learn more about the lawsuit in US federal court.