September 2018 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Unz Review: The Vineyard Saker re: Nazi on Christian action in Ukraine
by Razer 28 Sep '18

28 Sep '18

The abomination of desolation standing in the holy place The Saker 28 Sept 2018 Warning: the following text was written specifically to help Christians make sense of the “hijacked vocabulary” used in the discussion of the current attempts by the Empire to take control of the Orthodox people of the Ukraine. For atheists/agnostics this discussion will offer just some irrelevant and boring mumbo-jumbo with no relevance to the lofty realms of enlightened modern positivism. Introduction The latest move by the Anglo-Zionist Empire in the Ukraine is truly an exceptionally ugly and dangerous one: it appears that the Patriarch of Constantinople will soon grant its full independence to the so-called “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate”. This move is openly directed against the current biggest ecclesiastical body in the Ukraine the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate” and it will almost certainly lead to bloodshed and massacres similar to what took place in Odessa on May 2nd 2014: the Ukronazis will use force (riot police or even Nazi death squads) to forcibly seize the churches, cathedrals, monasteries and other buildings and properties currently owned by the Moscow Patriarchate. There are many articles written about this development, but almost all of them are written from a secular point of view, even when written by supposedly Christian or Orthodox authors. The paradoxical element here is that a lot of theological terms are used by authors who have only a very vague idea of what these terms really mean. I have no desire to enter into this conversation and use the pseudo-spiritual reference framework typically used by such commentators and what I propose to do today is much more modest: I want to explain the original, Christian, meaning of the terms which are (mis-)used on a daily basis. The reader will then decide how to apply them, or not, to the current crisis. I will begin by the very basics. The basics The term “Christian” can mean one of two things: first, it can designate any person or group calling itself Christian. When used in this sense, the word “Christian” includes not only the all main Christian denominations, but also Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, the Mormons or even the 17% of British Christians who do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. Basically, in this context the term has no objective meaning whatsoever and this is how the term is mostly used nowadays. There is also another use of the word “Christian”. This second definition is based on two very ancient statements. The first by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (4th century) and the second one by Saint Vincent of Lérins (5th century). The first one says that the Christian faith is the faith “which the Lord gave, was preached by the Apostles, and was preserved by the Fathers. On this was the Church founded; and if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian“. The second one says that this faith only includes that “which has been believed everywhere, always and by all”. By these definitions, “Christianity” is an objective category not a “free for all”. The key words affirming this are “if anyone departs from this, he neither is nor any longer ought to be called a Christian”. These ancient definition preclude not only any form of dogmatic innovation, they also imply that words can be used either in a truly Christian sense or not. There is no middle-ground here. This belief, which was shared by all the Church Fathers and all the members of the ancient, original, Christian Church has tremendous implications, especially for what is called “ecclesiology”. The term “ecclesiology” refers to the Christian theology concerning the Church. In other words, the teachings of Christianity about what is, or what is not, the Church (and what is, or is not, within the confines of the Church) is an objective corpus of beliefs, of key tenets, of dogmas. What I will do next is to explain the meaning of a number of concepts when used in this second, original, context and contrast their original meaning with the basically secular and pseudo-Christian meaning which is so often attributed to them nowadays. One more thing, for the sake of clarity: I will be writing the word church with a lower case “c” when dealing with a building (as in “the church of Saint Paul in the city’s downtown”) and with a capital “C” when dealing with an ecclesiastical jurisdiction/body (as in the “Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate”); in this latter case the use of the word “Church” with a capital “C” will in no way imply any recognition of legitimacy. 1. Canonical, canonicity and “recognized” Most authors nowadays speak of a “canonical” Church as being a “recognized” Church. This is a circular definition, by the way: a Church is canonical because it is recognized and it is recognized because it is canonical. This begs the obvious question: recognized by whom?! The answer is also obvious: either recognized by the country’s civil/secular authorities or recognized by other “canonical” Churches. From a truly Christian point of view, this is utterly absurd. Since when do civil/secular powers have the expertise or, for that matter, the authority to recognize or not recognize Church “A” as “canonical” and Church “B” as “non-canonical”?! And what does “canonical” mean anyway? “Canonical” simply means “in conformity to the Church canons”. As for the word “canon” it is simply the Greek word for “ruler, measure”. Simply put, something is “canonical” when it is in conformity with the dogmas, rules, decrees, definitions and practices proclaimed and adopted by the Christian Church, primarily by means of decisions by the various recognized Church councils (I won’t go into the issue of what constitutes a recognized council since that will take too much time). You could say that something is canonical if it conforms to the the rules of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria and Saint Vincent of Lérins quoted above. This, again, is an objective category which cannot be twisted and turned into a free for all. So let’s look at one such canons and see what it says. The 31st Apostolic Canon decrees that: If any bishop makes use of the rulers of this world, and by their means obtains to be a bishop of a church, let him be deprived and suspended, and all that communicate with him. This ruling of the apostles themselves has later been recognized and confirmed during an Ecumenical Council. The 3rd Canon of the 7th Ecumenical Council says: “Every appointment of a bishop, or of a presbyter, or of a deacon made by (civil) rulers shall remain void in accordance with the Canon which says: “If any bishop comes into possession of a church by employing secular rulers, let him be deposed from office, and let him be excommunicated. And all those who communicate with him too.” You see the problem now? How can anybody consider that civil/secular authorities are competent to “recognize” this or that Church as “canonical” when the canons of the Apostles and of a Ecumenical Council (the most authoritative Church Council) specifically state that if a bishop has obtains his “legitimacy” (office, rank, diocese or church properties) from civil/secular authorities he should be deposed, thus making him totally illegitimate? From a canonical point of view, the recognition of civil authorities is not only meaningless, it could, depending on the exact circumstances, constitute grounds for deposition! The reality is that during much of the 20th century what we have seen is the civil/secular authorities of various countries supporting one Church against another for purely political purposes. This was especially prevalent in the Communist countries. Some bishops were considered “friendly” and others “enemies of the people”. The secular authorities then simply used brute force (usually in the form of riot police) to evict the latter and replace them with the former. The “friendly” bishops then took control of all of the churches, monasteries and other properties and declared themselves to be legitimate and canonical because they were recognized and because they were placed in control of a lot of very visible and historical real estate. Needless to say, that kind of dependence on the goodwill and support of civil/secular authorities placed the “friendly” Churches into a complete subordination to the state, exactly what the civil/secular authorities wanted in the first place. The fact that, unlike in most similar cases before the 20th century, the civil authorities in the 20th century were not only secular, but openly and militantly atheistic created a qualitatively new phenomenon: the subordination of bishops and Churches to the will of anti-religious secular regimes. Nowadays, of course, most governments in nominally Orthodox countries do not declare themselves as militant atheists, but the subordinate relationship of the official “state Churches” to the secular authorities has remained unchanged (even if their official rhetoric has been adapted to the new realities). The bottom line is this: all this talk about “canonical” and “recognized” Churches is a self-serving canard used by those Churches who have obtained their official status by completely uncanonical means. In the overwhelming number of cases, when individuals or organizations use the term “canonical” they never mean “in conformity to the Church canons” simply because they are both ignorant and indifferent to what the Christian teachings really says about these matters. 2. Bishops, Patriarchs and wannabe “Eastern Popes” Who is the biggest Ortho-boss, the bishop, or maybe the Archbishop, or the Metropolitan, or the Patriarch? It must be the “Ecumenical” Patriarch, right? Since he is “Ecumenical” he must be like an “Orthodox Pope”. Check out his official title: “His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch“. God is, by definition, (only) “divine”. The Third Person of the Trinity is (just) the “Holy” Spirit. But the Patriarch of Constantinople is his “most divine and all-holy”! Wow – he surely must really be some kind of super Ortho-Pope! Wrong. There are only four main “ranks” in the Church: faithful, deacon, presbyter and bishop. All the rest are just honorific and/or administrative titles including reader, subdeacon, chanter, acolyte, protodeacon, archdeacon, protopresbyter, archpriest, archimandrite, mitred archpriest, protosyngellos, archbishop, metropolitan and patriarch. The rank of emperor, by the way, was associated with the rank of subdeacon and the emperor would receive the Mysteries (aka “sacraments”, the Eucharist) to the side of the altar with the subdeacons. None of these titles indicate any qualitative difference or mystical superiority. The Church, while essentially mystical (thus referred to as the “theandric Body of Christ”) also has an administrative/organizational aspect which must exist within the social and political environment of the society in which it operates. For example, while in mystical terms all bishops are equal, it was obvious from the beginning that being the bishop of the imperial city (be it Rome or Constantinople) was a far more important office than being the bishop of some remote and scarcely populated diocese. Furthermore, while all important decisions were made in councils (local or ecumenical) day to day decisions could be made by bishops specially invested with that authority (sometimes assisted by a few more bishops). But except for honorific and administrative reasons, all bishops are fundamentally equals, invested with the same charisma (gift) and authority. The Latin expression primus inter pares, or “first among equals”, expresses this reality. This also fully applies to the “Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch” who had a honorific primacy simply because he was the ruling bishop of the capital of the Empire, just as the ruling bishop of Rome (the “Pope” in Latin terminology) had before him. I won’t go into the history of how the (tiny) Patriarchate of Constantinople used its former position to claim some kind of universal jurisdiction, this would take too much time, but I will simply note that two events which occurred on the 15th century have irrevocably made void any and all claims of primacy (even of honor) by the Patriarch of Constantinople: the False Union of Florence in 1439 AD and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 AD. [Sidebar: the Russian Orthodox Church, by the way, could lay claim of being the “Third Rome” as successor to the First and Second Rome since the First Rome fell to the Barbarians in 476 and fell into apostasy in 1054 while the Second Rome fell into apostasy in 1439 and to the Ottomans in 1453. I won’t go into the merits of this argument, but I will just point out that it absolutely infuriates the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is by far the biggest of all and the fact that Moscow and Saint Petersburg were the capitals of the last Orthodox empire only further serves to create tensions, and even outright hostility, between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Moscow Patriarchate. This is all very relevant in the case of the current political struggle over the Ukraine and the role of the Patriarch of Constantinople in it]. For all these historical and political arguments, the reality is that the Christian Church has always been conciliar in nature: that is to say that councils (local or major ones) were both the mode and the sole authority by which important decisions could be taken, never any single individual. The example of the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem (in about 50 AD) was the first one to set such an example and it has always been followed by those faithful to the original Christian ecclesiology ever since. 3. The “right” for each country or nation to have its own Church This is one of the most outlandish and yet also most frequent assertions made by almost every commentator out there: that there is some kind of “right” for each nation or country to have its own, independent, Church. Nothing could be further from the truth! The reality is that Christianity (like Islam, by the way) absolutely rejects any categories based on ethnicity, race, tribe or anything similar. Here are just a few quotes from the New Testament proving this: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28) For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one Spirit (Gal 5:6) Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God (1 Cor 7:19) For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit (1 Cor; 12 :13) But the clearest and most definitive statement on this issue is this one: Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all (Col 3:9-11). So national/racial/ethnic/tribal categories are lies (contrast that with the racist interpretation of the Scripture by rabbinical phariseism aka modern “Orthodox Judaism”!), becoming a Christian renews your knowledge (that is make you adopt new categories) and in Christ all are one (no more national/racial/ethnic/tribal for true Christians). This teaching have always remained at the core of the true Christian dogmatic anthropology (i.e. teachings about the nature of man). In fact, what is nowadays called “phyletism” or “ethno-phyletism” (nationalism or tribalism) has been condemned as a heresy by a pan-Orthodox council as late as in 1872 (this council was held in Constantinople, of all places, what sad irony!) For those interested in the historical context for this council, you can download a PDF about it here: http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/The-Synod-of-Constantinople-1872-The-Oecume…. [Sidebar: It is ironical – and sad – that so many of those who today engage in “hunting the Jew” by means of putting silly parentheses around (((names))) and who call themselves Orthodox Christians completely fail to realize two thing: first, they are using categories which the Church has denounced as heresies and, second, they are using the exact same categories as many of the (Orthodox) Jews they are denouncing. Frankly, this is rather pathetic and only goes to show the fantastically low level of spiritual education of those who fancy themselves as “defenders of the Christian faith” and who, in reality, have not even the vaguest basic notions about the faith they pretend to defend] The truth is that modern national/racial/ethnic/tribal categories are just re-hated pagan categories and that those who use them today, including priests and bishops, are simply catering to the pagan, post-Christian Zeitgeist for petty political reasons. Furthermore, it is also true that since the fall of the last Orthodox Empire in 1917, the Orthodox Church has been undergoing an immense crisis brought along primarily by the infiltration of Greek Orthodox Churches by Freemasons (see here for some background information) and the infiltration of the Russian Orthodox Church by agents of the Bolshevik regime in Russia (see here and here for some background information). The combined effects of these three phenomena (1917 Revolution, Masonic and Bolshevik infiltration) has resulted in a deep crisis from which most Orthodox Churches have yet to recover and which often makes them easy pawns in political battles (I discussed this issue in some detail in my article “Why Orthodox Churches Are Still Used as Pawns in Political Games”). As for rank and file Orthodox Christians, they are sometimes induced to come to the wrong conclusions about this because they believe (correctly) that, unlike the Latin Papacy, the Orthodox Church does not have one single super-boss and one single administration. They also believe (correctly) that, unlike the Latin Papacy of the past, the Orthodox Church did not have a single “official” language of worship and that, in fact, Orthodox ritual practice is rather diverse and often includes local cultural influences. These correct beliefs, however, bring them to the entirely false conclusion that each Orthodox nation has some kind of “right” to have its own independent (“autocephalous”) Orthodox Church. The fact that much of the clergy of the “official” and “recognized” (that is “state approved” vide supra) Orthodox Churches is more than happy to comfort them in these beliefs does not help. As for the secular leaders of the state, they are more than happy to have an Orthodox Church which is both 1) totally compliant and 2) nationalistic. What is lost in all this madness is the Orthodox truth, the wordview of the true, original, Christianity, and the “spirit of the Fathers” (or phronema in Greek) which best expresses it. It is also no wonder that the most corrupt Orthodox hierarchs, like the Patriarch of Constantinople, are more than happy to pretend that Orthodox ecclesiology does somehow grant them the authority of some kind of “Eastern Pope”. This is truly the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place” (Matt 24:15 & Daniel 9:27)! Those Orthodox Christians who nowadays succumb to the heresy of ethno-phyletism would do well to remember that besides the, shall we say, “geographical” meaning of the words of Christ (in reference to Jerusalem, of course, but also Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, Kiev and many other cities), there is also a second, spiritual meaning well explained by Saint Maximos the Confessor: “From the passions embedded in the soul the demons take their starting base to stir up passionate thought in us. Then, by making war on the mind through them they force it to go along and consent to sin. When it is overcome they lead it on to a sin of thought, and when this is accomplished they finally bring it as a prisoner to the deed. After this, at length, the demons who have devastated the soul through thoughts withdraw with them. In the mind there remains only the idol of sin and which the Lord says, “When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, let him who reads understand.” Man’s mind is a holy place and a temple of God in which the demons have laid waste the soul through passionate thoughts and set up the idol of sin. That these things have already happened in history no one who has read Josephus can, I think, doubt, though some say that these things will also happen when the Antichrist comes.”(2nd Century on Love, #31). Here we have arguably one of the greatest Christian theologians and philosophers of all times reminding us that the “abomination of desolation” will also happen in the minds of those who, suaded by demons and passions, stray away from that “which has been believed everywhere, always and by all” and, instead, let their minds and souls be polluted by the post-Christian nonsense of modern nationalisms. Nationalism, of course, is not only an modern idol, but it is also a rather crude form of self-worship, yet another truly satanic practice! Conclusion: what this is all about and we can can do about it The first sad reality is that none of this is about Christianity, Orthodoxy, ecclesiology or anything else remotely connected to any notion of truth at all. This is about buildings, real-estate, political power, money, influence, indoctrination and all the other key “values” of our times. The second sad reality is that innocent and well-intentioned people will suffer and even die as a direct consequence of the immoral actions of a few power-greedy individuals. The truth is that a religion-fulled civil war appears to have already been set in motion and that there is nothing we, simple rank and file Christians, can do about it, at least not in secular terms. In spiritual terms, we can do two things: we can, of course, pray and we can refuse to become part of a debate in which every single concept dear to us is misused, distorted and perverted. For that, we need to understand that the abomination which is taking place before our eyes did not just pop-up into existence ex nihilo and that there are profound spiritual roots to the almost universal adoption of non-Christian categories by most, albeit not all, Christians. Christ Himself reminded us that “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:9). We also know that the wisdom of this world is “foolishness with God” (1 Cor 3:19) and that it comes “not come from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15). Then how can we then still operate by using worldly categories or worldly interpretations of patristic concepts? What we can, and must, do is follow Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s famous appeal and “live not by lies” even if most of our contemporaries, including many Christians (even clerics!) have given up on the very notion of “truth”. In Solzhenitsyn’s words “So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: whether consciously, to remain a servant of falsehood — of course, it is not out of inclination, but to feed one’s family, that one raises his children in the spirit of lies — or to shrug off the lies and become an honest person worthy of respect both by one’s children and contemporaries”. After all, if we are truly Christians, then we can remember Christ’s promise that “blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matt 5:6) and, hopefully, this will give us courage to “stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thess 2:15). The Saker http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-abomination-of-desolation-standing-in-the-hol…

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After Mysterious Closure, Solar Observatory In New Mexico Reopens
by Razer 27 Sep '18

27 Sep '18

After Mysterious Closure, Solar Observatory In New Mexico Reopens : NPR Laurel Wamsley A solar observatory in New Mexico reopened Monday after being closed by authorities for 10 days — which spawned national interest and speculation into the cause of its evacuation. Let's get this out of the way: Scientists say that aliens were not involved. On Sept. 6, the Sunspot Solar Observatory was suddenly closed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, the consortium that operates it, without public explanation. People who work at the observatory, and those who live on the site, were asked to evacuate. The site's post office was also closed. The Otero County sheriff told the local newspaper that his office was alerted but not given any information. "The FBI is refusing to tell us what's going on," Sheriff Benny House told the Alamogordo Daily News shortly after the closure. "We've got people up there (at Sunspot) that requested us to standby while they evacuate it. Nobody would really elaborate on any of the circumstances as to why. The FBI were up there. What their purpose was nobody will say." "But for the FBI to get involved that quick and be so secretive about it, there was a lot of stuff going on up there," he added. "There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers but nobody would tell us anything." From there, it was off to the races. Combine the FBI, a powerful telescope and a location in rural Sunspot, N.M., and you've got all the ingredients for some rampant speculation — government surveillance, aliens, etc. "Why the FBI close the observatory?? People have the right to know!!" one person demanded on the observatory's Google page. The observatory, in Lincoln National Forest, about 170 miles south of Albuquerque, is home to the Dunn Solar Telescope. When it opened in 1969, it was the world's premier high spatial resolution optical solar telescope, the National Solar Observatory says. Though it's now considered a "legacy telescope," the Dunn "continues to be one of the most versatile, user-friendly setups in the world," the observatory says. New Mexico is already associated in some people's minds with unexplained phenomena. The observatory is about 85 miles southwest of Roswell, N.M., a town long at the center of UFO lore. So what did happen at Sunspot? A security threat, though the specific nature of that threat remains unclear. According to a statement from AURA, the consortium and the National Science Foundation decided to vacate the site temporarily because of a security issue: "AURA has been cooperating with an on-going law enforcement investigation of criminal activity that occurred at Sacramento Peak. During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents. For this reason, AURA temporarily vacated the facility and ceased science activities at this location. "The decision to vacate was based on the logistical challenges associated with protecting personnel at such a remote location, and the need for expeditious response to the potential threat. AURA determined that moving the small number of on-site staff and residents off the mountain was the most prudent and effective action to ensure their safety." The consortium said that it recognizes that the lack of communication while the facility was being evacuated was "concerning and frustrating for some." "However, our desire to provide additional information had to be balanced against the risk that, if spread at the time, the news would alert the suspect and impede the law enforcement investigation. That was a risk we could not take," the statement says. And the helicopter? House, the sheriff, told The Washington Post that Black Hawk helicopters aren't uncommon in the area. A call to an FBI spokesperson was not immediately returned. A person at the bureau's Albuquerque office said he had no information and could not comment. The consortium said the site will have extra security for now, because of people showing up at the facility since its closure: "Given the significant amount of publicity the temporary closure has generated, and the consequent expectation of an unusual number of visitors to the site, we are temporarily engaging a security service while the facility returns to a normal working environment." James McAteer, the New Mexico State University professor who leads operations of the telescope at the site, said he was impressed by the theories that people had come up with for the closure. "It was the first time I've had to deny contact with Aliens and Death-by-solar-storm and underground tunnels and New communications via X-rays all at one time," he wrote in an email to NPR. The observatory's reopening means that researchers can get to back to doing what they do: staring at the sun. "We cannot wait to get back to work to show everyone the world class research we do every day at the telescope," McAteer said. NPR's Emily Sullivan contributed to this report. https://www.npr.org/2018/09/17/648804508/after-mysterious-closure-solar-obs…

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Re: latest false flag attack?
by grarpamp 27 Sep '18

27 Sep '18

Show docs / pics of any significant damage to 7 attributed and accepted by analysts as being from *planes* bits. 7 appears done by the north tower ejecting into it, and resulting fire. Anyway, 9/11 was done by governments fuckery around the world. Which in the worst cases, were peaceful dissolutions to fail, would take excess efforts to root them out... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/shadow-government-news-to-congress/

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Re: busted memes - Jews NOT expelled 109 times [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 27 Sep '18

27 Sep '18

Or, you know, "Muh Holohoax" just keeps repeating because it's ordained by God HIMself? https://russia-insider.com/en/mainstream-holocaust-narrative-substantially-… Bust a move. Bust a meme. HH the facts or die the dream. Muh 6 million souls, 1913, Muh 6 holo hoaxes, give in to Hebe's! Grab a fact by the pussy, trigger a newb, Bust a meme! On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 12:14:54PM -0700, Razer wrote: > > -------- Original message --------From: Steven Schear <schear.steve(a)gmail.com> Date: 9/25/18 11:06 AM (GMT-08:00) To: Zenaan Harkness <zen(a)freedbms.net> Cc: CypherPunks <cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org> Subject: Re: busted memes - Jews NOT expelled 109 times [PEACE] > Or the expulsions could often mean, that unlike other groups, they kept their identities and refused to assimilate. Where are those that kicked them out? How many other groups have even existed for more than 2500 years? > Maybe being kicked out so often has resulted in their group survival. > ............... > Dimitry Orlov, expat Russian blogger pointed out a few years ago that people who are outcasts from the dominant community or society tend to build stronger more resilient ones. > See http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/11/but-what-is-community.htmland directly ontopic http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-not-to-to-organize-community.html > Rr > > On Sep 25, 2018 5:46 AM, "Zenaan Harkness" <zen(a)freedbms.net> wrote: > Dang donchahateit when a meme gets busted - in this case the ole hope > > for "one-ten and never again" (as in 109 countries to date), is > > factually bloody false M8, as we'd say 'ere in Oz - the truth is that > > we know of 359 expulsions since at least 733 B.C. > > > > Oh well, meme easy come, meme easy go I guess. So sad. > > > > Quite a stunning fact, really - you have to wonder that if u bin > > kicked outta 359 countries, ain't that like "doing the same thing > > over and over, and expecting a different outcome?" > > > > P'rhaps, I dunno, may be a mirror could be in order? > > > > Who knows… > > > > > > I'd attach the pic but the full chart is ~1.8MiB: > > https://dailystormer.name/daily-reminder-jews-expelled-359-times-not-109/ > > > > >

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[lists@puri.sm: [Announce] The Launch of the Librem Key]
by Zenaan Harkness 27 Sep '18

27 Sep '18

Hopefully FTW. ----- Forwarded message from Purism Announcements <lists(a)puri.sm> ----- From: Purism Announcements <lists(a)puri.sm> To: announce(a)announce.puri.sm Reply-To: feedback(a)puri.sm Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2018 19:58:18 -0400 Subject: [Announce] The Launch of the Librem Key Purism logo Dear supporters, we interrupt our regular news broadcast with a special short edition about a very focused topic: the launch of the Librem Key <https://puri.sm/products/librem-key/?pk_campaign=2018-09-26-email>. Librem Key photo It is the first product of its kind, and it introduces a whole new dimension to laptop security. The Librem Key is not some ordinary token security key, but a complete re-imagining of how we secure and verify the data on our laptops with a simple user experience. Combined with a secure BIOS replacement, you can instantly know if your laptop has been compromised, with a glance. Our technology is unique, auditable and powerful, and we hope that you'll be interested in utilizing the Librem Keys's benefits. Our Chief Security Officer, Kyle Rankin, wrote an introductory blog post about the Librem Key <https://puri.sm/posts/introducing-the-librem-key/?pk_campaign=2018-09-26-em…> and an additional blog post to detail how it interacts with "Heads" to provide tampering detection <https://puri.sm/posts/the-librem-key-makes-tamper-detection-easy/?pk_campai…>. We hope you'll find this as exciting as we do! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Look forward to our progress updates on seamless integration between the Librem Key and our various hardware and software products to provide easy-to-use security within your reach... Thanking you for your continued support, — the Purism team (feedback at puri.sm) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Note: contents of this email are CC-by-SA; feel free to forward it to friends! /To remove yourself from our announcements list, simply email announce-leave(a)announce.puri.sm <mailto:announce-leave@announce.puri.sm> and you will automatically be instructed how to unsubscribe./ _______________________________________________ Purism Announce mailing list http://announce.puri.sm/listinfo/announce ----- End forwarded message -----

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Cloudflare announces ESNI to decrease ISP's ability to know which sites you visit
by Greg Newby 25 Sep '18

25 Sep '18

https://blog.cloudflare.com/esni/ A follow-on to their launch of Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 resolver network, and coming to Firefox nightly builds. ESNI makes sure the site component of HTTPS requests are encrypted, not just the payload. The blog post says they were motivated by the April 2017 repeal of restrictions of ISPs gathering customer browsing. When you visit an https site, the server needs to know the name of the site before SSL/TLS negotiation can start (at least, on a server that has multiple hostnames on the same IP address), because that is how the server knows which certificate to utilize. ESNI goes beyond SNI (Server Name Indication), a 2003 IETF RFC. The blog post talks about browser support. It's not so clear what is required for Web servers and SSL certificates to make this work end-to-end for sites that are not hosted on Cloudflare.

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busted memes - Jews NOT expelled 109 times [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 25 Sep '18

25 Sep '18

Dang donchahateit when a meme gets busted - in this case the ole hope for "one-ten and never again" (as in 109 countries to date), is factually bloody false M8, as we'd say 'ere in Oz - the truth is that we know of 359 expulsions since at least 733 B.C. Oh well, meme easy come, meme easy go I guess. So sad. Quite a stunning fact, really - you have to wonder that if u bin kicked outta 359 countries, ain't that like "doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome?" P'rhaps, I dunno, may be a mirror could be in order? Who knows… I'd attach the pic but the full chart is ~1.8MiB: https://dailystormer.name/daily-reminder-jews-expelled-359-times-not-109/

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Government is Stupid About Money (and Taxation is Theft)
by grarpamp 24 Sep '18

24 Sep '18

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/917463355593502720 https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/75bjr1/some_day_well_look_back_at… If you're gonna thieve and force it, at least be smart with it. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_as_theft https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=taxation+is+theft

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Re: latest false flag attack?
by John Young 24 Sep '18

24 Sep '18

Much of NIST findings have not been made available to the public. Some building professionals have been given limited access under NDA. Terrorism continues to be the rationale for withholding, no matter the sustained growth among conspiracists about WTC and other calamities. WTC7 had emergency generator fuel tanks on upper floors which contributed to the fire (revised codes now prohibit that, so it is claimed, however, special agencies (ie, spies) can get what they want). NIST is ruled by the needs of special agencies, as with all official agencies, including what information is released to the public (considered indistinguishable from terrorists). WTC7's fuel tanks were not designed to withstand exceptional forces, say, as bladders, so fractured. Supertalls have introduced a slew of risky practices, most never tested in the field over long duration, only surmised in codes and experiments, and above all, coutured as safe by public relations. Any building over 75 feet tall (reach of firefighter ladders) is exceptionally dangerous. Professionals, officals and the real estate industry have long used elaborate justifications and finely-crafted codes to camouflage the danger, aided and abetted by the insurance industry. Fortuitously, those responsibile for the potential calamities favor highest floors for offices and homes, biggest and hardest to reach McMansion spreads, all dense with flammables, seemingly secure as vaults which turn out to be inescapable crematoria. Photos of WTC leapers, barbecues, body parts and ground beef are some of the NIST withholdings. At 08:59 AM 9/24/2018, you wrote: >from the NIST report on WTC7, downloaded >directly from NIST's own website, at ><https://ws680.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861610>https://ws680.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861610 > > >On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 2:41 AM Peter >Fairbrother <<mailto:peter@tsto.co.uk>peter(a)tsto.co.uk> wrote: > >Begins: "Never before or after 9/11 have steel framed buildings >collapsed due to fire". > > >NIST report page xxxv: "This was the first known >instance of the total collapse of a tall building primarily due to fires." > >in certain ways, having re-read a lot of this >for the first time in years, I'm inclined to >side with the official explanation more than I >used to be. but if one is going to do that, it >is dirty pool to argue against what the report >itself says in plain English at the same time. >NIST engineers did/do consider what happened at WTC7 to be unusual.Â > >& again, a lot appears to be riding on the word "total." > >NIST report, also page xxxv, also contradicting >a fair amount of what some here have said: > >"Since WTC 7 was not doused with thousands of >gallons of jet fuel, large areas of any floor >were not ignited simultaneously. Instead, the >fires in WTC 7 were similar to those that have >occurred in several tall buildings where the >automatic sprinklers did not function or were >not present. These other buildings did not >collapse, while WTC 7 succumbed to its fires."Â > >if you want me to accept the NIST report, you >can't ask us to accept facts/reasoning based on >one person's reasoning, when the NIST report >itself explicitly does not accept those facts or reasoning. > >- z

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Software disenchantment
by AleXander 23 Sep '18

23 Sep '18

http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/ Software disenchantment I’ve been programming for 15 years now. Recently our industry’s lack of care for efficiency, simplicity, and excellence started really getting to me, to the point of me getting depressed by my own career and the IT in general. Modern cars work, let’s say for the sake of argument, at 98% of what’s physically possible with the current engine design. Modern buildings use just enough material to fulfill their function and stay safe under the given conditions. All planes converged to the optimal size/form/load and basically look the same. Only in software, it’s fine if a program runs at 1% or even 0.01% of the possible performance. Everybody just seems to be ok with it. People are often even proud about how much inefficient it is, as in “why should we worry, computers are fast enough”: @tveastman <https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1039002300600147968>: I have a Python program I run every day, it takes 1.5 seconds. I spent six hours re-writing it in rust, now it takes 0.06 seconds. That efficiency improvement means I’ll make my time back in 41 years, 24 days :-) You’ve probably heard this mantra: “programmer time is more expensive than computer time”. What it means basically is that we’re wasting computers at an unprecedented scale. Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time. <https://xkcd.com/2021/> Everything is unbearably slow Look around: our portable computers are thousands of times more powerful than the ones that brought man to the moon. Yet every other webpage struggles to maintain a smooth 60fps scroll on the latest top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. I can comfortably play games, watch 4K videos but not scroll web pages? How is it ok? Google Inbox, a web app written by Google, running in Chrome browser also by Google, takes 13 seconds to open moderately-sized emails <https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/statuses/968882438024941568>: It also animates empty white boxes instead of showing their content because it’s the only way anything can be animated on a webpage with decent performance. No, decent doesn’t mean 60fps, it’s rather “as fast as this web page could possibly go”. I’m dying to see web community answer when 120Hz displays become mainstream. Shit barely hits 60Hz already. Windows 10 takes 30 minutes to update <https://grumpy.website/post/0PeXr1S7N>. What could it possibly be doing for that long? That much time is enough to fully format my SSD drive, download a fresh build and install it like 5 times in a row. Pavel Fatin <https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/>: Typing in editor is a relatively simple process, so even 286 PCs were able to provide a rather fluid typing experience. Modern text editors have higher latency than 42-year-old Emacs. Text editors! What can be simpler? On each keystroke, all you have to do is update tiny rectangular region and modern text editors can’t do that in 16ms. It’s a lot of time. A LOT. A 3D game can fill the whole screen with hundreds of thousands (!!!) of polygons in the same 16ms and also process input, recalculate the world and dynamically load/unload resources. How come? As a general trend, we’re not getting faster software with more features. We’re getting faster hardware that runs slower software with the same features. Everything works way below the possible speed. Ever wonder why your phone needs 30 to 60 seconds to boot? Why can’t it boot, say, in one second? There are no physical limitations to that. I would love to see that. I would love to see limits reached and explored, utilizing every last bit of performance we can get for something meaningful in a meaningful way. Everything is HUUUUGE And then there’s bloat. Web apps could open up to 10× faster if you just simply block all ads. Google begs everyone to stop shooting themselves in their feet with AMP initiative—a technology solution to a problem that doesn’t need any technology, just a little bit of common sense. If you remove bloat, the web becomes crazy fast. How smart do you have to be to understand that? Android system with no apps takes almost 6 Gb <https://grumpy.website/post/0Oz1lDOq5>. Just think for a second how obscenely HUGE that number is. What’s in there, HD movies? I guess it’s basically code: kernel, drivers. Some string and resources too, sure, but those can’t be big. So, how many drivers do you need for a phone? Windows 95 was 30Mb. Today we have web pages heavier than that! Windows 10 is 4Gb, which is 133 times as big. But is it 133 times as superior? I mean, functionally they are basically the same. Yes, we have Cortana, but I doubt it takes 3970 Mb. But whatever Windows 10 is, is Android really 150% of that? Google keyboard app routinely eats 150 Mb. Is an app that draws 30 keys on a screen really five times more complex than the whole Windows 95? Google app, which is basically just a package for Google Web Search, is 350 Mb! Google Play Services, which I do not use (I don’t buy books, music or videos there)—300 Mb that just sit there and which I’m unable to delete. All that leaves me around 1 Gb for my photos after I install all the essential (social, chats, maps, taxi, banks etc) apps. And that’s with no games and no music at all! Remember times when an OS, apps and all your data fit on a floppy? Your desktop todo app is probably written in Electron and thus has userland driver for Xbox 360 controller in it <https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/>, can render 3d graphics and play audio and take photos with your web camera. A simple text chat is notorious for its load speed and memory consumption. Yes, you really have to count Slack in as a resource-heavy application. I mean, chatroom and barebones text editor, those are supposed to be two of the less demanding apps in the whole world. Welcome to 2018. At least it works, you might say. Well, bigger doesn’t imply better. Bigger means someone has lost control. Bigger means we don’t know what’s going on. Bigger means complexity tax, performance tax, reliability tax. This is not the norm and should not become the norm. Overweight apps should mean a red flag. They should mean run away scared. Everything rots 16Gb Android phone was perfectly fine 3 years ago. Today with Android 8.1 it’s barely usable because each app has become at least twice as big *for no apparent reason*. There are no additional functions. They are not faster or more optimized. They don’t look different. They just…grow? iPhone 4s was released with iOS 5, but can barely run iOS 9. And it’s not because iOS 9 is that much superior—it’s basically the same. But their new hardware is faster, so they made software slower. Don’t worry—you got exciting new capabilities like…running the same apps with the same speed! I dunno. iOS 11 dropped support for 32-bit apps. That means if the developer isn’t around at the time of iOS 11 release or isn’t willing to go back and update a once-perfectly-fine app, chances are you won’t be seeing their app ever again. @jckarter <https://twitter.com/jckarter/statuses/1017071794245623808>: A DOS program can be made to run unmodified on pretty much any computer made since the 80s. A JavaScript app might break with tomorrow’s Chrome update Web pages working today would not be compatible with any browser in 10 years time <http://tonsky.me/blog/chrome-intervention/> (probably sooner). “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”. But what’s the point? I might enjoy occasionally buying a new phone and new MacBook as much as the next guy, but to do so just to be able to run all the same apps which just became slower? I think we can and should do better than that. Everyone is busy building stuff for right now, today, rarely for tomorrow. But it would be nice to also have stuff that lasts a little longer than that. Worse is better Nobody understands anything at this point. Neither they want to. We just throw barely baked shit out there, hope for the best and call it “startup wisdom”. Web pages ask you to refresh if anything goes wrong. Who has time to figure out what happened? Any web app produces a constant stream of “random” JS errors in the wild, even on compatible browsers. The whole webpage/SQL database architecture is built on a premise (hope, even) that nobody will touch your data while you look at the rendered webpage. Most collaborative implementations are “best effort” and have many common-life scenarios in which they lose data. Ever seen this dialogue “which version to keep?” I mean, bar today is so low that your users would be happy to at least have a window like that. And no, in my world app that says “I’m gonna destroy some of your work, but you get to choose which one” is not okay. Linux kills random processes *by design*. And yet it’s the most popular server-side OS. Every device I own fails regularly one way or another. My Dell monitor needs a hard reboot from time to time because there’s software in it. Airdrop? You’re lucky if it’ll detect your device, otherwise, what do I do? Bluetooth? Spec is so complex that devices won’t talk to each other <https://thewirecutter.com/blog/understanding-bluetooth-pairing-problems/> and periodic resets are the best way to go <http://time.com/4358533/bluetooth-fix-how/>. And I’m not even touching Internet of Things <https://twitter.com/internetofshit>. It’s so far beyond the laughing point I’m not even sure what to add. I want to take pride in my work. I want to deliver working, stable things. To do that, we need to understand what we are building, in and out, and that’s impossible to do in bloated, over-engineered systems. Programming is the same mess It just seems that nobody is interested in building quality, fast, efficient, lasting, foundational stuff anymore. Even when efficient solutions have been known for ages, we still struggle with the same problems: package management, build systems, compilers, language design, IDEs. Build systems are inherently unreliable and periodically require full clean, even though all info for invalidation is there. Nothing stops us from making build process reliable, predictable and 100% reproducible. Just nobody thinks its important. NPM has stayed in “sometimes works” state for years. @przemyslawdabek <https://twitter.com/przemyslawdabek/status/940547268729606145>: It seems to me that rm -rf node_modules is indispensable part of workflow when developing Node.js/JavaScript projects. And build times? Nobody thinks compiler that works minutes or even hours is a problem. What happened to “programmer’s time is more important”? Almost all compilers, pre- and post-processors add significant, sometimes disastrous time tax to your build without providing proportionally substantial benefits. <https://xkcd.com/303/> You would expect programmers to make mostly rational decisions, yet sometimes they do the exact opposite of that. E.g. choosing Hadoop even when it’s slower than running the same task on a single desktop <https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/hadoop_hatred.html>. Machine learning and “AI” moved software to guessing in the times when most computers are not even reliable enough in the first place. @rakhim <https://twitter.com/freetonik/status/1039826129190875136>: When an app or a service is described as “AI-powered” or “ML-based”, I read it as “unreliable, unpredictable, and impossible to reason about behavior”. I try to avoid “AI” because I want computers to be the opposite: reliable, predictable, reasonable. We put virtual machines inside Linux, and then we put Docker inside virtual machines, simply because nobody was able to clean up the mess that most programs, languages and their environment produce. We cover shit with blankets just not to deal with it. “Single binary” is still a HUGE selling point for Go, for example. No mess == success. <https://xkcd.com/1987/> And dependencies? People easily add overengineered “full package solutions” to solve the simplest problems without considering their costs. And those dependencies bring other dependencies. You end up with a tree that is something in between of horror story (OMG so big and full of conflicts) and comedy (there’s no reason we include these, yet here they are <https://medium.com/@jdan/i-peeked-into-my-node-modules-directory-and-you-wo…> ): Programs can’t work for years without reboots anymore. Sometimes even days are too much to ask <https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/operations/unicorn.html#unicorn-w…>. Random stuff happens and nobody knows why. What’s worse, nobody has time to stop and figure out what happened. Why bother if you can always buy your way out of it. Spin another AWS instance. Restart process. Drop and restore the whole database. Write a watchdog that will restart your broken app every 20 minutes. Include same resources multiple times, zip and ship <https://blog.timac.org/2017/0410-analysis-of-the-facebook-app-for-ios-v-87-…>. Move fast, don’t fix. That is not engineering. That’s just lazy programming. Engineering is understanding performance, structure, limits of what you build, deeply. Combining poorly written stuff with more poorly written stuff goes strictly against that. To progress, we need to understand what and why are we doing. We’re stuck with it So everything is just a pile of barely working code added on top of previously written barely working code. It keeps growing in size and complexity, diminishing any chance for a change. To have a healthy ecosystem you *need* to go back and revisit. You *need* to occasionally throw stuff away and replace it with better stuff. But who has time for that? We haven’t seen new OS kernels in what, 25 years? It’s just too complex to simply rewrite by now. Browsers are so full of edge cases and historical precedents by now that nobody dares to write layout engine from scratch. Today’s definition of progress is either throw more fuel into the fire: @sahrizv <https://twitter.com/sahrizv/status/1018184792611827712>: 2014 - We must adopt #microservices to solve all problems with monoliths. 2016 - We must adopt #docker to solve all problems with microservices. 2018 - We must adopt #kubernetes to solve all problems with docker or reinventing the wheel: @dr_c0d3 <https://twitter.com/dr_c0d3/status/1040092903052378112>: 2000: Write 100s of lines of XML to “declaratively” configure your servlets and EJBs. 2018: Write 100s of lines of YAML to “declaratively” configure your microservices. At least XML had schemas… We’re stuck with what we have, and nobody will ever save us. Business won’t care Neither will users. They are only learned to expect what we can provide. We (engineers) say every Android app takes 350 Mb? Ok, they’ll live with that. We say we can’t give them smooth scrolling? Ok, they’ll live with a phone that stutter. We say “if it doesn’t work, reboot”? They’ll reboot. After all, they have no choice. There’s no competition either. Everybody is building the same slow, bloated, unreliable products. Occasional jump forward in quality does bring competitive advantage (iPhone/iOS vs other smartphones, Chrome vs other browsers) and forces everybody to regroup, but not for long. So it’s our mission as engineers to show the world what’s possible with today’s computers in terms of performance, reliability, quality, usability. If we care, people will learn. And there’s nobody but us to show them that it’s very much possible. If only we care. It’s not all bad There are some bright spots indicating that improving over state-of-the-art is not impossible. Work Martin Thompson <https://twitter.com/mjpt777> has being doing (LMAX Disruptor <https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/disruptor>, SBE <https://github.com/real-logic/simple-binary-encoding>, Aeron <https://github.com/real-logic/aeron>) is impressive, refreshingly simple and efficient. Xi editor <https://github.com/google/xi-editor> by Raph Levien seems to be built with the right principles in mind. Jonathan Blow <https://www.youtube.com/user/jblow888> has a language he alone develops for his game that can compile 500k lines per second on his laptop. That’s cold compile, no intermediate caching, no incremental builds. You don’t have to be a genius to write fast programs. There’s no magic trick. The only thing required is not building on top of a huge pile of crap that modern toolchain is. Better world manifesto I want to see progress. I want change. I want state-of-the-art in software engineering to improve, not just stand still. I don’t want to reinvent the same stuff over and over, less performant and more bloated each time. I want something to believe in, a worthy end goal, a future better than what we have today, and I want a community of engineers who share that vision. What we have today is not progress. We barely meet business goals with poor tools applied over the top. We’re stuck in local optima and nobody wants to move out. It’s not even a good place, it’s bloated and inefficient. We just somehow got used to it. So I want to call it out: where we are today is bullshit. As engineers, we can, and should, and will do better. We can have better tools, we can build better apps, faster, more predictable, more reliable, using fewer resources (orders of magnitude fewer!). We need to understand deeply what are we doing and why. We need to deliver: reliably, predictably, with topmost quality. We can—and should–take pride in our work. Not just “given what we had…”—no buts! I hope I’m not alone at this. I hope there are people out there who want to do the same. I’d appreciate if we at least start talking about how absurdly bad our current situation in the software industry is. And then we maybe figure out how to get out. September 17, 2018 · Discuss on HackerNews <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012334> Reddit <https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/9go8ul/software_disenchantmen…>

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