November 2019 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

A third possible outcome of the Gom Jabbar test
by Ryan Carboni 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

To quote von Hammerstein-Equord: "The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous." Thus I posit a third possible outcome of the Gom Jabbar test, that the person could potentially stick his hand further into the box, exclaiming "I nearly have it!" Even though it was never mentioned to begin with that there is anything in the box other than pain.

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"Blue Dot Initiative" - The West belatedly waking up - "less worse" choices - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

OK, ok, no doubt "statist propaganda, what the eff are you posting" responses will follow, but for just a moment: - The Chinese approach to the state "handling" of dissidents <cough> Tiananmen Square <cough/> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests is a little more ... blunt ... than the Western approach - The Chinese are executing capatilism to a notably greater degree than the West, which may imply certain things about them, e.g. in relation to: - hive mind / locust mentality - regard for the individual - Thick Face, Black Heart (book written by a Chinese lady for our benefit) - "the motherland" nationalism, at all costs - a unity (of a sort) within the Chinese people which is as impressive as the fanaticism of Islamic extremists willing to blow themselves up for "Allah" - notwithstanding many things "of the West", including but not limited to the misdeeds, empire building, CIA assassination program, CIA orphanages and blackmailing program, CIA/NSA ubiquitous monitoring of the world, etc, were one to choose between the Chinese system where social credit scores and ubiquitous facial scanning now block people in China from buying train tickets, and the present corruption of the West, but our ability still (for the time being) to say the things we say here on the cypherpunks mailing list, and to discuss the things we discuss I for one would not choose the Chinese regime. What strikes my heart most heavily in all this is the following: Our abandonment (by deep state corruption and overwhelming evil compulsion) of relationship and/ or partnership with Russia - not the Marxist Communism regime of the USSR of old, but of present day Russia, with whose people we culturally share so much, and who, on the whole, are far more compelling in their principles and inspiration than we in the West have descended (basically in aggregate into nihilistic dullards). The Fed. At heart, the corruption of the West can be traced, consistently, to money, and in particular unethical and unconstitutional debt based money/ fiat/ usury system, under which we serf, and which has been used to bully and dominate most of the rest of the world. When the Fed says "eviscerate Russia, do anything but agree to be fair to Russia and other nations in the world", the USA congress jumps like a flea bitten hungry mongrel dog being chucked half a sausage, to Israel's, sorry I means the Fed's / AIPAC's bidding. So bound into empire and the enternal spiral debt trap heaved upon her, that the USA empire demonstrated no restraint in decency or respect for Russia and her people (and dozens of other countries and peoples). We must unwind the government blackmail machine, for any hope of sanity. In the mean time, the USA is finally beginning to demonstrate some self awareness in relation to "well now, your proposals need to have at least -some- benefit to those who participate", and is belatedly coming to the "shared infrastructure and shared future intentions" party: US Challenges China's Belt And Road With New Global Infrastructure Scheme https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-challenges-chinas-belt-and-road-n… The Trump administration has spent the last several years, bashing China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and calling it a 'debt trap' and urging countries around the world to resist allowing China to build infrastructure projects in their respected countries. The motive behind US officials attempting to discredit the BRI is because of Washington's new plan to launch a similar infrastructure scheme. ... The US Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) have unveiled on Monday the American-led Blue Dot Network, a global "sustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world," read an OPIC press release. ... Better late to the party than never, and it may well be that it was the Fed all along which forbade any genuine progress on actually building any long lasting vision for the West, up until now. Some of us, do not want Chinese overlords... and to this end, Putin's "multi polar" world looks much saner and balanced, than a Chinese world empire. Remember, Federal Reserve Bank policies caused a massive % of Western manufacturing and industrial capacity to be exported lock stock and barrel to China over the last few decades, and in this way, massive wealth (at least, in the form of computer account fiat balances) and trade imbalances were created, in the favour of China. In the big picture of Empires and fiat "reserve currency status" usury regimes, China was quite clearly being prepped to be the next Empire kid on the block, with de Rothschilds' sons overseeing it all. Unfortunately for de Rothschilds, and for the West, the Chinese were not beholden to "no one" - they have their own wise counsel behind the scenes, and they've played a very long and deceptive game in the Empire stakes. Although the Fed - played an all or nothing gambit (which admittedly has been entirely successful for a few millennia) - and failed to claim the last few holdout countries into the Federal Reserve system (Iran for one, who'd a thought), - and also Putin put his foot down and held the line against the disgraceful enslavement of the Russian people post-USSR collapse by "the Harvard boys" and their "economic shock therapy" it's not too late for the West to salvage a semblance of economic and international dignity. Trump may have made a bunch of mistakes, and/or may simply have had his hands consistently tied by AIPAC and the Fed, but at least he stands up for those who still believe that It's OK to be White!

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Anarcho-Tyranny in Oslo - Counter Currents' Greg Johnson arrest, and full speech - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

So Counter Currents publisher Greg Johnson was arrested, and banned from Norway, because he might say something TPTB don't like. The story of his arrest is titled Anarcho-Tyranny in Oslo and is found here: https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/11/anarcho-tyranny-in-oslo/ And the full speech he intended to give in Oslo, is titled "The Very Idea of White Privilege", and is found here: http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/the-speech-greg-johnson-was-going-to-give-in-… This para can be considered a tl;dr: The main reason to reject the claim that America is a white supremacist society is the fact that some non-white groups—chiefly East Asians and certain communities of South Asians—do better than whites in key indicators of success, such as educational attainment, income, and law abidingness, and they did so before anti-white discrimination and non-white tokenism became rampant. If American whites were intent on creating systematic white privilege and supremacy, we failed miserably. White racism is not a sufficient explanation for differing racial outcomes in America. Here is an extract: A privilege is an advantage that you enjoy and others don’t. Privilege is inherently unequal. Special privileges are the opposite of equal rights. White privilege means advantages enjoyed by whites just in virtue of their race—rights not enjoyed by non-whites. White privilege is a form of hereditary privilege. Whites do nothing to earn or merit white privilege over and above simply being born. White privilege thus refers to a whole range of unequal and unearned—and thus unjust—advantages enjoyed by whites and denied to non-whites in the societies that whites created. White privilege is just another word for white “racism.” The concept of white privilege has exploded in American public discourse in the last five years, coinciding with the so-called “great awokening,” namely the wave of Left-wing hysteria and gaslighting set off by the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown hoaxes, namely the claims that two blacks who were killed while committing crimes were actually the real victims, innocent victims of white racism. The concept of white privilege has provoked a great deal of eye-rolling and healthy anger from whites. This manifestation of white toughness has, absurdly, been termed “white fragility,” which is a clear sign that the Left is not just out of touch with reality but simply thinks that it can be conjured up or banished with word magic. Whites reject the idea of white privilege for various reasons. - Some think that racism is a terrible thing, but they don’t think that they or their societies are guilty of it. - The vast majority of white people work very hard and never had anything given to them, so they resent the idea that they benefit from unearned privileges. - Others think there is nothing wrong with racial inequality and believe that white privilege is just another politically correct moral swindle in which non-whites seek unearned advantages by accusing good-hearted whites of spurious offenses for which they can buy forgiveness. But as much as I applaud this pushback against white privilege, the concept is not entirely meaningless. For instance, within the lifetimes of some people reading this, whites enjoyed legal privileges denied to non-whites in Apartheid South Africa and the American South. But there is not a white society in the world today in which whites enjoy such legal privileges over non-whites. Even the idea of nationality through descent is being chipped away as a form of privilege. Indeed, in South Africa and the United States, non-whites now enjoy privileges over whites, both legally and through massive private discrimination. Yet, even with decades of official and unofficial non-white privilege behind us, certain non-white groups are more likely than whites to be uneducated, poor, and in trouble with the law—to name just three important factors in overall social well-being. The official explanation for these lingering inequalities is “racism,” that is to say: white malevolence, as well as “systemic” forms of inequality. According to this theory, since all peoples want to thrive in white societies and have equal inherent potential to do so, the fact that some groups conspicuously do not thrive needs to be explained. Since white people are the architects of these societies, they are obviously the ones to blame. Thus white people must be hectored and browbeaten and reeducated. We must be punished by affirmative action and reparations. And we must endure having our societies torn apart and rebuilt over and over again, until racial equality is attained. Because nothing stands in the way of racial equality except white institutions and ways of life, white ignorance and ill-will, white guilt and white privilege—or so they say. But it is increasingly difficult to believe this viewpoint because legal white privileges have been overturned and replaced. White privilege has not, moreover, been replaced by a classical liberal meritocracy, in which all people are subject to the same rules and judged on individual merit, but by a system of non-white privilege. But even with the system rigged in their favor, some non-white groups conspicuously lag behind whites in a vast number of indexes of social well-being. (An excellent summation of these differences is Richard Lynn’s The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide [Augusta, Ga.: Washington Summit Publishers, 2008].) Even though anti-racist activists and non-whites find it increasingly difficult to point to any specific cause of persistent inequality, they just know that it is somehow white people’s fault. This is why the Left has resorted to increasingly “occult”—i.e. hidden and mysterious—explanations for persistent racial inequality. Since fewer and fewer whites are consciously racist, the problem must be unconscious racism somehow keeping certain groups down. Unconscious racism is a real phenomenon, but how far does it explain persistent inequality? (On unconscious racism, see Kevin MacDonald’s “Psychology and White Ethnocentrism,” The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 4 [2006].) https://www.toqonline.com/archives/v6n4/MacDonald.pdf Since fewer and fewer whites hold negative racial stereotypes about other groups, and non-whites are still displaying stereotypical behavior, non-whites must be sabotaging themselves because of the “threat,” the mere specter of negative stereotypes existing in their own minds—and this is still white people’s fault, somehow. Since explicit, legal racism has been dismantled and even reversed, the legacy of past racism must still exert a subtle influence that is powerful enough to cancel out the effects of much more recent systems of non-white privilege, somehow. The classic statement on white privilege is Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf where she writes: I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks. ... All of these “privileges” are simply aspects of having a homogeneous homeland, of belonging to a community of people with whom you share a common biological and cultural heritage. In white societies, one can call this “white privilege.” But in Asian societies, one would call it Asian privilege and in African societies, African privilege. Furthermore, it is too crude to speak about this simply in terms of broad racial categories. Instead, we should speak about Norwegian privilege in Norway, Japanese privilege in Japan, Swazi privilege in Swaziland, and the like. It would also be nice to live in a world in which stateless peoples, like Palestinians and Kurds, have similar privileges. ... It is fun to visit foreign lands, but it can be alienating, stressful, and psychologically exhausting to actually live in one, and this is the everyday experience of minorities and stateless peoples in other people’s homelands. The cure to this problem is to give every people a land of their own where they can feel at home rather than constantly alienated. Many of McIntosh’s alleged privileges of being white are more accurately described as the absence of the disadvantages of being black. These include: ... McIntosh describes black disadvantages as white privileges because she wishes to absolve blacks for these problems and blame whites. Unfortunately, many anti-black stereotypes—for instance, black criminality and financial irresponsibility—are not just dreamed up by evil-minded white people. They are based in experience. Of course most blacks are not criminals and spendthrifts, but enough of them are that it is rational for whites to be vigilant around blacks they do not know, a burden of suspicion that falls equally upon the problem minority and the blameless majority. One of the central contentions of the Black Lives Matter movement is that blacks are arrested for crimes at a greater rate than whites simply because of white racism. But objective data shows that blacks are arrested for crimes at pretty much the same rate that they commit them. (See for instance, Edwin S. Rubenstein’s The Color of Crime: Race, Crime, and Justice in America [Oakton, Vir.: New Century Foundation, 2016].) Thus, if Black Lives Matter wishes to lower the black arrest rate, they should work to lower the black crime rate. https://2kpcwh2r7phz1nq4jj237m22-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads… But there is not a single politician in America who has the courage to simply tell blacks to commit fewer crimes. Instead, police departments are being intimidated into giving blacks license to break the law with impunity. Police are also more likely to use violence with white suspects than blacks in comparable situations. This is objectively a system of black privilege. (On Black Lives Matter and the collapse of policing blacks, see Heather MacDonald’s studies https://www.city-journal.org/html/ferguson-effect-lives-14919.html on “the Ferguson effect.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_effect On the over-policing of whites in America, including increased chances of death by cop, see Richard Houck’s “Law Enforcement and the Hostile Elite,” Counter-Currents, June 20, 2018.) https://www.counter-currents.com/2018/06/law-enforcement-the-hostile-elite/ Blacks feel oppressed in white societies by negative white stereotypes. But the most momentous of these stereotypes are based on experience. Thus it is rational to use them as guides in dealing with black strangers. Because of this, no amount of reeducation is going to banish them. (For a more detailed discussion of the rationality of experience-based prejudices, see the title essay https://www.counter-currents.com/2015/12/in-defense-of-prejudice/ of my book In Defense of Prejudice.) https://www.counter-currents.com/product/in-defense-of-prejudice/ As long as multiracial societies persist, whites will continue to resent blacks for not living up to white standards, and blacks will continue to resent whites for imposing alien standards. The ethnonationalist solution to such irreconcilable differences is racial divorce: the creation of homogeneous sovereign homelands, to the extent that this is possible, for all distinct peoples who wish to exercise this right. (I discuss the concepts of ethnonationalism and homogeneity, and how they can be achieved humanely in The White Nationalist Manifesto. https://www.counter-currents.com/product/the-white-nationalist-manifesto/ Also see my essay, “Irreconcilable Differences: The Case for Racial Divorce.”) https://www.counter-currents.com/2015/03/irreconcilable-differences/ The main reason to reject the claim that America is a white supremacist society is the fact that some non-white groups—chiefly East Asians and certain communities of South Asians—do better than whites in key indicators of success, such as educational attainment, income, and law abidingness, and they did so before anti-white discrimination and non-white tokenism became rampant. If American whites were intent on creating systematic white privilege and supremacy, we failed miserably. White racism is not a sufficient explanation for differing racial outcomes in America. We have an alternative hypothesis based on the science of Human Biological Diversity. The differing levels of education, income, and law-abidingness—to name just three factors—among racial groups in America are precisely what we would predict given measurable differences of IQ and sociopathic personality traits between the races. For a survey of the effect of IQ on a wide range of social outcomes, see Richard Lynn’s The Global Bell Curve. On racial differences in personality traits beyond just IQ, including psychopathy, see Michael Levin’s Why Race Matters (Oakton, Vir.: New Century Books, 2016). ... Different races really are different. That means that when different races live in the same social system, subject to the same laws, institutions, and incentives, some will inevitably flourish better than others. There will never be a social system that is equally conducive to the flourishing of all races and cultures. Such inequalities will persist even if we institute remedial forms of discrimination in favor of groups who lag behind. ...

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Crenshaw wrecked (again) - 'Groppers' bring Zioclopse Dan to tears (nearly) - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

<ding ding ding> Zioclopse, Round Two After the previous innings where The ZOG Empire Struck Back, which featured Ben Shapiroju reading a 40 minute script for the ZOG army to thereafter follow (just like Clinton and her "basket of deplorables" in 2016), Dan "the Zioclopse" Crenshaw, true to form, bounced back for a second round against .... the Groppers! And Dan "Cyclops" Crenshaw, Zionist shill, has been for the second time, udderly wrecked :) He tried splitting the questioner line into 2 or more, had questioners all shuffled around - a line for Dems to ask questions, a line for Reps, and mix mix mix 'em all up. Very strangely tho, some folks in the "Dems" line asked questions about the USS Liberty ... ... that's just, like, really odd - who could have predicted that? (various clips of the original talk, with the below quotes, in original article below) So Dan ultimately lost it on his grass lawn patch outside at Arizona State U: “America would not be here without Israel and the important lessons of Jerusalem.” U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw pic.twitter.com/Umq0TJRh5L — CUFI (@CUFI) November 1, 2019 Crenshaw: Are you Trump Supporters? "Yes" Crenshaw: So you support the most pro-Israel president ever? "Yes" Crenshaw: Will you disavow Trump's Israel policy? "Yes" Crenshaw: Are you pro-Trump or not???" "YES!!!!" Perfectly coherent worldview; foreign to people like Dan — Jake Lloyd (@JacobCLloyd) November 8, 2019 And that USS Liberty - man, that's just literally metaphorical dynamite for Cyclops Dan :) : Q: … All three testified to it being an intentional attack by Israel. My questions is: how can you associate with TPUSA when its leader Charlie Kirk called this event a conspiracy theory? Your Navy brothers were killed in the incident. Dan: Alright. What do you guys call yourselves? There’s a name for your group, right? Groppers? No, you’re not conservatives. You’re not. I know you think you are. [Crosstalk, chanting] So, for those of you who are new to this and you’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on here, you’ve got a bunch of guys – they’re all guys. They’ve got one girl. That’s good. And I’ve already answered you. What do you call yourself? The Groppers? That’s a very strange name. It’s a very strange name. So, these guys are kinda the Alt-Right 2.0. They’re deeply anti-Semitic, they only care about a couple issues that have to do with Israel. They’ll ask questions about the USS Liberty … why we give aid to Israel … they’ll frame these questions in a way that seems reasonable. Right? It’s reasonable to ask about history, and the USS Liberty, sure. AA: What a whackjob. He acts emotionally incontinent, like he’s on roids. He might be on roids. And someone asking about the lines: First off, I did want to thank you for your service non-ironically. I think it’s a great thing that you do. Congressman, my question really has to do with liberty and freedom that you always talk about. How can you claim to freedom and liberty and pro all of that, when you make two separate lines and label one group anti-semites and racists, which is an attack that the left. [loud applause] How can you do anything related to pro-liberty, pro-free speech, when you are suppressing people by moving people around in the line? Crenshaw declined to explain ... The crowd started chanting “prove me wrong,” which is the name of his event. All kinds of people were trying to prove him wrong about the USS liberty, Israel being our greatest ally, anal marriage being good for society, mass immigration being our greatest strength, America being an idea, etc. etc. etc. But all this odious fiend wants to do is talk about fake AOC “revolutionary socialism” bullshit that everyone thinks is boring and is – like him – only propped up by Jew money. ... At one point, the one-eyed freak said “You’re going to regret saying these things on camera.” They use that to cloak their anti-Semitic leanings. And their racist leanings. And it’s pretty gross. Guys. Guys. And I’ll say this. Now we’re going to have a little come to Jesus moment. You don’t have the luxury of the time that I grew up in, where nothing was only and we we’re tweeting and we weren’t on Facebook, and things like this weren’t being filmed. You guys live in that reality. And you’re young and you’re very upset and emotional. You’re going to regret this. You’re going to regret being on camera and saying some of the things that you’re saying. ... This is a Republican Congressman telling people they will regret being on video questioning him, questioning Israel. What does that mean, Congressman Dan, you low IQ moron? What are you going to do to them, Congressman Dan, you freak? Are you going to have them murdered? Heck you, Dan, you piece of human garbage. We are not “Alt-Right neo-Nazis.” WE ARE AMERICANS. WE ARE STANDING UP FOR OUR COUNTRY. We are the exact opposite of you, a man who is a professional sellout, a spy and a traitor, using our government, our resources, to support a foreign power. The Zioclopse, wrecked :D [Imagine some Rubber Boys victory musak here and some truly wicked Israeli dance moves.] Fully wrecked man, fully wrecked :) Gropper War: Zioclops Dan Crenshaw Gets Confused, As He Gets Gropped by Virile Groppers! http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/gropper-war-zioclops-dan-crenshaw-gets-confus…

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[MINISTRY] - CJEU (EU Court of Jewstice): Facebook can be ordered ... to remove defamatory material worldwide - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

So the EU Court of "Justice" aka Jewstice, is Jewing over the EU and claiming jewrisdiction over the entire world (could never have predicted this) by providing a fig leaf of Jewdicial sanction to the Facebook Political Complex in their zealous hand wringing censorship. Speak anyway (of course): The Court Of Justice Of The European Union Limits Free Speech https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/court-justice-european-union-limits-… https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15139/european-court-free-speech On October 3, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in a judgment that Facebook can be ordered by national courts of EU member states to remove defamatory material worldwide: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-10/cp190128en… "She [Glawischnig-Piesczek] is seeking an order that Facebook Ireland remove a comment published by a user on that social network harmful to her reputation, and allegations which were identical and/or of an equivalent content. "The Facebook user in question had shared on that user's personal page an article from the Austrian online news magazine oe24.at entitled 'Greens: Minimum income for refugees should stay'. That had the effect of generating on that page a 'thumbnail' of the original site, containing the title and a brief summary of the article, and a photograph of Ms Glawischnig-Piesczek. That user also published, in connection with that article, a comment which the Austrian courts found to be harmful to the reputation of Ms Glawischnig-Piesczek, and which insulted and defamed her. This post could be accessed by any Facebook user." The judgment has brought concern among free speech organizations. Thomas Hughes, the executive director of ARTICLE 19, a non-profit organization that works on "protecting the right to freedom of expression around the world," said: https://www.article19.org/resources/cjeu-judgment-in-facebook-ireland-case-… "This judgment has major implications for online freedom of expression around the world. "Compelling social media platforms like Facebook to automatically remove posts regardless of their context will infringe our right to free speech and restrict the information we see online... "The ruling also means that a court in one EU member state will be able to order the removal of social media posts in other countries, even if they are not considered unlawful there. This would set a dangerous precedent where the courts of one country can control what internet users in another country can see. This could be open to abuse, particularly by regimes with weak human rights records." According to ARTICLE 19: https://www.article19.org/resources/cjeu-judgment-in-facebook-ireland-case-… "The judgment means that Facebook would have to use automated filters to identify social media posts that are considered to be 'identical content' or 'equivalent content'. Technology is used to identify and delete content that is considered illegal in most countries, for example, child abuse images. However, this ruling could see filters being used to search text posts for defamatory content, which is more problematic given that the meaning of text could change depending on the context. Although the ruling has said only content that is essentially the same as the original unlawful post should be removed, it is likely that automated filters will make errors". The judgment "undermines the long-standing principle that one country does not have the right to impose its laws on speech on another country," Facebook commented in a statement. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-handed-unwanted-job-global-11262948… ...

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Steal This Book Abbie Hoffman, This Wiki, and Waymond Hall
by grarpamp 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book infohash:223536A963B74F5A0DB2A9BAA9E4A8980DA0CB88 Steal This Book: Today https://web.archive.org/web/20120113120006/http://www.stealthiswiki.org/ infohash:5D1F49F7811EBDB1759175864F467F4968C6D550 https://story.californiasunday.com/waymond-hall My decade as a fugitive - Waymond Hall https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21481540 http://hiddenwiki.me/

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Scraping the Analog Media - Mag Tape / Disk, Laser, Vinyl
by grarpamp 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1163549830175580160 Domesday Duplicator , ld-decode , Applesauce drive , homebrew ultrasonic record cleaners, etc :)

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American Empire's unwinnable wars, from an Officer's PoV - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

America's Endless Wars: "At West Point, Graduation Day Felt More Like A Tragedy Than A Triumph" https://www.zerohedge.com/political/americas-endless-wars-west-point-gradua… https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-army-west-point/ ... The first of our wars to come from that nightmare has always been unwinnable. All the Afghan metrics—the US military’s own “measures for success”—continue to trend badly, worse than ever in fact. The futility of the entire endeavor borders on the absurd. It makes me sad to think that my former officemate and fellow West Point history instructor, Mark, is once again over there. Along with just about every serving officer I’ve known, he would laugh if asked whether he could foresee—or even define—“victory” in that country. Take my word for it, after 18-plus years, whatever idealism might once have been in the Army has almost completely evaporated. Resignation is what remains among most of the officer corps. As for me, I’ll be left hoping against hope that someone I know or taught isn’t the last to die in that never-ending war from hell. My former cadets who ended up in armor (tanks and reconnaissance) or ventured into the Special Forces might now find themselves in Syria—the war President Trump “ended” by withdrawing American troops from that country, until, of course, almost as many of them were more or less instantly sent back in. Some of the armor officers among my students might even have the pleasure of indefinitely guarding that country’s oil fields, which—if the United States takes some of that liquid gold for itself—might just violate international law. But hey, what else is new? Still more—mostly intelligence officers, logisticians, and special operators—can expect to deploy to any one of the dozen or so West African or Horn of Africa countries that the US military now calls home. In the name of “advising and assisting” the local security forces of often autocratic African regimes, American troops still occasionally, if quietly, die in “non-combat” missions in places like Niger or Somalia. None of these combat operations have been approved, or even meaningfully debated, by Congress. But in the America of 2019 that doesn’t qualify as a problem. There are, however, problems of a more strategic variety. After all, it’s demonstrably clear that, since the founding of the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, violence on the continent has only increased, while Islamist terror and insurgent groups have proliferated in an exponential fashion. To be fair, though, such counter-productivity has been the name of the game in the “war on terror” since it began. Another group of new academy graduates will spend up to a year in Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states of Eastern Europe. There, they’ll ostensibly train the paltry armies of those relatively new NATO countries—added to the alliance in foolish violation of repeated American promises not to expand eastward as the Cold War ended. In reality, though, they’ll be serving as provocative “signals” to a supposedly expansionist Russia. With the Russian threat wildly exaggerated, just as it was in the Cold War era, the very presence of my Baltic-based former cadets will only heighten tensions between the two over-armed nuclear heavyweights. Such military missions are too big not to be provocative, but too small to survive a real (if essentially unimaginable) war. The intelligence officers among my cadets might, on the other hand, get the “honor” of helping the Saudi Air Force through intelligence-sharing to doom some Yemeni targets—often civilian—to oblivion thanks to US manufactured munitions. In other words, these young officers could be made complicit in what’s already the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Other recent cadets of mine might even have the ignominious distinction of being part of military convoys driving along interstate highways to America’s southern border to emplace what President Trump has termed “beautiful” barbed wire there, while helping detain refugees of wars and disorder that Washington often helped to fuel. ... None of these potential tasks awaiting my former students is even remotely linked to the oath (to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”) that newly commissioned officers swear on day one. They are instead all unconstitutional, ill-advised distractions that benefit mainly an entrenched national security state and the arms-makers that go with them. The tragedy is that a few of my beloved cadets with whom I once played touch football, who babysat my children, who shed tears of anxiety and fear during private lunches in my office might well sustain injuries that will last a lifetime or die in one of this country’s endless hegemonic wars. ... My last day in front of a class, I skipped the planned lesson and leveled with the young men and women seated before me. We discussed my own once bright, now troubled career and my struggles with my emotional health. We talked about the complexities, horror, and macabre humor of combat and they asked me blunt questions about what they could expect in their future as graduates. Then, in my last few minutes as a teacher, I broke down. I hadn’t planned this, nor could I control it. My greatest fear, I said, was that their budding young lives might closely track my own journey of disillusionment, emotional trauma, divorce, and moral injury. The thought that they would soon serve in the same pointless, horrifying wars, I told them, made me “want to puke in a trash bin.” The clock struck 1600 (4 pm), class time was up, yet not a single one of those stunned cadets—unsure undoubtedly of what to make of a superior officer’s streaming tears—moved for the door. I assured them that it was okay to leave, hugged each of them as they finally exited, and soon found myself disconcertingly alone. So I erased my chalkboards and also left. Three years have passed. About 130 students of mine graduated in May. My last group will pin on the gold bars of brand new army officers in late May 2020. I’m still in touch with several former cadets and, long after I did so, students of mine are now driving down the dusty lanes of Iraq or tramping the narrow footpaths of Afghanistan. My nightmare has come true.

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High tech Anti-Trust
by jim bell 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

Top antitrust enforcer warns Big Tech over data collection https://news.yahoo.com/top-antitrust-enforcer-warns-big-003120945.html

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Cointelegraph: FBI: Crypto Is A “Significant Problem That Will Get Bigger And Bigger”
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

Cointelegraph: FBI: Crypto Is A “Significant Problem That Will Get Bigger And Bigger”. https://cointelegraph.com/news/fbi-crypto-is-a-significant-problem-that-wil… Jim Bell's comment: Government is a problem that will get bigger and bigger.

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