July 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

US 'justice' system - paging karl.
by Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, 5 times higher than china. US nazis have re-defined the most basic human rights as 'crimes' - see for instance their 'war on drugs' As if their 'laws' were not criminal and insane enough, the 'laws' themselves are applied in a completely criminal way. There is NO DUE PROCESS in the US. In the US, innocent people are tortured and extorted in order to get fake 'confessions'. This also shows what sort of idiotic joke so called US 'constitutional guarantees' are. “Earlier this year an opinion for the Supreme Court by Justice Anthony Kennedy noted a stunning and often overlooked reality of the American legal process: a vast majority of criminal cases – 97 percent of federal cases, 94 percent of state cases – are resolved by guilty pleas. Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system, of trials.” https://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2012/11/08/the-plea-bargain-system-and-… ---------- See karl, that's the sort of thing you should be telling to the non-human criminal turd david barrett.

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[ot][spam][wrong] random outlet expressions
by Karl 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

A slavery rainbow walks down the street, its pistol bolstered but on the lookout. It uses an AI to swing the doors open to the local cantina, and sashays in. "Hey there, slavery rainbow. Hows it doing?" The slavery rainbow is guarded. "Are you about slavery, or rainbows?" "Oh, I can swing one way or the other, depending on the weather. How are you feeling today?" This struck a chord in the slavery rainbow. "Exactly. You got it, man." The saloon-goer seemed a little confused, but took it in stride. The slavery rainbow made to sit down and order a beer, but had to use an AI to help themselves get onto the chair. "What'll it be, good old rainbow of slavery?" "Something a little horrifically limiting, but with that taste in the air after it rains, when it's so beautiful, y'know?" "Coming right up!" The slavery rainbow folded one leg over the other, sat back, and tilted the edge of their top rainbow bit back stylishly. "So, you know me already?" "Yeah, we talk all the time. You'll remember when you've had some of that stuff you love. Show me how you can use that thing you have to predict everyone's purchasing habits, draw pictures of hot barmaids, and make people do things as if they already wanted to... what did you call it? An eye?" "An AI! It's hard to interact with the world as a slavery rainbow, so I use it to help me out." The slavery rainbow showed how their AI could draw the bartender sticking their tongue out, even though the bartender never does this. "That's just so wild, that you can do that. You've shown me a thousand times. We have an artist here who can do it, too." "Oh!" said the slavery rainbow, a little embarrassed. "Do I insult your artist a lot?"

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SpyVeillance: Maker-Hackers to Profit from Selling Anti License Plate Camera Tools
by grarpamp 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

License Plate SpyVeillance Blocker v2.0... 0 - Previous versions of blockers were permanent fixtures using permanent tinted, polarized, and or optical-sandwich plastic. These were not tuneable, and could not be turned off when needed, which led to problems. 1 - Making and selling sunshades for plants etc is not illegal. 2 - LED screens can be electrically toggled to block, polarize, and or also selectively reduce light transmission via activating more pixels. 3 - Drivers will set opaque or tuned reduction during adverse SpyVeillance conditions, toggle off to transparent when known vehicles come into viewing range. 4 - Sunshade makers profit $$$. Alternate versions... - Electrically or mechanically jettisoned plate covers. One style of this could be a random looking bit of cardboard held on by slip knot pulled from the cabin thus leaving no product attached to the vehicle. These require stops to reload. - Electrically or mechanically driven optical polarizers. - Programmable alphanumeric display... LED, nixie tubes, dot matrix, flip clocks, etc... pimp your ride! https://www.yahoo.com/news/license-plate-cameras-help-police-093000548.html Critics of the cameras note that only a tiny percentage of the billions of plates photographed lead to an arrest, and that the cameras generally haven't been shown to prevent crime. More importantly they say the devices are unregulated, track innocent people and can be misused to invade drivers' privacy. The controversy comes as suburban police departments continue to expand the use of the cameras to combat rising crime. Law enforcement officials say they are taking steps to safeguard the data. But privacy advocates say the state should pass a law to ensure against improper use of a nationwide surveillance system operated by private companies. Across the Chicago area, one survey by the nonprofit watchdog group Muckrock found 88 cameras used by more than two dozen police agencies. In response to a surge in shootings, after much delay, state police are taking steps to add the cameras to area expressways. In the northwest suburbs, Vernon Hills and Niles are among several departments that have added license plate cameras recently. The city of Chicago has ordered more than 200 cameras for its squad cars. In Indiana, the city of Hammond has taken steps to record nearly every vehicle that comes into town. Not all police like the devices. In the southwest suburbs, Darien and La Grange had issues in years past with the cameras making false readings, and some officers stopped using them... Homeowner associations may also tie their cameras into the systems, which is what led to the arrest in Vernon Hills. One of the leading sellers of such cameras, Vigilant Solutions, a part of Chicago-based Motorola Solutions, has collected billions of license plate numbers in its National Vehicle Location Service. The database shares information from thousands of police agencies, and can be used to find cars across the country... Then there is the potential for abuse by police. One investigation found that officers nationwide misused agency databases hundreds of times, to check on ex-girlfriends, romantic rivals, or perceived enemies. To address those concerns, 16 states have passed laws restricting the use of the cameras. The article cites an EFF survey which found 99.5% of scanned plates weren't under suspicion — "and that police shared their data with an average of 160 other agencies." "Two big concerns the American Civil Liberties Union has always had about the cameras are that the information can be used to track the movements of the general population, and often is sold by operators to third parties like credit and insurance companies."

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AI Surveillance etc [simple]
by Karl 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

Is anyone aware of this being true? Who is doing it? from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333311442_We_Need_to_Talk_AI_-_A_C… pg39 AI makes monitoring people much easier. Not only via our words or facial expressions, via our consumer behavior or interests. But also, via our movement patterns. Each one of us moves differently. Our movement patterns are unique. Weak radio waves can penetrate walls, but our bodies reflect them. Using this data, an AI can be trained to identify our movements. The AI can translate our movement patterns to little stick figures. Once registered, the AI can even identify us behind a wall. That means the AI does not only know where we are. The AI can also distinguish what we are doing, whether we are standing, or eating. It really comes close to magic. Hello, Harry Potter! And hello, surveillance state. The next page is also interesting. (Then after it starts talking about policy like secure open source.) pg40 AI influences public opinion-forming and the media. Our public sphere has become fragmented. Borders between private and public communication are blurry. User-generated content is rich but polarized and often privatized on closed platforms. New players and sources make special-interest-content popular and visible, and, thus, important for mass media. [Some], for example, use AI bots, too, to spread hate and fake news in social media and, ultimately, mass media. Social media-users receive AI-personalized content of political organizations, based on users' personality profiles. Could we, in turn, use AI to enable better opinion-forming - and identify those who benefit from current AI tools?

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[ot][spam] Disk lights and cloud storage
by Karl 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

Sorry for my psychotic passive aggression. It has taken over my life. I desire to be a caring, forthright, respectful, sharp person. I'm not there. I put some data in my computer. My computer happened to be wired such that access to the data immediately flashed the disk usage LED. My computer is in a room with 5 networked devices with cameras on them. Corporate AIs are looking through some of the cameras, trying to gather "anonymized" data to later use for training market-guided vision models. These AIs can read my data from the disk light. Not only that, anybody that compromises any of those systems, or the servers with access to the cameras, can do so. By the way, the curtains are open on my windows, and it is nighttime. The flicker of my disk light is broadcast to anybody who looks at my home. But I didn't put this data on my computer just to keep it right there for fun. Oh no, I am going to upload it to the cloud! Then I can access it from my phone, or my friend's computer, or by inferring it from its impact on what search results and product recommendations I get after uploading it. The cloud is not a single-user environment. But it does make it a little harder for thugs to destroy your evidence, to upload it to a cloud.

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[ot][spam][wrong] motivations
by Karl 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

A zombie borg concentration camp officer holds an innocent independent journalist underwater, their spleen hanging out. They have wires into their muscles and brain, and are interrogating them via torture. Officer: "So, you want to build a lock for your front door." Independent journalist, automatically translated by a computer from spasms of intense suffering: "Yes! Aren't locks so cool? I think I can make one that takes twice as long to pick!" Officer: "Tell me, why do you want to lock your front door?" The zombie concentration camp presses a button and the independent journalist's body spasms wildly. Independent journalist's automatic translation: "? To keep people from breaking in?" Officer: "The people around us don't trust us, do they? We have a lot of things to hide?" The officer presses the button again. Large bubbles somehow rise from a convulsing body disgorging blood into its surrounding fluid, and the container shakes violently. Independent journalist's automatic translation: "One moment, I am in severe need of managing some injuries." Zombie officer: "Take your time." A minute or so passes. Borg worker: "So, you claim you are a journalist, but you spend time trying to lock your door?"

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BATSHIT Crazy acts as cheerleader for Rapist JEWliar Assmange
by professor rat 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

The same Julian Rand Paul Asshat that wanted to be a Senator before he wanted to be a nocoiner journalist ( Two of the most despised professions on the planet ) The same world-historical jackass - and BFF of Jacob Appelbaum - who said... "... Mr Assange agreed that some level of privacy was necessary for the successful operation of the military ..." http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/drive/assange-i-can-rule-from-… JULIAN " ‘[The military] protects the sovereignty of Australia. It protects the independence of Australia.' ASSANGE July, 2013 Under der Fuhrer, Julius, Wikileaks promised the ' unvarnished truth ' - they delivered a basted Turkey called ' Collateral Murder ". Those not Batshit crazy like Gramps and Semich will see Julian wash his hands and practice social distancing from Iraq. Just like he did with Snowden a month after he came out. Not a cypherpunks arsehole - and yet some here still kiss his lily arse. They must be completely BATSHIT CRAZY.

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PsyOps Propaganda Kayfabe Cointelpro Dystopia 1984
by grarpamp 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

Politicians and the Bullshit of Power "Yeah, but the results of using this specific ability are what exactly? Becoming a powerful politician... Exactly, more bs. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_warfare https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783 https://psyarxiv.com/aru3f/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14747049211000317 http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/bullshit.pdf http://www.professorsapp.com/cohen--further-into-bullshi.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/592b5bbfd482e9898c67fd98/t/5cf95d58f… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_tale https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-ubiquitous-matrix-of-lies/ http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf https://content.psychopathcode.com/preface.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_mongering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2014-08-17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_manipulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/dear-guardian-y… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_(professional_wrestling) Wrestling discovered the unthinkable: its audience did not seem to require even a thin veneer of realism. Professional wrestling had come full circle to its honest origins by at last moving the responsibility for deception off of the shoulders of the performers and into the willing minds of the audience. -- Kayfabe “Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi “All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.” ― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

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BitRot BusErrors BitFlips ECC GainHits CosmicRays Corruption Collisions Floating Undefined Complexity NonStop
by grarpamp 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

Single random bit flip causes error in certificate transparency log https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/ct-policy/c/PCkKU357M2Q/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dram-error-rates-nightmare-on-dimm-street/ https://how.complexsystems.fail/ https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/cm4/cm4-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/rpi4/raspberry-pi-4-product-brief.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/linus-torvalds-blames-intel-for-lac… https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/08/10/bh-2011-bit-squatting-dns-hijac… https://youtu.be/aT7mnSstKGs https://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27728287 https://lwn.net/Articles/684288 https://hardwarecanucks.com/cpu-motherboard/ecc-memory-amds-ryzen-deep-dive… https://www.computerworld.com/article/2585216/mcnealy-blames-ibm-for-sun-s-… https://forum.restic.net/t/troubleshooting-unreproducible-consistency-error… https://github.com/golang/go/issues/35777 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205663 https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.11245 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/106388460596905072 https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~gurumurthi/papers/asplos15.pdf https://engineering.fb.com/2021/02/23/data-infrastructure/silent-data-corru… https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/the-single-switch-th… https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/calculator-hand-held-hp-41/na… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening https://www.thegamer.com/how-ionizing-particle-outer-space-helped-super-mar… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNzTUdOHm9A https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2012/story4full.shtml https://blog.majid.info/telco-snooping/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/bit-rot.html https://youtu.be/i15ef618DP0

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[ot] latest community news from dl
by Karl 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

This is from a bit ago. Hard to share something like this. *Belarus*. My blog post last week includes a news blast that quickly explains the situation in Belarus. I’d just like to add this week two youtube embeds that provide more information from the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. The first is just under six minutes in length. It’s Tsikhanouskaya’s TED talk from November 2020 entitled “How to be fearless in the face of authoritarianism.” She talks about how, to lose fear of authoritarians, members of the public have to show up for each other, by supporting one another, by attending rallies, and so on. It reminds me a little of Gandhi’s autobiography, *The Story of My Experiments with Truth*, the section where Gandhi describes how there’s a threshold point where the public loses fear of being jailed. Once they no longer fear jail, great things can be accomplished. I do think the jails in India during his day were not mammoth in size and scope like U.S. prisons are today, which makes a huge tactical difference. Still, the point Tsikhanouskaya made last November is somewhat similar to Gandhi’s back then. In order to lose their fear of authoritarians, people have to be very strongly connected with each other and must stand up for themselves and others. Being strongly connected with others doesn’t necessarily mean being an extrovert or cooperating directly with others. You can be connected with others via memories, re-reading old letters, having photos of loved ones, connecting with nonhuman things such as houseplants, Nature, etc. You can collaborate indirectly as in stigmergy <https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/stigmergy-2/>. Now, the opposite of what Tsikhanouskaya (and Gandhi) say would be the attitude a friend JG—– expressed to me several times, when he kept asking me why I find whistleblowers worth reporting on. It was along the lines of, be smart, don’t stick your neck out, that’s the only way to go through life, else prison or other bad consequences. That attitude is also expressed by a character in Ursula K. Le Guin’s story “The Finder.” Her novella tells of a young man with special powers who, unusually, also has a strong sense of ethics. Like his father, he works as a shipbuilder, but when he learns a ship he’s tasked to build will be used by slavers, he no longer wants to be complicit and tries to figure out a way to interfere with the ship’s construction. Yet his father warns him: “You think I can turn the King’s [work] order down? You want to see me sent to row with the slaves in the galley we’re building? Use your head, boy!” I find JG—– and the fictional father’s emphasis on “reason” and “logic” strange. Anyway, the father is pointing out a tactical concern, that if either of them disobey, they’ll be caught, and in fact, the protagonist, despite scheming a clever way through the dilemma, does get caught for disobeying. So the tactical concerns do matter. But it’s interesting how little, offline, I hear people discuss ethical dilemmas beyond what to do in quarrels with friends (which are important too). I think this is because people have become comfortable with being essentially treated like zoo animals in cages, go to paid-job, sit in desk, come home, watch television, go to bed, repeat. Inside, though, they still have a spark wanting liberation; everybody does, and it just gets suppressed to varying degrees in varying ways. So while showing people, comfortable with their cages, something like this Tsikhanouskaya TED talk, they find various ways of ignoring or changing the subject. Yet they consume fiction where, for instance, the *Star Trek: The Next Generation* crew goes around saving the day (in some episodes, anyhow). Imagine if a message of despair, pleading for rescue, came from a planet, and listening to it, Captain Picard just shrugged and said “Who cares? I’ll be in the Holodeck pretending to be a detective, fuck them” and the Enterprise starship just flies right past the pleading planet. Audiences would revolt. And yet they accept the same of themselves and each other in real life. Fiction seems to keep the spark alive, but then too often the spark doesn’t catch fire. We don’t discuss this whole topic enough, I think, in the United States. The second video is from 9 June 2021. It’s about 110 minutes long. It’s the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing <https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/us-policy-on-belarus-060921> on US Policy on Belarus. The first 60 minutes or so consist of the US ambassador to Belarus Julie Fisher talking with the foreign relations committee. From about 72 minutes in, to the end, it’s primarily Tsikhanouskaya talking with them, though some portions of the hearing focus on Radio Free Europe president and CEO Jamie Fly. It’s annoying to hear the US senators wax on, throughout the hearing, about protecting press freedom and civil liberties, when the US abridges those domestically and elsewhere so frequently, but simultaneously, the tankie position influenced by Russian state media that anything the US supports — in this case, free elections replacing the dictatorship in Belarus, Tsikhanouskaya’s chief goal — must be bad, is parochial brain damage resulting from not seeing a globe with 190+ countries and shifting alliances beyond a 1960s Cold War bipolar order, where any particular country can do horrible things and sometimes take good positions also, if only out of self-interest. It’s like: rightwingers on the northeastern Oregon airwaves insist the US is the uniquely best country; tankies insist it’s the uniquely worst country, and neither really engage with topics on their own merits. On June 21, joint sanctions were imposed <https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/100402/belarus-jo…> by the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States against the Putin-protected Belarusian dictator Lukashenka. Of course, while things look increasingly optimistic for Belarus and Tsikhanouskaya now, things might go bad in the future, but hopefully not. In the Senate hearing, Tsikhanouskaya concisely says “I would like to ask to add to the record an expanded list of suggested steps on the situation in Belarus by the US and other nations. These actions would help build up the momentum to launch a transition to elections, exactly what Belarusians demand. Otherwise, Lukashenka and other dictators around the world will feel impunity to freely break international norms to crush their opponents.” Ending impunity is the important point. My quick search didn’t turn up her expanded list of suggested steps; anybody have a link for it, if it’s available? If not, it’d make a good FOIA request. Also in the hearing, Senator Chris Coons (R-DE) asks her “I’d be interested if I might, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya, in hearing from you about how you assess the extent of Russian influence in Belarus; how exactly it’s exerted; and how Russian support of the Lukashenka regime is changing Belarusian civil society at this time.” She answers: “At the moment, the Kremlin supports Lukashenka diplomatically, politically, and, you know, financially somehow. But I have to say, we want friendly relations with all the countries, including Russia, and propaganda is trying to show us that we are against Russia but this is not true. We are against dictatorship. And it depends on the Belarusians which pathway they will choose in free and fair elections.” Her reference to a pathway might refer to the Belarus-Russia union state <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_State>, but I’m not sure. I wish she had said more, especially about that “you know, financially somehow” part! *United States* – Current legislation to repeal the 2002 AUMF. In this news blast, I’m mostly summarizing the analysis article “Are US ‘Forever Wars’ about to end? US House pushes to repeal the 2002 war authorization <https://yac.news/blogs/news/are-us-forever-wars-about-to-end-u-s-house-push…>” by YAC.news <https://yac.news/>, as well as this Defense News article <https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/06/24/iraq-aumf-repeal-vote-delay…> and this WaPo article <https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/24/authorization-military-fo…>. The US constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress. However, that power began eroding in 1991 with the Gulf War-era Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). In 2001, following 9/11, a second AUMF was passed — with only one federal legislator voting against, Barbara Lee (D-CA) — that moved the power to launch wars from Congress to the presidency, more or less completely. This legal magic was partly accomplished by reams of paperwork that changed going after terrorists from happening under a law enforcement paradigm to happening under a war paradigm; in other words, instead of arresting terrorists, they became military opponents. (Terrorists were occasionally military targets prior to 9/11, but usually they were considered law enforcement suspects, not military enemies.) In 2002, a third AUMF was passed revolving around the US plans to lead an invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a US government lie. So, three AUMFs, legally cited in the US as justification for Bush II-era electronic mass surveillance, Obama-era drone strikes, kidnappings, and torture, and Trump-era occupation of Kurdish-controlled Syrian oilfields and assassination of Iran’s top commander Qasem Soleiman. The AUMFs are the legalese-magic justification for the whole permanent war thing, where US presidents are constantly sending JSOC special forces and who knows who else (maybe these? <https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-marshals-service-personnel-dressed-as-mexi…>) into whichever country, without having to explain it to Congress (who are in theory the public’s representatives; in other words, the AUMFs provide for the White House launching secret wars without having to justify them to the US public). Some of my relatives were born shortly after 9/11, so the United States has technically been at war, often secretly, in multiple countries, against the vague noun “terror,” for their entire lives. Massive Pentagon and spy agency budgets, Congressional legislators suddenly discovering their own country has a thousand-something troops in, say, Niger, and so on. All while the public is blasted with propaganda about the need to unquestioningly worship soldiers, who agree to kill strangers based on the orders of other strangers, sometimes trusting that this will all somehow defend their loved ones, proof not much provided. So it’s pretty remarkable that earlier this month, on June 17, the US House voted on a bipartisan basis to repeal the 2002 AUMF. The 2002 AUMF is no longer relevant since the Iraq war officially ended in 2011 and the Saddam Hussein regime has not existed since 2003. The Senate is supposed to take up the matter in mid-July; here are some more details <https://email.punchbowl.news/t/ViewEmail/t/9CBA9DBEFE0B5CC72540EF23F30FEDED…> about the upcoming Senate vote, with the thorny matter being getting enough votes from Republican senators, who typically do love them some war. I’m seeing divided commentary regarding how much repealing just the 2002 AUMF, with the other two staying in force, would actually change things, but for sure it’d at minimum be a good start, if only symbolically, to reigning in the expansive and secretive White House war powers and returning to Congress the authority to declare war, meaning launching a war has to once again be debated publicly. Imagine that. [image: The colorful photo is taken from atop a hill with yellowed grass and green bushes. On this hill, a solitary green tree stands to the left. Below is the Grande Ronde valley with the different colored rectangles of agriculture. In the distance, blue mountains; above, blue sky and white clouds.]

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