September 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Wikileaks head hostile to US ( and the web! )
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

JULIAN " the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization " ASSANGE 2012 JULIAN "of course Russia understands this game and Putin understands this game for a long time now" ASSANGE 2013 JULIAN " Capitalism+atheism+feminism = sterility " ASSANGE. 2017 Mar 6, 2014 - I wouldn't say this publicly, but Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in prison..." JULIAN " Being guilty of aggravated rape has nothing to do with our party" A. Broinowski. Wikileaks Party NSW candidate for au Senate. 2013.

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JULIAN " This is what we are: spies for the people " ASSANGE
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

JULIAN " This is what we are: spies for the people " ASSANGE JULIAN " to come into the Senate as a spy for the people ” ASSANGE 2013 JULIAN " I'll be so disheartened that I'll lower myself to government contracting work " ASSANGE 2007. “#PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID and [George] Soros,” WikiLeaks tweeted. Putin said: “WikiLeaks has showed us that official people and official organs of the US are behind this.” The “customers” who ordered the Panama Papers’ leak were clear, he said. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses-panama-papers-…

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CIA targeting WikiLeaks, JTRIG style tactics confirmed
by Jacob Appelbaum 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

Hello, It is interesting to note that the moment that new evidence[0] is presented to the public that the intelligence services are working against WikiLeaks, we see posting activity trying to suggest that Julian Assange is somehow a pro-militarist, pro-intel person. This is nonsense propaganda that presumes a statement of fact is a statement of desire or a goal. Rather than discussing that the CIA has been targeting, harassing, and even discussing kidnapping or assassinations of Julian and WikiLeaks associates: the same posters promote JTRIG[1] internal conflict dynamics and this too should be ignored. Whenever people use JTRIG tactics of division, we should seek to find commonality in our struggles. There is more news on the way. Reminds me of better times: "The truth is coming and it can't be stopped." [0] https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-insi… [1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

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Yahoo! subject to the largest data breach on record
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_data_breaches Who does their security? The THREE STOOGES!?

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Anonymous officials making assertions without evidence
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

Claims without evidence may be dismissed without examination In the May 9, 2005, issue of Newsweek, Michael Isikoff co-wrote an article that stated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Quran down a toilet." Detainees had earlier made similar complaints, but this was the first time a government source had appeared to confirm the story. The article caused widespread rioting and massive anti-American protests throughout some parts of the Islamic world, resulting at least 17 deaths in Afghanistan. The magazine later retracted the story after noting that the anonymous official who was their source subsequently could not remember important details.

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SECRET HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN CONSULATE
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN CONSULATE IN SAN FRANCISCO https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/14/the-secret-history-of-the-russian-cons…

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Russian Roulette: KGB Putin's War on Democracy & his selection of Donald Dumbfuck
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Isikoff Michael R. Isikoff (born May 12, 1952) is an American investigative journalist who is currently the Chief Investigative Correspondent at Yahoo! News. He is the co-author with David Corn of the book titled Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, published on March 13, 2018..."

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Cryptocurrency: West Can't Ban Like China Did...
by grarpamp 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

Why The West Can't Ban Bitcoin The Way China Did https://bombthrower.com/articles/china-is-showing-us-what-it-would-take-to-… https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/06/27/bitcoin-billion-users-2024/ https://bombthrower.com/articles/network-states-a-primer/ https://bombthrower.com/articles/could-facebooks-diem-become-fedcoin-by-def… Only a complete “dictatorship of the proletariat” can kill Bitcoin Evergrande is being called China’s “Lehman moment” and overnight the PBC closed the loop on their clampdown on crypto with a total ban on virtual currency transactions. For those paying attention, however, China isn’t just moving against crypto, they’ve been bringing their entire technology sector to heel. They also stated that it is time to redistribute wealth from the top tier of the nations wealth holders to the rest of the peasant class. This isn’t a return to their Communist roots as much as it is a move of self-preservation against rising internal powers. In the words of my friend Charles Hugh Smith via some correspondence we’ve been having this week “Xi has set out to crush the Network State”. I said in my earlier Network State Primer about the coming tension between Nation States and Network States: the former will go down swinging. The power structures of the nation states won’t go gently into the dustbin of history. They will go down swinging, over a transitional era that may span decades or longer, similar to the centuries long tensions between monarchs and the Papacy that shaped the transition from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. China has decided to make their last stand of the Nation State, now. Here at this moment in time. They will not bail out Evergrande, they will allow their side of the Everything Bubble to pop, and they will use the economic crash to make a final sweep of consolidation of their power. They will make sure their Big Tech knows who is in charge and that it is not them. Over here in the West, recent regulatory jabs at crypto seem almost enfeebled by comparison. The SEC forcing Coinbase to cancel a program they hadn’t launched yet (so it makes no difference to their bottom line), while bickering with the CFTA over who gets to regulate crypto. The subtext to all this is we shall now see, and be forced to choose, a path forward in the digital networked age: Behind door #1 we keep the nation state format of centralized, top down control and escalating interference into both the economic and private lives of its subjects. Behind door #2 is the coming tension between nation states, network states and crypto-claves that I outlined previously. Neither path will produce a serene and stable gilded age. They will both be chaotic and volatile, Fourth Turning style transitions. The former in the course of implementing then maintaining a totalitarian dictatorship by force. The latter in the interplay and jockeying between three disparate organizational dynamics, each with it’s own centre of gravity (power), source of wealth and interdependencies with the others. China may be able to make option #1 work there, at least for awhile, but would a China style technocratic dictatorship actually fly and sustain in the West? At first glance one may think so. The zeitgeist today seems to be one clamouring for authoritarianism and collectivism. But upon deeper examination this may only be the vocal minority of academia, media pundits and Social Justice Inc. The majority of the population may just be keeping silent out of pragmatism and sheer exhaustion from the never-ending elitist sanctimony and cultural Marxism. But the pushback against COVID authoritarianism, now made acute by forced vaccinations and the ongoing threats of never-ending lockdowns may finally be getting hints of non-compliance through to policy-makers in the West. Australia has officially abandoned their Zero Covid policy and vaccine passport mandates are incurring revolts and in some places are abandoned. What would it take for Western governments to ban crypto, reign in ascendant tech platforms and more permanently abrogate all property rights? Western governments would have to go “Full China” My worry under lockdowns was that Western governments pined for China-style autocracy. And let’s call it for what it is: for a couple years since all this started, they certainly tried it. To varying degrees they continue to cling to the hope that they can remain relevant in a 21st century world using technocratic methods developed out of 20th century industrialism. Most policy makers are still trapped in a mindset learned from an era of assembly lines and cubicles. They think the only difference is it’s now digitized. But the more I started thinking about this the more I realized how unlikely this is in the realms of erstwhile liberal democracies. For one thing, decentralized crypto currencies have already changed the game in the West in a way where there is no going back. It is estimated that by 2024, there will one billion Bitcoin HODLers, and that makes them a real constituancy. Another reason is that we are at least nominally democracies, with elections. That means our societal fabric has a particular architecture very different from China’s. While elections have become largely ceremonial ratifications of homogenous policy tracks, contested between insular factions within political monocultures, they at least show the overlords where the boundaries of their powers are. Take for example the recent Canadian election, where Justin Trudeau’s gambit to secure a majority failed and he’s stuck with another minority government. The rising right-wing PPC party won no seats, and yet, secured 5% of the popular vote, up from 1.62% in 2019, the year that party formed. They blew out the Green Party at 2.6% and who has been around for 35 years. Their performance caused much pearl clutching from the MSM and there will be more going forward, especially should the incumbent government continue with its post-national, woke, collectivist aspirations. The Chinese peoples have never been free. There’s never been a liberty inspired revolution there, only a cultural (Marxist) one. People in China have no constitutionally guaranteed rights, they aren’t even citizens. They’re subjects. They will take it, at least for now, because they’ve always taken it. As Charles put it in his emails to me, their history is replete with “one bloody purge after another, of someone consolidating power and then unleashing a Cultural Revolution to eliminate rivals, etc. If crashing China’s bubble is the nuclear option, Xi is quite confident he can push the pain level to 11 and most will accept it, those who don’t will enjoy treatment as an honorary Uyghur.” That’s not the case here in the West where there have been at least two revolutions fuelled directly out of an impulse for liberty: The French and the American. Even though the former went off the rails a lot quicker than the latter did, it still happened and it is a stark reminder of where things go when wealth inequality gets so out of whack and the elites become so detached from reality (Charles thinks this is where things are headed in the US, he may not be wrong). For cryptos to be hit with a China-style ban, in their entirety here in the West, governments would have to go Full China, complete with total control over every aspect of every citizen’s life (China just set limits on how much time you’re allowed to spend on Tik Tok, they have social credit systems which meter your alcohol consumption, the list goes on and is getting longer). How long would that last here in the West? Either the citizenry would move straight into the final hyper-normalization phase seen in the Soviet Union before it collapsed (paraphrasing: “They pretend to govern us and we pretend to obey”), or, the pitchforks and torches come out almost immediately. Countries break up. Secessionists abound. At least a few people face some Mussolini moments if not full on Storming of the Bastille and a French Revolution style purging of perceived elites. It would get ugly. I’m not saying this is what would happen if Western governments banned crypto, I’m saying it could happen in response to the kind of dictatorship that would have to be imposed in order to ban crypto. That also doesn’t mean that cryptos can’t go “risk off” (to use Charles’ description) for awhile, even in lieu of a ban. Especially if China allows the economic chips to fall as they may and that ripples across the global economy (perhaps China is unleashing yet another global contagion…. on purpose). The way I see it, the tension in liberal democracies between nation states and network states will be played out through their respective monetary systems. The nation state’s fiat money will be digitized into CBDCs, which will be specifically constructed to preclude wealth formation or savings and almost certainly be the rails of Westernized social credit systems, The network state stable coins (like Facebook’s Diem), which may endeavour to extend the lifespan of fiat currencies and fuse with CBDCs And crypto currencies founded on hard money principles that catalyzed the entire decentralized revolution. These will exist out of default because in the absence of total dictatorship and owing to the demands of optionality, capital pools will have to go here (among other places) out of self-preservation.

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Wikileaks head approves assassinations, Kidnappings and shoot-outs from London
by professor rat 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

"... 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

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Cryptocurrency: CBDC's will Fail, But they're trying them anyway...
by grarpamp 26 Sep '21

26 Sep '21

While quiet CBDC polling, focus, and trials in US continue over year... Welcome To The Central Bank Hotel, Once Inside You Can Never Leave https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/speeches/exploring-a-digital-euro-875408 https://mishtalk.com/economics/welcome-to-the-central-bank-hotel-once-insid… Central bank digital currencies are on the way. The German Central Bank just embraced a digital euro. Let's discuss the risks... Fintech and Global Payments Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank gave the opening speech at the digital conference “Fintech and the global payments landscape – exploring new horizons” Exploring a Digital Euro The title of Weidmann speech was Exploring a Digital Euro. Emphasis mine with my thoughts in braces [ ] Paper money, for instance, was first introduced in China about a thousand years ago. This innovation eventually transformed the payments system. Today, digitalisation is on the cusp of overhauling payments. Central banks have to work out how to respond to this challenge. One possibility is the issuing of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). According to a survey by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the share of central banks conducting work on CBDC for general or wholesale use rose to 86% last year. Many of them have made significant progress. Two months ago, the Eurosystem launched a project to investigate key questions regarding the design of a CBDC for the euro area. The aim of the investigation is to prepare us for the potential launch of a digital euro. Experiments have already shown that, in principle, a digital euro is feasible using existing technologies. As my ECB colleague Fabio Panetta has stressed, a digital euro would have “no liquidity risk, no credit risk, no market risk,” in this way resembling cash. [No Risk? Really] The protection of privacy would thus be a key priority in terms of maintaining people’s trust. European data protection rules would have to be complied with. Nevertheless, a digital euro would not be as anonymous as cash. In order to prevent illicit activities such as money laundering or terrorist financing, legitimate authorities would have to be able to trace transactions in individual, justified cases. [Every Case] But designing CBDC involves curbing its risks. In order to prevent excessive withdrawals of bank deposits, it has been suggested that a cap be placed on the amount of digital euro that each individual can hold. Or that digital euro holdings in excess of a certain limit could be rendered unattractive by applying a penalty interest rate. [No Risk? I thought you said there was no risk.] If a digital euro were accessible for non-residents, this could impact on capital flows and euro exchange rates. What this calls for is international and multilateral collaboration. [Wait a second, is this another risk?] Self-reinforcing loops and “lock-in” effects may tie users to one platform and exclude competitors. Some observers have been reminded of “Hotel California”, the famous song by the American rock band “The Eagles”: it’s such a lovely place, with plenty of room; but once inside you can never leave. [Hotel Central Bank: Once inside you can never leave.] The Eurosystem has no commercial interest in user data or behaviour. A digital euro could therefore help to safeguard what has always been the essence of money: trust. [Ah yes, trust that interest rates won't go even more negative, money won't expire, and withdrawals won't be capped]. Central banks need to be at the cutting edge of technology. Otherwise, they cannot provide the backbone of payment systems and offer safe and trusted money for the digital age. This has prompted all major central banks to start exploring issuance of CBDC. However, our success as a money creator will depend not so much on speed, but on the trust of those who are supposed to use the money. Europe Moving Ahead It appears Europe is moving ahead faster than the Fed. The risks are obvious. Expiring Money Increasingly Negative Interest Rates Withdrawals Capped Withdrawals Taxed Gifts Taxed And once inside you can never leave. Livin' it up at the Hotel Fedifornia has a nice ring to it. ECBifornia isn't as catchy.

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