December 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Who’s who in Eric Adams’ administration - City & State New York
by Gunnar Larson 13 Dec '23

13 Dec '23

If you ran risk and ethics under Andrew Cuomo, this whole "first checks in Bitcoin" ... FTX, STX and NYCCoin saga is a big, big problem. It is more than a $10B problem. ---- https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2023/10/whos-who-eric-adams-adminis… Chief of staff to the mayor: Camille Joseph Varlack Varlack, an attorney and the former senior adviser to the mayor, was named Adams’ next chief of staff in December 2022. Before joining city government, Varlack worked at the law firm Bradford Edwards & Varlack LLP as a founding partner and chief operating officer. She also oversaw 60 agencies in state government under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the deputy director of state operations, chief risk officer and special counsel. She assumed the role of chief of staff in January 2023.

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New bridge linking Türkiye, Greece planned as ties warm | Daily Sabah
by Gunnar Larson 13 Dec '23

13 Dec '23

https://www.dailysabah.com/business/transportation/new-bridge-linking-turki… New bridge linking Türkiye, Greece planned as ties warm President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (L) and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during their meeting in Athens, Greece, Dec. 7, 2023. (IHA Photo) BY BARIŞ ŞIMŞEKDEC 11, 2023 2:35 PM Türkiye and Greece have reached a consensus to build a second bridge on the Maritsa (Meriç) River, which marks much of the border between the two countries, according to a report Monday. The main bridge spans are planned to be 110-180-110 meters (361-591-361 feet), while the tenders for the Turkish and Greek sides of the project are set out to be put forth separately, the report said. The announcement for the plans on the second bridge connecting two neighbors and historic rivals comes shortly after last week’s visit of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Athens where the two countries renewed their will to cooperate in several fields, including energy and tourism. Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, who shared details about the new border bridge to be built, said, "It is planned to work according to the short pylon extradosed bridge type with 2x2 lanes on a single deck, while the main bridge spans are planned to be 110-180-110 meters." Uraloğlu stated that the existing Ipsala-Kipi Bridge over the Meriç River was built in 1958 and, after inspections, there was no structural problem with the bridge. However, due to increased heavy vehicle traffic and the concentration of tourists, it was found that the bridge was inadequate. Recalling that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly build a second road border crossing bridge in the Ipsala-Kipi border crossing area to improve the transportation infrastructure connecting the two countries was inked in Athens on Jan. 22, 2004, Uraloğlu detailed the context of the agreement. "In this context, on June 10, 2006, an agreement was signed between Türkiye and Greece for the construction of the Ipsala-Kipi Second Border Crossing Bridge," he said. "In this agreement, it was decided that Greece would undertake the bridge project. On April 4, 2014, a protocol was signed specifying the location and exact place of the bridge and the border crossing bridge plan based on determining the borderline on the map," he explained. "In the meeting held on Feb. 15, 2017, to make evaluations together with the Greek side at the technical level it was decided that the meetings would be in the Joint Planning and Monitoring Project Committee (OPIPK) format," he said. Furthermore, the minister mentioned that this committee held various meetings from 2018 until now. "As a result of the meetings, it was collectively accepted that the clear height between the bridge deck and the river surface should be 10 meters. It was also decided to work according to the short pylon extrados bridge type with 2x2 lanes on a single deck; the main bridge spans were planned to be 110-180-110 meters; and the bridge approach spans were projected to be 44 meters," he noted. "Additionally, it was decided to tender for the construction of the bridge separately for the Greek side and the Turkish side, and to establish a joint inspection group that will supervise both the Greek side contractor and the Turkish side contractor during the construction," he added. Stating that the European E-84 road or D-110 Highway, as a part of the European E-roads network in Türkiye, starts from the Greek border near Ipsala and ends in Silivri, Minister Uraloğlu said, "This line is approximately 180 kilometers with an east-west reference." "The project is set to have its start from the Ipsala customs exit and end at the Kipi customs entrance after 1,500 meters," he informed.

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SBF’s Lawyer Says Client Was ‘Worst’ Witness He Has Ever Seen
by Gunnar Larson 12 Dec '23

12 Dec '23

We will always have the Bloomberg Crypto Summit: https://www.youtube.com/live/DtFucHueMG8?si=B0iCKqrLwoDNvvcz For a retrial, let's see if my Cousin Vinny can get in on this Trump trading card business. ---- Sam Bankman-Fried went off-script when he took the stand. SBF’s Lawyer Says Client Was ‘Worst’ Witness He Has Ever Seen https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-12/sbf-defense-legal-archit…

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Harvard Endowment Invested up to $12.65M in Blockstack Token Sale
by Gunnar Larson 12 Dec '23

12 Dec '23

https://www.newsbtc.com/news/harvard-endowment-invested-up-to-12-65m-in-blo… Harvard’s $37.1 billion endowment fund has reportedly invested $12.65 million in Blockstack. The New York-based blockchain toolmaker lately applied with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise $50 million. The application submitted to the US securities regulator detailed the name of Blockstack’s advisory members. Among those names was Charlie Savaria, one of the recently appointed managing directors for the Harvard Management Company. Mr. Savaria, according to the document, alongside other six advisory members purchased an aggregate of 95,833,333 BlockStack digitized equities, called Stack Tokens (STX). At the time of selling, the STX rate was $0.0132, meaning that Blockstack attracted as much as $12.65 million from its advisory board via the coin sale.

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Nikos on Alfredo
by professor rat 12 Dec '23

12 Dec '23

Nikos Maziotes on Alfredo B https://anarchistnews.org/content/comrade-alfredo-bonanno Reposts for the urge to destroy that is also the creative urge

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FreeSpeech and Censorship: Thread
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 11 Dec '23

11 Dec '23

Wikileaks as a limited hang-out. Who knew!? https://newsofinterest.tv/audio_pages/alex_jones/_101205_w_tarpley.php Reposts not snorements of gramps garbage

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[log][personal][ot] digital strangenesses
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 11 Dec '23

11 Dec '23

this ipad's gps began thinking it is in washington a couple nights ago, and hence now sets the time 3 hours in the past

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Human Rights Are Universal Hillary Clinton
by Gunnar Larson 10 Dec '23

10 Dec '23

https://medium.com/@HillaryClinton/human-rights-are-universal-c628f3d797d5 Human Rights Are Universal Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton · Follow 6 min read · 3 hours ago Listen Share The Universal Declaration of Human Rights just turned 75 and is more important than ever By Michelle Bachelet, Allida Black, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Eleanor Roosevelt holds a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1949 December 10th is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and once again we are in the midst of a debate about whether it declares Western or universal values. Based on our experiences around the world, we believe strongly that the human rights enshrined in the Declaration are in fact truly universal. They belong to everyone, everywhere. And, an analysis of how the Declaration was created shows clearly that it arose from a global debate in the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War as nations struggled to reconcile sovereignty with security and international law with human rights. The world had never experienced trauma of that scale. Forty-five million civilians and fifteen million soldiers killed. Twenty-five million soldiers wounded, and forty-five million civilians injured. More than eleven million murdered and tortured in concentration camps. Fifty-plus million refugees jammed in camps across Europe. And atomic bombs devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the Secord World War drew to a close, the so-called “Great Powers” — the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Russia — convened at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, to design an international organization that would succeed where the League of Nations had failed. The delegates from those nations were focused solely on security not the values leaders had proclaimed they were defending and promoting throughout the war. That omission was noted by others, and an effort led by Latin American nations, New Zealand, Greece, and India, as well as anti-colonial activists and women’s rights, civil rights, and religious organizations was organized to elevate attention to the values they thought should undergird postwar planning. They held regional conferences in Mexico City and Paris, convened global coalitions, drafted their own declarations of rights, and flooded the Great Powers with demands to revise their plans and build a United Nations as dedicated to securing human rights as it was to preventing war. Yet by April 1945, as 850 delegates from fifty nations gathered in San Francisco to draft the UN Charter, human rights remained marginalized in all planning documents. Human rights advocates knew they would have to use every political and diplomatic tool at their disposal to refocus the conversation and to ensure that the UN and its Charter treated the security of individuals with the same respect afforded the security of nations. Groups from Liberia and other West African nations, Ceylon, Burma, and Britain organized the All-Colonial People’s Conference to insist that the right to self-determination be recognized. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, who had been excluded from the Indian delegation (and later would serve as India’s ambassador to the United States and president of the General Assembly) worked with other allies to force the creation of the Trusteeship Council. Denmark’s Bodil Begtrup worked with women from China, the Dominican Republic, Poland, Uruguay, and the United States to force the inclusion of women’s political and civil rights. A broad coalition of American NGOs insisted that the State Department lead the efforts to declare human rights a central “purpose” of the UN, require that all Member States accept their obligation to guarantee human rights, and include a specific reference to a human rights commission in the UN Charter. While Americans lobbied their government, the large Latin American bloc circulated the proposals drafted after the Mexico City conference. Egypt, Paraguay, France, and South Africa proposed resolutions that specified human rights as one of the founding principles of the United Nations. Philippine General Carlos Romulo led a multi-nation coalition to urge that these rights apply “without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” Eventually, the advocates won the debate. Human rights would include political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights. The UN Charter’s opening sentence reaffirmed “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, to establish conditions under which justice and respect … can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” But this was just the first step. How would human rights be defined and how would they be promoted and protected? The new UN Human Rights Commission was tasked with the job. When the first General Assembly convened in January 1946, Security Council deliberations once again pushed human rights aside, but by February, debates over refugee resettlement seized center stage as Russia challenged the right of refugees to return home. The leaders of the American delegation had not focused on this crisis and turned to Eleanor Roosevelt, a member of the Commission, because of her familiarity with the issue. Her swift, polite dismantling of the Russian position not only increased her stature within the UN but also reminded the General Assembly of its mandate to draft a bill of human rights. Deliberations began on a proposed bill of rights. Politics, however, rather than aspirations or expertise ruled the day. The Commission’s eighteen delegates, representing nations spread across the globe, did not agree on virtually anything But human rights advocates pressed to create as comprehensive a document as possible. One-hundred-fifty of the world’s leading philosophers offered comments about what should be included. Eleanor Roosevelt met with dozens of the advocates, read and circulated their proposals, and promoted many of their positions with the U.S. State Department and UN colleagues. As chair of the subcommittee charged with drafting the human rights protocols, she folded them into deliberations over language and intent. Finding common ground quickly devolved into political and moral arguments requiring more than 3,000 hours of contentious debate. Did human rights come from God, natural law, or the authority of the state? Were human rights universal or dependent upon context and culture? Should the state give its people as much freedom as possible or intervene to assure certain rights? What rights constitute human rights? Were social and economic rights as important as political and civil rights? Delegates from India, Uruguay, and the Philippines confronted Britain and France over self-determination. Panama and South Africa fiercely debated whether human rights were subject to international law. The US and the Soviet Union tangled over political freedom and economic security. Chilean Hernan Santacruz insisted that interdependence not only existed between persons but among countries. Hansha Mehta and Eleanor Roosevelt debated whether “men” included women or women should be specifically recognized in the Declaration. All debated how race-based discrimination should be addressed. By December 1948, they agreed upon a Declaration that proclaimed thirty universal human rights and required all Member States and territories to promote, protect, and defend those rights. On December 10, the UN unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‒ with eight Soviet bloc abstentions. The world had agreed to freedom of speech, assembly, and religion and the right to education, food, shelter, national identity, work for pay, and travel. It declared torture, arbitrary detention, slavery, and involuntary servitude violations of human rights. All had the right to a fair trial, to seek asylum, and to marry. All shared the responsibility to build communities respectful of “free and full development” of one’s personality. The world had stared fear in its face and presented a concrete vision grounded in hope and determination. The Declaration would influence more than ninety constitutions; be enshrined in multiple covenants; ratified by the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights; and inspire the Beijing Platform for Action and the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. Yet now, when the UDHR is perhaps more necessary than ever, many have succumbed to apathy or disdain. They have been persuaded to overlook the global effort it took to create this vision and to see instead it as Western-inspired propaganda unevenly applied or a tool to limit their aspirations. It took monumental effort to create the Declaration. All knew it was aspirational but hoped that it could promote peace, improve lives, and combat discrimination. They put aside rivalries and compromised. Today, in the shadow of COVID, climate change, autocracy, and war, discrimination thrives, economies are uncertain, and trust in institutions erodes. Compromise is dismissed. We must find our own courage to stand for the principles the Declaration enshrines and, like its drafters, commit to moving it forward rather than adhering to purity tests. We must realize that “human rights begin in small places close to home,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said, as well as the world outside our borders. If we do, we combat the fear and doubt undermining peace, security, and progress and restore the hope and determination the world needs. Michelle Bachelet is the former President of Chile. Allida Black is a historian at the University of Oxford. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the former U.S. Secretary of State. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the former President of Liberia.

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Harvard Rocked by Attacks on President After Penn Leader Quits
by Gunnar Larson 10 Dec '23

10 Dec '23

Harvard Rocked by Attacks on President After Penn Leader Quits https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-10/harvard-rocked-by-attack… “One down. Two to go.”

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Today, on 10 December 1948: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations
by Gunnar Larson 10 Dec '23

10 Dec '23

Today, xNY.io - Bank.org celebrates the UNDHR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, it was accepted by the General Assembly as Resolution 217 during its third session on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, France.[1] Of the 58 members of the United Nations at the time, 48 voted in favour, none against, eight abstained, and two did not vote.[2]

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