July 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Collapse: Is Now Locked In
by grarpamp 10 Jan '24

10 Jan '24

A random blurb on overpopulation, resources, stupid Govts and Peoples... http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2021/12/can-any-nation-state-survive-e… Can Any Nation-State Survive The Era Of Inequality And Scarcity? We have an extraordinary opportunity to transform our unsustainable "waste is growth" economy and toxic inequality to sustainable systems that optimize well-being rather than collapse. The possibility that the United States could fragment is no longer a marginalized topic. Maps displaying various post-U.S. regional configurations accompany essays exploring how and why a break-up of the U.S. would be a solution to regional and ideological polarization, for example, Max Borders' recent article, Dear America: It's Time to Break Up. But two forces larger than political polarization may fragment nation-states across the globe, including the U.S.: inequality and scarcity. Inequality and corruption go hand in hand, of course, as the wealthiest few influence the state to protect their monopolies and backstop their speculative gains. Inequality also goes hand in hand with the collapse of nation-states, as this seminal paper explains: Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. The parasitic elite can accumulate the majority of income, wealth, political power and resources in eras of expanding abundance, as what's left is enough to support an expanding populace that consumes more per capita every year, i.e. broad-based prosperity. But once abundance transitions to scarcity, the economy and society can no longer sustain the dead weight of its outsized parasitic elite. The parasitic elite believes its bloated share of resources, wealth and power is not only sustainable but can be expanded without consequence, and so it deploys all its formidable power to keep the status quo unchanged even as scarcity lowers the living standards of the bottom 90% and hollows out the economy. In effect, the modern central state, regardless of ideological label, optimizes inequality and growth. Once growth falters while inequality continues increasing, the only possible outcome is fragmentation and/or collapse. Put another way: the status quo is no longer the solution to inequality and scarcity, it is the problem. Private-sector and political elites are incapable of recognizing they are now the problem, and so the rapid unraveling of the status quo will come as a great shock to their magical-thinking confidence in their power. The elite's delusional "solution" is a seamless, painless transition to a new era of abundance via "green energy." Unfortunately, this vision is 100% magical thinking, as all these projections ignore the physical realities of building out a global energy system that generates energy on the same scale as existing hydrocarbon energy sources. Read these three reports for reality-based assessments: The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking (manhattan-institute.org) The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth: Even "sustainable" technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines face unbreachable physical limits and exact grave environmental costs. (scientificamerican.com) Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels (PDF, Simon P. Michaux, Geological Survey of Finland) Read the 3-page abstract. As explained in the first paper, inequality generates collapse and so does a decline in resources, i.e. scarcity. Put the two together and the only possible outcome is collapse of all centralized nation-states that optimize inequality and endless expansion of consumption. The issue isn't ideological labels or principles, it's whether the state solves problems or covers them up with fake fixes that accelerate collapse. Nations which want to not just survive but emerge stronger have one path: a revolutionary transformation from "waste is growth" to degrowth, from an economy and state dominated by a parasitic elite to a strictly limited parasitic elite and from abject dependence on fragile supply chains originating in other nations to decentralized, localized independence for essentials. I've written a book that is a template for this transformation. This book is the culmination of a lifetime of study, observation, experience and analysis: Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States. Though I devote some analysis specifically to the U.S., the book is a template for any nation to not just survive scarcity but emerge stronger by evolving a degrowth economy and a decentralized political order. We have an extraordinary opportunity to transform our unsustainable "waste is growth" economy and toxic inequality to sustainable systems that optimize well-being rather than collapse.

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Coronavirus: Thread
by grarpamp 10 Jan '24

10 Jan '24

On 3/5/20, Georgi Guninski <guninski(a)guninski.com> wrote: > Is the so called "society" ready for the time when there > are not enough hospitals for ill from corona virus? > > AFAIK all ill from corona virus are sent to hospitals > to not spread the disease further. > > The Chinese built a new hospital for about a week. General purpose hospital is utterly stupid thing to be flooding cases into under a mass affliction. Hospital are general triage and specialized case facilities. Flood them with disease transmitters and you end up wiping out the entire staff thus shutting the entire hospital down. Staff and facilities are far more valuable alive to handle the random shit that shows up at hospitals and do the specialized things. Instead focus care efficiently tuned to the mass affliction by diverting all the diseased people away from hospitals and out to warehouses, cruise ships, new rapid builds, etc full of cots, food service, mass produced respirators and other med gear and supplies, tv's, internet, books, showers, tent farms, drywalled family rooms inside, etc. Everybody there is already afflicted with the single underlying issue, so train them to self care and peer care for that, same as they'd get in the flooded out hospitals for that issue. Then move whatever number you can handle out to more complex "hospital" treatment sections of the same isolation farms as needed. And accept that big losses will happen. Flooding your hospitals is *not* going to change that, and *will* make things worse. Trying to wipe out all your hospitals, all your doctors, surgeons, knowledge, etc... is not smart. Civilization shutdown its mass facilities, wrote off and forgot how to deal with massive single cause casualties since 70 years quiet since last big wars, and other causes on that scale, many of which were easy... "stop the bleeding"... not "do not catch it too" kind of pandemic hasn't really been seen in 100+ years. Now all you have left in cities of *millions* of people, is under 500 beds total worth of proper isolation wards, those are largely meant for holding new unknown bugs and the recurring background noise of known nasties, with all other space on hospital land dedicated to five star baby birthing hotels, trendy cancer shops, pointless architectural atriums, big office rooms, etc. And all other space in the cities completely tuned to commercial purposes. With zero durables supply stockpiles, and no excess production capacity maintained on decade[s] span cold standby... because "just in time" wiped all that out. Deadly contagion is fucked up, expect that. You should have. People warned you. Oldnews Protip: Think, prepare, options, then you can isolate yourselves from people, buy some time, ride some things out. https://old.reddit.com/r/preppers+prepping+supplychain/

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US 2nd Amendment Under Assault, Freedom Firearms Guns Defense
by grarpamp 10 Jan '24

10 Jan '24

"... the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constit… 2nd Amendment, Firearms, Guns, Self Defense, Freedom's Defense Against Tyranny, Gun Confiscation, 3D printed Guns, Blueprint Censorship, FreeSpeech, Crypto Munitions, Natural Law Posession nor production nor transfer of any nonliving "thing" can never logically be "illegal". This is not in conflict with those voluntarily choosing to not themselves posess a "thing", nor preclude sanction for those who use a "thing" against the NAP. Per the Great Reset, all your rights are now under assault by tyrant globalist politicians... the US 2nd Amd is one of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diz-8FzHOLM Meaning and Purpose of 2ndA pt1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vioWTwGiELo Meaning and Purpose of 2ndA pt2 Witness the list of non-libertarian countries, ~195, literally all of them, non NAP compliant, anti-libertarian shitholes, including yours... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation History proves sequences of "democratic" and tyranny practices will stomp whatever freedom they can leading to brainwashed life lacking means or any will for freedom... During the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, in 1919, a disarmament law was decreed, ordering every weapon owner to give them away to the authorities; the only exceptions were machetes and hunting shotguns. Historian Manuel Caballero argues that while Gómez final intention was to prevent his enemies from obtaining weapons, the law contributed to avoid civil wars in Venezuela for the next century.[212] In 2012 Venezuela banned private sales of firearms and ammunition hoping to lower crime rates. The Army, police, and certain groups trusted by the government (colectivos) are exempted from the ban and can buy firearms from state-owned manufacturers.[213] In 2013 Venezuela stopped issuing new firearm licenses.[214] In 2017 government banned carrying firearms in public places.[143] Since then, the government began to seize guns from civilian hands, destroying thousands every year, including more than 15,000 in 2018. More than 483,000 private guns have been destroyed since 2003, with only 3,000 of them being surrendered voluntarily. 60 disarmament centres were created in the country and the penalty for illegal firearm possession was raised to 20 years imprisonment.[215] According to the government, the only people who should carry guns are public agents. Néstor Reverol, Minister of the People's Power for Interior Relations and Justice, claimed that strict gun control led to a reduction in crime and kidnappings in Venezuela.[216] No, the top mass shootings, and murders in general, have and are ALWAYS performed by Government and religion... in wars, and in silencing opposition and freedom, and in death sentences, specifically by those following "orders" and willfully violating the NAP. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/10/putting_bidens_gun_co… https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-440 https://crimeresearch.org/2018/02/op-ed-new-york-times-background-checks-no… https://crimeresearch.org/2016/01/why-the-so-called-charleston-gun-purchase… https://crimeresearch.org/2018/02/with-39-killed-in-tunisia-attack-the-top-… https://crimeresearch.org/2019/01/responding-voxs-popular-americas-unique-g… https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-are-coming-for-your-guns-11601938911 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3671740 There were so many lies in Vice President Kamala Harris’ and President Joe Biden’s presentations on guns Thursday that it is hard to know where to start. One thing is certain, though: The media fact-checkers won’t question their claims. Here are just a few of the false ones: The background check system “has kept more than 3 million firearms out of the hands of dangerous people.” Since the Brady background checks began in 1994, there have been 3.5 million initial denials. However, it is one thing to stop a felon from buying a gun. It is quite another to stop a law-abiding citizen from buying a gun just because his or her name is similar to a felon’s. In 2017, for example, there were 112,000 initial denials for supposedly attempted prohibited purchases, but just 12 federal prosecutions by June 2018. The reason is that these weren’t real cases. The background check system is a mess, with the mistakes primarily born by minorities through no fault of their own. The error rate for black males is three times their share of the population. The Charleston Loophole Biden says that if there had only been more than three days to check Dylann Roof’s background, Roof would have been stopped from buying a gun, thereby preventing the horrible Charleston, S.C., church shooting. But that is a lie. You can’t buy a gun if you have a felony or certain misdemeanor convictions, or if you are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime with a possible prison sentence of at least one year. Since Roof’s arrest was for a misdemeanor drug offense, which had a maximum possible sentence of six months, a longer waiting period would not have blocked his gun purchase. If Democrats want to change the law so that any misdemeanor arrest prevents gun purchases, this would at least be related to the Charleston case. But Democrats want to impose up to a 30-day waiting period without explicitly stating that is their real aim. If they want a long waiting period, they should make a case for why this would somehow be desirable. Instead, Democrats pretend that their proposal would have stopped the Charleston shooting when their actual goal is to obtain a long waiting period. Biden said that gunmakers are “exempt from being sued. ... This is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued.” The president claims this is the top change he wants. In fact, however, if gunmakers make defective guns, you can sue them. Likewise, if they break the law (e.g., sell a firearm without a background check), you can sue them. Biden’s proposal is very different from current law. He wants gun manufacturers held civilly liable for misuse of guns they sell. This would allow lawsuits against manufacturers and sellers whenever a crime, accident, or suicide occurs with a gun. The straightforward result would be to put gunmakers out of business. Imagine what would happen to the car industry if similar rules were applied. The National Safety Council estimates that 39,404 Americans died and 4.5 million were injured from car accidents in 2018. Cars are also frequently used to commit crimes. “The vast majority of Americans believe there should be [universal] background checks.” Gun control advocates frequently claim that over 90% of Americans support background checks for private transfers of guns. Yet, the last time such laws were proposed to voters, they rejected them. When Michael Bloomberg got universal background check initiatives onto Maine and Nevada’s ballots, for example, he lost in Maine by four percentage points and won in Nevada by just 0.8 percentage points. This tough sledding wasn’t for lack of money. In Maine, Bloomberg outspent his opponents by over six times. In Nevada, he spent an incredible $35.30 per vote — three times more than his opponents. If over 90% of Americans supported these laws, this type of spending would be unnecessary. He blamed the “historic spike in homicides” on the lack of gun control laws. No sudden change in gun control laws caused last year’s spike in homicides. Instead, the real explanation is simple, and something Biden refused to consider: prisons released a large number of inmates because of COVID-19, politicians ordered police to stand down, police department budgets were cut, and prosecutors refused to prosecute criminals. In describing mass public shootings, Biden said that gun violence in this country is an “international embarrassment.” The president might not follow international news closely, but mass public shootings are much more common and deadly in the rest of the world than they are in the United States. The U.S. contains 4.6% of the world’s population, yet accounts for only 1% of the world’s shooters. Over the last decade, Europe has experienced deadlier mass public shootings than any of those in the U.S. -- ever. In November 2015, for example, 130 people were shot to death at a concert in Paris. In July 2011, 67 people were shot to death in Norway. European countries such as France, Finland, Norway, and a number of Eastern European countries have higher per capita death rates from mass public shootings than the United States does. Yet, all of these countries have stricter gun control laws than we do. These are just a few of the false claims made on Thursday. No, the rules for buying guns at gun shows are no different than buying them anywhere else. And no, when guns are unavailable neither the suicides nor the suicide attempts drop. Unfortunately, the liberal fact-checkers - as usual - are nowhere to be found. * * * Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author most recently of “Gun Control Myths.” Until last month, Lott was the senior adviser for research and statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy. Thomas Massie is a Republican member of the House who has represented Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since 2012.

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SpyVeillance: Thread
by grarpamp 09 Jan '24

09 Jan '24

Tucker: NSA planned to leak my emails to media outlets https://nypost.com/2021/07/07/tucker-carlson-claims-he-was-unmasked-by-nsa-… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9bKEPWviEU Tucker: NSA Disclosed My Emails https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlitOLX8KtU SpyVeillance: People are Concerned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-2n7lEi--M NSA Spying on US Citizens https://video.foxnews.com/v/6262789335001/ Glenn Greenwald on NSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bll9mmodikM Styx's Pussy Responds

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Cryptocurrency: Jamie Dimon JPMorgan Ponzi Gets Criminally Convicted on Fraud Racketeering
by grarpamp 09 Jan '24

09 Jan '24

https://nypost.com/2022/08/10/ex-jpmorgan-metals-traders-convicted-of-fraud… https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/jpmorgan-chase JPMorgan fined $36B in criminal and sanctions since 2000. Cryptocurrencies never required a bailout from any Government.

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Cryptocurrency: Bankster Warren Launches WarOnCrypto To Kill Freedom, Wallets, Miners, Fight Back!!!
by grarpamp 09 Jan '24

09 Jan '24

> https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/the-digital-asset-anti-money-laundering-act-is-… > https://decrypt.co/117221/senator-warren-crypto-bill-kyc-self-custody-walle… > https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/elizabeth-warren-crypt… > https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/14/elizabeth-warren-crypto-reg… > https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-sen-elizabeth-warren-says-crypto-will-rui… > https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/elizabeth-warren-targets-crypto-money-… > https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2022/11/23/regulate_crypto_or_itll_take_d… > https://www.theblock.co/post/194941/warren-marshall-introduce-bill-to-tight… > > https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/DAAML%20Act%20of%202022.pdf > https://www.durbin.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_fidelity_investments_… > https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/recommendations/March%202021… Elizabeth Warren’s crypto bill targets financial freedom, not fraud https://reason.com/2022/12/16/elizabeth-warrens-crypto-bill-targets-financi… Sen. Elizabeth Warren is coming after your financial privacy with her anti-crypto bill. https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-marshall-intro… https://www.warren.senate.gov/download/12/15/2022/daaml-act-of-2022 https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-im-less-than-infinitely-hostile https://reason.com/2021/12/01/turks-flee-to-gold-bitcoin-and-foreign-curren… https://reason.com/video/2022/03/11/the-canadian-government-couldnt-stop-bi… https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/20/americas/canada-trucker-protest-covid-sunday https://www.marshall.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/marshall-warren-int… https://www.wired.com/story/20-years-after-911-surveillance-has-become-a-wa… https://www.wired.com/2011/09/911-surveillance/ https://time.com/6096903/september-11-legal-history/ https://reason.com/2016/04/27/snowden-speaks/ https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/the-privacy-lesson-of-9-11-mass… https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/rolling-back-post-9… https://www.cato.org/blog/warren-targets-financial-privacy-wake-ftx-fall J.D. Tuccille | 12.16.2022 Senator Warren wants to extend the financial surveillance state cooked up by drug warriors and anti-terrorism fearmongers to cryptocurrencies. Beyond politically connected scammers and frothy valuations, the attractiveness of cryptocurrencies lies in their potential for doing what cash does, but across distances. When governments inflate money, people turn to other stores of value, including crypto. When politicians and their financial-sector accomplices block transactions of which they disapprove, people look for alternative means of doing deals without permission, crypto among them. So, when officials talk of stripping privacy and autonomy from cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, you know they would do the same to cash if they could. "Rogue nations, oligarchs, drug lords, and human traffickers are using digital assets to launder billions in stolen funds, evade sanctions, and finance terrorism," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) huffed this week. "The crypto industry should follow common-sense rules like banks, brokers, and Western Union, and this legislation would ensure the same standards apply across similar financial transactions. The bipartisan bill will help close crypto money laundering loopholes and strengthen enforcement to better safeguard U.S. national security." The bipartisan bill to which Warren refers sports the tendentious moniker, Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022. Stripped of grandiose claims, it attempts to extend the financial surveillance state cooked up by drug warriors and anti-terrorism fearmongers to cryptocurrencies. Warren and company picked an opportune moment to do just that, while the public is occupied with a headline-grabbing financial scandal that taints crypto's already sketchy reputation. In fact, Sam Bankman-Fried's shenanigans at FTX, perhaps concealed by generous political donations, look old-school, including mingling personal and corporate funds in ways that would have raised red flags long before digital tokens. But they cast further shade over a crypto sector that had yet to gain acceptance by the American mainstream. After years of breathy warnings that cryptocurrency is shady, and speculative values detached from reality, many people are prepared to believe the worst. "Crypto is an interesting technology that had one terrible piece of bad luck: its standard-bearer, bitcoin, went up in value 10,000x over a few years," wide-ranging commentator Scott Alexander wrote earlier this month. "When something goes up in value 10,000x, it's hard to think of it in any other context. Whatever it was before, now it's 'that thing which went up in value 10,000x'." Alexander points out that, despite the shellacking the crypto sector is taking in the press and from politicians, it remains popular in countries where it's used for its intended purpose as a store of value and a means of exchange in defiance of authoritarian controls. "Vietnam uses crypto because it's terrible at banks," he notes. "There's a history of the government forcing banks to make terrible loans, and then those banks collapsing." In socialist Venezuela, "cryptocurrency provides a hard-to-ban alternative which has caught on among Venezuelan hustlers and small businessmen." This played out in Turkey when the government got serious about turning the lira into toilet paper and people bought gold, foreign currency, and bitcoin. Bitcoin also became a means for Canadian protesters to work around government attempts to financially isolate their protest movement. "Of course a technology centered around avoiding governance and banking failures will be centered in the countries with the most governance and banking failures!" Alexander adds. But any technology that can be used by good people can also be used by bad people. That's as true of window curtains as it is of crypto (or cash). The same privacy sought by a family going through evening routines might serve a terrorist building bombs, just as businesses and activists evading a hostile state might use the same currency that purchases bomb parts. Politicians love playing up potential abuses. "Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, our government enacted meaningful reforms that helped the banks cut off bad actors' from America's financial system. Applying these similar policies to cryptocurrency exchanges will prevent digital assets from being abused to finance illegal activities without limiting law-abiding American citizens' access," insists Sen. Roger Marshall (R–Kan.), co-sponsor of the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022. When politicians hold up the post-9/11 panic that supercharged the surveillance state as their model, take them seriously. The legacy of that time is widely recognized as an over-powerful government that intrudes into Americans' lives, subjecting our activities and communications to monitoring and diminishing our liberty. With their bill, Warren, Marshall, and company want to extend that surveillance to financial technology that was explicitly developed to empower individual liberty and privacy. "The bill first seeks to classify self‐<U+200B>hosted wallets as money service businesses," cautions the Cato Institute's Nicholas Anthony. "For those unfamiliar, self‐<U+200B>hosted wallets are merely the digital equivalent of a wallet in your pocket or purse. ... Where much of the financial surveillance in the United States depends on what's known as the third‐<U+200B>party doctrine, self‐<U+200B>hosted wallets offer individuals protection from government surveillance and censorship. Yet Senator Warren's bill would put an end to that protection." The bill, says Anthony, would "classify cryptocurrency miners, validators, and network participants as money service businesses." It "also sets its sights on cryptocurrency mixers" who "offer individuals the opportunity to enhance their privacy when using cryptocurrencies on public blockchains." In fact, the bill's language specifies that "the Secretary of the Treasury shall promulgate a rule that prohibits financial institutions from ... handling, using, or transacting business with digital asset mixers, privacy coins, and other anonymity-enhancing technologies." Senators Warren and Marshall talk about "terrorism" and "drug lords," but their clear goal (whether or not its within their reach, which is another matter) is to strip crypto of its ability to be used privately and without permission in the same way we use cash. Their objections to digital money also apply to banknotes and coins. Ultimately, it's not crypto they fear, but our liberty to earn, purchase, save, and donate without being impoverished, scrutinized, or stopped by government officials. Bitcoin and other digital tokens have their flaws, but they're an attempt to fulfill a widespread desire for reliable stores of value and means of exchange independent of control. And while all such forms of money are vulnerable to fraud and theft, that's already illegal. The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2022 doesn't even attempt to address such crimes, instead, it's an attack on financial privacy and liberty. For all the reasons politicians are coming after crypto, you can bet that cash is next.

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Notary Public License Law (New York DEPARTMENT OF STATE Division of Licensing Services)
by Gunnar Larson 08 Jan '24

08 Jan '24

Brody Larson collates 34 highlights to Notary Public License Law (New York DEPARTMENT OF STATE Division of Licensing Services): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L4rPu4covfuTBAEcQOlP2jS8A8XNDq9E/view?usp=…

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DropGangs: Parcel Services Now CensorBanning Shipments, MICT, Hawala
by grarpamp 30 Dec '23

30 Dec '23

Global and local shippers have quietly rolled out mandatory Govt ID to send all packages... MICT and other imaging covers were secretly rolled out... to integrate with global censorship, permission, control, and datamining regimes. And now the predictions of "conspiracy theorists" and others are coming true... UPS and other carriers now appear to be conspiring with authoritarian political regimes to arbitrarily censor shipments without law or court order. https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-glenn-beck-program/ceo-says-roughly-two-… https://offensively-patriotic.com/2022/07/02/ups-cancelling-firearm-dealer-… 3D printer manufacturers, crypto miners, journos, are all next to be censored from shipping. All who do not pass Political and or Social Scoring will be denied access to services. Freedom is and will experience much Downtime if not countered. Drop Gangs, crypto-enabled Hawala networks, all now needed and must be developed and deployed, to make letters, parcels, goods, services, and data appear out one side of the network when input into the other site.

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The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' – Bitcoin News
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '23

17 Dec '23

Whete is Kathryn Haun when you need her on NYCCoin? ..... https://news.bitcoin.com/the-silk-road-investigation-a-pattern-of-bad-behav… by Jamie Redman Oct 22, 2019 The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Kathryn Haun, a general partner at U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has revealed in recent interviews how she helped take down the Silk Road when she was working for the Attorney General’s office. According to her accounts, the U.S. government agency also asked her to help “start shutting down technology before it’s built.” Haun’s story also highlights how the U.S. government’s evidence against the Silk Road transpired because of double agents. Also read: FBI Agent Admits to Stealing Silk Road Bitcoins Seized by U.S. Marshals Kathryn Haun Was Asked to Disrupt Bitcoin in 2012 During the last few years, governments worldwide have been cracking down on digital assets like on and off-ramps that are tied to fiat. Regulations are far stricter than they were in the early days, when governments first heard about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Andreessen Horowitz general partner Kathryn Haun has a lot of experience working with government agencies when it comes to the cryptocurrency economy. She witnessed the takedown of the Silk Road darknet marketplace and before she started she was even asked to help dismantle the Bitcoin network. During an interview with CNBC, Haun revealed how a colleague mentioned the up and coming technology to her in 2012. “‘We have this perfect assignment for you – there’s this thing called Bitcoin and we need to investigate it,'” Haun told the news outlet on October 6. “That was the first time I’d ever heard of bitcoin,” she added. The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Former Silk Road investigator Kathryn Haun. Attempts to shut down Bitcoin by agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice were fruitless ventures, Haun detailed. “It would have been akin to saying ‘let’s go prosecute cash,'” the former prosecutor said. “What we heard with Libra were the same criticisms [about Bitcoin],” Haun remarked. While discussing the similarities between her early days with Bitcoin in contrast to Libra, she continued: They got more attention because of the high-profile nature of the project and the fact that Facebook was involved. I think it would be a really dangerous thing, and frankly a dangerous precedent to start shutting down technology before it’s built. Uncovering the Silk Road and Parallel Investigations During another recently published interview with Haun, the Andreesen Horowitz partner spoke with Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass about her role during the prosecution of the Silk Road marketplace. “The Silk Road was making millions of dollars a month and they were generating a lot of revenue,” Haun stressed. She doesn’t remember exactly how the Silk Road case got opened in New York, but she recalls Senator Chuck Schumer read a Wired article that prompted him to wonder why the marketplace was allowed to exist. “So the Southern District of New York, which is another Attorney General’s office – I was in the U.S. Attorney General’s office in San Francisco – SDNY opened the case and was trying to figure out who was behind the Silk Road. At this same time, a D.C. office was also trying to figure out who was running the Silk Road — And there were parallel investigations going.” The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Haun discusses the Silk Road investigation with Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass. Haun explained that the government had task forces comprised of many alphabet soup agencies: “We’re talking the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, DEA, ATF, and the U.S. Marshals,” she underlined. “One task force, the one out of Washington D.C., they had an undercover agent. That undercover agent was able to befriend the person running the Silk Road. All the government knew at the time was that the person running the Silk Road went by the nickname ‘DPR’ for ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ from the movie ‘The Princess Bride.’ So they didn’t know who DPR was, but the undercover agent actually set up an attempt to buy the Silk Road.” The Foundation of Evidence from the Silk Road Case Stemmed from Double Agents According to the former prosecutor, the undercover agent struck many online conversations with DPR and proceeded for the next two years to engage and message with the moniker. “A lot of things went wrong on both sides — From the Silk Road side, 2013 was a really bad year for the Silk Road because what you had was a person who had an online persona called ‘Death from Above,’” Haun said. “Death from Above starting extorting DPR and saying ‘if you don’t pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin I’m going to reveal your identity to law enforcement.’ Meanwhile, there was another online persona who went by the moniker ‘French Maid.’ French Maid was selling DPR information about the government’s investigation. French Maid told DPR the Feds are closing in and the end is near and you are about to be had.” Haun added: The government didn’t know any of this then and it all came out after the fact. In the midst of this, something else really bad happened in 2013 — About 21,000 bitcoins, which is today in excess of roughly $150 million dollars, went missing overnight from the Silk Road. From Silk Road vendor accounts and from what you might consider the petty cash account — Although there’s nothing petty about 21,000 bitcoins. The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Haun’s story begs the question: How much evidence would the government have without the use of double agents and rogue officers manipulating the investigation? During the remainder of the interview, Haun discussed Curtis Green’s role with the Silk Road and said Green showed the Feds “how the Silk Road worked, how to log into it, how to reset vendor PINs and passwords, and of course [Green] had that access because he was the key administrator.” Haun also said Green even gave his laptop to the Feds to keep as evidence. The discussion with Kyle Bass shows how government agents claim to have dismantled the Silk Road from the words of a former Federal prosecutor. However, Haun wasn’t involved with the DPR takedown first hand, but she was very much involved with investigating rogue agents. At first, when she heard about the first rogue agent she took it with “a grain of salt” and actually said it was a shame the tipster was smearing a Federal agent’s good name. But the tipster was insistent and she decided to look into it. “We saw that this agent who we got the tip for was liquidating hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions a month, in cryptocurrency. So I thought it’s probably another undercover operation and there’s probably a legitimate explanation,” Haun explained. The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' >From left to right — Carl Mark Force, Shaun Bridges, and Curtis Green all played a ‘double agent’ role in the Silk Road investigation. Curtis Green was a Silk Road moderator who was told by the U.S. government to fake his own death. Haun concluded that the rogue agent was caught telling exchanges to destroy transaction histories. Because undercover agents who are running undercover operations shouldn’t be asking for evidence to be destroyed, it raised a red flag Haun said. Her team found a “pattern of really bad behavior to put it mildly” and in the end, it turned out the rogue agent was both online personas: French Maid and Death from Above. Essentially, the interview with Haun shows that Curtis Green, Shaun Bridges, and Carl Mark Force were acting as double agents during the entire investigation. The discussion with Haun further highlights how the Silk Road case was quite messy and many constitutional laws were broken by rogue agents in order to disrupt the site. Still, the U.S. government, with no thought toward constitutional law and a complete disregard for true justice, based all their Silk Road evidence on the shameful ethics of Curtis Green and two rogue cops — Carl Mark Force and Shaun Bridges. It goes to show that the many unanswered questions surrounding the case, like how government agents found the Silk Road’s IP address, which wasn’t due to a faulty ‘captcha’ screen as claimed, were likely due to perfidious agents gone rogue.

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Harvard inflates wood ...
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '23

17 Dec '23

" ... When recommendations by some consultants and the allocation of TIMBER by Harvard University’s endowment led to broad interest in the asset. Timber funds were launched with the understanding that they provided diversification and enhanced returns. Our analysis showed that timber did not add any value to our clients’ portfolios, and we recommended against investing in timber funds." -Goldman Sachs Investment Group (June 2021): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yEQupX1a7VS4K6N018Y0SF_0v4lpJWz8/view?usp=… -- *Gunnar Larson - xNY.io <http://www.xNY.io> | Bank.org <http://Bank.org>* MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 New York, New York 10001

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