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Trump says he’d ban government from labeling speech as misinformation
by Gunnar Larson 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3776629-trump-says-hed-ban-government… Former President Trump said Thursday that he’d ban the U.S. government from labeling any domestic speech as “misinformation” or “disinformation” if he returns to the White House. “I will sign an executive order banning any federal department or agency from colluding with any organization, business or person to censor, limit, categorize or impede the lawful speech of American citizens. I will then ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as mis- or disinformation,” Trump said in a pre-taped video shared with the New York Post. The former president also said he’d fire federal bureaucrats who he perceived to have engaged in domestic censorship. “Directly or indirectly, whether they are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the DOJ, no matter who they are,” he said of those he’d seek to fire. Trump further pledged to direct the Department of Justice to “aggressively prosecute” the alleged censorship. Among other initiatives, the former president called for the federal government to break ties with any nonprofits and academic programs that are aimed at tacking mis- and disinformation. “If any U.S. university is discovered to have engaged in censorship activities or election interferences in the past, such as flagging social media content for removal of blacklisting, those universities should lose federal research dollars and federal student loan support for a period of five years, and maybe more,” he said. The Biden administration has sought to clamp down on the rampant spread of disinformation, particularly regarding the coronavirus pandemic. “The unvaccinated are responsible for their own choices. But those choices have been fueled by dangerous misinformation on cable TV and social media,” President Biden said last year. Trump’s comments about censorship come amid the release of the “Twitter Files,” installments which new Twitter CEO Elon Musk says will reveal information about “free speech suppression” on the platform before he bought it. National Archives releases thousands of JFK assassination records Bipartisan committee chairs push for boost in Taiwan, Ukraine weapons sales Since his takeover of the social media app, Musk moved to reinstate Trump’s account, which was banned following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. The former president said in his video that the most recent release confirms a “censorship cartel” and “a sinister group of deep state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists and depraved corporate news media” at work to censor Americans’ speech. Trump announced his 2024 bid to reclaim the presidency last month. Categories: Campaign, Media, Technology Tags: 2024, Campaign, Censorship, disinformation, Free speech, misinformation, Trump.

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That crypto-currency-mixers are such a dangerous national-security threat we regard as a merit.
by professor rat 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

That crypto-currency-mixers are such a dangerous national-security threat we regard as a merit. Just goes to show the worlds last superpower fucks with cypherpunks at their own peril. Death to America means life for everyone else - welcome to the global anarchist revolution. The USA's regulatory arbitrage bid looks like matching the EU's - that's when they get their crypto regulations act together - it presently recedes before them like a mirage in the desert. And even if it comes - and betters the Chinese - that still only means massive money laundering is guaranteed just below the threshold. Page 459, " Too big to fail" by Andy Sorkin "...Goldman had been on Wachovia's payroll as its adviser, and as such, knew every aspect of its internal numbers..." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

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Cryptocurrency: Altruism Is NOT Government
by grarpamp 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPM6rf0-e6M SBF "Charity" Charity is NOT to the US Govt Political Party, Government does not save lives, it destroys them, Government has never been shown "good", it's "bad" by definition, so stop doing that. Charity gives to the have-nots, not to the Politicians whose only definition and existance is to take-more. Personal Responsibility is Self-Education Due Diligence and Caretaking, not trusting some closed source secretive central exchange, random shitcoin scams, and Govt. Sam will be given second chance tests, to create opensource P2P DEX, to do transparent Good for the World, but never if by giving $Billions to prop up Government Fraud Theft Violence War Murder and Political Force Over Others, only if to peoples and their non-Govt projects in Voluntary Human Freedom and Advancement. Altruism is teaching doing giving the good yourself, not relegating offloading that responsibility to Govt which always turns it into evil force. Effective Altruism's evidence and reason would conclude to forever eschew Government, not to continue to prop it up. That is the chance that everyone has been given, and not least now also via Crypto Freedom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism

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Erin Plante needs killing ( My 2k sats )
by professor rat 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

Here is a much more acute threat than, say . . .Liz Rabbit Warren https://twitter.com/eeplante Erin Plante @eeplante · Sep 3 This week I had the fun experience of filming a VICE documentary with an Emmy award winning director, at the super cool Chainalysis Inc. headquarters in NYC <<< Kill one pentagon employee - scare one thousand

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How to surrender to cryptoanarchist terrorists
by professor rat 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

Surrender early - surrender often - surrender groveling & begging for mercy - especially if you're a POTUS https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/ethics-101-crypto-projects-negotiate-hac… Reposts not humiliating collapse conditions for the USG

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Elon Musk’s Twitter Is a Shakespearean Psychodrama Set in Silicon Valley
by professor rat 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy painfully they first make barking mad Elon Musk’s Twitter Is also an exercise in gross hypocrisy. ariehkovler 3h Replying to @DavidSacks Oh come on. To go from "everything legal is welcome here except incitement to violence" to "oh now we care about harm reduction but only for billionaires' jets" is not a remotely credible position. You just spent months arguing that harm reduction is woke censorship. << Mollusk go fuck your ugly mother up that shithole you fell out of.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter Is a Shakespearean Psychodrama Set in Silicon Valley
by Gunnar Larson 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

Elon Musk’s Twitter Is a Shakespearean Psychodrama Set in Silicon Valley https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-12-14/elon-musk-twitter-owners… Shortselling Telsa to the Moon?

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Major World-Wide Talent Expansion at Woodsford
by Gunnar Larson 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

https://litigationfinancejournal.com/major-world-wide-talent-expansion-at-w… Check out my new article: ESG financier and litigation investor Woodsford is proud to announce a new class of team members joining the firm’s global enterprise. Amar Singh Mann, David Haighan and Jordan Howells will join Woodsford’s London, United Kingdom office. Cody Nguyen is slated to enter Woodsford’s Brisbane, Australia office. Additionally, Woodsford announced that former Australian Federal Magistrate, the Honorable Neil McKerracher KC will join the firm’s global investment advisory panel. Woodsford says that Australia continues to be an emerging market for litigation finance innovation. Woodsford’s appointment of Howells as Senior Investment Manager is rooted in his wealth of experience, including 14 years of public and private organizational investigation, litigation and negotiation for ESG malfeasance. Woodsford plans to engage Howells’ prosecutorial acumen that includes liaising with the United States Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission and Serious Fraud Office. Steven Friel, Woodsford’s Chief Executive Officer, says that the firm’s new international appointments are indicative of cross border litigation investment innovation. Friel goes on to say that Woodsford’s international footprint in ESG justice is expected to represent some of the highest standards in the world.

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Senate Banking Hearing on FTX Collapse Pits a Courageous Law Professor Against Paid Shill Kevin O’Leary
by Gunnar Larson 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/12/senate-banking-hearing-on-ftx-collap… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 15, 2022 ~ Kevin O'Leary Testifying at Senate Banking Committee Hearing, December 14, 2022 Kevin O’Leary Testifying at Senate Banking Committee Hearing, December 14, 2022 If you are an average American without insider knowledge of how Congress works these days, you might have felt that you had stepped onto the set of Alice in Wonderland while watching the Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday. The hearing was convened to examine the sudden collapse of the crypto exchange, FTX; its tentacles that reach into the federally-insured banking sector; and legislation that may be required to rein in the mushrooming risks that crypto poses to U.S. financial stability. Given that more than one million customers of FTX cannot get access to the money or crypto “investments” in their potentially worthless accounts; that the kingpin of this operation, Sam Bankman-Fried, was indicted on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice on eight criminal counts; and that a federally-insured bank, Silvergate Bank, that held FTX customer deposits, has seen its publicly traded parent (Silvergate Capital Corp., ticker SI) lose 87 percent of its market value year-to-date, one might have expected that serious consideration would have gone into the selection of the four witnesses that appeared at yesterday’s hearing. Instead, the Republican crypto shills on the Senate Banking Committee made the public suffer through the alternative-reality ruminations of Kevin O’Leary, a cast member of the TV program, “Shark Tank,” who admits to receiving $15 million from FTX to be its “ambassador.” O’Leary is a named defendant, along with other celebrities who took money to promote FTX, in multiple class action lawsuits. He thus has an incentive to spin the narrative away from fraudulent conduct. In his opening remarks at the hearing, O’Leary also admitted to being “a shareholder in multiple companies involved in crypto.” Along with multiple Republican Senators on the Senate Banking Committee, O’Leary attempted to push the narrative that the collapse of FTX has nothing to do with crypto itself; that crypto continues to offer great promise. O’Leary told the Committee that if legislation were passed to ban banks from engaging in crypto activities, he would “short every American bank stock.” (To “short” means to bet on a decline in price.) O’Leary also insisted that once crypto is regulated, it “is going to be profound in terms of how it changes the cost, the efficiency, the audit ability, the productivity of the banking sector.” There is, in fact, zero evidence to suggest that crypto offers any productive use for the financial sector, as more than 1,600 scientists and software engineers have already explained in a detailed letter to the Senate Banking Committee and as was detailed by a serious witness at yesterday’s hearing — Hilary J. Allen, Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law. Hilary J. Allen, Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law Hilary J. Allen, Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law Professor Allen’s research focus is in the area of financial stability regulation. She is the author of Driverless Finance: Fintech’s Impact on Financial Stability, released by Oxford University Press in January. Professor Allen also worked in 2010 with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to study the causes of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. She made the following key points at yesterday’s hearing, either in her verbal or written testimony: “The problems at FTX were not a one-off, but part of a cascade of interconnected failures in the highly leveraged crypto financial system.” “Another key flaw in the ‘this wasn’t about crypto’ narrative is that many of the problems at FTX arose because of a feature that is unique to the crypto industry: cryptoassets (like the FTT token) can be created out of nothing by anyone with computer programming abilities. I have previously explained that this unlimited supply of cryptoassets allows for significant leverage, making the crypto ecosystem very fragile. The unlimited supply of cryptoassets also ensures that frauds are particularly easy to perpetuate: when an entire industry is built on an asset type that can be manufactured at zero cost, has no fundamentals, and trades entirely on sentiment, traditional checks on fraud (like valuation methodologies and financial accounting) will inevitably break down.” Crypto tokens “are minted out of thin air.” “What the public actually needs is protection – individual investors need protection from crypto frauds, and our broader financial system also needs protection from crypto’s booms and busts.” “A ban on crypto would be the most straight-forward way of protecting both investors and the financial system: it would end the uncontrolled creation of cryptoassets and also ensure that cryptoassets never require a bail-out. If policymakers don’t wish to proceed with a ban, then they will need to be careful to ensure that any laws they do adopt don’t inadvertently encourage the proliferation of cryptoassets or bring those cryptoassets closer to the core of our financial system.” “Crypto should also not have the CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] as its primary regulator. The CFTC has no statutory investor protection mandate, has limited experience regulating retail-dominated markets, and the application of the CFTC’s self-certification regime to crypto would allow an unlimited supply of cryptoassets to proliferate.” Professor Allen’s slap down of the idea of allowing the CFTC to regulate crypto seemed to age Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) by about 20 years. When Lummis took her turn at questioning the witnesses later in the hearing, her face showed serious signs of stress. That might be because the legislation she has co-introduced with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to allow the CFTC to oversee crypto, was just exposed in the hearing as a sell-out to crypto interests. (See our earlier report: After Crypto Money Piled into Campaign Coffers of Senators Lummis and Gillibrand, They Introduced a Sweetheart Legislative Bill for Crypto.) Another witness at yesterday’s hearing was Ben McKenzie, the actor and crypto researcher who has a book coming out next year with journalist Jacob Silverman, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. McKenzie demonstrated an acute understanding of the fraudulent aspects of crypto, stating: “ ‘Cryptocurrencies’ are not currencies by any reasonable economic definition, as they are unable to fulfill any of the three functions of money. They are a poor medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Bitcoin cannot work as a medium of exchange because it cannot scale. The Bitcoin network can only process 5 to 7 transactions a second. By comparison, Visa can handle tens of thousands. To facilitate that relatively trivial amount of transactions, Bitcoin uses an enormous amount of energy. In 2021, Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh in total, comparable to the electrical energy consumed by the country of Argentina. Bitcoin simply cannot ever work at scale as a medium of exchange.” The fourth witness, Jennifer J. Schulp, was another crypto-friendly narrator from a suspect nonprofit – the Cato Institute, which was previously secretly owned by the fossil fuel billionaires, the Koch brothers, and a handful of other men. You can watch the full hearing at this link.

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Only Sons of Anarchy can handle crypto
by professor rat 15 Dec '22

15 Dec '22

Only 1% of people can handle crypto self-custody right now: Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s comments come as billions of dollars of stablecoins continue to flow out of the Binance exchange. https://cointelegraph.com/news/only-1-of-people-can-handle-crypto-self-cust… Reposts not wingnut Nuremberg rallies

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