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Lone Star will not submit new bid for Bank of Cyprus (updated) | Cyprus Mail
by Gunnar Larson 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

https://cyprus-mail.com/2022/09/27/lone-star-will-not-submit-new-bid-for-ba… Private equity firm Lone Star, in a statement issued on Tuesday to the London Stock Exchange, said that it is not intending to submit a revised offer for the acquisition of the Bank of Cyprus. It should be noted that the firm is bound by the restrictions set out in Rule 2.8 of the Irish Takeover Rules. This section, which refers to the section titled ‘Statements of Intention not to Make an Offer’, under certain conditions, allows for the statement to be set aside, in turn allowing the firm to make a new offer within the next 6 months.

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Turkish State Banks Set to Exit Russia’s Mir on US Warning
by Gunnar Larson 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

Turkish State Banks Set to Exit Russia’s Mir on US Warning https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/turkish-state-banks-set-…

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Collapse of Theocratic govts
by professor rat 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

signalapp Sep 23 A request to our community: Signal is blocked in Iran. You can help people in Iran reconnect to Signal by hosting a proxy server. If you’re willing and able, please follow the instructions here: https://signal.org/blog/run-a-proxy/… 1/2 #IRanASignalProxy Reposts as cut-and-paste policy

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A feminist revolution started and led by women
by professor rat 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

https://emrawi.org/?Essay-Iran-s-Feminist-Revolution-Women-Life-Liberty-2315 Reposts erc

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Fwd: NY DFS FOIL response letter FOIL-2022-091931-018192
by Gunnar Larson 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Bogdan, George (DFS) <George.Bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov> Date: Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 1:39 PM Subject: RE: NY DFS FOIL response letter FOIL-2022-091931-018192 To: Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> George Bogdan Senior Attorney Department of Financial Services One State Street New York, New York 10004-1417 FAX: (212) 709-1655 (212) 480-4758 *george.bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov <george.bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov>* *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 27, 2022 12:47 PM *To:* Bogdan, George (DFS) <George.Bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov> *Cc:* cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org> *Subject:* Re: NY DFS FOIL response letter FOIL-2022-091931-018192 *ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.* Dear Mr. Boden: Thank you for your email response today. Concerning the letter's statement: "I asked you to clarify ambiguous phrases in your request on July 27, 2022. On July 27, 2022, you claimed your request was unambiguous and refused to do so." Mr. Boden, forgive me but I have done a search of mailbox on July 27, 2022 and I am not finding the said refusal correspondence mentioned above. Additionally, I searched for any DFS correspondence on July 26 and 28 2022. If it would not be any trouble, would you mind forwarding the July 27, 2022 clarification refusal to me? This does not sound like something I would normally refuse to do. However, I would like to make sure I did not make a mistake. Thank you in advance, Gunnar Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org 646-454-9107 On Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 11:49 AM <George.Bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov> wrote: Dear Mr. Larson: My response to your NY FOIL request is attached re appeals manuals and guidebooks. Sincerely, George Bogdan DFS Records Access Officer Tracking Number:FOIL-2022-091931-018192

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Re: NY DFS FOIL response letter FOIL-2022-091931-018192
by Gunnar Larson 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

Dear Mr. Boden: Thank you for your email response today. Concerning the letter's statement: "I asked you to clarify ambiguous phrases in your request on July 27, 2022. On July 27, 2022, you claimed your request was unambiguous and refused to do so." Mr. Boden, forgive me but I have done a search of mailbox on July 27, 2022 and I am not finding the said refusal correspondence mentioned above. Additionally, I searched for any DFS correspondence on July 26 and 28 2022. If it would not be any trouble, would you mind forwarding the July 27, 2022 clarification refusal to me? This does not sound like something I would normally refuse to do. However, I would like to make sure I did not make a mistake. Thank you in advance, Gunnar Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org 646-454-9107 On Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 11:49 AM <George.Bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov> wrote: > Dear Mr. Larson: > > My response to your NY FOIL request is attached re appeals manuals and > guidebooks. > > Sincerely, > > George Bogdan > DFS Records Access Officer > > Tracking Number:FOIL-2022-091931-018192 >

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Immortality: Genomics, Uploads, Synthetics
by grarpamp 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

https://joebot.substack.com/p/synthetic-salvation-on-genomics-mind Synthetic Salvation - On Genomics, Mind Uploads, & The Quest For Immortality Submitted by Joe Allen's substack, Singularity Weekly. Our elites want to live forever. The rest of us will make for rich compost Fear of death is intrinsic to human life. As our years accumulate, we watch friends and family drop off, one by one, disappearing from our presence and lingering only in memories. Barring some miracle, divine or otherwise, we’re all soon to follow, down to the sweetest baby ever born. Unfazed by this horror, the faithful are emboldened by belief in resurrection or reincarnation—a direct participation in the eternal. For religious people, the body is just a vehicle for a transcendent soul. The mystery of death is a rite of passage. For the materialist, there is only this world, beyond which the dying meet total annihilation. The brain dissolves into black nothingness. Consciousness stops with the Big Zero at the end of our lives. And for all sentient beings, and all memory of our existence, there awaits the Big Zero at the end of the universe. The cosmos is nothing but atoms and the void. To make matters worse, the atoms are slowly freezing to death. Wallowing in this trance of sorrow, our elites, and most anybody else, would pay anything to live forever—or just a little longer. Held in thrall by old age, disease, and death, they put faith in biomedical protection racketeers who swear they can keep the Reaper at bay. Today, it’s the vaxx-addicts and maskholes. Tomorrow, it’ll be needle-pocked mutants with blinking devices stuck all over them, who pray to AI for a place in the cloud. Transhumanism offers synthetic salvation through three basic methods—bio longevity, bionic continuity, and digital immortality. Genomics will stop aging on the cellular level. Bionics will keep the body running with replacement parts. Once artificial intelligence is sufficiently advanced, mind uploads will allow eternal communion with the digital deities whom techies are busy creating. “I think that there’s a good probability,” the human-reptile hybrid, Jared Kushner, recently said, “that my generation is—hopefully with the advances in science—either the first generation to live forever, or the last generation that’s gonna die.” A more likely scenario? This is the first generation to merge with machines, and the last generation to regret it. Kushner is not alone. Many of our credulous elites, from Wall Street to the World Economic Forum, have been ensnared by a techno-religion. Its unfrocked priests are the scientists and futurists who push radical gene therapies, brain-computer interfaces, and various life-logging gadgets. As the actual technology becomes more and more sophisticated, you can be sure every atheist and his lapsed uncle will fall prey to this cosmic scam. And for those who can’t afford it? Well, you know, there’s only so much room on the lifeboat. Bio Longevity In order to cheat death, at least for awhile, the first method is to preserve the body at the cellular level. One proposed line of attack is to correct defective genes and defuse the cell’s innate self-destruct programs. With the discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9 complex in 2012, geneticists now have the power to more easily knock out faulty genes, and even insert new, superior genetic codes. Joe Biden’s recent executive order, the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative, has slated $2 billion for these “high-risk, high reward” projects to “write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers.” There are also less invasive procedures, to be used in conjunction with gene-editing, such as munching vitamins morning, noon, and night, or gaining self-knowledge through Internet of Bodies surveillance devices—wearable trackers which feed every biometric data point into an artificial intelligence system, putting flesh on the bones of your “digital twin.” In theory, the resulting simulation could be used as a reference for targeted gene-editing. “By preventing 90 percent of medical problems,” Ray Kurzweil wrote in The Singularity is Near, “life expectancy grows to over five hundred years. At 99 percent, we’d be over one thousand years. We can expect that the full realization of the biotechnology and nanotechnology revolutions will enable us to eliminate virtually all medical causes of death.” Inspired by this sort of statistical fantasy, Big Tech oligarchs are pouring billions into various life extension laboratories: SENS Research Foundation – Co-founded by the transhumanist Aubrey de Grey in 2009, this organization seeks to halt and reverse aging. “No matter what caused a given unit of damage in the first place,” they assure us, “the same regenerative therapeutics can be used to repair it.” Altos Labs – Founded by Jeff Bezos and the corporate transhumanist Yuri Milner in 2021, this is a “new biotechnology company focused on cellular rejuvenation programming to restore cell health and resilience, with the goal of reversing disease to transform medicine.” Calico Labs – Acquired by Google in 2015 at the behest of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, this company is focused on “the convergence of biology and technology, coupled with a long-term perspective and funding” with high hopes of “curing death.” Methuselah Foundation – Bankrolled by Peter Thiel (along with many other immortality start-ups), this foundation is on a mission to “make 90 the new 50 by 2030.” And the list goes on and on. By all appearances, billionaires fear death as if hell awaits, and they’ll pay any amount to avoid it. If you’re lucky, you too might add a few years to your life through trickle-down immortality. Should these gene-therapies and 3D-printed organs fail to keep your carcass shambling along, there are always cryonic doctors who’ll freeze you right before you die, then thaw you out once these transhumanists finally get their shit together. Alcor Life Extension Foundation, for example, charges $80,000 to freeze your head, and $200,000 for the full body treatment. It’s a small price to pay for a shot at immortality. Bionic Continuity The second method is to replace failing tissues and organs with mechanical parts. We do this already with pacemakers, prosthetic limbs, cochlear implants, dental implants, deep brain stimulation devices, and flag-raising penile implants. In a real sense, the entire plastic surgery industry—from hair transplants to rubber duck lips to silicone boobs—is a means to stave off our inevitable dissolution, if only on a superficial level. Transhumanists foresee a day, just over the horizon, when more advanced prosthetics will offer superior functionality—including brain function. We’ll have Swiss Army knives for fingers and versatile artificial genitals, sort of like today’s transgenders, but presumably way better. Any prospective immortal had better hope so. This cyborg dream was fleshed out in the early 20th century by the Marxist thinker J.D. Bernal. “Already we know the essential electrical nature of nerve impulses,” he wrote in 1929, “it is a matter of delicate surgery to attach nerves permanently to apparatus which will either send messages to the nerves or receive them. And the brain thus connected up continues an existence, purely mental and with very different delights from those of the body, but now perhaps preferable to complete extinction.” Bernal compared this bionic transformation to the metamorphosis of a butterfly, albeit one with hideous wings. “Apart from such mental development as his increased faculties will demand from him,” he speculated, “he will be physically plastic in a way quite transcending the capacities of untransformed humanity.” Screenshot: “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991) As we hurtle toward this nightmare in the 21st century, futurists claim it’ll soon be possible to model the entire human brain—down to the last electrochemical thought pattern—using artificial intelligence. The transhumanist guru Ray Kurzweil predicts this will be accomplished by 2029. (It’s unclear if that will be early in the year, or just in time for Christmas.) Following an AI-created digital template, doctors will replace our dying neurons with artificial neurons. Bit by bit, our meat brains will be transformed into a latticework of lightning fast transistors. It’s an upgraded mind-brain that could last forever—so be sure to get a warranty. Would this mechanical monster still be you, though? The idea is that a pattern is a pattern, and the human “soul” is just a pattern of information. It doesn’t matter what the medium may be. Think of it this way—if you replaced every thread in a sweater, strand by strand, with artificial wool, it would still feel like the same old sweater. Maybe even better. In a similar manner, many believe your personal consciousness will survive the transition from gray matter to circuitry. This mind-machine merger would be like looking out at the world through your smartphone—forever. You’d hardly notice the difference. “If you think about replacing the neurons one at a time by prosthetic neurons made of silicon,” explains the philosopher of consciousness and NYU-employed transhumanist, David Chalmers: Just say I replace ten percent of my brain with silicon chips…do it one at a time, and keep going and keep going…and they interconnect with the other ones in a perfect way. … I think as long as you do it gradually, and replace the neurons one by one, then it’s gonna be like getting prosthetic limbs or [an] artificial heart. You’re gonna be replacing parts of me, but I’m gonna be present throughout, and I think I could even stay conscious. Of course, these artificial neurons haven’t been developed yet—not even close—but they will be one day. You’ll see. Have a little faith. Scientists are working hard. It’s a solid investment. Digital Immortality The third method to attain quasi-eternal life is basically the digital side of bionic continuity. Rather than, or in addition to, replacing neurons with artificial neurons, the mind will be gradually uploaded to a computer, where the patterns of one’s personality can be entombed in perpetuity. Transhumanists delight in pointing out we’re already doing this. Everyone from toddlers to creaky old codgers is feeding their inner self into Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, third-party data vultures, and any intelligence agencies with backdoor access to these companies. Perhaps one day they’ll sell our digital twins back to us so we can inhabit our virtual wraiths. “Currently, when our human hardware crashes,” Ray Kurzweil wrote, “the software of our lives—our personal ‘mind file’—dies with it. However, this will not continue to be the case when we have the means to store and restore the thousands of trillions of bytes of information represented in the pattern that we call our brains.” Kurzweil believes injectable nanobots are the key to this uploading process. These microscopic robots will travel through the brain, mapping every neuron and synapse, creating a perfect facsimile of the “soul” in a computer. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat. As with most transhumanists, Kurzweil was deeply influenced by the Carnegie Mellon roboticist Hans Moravec, who in 1988 described a gruesome uploading procedure now known as the “Moravec Transfer.” Basically, the patient commits suicide by having his or her brain scraped off, like whittling an onion, with each skin copied in silico: You are fully conscious. The robot surgeon opens your brain case and places a hand on the brain’s surface. This unusual hand bristles with microscopic machinery, and a cable connects it to the mobile computer at your side. … The surgeon’s hand sinks a fraction of a millimeter deeper into your brain, instantly compensating its measurements and signals for the changed position. The process is repeated for the next layer, and soon a second simulation resides in the computer, communicating with the first and with the remaining original brain tissue. Layer after layer the brain is simulated, then excavated. Eventually your skull is empty…your mind has been removed from the brain and transferred to a machine. Some would call this biohorror, but transhumanists revere the “Moravec Transfer” as a pioneering vision of synthetic salvation. Screenshot: “The Lawnmower Man” (1992) One of Kurzweil’s distinguished disciples, the transgender tech innovator Martine Rothblatt, proposes a kinder, gentler man-machine merger by way of mind-cloning. “This blessing of emotional and intellectual continuity or immortality,” she (he? whatever) wrote in Virtually Human, “is being made possible through the development of digital clones, or mindclones: software versions of our minds, software-based alter egos, doppelgängers, mental twins.” In other words, with sufficiently detailed surveillance, our personal data can be processed through artificial intelligence to create a new, more durable “soul” in silico. “When the body of a person with a mindclone dies,” Rothblatt goes on, “the mindclone will not feel that they have personally died, although the body will be missed in the same ways amputees miss their limbs but acclimate when given an artificial replacement. … The mindclone is to the consciousness and spirit as the prosthetic is to an arm that has lost its hand.” Having been baptized in electromagnetic waves, you will become your digital ghost, floating forever among the AI angels. The metaphysics of this process make no sense, but then, why should the transhuman techno-cult be any more realistic than traditional cults? Their delusions would be funny if they weren’t constantly intruding upon our lives through ubiquitous screens and surveillance devices, and blasted into our brains with wall-to-wall propaganda. “If anything,” Rothblatt conceded in a TED interview, “I’m perhaps a bit of a communicator of activities that are being undertaken by the greatest companies in China, Japan, India, the U.S., Europe.” You have to wonder if we’ll have social credit scores in heaven. So You Want To Live Forever—Good Luck With That Humanity is composed of three primary elements—the spiritual, the biological, and the technological. At best, we are eternal souls enshrined in bodies, with exceedingly powerful tools in our hands. At worst, we’re bumbling monkeys in the Machine. As the materialist worldview erodes our spiritual consciousness, we’re left with nothing but mortal bodies. When God is dead, technology is exalted as the highest power, holding out the promise of free WiFi and synthetic salvation. The delusion of physical immortality, whether bodily or digital—or both—is capturing our elites’ imaginations. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out that if they actually managed to live forever, and the planet has finite space and resources, some number of us will have to become compost for their biomechanical gardens. Personally, I don’t mind the idea of being turned into mulch. That’s the fate of every man and woman ever born. What is eternal will endure. My fear, writhing deep in my paranoid brain stem, is that our technocratic rulers, sweating over flawed calculations, are willing to huck us into the mulchers long before our time. God will not be mocked. Nor will Mother Nature. I’m certain that, in the course of time, every billionaire cyborg and half-retarded upload will shuffle off this mortal coil. Unfortunately, I also suspect they’d happily push the rest of us offstage while they do their apocalyptic jig.

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Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky Resigns From Bankrupt Crypto Firm
by Gunnar Larson 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky Resigns From Bankrupt Crypto Firm https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/celsius-ceo-alex-mashins…

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Fwd: NY DFS FOIL response letter FOIL-2022-091931-018192
by Gunnar Larson 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYhB7EX8SR3-odedVuGOyWt0OgDn4mf7/view?usp=… ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: <George.Bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov> Date: Tue, Sep 27, 2022, 11:49 AM Subject: NY DFS FOIL response letter FOIL-2022-091931-018192 To: <g(a)xny.io>, <George.Bogdan(a)dfs.ny.gov> Dear Mr. Larson: My response to your NY FOIL request is attached re appeals manuals and guidebooks. Sincerely, George Bogdan DFS Records Access Officer Tracking Number:FOIL-2022-091931-018192

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Edward Snowden Gets Russian Citizenship
by grarpamp 27 Sep '22

27 Sep '22

Putin approves Snowden's Russian Citizenship application. https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/ https://twitter.com/snowden https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/americas-open-wound https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250237231/permanentrecord Unfortunately the US will still be able to, and indeed will, abduct him from far too many global vacation spots. #FreeSnowden #FreeAssange “They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.” ― Baruch Spinoza Did you know that whistleblowers are sentenced to more time in prison than corrupt officials who trade secrets for sex⁠—more time than even actual spies? The government has made *telling* the truth a greater crime than *selling* it. Continuing Ed — with Edward Snowden America’s Open Wound The CIA is not your friend Edward Snowden Sep 20 “Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.” ― Baruch Spinoza It hasn’t been a month since President Biden mounted the steps of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, declaring it his duty to ensure each of us understands the central faction of his political opposition are extremists that “threaten the very foundations of our Republic.” Flanked by the uniformed icons of his military and standing atop a Leni Riefenstahl stage, the leader clenched his fists to illustrate seizing the future from the forces of “fear, division, and darkness.” The words falling from the teleprompter ran rich with the language of violence, a “dagger at the throat” emerging from the “shadow of lies.” “What’s happening in our country,” the President said, “is not normal.” Is he wrong to think that? The question the speech intended to raise—the one lost in the unintentionally villainous pageantry—is whether and how we are to continue as a democracy and a nation of laws. For all the Twitter arguments over Biden’s propositions, there has been little consideration of his premises. Democracy and the rule of law have been so frequently invoked as a part of the American political brand that we simply take it for granted that we enjoy both. Are we right to think that? Our glittering nation of laws observes this year two birthdays: the 70th anniversary of the National Security Agency, on which my thoughts have been recorded, and the 75th anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was founded in the wake of the 1947 National Security Act. The Act foresaw no need for the Courts and Congress to oversee a simple information-aggregation facility, and therefore subordinated it exclusively to the President, through the National Security Council he controls. Within a year, the young agency had already slipped the leash of its intended role of intelligence collection and analysis to establish a covert operations division. Within a decade, the CIA was directing the coverage of American news organizations, overthrowing democratically elected governments (at times merely to benefit a favored corporation), establishing propaganda outfits to manipulate public sentiment, launching a long-running series of mind-control experiments on unwitting human subjects (purportedly contributing to the creation of the Unabomber), and—gasp—interfering with foreign elections. From there, it was a short hop to wiretapping journalists and compiling files on Americans who opposed its wars. In 1963, no less than former President Harry Truman confessed that the very agency he personally signed into law had transformed into something altogether different than he intended, writing: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble…” Many today comfort themselves by imagining that the Agency has been reformed, and that such abuses are relics of the distant past, but what few reforms our democracy has won have been watered-down or compromised. The limited “Intelligence Oversight” role that was eventually conceded to Congress in order to placate the public has never been taken seriously by either the committee’s majority—which prefers cheerleading over investigating—or by the Agency itself, which continues to conceal politically-sensitive operations from the very group most likely to defend them. "Congress should have been told," said [Senator] Dianne Feinstein. "We should have been briefed before the commencement of this kind of sensitive program. Director Panetta... was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to Congress." How can we judge the ultimate effectiveness of oversight and reforms? Well, the CIA plotted to assassinate my friend, American whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, in 1972, yet nearly fifty years of “reforms” did little to inhibit them from recently sketching out another political murder targeting Julian Assange. Putting that in perspective, you probably own shoes older than the CIA’s most recent plot to murder a dissident... or rather the most recent plot that we know of. If you believe the Assange case to be a historical anomaly, some aberration unique to Trump White House, recall that the CIA’s killings have continued in series across administrations. Obama ordered the killing of an American far from any battlefield, and killed his 16 year-old American son a few weeks later, but the man’s American daughter was still alive by the time Obama left. Within a month of entering the White House, Trump killed her. She was 8 years old. Nawar al-Awlaki It goes beyond assassinations. Within recent memory, the CIA captured Gul Rahman, who we know was not Al-Qaeda, but it seems did save the life of Afghanistan’s future (pro-US) President. Rahman was placed in what the Agency described as a “dungeon” and tortured until he died. They stripped him naked, save a diaper he couldn’t change, in a cold so wicked that his guards, in their warm clothes, ran heaters for themselves. In absolute darkness, they bolted his hands and feet to a single point on the floor with a very short chain so that it was impossible to stand or lie down – a practice called “short shackling” – and after he died, claimed that it was for his own safety. They admit to beating him, even describing the “forceful punches.” They describe the blood that ran from his nose and mouth as he died. Short-shackling, as described by survivors Pages later, in their formal conclusion, the Agency declares that there was no evidence of beating. There was no of evidence torture. The CIA ascribes responsibility for his death to hypothermia, which they blamed on him for the crime of refusing, on his final night, a meal from the men that killed him. The CIA claimed the complaints of a man they tortured to death — regarding the violation of his human rights — were evidence of a “sophisticated level of resistance training.” In the aftermath, the Agency concealed the death of Gul Rahman from his family. To this day, they refuse to reveal what happened to his remains, denying those who survive him a burial, or even some locus of mourning. Ten years after the torture program investigated, exposed, and ended, no one was charged for their role in these crimes. The man responsible for Rahman’s death was recommended for a $2,500 cash award — for “consistently superior work”. A different torturer was elevated to the Director’s seat. The Judgment of Solomon, Rubens, 1617 This summer, in a speech marking the occasion of the CIA's 75th birthday, President Biden struck a quite different note than he did in Philadelphia, reciting what the CIA instructs all presidents: that the soul of the institution really lies in speaking truth to power. “We turn to you with the big questions,” Biden said, “the hardest questions. And we count on you to give your best, unvarnished assessment of where we are. And I emphasize ‘unvarnished.’” But this itself is a variety of varnishing — a whitewash. For what reason do we aspire to maintain — or achieve — a nation of laws, if not to establish justice? Let us say we have a democracy, shining and pure. The people, or in our case some subset of people, institute reasonable laws to which government and citizen alike must answer. The sense of justice that arises within such a society is not produced as a result of the mere presence of law, which can be tyrannical and capricious, or even elections, which face their own troubles, but is rather derived from the reason and fairness of the system that results. What would happen if we were to insert into this beautiful nation of laws an extralegal entity that is not directed by the people, but a person: the President? Have we protected the nation’s security, or have we placed it at risk? This is the unvarnished truth: the establishment of an institution charged with breaking the law within a nation of laws has mortally wounded its founding precept. >From the year it was established, Presidents and their cadres have regularly directed the CIA to go beyond the law for reasons that cannot be justified, and therefore must be concealed — classified. The primary result of the classification system is not an increase in national security, but a decrease in transparency. Without meaningful transparency, there is no accountability, and without accountability, there is no learning. The consequences have been deadly, for both Americans and our victims. When the CIA armed the Mujaheddin to wage war on Soviet Afghanistan, we created al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden. Ten years later, the CIA is arming, according to then-Vice President Joe Biden, "al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world." After the CIA runs a disinformation operation to make life hard for the Soviet Union by fueling a little proxy war, the war rages for twenty-six years — far beyond the Union’s collapse. Do you believe that the CIA today — a CIA free from all consequence and accountability — is uninvolved in similar activities? Can you find no presence of their fingerprints in the events of the world, as described in the headlines, that provide cause for concern? Yet it is those who question the wisdom of placing a paramilitary organization beyond the reach of our courts that are dismissed as “naive.” For 75 years, the American people have been unable to bend the CIA to fit the law, and so the law has been bent to fit the CIA. As Biden stood on the crimson stage, at the site where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were debated and adopted, his words rang out like the cry of a cracked-to-hell Liberty Bell: “What's happening in our country is not normal.” If only that were true. The Death of Achilles, Rubens Leave a comment Share 59 Comments Daniel D Writes A Ghost in the Machine Sep 20Liked by Edward Snowden It's great to have you back! Hope your time off for family has been enjoyable and rewarding for you and for them. Thank you for shining a light on these dark corners of the American Empire, where shadowy spooks wage war on the regular people of the world, including non-elite Americans, to benefit the private interests of globalist oligarchs and petty tyrants. Someday, there will be statues of you in America to honor you as a first-rate patriot, hopefully in your lifetime. ReplyCollapse 1 reply London Donna Sep 20Liked by Edward Snowden Thank you for this Ed. I’m a tutor and I speak of you to my students many times a week - year in, year out. I never forget about you and don’t allow those around me to do so either. Your incredible bravery and sense of duty should be publicly commended, not kept a dark and dirty secret. You are not only a remarkably intelligent human being, but your selflessness and compassion for your fellow human being is, in my view, quite unparalleled. Please continue to enlighten us with your interesting articles and musings. And please know that there are many of us who think of you, support you, and will always remain indebted to your sacrifices in the name of the public, of human, fairness and freedom. Be well. ReplyCollapse 57 more comments… No posts © 2022 Edward Snowden Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice Publish on Substack Get the app Substack is the home for great writing

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