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POLITICO: Court rules NSA phone snooping illegal — after 7-year delay
by jim bell 03 Sep '20

03 Sep '20

POLITICO: Court rules NSA phone snooping illegal — after 7-year delay. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/court-rules-nsa-phone-snooping-ill…

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Cryptocurrency: Sound Money Is Key To Defending Our Liberties
by grarpamp 03 Sep '20

03 Sep '20

Sound Money Is Key to Defending Our Liberties Tags BitcoinMoney and BanksStrategy 11 hours agoThorsten Polleit The title of this article epitomizes what the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) called the “sound money principle.” As Mises put it: The sound-money principle has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.1 And further: It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realise that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of right.2 Mises tells us that sound money is an indispensable line of defense of people's liberties against the encroachment on the part of the state and that sound money is a kind of money that is not dictated by the state but is chosen by the people in the free marketplace. The world we find ourselves in is a rather different place. Our monies—be it the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the yen, or the Swiss franc—represent fiat currencies, monopolized by the state. Fiat money is economically and socially destructive—with far-reaching and seriously harmful economic and societal consequences, effects that extend beyond what most people would imagine. Fiat money is inflationary; it benefits a few at the expense of many others; it causes boom-and-bust cycles; it leads to overindebtedness; it corrupts society’s morals; and it paves the way toward the almighty, all-powerful state, toward tyranny. Central Banking Is Marxist It is certainly no coincidence that “the state” has been expanding ever since the world adopted an unfettered fiat money regime back in the early 1970s, and that as a result individual liberties and freedoms have been under pressure ever since. The state feeds itself on fiat money. It simply issues new debt, which is then monetized by the its central bank, which is at the heart of the fiat money regime. Perhaps you will find it surprising that I believe that the concept of central banking is truly a Marxist concept. (I am not saying that central banking is only favored by Marxists. Not at all! There are also many other ideologies which approve of central banking.) In their Communist Manifesto of 1848, Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95) compiled a list of measures necessary to establish communism. Measure number 5 reads as follows: Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. Against this backdrop there should be no doubt that once the state has become the absolute ruler of fiat money, the door is open for it to grow bigger and bigger, eventually turning into the dreaded deep state. And the deep state, as we know well from history, has little regard for individual freedoms and liberties. Making Money Great Again: Returning to Sound Money What needs to be done? Well, the challenge at hand is “Making Money Great Again”! This requires, first and foremost, ending the state’s money production monopoly and opening up a free market in money. A free market in money means that people have the freedom to choose the kind of money they wish to use and that people have the freedom to provide their fellow men with alternative goods that may serve them well as money. As things stand, however, a final solution to the “money problem” has not arrived yet—even considering the emergence of the cryptocurrency space. This is because the financial intermediation problem is still unsolved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem; we will come back to this issue in a moment. But first let us address the question: How can we get from a state-controlled fiat money regime to a free market in money? The first strategy is monetary enlightenment—informing the widest possible audience about the evils of fiat money and how it affects their personal lives, families, and communities. This also includes explaining to people that there is a superior and practicable alternative to a fiat money regime, namely a free market in money. The second strategy is making progress in the field of alternative currencies and payment systems, especially in terms of technological disruptions and their economic profitability. This is the activity space for those among us who are propelled by entrepreneurial spirit. The Limits of Cryptocurrency The cryptocurrency community, the bitcoin community in particular, and also precious metals–based payment system providers have been making some headway in this area in recent years, but unfortunately victory has not yet been achieved. For instance, bitcoin still has some scalability and performance issues. Currently, the bitcoin network settles a peak of around 350,000 transactions worldwide every day, and given its present configuration, it is presumably running at almost full capacity. By comparison, the German fiat money payment system alone processes more than 75 million transactions on average every business day.3 From the payment processing viewpoint, bitcoin cannot outshine fiat currencies yet. What is more, a currency in a modern economy must provide for the possibility of financial intermediation (an issue I mentioned earlier).4 People typically demand payment or storage services for their money, or they want to lend and borrow money—irrespective of the kind of money they actually use. Often peer-to-peer is not enough, a third party is required. Providing intermediation services outside existing state regulation is difficult. In fact, it would put an upper limit on the financial sophistication of any cryptocurrency. This is a heavy drag on their competitiveness compared to fiat currencies. And if a cryptocurrency comes out into the open space, it will have the state breathing down its neck, drowning it in business-destroying regulations and restrictions. Because the financial intermediation problem is still unsolved, one has reason to remain skeptical that—given the current circumstances—existing cryptocurrencies will succeed in pushing aside the state and replacing its fiat currency just like that. Precious metals suffer from similar problems. In many countries, the state subjects gold and silver to value-added taxes and/or capital gains taxes. This makes them uncompetitive versus fiat currencies in terms of using them in daily transactions. The Key to Free Market Money Is Deconstructing the State In fact, is it possible that a free market in money can ever emerge as long as there is the kind of state we know today? The state is, as most of you probably know, the territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making with the right to tax its citizens. We can rightfully expect that this kind of state will do its best to crush any competitor to its fiat money and prevent a free market in money from emerging. So if we want a free market in money, the sobering logical conclusion is this: we need to reform, to deconstruct, the state (as we know it today). Now the uncomfortable truth is out, because the state is possibly the fiercest adversary you could choose. How can we hope to achieve victory? Well, there is certainly no magic spell. One possible and straightforward strategy might be appealing to people's inner self, and that is their right to self-determination. The right to self-determination is inalienable and it is an indisputable truth. Each and every individual is the owner of his or her body and the owner of goods acquired in nonaggressive ways (without violating the physical integrity of someone else's property). We cannot dispute these words without causing a logical contradiction. The right to self-determination implies that the citizens of a state have the right (1) to make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to be members of the state and (2) to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state. In other words: the right to self-determination includes the right of secession, that is, people's right to break up the big state and to deconstruct it into smaller units. Smaller political units are less powerful, more peaceful, and free market oriented. They keep taxation low, or may even go without it and become wealthier. Just think of, e.g., Shanghai, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, or Monaco. This is because small political units must compete for capital and talents with other political units. They must behave themselves nicely. Otherwise, people and capital will leave their territory. Given a great number of small political units, there is a good chance that some of them will allow for, even encourage, a free market in money, setting an example that creates emulators. Conclusion It is hard to say which route would be the most effective in “Making Money Great Again.” Perhaps the cryptocurrency community will somehow succeed in ending the state (as we know it today), leaving a truly free market in money in its place. In the meantime, however, it certainly would not hurt if we (1) kept educating the wider audience about what good money is and what bad money is and also (2) kept unmasking the state (as we know it today), showing that it is incompatible with and a violation of the inalienable right to self-determination of each and every human being. In any case, it is of the utmost importance to wrest the money monopoly out of the hands of the state. Otherwise, there is indeed little hope that the free society (or what little is left of it) can survive.

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Cryptocurrency: How Ta Invest - Legacy vs New 2020's Style, CipherTrace OpSec
by grarpamp 03 Sep '20

03 Sep '20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoeaytgytZ0 Financial Success in the 1990's https://ccnews24.net/kazakhstan-is-negotiating-a-gigantic-investment-in-cry… Financial Success in the 2020's https://old.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/il2c12/in_light_of_ciphertrace_let…

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SKS PGP Keyservers Nodecount Dropping
by grarpamp 03 Sep '20

03 Sep '20

https://sks-keyservers.net/status/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://sks-keyservers.net/status/ Number of servers in pool slowly dropping, might need volunteers at some point, including more nodes on Tor, I2P, CJDNS...

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Where's the fingerprints and sigs? (was: Please check the current beta git conversions)
by grarpamp 03 Sep '20

03 Sep '20

On 9/1/20, Shawn Webb <shawn.webb(a)hardenedbsd.org> wrote: > I'm curious if there's any plans for read-only access over ssh. > Trusting FreeBSD's ssh key material is likely easier than trusting > HTTPS in certain regions. A bit moot when such key materials of all services, and repos, and ticketing, and reviews, and builds, and downloads, and packages, forums, and git hashtree initialization first hashes, and pubkey modulus not just the larger DER's by untrusted/attacking CA's, etc... are all not sha-256 fingerprint signed and attested to in a base included textfile, in repo and on website, etc by security officer keys having good WoT... for users to reference, import, validate, pin down, etc. And tools for accessing such services often not have fingerprint pinning options. Woes be to those using such untrustable massively MITM'd and spied upon networks as the Internet, Workplace, Home, Travel, VPN, WiFi, Tor Exits, etc not having any way to authenticate fingerprints and pin such services back to their favorite OS project's security apostille office yet. Security vaunted OpenBSD still serves up via cleartext non-hashtree anoncvs on non-ecc harware on non-zfs-skein filesystems etc... So the BSD world must still be thought secure, bit integral, and trustably accessible without any of these infrastructure tool fingerprint sig and pin basics... still no need to supply them since decades since TLS/SSH/etc were deployed... Right? Not. Cheers all :) [Same for Linux ;]

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Sedition in Victoria Australia as heavily preggo mum handcuffed for "join us" tweet - photo not attached - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 03 Sep '20

03 Sep '20

Poking fun at the hoomans "standing" (oh so rare as that is even today) who consider that they might tweet in support of "muh human rights" whilst in the middle of a declared State of Disaster (one level up from State of Emergency, just one level down from Marshall Law) is arguably "bold" but more likely just ignorant - not so dissimilar to wearing Nazi regalia in front of an ANTIFA crowd. Better late than never that some folks actually realise that they should care (should have cared) about their human rights? When real life becomes so sad it's self satirising, you know most folks have little will for much of anything - in the face of incredible opportunities for so many years to protest injustice re for the likes of Julian Assange, and for UPMART's "no road tolls thanks, that's highway robbery" causes - and yet now, ~20 years into this "spiritual cold war", where a mask and a little public caution is asked of us for a few months whilst the MOTUs sort out the shitty mess they created, finally some folks think now is the time to speak up? Color me fully cynical man, fully cynical.. We can certainly empathize with the plight of humans (pronounced in a decidedly cynical "oh no, not that again!" southern drawl as "huuuuumans!"), and we can understand that putting a tissue on your face for a few months really is the height of fascism - I mean, some idiotic Mayer even ordered mask wearing ---in your own home--- - HA!! Now that's one -gold- acid test baby ;) : Florida county ‘mask-at-home’ order draws bewilderment and outrage before authorities say it only applies to guests https://www.rt.com/usa/495404-broward-county-mask-home-requirement/ [appropriate yet oddly funny photo not attached] Americans should start wearing face masks AT HOME, Dr. Deborah Birx says https://www.rt.com/usa/496991-birx-face-masks-at-home/ Funny as bro, funny as :D Anyway, for all your pregnant handcuffing photo needs, look no further - this take by RT is actually rather funny, it's a writing job well done: Australia should be ashamed & appalled by this video of police handcuffing a pregnant woman for posting an anti-lockdown message https://www.rt.com/op-ed/499726-victoria-police-arrest-pregnant-woman-lockd… PS: I's be fully entitled to muh cynical feelz, muh grits - in due course many stories shall be made public for the edification of what not to do and what not to expect of humans :D

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Solzhenitsyn: "The Western world has lost its civil courage" - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 02 Sep '20

02 Sep '20

This is another foundational problem we face, and put in a way which is easy to immediately grok: The Western world has lost its civil courage. Solzhenitsyn said this in a speech in 1978. A longer quote for context is provided below: “The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite. Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end? Even biology knows that habitual, extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask . . . The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.” This is up there with "we don't control our own lives". As said by many to date, the first step to solving any problem, is understanding that problem, and to this end, succinct problem statements are useful to share understanding with others - and surely, without many others seeing a problem, what hope have we to solve that problem? Will You Choose Freedom? Stacey Rudin via The American Institute for Economic Research https://www.aier.org/article/will-you-choose-freedom/ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-you-choose-freedom In George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel “1984,” protagonist Winston wonders whether he is the only person who retains a real memory and doubts the narrative of The Party. He has no way to find out whether everyone else truly believes the government-revised version of history, or simply acts like they do; discussing such matters is verboten, punishable by vaporization: deletion from history. Fortunately we are not quite at that point in the United States — no one has yet been vaporized. .. Democracy lives or dies based on the characters of the people that comprise it. In centuries past, those who fought to build this country learned lessons about the value of freedom the hard way and passed down their wisdom: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We didn’t heed the warning. We just willingly sacrificed the Constitutional rights they fought for in order to hide from a virus with a 997 out of 1000 survival rate. Many who were disquieted by the widespread elevation of fear into virtue never said a word due to concern over “looking bad,” hoping someone else would step up to fight against the absurd new moral construct calling good, hardworking people murderers if they won’t sacrifice their entire lives and livelihoods for an indefinite period. It is hard not to see ourselves in Solzhenitsyn’s observation: “A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger…We [in the East] have been through a spiritual training [producing] stronger, deeper, and more interesting characters than those generally produced by standardized Western well-being.” We got away with our lack of character-building challenges for quite awhile, but when “disaster” struck it laid us bare. We met the enemy, and he is us. ...

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Censorship: ShadowGate Documentary Banned by FaceBook and YouTube
by grarpamp 02 Sep '20

02 Sep '20

https://banned.video/watch?id=5f37fcc2df77c4044ee2eb03 ShadowGate Documentary Full Version Just another in the long list of now many many hundreds of well documented cases of censorship of peoples voices and content around the world. Such shutdowns, censorship and narrative steering control, rapidly accelerating in the last five years alone. Regardless of whatever book, film, dataset, voice... Such GovCorp Media and Political censorship is why you need fully encrypted distributed P2P and even guerilla radio and physical transport networks. And why you need to spam random surface dwellers with random links to them. Whether presenting different ideas, say CryptoAnarchism, or your own truths, no one will see them when they're censored or they don't know where to go to freely browse a wide range of things new to them, buy and sell physibles in open markets, etc. There's a reason these ridiculous censorious power and control structures don't want you to see, hear, read, posess, and consume things... you might wake up and rightly revolt against or ignore them, reaching unto a greater state of liberation for all. Your freedom is something they are not willing to grant. Seek it out.

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Cryptocurrency: AlphaBay darknet market moderator sentenced to 11 years in Jail
by grarpamp 02 Sep '20

02 Sep '20

On 9/2/20, jim bell <jdb10987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > https://cointelegraph.com/news/alphabay-darknet-market-moderator-sentenced-… "Herrell was paid in Bitcoin to handle disputes between vendors and buyers on AlphaBay. He also acted as a “scam watcher” monitoring the marketplace for attempts to defraud users." So someone or entity can get paid to do voluntarily agreed upon, fair, peaceful, and trusted dispute resolution among parties, thereby helping to prevent escalation to violent outcomes, and everyone happily smokes a bowl at the end of the day... but gets decades in physically and mentally abusive prison, lack of health care, persecuted for life when let out, etc... Yet some street thug, rapist, arson, standing army, etc can beat the shit out of someone, abuse, maim, steal, tax theft, drone murder in "war", etc and get less or even no time or even the victim get repaid losses... and in many thieving regulating entities the malactor gets promoted for it... And whistleblower and publishers exercising freedom of speech get held in prison indefinitely without timely or fair process... While dozens of harmless open markets, kids Kool-aid stands, families selling food and services to make ends meet, etc get shutdown for being "unlicensed", etc... Yeah, that's Government Power for ya. BTW, search these tags among hundreds of others if you want to see more... #FreeRoss , #FreeAssange , ... Cryptocurrency invented to help defund and stop one of the abusers mentioned somewhere above, guess which one it is. Seems there's a reason many good people are in cryptosphere. And why more adoption keeps happening every day worldwide. There is no stopping decentralized privacy enabled cryptocurrency :)

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AlphaBay darknet market moderator sentenced to 11 years in Jail
by jim bell 02 Sep '20

02 Sep '20

https://cointelegraph.com/news/alphabay-darknet-market-moderator-sentenced-…

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