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Lessons to be learned from the Nordic countries?
by Shawn K. Quinn 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

https://theweek.com/articles/918143/what-america-learn-from-nordic-police > The Nordic countries, as usual, have an instructive example for > America. These nations have both enormously smaller police > departments and prison systems than the United States, and much less > violent crime, especially murders. Emulating their basic approach > could allow American cities to cleanse themselves of police abuse and > still enjoy lower crime. -- Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn(a)rushpost.com> http://www.rantroulette.com http://www.skqrecordquest.com

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Cryptocurrency: Documentary, Corona, Floyd Protests, Taxes
by grarpamp 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

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Offset: A credit card powered by trust between people
by realcr 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

Hey list, I am happy to announce the first public version of Offset: A credit card powered by trust between people. Check it out here: https://www.offsetcredit.org Any feedback is highly appreciated! A short description about Offset: Offset is a credit card powered by trust between people. Payments in Offset are secure, fast and privacy respecting. In addition, Offset lets you pay with any currency you like. You can pay with Offset at the local grocery store by scanning a QR code, or buy something online from the other side of the world, even from someone you have never met. As a merchant, Offset gives you the freedom to sell without having to pay the extra fees to a payment processor. Most importantly, Offset gives you the control. Offset is free and open source. There is no single “Offset server”, as Offset is fully decentralized. Your Offset credits fit nicely into your mobile phone, and you are the only one having control over those credits. To use Offset you don’t need a previous credit history, a bank account, id card, phone number or even an email address. You can open as many Offset cards as you like, without having to pay any fees. Your Offset cards can not be frozen, and your transactions can not be tracked. Offset moves the power of issuing money from the state to the market participants. Therefore, Offset credits are protected from inflation. While the currencies of the world are constantly depreciating in value, Offset credits hold to their original value. -- real

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IBM Publishes Fully Homomorphic Crypto Toolkit, ZKP, PQC, Zoom Throws Users Under Spy Bus
by grarpamp 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/research/2020/06/ibm-releases-fully-homomorphic-e… https://developer.ibm.com/blogs/new-open-source-security-tools-let-you-deve… http://research.ibm.com/labs/uk/fhe.html https://fhe-website.mybluemix.net/ https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/hits09/gentry-homomorphic-encryption.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1113.pdf https://fhekit.slack.com/join/shared_invite/zt-e35rax8l-_ZbB2XuF3WcXCM2mDe~… https://github.com/IBM/fhe-toolkit-macos https://github.com/IBM/fhe-toolkit-ios https://github.com/IBM/fhe-toolkit-linux https://github.com/IBM/fhe-toolkit-android https://github.com/homenc/HElib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/white-paper/2020/05/26/getting-re… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography Zoom's free surveillance and fake crypto for hundreds of millions of users https://github.com/zoom/zoom-e2e-whitepaper/raw/master/zoom_e2e.pdf https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21279355/zoom-end-encryption-calls-fbi-po… @RonWyden - Privacy and security shouldn't be reserved for those who can pay. I urge Zoom to rethink its decision to charge users for strong encryption. https://mobile.twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1268636886517665795 - Says, while still working for Zoom throwing users under the bus... So let me follow this up with some more detail, if you can handle a thread. The thing that’s really concerning me is that there’s a strong push from the US and other governments to block the deployment of new E2E encryption. 1/

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Re: freedom - evolution of jew-kristian fascism in the western cesspool
by Zenaan Harkness 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

Thanks, Punk. For those also interested, PDF: https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2013/SOC571E/um/_Routledge_Classics___Max_… and HTML: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber. 1905 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/weber/protestant-ethic/ "Published: Unwin Hyman, London & Boston, 1930; Translated: Talcott Parsons, Anthony Giddens; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden February 2005; CopyLeft: this text is completely free." Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism : Summary https://www.sociologygroup.com/protestant-ethic-spirit-capitalism-summary/ A Book Overview: "The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit Of Capitalism" https://www.thoughtco.com/the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism… .. Key Takeaways: The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit Of Capitalism - Weber’s famous book set out to understand Western civilization and the development of capitalism. - According to Weber, societies influenced by Protestant religions encouraged both accumulating material wealth and living a relatively frugal lifestyle. - Because of this accumulation of wealth, individuals began to invest money—which paved the way for the development of capitalism. - In this book, Weber also put forward the idea of the “iron cage,” a theory about why social and economic structures are often resistant to change. .. In other words, capitalism evolved when the Protestant ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. ... On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 10:51:21PM -0300, Punk-Stasi 2.0 wrote: > On Sat, 6 Jun 2020 11:20:06 +1000 > Zenaan Harkness <zen(a)freedbms.net> wrote: > > > very interesting! > > thanks for posting.. > > > > was that from Wiki? > > quote comes from max weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905) > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 04:47:15PM -0300, Punk-Stasi 2.0 wrote: > > > > > > > > > "the Reformation meant not the elimination of the Church’s control over everyday life, but rather the substitution of a new form of control for the previous one. It meant the repudiation of a control which was very lax, at that time scarcely perceptible in practice, and hardly more than formal, in favor of a regulation, of the whole of conduct which, penetrating to all departments of private and public life, was infinitely burdensome and earnestly enforced. The rule of the Catholic Church, “punishing the heretic, but indulgent to the sinner,” as it was in the past even more than today, is now tolerated by peoples of thoroughly modern economic character, and was borne by the richest and economically most advanced peoples on earth at about the turn of the fifteenth century. The rule of Calvinism, on the other hand, as it was enforced in the sixteenth century in Geneva and in Scotland, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in large parts of the Netherlands, in the seventeenth in New England, and for a time in England itself, would be for us the most absolutely unbearable form of ecclesiastical control of the individual which could possibly exist." > > > > > > >

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the British Queen, the Crown, and Australia - Fwd: ASIO & Palace Letters
by Zenaan Harkness 06 Jun '20

06 Jun '20

The queen had, and almost certainly still has, interests in Australia - as in financial interests, and Whitlam wanted to buy back the farm, and shirt was going down re Vietnam. Personally, individuals, including the Queen, have a right to uphold and at least attempt to defend their interests. But, speaking as an Australian, when "our" British monarch/ the Queen, a) has been stripped of or has abdicated any relevant political power, and b) is not useful for the protection of basic human freedoms, for a recent example the matter of the Assange case, then it's hard not to ask "well what use is the Crown/ the Queen, to us?" There's nothing inherently wrong with at least some powers being vested with a Monarch or dictator, just so long as that authority is actually benevolent, and so long as we the people are with sufficient awareness and authority and will to hold any and all such authority to the required standard of benevolence, and with sufficient authority and power to remove such an authority from power should they fail to uphold benevolence, righteous justice, etc. (Most folks these days can see glaringly devolving and apparently structural compromise in our so called "democratic' system.) There is wisdom in having the hierarchy of power and authority be distributed so to speak - a balance of powers, and in our present system technically (though perhaps no longer practically) the Crown holds only one remaining formal power in Australia - the power to declare or veto war. Such power OUGHT be used as a check and balance against the corporations and bankers who lust for the econmic windfalls of war, and when this check and balance no longer exists, then again, on this point, the Crown loses its relevance to the rest of us, the King or Queen of the day little more than an attractively presented financial burden upon us. A lot of folks get caught up in envy of the wealth of another, and we must be absolutely diligent in casting aside such base, petty and demeaning (of ourselves no less!) such envy and implied 'negative' aspersions (e.g. "that person has a lot of wealth, they must be a bad person"). What we MUST uphold, is our individual and collective human rights, and dignity. Although the Crown ought in general be held to higher standards of principles, the Queen is no less deserving of dignity than anyone else. That said, the issues surrounding Vietnam, Pine Gap and other matters, may or may not be scandalous - but we the Australian people have the right to make our own assessments of past events such as the sacking of our democratically elected prime minister Gough Whitlam in that Vietnam era. With the letters and much of the behind the scenes of the events hopefully to be soon disclosed (see below), we might be able to meaningfully comment further, but as a principle, there's a chance Gough Whitlam missed the JFK memo - it's not a good idea to be the lone hero for all, that just makes you an individual target. Instead, better to speak to the people, be public on a daily basis, and stick to fundamental principles of human rights, fairness, and legitimate interests of individuals, groups and especially allies (so far as they are actually allies). Allies don't demean, allies don't enslave, allies don't deny justice, most especially that founded in righteousness (Julian Assange is today's prime example). Let's aim to (re)build Australia's dignity on the world stage, which for starters demands that we treat all nations, and all people, with dignity and respect. And to those who would consider themselves Australia's allies - yes, it can be scary to have to -actually- trust an ally, but surmounting that fear is the price for a truly strong relationship, which can of course never properly exist on a foundation of lack of trust. Hopefully our politicians will begin to get the memo. ---- Forwarded message from Gil May <gilmay97(a)gmail.com> ----- From: Gil May <gilmay97(a)gmail.com> Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2020 08:23:37 +1000 Subject: Fwd: ASIO & Palace Letters *ASIO & Palace Letters:* As you read this remember that Whitlam wanted to bring in a law to prevent foriegn ownership of Australian assets, that all had to be at least 51% Australian owned. The iportance of this today is very relevent where China and others hold massive investments of our assets. He wanted all mineral assets to be Australian, think of the billion$ in opposition that caused, his raid on ASIO and Pine Gap that was opperating without any knowledge of what it's operations were and the US refusal to advise the government of such. IF as we were told Whitlam was a danger to Australia and all the terrible things he was suposed to have done, THEN WHY weren't all his law changed when the LNP came to power???????????? His laws still stand today. I told Lionel Murphy, The Attorney General, to tell Whitlam to call Malcolm Fraser in and tell him if he does not passs the Budget Bill, you will break the 'Book of Pairs' and would have given him a majority of one, and that would be the end of the Westminister sytem of government forever, but Whiltlam a stickler for traditional proceedures would not do it. GM I am sure you will remember these events clearly, so the following may interest you. . --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: citizensparty.org.au <https://cec.enudgemail.com.au/securl.php?nudge=y84zpr11221&link=3671&email=…> *Will ASIO stop Australians from seeing the ‘palace letters’?* The 29 May High Court judgement that the “palace letters” between Queen Elizabeth II and Governor-General John Kerr in the Whitlam dismissal should not remain secret is a significant step in the fight for Australian sovereignty. It’s not a foregone conclusion, however, as the Director-General of the National Archives who has a say in what is released, David Fricker, is a former Deputy Director-General of spy agency ASIO. This is a massive conflict of interests, as ASIO was up to its neck in the intrigues against Whitlam, not least because Whitlam’s Attorney-General Lionel Murphy raided the agency he was supposed to be in charge of, but which withheld terrorism-related information from him. ASIO then, as now, operated under what is now known as the “Five Eyes”, dominated by US and British intelligence, which regarded Whitlam as a threat; indeed, ASIO is effectively the Australian subsidiary of Britain’s Security Service MI5, whose assistant director in the 1970s, Peter Wright revealed in his book *Spycatcher* that MI5 saw its loyalty as to the Queen personally, not to the elected government. Monash University historian Professor Jennifer Hocking, who initiated the case to have the letters released, has already indicated she is having trouble in her negotiations with Fricker, and Fricker told ABC News that releasing the palace letters won’t be simple, and that some records may not be released as exemptions for things like national security still apply. “We are not like a library or a museum”, Fricker said. “I am required to diligently go through those things and just make sure that our release of these records is responsible, it’s ethical and it complies with the law.” This is unacceptable, and Australians should demand their release in full. If they are released in full, Australians may soon discover secret details of the Queen’s role in the 1975 coup to overthrow Gough Whitlam, a democratically elected Prime Minister. Buckingham Palace has to date intervened to ensure the palace letters remain secret, a clear indicator that much is at stake, including the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British Intelligence Services (MI5, SIS and GCHQ), the latter of which have since 2011 been overseen by Prince Charles in his capacity of Royal Patron of the Intelligence Services. Prof. Hocking’s four-year legal battle to access the palace letters has met enormous resistance. Sir Edward Young, the queen’s private secretary, has indicated the release “could damage not only international relations but also the trusting relationship between Her Majesty and her representatives overseas”. The 211 palace letters were placed in the custody of Australian Archives on 26 August 1978 by the then Official Secretary to the Governor-General, David Smith. The letters comprise 116 from Kerr to the Queen, mostly through the official secretary; and 95 letters from the Queen, all of them through her private secretary. At the time, Smith wrote to the Australian Archives in a letter of deposit: “This package contains the *personal* and confidential correspondence between the Right Honourable Sir John Kerr, AK, GCMG, GCVO, K St J, QC, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia from 11 April 1974 until 8 December 1977, and Her Majesty the Queen.” (Emphasis added.) Smith declared the letters would remain closed until 8 December 2037 and thereafter subject to further caveat at the whim of the British Crown. The Australian Archives has continued to argue that the palace letters were “personal correspondence” and therefore should remain private. Prof. Hocking explains otherwise. “Before lodging them in the Archives, the letters had been kept by Smith in the Government House ‘strong room under absolute security’ again in an official capacity, which scarcely suggested the letters were ‘personal’”, wrote Hocking in a 1 June article <https://cec.enudgemail.com.au/securl.php?nudge=y84zpr11221&link=3672&email=…> at Pearls and Irritations, the blog run by retired public servant John Menadue, who was head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Whitlam at the time of the dismissal. “It is surely an unusual position for the National Archives, which describes itself as a ‘pro-disclosure organisation’, to contest this action at significant expense—initially of almost one million dollars—at a time of severe budget and staff cuts”, Prof. Hocking wrote. Fortunately for Hocking the High Court has ordered the Australian Archives to pay her legal costs. The latest High Court ruling makes clear that the palace letters were not “personal” at all, but “constitute Commonwealth records within the meaning of the *Archives Act 1983*”. The court “ordered that a writ of mandamus issue to compel the Director-General of the National Archives of Australia to reconsider Professor Hocking’s request for access to the deposited correspondence”, and so overruled the previous Federal Court ruling against Prof. Hocking. *What is at stake?* In a 16 April article <https://cec.enudgemail.com.au/securl.php?nudge=y84zpr11221&link=3673&email=…> at Pearls and Irritations, Prof. Hocking had said that the more than two hundred letters is simply a “staggering number”, and “should they be released the ‘Palace letters’ will be the most important record of the inner workings of the vice-regal relationship during a time of political crisis that we have ever seen”. Veteran journalist John Pilger indicated what is at stake in a 1 June article <https://cec.enudgemail.com.au/securl.php?nudge=y84zpr11221&link=3674&email=…> for Consortium News. “There is an historical amnesia among Australia’s polite society about the catastrophic events of 1975”, he wrote. “An Anglo-American coup overthrew a democratically elected ally in a demeaning scandal in which sections of the Australian elite colluded. This is largely unmentionable.” Pilger explained how the Whitlam government provided significant opposition to Vietnam war crimes and threatened to close the secretive US-run intelligence facility at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs: “Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, ‘This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.’” And the role of British intelligence cannot be overstated: “In 1975, Whitlam discovered that MI6 was operating against his government. ‘The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office’, he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, ‘We knew MI6 was bugging Cabinet meetings for the Americans’.” Whitlam’s plans to control Australia’s mineral wealth for the benefit of all Australians clearly displeased the Queen, who was long the largest individual shareholder of minerals giant Rio Tinto. This plan to “buy back the farm” so Australians would own our nation clearly ran against the British imperial agenda, and the City of London and Wall Street banking interests. Will the released papers convince Australians to abandon the fairy tale that the Queen is above politics and merely plays a ceremonial role? Will we now fight for sovereignty? ----- End forwarded message -----

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Mission accomplished?
by Steven Schear 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

EU’s Europol: Bitcoin Privacy Wallet ‘Not Looking Good’ For Law Enforcement https://www.coindesk.com/europol-bitcoin-privacy-wasabi-wallet

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Box for simple Tor node.
by jim bell 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

Somebody asked me a question, but because I am far from being an expert, I couldn't answer. Suppose a person wanted to implement a TOR node, simply by buying some box, and plugging it into his modem, and power. And NOT needing to become an expert on TOR, or even on computers in general. And NOT having to follow pages and pages of instructions. I did a few minutes of searching, and even the 'simple' explanations seemed 'clear as mud'. Don't bother with long explanations challenging the usefulness, or trustworthiness of TOR. Yes, we've discussed them to death. That's a different subject. Jim Bell

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The Unix Way, and other tech bits
by grarpamp 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

https://prithu.xyz/posts/unix-pipeline/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23420786 https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/06/romanian-skimmer-gang-in-mexico-outed-b… SpaceX Starlink https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409063 https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-ec2-c5a-instances-powered-by-2n… http://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/the-road-less-traveled-to-fusion-energy

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Articles and notes on recent events
by recondite＠tuta.io 05 Jun '20

05 Jun '20

#### Politics #### ## Curfews have been lifted in D.C. andL.A. county. The violence is dying down, and the four officers beingcharged seem to have had an effect. Was there also an effect from theNational guard? #Jim Craig, an associate professor ofmilitary and veteran studies in relation to the Ferguson civildistress in 2014 said, “calling out the national guard for a floodis one thing, calling out the national guard for riots and unrestmoves say into the extreme.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/what-is-national-guard-fergus… #So let’s not discount the extremenature of what has just happened and also the fact that it has becomeobviously much more common since many states deployed the nationguard this last week. #As of June 2, 23 states activated theNational Guard in reaction to the riots, 17,000 of them on Mondaymorning. 45,000 have already been activated in response to the Covidcrisis. That means about 66,700 National Guard personnel are activeright now in all 50 states. This is multiples of the amount ofactive-duty troops in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/06/02/which-us-states-have-… ##Even though things seem to have been dying down and staying peacefulPortland is still dealing with violence as they have a large ANTIFAto citizen ratio, and some rioters abroad have begun to express theirsolidarity with the American rioters by rioting themselves. Greekdemonstrators as the most extravagant of them all threw Molotov cocktails towards the U.S. embassy in Athens. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests-greece/greek… ## Nolonger are the protests for justice for George Floyd as that seems tobe well on its way, but the riots are now against white superiority and police brutality. ##This is good, more or less, it’s undoubtedly something that needs tobe addressed. But what comes to mind is Killer Mike’s speech inAtlanta a few days ago. We need to be beating our opposition up in thevoting booth. By putting the the politicians you want into the jobswhere they can make a difference there’s a big chance of changingsome things. But right now the rioters are trying to kill wasps witha shotgun, it’s not going to work, they’re going to cause a lotof damage, and get themselves hurt in the process. Dealing with waspsproperly is going to take more time and effort but will be much moreeffective. ...Whichleads me to, another success in this saga: ## Defund the Police ## NYC Comptroller Wants $1.1B cut fromthe NYPD #The cut is supposed to happen over thenext four years in order to aid “vulnerable communities mostimpacted by police violence and structural racism.” #The plan: $265M annually by reducingheadcount through attrition, suspending hiring of new police classes,and scaling back overtime. According to statement from ScottStringer. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/comptroller-stringer-to-mayor-de-blasi… #The 1.1B cut is a %19 reduction in the overall budget for the NYPD ## So that’s a win! Or, is it just aconsolation prize? Like we talked about there is a substantial amountof National guard deployed right now. I realize that many of thepeople in the national guard are average citizens on reserve, butthis feels close to martial law! Maybe governors of all the statesare realizing how easy it is to deploy the National Guard reservesduring a crisis and therefore don’t feel the need to have policefunded? This is a major speculation and as I’m sure the NYCcomptroller and Governor Cuomo know each other but it’s a long shotthat they are colluding. ## Never the less, I am alwayssuspicious when the government “cuts back” and ask myself, arethey really cutting back or are they just moving power and influenceform the front-end to the back-end in order to save face but retaincontrol. ## If it is in good faith, is it reallythe most effective route to take? Right now it probably is for manyreasons, the least of them not being that of calming down the angrypeople and showing them that the government cares. But I feel there’smore of a change in the way of a spiritual revolution that could beof a larger benefit. ## Nicolo Machiavelli’s eighth ruleof war: Discipline in war counts more than fury. https://warontherocks.com/2014/08/machiavellis-27-rules-of-war/ ## “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” - Aristotle #### Covid #### ## NYC hits zero confirmed covid deathsfor first day since march #NYC hit it’s peak death rate onApril 7 https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-deaths-confirmed-cov… ## The fact is that this pandemic hasbeen bad, but not as bad as we expected. ## Another 1.9 million have filed forunemployment, the ninth week of that number declining but still amassive ammount of unemployed. Still more unemployed than during thegreat depression. https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-nyc-us-world-updates… #### Crypto #### ## MakerDAO weighs accepting real-worldassets as crypto loan collateral. #Another step towards more robustdecentralized financial services, one of the most promising ideas inthe cryptocurrency space. https://www.coindesk.com/makerdao-weighs-accepting-real-world-assets-as-cry… #With decentralized financial serviceseveryone with an internet connection can take advantage of the samemethods that the ultra rich use in order to protect their wealth. #That is, creating liquidity fromnonliquid assets and therefore adding a layer of protection frominflation (among other things.) #Why do you think that the ultrawealthy buy painting for hundreds of millions of dollars? It’s avery slowly appreciating thing and is difficult to take care of.First of all it’s definitely insured so they can recoup much ofthat cost, but it’s also very easy to put that up as collateral andopen a line of credit with a bank that cost them about 1% ininterest. So they do in fact use the money to purchase the paintingbut in a roundabout way make it possible to take that money back outfrom the investment without actually selling the asset itself. #Projects like Celsius and MakerDAO dothe exact same thing but with cryptocurrency. It requires no creditrating, little KYC, and your loan comes to you with about a 1%interest rate. #The advancement of Non-fungibletokens, which is what powers crypto kitties, is what will be able toact as lesson between your real world assets and the loan that youtake out (in a USD-pegged stable coin, by the way.) #Goes to show that most technologicaladvancements become applied to at worst borderline nonsensicalprojects and at best fun things to do before they go on topotentially change the entire world as we know it. #This is a big deal that could makeMakerDAO a lot of money and enable the common people to takeadvantage of financial services that are currently reserved for thewealthy and well-connected.

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