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American Empire's unwinnable wars, from an Officer's PoV - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

America's Endless Wars: "At West Point, Graduation Day Felt More Like A Tragedy Than A Triumph" https://www.zerohedge.com/political/americas-endless-wars-west-point-gradua… https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-army-west-point/ ... The first of our wars to come from that nightmare has always been unwinnable. All the Afghan metrics—the US military’s own “measures for success”—continue to trend badly, worse than ever in fact. The futility of the entire endeavor borders on the absurd. It makes me sad to think that my former officemate and fellow West Point history instructor, Mark, is once again over there. Along with just about every serving officer I’ve known, he would laugh if asked whether he could foresee—or even define—“victory” in that country. Take my word for it, after 18-plus years, whatever idealism might once have been in the Army has almost completely evaporated. Resignation is what remains among most of the officer corps. As for me, I’ll be left hoping against hope that someone I know or taught isn’t the last to die in that never-ending war from hell. My former cadets who ended up in armor (tanks and reconnaissance) or ventured into the Special Forces might now find themselves in Syria—the war President Trump “ended” by withdrawing American troops from that country, until, of course, almost as many of them were more or less instantly sent back in. Some of the armor officers among my students might even have the pleasure of indefinitely guarding that country’s oil fields, which—if the United States takes some of that liquid gold for itself—might just violate international law. But hey, what else is new? Still more—mostly intelligence officers, logisticians, and special operators—can expect to deploy to any one of the dozen or so West African or Horn of Africa countries that the US military now calls home. In the name of “advising and assisting” the local security forces of often autocratic African regimes, American troops still occasionally, if quietly, die in “non-combat” missions in places like Niger or Somalia. None of these combat operations have been approved, or even meaningfully debated, by Congress. But in the America of 2019 that doesn’t qualify as a problem. There are, however, problems of a more strategic variety. After all, it’s demonstrably clear that, since the founding of the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, violence on the continent has only increased, while Islamist terror and insurgent groups have proliferated in an exponential fashion. To be fair, though, such counter-productivity has been the name of the game in the “war on terror” since it began. Another group of new academy graduates will spend up to a year in Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states of Eastern Europe. There, they’ll ostensibly train the paltry armies of those relatively new NATO countries—added to the alliance in foolish violation of repeated American promises not to expand eastward as the Cold War ended. In reality, though, they’ll be serving as provocative “signals” to a supposedly expansionist Russia. With the Russian threat wildly exaggerated, just as it was in the Cold War era, the very presence of my Baltic-based former cadets will only heighten tensions between the two over-armed nuclear heavyweights. Such military missions are too big not to be provocative, but too small to survive a real (if essentially unimaginable) war. The intelligence officers among my cadets might, on the other hand, get the “honor” of helping the Saudi Air Force through intelligence-sharing to doom some Yemeni targets—often civilian—to oblivion thanks to US manufactured munitions. In other words, these young officers could be made complicit in what’s already the worst humanitarian disaster in the world. Other recent cadets of mine might even have the ignominious distinction of being part of military convoys driving along interstate highways to America’s southern border to emplace what President Trump has termed “beautiful” barbed wire there, while helping detain refugees of wars and disorder that Washington often helped to fuel. ... None of these potential tasks awaiting my former students is even remotely linked to the oath (to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”) that newly commissioned officers swear on day one. They are instead all unconstitutional, ill-advised distractions that benefit mainly an entrenched national security state and the arms-makers that go with them. The tragedy is that a few of my beloved cadets with whom I once played touch football, who babysat my children, who shed tears of anxiety and fear during private lunches in my office might well sustain injuries that will last a lifetime or die in one of this country’s endless hegemonic wars. ... My last day in front of a class, I skipped the planned lesson and leveled with the young men and women seated before me. We discussed my own once bright, now troubled career and my struggles with my emotional health. We talked about the complexities, horror, and macabre humor of combat and they asked me blunt questions about what they could expect in their future as graduates. Then, in my last few minutes as a teacher, I broke down. I hadn’t planned this, nor could I control it. My greatest fear, I said, was that their budding young lives might closely track my own journey of disillusionment, emotional trauma, divorce, and moral injury. The thought that they would soon serve in the same pointless, horrifying wars, I told them, made me “want to puke in a trash bin.” The clock struck 1600 (4 pm), class time was up, yet not a single one of those stunned cadets—unsure undoubtedly of what to make of a superior officer’s streaming tears—moved for the door. I assured them that it was okay to leave, hugged each of them as they finally exited, and soon found myself disconcertingly alone. So I erased my chalkboards and also left. Three years have passed. About 130 students of mine graduated in May. My last group will pin on the gold bars of brand new army officers in late May 2020. I’m still in touch with several former cadets and, long after I did so, students of mine are now driving down the dusty lanes of Iraq or tramping the narrow footpaths of Afghanistan. My nightmare has come true.

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High tech Anti-Trust
by jim bell 09 Nov '19

09 Nov '19

Top antitrust enforcer warns Big Tech over data collection https://news.yahoo.com/top-antitrust-enforcer-warns-big-003120945.html

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Cointelegraph: FBI: Crypto Is A “Significant Problem That Will Get Bigger And Bigger”
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

Cointelegraph: FBI: Crypto Is A “Significant Problem That Will Get Bigger And Bigger”. https://cointelegraph.com/news/fbi-crypto-is-a-significant-problem-that-wil… Jim Bell's comment: Government is a problem that will get bigger and bigger.

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Re: cypherpunks Digest, Vol 77, Issue 51
by Rob Avina 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

Thanks. I REALLY like this song, and Tim Bergling in general. This one in particular is pretty appropriate RN. Message: 3 Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2019 15:44:52 -0300 From: Cecilia Tanaka <cecilia.tanaka(a)gmail.com> To: CypherPunks <cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org> Subject: [OT] [Music] "Silhouettes" - AVIICII Message-ID: <CAG2tMp5kq3nci-=rL61upvL6ySjoZJon5p_f0YWaXgVNhFGQBg(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" "Silhouettes" - AVIICII https://youtu.be/6VJBBUqr1wM Press play, fast forward Non stop we have the beaten path before us It was all there, in plain sight Come on people, we have all seen the sunshine We will never get back to To the old school To the old rounds, it's all about the newfound We are the newborn, the world knew all about us (We are the future and we're here to stay) We've come a long way since that day And we will never look back, at the faded silhouette We've come a long way since that day And we will never look back Look back at the faded silhouette Straight ahead on the path we have before us Day by day, soon the change will come Don't you know we took a big step forward Just lead the way and we pull the trigger And we will never get back to To the old school To the old rounds, it's all about the newfound We are the newborn, the world knew all about us (We are the future and we're here to stay) We've come a long way since that day And we will never look back, at the faded silhouette We've come a long way since that day We've come a long way since that day And we will never look back, at the faded silhouette We've come a long way since that day And we will never look back Look back at the faded silhouette

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Fitbit privacy
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

People are throwing away their Fitbits over fears about privacy https://mol.im/a/7665731 via http://dailym.ai/android

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Energy Markets, Green Power, Etc [ex: Chile]
by grarpamp 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

> We cannot support a world population of billions without large amounts > of energy. > We could in fact produce the required energy without carbon emissions > What green energy projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power Nextgen #OpenSource #OpenAudit nuclear energy is clean and safe baseload until every rooftop is solar. Nuclear fuel is obviously limited supply. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydropower Hydro recycles itself, but fucks with water systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power Geothermal is generally unlimited, but not very powerful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power Solar and wind power, are useful for offgrid cypherpunks venturing energy independence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery Various storage systems for punks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen Hydrogen is interesting closed loop between solar electric cracking, gaseous fuel usage, and water. > CO2 Likely more problematic than strictly CO2 alone, likely for decades past and some to come, is all the toxic pollution products and byproducts, destruction wastelands, industrial, farming, vehicle runoff, nanoparticles, etc mentioned before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propane Many LNG (Methane) / LPG etc gas combust relatively cleanly to CO2 and H2O, but not under some non-ideal combustion cycles that are in use today. Production processing is not exactly clean or efficient either. > higher energy prices > seize the means of production, and most of them want to shake down the > energy grid. Ever notice how, even though you've been more or less forced to migrate from incandescent watts and even CFL and CPU watts, for LED and 7nm watts... your total electric bill has actually increased ever since incandescent was cut out of the market. > People want to continue traveling around Walk and sailboat, bitch. Don't forget your papers, please. https://papersplease.org/ > invariably shuts down people > If warmists believed a word of their own bullshit, green energy projects > would produce useful energy, instead of superior holiness. Must be decentralized. > lifestyles Tooling around in your yuppie jackass SUV smokin endo and buying up all the bullshit at yet another mall... is not a lifestyle, it's a pointless waste. Die already. > frequently get blackouts and brownouts Same as always really.

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One result from google ' "ethereum" "augur" "assassination"
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

2019 October 17 | Techrights techrights.org › 2019/10/17Oct 17, 2019 - The CHAOSS core of Augur and GrimoireLab currently supports over two .... cause problems, especially to people not very familiar with Ethereum and the ...... a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you're a son of a bitch.

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Augur (Rep)
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

https://www.publish0x.com/cryptocurrency/what-augur-rep-comprehensive-guide… [partial quote follows] What is Augur (REP)? [A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding Augur] By Mr.CryptoWiki | cryptocurrency | 2 weeks ago Since the gambling and sports betting industry is booming year after year, there is a constant influx of new businesses trying to get a piece of the cake. This has proven true in the crypto industry as well, where dapp development platforms like EOS attribute 70 percent of their overall traffic to gambling dapps and TRON attributes 95 percent of its network activity to gambling-related dapps. Ethereum, however, is much less than this at only 2 percent, largely because the DeFi (decentralized finance) industry makes up the majority of network activity. Nevertheless, the online gambling and betting market are booming and if you apply the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies combined with smart contract capabilities, the potential to create something truly revolutionary arises. One such project doing just that is Augur (REP) – a decentralized prediction market platform where anyone can place bets on literally anything. Bet on sporting events, political outcomes, economies, weather, natural disasters, market crashes, cryptocurrency prices, and much more. With Augur, you bet on the outcome of future events that anyone, anywhere in the world can create to get monetary prizes. The less likely an event is to occur, the bigger the reward you can earn predicting its success.[end partial quote]

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Ethereum/Augur Analysis.
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

https://medium.com/@vntrp/augur-token-fundamental-analysis-caeb80b1d542 [partial quote follows] Highlights - Interesting market with high potential, but lack of active users - Solving a big issue with a bad UX and worrying mechanism design flaws - No break-through technology and a convoluted resolution process - Currently way overvalued on the fundamental side - Augur V2 (to be released in September) might solve some of the issues of the model, but will liquidity and participation rate increase? Business Description Augur is the largest fully decentralized and open-source prediction market platform built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. It was founded in 2014 by Jack Peterson and Joey (Joseph) Krug. Augur’s ICO in 2015 allowed the organization to raise 5M USD and subsequently launch the mainnet in 2018. The goal of Augur is to provide a betting application (and an entire decentralized financial system, according to the Augur Master Plan published in 2017) that is censorship-resistant from platform providers and government bodies allowing any user to create a prediction market. | | | | | | | | | | | Augur Master Plan Augur Augur’s purpose is to democratize and decentralize finance. We’ll do this by enabling anyone, anywhere, at anyti... | | | Based on its convoluted resolution model, Augur’s value proposition lies in forecasting and communicating the outcome of real-world events thanks to designated reporters who get rewarded in REP (Reputation, the cryptocurrency for the Augur ecosystem) for every correct reporting on actual events and the ensuing market resolution. This system aims at creating a universe where market odds should align with real-world sentiment towards a specific event by allowing traders to participate in these peer-to-peer prediction markets. Part 1 — Business Case

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History of Cypherpunks
by jim bell 08 Nov '19

08 Nov '19

https://servisaberlo.com/articulos-5000-palabras/cypherpunks-definicion/ History of Cypherpunks,in Spanish, but Google will translate.Partial quote follows: Until the 1970s, cryptography was ironically a secret cooked in the military orbit for encryption and decryption of messages in times of war. Available to military agencies, out of the reach of the ordinary user. But soon leading scientists began to make public their knowledge and studies on cryptography on the electronic level, inspiring the creation of tools in the service of privacy and security of user data. CYPHERPUNKS FOUNDERS Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May and John Gilmore are the creators of cypherpunk, a leaderless movement that began as a small group with monthly meetings at Gilmore's company, Cygnus Solutions, in California. First, with discussions between Eric Hughes and Timothy May, which led Hughes to organize a meeting. That first meeting was the same week that, by coincidence, PGP 2.0 was launched. The 'The Cypherpunks' mailing list has been in existence since September 1992 , when several crypto activists went to cyberspace to communicate , organizing a mailing list , where everyone could register anonymously. ERIC HUGHES Mathematician and programmer, Hughes created and managed the email list The Cypherpunks , where he got to spread one of his developments : the first anonymous remailer - created alongside Hal Finney - in 1992. [end of partial quote] Jim Bell

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