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Operation Barbarossa: The 75th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union
by Zenaan Harkness 28 Jun '16

28 Jun '16

The West has not escaped fascism, and the Russian state is not without its many problems. We are humans, and we be in this world with other humans. Perhaps more people in positions of power will see the benefits of benevolence in their localised dictatorial capacity, see the longer term benefits to all for actual community oriented thinking and action. "Be like ants." Operation Barbarossa: The 75th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union On this 75th anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union the Russians will once again remind the world that the Red Army saved European civilisation as well as Russia from the Nazis Geoffrey Roberts http://russia-insider.com/en/barbarossa/ri15045

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[OT] Fwd: [ PFIR ] Cryptography pioneer Marty Hellman calls for compassion in personal, cyber, and international threats
by Cecilia Tanaka 28 Jun '16

28 Jun '16

For your information, with warm hugs from Brazil! :* Cecilia PS: - Juan, maybe you and some people don't like him and his posts, but Lauren is a kind soul. I really like him a lot. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility) Announcement List" < pfir(a)pfir.org> Date: Jun 27, 2016 9:08 PM Subject: [ PFIR ] Cryptography pioneer Marty Hellman calls for compassion in personal, cyber, and international threats To: <pfir-list(a)pfir.org> Cryptography pioneer Marty Hellman calls for compassion in personal, cyber, and international threats https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/27/cryptography-pioneer-marty-hellman-on-usi… Hellman no longer does crypto research, though he retains a position at Stanford; instead, he has been advocating for changes in policy that acknowledge the new, more interconnected global community. "I see cyberweapons as very similar to nuclear weapons," he said. "Early on we had a monopoly on nuclear weapons so we thought they were the greatest thing going. But unlike a nuclear weapon, a cyberweapon doesn't destroy itself, so like with Stuxnet, our adversaries were able to take it apart and figure out how it works. We need to start thinking this through more carefully." - - - --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren(a)vortex.com) http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir

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[OT] Fwd: [Air-L] mapping american interest in the rest of the world
by Cecilia Tanaka 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

I don't know if it can be interesting for everybody, but it possibly can be curious for some people here. I am sharing Kalev e-mail address for private feedbacks and he is a kind person. Please, don't be aggressive with him. He is a researcher and, like me, loves open data and open knowledge. There are several good and interesting persons in the AIR-L list, but most of communication happens out the mailing list. Please, no conflicts there. Love and dreams, Cecilia PS: - A guy asked me why I always say "North Americans" instead just "Americans". There are also Latin America and South America, not only North America. The world is really small, but much more complex than most of us usually think. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "kalev leetaru" <kalev.leetaru5(a)gmail.com> Date: Jun 27, 2016 4:02 PM Subject: [Air-L] mapping american interest in the rest of the world To: "air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org" <air-l(a)listserv.aoir.org> Thought this would be of great interest to those of you studying media geography and online bias. The Google Trends group created for me a map of how often Americans have searched about each country in the world thus far in 2016. Turns out it matches quite closely the attention paid to each country by American television coverage 2009-2016. Africa, Central Asia and the Baltics are standouts, along with Southern Europe. Thought this was quite fascinating to pair up all of the work being done on media geography and online bias with the use of search volume as a proxy for American public interest in those countries. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/27/do-americans-… ~Kalev _______________________________________________ The Air-L(a)listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/

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Operation Barbarossa: The 75th Anniversary of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union
by Александр 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

John Newman jnn(a)synfin.org > Hitler and Stalin > were both mad men. > > i love this nasty maneuver when mixing TOGETHER (as if they were the same): lie AND truth // black AND white // destroyer AND savior ... a few words about the smear campaign against Stalin for the last 70 years. (information not from your TV/papers/great propaganda bibliographic book): *Let's Be Honest - Stalin Was Less of a Criminal Than Churchill, Truman, and LBJ* "It's time to recover the truth about Stalin and the USSR from a cesspool of hostile propaganda" We have long maintained that the truth about the USSR, in general, and particularly the Stalin period, has long been the object of the most cynical, mean-spirited, and comprehensive propaganda effort ever seen in the annals of history. For reasons of sheer class interest among the plutocrats of the West, the business elites that still rule most of the so-called “capitalist democracies,” the demonization of Stalin was a necessity, a campaign only briefly interrupted by World War Two and quickly resumed literally a few hours after its ending. The Western elites —with the American ruling circles in the lead—correctly saw an enemy in Stalin. They could not bribe him and they could not intimidate him. Nor could they easily topple him, as they had done (and still do) countless times with weaker, “inconvenient leaders.” What’s more, Stalin was at the helm of a powerful nation and titular leader of an ideology directly opposed to their indispensable economic system. Occasional diplomacy aside, they hated him. He and his nation stood in the way of their plans for global hegemony. So the the venom had to flow and did—abundantly. And in that sordid enterprise the capitalist elites found countless allies, not to mention the usual battalions of ignorant, useful idiots. As any propaganda student will attest, when vilifying a nation’s policies and social values, it’s far easier (and effective) if the propagandist aims the Big Lie machine at its leader. As we have seen in recent times with Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, Fidel Castro, Iran and North Korea’s leaders, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and finally Putin—among many others (the empire is never lacking in “dangerous enemies”)—the character assassination of a leader is an old tactic to prepare the perennially benighted home population for an attack on the targeted nation. >From this perspective it’s not difficult to see that if the Ministry of Truth could swiftly complete the total demonization of Vladimir Putin—a figure in good standing merely 3 years ago—and not even an avowed socialist, one can only imagine what outrageous fabrications they could have concocted (and did) to cordon off the image of Stalin, an outspoken communist, over several decades. This made eminent sense to the West’s doctrinal gatekeepers. Given the identification of Stalin’s long rule with the Soviet Union at its most embattled, the blackening of Stalin’s name served an important purpose: it provided the Western propagandists an invaluable shorthand—an “irrefutable symbol” of communism’s putative evil—to block the very idea of genuine socialism as an option for humanity. The preceding is obviously not to argue that Stalin was a flawless leader, or a saint who just happened to have a powerful army, or that he didn’t make some serious mistakes. He did. However, the most elementary fairness demands that we ask, which world historical figure confronted with enormously difficult choices emerges today (barring self-serving ideological propaganda) unscathed from close and impartial examination? Judging Stalin by the context in which he had to act, and even more important, the purposes he served, he was arguably no worse, morally, than most Western leaders, and by any rational measure, probably a damn sight better. For who are these distinguished gentlemen who have led the West for over a century now? Churchill, the most revered member in the club, was an unapologetic racist and imperialist who in the 1920s endorsed the policy of RAF bombing and gassing Iraqi villages (Mesopotamia) into submission, for for failure to pay their assigned tribute. JFK, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon pursued an illegitimate, barbaric, genocidal war in Vietnam that remains one of the horrors of modern imperialism. Truman dropped the bomb on the Japanese as a way to keep the Soviets “in line,” making America so far the only nation to have used nuclear weapons on a civilian population. And during the postwar, the US tentacles, chiefly acting through the CIA and its clients, have managed to murder and repress tens of millions of people around the globe—in all latitudes and scores of nations, from the Philippines, to Indonesia to Chile, to Nicaragua, to Iran, the Congo, Korea, the entire Middle East, literally bathed in blood—always in pursuit of geostrategic advantage, and the suppression of popular democracy in order to better permit the continuation and maximization of corporate profit. So much for the inherent perfidy of communism and angelic innocence of capitalism. The record is by now so huge and consistent, the hypocrisy so staggering, that we can state categorically there is not a single case in which America has used its immense diplomatic and military power to back a genuine democratic leader (such people are immediately branded “communists” and dealt accordingly) or assisted people struggling for freedom from class oppression. It’s a vile and hypocritical record that continues to this day, thanks to the complete brainwash to which the American population has been subjected as a measure of pre-emptive pacification. The whole thing is amply documented so there’s no point in even trying to refute it. In any case, recovering the truth about Stalin and the USSR from the cesspool of hostile propaganda in which the enemies of socialism situated it, assisted by the perennially misguided and often fanatical anti-communist and especially anti-Stalinist leftists, is no task for the weakhearted. That’s why we salute our colleagues at Russia Insider, and its editor, Charlie Bausman, in particular, for their decision to publish Grover Furr. Letting this scholar speak to a larger audience is a badly needed blow for truth —especially in the current context of reckless warmongering on Russia’s and China’s doorstep. The Big Lie must be defeated if a lasting peace is ever to be attained by humanity. http://russia-insider.com/en/history/lets-be-honest-stalin-was-less-crimina…

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IT-mees Jõhvist: „USA valitsus ja Kim Dotcom röövisid neli aastat minu elust“
by grarpamp 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

http://ekspress.delfi.ee/kuum/it-mees-johvist-usa-valitsus-ja-kim-dotcom-ro… http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/from-file-sharing-to-prison-a-me… The whole case was blackmail. They were just waiting for the defendant to get tired of fighting and give up. It’s not the one who’s in the right who wins, but the one who has the most staying power. They never send you straight to where you’re going. You drive through a number of other prisons first. If you make trouble, say by complaining to the judge that your rights are being violated, you’re put through this thing called "diesel therapy." They bounce you back and forth between prisons like a ping-pong ball. I was taken from Alexandria to Brooklyn, from there to Pennsylvania, from there back to Brooklyn, and from there to Pennsylvania again—a total of about 16 hours of driving. Before I got to where I was meant to be going, I was put in two different prisons, one of which was a supermax prison where they keep the worst of the worst. I was there for 10 days. There are more than 2.5 million prisoners in the United States. Almost one percent of the whole population is in prison, and that’s a huge problem. But what surprised me most was that there are private prisons in the US. The more prisoners, the more money you get from the state. It’s big business. Estonia was the only country that didn’t give its people any support. All the other countries gave their prisoners at least some pocket money. Even 10-20 euros would’ve been a great help, because you don’t even get normal soap for free there, not to mention shampoo. You’re given toothpaste whose "best before" was in 2005 and two 20 x 40 cm towels for your whole body for half a year.

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Re: [Cryptography] Digital currencies
by grarpamp 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

On 6/20/16, Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> wrote: > Using as much > electricity as the island of Malta does to distribute the ledger is an > abomination. Far less than all the electricity consumed by the fiat system of the US alone... gov / fed reserve / bank buildings full of offices / datacenters / networks / devices, hvac, payroll, healthcare, vehicles, maintenance... all the electrons needed to make it go. Bitcoin, and any other digital currency, is likely highly efficient and becoming optimal implementations of whatever usable monetary and other features they provide. > Ultimately BitCoin is betting on the ultimate dotcom bubble, > the only value in the currency is that people want the currency. Someone have a rare known "thing" that others want, negotiate and trade for it. You're correct, and nothing could be more pure. The delusion that any fiat is backed by any "value" should end the minute you try to trade it for something of value to you from its issuer / participant brokers and discover them telling you to get lost at gunpoint, thus establishing its exact and formal value to both of you as zero. Particularly for any physical good. Then when actually trading with others you must also evaluate whatever issuer / broker party is doing with it, which at times in history is difficult to do, and such doings not necessarily always to your benefit.

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Re: [Cryptography] Fwd: Study on Trends in Crypto-Messaging
by grarpamp 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

On 6/17/16, Tom A. <thomasasta(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > fwd > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > On 2016.06.17, at 4:11 PM, Liberationtech wrote: >> >> Study on Trends in Crypto-Messaging: >> >> Another contribution in the crypto discussion: Two security researchers >> examine in their BIG SEVEN study seven encryption applications for e-mail >> and instant messaging out of the open source area and then performed a >> deeper IT-audit for the acquainted software solutions. The evaluation took >> into account the essential criteria, study fields and methods of eight >> international IT-audit manuals and identifies Ten Trends in the >> Crypto-Messaging. >> >> The comparatively studied applications include CryptoCat, OTR-XMPP clients >> such as Pidgin with the OTR-plugin, RetroShare and GoldBug, Signal, >> Surespot and Tox. >> >> http://bit.ly/1V146AS >> https://sf.net/projects/goldbug/files/bigseven-crypto-audit.pdf >> >> by Adams, David / Maier, Ann-Kathrin (2016): BIG SEVEN Study, open source >> crypto-messengers to be compared.. >> >> >> Sent by Mobile. """ Security researcher David Adams from Tokyo about the published BIG SEVEN CRYPTO-study: "We looked at the seven major open source programs for encrypted online-communication" ... The software "GoldBug - email client and instant messenger" here was ahead with excellent results and is not only very trustworthy and compliant to... """ Co-author of the study Ann-Kathrin Maier from Munich confir study deepened with a detailed audit of the crypto-program results for encrypted email and secure online chat. By our trustworthiness of this open source encryption in GoldBug." """ Therefore, the comparative BIG SEVEN study ... is recommended... as preparatory reading material for questions at the next crypto party. """ Really? Lol :) - Googling your two bogus paper authors "security researchers" turns up nothing, other than the name you stole from an unrelated real person. Shame on you. - There was no such dated post on liberationtech for you to be "forwarding" from. - If whatever is in this so called paper about other projects [1] isn't accurate, they'll be denouncing you in public just like EFF and Tor did when you lied about your affiliation with them. We are *very* interested in your project... why don't you post your "Sent by Mobile" phone number so we can talk with you? Or the phone number you used to register with google. How are the unreproducible binaries, community censorship, refusal to talk, and weasling around wikipedia and cheesy websites coming along these days? Any links yet to positive commentary by well known and respected public members of the real community, such as from anyone in the apps below [1]? If you're trying to be the next Satoshi, you're not doing a very good job. Your history of lies, fakes, and shady operations is ridiculous. Someday someone will dox you and what an interesting day that will be. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Goldbug https://sourceforge.net/projects/goldbug/ [1] briar, cryptocat, gpg, otr, mailpile, pond, retroshare, tox, signal, silent, i2p, ricochet, torchat, surespot, etc.

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Fw: How to identify a sociopath / psychopath
by Zenaan Harkness 27 Jun '16

27 Jun '16

How to identify a sociopath / psychopath? Have you ever felt the urge to throw one of your group's leading lights and a principled and staunch man, under the bus? Do you notice you occasionally get caught up in a public lynch mobbing, which in hindsight was a less than admirable move? Have you ever been involved in a conversation where uncomfortablly powerful/ confronting questions are asked which challenge conventional thinking or the status quo, and instead of supporting the questioner, you tried to defend the indefensible until it was obvious the indefensible could no longer be defended? Is it possible that for you, the ends ("I/we are trying to save the world") justifies the means ("an evil is done now, under my watch")? Is it really too radical to suggest that instead of justifying an evil, it might be better to just say no? To support the staunch and principled man or woman in uncomfortable times? To identify and support humility and humanity, to display a little empathy? So you say you need the wood for what you're building, but how does heartlessness make a better world? Does justifying an evil now, in pursuance of a purportedly better world, make you just a little bit sociopathic? anon.

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Tor funding
by grarpamp 26 Jun '16

26 Jun '16

On 6/26/16, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > ... the most important part of that transcript IMO is the > discussion about funding. Both Mike Perry and Jacob Appelbaum agreed > in it that the current funding model "comprimises" the project (their word). > Why can't Tor use a funding model similar to Wikipedia? Tor actually does have an individual donation component. Though it doesn't yet go into statistics about number and size distribution of transactions for each funding method, there's at least some level of breakout in the annual report and filings. Tor has an element of "can't teach old dog new tricks", or at least "we're moving, slowly..." the Tor dog has received a lot of "compromised" (from some minds or global perspectives) money. Some principals in tor grew up in certain spheres of work, for which say, writing proposals for, and getting, government grants, is what they're good at. Contracts bids are of course more one sided than bilateral interest work or grant requests. Public sector work / careers (Government, University) are just naturally that way. Others are good at courting large private foundations / NGOs, some of those not everyone would agree on either, and some possibly funded in turn by similar objectionables. > If you just stood up and said, "Help us get out of this Faustian bargain," > the people and organizations that rely on your software would certainly help > find a way to raise the money needed to support your work. Maybe some of this needs to be thrown out to some sort of community approval model. Maybe a growing percentage moratorium on objectionables, and such a stand up announcement, is part of that. Some even say remove all the program outreach money to a separate entity. With other folks just coding for BTC. Balancing and transitioning is hard. > For better or for worse Tor is currently synonymous > with online anonymity (or the best semblance of it available), in the same > way Wikipedia is synonymous with online encyclopedia. Maybe tor just got "lucky" here, who knows. One thing that should be thought about is any undue mass effect, and how to help other projects in the space [1] that are small or lack the above historically conjoined funding talent and sources, yet whose code, ideas, and papers are seen as important / competing work, or have been used by larger projects. Monopolies in any field are usually not a good thing, so you want to be quite careful about creating or sustaining them. And continually reevaluate, as a process, if what you're funding and coding is still worthy of your efforts. [1] Anon overlays, messaging, storage, crypto, activism, etc. [Sorry for subject change it didn't fit original of that blogger, and for gmail thread breakage.]

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Brexit Signals the End of the Neocon's "End of History"
by Zenaan Harkness 26 Jun '16

26 Jun '16

Polemic, and could be shorter, but ends so succintly courtesy Ralph Waldo Emerson quote. Brexit Signals the End of the Neocon's "End of History" http://russia-insider.com/en/brexit-signals-end-neocons-end-history/ri15213

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