Tag: freedom
nostr – Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays
The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all.
It doesn’t rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works.
This is a work-in-progress. Join the Telegram group!
Very short summary of how it works, if you don’t plan to read anything else:
Everybody runs a client. It can be a native client, a web client, etc. To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to multiple relays (servers hosted by someone else, or yourself). To get updates from other people, you ask multiple relays if they know anything about these other people. Anyone can run a relay. A relay is very simple and dumb. It does nothing besides accepting posts from some people and forwarding to others. Relays don’t have to be trusted. Signatures are verified on the client side.
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This was recommended by Jack Dorsey this morning. Something like this has to be done. We all have to support it. A communication system that cannot be controlled by governments or corporations or secret societies, once established, will be a major turning point in world history. There is no other path forward for free speech, individual rights, human rights, a flourishing world civilization than this one. This kind of system is also in perfect alignment with the American First Amendment and core Buddhist ethical teachings. ABN
a native internet protocol for social media ~ Jack Dorsey
[All of the below is Dorsey’s blog on how he thinks Twitter and social media should be operated. I have bolded some sections in addition to the few places he bolded. I completely agree with what Dorsey is saying and hope all readers of ABN and in the world read what he has written. I have taken the liberty of posting his entire blog post here to ensure we have a copy of it. ABN]
| There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified. I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead: 1) Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control. 2) Only the original author may remove content they produce. 3) Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice. The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles. This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms (lack of dual-class shares being a key one). I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company. The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account. As I’ve said before, we did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society. Much more about this here: |
| jack@jackI do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?12:16 AM – 14 Jan 2021 |
Federal appeals court bars Biden administration from forcing Catholic groups to provide transgender care
A federal appeals court on Friday permanently blocked the Biden administration from requiring religious doctors and hospitals to perform transgender medical services that violate their conscience, becoming the second court to do so.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, a case concerning a coalition of Catholic groups who have challenged the Biden administration’s attempt to invoke the Affordable Care Act to prohibit doctors and hospitals from discriminating against transgender patients. The Catholic groups, which include hospitals, a university and nuns who run health clinics, say the Biden administration’s rule violates their free exercise of religion.
An August ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals similarly held that the federal government cannot force Christian medical organizations to perform abortions or gender transition surgeries under the Affordable Care Act.
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Julian Assange Twitter account restored
President Trump Special Master Appointment Overturned by Appeals Court – If Secret Search Warrant is Valid, All Seizure Valid – But You are Not Allowed to See Search Warrant, Because National Security
Today the appeals court essentially said if the search warrant was legally predicated and legally valid, and if the search warrant was used legally, then all the seized documents are valid for the investigative purposes of the DOJ – regardless of their content. The only way to fight the authority of the DOJ seizure is to challenge the legality of the search warrant. However, here’s where things get weird.
President Trump’s lawyers have been: (1) blocked from receiving a non-redacted search warrant; (2) denied access to the underlying probable cause affidavit used to predicate the search warrant, and (3) denied the full contents of the documents that were seized as part of the warrant (they are not allowed to see). Yet somewhere in this convoluted mess, we are supposed to believe a 4th amendment violation doesn’t exist.
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Musk bans Ye, a Buddhist take
Ultimately, these are just words, symbols, signs. They are not trafficked children, sex slaves, or Satanic sacrifices. In Buddhism, there are prominent stories of prominent monks spitting on a statue of the Buddha or destroying one, illustrating the emptiness of even the most revered figure of the Buddhist tradition. In America today, you can do whatever you want in public with such symbols as the flag, the cross, the Constitution, statues of historical or religious figures, the Buddha, Jesus and Mary, but not Nazis or the Star of David. “Who made you the judge?” Ye asks Musk. Musk says Ye is “inciting violence.” Ye is definitely bringing that on himself. I see him as an artist like Alex Jones. Both say things or display things others do not like. At the same time we have Satanic displays and laws allowing infanticide. I make these comments not to defend or condemn either Musk or Ye but to illustrate the extremely strong bondage of words and symbols. We can find similar bondage in terms like “The Science” or “Follow The Science”; “vaccinations” or “antivax”; “Anthropogenic Global Warming” or “Climate Change” soon to become “Climate Restoration”; “Democracy,” “equity,” “diversity,” “communism.” Words, concepts, and stories are all interrelated on many levels and always fascinating both in their beauty and foolishness. The Buddha was best known as an analyst. Analysis is basic to Buddhist practice.
In Buddhism, everything is empty including the Dharma. Before he died, the Buddha himself explicitly asked that statues not be made of him. He said that to avoid turning his teachings into dogma and his memory into a sacrosanct anti-empty doctrine that must be worshiped rather than understood, revered rather than loved and learned from. The Buddha asked to be remembered only by the symbols of a lotus branch, a Dharma Wheel, and a footprint. Obviously, most Buddhists did not obey and most of us own and cherish images of the Buddha. Oh well, no one is perfect and that transgression does not seem too bad. I was a bit proud of the world Buddhist community for not becoming too upset when the Buddhas of Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taliban. None of us liked it but all of us knew that becoming angry or violent over it is not at all what the Buddha taught or would have wanted or, stated more plainly, that would not have been the right thing to do. ABN
FLASHBACK 01/04/22: ‘Everyone who died with covid should be considered murdered’ ~ NHRMC Nurse Morgan Wallace
Elonathan Greenmusk plays word game
I hope Musk does well by the world’s people by truly allowing free speech on Twitter. If he means the above, he won’t. Freedom of speech without freedom of reach is not free speech, it is censorship. It’s a word game that conceals a vile intent. ABN
The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” -Elon Musk 11-18-22
Musk is wrong about this. An easy way to see this is consider a same or similar message sent by thousands of people. If this message is made “unreachable,” no one will see it. Making a message unreachable is censorship.
A very serious example of this kind of censorship is the “unreachable science” of covid. Hundreds of doctors and scientists and tens of thousands of others have been doing everything they can to make the voice of real science be heard. The have met with some success but not nearly enough.
Until Musk took over, in addition to outright bans, Twitter shadow banned, demoted, delisted, and otherwise hid the “reach” of real science as millions died. What’s worse, not only Twitter did this but also virtually all social media, all MSM, all academia, and all government agencies did it too. For three years all of the top official speakers in the West have concertedly and deliberately gaslit the world with the help of demonic algorithms and misguided intentions.
If real science had not been censored by government, social media, Twitter, and MSM, we would probably not even remember covid today.
Real uncurated science—which was difficult for most to reach—found effective early treatments for covid within months, thus precluding any need for a vaccine. Real uncurated science also identified the danger of Remdesivir, ventilators, and the experimental vaccines.
I congratulate Musk on removing all bans on covid-related speech from Twitter. By doing this, he is proving the point: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.
Consider again the banned and “unreachable” real science of covid. During these years, bad theories and evidence have appeared and been quickly exposed as such, just as they should be. As a “free speech absolutist,” which he claims to be, Musk should realize that all subjects will follow a similar evolution. Basing speech proscriptions on feelings, vague ideas, or lousy moral philosophies only opens the door to censorship by other names.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk Says He Will Publicly Reveal Twitter’s “Files on Free Speech,” and Implies Coordination with Government
CTH has not visited the various Twitter stories recently, quite frankly because we are ambivalent to them. It just seems illogical for Elon Musk to have purchased Twitter without any idea of what was happening inside Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop, the public-private partnership that structures the operations of the social media company known as Twitter.
That said, some interesting developments recently as media rail against the platform and organized ultra-leftist groups demand advertising boycotts. Apparently, Apple and Android are threatening to remove the Twitter App and Mr. Musk is doubling down on exposing the matrix of how the U.S. government was working with Twitter toward controlling speech that was against their interests.
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#WhitePaperRevolution #白紙革命 digital painting by Ricker Choi
This refers to demonstrators in China holding up pieces of white paper rather than written signs in protest. One interpretation is it symbolizes censorship. Another one I heard is: “They won’t listen to us anyway.” I wish them luck and know it is very dangerous for them. Recall how Hong Kong demonstrators were quickly overcome and disappeared. Communist control is based on terrorism. Don’t want the vax, you’re fired, cancelled, and scorned. ABN
EMERGENCY – China Has Erupted – REVOLUTION!!!
Many strong signs of rebellion presented in this video. Impossible to predict what will happen but a few factors worth mentioning are: 1) Xi grievously insulted Hu Jintao and his faction by publicly kicking Hu out of the 20th Congress; 2) Xi appointing only toady loyalists to the Standing Committee after seizing a third-term as emperor of China. These two factors and more must have profoundly angered Xi’s rivals in Shanghai and throughout China. Very probable they are fomenting and abetting demonstrations as they arise. 3) Xi could be quietly deposed or assassinated followed by another communist boss. This is quite likely. 4) A real revolution could happen with chaos ensuing. Some new form of government would arise probably with Taiwan and American connections. Some underlying factors are the bad economy in China, American sanctions on high-end computer chips, a general turning away from trade with China by the West. The harshness and crudeness of Xi Jinping is also a strong emotional signal that no one can ignore. China is a highly cohesive social entity so when unrest happens and grows enough, nothing can stop it. This has been a core reason for Xi’s extreme harshness with lockdowns and more. ABN
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