August 2016 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

[MONEY] A Black Day in Monetary History
by Zenaan Harkness 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

Search for the 3 blank lines to skip the prequel :) ---- A Black Day in Monetary History By Bill Bonner in Ouzilly, France Last night, we tossed and turned in bed like a crazy person with a fever. Sunday was clear and hot. In the evening, we went to the 19 th -century church in Montmorillon for a concert. Bach, Schubert, Mozart — all were performed on the big organ in back of the church, accompanied by a clarinettist. Fortissimo thunder The organ is about 30 feet off the ground. It is set on a wooden platform, ornately carved, and cantilevered out into the church so that it is over the heads of the people sitting in the rearmost pews. It is built of such sturdy, heavy wood that we thought for a moment the entire ensemble might pitch over onto the crowd below. That was after all the stops had been pulled out, and a fortissimo thunder arose from the organ. It sounded like the advance of the Red Army on Berlin in 1945. (Elizabeth noted that she thought the organist was abusing the instrument.) Classical music performed on a huge, old organ in a stone church is always impressive. But there were a couple of times when we thought that Bach was just toying with us…or that he had lost the plot, wandering up and down the scales with no clear destination. Our favourite, ‘Concierto de Aranjuez,’ by Rodrigo, haunted our sleep. It is a piece with an undercurrent of sweet melancholy such as what you might find echoed in the Diary from time to time. Yes, we laugh at economists, politicians, and popular myths. But beneath it — like an unrelenting, dark accompaniment of ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’ — is the age-old lament that everything you care about inevitably comes to an end. New monetary era The musical highlight of the evening was ‘Ave Maria’ by Franz Schubert. It was, after all, Mary’s big night: the eve of her assumption into Heaven. Appropriately uplifting and bright, ‘Ave Maria’ was Schubert’s hit song of 1825. It was composed as ‘The Lady of the Lake’ and adapted to the Catholic prayer addressed to the mother of Jesus. Schubert died three years later at the age of 31. Returning home after the concert, the moon shone so bright we hardly needed to turn on the lights. We could see perfectly well, but the colours were washed out. It was as if everything had been painted in shades of black and white while we were away. Maybe it was the moonlight…maybe it was the sad music…something disturbed our sleep. We turned to the left. We turned to the right. We heard the melodies from the concert so clearly, we went to the open, moonlit window to see if someone were playing a radio outside… But perhaps it was something else troubling our sleep… Yes, today, we mark the beginning of a new era…and the end of the American Dream — such as it was. On this day in 1971, President Nixon defaulted on America’s promise to its foreign creditors to convert its dollars to gold at the fixed rate of $35 an ounce. This ended the last vestiges of the gold standard. And it set world currencies — which had been pegged to the gold-backed dollar — ‘floating’ against one another. Neither Nixon, nor almost anyone else, had a clear idea of what the new monetary era really meant. No one — not even economist Milton Friedman, who advised the president — had any idea what it would do to the world economy and to the American system of government. Friedman was right about most things. But he was disastrously wrong about money. Yet, so subtle was it…so clever…so unanticipated — like a sudden shift to a minor scale or an unexpected major lift — it took 40 years for the new refrain to become clear. Maculate conception Only now are we beginning to hear the full melody…and understand how this new money corrupted the country and undermined its wealth. For all its faults — and there were many — the US used to be a place where hard work usually paid off. People worked, saved, invested…and grew wealthier. Wealth followed work, not the other way around. There were always whiners and complainers — some with legitimate beefs about the way the system worked. Still, there was a shared belief that the system was fair…because there was a connection — real and unforgiving — between money and the morality of the marketplace. Generally, those with money got it by work, invention, innovation, self-discipline, or luck. And generally, other people accepted the outcome as fair. But this new money changed everything. It turned an entire class of people — the insiders, the elite, the establishment — into parasites able only to get money unfairly. The new money was the product of a very maculate conception — borrowed into existence, not earned. This put the cart of money manipulation in front of the horse of hard work and innovation. If you had the right connections, you could conjure up wealth…from the money itself. ‘ By the sweat of your brow you will earn your bread, ’ it was commanded in the Bible. So it had been — with brief interruptions of monetary experiments and adventures — since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. But now, with this new system created on this day 45 years ago, money is gotten sweat-free, in the air-conditioned towers of the big banks… …and used by the ‘Parasitocracy’ to rule the nation. More to come… Regards, Bill Bonner, For The Daily Reckoning, Australia

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Facing The Panopticon
by grarpamp 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/12/facing-down-the-panopticon/ by Bill Blunden John Young, the architect who runs the web site Cryptome, has called this forest of kiosks “the largest urban spying system in the United States.” And this is merely the tip of the iceberg. The rapid spread of these urban telescreens is an indication of a much larger problem. http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2016/01/70-percent-global-internet-traffic-… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/02/landlord-installs-faraday-cag…

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Going Dark - an unmentionable company blows law enforcement
by Zenaan Harkness 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

Cause for both cautious optimism - this might result in a competitive market for 'full system' 'wholistic' encryption ecosystem - @pp13 at BlackHat: Reopening the "Going Dark" Debate https://lawfareblog.com/apple-blackhat-reopening-going-dark-debate (The author says some things which sound a bit messed up e.g. "Apple built the very thing that they and the privacy community have been saying for years is reckless, dangerous or impossible: a high-value encryption key secured in a vault such that the key can’t be stolen or misused by hackers or malicious insiders" - perhaps he's attempting to obfuscate things, or perhaps his own mind is naturally obfuscated.)

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Fwd: [ PFIR ] Wikileaks Published Dozens of Malware Links in Email Dump
by Cecilia Tanaka 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

WTF!!! Wow, now I am scared! What is happening with Wikileaks? Ô.Ô ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility) Announcement List" < pfir(a)pfir.org> Date: Aug 15, 2016 2:28 PM Subject: [ PFIR ] Wikileaks Published Dozens of Malware Links in Email Dump To: <pfir-list(a)pfir.org> Wikileaks Published Dozens of Malware Links in Email Dump http://gizmodo.com/wikileaks-published-dozens-of-malware-links-in-email-du-… Anyone searching the Wikileaks database can easily download malware attachments by clicking on the wrong link. Dr. Bontchev disclosed the links safely in his report, and also said his findings were "by no means exhaustive." He said most of the malware discovered was "run-of-the mill" spam, scam, phishing attacks inciting you to click on the attachment, which is terrible news for journalists and anti-censorship advocates investigating the leak.

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Anarchist Bibliography, please?
by anticon＠sigaint.org 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

Sole (Poet) Capitalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioP6sAtzyoI Coal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE-Zk9Y7Jdg Fuck Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehg3Hgkxkbo Sole could use your help with tech, as seen here: http://www.soledjpain1.lnk.to/Nihilismo

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Re: Swedish warrant for Wikileaks' Assange cancelled
by John Young 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

At 02:05 PM 8/15/2016, you wrote: >https://github.com/theshadowbrokers/EQGRP-AUCTION/ This repository has been disabled.

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Swedish warrant for Wikileaks' Assange cancelled
by grarpamp 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11049316 http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/4-Years-Later-Sweden-Accepts-Ecuadors… https://twitter.com/wikileaks Sweden has cancelled an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Swedish Prosecution Authority website said the chief prosecutor had come to the decision that Mr Assange was not suspected.

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[DEMOCRACY] From the NSW Hansard: Peter Phelps on greyhound racing
by Zenaan Harkness 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

I wish this were shorter, but it is what it is. That said, if you just want the TL;DR, read the sentence in the last paragraph, which seems somewhat apropos the punk side of cypherpunks. Here is Australia, the Liberal party is the conservative/ less debt/ rational economic and self responsibility type party, where Labour, our other 'main' national party almost invariably increases national debt, raises taxes, increases handouts. Both parties are still well funded by the corporates of course... ----- Forwarded message ----- Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2016 18:51:42 +1000 From: Gil May <gilmay97(a)gmail.com> Subject: From the NSW Hansard: Peter Phelps on greyhound racing *From the NSW Hansard: Hon Peter Phelps on greyhound racing* Posted on 7:06 pm, August 11, 2016 <http://catallaxyfiles.com/2016/08/11/from-the-nsw-hansard-peter-phelps-on-g…> by Sinclair Davidson <http://catallaxyfiles.com/author/sinclair-davidson/> *The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS (17:43): *When we arrive in this place as parliamentarians we always hope that we will be able to promote good policy which is also good politics. Occasionally we have to promote good policy which is bad politics. Two things that spring to mind immediately are the GST and the leasing of poles and wires. Sometimes we have to promote things which are bad policy and good politics—the inevitable elements of pork-barrelling that happen because, quite frankly, winning elections is important. Occasionally we have legislation and regulation that comes before us which is both bad policy and bad politics. Bad policy I will go into later but, in my view, this legislation is bad politics. The sort of people who get energised by animal rights activism will never vote for us; they have The Greens and the Animal Justice Party to cater to their needs—and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people have asked me how I can support a bill that is supported by The Greens and is it not axiomatically bad that the Coalition would be supporting something The Greens support? My answer to that is no, and my mind turns back to the very significant reforms we did in relation to campaign finance in this State. Too often, between the Coalition, The Greens and the Animal Justice Party it is a zero-sum game: we cannot assist them without hurting our own base. I contrast their peculiar and occasionally bizarre policy prescriptions with those held by the large number of people in marginal seats that the Liberal Party hold on the peri-urban fringe of Sydney—that great swathe which we have taken from Putney to Picton and which we hold quite proudly—because there was a period of time when we resonated with what might be called the aspirational voters, the blue-collar conservatives who decided, with the election of the Howard Government, that they would give the Liberals a chance. We say, “Oh, don’t worry about them. Greyhound racing is just a hobby; they will move on from that.” That is not true for three reasons. First, we would not apply the “Oh, it is just a hobby; they will move on” if we were to ban rugby league. If we were to ban rugby league people would not say, “Oh, we will just move on from that. We will take up an interest in rugby union or the AFL.” Secondly, it is not true because, more so than rugby league, greyhound racing is a participation sport. There is an investment of time and capital in the sport by the owners, the breeders and the trainers; it becomes part of their personae: “I am a greyhound racer”, “I am a greyhound owner”, “I am a greyhound trainer”—it is inextricably linked with what they are. Thirdly, the “Oh, it’s just a hobby; they will move on” is fundamentally disproved by what happened to a large number of our voters subsequent to the 1996 gun law changes. Anyone who worked for a Coalition member in a marginal seat after the 1996 gun law changes knows what happened: they never forget. One wag once said that in politics friends come and go but enemies remain forever. The visceral nature of the gun owners, who 20 years ago were chagrined at the Howard Government, remains, to a large extent, true today. For that reason I think this is bad politics. I also think it is bad policy. I have read the McHugh report and there are some terrible stories in it. But is this industry so irredeemable that it must be banned? If the 12 apostolic saints came down from heaven and we appointed them to the board of Greyhound Racing Australia, would this industry be so corrupt and unbearably fixable that it must still be banned? The Hon. Mark Pearson said that 10 out of 10 witnesses who were called to the inquiry—nine, actually; one was implicated—said that they used live baiting. I could select 10 former members of Parliament who, if we were to interview them and use their evidence as evidence of a grander theme within New South Wales parliamentarians, we could say are all corrupt. The selective use of 10 out of 10 witnesses who were specifically chosen because they were believed to be dodgy anyway is not a great argument. In fact, McHugh makes that point in the report. He said that what those people said there were ex post facto rationalisations to cover for their own malfeasance in the industry. In fact, he put the element of live baiting at between 10 and 20 per cent as a more realistic figure. The consequences that flow from the inevitable passage of this legislation today are going to be horrendous. Let us look at what this legislation is based on: firstly, the concept that there was illegality, not by a majority, not by everyone, not by a plurality but by a small but significant minority—10 to 20 per cent; that is the illegality—that there was knowledge of it at the highest levels; that it involved injury to animals during racing; and that it involved wastage rates, the polite euphemism for killing off those dogs that cannot run fast enough. There are many instances in our society of unaddressed endemic problems and systemic failure to correct those problems. One could look at cycling and talk about endemic doping and systemic failure to reject such doping. One could look at the endemic corruption occasioned by subcontinental bookmaking in cricket. One could go back to rugby league and say, “Look at the incidence of alcohol abuse, drug use, match fixing, steroid use, sexual abuse and domestic violence.” More importantly, one could say there is also an endemic and systemic problem in relation to the practice of overpaying players, conveniently breaching the salary cap, but no-one is suggesting that rugby league be banned. On a closer level one could say that the problem is evidenced in the live export trade in sheep and cattle, including the tactics used by animal rights activists, could lead to calls for the banning of the live sheep and cattle trade. In fact, the Coalition rightly slammed the Gillard Government when it called for a temporary closure of the live sheep and cattle trade industry. Perhaps the greatest threat we face is from the direct analogy and that is horseracing. Is there illegality? Is there knowledge of illegality? Is there injury to animals and are there wastage rates? The answer is yes, exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhaging. Researchers at the University of Melbourne have shown that 56 per cent of racehorses have blood in their windpipes and 90 per cent have blood deeper in their lungs. Are there deaths in racing? Yes, famously Red Cadeaux in the 2015 Melbourne Cup and the year prior to that Admire Rakti and Araldo. Indeed, the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses gives a figure which indicates that Australia-wide 127 horses died on Australian racetracks and thousands more have disappeared from the sport in the calendar year 2015. I note that the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses has the somewhat revealing and pointed website*horseracingkills.com <http://horseracingkills.com>*, which gives an indication of exactly how objective it is in that regard. If people are agitated about a 30 per cent rate of muscular and ligamentary damage in greyhounds, imagine how they will feel if they get vision of blood pouring out of a racehorse’s nostrils? Are there incidences of doping? Yes. A quick Google search will show allegations of doping with erythropoietin [EPO], cobalt chloride to produce EPO, caffeine, xenon gas and formaldehyde, the practice of stomach tubing and even today the old practice of gingering a horse. Indeed, in talking about wastage, when a thoroughbred destined for racing is born in Australia its chances of being a successful racehorse are slim. It is estimated that only 300 out of every 1,000 foals produced will ever start a race. That means of 13,000 thoroughbred foals born each year in Australia alone, approximately 9,000 will be considered useless and thousands will end up at the knackers. Of the horses that do race, one Australian study found that approximately 40 per cent earned no money at all and only 13 per cent earned money to cover costs. These figures did not include the initial purchase price. Dr Paul O’Callahan, Chief Veterinary Steward of the Victorian Racing Club, stated that less than 2 per cent of horses actually earn their keep. Ariella Hayek in 2004 in her study “Epidemiology of horses leaving the racing and breeding industries” noted: Of the twenty knackeries that participated … three plants processed 200 or more horses per month. Plants that processed larger numbers of horses tended to process younger horses. The managers of these plants suggested these horses tended to be sold to the slaughterhouse as a result of economic difficulties … [and] also reported slaughtering large numbers of racehorses … Given the low market value for ex-racehorses, the high costs of care and level of experience required, it is likely that if this large number of horses did not enter slaughterhouses, they would be prone to conditions in which their welfare would be a cause of concern. I am not suggesting that the horseracing industry should be abolished but the same sorts of arguments that are being made today for the abolition of the greyhound racing industry can and will be made and are in fact currently being made by animal rights activists to shut down the trotting and horseracing industries. Animals are property; they are not persons and the mere fact of sentience does not grant one comparable rights to humans. But that is not the view of animal rights activists. Selective culling is vital for breeding. That is why 95 per cent of male calves are castrated and sold for meat. When one is using the coercive power of the State to ban an entire industry that is a pretty big decision to make. I want to quote one paragraph from the report. Paragraph 1.114 states: It would be surprising if these failings of the industry had not destroyed the community’s trust in the industry. Moreover, these failings have occurred in a context where greyhounds in NSW are now primarily, almost exclusively, bred for commercial purposes to race for prize money and to create gambling opportunities. The reality is that, for many, perhaps most, of those who participate in the industry – whether as punters, breeders, owners or trainers, greyhounds are commercial commodities, not animals to be cherished and loved. Let me take that paragraph and just change a couple of words to show the hysterical temper of this report: It would be surprising if these failings of the industry had not destroyed the community’s trust in the industry. Moreover, these failings have occurred in a context where beef cattle in NSW are now primarily, almost exclusively, bred for commercial purposes – to be killed and sold for food. The reality is that, for many, perhaps most, of those who participate in the industry – whether as … breeders or owners … beef cattle are commercial commodities, not animals to be cherished and loved. It is ridiculous and it is applying a double standard; it is a “How much is that doggie in the window?” moralising. Nobody is calling for the live export trade to be banned for sheep or cattle. I certainly am not—except that actually some people are. The sort of people who enthusiastically support the greyhound ban are exactly the same people who want to shut down the live export trade, shut down horseracing and harness racing and, in many instances, believe that ownership of pets is abhorrent. The precedent that this establishes is very dangerous. In New South Wales we have hunting with hounds. The Sydney Hunt Club exists. Are we going to ban that too? The irony is that greyhounds now could be bred as companion animals and could actually hunt rabbits in the field, but they could not be used for chasing a mechanical hare around a track. The second problem we face—and this is an even more dangerous precedent—is the problem of acknowledging as a conservative Government the concept of a social licence. It is a vague, imprecise method; it is a tool uniformly of the Left. One never hears people say, “Wind farms have lost their social licence” or “the CFMEU has lost its social licence”. We are a party of the rule of law and laws which are rules, not touchy, feely opinions. Social licence is a hammer used by the cultural Left to attack that which is legal but which they dislike—coal, coal seam gas [CSG] and mining—a vague, imprecise tool where any demagogue can claim to be the authentic voice of the people. “So you don’t like something; well let’s ban it.” Why? Because it has lost its social licence. But who determines social licence? Is it just an update of the concept of “the common good” that demagogues and dictators everywhere can use to justify their actions as “the will of the people”? Has hunting with hounds lost its social licence? What about hunting with firearms? What about plain old ownership of firearms? If the only metric in social licensing is 50 per cent plus one, we can ban anything we dislike. For the ideologues of the animal welfare extremists, this is just the thin end of the wedge. Think for a moment: Does this bill encourage or discourage them? Are they going to roll up their swags and go home and say, “That is it; we have fixed all the problems we have”, or are they going to take this as yet another step on their path to ideological purity? This week we had People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] calling for Eggs and Bacon Bay in Tasmania to be renamed. These are the sorts of people we are dealing with. Allow me to move briefly into the realm of prophecy. This bill is a rod for our own back, a rod with which we will be beaten in the future by these activists. PETA or some other animal welfare organisation will recruit someone, probably a bright young woman, to go to a trainer, probably one in rural or regional New South Wales. It will not be Gai Waterhouse; it will be some trainer in regional New South Wales—maybe old Cec at Queanbeyan Racecourse. This woman will say, “I really love horses, but I cannot break into the industry. Can you let me in? You do not need to pay me. I just want you to teach me all you know about the industry.” Old Cec, who might be doing it tough, might think, “This is great”, and take her on. Then every day she will come in miked up and with a hidden camera. Cec, who is not a vet—he goes about what he does based on 40 years of experience and what his dad taught him—might have a few folk remedies. He loves horses, but they are not his living. Some will not run, some will go to the knackery, some will bleed from the nostrils and some will have injuries. In the end, the edited tapes will be handed over to *Four Corners *and we will be back here again. The argument I have heard is, “This won’t be applied to the horseracing or harness industry.” Why not? The eye roll from the Hon. Mark Pearson when the Minister started talking about the higher standards of conditions in other forms of racing spoke eloquently about what he really believes about the conditions in those other forms of racing. That eye roll gave the game away. What is the moral precept or the ideological world view that divides racing greyhounds from racing horses? Is it mere numbers? How much wastage is too much? Is it the historical decline of greyhound racing? If we are talking about the historical decline of industries as a rationale for euthanasing them, there are a whole range of non-racing economic industries we could kill off on that basis. Is it simply the number of industry participants—that horseracing is too big to fail? Is it popularity? If it is popularity, that sets a dangerous precedent. Nobody has clearly enunciated exactly why the radical animal liberationists will not use this prohibition as an encouragement, as a propaganda springboard, for their activities in the future. During his contribution, the Hon. Peter Primrose quoted Coalition members at length. What he failed to acknowledge was that there is also dissent within the Labor Party. I will not go into too much detail, but this whole idea that “disunity is death”, that we should remain a Punch and Judy show where we whack each other over the head rather than let a plurality of ideas and a Socratic discourse take place, is, I think, abhorrent. What happens is that we legitimise a system where politicians are absolved from the necessity of thought and consideration of public policy issues. I want to leave everyone with a thought experiment. If the Premier had come out and instead said, “We are not going to ban the industry; we are going to work on a reform package”, who seriously believes there would have been a groundswell in the Coalition parties to then ban the industry? My concern is not that people have strong views on this matter. My concern rather is that we are invoking the full suite of coercive powers of the state, violating freedom of association, freedom of action and ownership of property, based on no strong views whatsoever—a lackadaisical authoritarianism which I cannot and will not support. ----- End forwarded message -----

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DDoSCoin: Proof of malicious work
by Steve Kinney 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Oh fuck. Time to advance the Digital Doomsday Clock. How many days past midnight was it yesterday? https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot16/workshop-program/presentation/w ustrow or https://tinyurl.com/ddoscoin "In this paper, we present DDoSCoin, which is a cryptocurrency with a malicious proof-of-work. DDoSCoin allows miners to prove that they have contributed to a distributed denial of service attack against specific target servers. This proof involves making a large number of TLS connections to a target server, and using cryptographic responses to prove that a large number of connections has been made. Like proof-of-work puzzles, these proofs are inexpensive to verify, and can be made arbitrarily difficult to solve." CliffNotes version: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/12/ddoscoin_cryptocurrency/ :o) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJXr+veAAoJEECU6c5Xzmuqa/QH/0woHuLRvAlsOHp/ecjHUFy/ msvAplK6H1ivNIJhYqqBf9DRumuw1g8N4B4N57+R/IclP26O+Rx/qLzlOtRHCB30 3jGrP+pfuCkHoN+7My9MjKArIzpj6C7jurHnK4ip+Nb5D0/mZZn509YcS5+p1EzA F3iv+iHtFUotzQnGMR8ndW6Owwnjg2fqHBzBlIQzKlAgPLOWzL5CWqnsvPiK4WEZ qVmB6mB6uWSqPGZfw/+W1MshH6nQK4BWX5drFIy8VrjTnjl2RWr4fBymlSu5ikAN TUUwJ3/wqXRj6WGfWcJrfFV7/wfio/Mr2HoWV6sSuzJ2FQzNBx0/Si489S++6vM= =zk5J -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Attempted coup d'etat in Turkey
by Georgi Guninski 15 Aug '16

15 Aug '16

Consider searching the web for: news Turkey coup d'etat Someone old told me coup d'etat's are common for Turkey, the search terms are: history Turkey coup d'etat Does the NATO's Turkey have nukes?

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