May 2022 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

Fwd: Litigation Finance Journal Alert -- New Commercial Post
by Gunnar Larson 27 May '22

27 May '22

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Re: Your City of Miami public records request #22-1685 has been closed.
by Gunnar Larson 27 May '22

27 May '22

City of Miami: We asked for the receipts to how the $5M was spent. Can you please provide the receipts? Gunnar Larson On Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:33 AM PublicRecords(a)miamigov.com < support(a)nextrequest.com> wrote: > -- Attach a non-image file and/or reply ABOVE THIS LINE with a message, > and it will be sent to staff on this request. -- > City of Miami Public Records > Record request #22-1685 has been closed and published. > > View Request 22-1685 <https://miami.nextrequest.com/requests/22-1685> > https://miami.nextrequest.com/requests/22-1685 > > <https://www.nextrequest.com/> > > The All in One Records Requests Platform > > *Questions about your request?* Reply to this email or sign in to contact > staff at City of Miami. > > *Technical support:* See our help page > <https://help.nextrequest.com/knowledge/requester-resources> > > * Too many emails? * Change your email settings here > <https://miami.nextrequest.com/settings> > >

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Cryptocurrency: Businesses Looking Towards Unconfiscatable Crypto Too
by grarpamp 27 May '22

27 May '22

In complete pile of nonsense, Government Politicians are blaming everyone and everything but themselves for Inflation, and concocting "windfall taxes" to steal money from everyone they can, and deploy age old lie of calling power "temporary" when they mean "permanent"... UK Imposes Windfall Tax On Energy Firms To Fund £15 Billion Relief Package For Households https://www.theepochtimes.com/uk-imposes-windfall-tax-on-energy-firms-to-fu… The UK government has announced a temporary windfall tax on oil and gas giants to fund a relief package for households struggling with rising bills. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has previously resisted opposition parties’ calls for a windfall tax, warning about the impact it would have on future investment. But he has now been forced to unveil emergency measures to tackle the impact of soaring inflation, which has reached a 40-year high. Millions of households will receive a £400 ($504) discount off their energy bills. Around 8 million of the lowest income households will be sent a one-off payment of £650, and pensioners will receive a one-off £300 payment. To help fund the package, which will cost £15 billion ($19 billion), the government will introduce a 25 percent profit levy on oil and gas giants, which it expects to generate £5 billion ($6.3 billion) in tax revenues. Addressing the House of Commons on May 26, Sunak acknowledged that high inflation is causing “acute distress” for people in the country, telling MPs, “I know they are worried, I know people are struggling.” He said the government “will not sit idly by while there is a risk that some in our country might be set so far back they might never recover.” Sunak said the oil and gas sector is making “extraordinary profits” not as the result of innovation or efficiency, but as the result of “surging global commodity prices driven in part by Russia’s war.” “For that reason I am sympathetic to the argument to tax those profits fairly,” he said. Meanwhile, the chancellor said he is introducing a “new investment allowance” to incentivise energy firms to reinvest their profits in developing domestic energy sources. Sunak stopped short of also slapping the new levy on electricity generators, although he said the Treasury was evaluating the scale of the profits being made in the industry and what steps could be taken. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, called it a “big, expensive package from Rishi Sunak.” “In conjunction with tax rises already in place this is hugely redistributive - taking from high earners and giving to the poor,” he wrote on Twitter. Before the announcement, oil and gas producers warned that a windfall tax would do long-term harm to the industry. Offshore Energies UK, which represents the offshore oil and gas industry, said the tax would burden firms with “sudden new costs,” which would “disrupt planning and investment and, above all, undermine investor confidence.”

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When all of the ships come back to the shore
by professor rat 27 May '22

27 May '22

Mr Shipton has grave fears for his brother's welfare, well beyond any life sentence, if he were to be extradited to the US. "I really believe he won't be kept safe there in the US prison system," he said. "We know there are people who are part of the security state in the US who really want Julian dead. They've called for it on national television. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-27/julian-assange-release-family-electi…

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When The Government Plays God: The Slippery Slope From Abortions To Executions
by grarpamp 27 May '22

27 May '22

When The Government Plays God: The Slippery Slope From Abortions To Executions https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentar… https://doi.org/10.1108/01443339910788712 http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html “Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny; the State simply declares that certain classes of human beings are not persons, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law. The State protects the ‘right’ of some people to kill others, just as the courts protected the ‘property rights’ of slave masters in their slaves.” - Ron Paul The government wants to play god. It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection. Delve beneath the rhetoric and spin that have turned abortion into a politicized, polarized and propagandized frontline in the culture wars, and you will find a greater menace at work. Abortion may be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more going on here. The Left would suggest that unborn babies do not have constitutional rights and the only right that matters is a woman’s right to privacy in choosing whether or not to abort a pregnancy. The Right, while fixated on saving the lives of unborn babies, seems less concerned about what happens to those lives from birth to death. What few seem willing to address is that in the 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen. This is how the abortion debate—a politicized tug-of-war over when an unborn child is considered a human being with rights—plays into the police state’s hands by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights. Even if (as a leaked draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization suggests) the Supreme Court overturns its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, that will not resolve the larger problem that plagues us today: namely, that all along the spectrum of life—from the unborn child to the aged—the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry. Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution. American families who have their dogs shot, their homes trashed and their children terrorized or, worse, killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Disabled individuals who are being strip searched, handcuffed, arrested and “diagnosed” by police as dangerous or mentally unstable merely because they stutter and walk unevenly are being denied their rights under the Constitution. School-aged children as young as 4-years-old who are leg shackled, handcuffed and strip searched for violating school zero tolerance policies by chewing a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun and playing an imaginary game of cops and robbers, or engaging in childish behavior such as crying or jumping are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Likewise, Americans—young and old alike—who are shot by police because they pointed a garden hose at a police officer, reached for their registration in their glove box, relied upon a cane to steady themselves, or were seen playing with air rifles or BB guns are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Female motorists who are unlucky enough to be pulled over for a questionable traffic infraction only to be subjected by police to cavity searches by the side of the road are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Male pedestrians and motorists alike who are being subjected to roadside strip searches and rectal probes by police based largely on the color of their skin are being denied their rights under the Constitution. American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Homeowners who are being fined and arrested for raising chickens in their backyard, allowing the grass in their front yards to grow too long, and holding Bible studies in their homes are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Decorated military veterans who are being arrested for criticizing the government on social media such as Facebook are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Homeless individuals who are being harassed, arrested and run out of towns by laws that criminalize homelessness are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Individuals whose DNA has been forcibly collected and entered into federal and state law enforcement databases whether or not they have been convicted of any crime are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Drivers whose license plates are being scanned, uploaded to a police database and used to map their movements, whether or not they are suspected of any crime, are being denied their rights under the Constitution. The same goes for drivers who are being ticketed for running afoul of red light cameras without any real opportunity to defend themselves against such a charge are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Protesters and activists who are being labeled domestic terrorists and extremists and accused of hate crimes for speaking freely are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Likewise, American citizens who being targeted for assassination by drone strikes abroad without having been charged, tried and convicted of treason are being denied their rights under the Constitution. Hard-working Americans whose bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash are seized by police (operating according to asset forfeiture schemes that provide profit incentives for highway robbery) are being denied their rights under the Constitution. So, what is the common denominator here? These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority. If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will. It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good. Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry. Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now. If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever. Already, the politicos are beating the war drums to herald the next phase of the abortion wars. President Biden wants voters to elect more pro-abortion rights officials to ensure that “a woman’s right to choose is fundamental.” The Senate plans to vote to codify the right to an abortion into federal law. Chief Justice John G. Roberts is opening an investigation into how the Supreme Court’s draft abortion ruling was leaked. And polling indicates that the majority of the American people want abortion to remain legal. Like clockwork, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of yet another political circus that could get scary, ugly and overwhelming really fast. Before you get too distracted by this conveniently timed diversion that has everyone forgetting about spiking gas prices, inflation, housing shortages, and warring empires, remind yourself that no matter how the Supreme Court rules in Dobbs, it will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale. Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity. Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies. Yet here is what I know. Life is an inalienable right. By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights. If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection. There’s an idea embraced by both the Right and the Left according to their biases that there is a hierarchy to life, with some lives worthier of protection than others, but there is no hierarchy of freedoms. All freedoms hang together. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we must never stop working to protect life, preserve our freedoms and maintain some semblance of our humanity. Freedom cannot be a piece-meal venture.

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Cryptocurrency: Cryptonauts Say JPMorgan is 75% Overvalued, Stablecoins are Cooked and Done
by grarpamp 27 May '22

27 May '22

JPMorgan Says Bitcoin Is 25% 'Undervalued', Terra FUD Overdone The collapse of the Terra USD and the Luna token, within a year of the collapse of Iron Finance and the TITAN token, once again brought out the obituaries for crypto broadly, and raised the FUD over the stabilisation mechanisms of stablecoins (most specifically 'algorithmic' style). As a reminder, we can classify stablecoins into three broad categories: fiat-backed, crypto-backed, and algorithmic. It has also soured sentiment among crypto investors... As JPMorgan's Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou notes in his latest report, most flow and positioning metrics also turned very negative. The chart below shows the 4-week rolling flow into bitcoin and ethereum publicly traded funds. These funds capture a significant component of the institutional impulse as many institutional investors are either not willing or not permitted to invest directly in crypto assets via digital wallets. In the fund space bitcoin funds including ETFs saw the largest outflow since May 2021. The crypto fund flow impulse has been normalizing over the past year after peaking at the beginning of 2021 and has been mostly negative this year. In the futures space, JPM's position proxy for CME bitcoin futures is approaching oversold territory. The equivalent indicator for ethereum has also declined to below neutral... These flow and positioning metrics, Panigirtzoglou suggests, provides a good entry point for long term investors. The JPM strategist also notes that, thus far, however, there seems to have been relatively limited spillovers to other stablecoins and the Total Value Locked in DeFi projects beyond Terra appears to have been relatively resilient. Panigirtzoglou concludes by noting that the past month’s crypto market correction looks more like capitulation relative to last January/February and going forward JPM sees upside for bitcoin and crypto markets more generally. Our previous projection that the bitcoin-to-gold vol ratio will settle to around 4x this year stills holds... Our fair value for bitcoin based on a volatility-ratio of bitcoin-to-gold of around 4x would be $38k significantly above its current price. Additionally, JPMorgan's bullish stance is reinforced by Glassnode's MVRZ Z-Score, which assesses when Bitcoin is undervalued/overvalued based on its "fair value", and is nearing the green zone that had preceded the crypto's massive rebound rallies, as shown in the chart below... JPMorgan reiterates four reasons behind the emergence of crypto as an alternate institutional asset class. First, the pandemic by inducing unconventional monetary policies and by boosting money supply created additional demand for an “alternative” currency. After the Lehman crisis, the role of an “alternative” currency was played by gold. After the virus crisis, this role was played by both bitcoin and gold. Second, the fact that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies survived the long winter of 2018/2019 and their market value did not go down to zero as many crypto critics were predicting at the time, increased confidence among institutional investors that there is enough residual demand ascribing value to cryptocurrencies. Third, the corporate sponsorship of bitcoin that started emerging in the summer of 2020 with Microstrategy, Square, PayPal, Tesla further boosted institutional investors’ confidence into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Fourth, the pandemic accelerated the shift towards digitization and cryptocurrencies are expanding in tandem with the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as they represent the fuel for powering DLT networks. Going forward Panigirtzoglou believes that the trajectory for VC funding would be crucial in helping the crypto market to avoid the long winter of 2018/2019. If VC funding dries up from here as a result of the loss of confidence from the collapse of Terra’s ecosystem, then a return to the long winter of 2018/2019 would look more likely for crypto markets. Thus far there is little evidence of VC funding drying up post Terra’s collapse. Of the $25bn VC funding YTD, almost $4bn came after Terra. Panigirtzoglou ends on a positive note, saying that "our best guess is the VC funding will continue and a long winter similar to 2018/2019 would be averted." On the same day, major venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz announced the closing of its fourth cryptocurrency fund at $4.5 billion. Also on Wednesday, crypto-focused venture firm NGC Ventures launched its third blockchain fund with $100 million raised from investors that included Babel Finance, Huobi Ventures and Nexo Ventures.

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God-Emperor of the Dune Library
by professor rat 27 May '22

27 May '22

Plans within plans KimZetter · 9h MIT asked me to write a chapter on covering national security/cybersecurity for new book published by Oxford Univ Press. I focused mostly on importance of having good sources and knowing who to listen to, who to ignore - especially on a beat noted for its deception and trickery twitter.com/KSJatMIT/statu… Show this thread

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In the name of Marxist-Communism
by professor rat 27 May '22

27 May '22

In the name of Marxist-Communism, mass murders were carried out, a man-made famine was created, and swathes of culture and history, including the Ukrainian language, were repressed. Then - in the name of Marxist-Communism - mass murders were carried out, a man-made famine was created, and swathes of culture and history, including Chinese languages, were repressed. Then - in the name of Marxist-Communism - mass murders were carried out, a man-made famine was created, and swathes of culture and history, including the Ethiopian language, were repressed. Then - In the name of Marxist-Communism - mass murders were carried out, a man-made famine was created, and swathes of culture and history, including the Cambodian language, were repressed. Then - in the name of Marxist-Communism - mass murders were carried out, a man-made famine was created, and swathes of culture and history, including the Korean language, were repressed. I’m sensing a pattern here.

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The Verge: Elon Musk says Starlink internet service will be ‘fully mobile’ in 2021
by jim bell 27 May '22

27 May '22

The Verge: Elon Musk says Starlink internet service will be ‘fully mobile’ in 2021. https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388378/elon-musk-starlink-satellite-in… Jim Bell's comment: I imagine, and hope, that this news will signal the ability of the Starlink system to be used by people in "freedom-hostile" nations. But, that may depend on how this is implemented. Can anyone buy a dish and use it anywhere on Earth? Without regard to political boundaries?

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ANARCHISTS JOIN UKRAINE’S WAR EFFORT
by professor rat 27 May '22

27 May '22

Activists from Kyiv and around world join state forces in fight against totalitarianism https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/26/putin-anarchists-join-ukraine… I trust they turned in their anarchist ID cards for the duration and will go to self-criticism on their return How things are done are as important as what gets done

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