I did not mean for it to sting AHH.  I just talked factually.  We all read his blog, and that is a fact.  In reality, I worked with his blog and his information for a very long time at the Saker site.  And even then there is stuff that I will not say.  I am not interested in stinging him and if I was, I promise you I can do much better than that poor sentence.  Why I do not even have to go into the past.  The criticism today is a notch or ten above stinging.

What I am truly pissed off about, is the information thrown about by people that know diddly squat about the man and his work.  One does not have to love him, or even trust him, but man!  He did a great piece of software and his brother did a superb backend and held out for a very long time.  I really think Russia lost, by their own doing, a very valuable son.   (Btw, I just absolutely hate the front end of Telegram! but I am talking as a software tech now who has done my fair share of user interface design)  Mr.P talks about how he must put himself ahead of the government and the state. Hell Yes!  If he does that.  Those entities have us, and they are responsible to us.  WE the people eh.  Putin and Xi understand that.

But let me tell a joke.  Back on the Saker site, I reposted one of Smoothie’s blogs which contained two or so pages out of some manual about netcentric warfare.  I like it when he talks about the principles and the weapons because I think he really knows that stuff.  Anyway, I read those pages and then gave them to my husband – with a casual inquiry.. What do you think about this?  He read them and frowned and asked me .. which network topology is this?  And then I laughed …  Netcentric warfare can just as well be a technical networking topology.   It is a stack, and the best-known one is called the OSI Model with seven layers, still a basic on the internet.

You say you are a luddite, but you have never pretended knowledge that you did not have.  That is the problem for me.  People take this fellow called Durov to the cleaners without knowing one word about what he said, what he did, what his relationship is with his users and how committed he is to freedom of speech.  It has been a black hole that they desperately try to fill, but the information is there for the looking.

If you ask me for something I have no proof of, I think the interview with Tucker Carlson has a lot to do with kidnapping Durov.  I think Carlson asked some questions, that he quickly said are not necessary to answer, that opened a gate to the thinking of the man Durov.

The narrative distraction?  It is not a bug, it is feature – it is designed to be so.

But about Durov, show me the one person that knows this – look at the people who use Telegram to run their businesses.

https://t.me/durov/295

or this:

https://t.me/durov/326

And all these people that suddenly know all about Telegram, do not even mention that it is open source code and one of the most verifiable codes on GitHub.

A story shared (https://x.com/jack/status/1787895769183268948) by Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, uncovered that the current leaders of Signal, an allegedly “secure” messaging app, are activists used by the US state department (https://www.city-journal.org/article/signals-katherine-maher-problem) for regime change abroad 🥷

🥸 The US government spent $3M to build Signal’s encryption, and today the exact same encryption is implemented in WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Messages and even Skype. It looks almost as if big tech in the US is not allowed to build its own encryption protocols that would be independent of government interference 🐕‍🦺

🕵️‍♂️ An alarming number of important people I’ve spoken to remarked that their “private” Signal messages had been exploited against them in US courts or media. But whenever somebody raises doubt about their encryption, Signal’s typical response is “we are open source so anyone can verify that everything is all right”. That, however, is a trick 🤡

🕵️‍♂️ Unlike Telegram, Signal doesn’t allow researchers to make sure that their GitHub code is the same code that is used in the Signal app run on users’ iPhones. Signal refused to add reproducible builds (https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641) for iOS, closing a GitHub request from the community. And WhatsApp doesn’t even publish the code of its apps, so all their talk about “privacy” is an even more obvious circus trick 💤

🛡 Telegram is the only massively popular messaging service that allows everyone to make sure (https://core.telegram.org/reproducible-builds) that all of its apps indeed use the same open source code that is published on Github. For the past ten years, Telegram Secret Chats have remained the only popular method of communication that is verifiably private 💪

Why do you think the Russian MoD uses it.

I leave this here because my brain is discombobulated and I cannot integrate this history.

https://archive.ph/yTOUU

This I did not know.  Zionist Militia’s Efforts to Recruit Nazis in Fight Against the British.

I think the idea is because the Brits gave the land of Israel to the zionists (and they called themselves zionist), they were of course in a state of being British subjects and as such colonized.  That is how this makes sense to me.

Yes indeed thanks!  Does not help to run a quiet boycott of RT lol.  We cannot live with them, and we cannot live without them.  It is there that I saw it first.

Circling out:  Max Blumenthal of the GrayZone says:  YouTube just BANNED us from livestreaming the #DNC2024 Our first stream from Chicago protests was removed on bogus grounds and we were suspended for a week But amid this political purge, we got into the arena to challenge the media hacks and officials that authorized the Gaza genocide

Circling out.

🚨🇺🇸🇬🇧 BREAKING: YouTube has REMOVED all episodes of George Galloway’s show in which Scott Ritter or I appeared as guest hosts. pic.twitter.com/YsNneJxDe2

— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) August 21, 2024

I once was a target of this type and other types of terrorism. ‘Nuff said.

There is another interesting statistic. 94% of israelis vote for zionist parties. So I don’t feel sorry for them.

It is the issue of staring into the abyss. It does not end well for anyone. Better to strike them openly with a storm of drones right into occupied Tel Aviv.

We cannot discriminate between terrorism into Russia, and then then disassociate from this terrorism. Well, at least I cannot. But then you know I don’t worry too much about differences between these kinds of opinions .. you are welcome to yours … to express it, and to use it the way you want. lol.

British-owned Lonmin mine in the platinum belt of South Africa and a massacre.

34 South African mineworkers were massacred by police, on this day in 2012. It was the worst massacre since the apartheid regime’s repression of the 1976 Soweto uprising.

The killings were also a political turning point as many workers started to lose faith in the increasingly neoliberal African National Congress (ANC). As a result, the Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Julius Malema, burst onto the scene and is still contending with the ANC.

The strike began in August 2012 demanding a pay raise. The government-allied union, the National Union of Mineworkers, did not approve the walkout but workers still went ahead with a wildcat strike.

Government repression resulted in the killing of 34 miners whose families are still seeking justice. This is the worst massacre to have been carried out by an ANC government.

The current President was deeply involved.  Here is the statement of the mineworker’s union.

Four reasons why NUMSA rejects Cyril Ramaphosa’s un-apology for Marikana
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, (NUMSA) rejects the un-apology made by the Deputy President of the country and the ANC, Cyril Ramaphosa, regarding his role in the Marikana Massacre. Ramaphosa was the chairperson of Lonmin mines, at the time of the massacre and Deputy president of the country.
In the email which he sent to Lonmin’s chief commercial officer, Albert Jamieson the day before the fateful killing of workers on August 16, 2012, Ramaphosa described the strike action taken by the miners as ‘dastardly criminal acts’ which required ‘concomitant action’ to address the situation. Ramaphosa’s apology nearly five years later are just empty words. There is no substance to his expression of regret and below are five reasons why:
1. At the time that the miners of Marikana were shot down by South African police Ramaphosa was Deputy president of the country, as well as chairman of Lonmin mines. The labour dispute which sparked the violent strike at Marikana was precipitated by poor wages, and poor working conditions of miners in the area. Ramaphosa’s past experience as a trade unionist and founder of NUM did nothing to improve the conditions of miners in Marikana.
Under his watch as a Lonmin executive the majority of miners lived, and continue to live in the same hovels which existed under Apartheid. It was the dehumanizing experience of living in squalor, in shacks with no water, no electricity or basic sanitation services, that the demand for a living wage of R12500 was made. Ramaphosa  had the power as an executive to make decisions which could have vastly improved the lives of the miners, but he chose not to.
Instead, when the interests of White monopoly capital were threatened and workers were forced to go on an illegal strike, because their trade union of choice, the National Union of Mineworkers (which he helped establish), had abandoned them, instead of using his skills as a negotiator in the union, he called for and colluded with the minister of police to end the strike, by any means necessary. During the Farlam Commission hearings it was found that the state planned for the massacre by ordering several mortuary vans in advance, therefore any claims by officials that the killings were unintentional are hollow.
2. The National Minimum Wage is further evidence that Ramaphosa is lying when he claims that he cares about workers. He has been spearheading a campaign, on behalf of big business to legalize R20 per hour as a minimum wage so that workers in South Africa can be exploited far more than they are already. There can be no radical economic transformation when workers are earning less than R3500 per month, and yet that is precisely what Ramaphosa is advocating for.
We live in a country of extreme inequality, rampant poverty, and an unemployment rate of at least 25%. The miners of Marikana were shot and killed, for daring to demand a living wage of R12500 as a living wage, and the deputy president responds by implementing a minimum wage which will have no impact on alleviating poverty and inequality.
3. Ramaphosa, and the ANC which he leads have spent the last 23 years defending and protecting White monopoly Capital, and they will continue to do so. On the one hand Ramaphosa claims that radical economic transformation is an imperative, but at the same time, he keeps celebrating the NDP (National Development Plan) as the vehicle through which this transformation will be achieved. The NDP, and its predecessor GEAR are neo-liberal economic policies which have been harmful to workers and their families for the last 23 years.
The ANC as the governing party, has refused to use its majority in parliament to implement policies of nationalization which would radically transform the lives of the African majority immediately. They have refused to nationalize the land; the banks as well as the commanding heights of the economy. Instead they continue to pursue neo liberal capitalist economic policies which are responsible for the suffering of workers and their families.
The ANC is fighting to ensure that this oppressive economic system which is characterized by low pay, and poor working conditions continues, because they want to please ratings agencies and foreign investors – they don’t care about African majority which elected them into power.
4. Ramaphosa and the ANC have launched a shameless attack on the working class. The Deputy President is driving legislation to limit the right to strike. This former trade unionist is fighting to undo all the work that workers in South Africa fought and died for under Apartheid.
Whilst the lives of millions of South Africans haven’t changed much since the days of Apartheid, Ramaphosa has undergone a personal radical economic transformation of epic proportions. He has gone from trade union leader, to big business billionaire and union basher. That is his legacy, 23 years after the end of Apartheid.
He is promoting the kind of radical economic transformation which empowers a small elite at the expense of the African working class majority.
As NUMSA we cannot take the utterances of the Deputy President seriously.   Ramaphosa and the ANC that he leads do not have any solutions for the working class. For the last 23 years the ANC has bent over backwards in an attempt to please big business, for example, by commercializing the roads through e-tolls and allowing labour brokers to flourish.
They even went as far as implementing a Youth Wage subsidy, where they basically pay employers for hiring young people and exploiting them with poor wages! It was the ANC’s senseless pursuit of rampant capitalism which eventually forced NUMSA to reject President Jacob Zuma and the ANC.
When we criticize Ramaphosa, we are not narrow in our analysis. We cannot support anyone from the ANC because we know that the ANC does not have any solutions for the challenges facing the poor and the working class of South Africa. It is bizarre therefore, that given extensive evidence to the latter, that any credible labour or leftist movement would still remain in the alliance when the governing party, has done nothing but show workers the middle finger!
NUMSA does not suffer from this kind of ideological confusion. We are proud of our reputation in the labour movement as a truly militant, worker driven formation. After 30 years in the battle for workers, we remain the largest worker led formation in the country and our revolutionary principles back this up.