MINIX, Assange or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb


It seems Julian Assange was right after all. In spite of all the 
denials by the British government along these years, of all the
assurances that the British government was hell bent on finding 
justice for the two alleged rape victims in Sweden, we now find out 
that the US filed an extradition request immediately after
Mr.Assange's apprehension.
 All that zeal was a charade.

Now before i'm chastised by some politically correct crypto-fascist,
rape is a serious offence and it deserves prosecution. There are
tribunals to deal with such claims, but in any sane legal system,
until a claim is proved, it is a claim, an unproven allegation, and
defendants are allowed to present their defence against the
allegations.
Without this, why bother with courts of law? Assume yourself and take
responsibility for your actions. What you want is summary judgement 
and execution.
But the priorities here seem to be towards the extradiction of
Mr.Assange to the US, where no doubt he'll face an onslaught of
charges for any real and imaginary crimes commited, rather than 
towards Sweden in order to answers the alleged rape charges. 

So far it seems that Mr.Assange's fears and paranoia were entirely 
justified. This was clearly and unequivocally demonstrated.

Was this a honeypot? If it was, it worked.

The worst and most embarrassing part however, is the disastrous
scenario of US politics.

Years ago, a candidate of one of the contending parties to the
presidential elections was found to have conspired to eliminate 
another contestant to the party's nomination for the upcoming
elections.
In one swift stroke, the entire support base of this popular
contender was alienated.
So sure was this candidate of winning the presidential elections that
a couple or more states were deemed unworthy of political attention,
further alienating the elector base in those states.

Not only that, but the entire establishment failed to comprehend the
magnitude of the dissatisfaction of the electors towards the state of
the nation.

There is no hope. Vast segments of the electorate have two, three 
jobs just to pay the bills.

Infrastructure crumbles, long vanished diseases resurge.
Healthcare, or the lack of it, bankrupts families. Education is
priced out of reach for most, and those that can afford it, are
enslaved into a castrating debt right when they're about to start
their adult life. Instead of starting to enjoy the independence of an
adult life, they are prevented from assuming it with all its perks
and downsides, rights and responsibilities.
The police shoots on sight and shoots to kill. It doesn't matter if
you're a law abiding citizen. You were in the wrong place at the 
wrong time. You're dead, your dog is dead, your family traumatized
after witnessing your brutal demise.
Prisons are privately run businesses where profit is the primary
concern. Prisoners have no rights. Redemption, rehabilitation are
undefined words.

All this frustration, hanger, ripe for picking.

You're either with team A or with B. There is no middle ground, nor
team C, D, E.

There's no political message either. Neither team A nor team B have
any political manifesto, any plan, road map, any medium to long term 
strategy.
Most of the electorate has no idea of what a political manifesto is,
but they fear the sound of it.
You cannot blame them since the entire system was rigged against
them. 
They were indoctrinated from their first day to think that they live
in the greatest country in the world, the pinnacle of human
civilization. A political system so perfect that nowhere else on
Earth you can find a better system.
There is no room for improvement, and life outside these borders is a
Cyclopic endeavour. Barren lands, murder and death. You'll fare
better inside these walls.

As with other indoctrinated groups, we are forced to witness 
televised emotion-filled eulogies to political heroes recently
demised.

And so, the candidate that had a guaranteed victory, looses.

Instead of assuming responsibility for a defeat, blame is laid
everywhere.
Everywhere but at the candidate or the party's feet.
They failed to understand the severity of the mistrust and contempt 
for such a candidate.

They also failed to understand that negative politics alone would not
suffice to defeat demagogy and populism. There is a segment,
typically represented by the young, that desires positive politics -
politics for something, for anything.
A cause, a political program, a manifesto, an idea, an idea of an
idea however remote that can be.
Anything that can bring some hope.
They are now chastised for voting third or fourth political parties 
as if their entirely legitimate political choice of voting for
something, instead of against something or someone, wasn't
legitimate.

The consequence of team A's failure is shallowness, populism,
demagogy and open-sight hostility.
But the failure lies deep, starting with this contestant.

You see, for decades this propaganda machine relied in newspapers,
radio, TV, cinema. Hollywood had always been a fundamental pivot in
projecting a positive image of the "American Dream" abroad while
ignoring all the ugliness that stayed home.

But with the internet... now, this was something new.
Decentralized you say?
How can we control it if in this echo chamber everyone can have an
equally loud voice?
This posed a problem, and poses a problem. After all, who watches TV
these days? Or buys newspapers? Listen to radio?
How is domestic propaganda supposed to be subtly fed to the
(un?)willing masses if your media vehicles have no recipients?

Team A blames the monsters under the bed, and the messengers.
The allegations presented in the messages are very serious. Are they 
true?
Never mind the content, disregard the content, it's the intention 
that counts, and we know the intention because we control the
narrative.

Team B needs someone to blame for the disastrous state of affairs.
And who is traditionally blamed? Well, blame the outsider, the
misfit, the foreign element, that who invokes the image of 
difference.

And now, the watershed moment of our times.

You see, that more or less decentralized echo chamber poses a direct 
threat to soft power, propaganda, or if the word seems too harsh for
you, to "narratives".
Anyone not peddling the narrative is a "bad actor" or a vassal to
one. The term alone is of such a callous shallowness that it cannot
invoke anything but disdain to whomever coined it.

We live in a surveillance state, but this is the beauty if it.
Your neighbours, your friends, your family, your significant other,
everyone is an informant.

But you accept it. There is no need to hide things.
That STASI-esque idea of full surveillance, of a panopticon, exists
in plain sight and is accepted.
If not you, those around you submit daily information about you to 
social media. Voluntarily. Lovingly.
Everything. Images, GPS data, messages, vulnerabilities, weaknesses,
insecurities and depression, hopes and diseases.
There is no need for a black car parked outside, of long shadows on
the cobblestones pavement.

Your devices spy on you. So that you can turn on the lights of the
living room automatically, or turn on the TV into whatever subdues
your consciousness.
You accept it, and freely give away this information, and if not you,
those around you.
You have no say, even if you are aware of the scope and magnitude of
the surveillance.

The panopticon exists. What was created to ensure free flow of ideas 
is now used to silent dissent and foment conformity and you are
afraid to voice your opinions, because every chamber can quickly
become the chamber of five minutes of hate.

And to ensure conforming views are what you see, now you have:

    * MINIX on ring -3.
    * TPM chips
    * "Secure" Boot
    * unaudited hardware RNG on-chip, DRNG
    * DRM on HTML5
    * cryptographically signed drivers, kernels

On their own, some of these are quite useful and some ideas genuinely
had merit.
But overall, some ideas were guaranteed to lead to abuse.
And all together, they're an irresistible temptation.

So what's with all these acronyms? Suffice to say they are there to
ensure you have a secure computing environment, and in the case of
Intel IME (and the AMD equivalent) then well... they are there to
ensure *some* people have access to your computer. No matter what you
do and what you are running.

A month or so ago, the EU adopted a directive allegedly against
copyright infringement.
As expected, there were some clauses included to address "fake news".
By "fake news", what they really mean is, anything that is factually
correct but that makes them look bad and that is inconvenient.

With a political context in place in the EU, and with the veritable 
Salem like witch-hunt taking place in the US against Mr.Assange,
expect a precedent to be created to stifle any form of reporting of 
such inconvenient matters.
With but a handful of exceptions, journalism is truly dead.
Neither Markus Wolff nor George Orwell could've imagined such a 
sophisticated prison.

And we gladly entered this slaughterhouse, of our own accord.
Sleepwalking steadily into the night.


12/04/2019