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Anti-fascism is reaction to fascism, it's in the name, even.
U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
131–140 of 831 posts
Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#132Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that. " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. " In general I think the free lunch…
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it. This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
And despite it being transparent garbage, millions of Americans are eagerly lapping up Red Scare 2.0
Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism. careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go. i guarantee more terrorism-related content is discussed via those providers than a/i. we should probably also go after internet service providers, too. maybe the companies that m…
> (has anyone checked who is providing terrorists with electricity?)
Or for that matter, where they get their air?! Oh gosh golly darn, gee, if Earth is providing air to those commie bastards…
I may not agree with their political views, but to say that the tool is the problem is equivalent to saying guns kill people instead of people that use guns. The problem isn’t the tool or their point of view, or then even speaking about it - the problem comes from humans not controlling themselves. Any actor taking any adverse or malicious action inspired by words or ideas isn’t the fault of the ideator or author, but of the actor failing in self control.
Gotta reign this insanity in.
Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#134Everyone’s missing the big picture here which is that this targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented and concerning: https://decode39.com/16319/autistici-inventati-case-sets-a-n... If a radical group sets up shop on I2P, are I2P users and devs now terrorists? This is a problem. What about Monero users/devs? Veilid? Tox? Signal?
It is not unprecedented, but a lot of fools lauded moves like this when these kind of instruments were used with barely a legal net around them against islamic terrorism or cybercrime.
I'm not crying for no Al-Qaeda or 8chan, mind you. In this very year UN and ICJ officials have been targeted in a similar fashion though. When the pax americana ends like this, I don't know what else is needed for EU and Asia to raise tougher walls around the woes of any idiot hyped enough to be voted by USA citizens.
Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#135Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that. " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. " In general I think the free lunch…
There is the absolutely perfect Supreme Court case that ruled against your theory.
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1
There is a law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) that says you cant knowingly provide material support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. A law firm wanted to provide financial support and legal services to some, including the PKK (the same group A/I was accused of helping). They argued the federal law violated their first amendment rights.
The court concludes that the first amendment doesn't protect your ability to provide material support including services and communication equipment and the law still stands today.
Im curious. How would you argue the first amendment protects knowingly providing material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations?
Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is quite long, but these two give a brief idea of what is going on: a) According to that article, what it seems they are about: > Its manifesto describes the project in explicitly political terms. A/I is antifascist, anti-capitalist and antimilitarist. It promotes free software, encryption, pseudonymity and the independent circulation of knowledge and cultural work. It reserves its limited, volunteer-run…
So anti-fascism ist deemed an extreme movement by the US government? What does that say about them?
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Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which terrorist groups, specifically? And what support are they offering specifically? You say provide tools for communication. Presumably that's every communication platform worldwide - almost undoubtably some sort of terrorist has used each of them.
They provide services to PKK which is a terrorist group, specifically.
Can you demonstrate that? What evidence is there that they have provided services to PKK
Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#138Keep in mind we're talking about communications services here, and one focusing on political speech at that. " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. " In general I think the free lunch…
The current United States government is very keen on pushing the idea that there is a vast and shadowy international left-wing conspiracy waging war on it. This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
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Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#139seems like PIR (the .org registry) now also suspended their main domain: https://www.whois.com/whois/autistici.org (it is on serverHold)
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Re: U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, we are talking about a communications service , one specifically focusing on political speech . " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. " Email, chat, websites, blogs - these are a…
There is the absolutely perfect Supreme Court case that ruled against your theory. Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1 There is a law (18 U.S.C. § 2339B) that says you cant knowingly provide material support for designated foreign terrorist organizations. A law firm wanted to provide financial support and legal services to some, including the PKK (the same group A/I wa…
I didn't claim that there was no basis in the legal system for these draconian actions. Clearly there must be, or they wouldn't be happening, right? Positive arguments rooted in what is aren't terribly compelling when the government has gone off the rails (unfortunately).
From a normative what ought perspective, a rationalization from an institution that has been slowly chipping away at our Constitutional rights is not particularly compelling. "Bad facts make bad law" is a saying for a reason. You're certainly not the first to casually disregard the freedom of speech!
So make no mistake, this action here is still fundamentally about speech - regardless of the routine legal hack of focusing on the concrete embodiment of said speech to sidestep a restriction on policing the speech itself. A/I is providing a platform for speech to these other groups, which seems eminently reasonable to me. Accepting the government's arguments here would imply accepting that it's also illegal to read what a terrorist group has written, as you would be giving them "material support" by helping their writings reach you by transiting your network and processing them with your computing device.
Which is why I said "weak men create hard times". It is difficult work to look at people you disagree with and acknowledge they too have rights, especially in the face of the powerful pushing rationalizations otherwise. But it's necessary work, lest the next time political winds shift you find yourself staring down the business ends of same exact pointy sticks that you had been cheering on.