Yeah they basically exist because the nation has no army. You’ll find the occasional nutjob (Mossad? never know) insisting the Lebanese army is stronger but this is generally framed through their collaboration with the IDF to crush Hezbollah. Even if the Lebanese army was completely on board with that, it’s obviously insane, but I have also heard that from Lebanese people, that the army is not even consistently like that & many of them are too sympathetic to Hezbollah to ever actually fight them. Probably depends on the region & I’d imagine the army is trying to keep track of that “problem” internally & taking it into account when deploying it to suppress pro-Hezbollah protestors

Hezbollah parliament members have declared that this new agreement renders the internationally-recognized government illegitimate. This is theoretically sound, too. I don’t think any compradors in recent memory (ever?? I don’t want to make sweeping statements that miss some horrifying Cold War event that slipped by me tho) have gone this far to subvert the sovereignty of their nation.

As far as military control, I believe Hezbollah forces are strongest in the south. I’d ask Lebanese journalists on Xitter. They’re chatty

Find me a guy with a master’s degree in jazz guitar writing music on Vim & I’ll agree on the emacs point…

I keep saying non-nerds should be interested in Graphene. Like, if you’re hot, why let the police ogle you? People should be more paranoid! Stalkers tend to seek out positions of impunity

Not saying your dad is hot, nevermind

I think you should all be less trusting of western tech companies that strictly use infrastructure in countries that the CIA would feel comfortable hanging out & torturing people to death in

Is this not itself a geopolitical statement? Do we judge everything by indidual choices, or acknowledge the place of individuals in a wider structure they may not be entirely aware of?

You add up all we know about 5/14 eyes, comprador states, you couldn’t get a better list of CIA-compatible nations than the Mullvad server picker

Let’s just stop for a second. Cyprus? Israel? Ukraine? I know the justification. But cmon

Cheogram is $5 + $2.50/additional # and it has a data sim option that is only metered when you use it +$5 ANNUALLY, so even if you only visit the US once a year it never wastes money

I will have to try those options too but just saying cheapest option I ever found & they’re on here too a Lemmy user recommended it actually

They have a page for checking compatibility with 2FA stuff & whether it silently bounced, maybe we should make a giant page for comparing which of these numerous services cause issues with, say, Chase (holy shit chase is so annoying they will lock you out of all online & text services if you use a VOIP number aaargh, they finally admitted they do this to every # not associated with a real name, so I assume it would work if you import your old # to Cheogram)

Cheogram :D https://lemmy.ml/c/sopranica (or similar I think they moved)

Perfect for leaving the US/Canada while maintaining contact. Quite inexpensive

I mean, moderates are invariably SuperHitler, especially in Scandinavia where their social welfare is synonymous with creating apartheid, but I don’t see why that would bother most Lemmy users :0

SILENCE BRAND

Oh my gosh! Is he okay??

Lol lmao wrong one I meant your reply to the other link I posted. I don’t mean “oh this person arguing w you is so dope”

No pressure, I am a turn-based human being

He should have a missile in his hand and a burning school under his feet. This is too pleasant. Also it’s accurate.

Oh yeah my issue is with the ideology of anti-authoritarianism that all these privacy people adhere to, thanks for clarifying what you meant. Anti-authoritarianism is an ideology that crosses many academic fields, as a result of the CIA (well, the OSS started it) bankrolling loads of orgs, as well as deciding the publishing & reach of their work. Very fine process of elimination. Leftism was exploding across the humanities and history departments, they needed their own brands (so many) to swallow it all whole worldwide. They needed to explain why they were fighting the people who drove Hitler to his grave (why, Stalin is secretly superhitler, please disregard Wall St’s involvement with the Nazis and Allen Dulles’ high treason against FDR, trying to make a deal with them before the soviets swooped in).

Privacy orgs often treat US governments as at risk of devolving into authoritarianism and dictatorship, contrasted with a mix of states the west is besieging with those it has bent and shaped into internal catastrophes, like Egypt in that recent Mullvad advertisement, India which has its whole ID system (AADHAR) managed by Google and Mossad (what’s the difference at this point). But the states they treat as at risk of being corrupted are the ones running the global surveillance apparatus. They have the luxury of allowing these software solutions. They control the hardware manufacturers, they have compromised your firmware. This stuff is not opaque to them, unlike the less technologically advanced states it targets (including the satrapies it calls allies).

Would you agree, even if not with the former points (I’m sure, as this is coming from entirely different premises than yours), that historical education among STEM workers and programming hobbyists is very lax? That they trust western journalistic institutions? Leaving them wide open to this capture strategy?

Putting this last so you get the framework before the trivia gotcha type thing: Arendt was in a relationship with a Nazi and these academics deliberately whitewashed his history. When Heidegger was a rector at Freiburg he would begin his lectures with “Heil Hitler!”. Not a great authority on authoritarianism (depending on your definition, just to do the stupid wordplay)

Will try to expand on these points later, maybe someone else can help. I have to go grab a lot of this reference material as I’m typing.

Oo intriguing last guy I asked about this never answered very good

But not the best, that would be this: https://lemmy.ml/post/48487241/26181321 :)

I’m not sure what the original post was about, but it’s very true that privacy is an extemely political thing. I wonder if the open source & security communities are preparing themselves for a future where western monopolies on hardware manufacturing and datacenters slip away and they become more hostile to these things. Western nonprofits funded mostly by corporations, and academia, these are totally bound by legality and could disappear with a few penstrokes. Autopen sorry

Legend of Grimrock 2. It was high school though, so I was really into sword-and-sorcery. It is very old school design, meant to be nostalgic for games I was too young to ever play. Very clicky. You’ll see. It ends up feeling like a rhythm game almost.

I can abide evil, but surveillance against Europeans 😱

Yeah it’s just easy to use and cheap. I know it’s CIA. So is my ISP. Neither are seriously bound by legality.