Bonum Certa Men Certa

There's No Lack of Money, There's Organised Looting

"Eat The Rich" has become a famous saying in recent years...

Eat The Rich Graffiti



Summary: We need to adopt technical measures to fight back against an increasingly unjust system where a rapidly-decreasing number of people control almost everything

THE economic situation of the year 2020 is awkward. Almost all attention was paid to COVID-19, more so than the US election, rising national debt (public liabilities), austerity measures, and the surging power/wealth of Western oligarchs. "Looters" is a label used to describe the beggars, not the people who rendered them beggars (and then pretend to be "job creators" who save the world). We're supposed to blame everything on a virus; to suggest otherwise is "crazy", so it's safer to ignore that many of the bailouts (or "stimulus") ended up in offshore (tax avoidance) bank accounts of very rich people, some of whom are vaccine profiteers with a grip on the media.



"In the West, the total wealth amassed by just thousands of individuals almost exceeds the total national debt, so one might joke that all that money collectively indebted... is 'loans' from grifting oligarchs, who not only took that money but want more of it back with interest."Astoundingly enough, media in the hands of Western oligarchs refuses to call those Western oligarchs what they truly are (the term "Russian oligarchs" is more popular, albeit it describes more or less the same characteristics which we find in the West). There are protests in Russia right now, but COVID-19 is used as a pretext to arrest those who participate (the general over public there knows it's being looted by the regime and the regime arrests those who present evidence). In the West, the total wealth amassed by just thousands of individuals almost exceeds the total national debt, so one might joke that all that money collectively indebted... is 'loans' from grifting oligarchs, who not only took that money but want more of it back with interest.

Biden/Warren: Will have a lady as my VP; One that my sponsors approveWhat does any of this have to do with tech and with rights? We'll get to it in a moment.

As is widely known, technology companies (telecom, social control media, OS vendors) work towards oppressing the population on behalf of abusive regimes. Those regimes might change their faces every now and then, but the same oligarchs remain in charge 'from the shadows'...

Want a progressive person, who fights for the common man and woman?

You can't have that. All you can have is empty "MAGA" rhetoric of fascism, led and funded (literally sponsored) by oligarchs. We know their names. Some sites have the "receipts"...

Bill Gates Objects to Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax, and She Offers to Explain



The fight against economic injustice ought to focus more on sites that censor and manipulate. They're a big, big part of the problem. In some colloquial circles and jargon they're "gatekeepers"...

Biden Buffett: 'There’s been class warfare for the last 20 years, and my class has won.' -Warren BuffettThey want us to think that the reason they do all this is "social responsibility", guarding us from misinformation and dangerous lunatics such as "QAnon". But those are straw man arguments that suit their agenda.

Microsoft, Bill Gates, and Jeff Epstein aren't enemies of one another. In fact, conveniently enough the whole Epstein episode helped remove Richard Stallman (RMS of GNU fame) from power, at least temporarily. Gates and Epstein come from the same system, they were groomed by the same system, and they see eye to eye (class identity).

When one finds oneself in positions of great power, facilitated by growing wealth (partly provided by one's government in the form of military contracts among other "lucrative" contracts), one loses track of what's right and what's wrong. Power begets more power and the population is bound to lose any sense of involvement in the political process.

Microsoft, Bill Gates, and Jeff EpsteinRussia is protesting. Russia is tired of the lie that the masses should just "eat snow" and be eternally poor (the country itself -- as a whole -- isn't poor or doesn't need to be poor).

And back we come to tech and to rights. The right to express oneself is going away, but many aren't aware of it. The right to communicate with other people is also going away, and it's easier to attain that when people are home-bound and policies are passed to restrict online speech (which nowadays is almost all speech, for anything else would be "unsafe" and "irresponsible").

Techrights intends to embark on a long fight for free speech and sharing online, seeing that under all sorts of bogus pretexts (like sedition/insurrection spun as merely a "riot" to pass new laws against protests) we have speech and pen pals equated with swords.

While it's true that sometimes speech can be weaponised to incite violence, we ought not allow straw man arguments to dominate the debate/discourse. While conspiracy theories (basically nonsense) do exist, we ought not let dissatisfaction over the passage of wealth (and asymmetric power structures that imperil true democracy) be spun as "conspiracy theory" or a "call for violence".

The solutions to the existing problems would likely not be policy-based. And why? Because policy is written by (and for) the oligarchs, by proxy. They've got the system "by the balls" (or the wallets). So we must adopt technical means to bypass the abuses and weaken oligarchy. We need to bypass censorship, centralisation, surveillance and so on. Those are technical challenges. Policies won't be on our side.

Recent Techrights' Posts

In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
Slop is a disease on the Web
 
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
Links for the day
Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
Another all-time low for Windows
The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
Links for the day
Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
Big Trouble in GNOME
even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
Links for the day
Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
Welcome to the dying Web
Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
he might hop over to another European country
Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
Links for the day
Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
Links for the day
New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
Congrats to the management!
In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
"I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025