Arbitrary censorship also appears to be taking place on "take the square"

The following post led to me being unsubscribed without warning from the "takethesquare" mail list. That list also appears to be having technical issues, when trying to access the list webserver page. 

Arbitrary censorship also appears to be taking place on the "take the square" Facebook page.
This characterization appears to no longer apply:

Mission

Democracy

===========================================

Re: [Squares] Climate Alarm Global Protest in december 8



To: squares@lists.takethesquare.net




Diminishing solar activity may bring new Ice Age by 2030

https://cosmism.blogspot.com/2015/08/diminishing-solar-activity-may-bring.html


False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment

https://cosmism.blogspot.com/2011/10/can-unconscious-motivation-explain.html


dss



On 30 Oct 2018, at 02:48, niel@squat.net wrote:

I think this protest can be a good training for what is being prepared for
2020, making use of the big wave from france, belgium and some other
countries in Europe and in the world actually really mobilized for the
climate. San Francisco is also a good exemple and the US networks is ready
for something bigger. The organization in france is very huge but also
very interesting because we are not just talking about a march and i think
that we can bring some really good ideas to the international climate
protest.



Thanks Niel!

I'll add that around the previous week, just before the COP24, there are a
set of decentralized actions planned by some ogranizations from
https://beyond-coal.eu/ (and local ones) against the usage of coal, at
least in Spain. No one published anything at this moment, it's still work
in progress.

El lun., 29 oct. 2018 a las 18:27, <niel@squat.net> escribió:


A proposition of international protest from France after the big succes
of
the march for the climate in september 8 (more than 130 000 people) and
october 13:

https://www.france24.com/en/20181013-france-tens-thousands-march-demand-action-climate-change

Ong's, citizen organizations and political parties in France and Europe
are supporting this growing movement who had to become international to
have an impact on politics and are calling for a globalization of the
protest in december during the next global negociations, the COP24, who
will probably result as a big political deception for everybody. We are
working on the prolongation of the protest to make it permanent
globaly...

Summary for Policymakers: “• Fossil fuels deliver affordable, plentiful, and reliable energy that is closely associated with key measures of human development and human welfare. There is a strong positive relationship between low energy prices and economic prosperity. Economic prosperity in turn is crucial to human health and welfare. Wind and solar power are incapable of delivering the affordable, plentiful, and reliable energy that is delivered by fossil fuels. “• Fossil fuels require the development of substantially less surface area than renewable energy sources, rescuing precious wildlife habitat from development. The power density of fossil fuels enables humanity to meet its need for energy, food, and natural resources while using less surface space, rescuing precious wildlife habitat from development. In 2010, fossil fuels utilized roughly the same surface area as devoted to renewable energy sources yet delivered 110 times as much power. “• The environmental and human welfare impacts of fossil fuels are overwhelmingly positive. Sixteen of 25 identified impacts of fossil fuels are net positive. Eight are uncertain, only one is net negative. Some of the identified impacts include agriculture, air quality, extreme weather events, human health, and human mortality. “• Reducing fossil fuel use to achieve dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions would inflict tremendous economic hardship. Reducing greenhouse gases to 90 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 would require a 96% reduction in world GDP, reducing per-capita GDP to $1,200 from $30,600 now forecast. Per-capita income would be at about the level it was in the United States and Western Europe in about 1820 or 1830, before the Industrial Revolution.”

Folly and privilege of the Transhumanist movement

"The Misguided Idiot’s Quest for Immortality: A diatribe on the folly and privilege of the Transhumanist movement" is a recent article by Alex Perlman in the magazine Future Human. She states "nothing has raised my hackles as much as this movement’s quest for immortality and the ignorance of the inherent inequality of the discussion around that idea... It is irresponsible, if not actively harmful, to pursue radical life extension as a serious goal, while so many Americans fear that they won’t be able to make [it] through the next few years."

This criticism was dismissed as "journalistic idiocy," and "bio-luddism." However, the author states,
"I very much agree with ... self-experimentation and morphological freedom, and I enjoy investigating the ethical challenges associated with using scientific knowledge to enhance the limits of the human body." I commented on G+, "The author is an ethics researcher and a transhumanist. It isn't from someone who is "not able to visualize the bounty of future possibilities and progress." It is a warning that transhumanism/cryonics in the USA is on a path of self-destruction. One key failure is the lack of insight into the long-term political dynamics that will bring transhumanism/cryonics in the USA into direct confrontation with the mainstream culture.

A recent book To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell offers a similar critique. The reviewer comments, "O’Connell is a highly sceptical observer, sometimes horrified and often amused, but offers reminders that this is not a simple tale of eccentrics and the freaky fringe. Some very rich and influential people dabble in aspects of transhumanism, and his series of reports, taken together, provide a commentary on the (at times) sinister and (always) hubristic faith in technology radiating outwards from Silicon Valley."

The censorship and other attempts at "controlling the message" about cryonics is now backfiring. The pioneers of the transhumanist/cryonics movement have shown they are incapable of adjusting to the challenge of exponential growth and the need to become a mass movement. Unfortunately, the undemocratic structures in the movement make it extremely difficult to dislodge the fanatics, who at this point are promoting their own death by ignoring social and organizational dynamics. I discuss some of these issues in The Growth and Decline of Cryonics.

Transhumanism/cryonics is mostly dominated by those supporting neo-liberalism and libertarianism (as defined in the USA). As I point out in my above publication, the effect of neo-liberalism has been a stagnation in wages for the majority. An important predictor of enrollment in a cryonics suspension program is wealth: “Individuals making more than $100,000 were generally more favorably disposed toward cryonics (Badger, 1998).” We can conclude from this that the macro-economic preferences of many of those in the movement are suppressing the growth of cryonics. Many of these people see the Scottish economist Adam Smith as their intellectual father. However, this is a flawed understanding of his actual teachings. Libertarianism is even more philosophically at odds with its own roots with its worship of the "free market." 

In his video Transhumanism and Immortality, Isaac Arthur comments on how difficult it is to distinguish between science and hype when investigating this topic. He is a competent commentator on future-oriented science and technology, and considers himself to be a transhumanist. So, this should be considered to be a positive view of the state of transhumanism. Expecting the public to take transhumanism seriously is unrealistic under these circumstances.

A solution could be a comprehensive critique of the underlying philosophical positions within transhumanism. As Jones has demonstrated, unrealistic views of technology make it impossible to take transhumanism seriously. A firm grounding in accepted science combined with a peer-reviewed publication of a high scientific standard appears to be essential to escape the perception of transhumanism as a "freaky fringe" science or new-age religion. 

Rock concert with a participant from space

Rock concert with a participant from space.

Sounds of Satellites

Space

Sounds

Guidelines for breaking the law with protection from federal authorities

Then there’s Unicorn Riot’s Icebreaker series which released ICE’s handbook containing the agency’s “rules for informants, infiltration of organizations, and guidelines for breaking the law with protection from federal authorities.”  WikiLeaks posted a tweet stating that ICE undercover agents “duplicitously” marry their targets, citing part of the handbook,

“…activity involving a purported legal marriage between an undercover operative and a target or third party; or a marriage sting operation whereby an undercover operative proffers marriage to a target or third party…”

And just today, @JulianAssange tweeted,

“DHS/ICE is part of the ‘deep state.’  TV shows you border guards, but in reality, ICE is a huge intelligence operation, that sucks out information on mass from computers, phones & passes it to CIA, runs drones & expands the power of the state through increasing ‘rightless’ zones.”