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.
> the reason why the 4 is tolerated but the 8 got axed is that 4 is a honeypot and 8 wasn't
That's certainly a take.
My personal take is that 4chan actually complies with the US laws, specifically the ones around promptly removing+reporting any illegal content that the US cares about (e.g., terrorism threats/CSAM/etc.), and 8chan doesn't.
Out of curiosity, what makes you consider 4chan to be a honeypot, as opposed to it just being a platform that simply complies with the relevant laws?
I will admit, I've spent barely a few minutes on 8 in my lifetime, so I am not equipped to judge the nuance of their situation much. With 4 though, it's been an on-and-off thing for me over the past ~15 years.
I think the same people who opposed a/i sanctions (not AI sanctions but they're really missing out by not exploiting that confusion) also opposed sanctions for """islamic terrorism""" and for """cybercrime""".
To some thin extent (opposition to racial profiling and big copyright), mayhaps. People protest against Guantanamo, not for ISIS, and protest against identification, not for looking at pedo porn.
It's the logic of Jack Bauer taken to the end. "Come on, it's obvious who the bad guys are, who needs rules?" until suddenly it's not obvious anymore...
My conspiracy theory is that "24" was funded by the CIA (etc.) to build public support for measures like the Patriot Act. "24" debuted 11 days after the Patriot Act became law, so they were being worked on at the same time.
It doesn’t even need to be secret or underhanded. The government can simply foster the media that drives their strategic goals. Same kind of idea as stochastic terror.
Is that even a conspiracy? It's well documented how closely the military works with Hollywood -- of course government apparatuses are interested in funding media that aligns with their goals.
> On October 23, 2001, U.S. representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the month.[5] The next day, October 24, the Act passed the House by a vote of 357–66,[6] with Democrats comprising the overwhelming majority of "no"-votes.
> The bill, which removed most of the changes from the Senate version, passed Congress on March 2, 2006, and was signed by President Bush on March 9 and 10 of that year.
It’s a conspiracy theory in that there’s no evidence of funding, support, or even cooperation in the particular case of “24”.
The 24 pilot was filmed before 9/11. After 9/11, the show had to be modified because reality has become uncomfortably close to it. That included delaying the premiere and removing a scene involving an exploding passenger aircraft.
That article mentions that some of those shows relied on government consultation, with the CIA and FBI, to help with realism, etc. “24” was not one of them. “24” co-creator Joel Surnow is on record saying there was no government involvement.
Quote from the WP for context:
> Coming this fall [2001]: A new primetime drama series takes a close-up look at an elite federal agency and the dedicated men and women who hunt deadly terrorists and treacherous criminals.
> The new show's on CBS. It's also on NBC. And ABC. And Fox.
Some years it's twenty-something sitcoms. Sometimes it's doctors, or vermin-oriented "reality" shows. This fall, the trend is Fed TV: No fewer than five new network series depict the exploits of people with civil-service pay grades, shiny employee ID badges and very large guns.
But it was “24” that did the most to normalize the “torture the bad guys till they reveal the plot” and other such right-wing wet dreams.
Torturing bad guys isn’t “right wing” lol. The second season came out my freshman year of college, and about a dozen of us in our dorm watched it religiously every week. I’m pretty sure only two of us were republicans. The show had universal appeal (to men). There’s like a dozen Bollywood knock offs of the show.
Why do you need the detour through the CIA? Our de jure Constitutional government is merely part of a much larger de facto government formed by large corporations and the billionaire (oligarch) class. The same group of people who funded the lobbyists that had the "Patriot" Act ready and waiting on September 10th also funded "24", the politicians and think tanks behind the Iraq War, and so on. The main difference is that production of "24" was a direct bona fide business expense for tax purposes.
You may be unaware, but the EU, India, and China have also engaged in their own versions of economically-pressured internet presence takedowns of international activists and dissidents they label subversive. The degree differs according to leverage and their constitutional reasoning, but there is no spirit of opposition to this type of policy if that’s what you’re imagining.
There is a difference between failing to condemn something and gloating/supporting attacks on liberty simply because one's favored political team is now doing it.
Any western /b/ and /pol/ is or has been a church for an ideology of fascism and pedophilia, furthermore politicians and cops LOVE to blame the platform when someone posts a manifesto and then exit the house to kill people with guns. They tend to spot this pattern because they disrupt grassroots movement just like that: agent provocateurs or controlled places will work to ensure that the status quo will not change no more than what is tolerated.
My limits for free speech are very broad and would certainly tolerate a lot of 8chan, but don't ask me to close my eyes and don't ask me to be sympathetic
It's a politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, we make technology that gets around the laws. Governments must increase their tyranny just to maintain the same level of control they had before. The result is either an uncontrollable population, or a totalitarian state.
I always hoped we'd find some sort of equilibrium. A state where governments learn to tolerate some crime because fully policing them would require crossing serious lines. It's becoming increasingly clear though that governments have no limits. There is no cost they are unwilling to pay in the name of maintaining their own power.
I'd say the more salient dynamic is mass communication increasing the power of propaganda (now individually tailored!) making it so people are increasingly tolerant those lines being crossed. People voted for this, right? There are legitimate understandable gripes underlying Trumpism. Propaganda is able to use that frustration as raw input, and twist it to convince people to support things that directly make their gripes worse! How much did we hear about inflation and the price of eggs, and yet forty trillion dollars more in the hole and now they cheer for it.
Sometime during the Obama years I came up with the realization that the primary information flow in democracy (especially a two-party democracy like the US) isn't the commonly accepted people->government, but rather goes parties->people. The act of "choosing" a candidate makes people have an affinity for everything that politician goes on to do, even when they would have rejected most of it. Trumpism, specifically how people who considered themselves "conservative" didn't look at his abject failure of a first term and send him permanently packing in favor of someone with leadership or patriotism, has thoroughly proven this out.
Monero is delisted from exchanges in Canada because the anonymity makes it impossible to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. It makes it a lot harder to acquire the coins or to turn them into liquidity. The government is also going hard against encryption with law c-22, which will make Signal stop providing service in the country.
This isn't comparable to the legality issues in particular countries, a comparatively minor threat for FOSS software projects. If the US declares your organization as terrorist, you'll lose banking access globally by leveraging the SWIFT system. The US influence has always been problematic, but this is now blatantly abused for MAGA populism.
All this means eg. Signal would not be able to escape jurisdictions, because no bank anywhere relevant will endanger their SWIFT access opposing the US. Sanctioned Signal would stop providing services for everyone, since they can't pay for servers, neither being able to receive donations, nor wire any money themselves. It's similar prior situations involving payment processors (e.g. in case of Wikileaks), but has totalitarian reach affecting almost all banking globally.
This is hardly unprecedented -- in fact, it looks like the US government has learned a thing or two from the anti-spam community. If you actually want to block e-mail or newsgroup spam at its source, you don't complain to the spammer themselves, but rather to their mail/news provider, and if that doesn't work, you escalate the issue to the upstream provider, the hosting company for the spammer's website, the registrar for the spammer's domain names, and so on. This is time-consuming but is sometimes effective. (Of course, dedicated spammers may then switch providers, or start employing distributed botnets of zombified residential devices, but knocking out their infrastructure at least temporarily does disrupt their operations for a time and drives up their cost of business to the point where they may reduce or even cease their activity.)
There is a balance that needs to be struck between freedoms and rule of law and it's quite rare to be able to actually have discussions about how to strike that balance because most folks willing to discuss have a simplistic but vaguely absolute position favoring one extreme or another and can never come to the point of deciding of where to draw the lines of enough freedom or enough control.
If you have real operational security concerns, your provider shouldn't know anything about you; should in fact have bilateral shielding between themselves and you to prevent either counterparty from learning stuff. That's how Signal works.
But Signal requires a working phone number for registration and it knows the phone number. The backend could be modified at any time to store this somewhere else while maintaining end to end encryption between the two parties communicating on it. How can Signal prove continuously that it doesn’t store or disseminate the phone number? I know in past precedent it has told courts that it only has very limited information (date of account creation and the last time of account access).
There's all sorts of things any service provider could do to sleuth out who its users are. The implication of this OFAC determination is that A/I didn't need to sleuth anything out; they are accused of knowingly and deliberately assisting the PKK.
Right, I'm only moved to comment by the implications being drawn on this thread that Signal and WhatsApp are next. Different fact patterns and different legal standards.
This is about finances. If the US declares you a terrorist organization, you cannot do any banking anymore, even outside the US, since most banks do not want to gamble on SWIFT access.
Since the US considers anything "antifa" as terrorism now, it already had most concerning distant effects last year. See GLS bank cancelling Rote Hilfe in Germany. 1933 was the last time Rote Hilfe was cancelled, btw. It's an antifa OG. Pretty good indicator about the status quo..
Anyway, look at e.g. GrapheneOS, which is already treated as probable cause by law enforcement. Encrypted messaging also super sus. Thing is, funding can't escape jurisdictions. Signal servers are not running on love and fellowship, but donations and public money. Opsec won't protect your software stack's foundation against US finance attacks.
This OFAC action isn't based on "antifa", though the press release predictably takes shots at it. It's based on three designated foreign terrorist organizations, notably the PKK.
> It's based on three designated foreign terrorist organizations, notably the PKK.
In this context, "designated foreign terrorist organizations" is not an explanation, but a tautology. The matter at hand is how and why something got onto that list.
The antifa remark relates to the Rote Hilfe situation. In my opinion, it's an example of how populist rhetoric became a major overreach with real consequences prior to the incident at hand. Rote Hilfe had a very weak relation to "Antifa Ost" (hardly worth US attention). That's how they got cancelled: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
So the antifa moral panic is indeed very much relevant.
I checked for an official PKK YouTube channel. I found that they don’t have one as they’re a designated foreign terrorist organization* and Google complies with that designation by not allowing them an official presence. Unsure about the others but I doubt any of those companies would allow an official account. Probably individuals that belong to that group have accounts but I don’t know that for sure.
* I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruled that knowingly providing material support to designated terrorist organizations is not protected by the first amendment. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/561/1
But I'm curious about your take on this. How would you argue the first amendment protects this?
So it's trivial that if you are the government and you want to arrest someone for speech, you first call them a terrorist organisation and then you can arrest them for speech? Ridiculous.
Have we forgotten Megaupload? Napster? Limewire? BitTorrent?
Anyone setting up infrastructure has to consider, in the very least, how this will be used for CSAM in particular but sure, I guess terrorism too. Years ago we had The Office make a joke about this where the company website for selling paper was overtaken by child predators.
This is one reason why we have centralized infrastructure and not federated infrastructure. All the platforms we have have the capability to report content, automatically scan pictures, images and text and to respond to law enforcement. You need all of those processes.
> targeting of infrastructure providers as “terrorists” is unprecedented
It is not unprecedented though. The US military empire always was supported
by the business empire and corruption empire. Trump and his BigBro Epstein
party-goers just make it much more obvious. In reality the terrorists are in
the US government primarily.
> If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US have all deemed a terrorist organization for over 20 years, then of course the US should sanction them and they have no moral ground to stand on.
No moral ground to stand on? Would you say that about Amazon who supports the US regime, which is in the business of bombing Iranian schoolgirls? Is that less terrorist?
This collective of course has much more of a moral ground to stand on than indeed Amazon.
> Would you say that about Amazon who supports the US regime, which is in the business of bombing Iranian schoolgirls? Is that less terrorist?
Strictly speaking, unintended collateral damage of civilians in a war does not fulfill the definition of terrorism. The attack on Iranian school was to the best of my knowledge a mistake stemming from old intel. Terrorism is deliberate attack on civilians to achieve a political goal.
>The attack on Iranian school was to the best of my knowledge a mistake stemming from old intel.
Bloomberg piece on this topic:
>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe
>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.
>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.
>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.
Strictly speaking, no. If you're going to play semantics, you first need to define how "unintended" is "unintended". If I drive down the highway at 200mph and get someone killed, is this unintentional? Now what if I do so in a crowded street? If I'm sending a missile at a country, how much effort do I need to put into research to be able to say it was "collateral" damage? If I aim them completely randomly, then what's the verdict?
If you're going to go down the semantics route, every word needs proper inspection. You're focusing on only one of them, "terrorism".
Luckily though, we don't need to; the US does more than enough intentional extrajudicial executions of civilians on its own. Even just considering one particular area where it does them, and then only the ones we know about, we're at about 227 civilian executions in just the last few years [0].
I think that when you’re bombing thousands of targets, a 0.1-1% targeting error rate leads to dozens of unintended collateral hits (and thousands of civilians dead) — and is among the many reasons wars are horrific.
>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 make the fiber optics?
(has anyone checked who is providing terrorists with electricity?)
All the providers you mention here work with the US government in situations where their platforms are being used by terrorist organizations. It sounds like the a/i folks are specifically offering free services to a militant group, so that's why they're being sanctioned. I don't think your argument flies.
My point is, most people are looking for strategies that actually make sense. Shutting down Google to stop terrorism, even when Google is already cooperating with the US government, makes no sense.
>To be explicitly clear, a "neutral infrastructure provider" does not describe A/I so your scenario is hypothetical.
i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers (that's why i quoted the part of your comment that i did)
>No, because they actively respond to removal request.
there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known. right now, meta is facilitating significantly more terrorism than a/i.
in any case, this isn't really about terrorism. they've just overused the child-safety angle lately, and needed to drum up some anti-privacy/anti-encryption using the terrorism card.
>So no one knows about these conversations but you know there are orders of magnitude more? Walk me through that.
sure. whatsapp is used by literal billions of people. add in a few more billion people through facebook, instagram, gmail, outlook, amazon.
would you like me to walk through the statistics calculations? or can you extrapolate from the billions of users? now make a guess how many people a/i has facilitated. a few thousand? a hundred thousand?
>Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political extremists.
because it demonstrates that the goal is not to curtail terrorism.
Wait, is this the right analysis? WhatsApp doesn't enter into any kind of agreement with organizations using it about their political alignment or objectives. The allegation (I have no idea how valid it is) is that A/I does.
upthread, nonethewiser said "They aren't some neutral infrastructure provider. __And even if they were that doesn't mean the US shouldn't sanction them for supporting terrorism.__"
emphasis mine. my assertion is that whatsapp, a neutral provider, facilitates more terrorists than a/i. i.e., the US should consider sanctioning them, if we are to follow nonethewiser's recommendation.
(to be clear, i'm on the pro-privacy, pro-encryption side, and don't actually think the US should be sanctioning whatsapp)
Right, I get that. I'm also not taking a position on this (in particular, the PKK seems like a Europe problem, not a US problem, and if Europe doesn't care I don't see why we should.)
But the analysis isn't based on "which service enables more terrorists". By that logic, forget WhatsApp, forget Signal; Google Mail probably runs the table in absolute numbers. But all three of those services assist terrorists without any deliberation or really even actual knowledge on the part of the providers.
from this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479169 on, i was talking about the neutral providers and the claim that neutral providers should also be subject to sanctions.
>without any deliberation or really even actual knowledge on the part of the providers.
i think we agree that this is an implicit requirement of being considered a neutral provider.
so, to claim neutral providers should be subject to sanctions implies that a provider who does not know or purposefully facilitate terrorists should still be subject to sanctions (gmail, whatsapp, signal, amazon, etc.)
then we got sidetracked by me being asked how can i possibly know that meta/google/etc. facilitate more terrorists than a/i. which i, and seemingly you, agree is a pretty obvious answer given the scale of the organizations. and i was asked to "walk them through that".
i would agree there as long as the providers are actually neutral they should be free from culpability. we shouldn't encourage providers to restrict who they serve because of potential liability, that's giving them way to much power.
Isn't forcing a provider to do business with everyone who asks just as bad? You're saying noblogs should be compelled to host nazi blogs. (Actual Nazis, not a euphemism. People who want Jews to be gassed.) You're also saying wedding cake bakers should be compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings.
> (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.
did you read the part where nonethewiser said "And even if they were [neutral] that doesn't mean the US shouldn't
sanction them for supporting terrorism."?
the double-negative might be confusing, so we can reword it to: "And even if they were neutral, the US should sanction them for supporting terrorism"
Did they? There's a lot of implication with that "if", and I saw someone else point out (albeit rudely) that anything that may have supported them was taken down.
we should be careful not to assume that the eu, uk and us set a good moral standard to follow.
you might ask who is right; the groups like google providing services to the us military, or the groups providing services to those opposing the us military.
> If they choose to support the PKK, which the EU, UK, and US
But they are not choosing to support the PKK.
They accuse it of being “a major far-left tech collective whose services are used by the most active and violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world.”
The far left is a terrorist group? Where are all these violent "antifa cells"?
They labeled this groups as a terrorist organization so they could claim that anyone protesting the fascist Trump regime will easily be labeled terrorists and thrown in jail without a trial.
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 all speech! A/I's overt political statement (that you are indicting them for) points to their primary interest being to facilitate political speech - a type of speech with some of the strongest protections (that whole "assemble ... and petition the Government" thing)
Beyond that, they're presumably a neutral conduit like every other service provider. If some users of their services are communicating to coordinate crimes, then unless A/I is getting directly involved in those conversations (with the government producing hard evidence of this), it's the exact same dynamic as every other email/hosting provider.
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.
US courts have made many decisions that go against the US Constitution. This is an example. Notice the US Constitution says Congress cannot do that, period. And it doesn't limit that only to laws concerning US citizens, differently from other articles and amendments that explicitly say this is for citizens only, and that for non-citizens. And yet, the many SCOTUS incarnations look at that and go "naaah!" because reasons.
That's why the US Constitution Americans know is a few pages long, while the one actual US judges, lawyers etc. use is a massive 3,000 pages long volume. That's what it takes to rhetorically weasel oneself away from most of what those few initial pages do say.
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.
They're not being targeted for terrorist activity per se; they're being targeted for providing material assistance to terrorists.
Per the Treasury Department:
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
"Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism." https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
Per the State Department: "The A/I Collective provides encrypted tools and services to numerous violent far-left extremist groups operating in the United States and around the world. Many of these groups have relied on the A/I Collective’s digital infrastructure to plot or incite violent attacks, recruit others to engage in criminal activity, publish official communiqués by U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, and disseminate maps of critical infrastructure, along with instructions for building improvised explosive and incendiary devices – all routed through a network of foreign servers intended to conceal criminal activity from law enforcement." They then go on to list the specifics. (https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...)
> Only months after Paranoia [their first server] went online, the G8 came to Genoa. Many A/I participants were also involved with Indymedia Italy. They helped construct the movement’s media center, laying cables, configuring servers and building workstations through which protesters could report what was happening across the city. What followed was historic: enormous demonstrations, the police killing of Carlo Giuliani, indiscriminate beatings in the streets, torture and abuse inside the Bolzaneto barracks and the nighttime raid on the Diaz school. Official narratives competed with photographs, recordings and firsthand testimony transmitted through independent infrastructure. Genoa became one of the earliest major demonstrations to be documented from nearly every direction by its participants rather than exclusively through institutional media.
Very curious. My latest submission is the video of Larry Ellison with the "The police will be on their best behavior[,] Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on". (It was triggered by a piece on TheOnion.)
Turns out, other people had been recording events, so that a covering narrative may not prevail over the truth.
>[The US State Dept's] examples include alleged railway and pipeline sabotage in Europe, attacks on energy infrastructure, Rose City Antifa, resistance to Atlanta’s proposed police-training center, Jane’s Revenge and publications carrying statements attributed to armed organizations.
At least one of these things is not like the others. Why are peaceful protests against "Cop City" (Atlanta's proposed police-training center) lumped in with violent attacks on infrastructure? This isn't the first time either - Samuel Tunick, the man who was charged with destruction of evidence for giving his duress pin to the CBP agents, was being investigated for his connection to the Cop City protests.[1]
And as others have said, what does it say about the current US admin that they are designating "anti-fascist" groups as terrorists? I will say, at least unlike Cop City protests afaik, Rose City Antifa seems willing to use violence to accomplish their goals.[2]
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 resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.
b) And the issue U.S. has with them:
> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.
> they oppose the very system they are trying to use and exist within.
Is there a way to not exist within capitalism and fascism while opposing it? You speak about it like this is some hypocrisy on their part. Is it not the rhetorical equivalent of "oh, you're drowning?? but you're IN WATER.."?
> Maybe not violently, but hardly can one expect sympathies, especially from system itself.
I would never expect the law to be sympathetic to anyone. I want the law to be fairly written, and equally applied. But unfortunately we're living in a time when you can get a life sentence for photocopying an anti-ice zine.
You are ok with 7 people getting life sentences because one person fired a gun in the middle of absolute chaos with no evidence the shot was premeditated or planned by the group?
And surely those swastika carriers are getting similar sentences... right?
Storm the capital to overthrow an election, get a pardon. Photocopy an anti-ice zine, get life in prison. Makes sense.
OKRainbowKid asked if antifascism is an extreme movement.
xienze said that an organization which defines itself as antifascist COULD be extreme.
You're asking for a definition of terrorism so you can say that A/I is not a terrorist organization. But that's not what's being argued.
xienze is saying that antifascists CAN be terrorist, not that all of them are. For example, the Red Army Faction committed numerous terrorists acts: bombings, kidnappings, murders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction#Criminal_acts
OKRainbowKid, of course, started from a false premise that "antifascists" are being persecuted because they're against "fascism".
Is there any indication or proof that they are providing services to PKK? Equating supporting protest organizers in the west with supporting an armed terrorist group is laughable and dangerous.
Having "pro-PKK views" (or for other groups designated as terrorists for that matter) is not against the law in the US as that is a first amendment right (as long as that speech is not support).
I clicked around a bit, read the manifesto, I still have no idea what these people do. I guess they claim to have been around for a while, but a bunch of the links don't work and the manifesto has definitely been updated to reflect 2026 opinions.
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.
they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)
The very first sentence on their about page says they "provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements"
It also says their manifesto was written in 2002.
You can use the Wayback machine to see older versions.
> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.
Yeah, that says pretty much nothing about what they do. It reads like an enterprise tech company webpage saying "we provide solutions to help transform your company into the digital age".
I would say they are pretty "mainstream" (or very widespread) in some territories. I have seen bartenders wearing those 'anti-' terms on their t-shirts at work.
Autistici/Inventati is an Italian collective, active since around 2001, that runs free digital services for activists, grassroots groups and anyone who wants to communicate without being profiled.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
Anyone that politically aligns with them. They say that explicitly:
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
They don't receive any money for this. It's 100% volunteer services.
Obviously not to fascists, and if you look at their website they make it very clear that you need to align ideologically and explain why and how you will use their services
Do the US then also sanction themselves? Cause the numer of people they have killed in that region of the globe since 1984 easily exceeds that number by orders of magnitude.
And the platform hasn't done any killing. They merely provide email etc. Are we going to sanction road builders too because a murderer has driven on their road since 1984?
The US sanctions the PKK because we're obliged to do so by our NATO ally Turkey, which gave rise to the PKK by carrying out a genocide against its local Kurdish population.
Meanwhile the SDF, the armed wing of the PYD, follows the same ideology as the PKK and was trained in military tactics by the PKK, and was among our chief allies against ISIS. They fought alongside US soldiers and we even supplied them with small arms.
The history of the PKK is complicated and the state they struggle against has a long history of genocide and (more recently) outright dictatorship. The relation of these countries to the PKK isn't ultimately determined by the PKK's history, morality, ideology, or even the use of terrorist tactics per se.
If you're curious about the bigger picture, there's actually an organized movement whose aim is to "de-list the PKK" as a terrorist organization, and that's probably a good place to start: https://www.peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/activities/delist-t...
There are also some books and some academic papers on the history of the PKK and their ideology. Those written by independent academics are generally neither fully condemnatory nor exculpatory towards the PKK, but give a clear sense of how the term "terrorism" and its use is at least contestable, geopolitical, etc. And any familiarity at all with the history of the conflict makes it clear that the Turkish government is likewise guilty of state terror conducted against Kurdish civilian populations in Turkey for generations now.
"Al-Sharaa, who until recently was known by his alias "al-Julani," was a longtime jihadist who was part of the ranks of organizations associated with al-Qaida and ISIS, and even orchestrated an attack against Israel – milestones that led to his designation as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the US, with a reward of approximately $10 million for information leading to his capture. President Trump decided to lift the sanctions on al-Sharaa, who has transformed into a political leader following the collapse of the Assad regime in December, when he assumed Syria's presidency as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham."
This tidbit should show people how the line between "terrorist", "freedom fighter" and "useful lackey" is razor thin.
You should never take the "terrorist" label at face value.
The US funded the Mujaheddin in the 80s in Afghanistan. Their first moves upon receiving the weapons was to throw grenades through the windows if Girls' schools.
They began as the "useful lackey", and the US lost control of the Wahabist movement that was amplified to fight Communism. Then they were "freedom fighters" to the religious extremists, and "terrorists" to fight a war against.
In your own example, Al-Sharaa(a product of weaponizing Wahhabism) did actual terrorism, and then was able to squeeze back into the "useful lackey" position, like many "terrorist"s have before him.
Is that more, or less, than the 1.2 million people Musk has killed so far with the illegal dismantlement of USAID? Musk aggressively advocates for the forcible ethnic cleansing of Europe.
I see people posting links to x.com which he uses to promote those views as well as platform other hate groups calling for violence and genocide against immigrants, trans people, etc.
Do acts gain moral validity under color of law alone?
Does AWS do business with anyone? Like the Israeli government who has been labeled perpetrators of genocide by the UN ~1 year ago because they've killed tens of thousands in Palestine since 2023?
> The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
> The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
> In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
a/I collective in the OP is the third on this list.
> based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world
Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable). Masar Badil supports "armed struggle". One of the other groups ("hammer") recently designated a terrorist group (and linked to A/I Collective in another article I read ) got its name by attacking people in Germany with hammers.
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"
Right. But when when a group blows up hospitals, schools and other infrastructure and murders 70,000 civilians (Israel)... Why is that not disignated terrorism?
You're not suggesting that most, if not all of these, are things the US hasn't done, are you? Surely not. The one you might try and dispute is the "50,000 protestors" one, as you know the other ones are clear as day.
I notice people always respond with "but the US does this too!" and never actual incidents. No, I'm not going to just high five your vague head nod at wrong doing you can't even describe.
Seriously, sit down, make a list of incidents, including weighing the outcome of those incidents. If it's a case where an officer or a soldier did something wrong, list what happened after (court, punishment, cleared of wrongdoing, etc)
Then do the same for your favorite alternate country that you think is superior. If you want to pick team Iran or Russia, then lay it out for them. Make the same list.
The shootings took place on May 4, 1970, during a rally opposing the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces, as well as protesting the National Guard presence on campus and the draft. Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom sustained permanent paralysis.
Eight of the shooters were charged with depriving the students of their civil rights, but were acquitted in a bench trial.
I'm not going to make an exhaustive list of all the terrible shit perpetrated by the US government and its agents. It would be too detrimental to my health. But you choosing to bury your head doesn't prove anything either, so I guess I have one up on you.
The obvious key to the whole charade
Would be to run down all of the games they played:
Remember Dita Beard and ITT, the slaughter of Attica
The C.I.A. in Chile knowing nothing about Allende at this time
In the past, as I recollect, Augusta, Georgia
The nomination of Supreme Court Jesters to head off the tapes
William Calley's Executive Interference in the image of John Wayne
Kent State, Jackson State, Southern Louisiana
Hundreds of unauthorized bombing raids
The chaining and gagging of Bobby Seale
Somebody tell these Maryland Governors to be for real!
You have a very nuanced take that I broadly agree with. I would add that they were probably targeted for political reasons, it's not like the current administration is going out of their way to tackle right wing "terrorism".
> Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft
This is already an extreme perversion of justice all on its own. Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism. This is simply armed conflict.
Damaging property for political ends has been part of the definition in the UK, and I think the US, for decades. I would say the case for targetting military equipment is stronger than for damaging most other things.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
Well the definition is flawed, or as the British say, the law is an ass.
Terrorism is widely understood to be the deployment of military force against civilian populations. Of course states do this all the time, but 'state terrorism' is basically dependent on whether politicians in country A align with country B or not; if they don't, they'll call out state abuses in country B as state terrorism, if not they'll say it's law and order.
Regardless of these nuances, extending the definition to include any kind of property damage is just laughably opportunist.
> Damaging property for political ends has been part of the definition in the UK, and I think the US, for decades.
Does that include property in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon? Because if the people who spray painted something are "terrorists", I want to know what the people who wiped Rafah off the face of the earth are called.
> Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
I think it’s worth considering that you’re much more likely to be a resident or a citizen than a state when you’re deciding how you feel about these kinds of things.
Damaging military equipment is a military end, not a political one. If it were otherwise, then a military attacking a military would definitionally be terrorism. At that point, you've removed the utility of the word "terrorism" from English and made it synonymous with "armed conflict."
Terrorism being done chiefly to change policies by terrorizing people through symbolic acts is a constrained, generally-accepted definition of terrorism.
Contrast with 9/11, where symbols of American capitalism, filled with civilians, were attacked in order to terrify people who have nothing to do with those buildings into supporting changes in policy that hurt the US.
I suppose the UK could declare Palestine Action as combatants and hunt them down and shoot them.. but that doesn't seem very uh, appropriate. I sort of prefer them being arrested and going through courts.
Note that the UK would be committing war crimes in this case, since you are not allowed to murder unarmed soldiers, you are supposed to capture them and put them in POW camps.
Which is typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens…
> Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism.
I hope no one takes this seriously.
If you're caught sabotaging equipment on a US military installation in many cases they are authorized to use deadly force and you'll be held accountable under the UCMJ. The absolute best outcome is you're designated a terrorist and live to see a prison cell.
The labeling of groups as "terrorist" is intended to justify authorization for military action against those groups, where, prior to the Global War on Terror, state affiliation or outright sponsorship was typically needed for a military response.
I am not an expert on the legalities. My impression is that, if they are terrorists, you kind of have to catch them in the act, or preparing to act, or providing support for actions. An army, in wartime, can be attacked in broader circumstances.
> Palestine Action has been designated a terrorist group in the UK as well after sabotaging military aircraft (the article says they sprayed paint, but does not say it was sprayed inside jet engines, rendering them inoperable).
That pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Definitions of "terrorism" that extend to sabotage against occupying or invading militaries and their allies are meaningless and hollow dilutions. At that point the discourse has been reduced to something like "violence is scary".
This use is also interesting (and galling) because it frames disarming as an unacceptably violent act.
There are some definitions of terrorism that leave room to designate attacks against professional agents of state violence as "terror", e.g., attacks on soldiers who are off-duty, attacks on civilian police forces, attacks on nominally civilian intelligence organizations like the CIA, etc.
Imo such uses of the words "terror" and "terrorism" should be considered carefully, because sometimes they are meaningful or useful, but often they are essentially attempts to hoodwink the public. Effectively they are designed so that any attack against an occupying army by a faction too weak to muster a permanent standing army of equal strength falls into the "terrorism" category, which means invasion is "war" but resistance is "terrorism".
The notion of "civilian" or "non-combatant" isn't always straightforward, either. In the history of the PKK, for example, one of the "civilian" forces targeted by bombings and shootings were a local militia whose sole purpose was suppressing popular unrest among local Kurdish populations who were forbidden from speaking their own native languages, celebrating their holidays, etc. Formally these militias were not part of an army. But their scarcely concealed function was suppression of the local population, unlike (for example) a proper civilian police force whose role is at least nominally to promote public safety, assist vulnerable (weak, elderly, disabled) citizens with daily life, investigate crimes, mediate/de-escalate disputes, etc.
Anyway, it's worth sitting down and thinking through a few different serious definitions of terrorism and asking yourself what use they are. One or more definitions will likely stand out to you as particularly useful when it comes to thinking through things like the safety of innocents, the morality and bounds of acceptable political activism, and other topics that might directly affect your comfort and safety. You'll often find that governments and large press organizations try to trade on the emotional impact of those definitions while operating under rather different ones that are more convenient for themselves.
As far as I can tell, there were no credible criminal charges against this group, except that they are effective organizers on the opposite side of political spectrum. In the White House’s deranged logic, this qualifies them to be officially designated as domestic terrorists [1].
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
This administration is on a witch hunt for anything they can identify as "antifa" when no such central organization insists. Instead it's being used as an over broad label to attack organized opposition to it's broadly unpopular policy agenda.
(If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)
Exactly. Antifa is short for "opposed to fascism". Which, you know, is the bad thing where you hurt a lot of people just because they are different from the "group" you defined, with the aim of spoliating the outsiders to enrich the members, or make them an inferior cast, etc...
Having to explain why fascism is to be fought against...
Ugh, what a world. Not even science-fiction writers dared to write such a nonsensical reality.
Nomenclature alone is meaningless. Is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which professes anti-fascist messaging and motives both democratic and anti-fascist? I wouldn't assume every "antifa" group is principled and accurate in its diagnosis of what fascism is and who are acceptable targets for their outgroup directed aggression.
Perhaps not, but this administration is in no way principled or accurate in its diagnosis of anything so their labelling of any group doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
NK is a dictatorship. I don't know where you got the misunderstanding that they would be "anti-fascist".........
Anti fascist => anti dictatorship.
Anti fascist means that you don't like fascism and that you are not going to let it happen passively.
(Tired of explaining the obvious. But I guess that somebody has to.)
A dictatorship mechanically leads to a situation where the governing group is working for their own wealth, thus in this case the "group" is the governing class. The extent and definition of that class is voluntarily limited so that wealth and power converges to them.
Now you see it? Yes that is a fascism, meaning that:
dictatorship => fascism
And the reverse stems from the "groupism" (i.e. tribalism) of fascism, which entails that you need exclude large portions of the population from the political system.
As this "group" definition becomes narrower and narrower (in order to make more wealth converge to the alleged "true humans" of its center), it becomes a harsher and harsher dictatorship, and finally a strongman regime.
The point is that people who proclaim themselves "antifa", be they in dictatorial power over half of Korea, or merely a band of organized activists, are not automatically due credibility and trust because of some grammatical fixation that magically guarantees alignment. Do you only become skeptical when the message is twisted after winning power?
"Antifa" factions in the Spanish Civil War ultimately did not win and accidentally enable a Spanish DPRK, but they still were perfectly capable of being and doing evil, such as committing mass rape and shooting of nuns.
If this wasn't so poorly written I'd have assumed it's GPT-3 slop.
OP's point is that a group's name does not necessarily hold any link to their activities, so an "anti fascist" group could very well be doing fascist activities themselves, name notwithstanding.
And if a Christian group is doing Demonic stuff that's a problem.
And seeing slop where there is not, you are being rude to me without purpose.
Not everybody is born in an English-speaking country.
I laid down the ideas logically, maybe that is what sounded foreign to you.
By the way you are the person writing nonsensical stuff such as "Antifa is a terrorist organization", while everybody is repeating tirelessly that it is just an adjective meaning to be opposed to fascism:
No any such organization exists. It is a movement, and a description one can describe one's self or actions: "anti-fascist".
But of course, their logic for sanctioning-by-association would mean that they all - Trump, Bessent, Rubio etc. - with their innumerable contacts with "violent terrorist groups and regimes" everywhere around the world, and just themselves really - should have been sanctioned, arrested, tried, or just disposed of like the US does with so many it dislikes.
Yes. The president fomented a violent insurrection and then pardoned its participants (who should all still be in prison). He shouldn't be in office and you could similarly sanction his own social media platform, X and any other number of their supporters.
> A/I (Autistici/Inventati, pronounced [au’tistiʧi]-[iŋ’vɛntati], or [iŋvɛn’tati]) was born in 2001 from an encounter of individuals and collectives of the autonomous anticapitalist movement interested in technology and active in the digital rights struggle. We believe that this world is far from being the best world possible. We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals.
> All of our services are provided for free, without any form of control or commoditization of the personal user data. We don’t receive any form of compensation for our work. We are volunteers exploiting the experiences we accumulated over years of technological, political and legal research while doing radical activism, and we are motivated and inspired by the principles of solidarity and self organization.
From their about page:
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements. Our principles are fairly straightforward: the world should not be run on money, should be rooted in solidarity, community, mutual help, equal rights and freedom, and social justice. Easy, isn’t it? We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism. On top of that, one has to share our basic attitude towards money and the capitalistic world: a deep feeling of uneasyness and unrest.
Given administration's obsession with Antifa being in the room with them at all times, it's impossible to take anything they say in relation to this as even close to factual.
Remember, Trump and his cultists are symptoms -- not the cause. I.E. Cuba's embargo was in place long before the orange buffoon, and that is the same force at play here. Fear that the people will get a taste of a fairer, more just alternative.
> “are you antifa or are you fa?”
Keep 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 of centrally hosted services and persistent doxxable identities is nearing a close. It was inevitable that governments would meddle more, and more, and more - implicitly treating communications are something other than speech due to how encompassing the digital world has become - and now here we are.
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.
Google says the Chinese military budget is 281 billion. They probably get lower cost labor and production, but that’s significantly lower than the United States.
Adjusting for Purchasing Parity, an imperfect measure, that still only like 600 billion, significantly lower than the United States.
They're vertically integrated so a lot of materials are cheaper. They also steal a lot of technology, so they save a lot of money on having to do the research the US already paid for. Finances alone don't make the military and your argument doesn't change anything I said.
Vertical integration is an interesting claim, because we have been told that the government outsourcing to private companies is more efficient due to competition than the government doing the work themselves.
It depends on the vertical. If you're outsourcing a sixth-generation fighter jet or an aircraft carrier, your options are fewer than if you're outsourcing building construction or office supplies. You don't want to trust your nuclear-powered supercarrier to Joe's Boat Emporium.
brother we're not discreet about it, the US is a stain on the world and the world would be more stable and better off if it disappeared, it is the biggest organizer of violence, arms dealing, murder, corruption and every single one of your leaders has been a scourge inflicted on the world. It's not a deep, hidden conspiracy.
It also turns out that only one side of these two has the means to wage war and is also the biggest arms dealer in the world. Bully gets called mean names, boo hoo :(
We didn't start World War 1, or World War 2, or the Korean war, or the Vietnam war. We didn't make Russia attack Ukraine. We didn't make Iraq attack Iran or Kuwait. We didn't make Iran fund terrorism around the region and the world.
We have promoted peace in Europe through NATO. We're trying to achieve a similar Europe-like stability in the Middle East so it isn't constantly at war, often caused by Iran proxies.
What country is it that you're defending? Iraq? That country that invaded its neighbors, lit all the oil fields on fire, committed genocide and buried all the bodies in countless mass graves, attempted to kill the US president, attempted to blow up the World Trade Center and abducted women then raped them while recording it to show the recordings to their family to shame them? Is that what you're defending? Please tell me, I want to know.
Oh no, it couldn't be Iraq. Maybe it's Iran! Do you want to go down the list of the kind of country Iran is? How about Afghanistan? North Korea?
The world is not a very nice place. Make sure you know what you're defending. We have free speech in the US and people can do their own journalistic research and reporting even if it goes against our own government. These other countries don't have free speech, so they can spread all kinds of lies about the US and ban any other opinions inside their countries. That means people become indoctrinated and find it more difficult to think for themselves to get closer to what the truth is.
Maybe read how de Gaulle viewed the US "promoting peace in Europe" or how the British did after the US stole the Suez canal and kicked the British out of the Middle East.
Yes, after Saddam invaded Iran, because Iran was trying to export its revolution to Iraq. We didn't make Iraq attack Iran though. It was just one more war caused by Iran exporting revolution which has happened several times in the Middle East already.
It was an opportunity to weaken Iran which is a far worse problem in the Middle East than Iraq was. Iran had fired most of its airforce pilots for not being Islamic radical enough and with their airforce in shambles, Saddam saw an opportunity. Then Iran had to rush to rehire their old airforce pilots regardless of their dedication to the revolutionary cause or regime just to fight back.
Britain was exporting oil from Iran, which was understood and agreed on.
Russia was trying to turn Iran communist, so it spread the message that Britain was taking advantage of Iran's oil and stealing the country blind in order to help overthrow the government.
The Islamic revolutionaries and the communists helped overthrow the government.
Then the Islamic revolutionaries executed the communists after they complained that they weren't being given an opportunity to help administer the country.
The Islamic revolutionaries were basically chanting "neither east, nor west". No capitalism taking advantage of Iran's resources, no Russian communists taking control of their government.
From there, the revolution now had a state and it could leverage the state's resources to export and fund its revolution to other countries which it has done extensively.
We've got a billionaire funded conspiracy openly ignoring the Constitution, wantonly trashing our American liberties, and yet you're still raging about "communist billionaires" ?
The politics of billionaires as a group is not leftism, nor is it rightism. The politics of billionaires is self-serving authoritarianism. From each camp, they pick the sides of issues that stand to increase their own power, taking stakes in them as if they are horses. They will gladly support woke groupthink as long as it's getting results, and then readily switch to supporting anti-woke groupthink when society has had enough and the winds shift.
The net effects from both phases are losses from our individual liberty, which have been accumulating for decades, and are presumably the source of your rightful anger. But please come to your senses!
From what I've seen, freedom of speech has been improving. It used to be that people could barely speak their mind on Reddit, Twitter or at universities without getting attacked or cancelled over who knows what. Now, people are expressing themselves more regularly in all of those places. Universities still have a ways to go, but it is improving.
There have been some television networks that also had public licensing to broadcast over the air, but that requires a broadcast license which has stipulations of serving the public interest. To maintain this license, you require locally relevant content, a variety of viewpoints expressed and they cannot distort the news.
Increasingly, shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and The View which are all broadcast over the air with public licenses, became more than simply interview shows with interesting guests. They became actual political hit jobs that masquerade as news while day in day out insulting politicians and spreading provably false out of context lies which people could debunk themselves with their own research. Yet, these networks used this entertainment loophole as if it was a blank check to go against the public interest broadcast license.
No doubt, people can argue the same about politicians themselves, but politicians aren't restricted to this legal standard, because they need the flexibility to achieve whatever they think the country needs at the moment. Public broadcasting is its own thing and does allow for a significant range of content, so long as you adhere to the standards.
If PBS ran a decent journalistic report investigating some problem in an administration that is in the public interest and is an entirely different thing than these political hate shows that all seem to echo the exact same thought with different words. They can exist just fine, but I fundamentally agree that it stretches the definition of what is acceptable public interest programming for over the air broadcasting.
Putting pressure on them to change up their programming is probably a good thing for the country. What ever happened to the old high quality high integrity debate shows and intellectual interviews? It's all insults or propaganda now and "I don't know, they're crazy!", so nobody understands what's going on in the world or why it's happening. It's like they make it obvious that they have no interest in informing you, because if you understand it, you can't hate it as much as they need you to.
It would be fine for those networks to continue running those shows, but they would have to move it off to some other channel that isn't broadcast using an over the air license.
As for the constitution, they are surrounded by lawyers and if they overstep something, they back off. They are applying unitary executive theory as a solution to a slow congress to address the many critical issues facing the US in our time, one of which is demonstrating to China that we can act, which is one more element of deterrence to prevent them from starting World War 3.
Companies are largely pro-American and if they feel like woke helps resolve some kinds of political tensions that have been dividing America, then they will feel like that is the patriotic thing to do. When it turns out that is actually Marxism in disguise aimed at destroying the country, they push back. These things just happen slowly and it takes time to adjust.
So you're in it purely for freedom of expression? I can get behind that, but after reading further it doesn't seem like they are about that at all, but rather are extremely selective and it has nothing to do with "bad acting."
A good friend of mine was charged with providing material support to terrorists for providing similar donations. And all his donations were prior to the US designating the recipients as terrorists. The government's arguments were "Yes yes, but you knew what you were supporting even though we hadn't designated them as such..."
Naive world view. They also filed other less serious charges against him (of which he may have been guilty). He intended to plead "Not guilty", but after 2.5 years of him being held before trial[1], they offered him a deal. Plead guilty and get 5 years, including time served.
He likely would have beaten the terrorism charges, but for the lesser charges it wasn't clear that he'd get a better prison sentence than the one he was being offered.
He took the deal and pleaded guilty.
Also, lawyers cost money - perhaps he couldn't afford to keep fighting through a trial. I also have another friend who had the same charges leveled against him (not for donations, but volunteering services). He did fight the charges and got acquitted. I don't know if it's true, but I heard it cost him well over $1M for his legal defense.
[1] Trials like these take a long time to prepare for, by both parties.
Do you really not care to know what the terrorist organization was before you assume that "they are fighting against oppressive bullshit"? Is A/I and ISIS the same to you?
And - the list of people that were originally put in this category when G.W. Bush issued this executive order has 29 people/organizations: Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaida, and various affiliated/related organizations.
So, yesterday it was Bin-Laden, today it is some Italian left-wing tech guys, and tomorrow it might well be you or me. Get ready to be branded a terrorist at some point.
For context, the organization is "left-wing" as in "hosting antifa", not as in "giving unfortunate people a social net". Very far to the left, self recognized radical activists.
The point is not what kind of policies the "radical left" tech guys had. The point is they had quarter century run in which law enforcement in Italy could not find anything illegal in their actions.
And The current US administration was like "we don't care that running a webserver for activists is legal in Italy, we will just declare them terrorists".
Which is precisely why it's important that criminals and even terrorists have rights and due process. Else they can just declare YOU a terrorist and suddenly you have no rights.
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism."
How quaint. The MEK (Iranian People's Mudjahheddin) were designated as a terrorist organization but collected money in EU streets all the time. Now they are useful against Khamenei.
The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.
Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.
Antifa is a leftist movement, nowhere on this planet is not anti-capitalist.
The two flags in the logo, black and red, represent the anarchist and the communist movement.
Marxism came first. Mussolini was a Marxist, then developed Fascism as a reaction to it.
When Marxist talk about "reactionary forces", what do you think it means?
In my experience, groups like this have a fairly hostile relationship to State Communism as well. The Kronstadt rebellion for example is frequently cited [1]. But then you have groupings like Anarchist communists [2], which you would then risk lumping together with the anti-Communism part (not to mention that anti-Communism as a term is usually associated with forces staunchly opposed to people like this). Plus, if you are "only" anti-authoritarian, how do you suggest avoiding getting lumped together with Anarcho-capitalism?
Furthermore, these organisations operate in what they perceive to be Fascist and/or Capitalist societies, so why state opposition to something that is not "there" and has been pretty much gone from the global scene for nearly forty years?
In conclusion, yes, you have a point. But given the reasons above I find it really hard to get worked up over it and Anarchists do not generally get along with Leninists, Stalinists, or Maoists anyway.
Of fascism, capitalism, and communism, only two are going concerns in these people's lives. If they're going to declare themselves "anti-communist" they might as well also take a strong vocal stance against ghosts and flying cars.
This is getting too big to ignore and is leaking into mainstream popular culture.
In the most popular streaming show atm (new season of Reacher), a main plot point is CIA and State Department and Green Berets involvement in a village massacre in Indonesia in the 90s (in the land of the tv show), this is of course a reference to the CIA and State Department indirectly murdering 1 million Indonesians 1965-1966.
Which of Trump or Putin is worse is irrelevant. Trump's US is maybe on par with Putin's Russia, maybe better or maybe worse (which depends on which aspect is looked at). That cannot deter us from fighting against what is bad in both of them.
This is NOT a competition nor a championship about which dictatorship can inflict the most pain and destruction to the world.
Nobody is rooting for such a "winner".
Criticize all the despicable actions of such stinky regimes, regardless of if they are in Putin's Russia, in Trump's US, or wherever else.
We are NOT in a race to the bottom.
We shall never forget our values, as Humans and as Earth-dwellers.
the first few sentences of this link, and their about page, and their services page all make it clear what they do. i am unsure of where you confusion comes from.
They host blogs and digital infrastructure for autonomous anarchist/leftist collectives and are deeply connected to global free speech movements since their founding in 2001. If you expect to see a two sentence
mission statement or a product summary, you’re going to be disappointed.
> Off topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
So you’re incorrect. HN isn’t off bounds for all political posts, but yes, they do have to have an “interesting new phenomenon”.
The U.S. sanctioning a decades old technology collective is clearly new. Whether it’s “interesting” I can’t speak to because that’s subjective to every individual, but that’s where the useful voting system comes in.
> For the majority of organizations one can tell what they do in a few seconds
Have you ever opened the website of any B2B software/services provider? By your logic, they're all the most suspicious people on earth, because none of them seem to be able to explain what they actually do.
There's an "About" link on the top of the page and if you click it it fully explains what they do and for who in the first sentence of the first paragraph.
You're getting a negative response because ignoring that and implying that they're secretly doing sketchy things makes it look like you're doing bad faith criticism
Parler experienced a government coordinated shutdown across app stores and infrastructure providers like AWS.
I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make, when their infrastructure (AWS) was shut off due to the government labeling them terrorists due to some users (who Parler had banned) using the service.
Did the government force AWS to shut them off or just ask nicely? Hard to say. Any message from the government comes with implied threats. We'd only find it which was the case, if AWS had refused and the government had either punished AWS or not.
Can you see how it's different from an explicit sanction or an arrest?
In some ways (not all, of course) an implicit demand from the government is worse than an explicit one. An explicit one at least puts all the cards on the table.
In the United States, your example is explicitly protected by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It is the legal defense of arms manufacturers who's product is sold legally and in good faith but is used by a third-party for illegal actions.
Rather than a vague insinuation that this group has taken some action deserving of economic blackballing, perhaps you could point to some specific action this group has done?
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.
> So I don't think this is as innocent as they seem.
Well, they are innocent until proven guilty.
> They are making and providing tools that enable communication specifically for Far Left groups, some of which are terrorist groups.
By all means, present something that shows they are knowingly supporting terrorist groups so we might judge for ourselves.
I mean, we have organizations that supported the January 6th terrorists that haven't had anything done to them, so I'm looking for something more serious than murder, storming the capital, riots, attacking the police force, and attempted assassination of a Vice President.
Without judging this or trying to axiomatically derive the logic, I think the claim here is that a/I knowingly and deliberately provides services to the PKK, which the US and the EU designate as a terrorist organization.
It’s more than that, I think. I read through the various government statements as I was curious about rationale and precedent: the other two groups impacted by the order are rather unambiguous extremists, so understandable. In the extended justification for this a/I group, the US gov lists a large number of US and EU “Antifa” groups that variously leverage their services, including one that the individual recently arrested for wiping his phone is meant to be connected to. It suggests to me this was the result of some considerable network analysis and that the intent is to now have stronger legal tools to go after those groups.
I think that second (speculative, of course) step would be the more worrying precedent: if the use of technical infrastructure also used by designated groups was formally made to be incriminating/right-waiving. Why wouldn’t that apply to Signal, for example? The OP suggests the dividing line should be between true infrastructure open to all, including unsavory actors, versus tools that advertise services to a particular faction. It’s not an entirely disagreeable distinction, but I think in practice it’s rather fuzzy (Moxie of signal is/was rather far left himself, if I recall).
EDIT: Re-reading the document, the state department emphasizes that a/I “manually vets all potential users.” OP’s distinction stands for now.
I share most HN'ers priors about this administration and its motives and am commenting positively, not normatively, and only about the specific claim the Treasury Department made.
Signal doesn't knowingly and deliberately provide services to any organization, let alone one formally designated by the US and the EU. The whole point of Signal is to eliminate all pretenses of the service knowing who its users are or what they're doing. To the extent that's also true of Autistici Inventati, the OFAC designation is invalid.
Yes, I originally only meant to note that in the extended statement on a/I the PKK isn’t mentioned and the focus is rather on a network of “antifa” groups [0]. With respect to your legal point, I reread the document and we’re in agreement: the state department goes to lengths to demonstrate that a/I “manually vets all potential users.”
I feel much more confident saying that regardless of the validity of the underlying legal argument, this administration's messaging (on everything) is unhinged and partisan. I'm purposefully not reading into or out of what they're saying.
My understanding is that this is only coming from the US government. Do we have any reliable information to back this up? Because if it's just the US government, I can safely assume it's all lies.
I have no idea, but --- non-normatively --- there is some signal to be gleaned from this particular provider being targeted and not other, better-known and more systemically important ones.
US sanctions mean if you trade with the santioned org.. YOU get sanctioned (lose access to trade or financial systems controlled by US or US companies like Visa)
In the USA - the consequences should be only related to USA pertinent actors. The newspapers in Italy say, "there is no judgement against them in Italy".
• Bank accounts and payment processing.
• U.S.-linked donations and fundraising services.
• Hosting, cloud infrastructure and upstream network services.
• Domain registration and related technical services.
• Certificate, security and email-delivery accounts.
• Software and communications services.
• Relationships with non-U.S. providers frightened by American secondary sanctions.
• Access for people in the United States who currently use A/I’s services.
No, because they don't want to be banned from banks. With few exceptions, the US has power over all global financial systems. Also tier 1 ISPs (even the European ones), which trickles down to all ISPs.
> Our financial strategy relies exclusively on voluntary donations.
That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term. Sure after this news they will get lots of donations, but long term it is not something that is realistic.
Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
[0] *Unless you now know why this collective needs crypto more than ever.
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?
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.
That's certainly a take.
My personal take is that 4chan actually complies with the US laws, specifically the ones around promptly removing+reporting any illegal content that the US cares about (e.g., terrorism threats/CSAM/etc.), and 8chan doesn't.
Out of curiosity, what makes you consider 4chan to be a honeypot, as opposed to it just being a platform that simply complies with the relevant laws?
I will admit, I've spent barely a few minutes on 8 in my lifetime, so I am not equipped to judge the nuance of their situation much. With 4 though, it's been an on-and-off thing for me over the past ~15 years.
> On October 23, 2001, U.S. representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the month.[5] The next day, October 24, the Act passed the House by a vote of 357–66,[6] with Democrats comprising the overwhelming majority of "no"-votes.
> The bill, which removed most of the changes from the Senate version, passed Congress on March 2, 2006, and was signed by President Bush on March 9 and 10 of that year.
The 24 pilot was filmed before 9/11. After 9/11, the show had to be modified because reality has become uncomfortably close to it. That included delaying the premiere and removing a scene involving an exploding passenger aircraft.
The Washington Post reported on a trend of shows about counter-terrorism and spies, on August 4 2011: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/08/04/...
That article mentions that some of those shows relied on government consultation, with the CIA and FBI, to help with realism, etc. “24” was not one of them. “24” co-creator Joel Surnow is on record saying there was no government involvement.
Quote from the WP for context:
> Coming this fall [2001]: A new primetime drama series takes a close-up look at an elite federal agency and the dedicated men and women who hunt deadly terrorists and treacherous criminals.
> The new show's on CBS. It's also on NBC. And ABC. And Fox. Some years it's twenty-something sitcoms. Sometimes it's doctors, or vermin-oriented "reality" shows. This fall, the trend is Fed TV: No fewer than five new network series depict the exploits of people with civil-service pay grades, shiny employee ID badges and very large guns.
But it was “24” that did the most to normalize the “torture the bad guys till they reveal the plot” and other such right-wing wet dreams.
I can't find much left or right coverage of it, there's so much news coverage in the way.
That said:
> Canada debanked right wing truckers
Who were participating in the illegal blockade: https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/fca-upholds-2...
The government also exceeded their authority, but there's a gap between "I don't like (left/right)" and "blockade".
> multiple American platforms coordinated to silence Trump in 2021
After this happened and he was impeached twice for his performance regarding it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Capitol_riot-_Videos_show...
(No comment on BBC link save for this not being novel by UK standards nor specific to left/right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial)
8chan didn't even do shit
That makes them, like, the bad guys, don't you think?!
I always hoped we'd find some sort of equilibrium. A state where governments learn to tolerate some crime because fully policing them would require crossing serious lines. It's becoming increasingly clear though that governments have no limits. There is no cost they are unwilling to pay in the name of maintaining their own power.
Sometime during the Obama years I came up with the realization that the primary information flow in democracy (especially a two-party democracy like the US) isn't the commonly accepted people->government, but rather goes parties->people. The act of "choosing" a candidate makes people have an affinity for everything that politician goes on to do, even when they would have rejected most of it. Trumpism, specifically how people who considered themselves "conservative" didn't look at his abject failure of a first term and send him permanently packing in favor of someone with leadership or patriotism, has thoroughly proven this out.
Ridiculous.
All this means eg. Signal would not be able to escape jurisdictions, because no bank anywhere relevant will endanger their SWIFT access opposing the US. Sanctioned Signal would stop providing services for everyone, since they can't pay for servers, neither being able to receive donations, nor wire any money themselves. It's similar prior situations involving payment processors (e.g. in case of Wikileaks), but has totalitarian reach affecting almost all banking globally.
You can maintain much better opsec in a two way communication than a broadcast.
Since the US considers anything "antifa" as terrorism now, it already had most concerning distant effects last year. See GLS bank cancelling Rote Hilfe in Germany. 1933 was the last time Rote Hilfe was cancelled, btw. It's an antifa OG. Pretty good indicator about the status quo..
Anyway, look at e.g. GrapheneOS, which is already treated as probable cause by law enforcement. Encrypted messaging also super sus. Thing is, funding can't escape jurisdictions. Signal servers are not running on love and fellowship, but donations and public money. Opsec won't protect your software stack's foundation against US finance attacks.
The US does not give a damn about PKK. They used the Kurdish sister organizations in Syria and Iran. They condemn PKK because Erdogan wants it.
The US would have zero issues with a Kurdish state comprising parts of Turkey and Iran that splinters the region even more.
In this context, "designated foreign terrorist organizations" is not an explanation, but a tautology. The matter at hand is how and why something got onto that list.
The antifa remark relates to the Rote Hilfe situation. In my opinion, it's an example of how populist rhetoric became a major overreach with real consequences prior to the incident at hand. Rote Hilfe had a very weak relation to "Antifa Ost" (hardly worth US attention). That's how they got cancelled: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
So the antifa moral panic is indeed very much relevant.
But decide for yourself, if "Antifa Ost" deserves US anti-terrorism attention to the extent of OFAC sanctions, or if it's maaaybe populist action... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_left-wing_extremism_tr...
Incidentally, funny how the NSU isn't on that list, hm?
* I did not make the designation, I know nothing about the PKK, I am only referencing it.
But I'm curious about your take on this. How would you argue the first amendment protects this?
Useless.
Why is providing people with the means to express themselves to an audience wrong? Please think for yourself; don't resort to labels.
Anyone setting up infrastructure has to consider, in the very least, how this will be used for CSAM in particular but sure, I guess terrorism too. Years ago we had The Office make a joke about this where the company website for selling paper was overtaken by child predators.
This is one reason why we have centralized infrastructure and not federated infrastructure. All the platforms we have have the capability to report content, automatically scan pictures, images and text and to respond to law enforcement. You need all of those processes.
It is not unprecedented though. The US military empire always was supported by the business empire and corruption empire. Trump and his BigBro Epstein party-goers just make it much more obvious. In reality the terrorists are in the US government primarily.
No moral ground to stand on? Would you say that about Amazon who supports the US regime, which is in the business of bombing Iranian schoolgirls? Is that less terrorist?
This collective of course has much more of a moral ground to stand on than indeed Amazon.
Strictly speaking, unintended collateral damage of civilians in a war does not fulfill the definition of terrorism. The attack on Iranian school was to the best of my knowledge a mistake stemming from old intel. Terrorism is deliberate attack on civilians to achieve a political goal.
Bloomberg piece on this topic:
>An Analyst’s Missed Remark Surfaced in Deadly Iran School Strike Probe
>An analyst's missed remarks and US intelligence systems that weren’t connected to one another are among the missteps that investigators have surfaced while probing the cause of a missile strike on an Iranian school that killed an estimated 120 children, people familiar with the matter said.
>Years before the US attacked Iran at the end of February, an intelligence analyst examining information about potential future strike targets in Iran noticed changes at a site the US had previously characterized as a naval facility belonging to the elite wing of the Iranian military in Minab city in the southeast of the country. It was, in fact, now an elementary school.
>The analyst remarked on changes at the site in a digital intelligence tool, but that tool wasn’t linked up to the official intelligence database that the US uses to develop strike targets and the information was never conveyed to military commanders, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be named discussing sensitive matters.
https://archive.is/LNMMf
If you're going to go down the semantics route, every word needs proper inspection. You're focusing on only one of them, "terrorism".
Luckily though, we don't need to; the US does more than enough intentional extrajudicial executions of civilians on its own. Even just considering one particular area where it does them, and then only the ones we know about, we're at about 227 civilian executions in just the last few years [0].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/29/us/us-caribbe...
I love how governments (in the west) are absolutely incapable of campaigns of terror.
I think that when you’re bombing thousands of targets, a 0.1-1% targeting error rate leads to dozens of unintended collateral hits (and thousands of civilians dead) — and is among the many reasons wars are horrific.
A mistake in a completely unjust war.
And what about the fishing boats we are bombing in the Caribbean and the Pacific? Not even the pretense of a legitimate war in that situation.
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 make the fiber optics?
(has anyone checked who is providing terrorists with electricity?)
>careful, if you start going after neutral infrastructure providers, that means google, amazon, microsoft, meta, and more will also need to go.
No, because they actively respond to removal request. Open by default, supporting request for removal.
The difference comes in when you are open by default and tell the US to fuck off when they ask you to stop supporting terror groups.
i am replying specifically to your comments about neutral providers (that's why i quoted the part of your comment that i did)
>No, because they actively respond to removal request.
there is still orders of magnitude more conversations going through the providers i mentioned, related to terrorism/csam/etc., which is simply not reported or not known. right now, meta is facilitating significantly more terrorism than a/i.
in any case, this isn't really about terrorism. they've just overused the child-safety angle lately, and needed to drum up some anti-privacy/anti-encryption using the terrorism card.
sure. whatsapp is used by literal billions of people. add in a few more billion people through facebook, instagram, gmail, outlook, amazon.
would you like me to walk through the statistics calculations? or can you extrapolate from the billions of users? now make a guess how many people a/i has facilitated. a few thousand? a hundred thousand?
>Even if that were true how would that change anything? They still comply with the US government and their mission statement isn't to empower, protect, support political extremists.
because it demonstrates that the goal is not to curtail terrorism.
yes
lets start with this: how many terrorists do you think a/i has helped?
emphasis mine. my assertion is that whatsapp, a neutral provider, facilitates more terrorists than a/i. i.e., the US should consider sanctioning them, if we are to follow nonethewiser's recommendation.
(to be clear, i'm on the pro-privacy, pro-encryption side, and don't actually think the US should be sanctioning whatsapp)
But the analysis isn't based on "which service enables more terrorists". By that logic, forget WhatsApp, forget Signal; Google Mail probably runs the table in absolute numbers. But all three of those services assist terrorists without any deliberation or really even actual knowledge on the part of the providers.
The claim is that A/I can't say the same thing.
>without any deliberation or really even actual knowledge on the part of the providers.
i think we agree that this is an implicit requirement of being considered a neutral provider.
so, to claim neutral providers should be subject to sanctions implies that a provider who does not know or purposefully facilitate terrorists should still be subject to sanctions (gmail, whatsapp, signal, amazon, etc.)
then we got sidetracked by me being asked how can i possibly know that meta/google/etc. facilitate more terrorists than a/i. which i, and seemingly you, agree is a pretty obvious answer given the scale of the organizations. and i was asked to "walk them through that".
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.
the double-negative might be confusing, so we can reword it to: "And even if they were neutral, the US should sanction them for supporting terrorism"
that's the part i quoted and my comment is about.
Did they? There's a lot of implication with that "if", and I saw someone else point out (albeit rudely) that anything that may have supported them was taken down.
Or since ONU has declared illegal the occupation of territory in West Bank, will US sanction Israel?
Or will the United States only sanction those who simply see things differently from them?
you might ask who is right; the groups like google providing services to the us military, or the groups providing services to those opposing the us military.
Woah, with radical statements like that, we might have to go after mutual aid groups, PACs, and churches.
We'll see if the Bush- and Obama-style thoughtcrime back in action will lull USA citizens and make them forget the gas price.
[0] https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/4a3850cc-9186...
But they are not choosing to support the PKK.
They accuse it of being “a major far-left tech collective whose services are used by the most active and violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world.”
The far left is a terrorist group? Where are all these violent "antifa cells"?
They labeled this groups as a terrorist organization so they could claim that anyone protesting the fascist Trump regime will easily be labeled terrorists and thrown in jail without a trial.
"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 all speech! A/I's overt political statement (that you are indicting them for) points to their primary interest being to facilitate political speech - a type of speech with some of the strongest protections (that whole "assemble ... and petition the Government" thing)
Beyond that, they're presumably a neutral conduit like every other service provider. If some users of their services are communicating to coordinate crimes, then unless A/I is getting directly involved in those conversations (with the government producing hard evidence of this), it's the exact same dynamic as every other email/hosting provider.
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.
That's why the US Constitution Americans know is a few pages long, while the one actual US judges, lawyers etc. use is a massive 3,000 pages long volume. That's what it takes to rhetorically weasel oneself away from most of what those few initial pages do say.
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.
Per the Treasury Department:
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
"Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism." https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
Per the State Department: "The A/I Collective provides encrypted tools and services to numerous violent far-left extremist groups operating in the United States and around the world. Many of these groups have relied on the A/I Collective’s digital infrastructure to plot or incite violent attacks, recruit others to engage in criminal activity, publish official communiqués by U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, and disseminate maps of critical infrastructure, along with instructions for building improvised explosive and incendiary devices – all routed through a network of foreign servers intended to conceal criminal activity from law enforcement." They then go on to list the specifics. (https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...)
https://cavallette.noblogs.org/2026/08/10083/2
Very curious. My latest submission is the video of Larry Ellison with the "The police will be on their best behavior[,] Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on". (It was triggered by a piece on TheOnion.)
Turns out, other people had been recording events, so that a covering narrative may not prevail over the truth.
[1] https://www.wewillfreeus.org/the-server-called-paranoia-defe...
At least one of these things is not like the others. Why are peaceful protests against "Cop City" (Atlanta's proposed police-training center) lumped in with violent attacks on infrastructure? This isn't the first time either - Samuel Tunick, the man who was charged with destruction of evidence for giving his duress pin to the CBP agents, was being investigated for his connection to the Cop City protests.[1]
And as others have said, what does it say about the current US admin that they are designating "anti-fascist" groups as terrorists? I will say, at least unlike Cop City protests afaik, Rose City Antifa seems willing to use violence to accomplish their goals.[2]
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-pro...
[2]: https://rosecityantifa.org/articles/statment-on-strategy-and...
> on energy infrastructure
that's not violence
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 resources for people and projects broadly compatible with those principles rather than businesses, political parties, organized religions or institutions already possessing the means to make themselves heard.
b) And the issue U.S. has with them:
> The United States alleges that A/I supplies specialized digital architecture, encrypted communications and hosting to antifascist groups and other radical movements, including organizations already designated by the United States.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Is there a way to not exist within capitalism and fascism while opposing it? You speak about it like this is some hypocrisy on their part. Is it not the rhetorical equivalent of "oh, you're drowning?? but you're IN WATER.."?
> Maybe not violently, but hardly can one expect sympathies, especially from system itself.
I would never expect the law to be sympathetic to anyone. I want the law to be fairly written, and equally applied. But unfortunately we're living in a time when you can get a life sentence for photocopying an anti-ice zine.
I laughed so hard at that. Best argument is good argument but funny.
Now since "potential" is not a crime, list the acts that merit the label.
And surely those swastika carriers are getting similar sentences... right?
Storm the capital to overthrow an election, get a pardon. Photocopy an anti-ice zine, get life in prison. Makes sense.
xienze said that an organization which defines itself as antifascist COULD be extreme.
You're asking for a definition of terrorism so you can say that A/I is not a terrorist organization. But that's not what's being argued.
xienze is saying that antifascists CAN be terrorist, not that all of them are. For example, the Red Army Faction committed numerous terrorists acts: bombings, kidnappings, murders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction#Criminal_acts
OKRainbowKid, of course, started from a false premise that "antifascists" are being persecuted because they're against "fascism".
Could have been a false flag to discredit antifa. What happened to safe harbor?
What is this?
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements.
they are a group of people providing services to activists. services include email, web hosting, chat, and other anonymity services. (see https://www.inventati.org/services/)
It also says their manifesto was written in 2002.
You can use the Wayback machine to see older versions.
> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.
From it:
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
I suspect they have some "not mainstream" political views; although I think understanding what these views are requires more in-depth reading of the blogs that they host.
I would say they are pretty "mainstream" (or very widespread) in some territories. I have seen bartenders wearing those 'anti-' terms on their t-shirts at work.
It provides email accounts, mailing lists, blogs, websites, chat and VPN access.
> We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism
They don't receive any money for this. It's 100% volunteer services.
And the platform hasn't done any killing. They merely provide email etc. Are we going to sanction road builders too because a murderer has driven on their road since 1984?
Meanwhile the SDF, the armed wing of the PYD, follows the same ideology as the PKK and was trained in military tactics by the PKK, and was among our chief allies against ISIS. They fought alongside US soldiers and we even supplied them with small arms.
The history of the PKK is complicated and the state they struggle against has a long history of genocide and (more recently) outright dictatorship. The relation of these countries to the PKK isn't ultimately determined by the PKK's history, morality, ideology, or even the use of terrorist tactics per se.
If you're curious about the bigger picture, there's actually an organized movement whose aim is to "de-list the PKK" as a terrorist organization, and that's probably a good place to start: https://www.peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/activities/delist-t...
There are also some books and some academic papers on the history of the PKK and their ideology. Those written by independent academics are generally neither fully condemnatory nor exculpatory towards the PKK, but give a clear sense of how the term "terrorism" and its use is at least contestable, geopolitical, etc. And any familiarity at all with the history of the conflict makes it clear that the Turkish government is likewise guilty of state terror conducted against Kurdish civilian populations in Turkey for generations now.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/11/12/donald-trump-ahmed-al...
"Al-Sharaa, who until recently was known by his alias "al-Julani," was a longtime jihadist who was part of the ranks of organizations associated with al-Qaida and ISIS, and even orchestrated an attack against Israel – milestones that led to his designation as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" by the US, with a reward of approximately $10 million for information leading to his capture. President Trump decided to lift the sanctions on al-Sharaa, who has transformed into a political leader following the collapse of the Assad regime in December, when he assumed Syria's presidency as the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham."
You should never take the "terrorist" label at face value.
The US funded the Mujaheddin in the 80s in Afghanistan. Their first moves upon receiving the weapons was to throw grenades through the windows if Girls' schools.
They began as the "useful lackey", and the US lost control of the Wahabist movement that was amplified to fight Communism. Then they were "freedom fighters" to the religious extremists, and "terrorists" to fight a war against.
In your own example, Al-Sharaa(a product of weaponizing Wahhabism) did actual terrorism, and then was able to squeeze back into the "useful lackey" position, like many "terrorist"s have before him.
I see people posting links to x.com which he uses to promote those views as well as platform other hate groups calling for violence and genocide against immigrants, trans people, etc.
Do acts gain moral validity under color of law alone?
You see it everywhere.
Google Search yields a very small amount of third party support for the PKK, all unreachable now.
I cannot find any evidence at all and neither can LLMs that this organization has ever directly supported the PKK or hosted a PKK website.
https://archive.fo/e8Gss
> The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
> The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
> In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
a/I collective in the OP is the third on this list.
> based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world
Designating A/I Collective a terrorist group is different as it is not directly supporting violence, but it is providing free services to people who do, and it says it provides services to groups its aim is to "provide support exclusively to individuals or groups we feel we have an affinity with.". On the other hand their terms forbid "military use" which is broadly defined enough to rule out terrorism.
I think its likely they do have sympathy for violent groups, n the other hand, unless they have been going out of their way to support violence in some way I do not see reasonable grounds for banning them. Lots of commercial services have dodgy users. My fear is that is is heading in the direction of "if you do not hand info to the US authorities on demand you will be deemed a terrorist"
The US regime is an extremely violent group, so I that's certainly the issue.
More seriously though, there’s no reasonable comparison to be made between any western power and Iran, Russia, or (and especially) Hamas.
October 7th was beyond the pale. Systemic rape, torture, and terror used to be something reasonable people could agree to stand against.
Seriously, sit down, make a list of incidents, including weighing the outcome of those incidents. If it's a case where an officer or a soldier did something wrong, list what happened after (court, punishment, cleared of wrongdoing, etc)
Then do the same for your favorite alternate country that you think is superior. If you want to pick team Iran or Russia, then lay it out for them. Make the same list.
Eight of the shooters were charged with depriving the students of their civil rights, but were acquitted in a bench trial.
I'm not going to make an exhaustive list of all the terrible shit perpetrated by the US government and its agents. It would be too detrimental to my health. But you choosing to bury your head doesn't prove anything either, so I guess I have one up on you.
you would do well to note that this page links directly to an entire wikipedia entry for 'US War Crimes': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
This is already an extreme perversion of justice all on its own. Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism. This is simply armed conflict.
> This is simply armed conflict.
Armed conflict by residents and citizens against the state is usually a serious criminal offense everywhere.
Terrorism is widely understood to be the deployment of military force against civilian populations. Of course states do this all the time, but 'state terrorism' is basically dependent on whether politicians in country A align with country B or not; if they don't, they'll call out state abuses in country B as state terrorism, if not they'll say it's law and order.
Regardless of these nuances, extending the definition to include any kind of property damage is just laughably opportunist.
Does that include property in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon? Because if the people who spray painted something are "terrorists", I want to know what the people who wiped Rafah off the face of the earth are called.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah
I think it’s worth considering that you’re much more likely to be a resident or a citizen than a state when you’re deciding how you feel about these kinds of things.
Damaging military equipment is a military end, not a political one. If it were otherwise, then a military attacking a military would definitionally be terrorism. At that point, you've removed the utility of the word "terrorism" from English and made it synonymous with "armed conflict."
Terrorism being done chiefly to change policies by terrorizing people through symbolic acts is a constrained, generally-accepted definition of terrorism.
Contrast with 9/11, where symbols of American capitalism, filled with civilians, were attacked in order to terrify people who have nothing to do with those buildings into supporting changes in policy that hurt the US.
Which is typically called „arresting“ when a government does it to their own citizens…
I hope no one takes this seriously.
If you're caught sabotaging equipment on a US military installation in many cases they are authorized to use deadly force and you'll be held accountable under the UCMJ. The absolute best outcome is you're designated a terrorist and live to see a prison cell.
Attacking military targets is somewhere between an insurgency, partisanism, or an armed conflict.
If we let terrorism mean “any act against the state”, then people who burn police cars are the same as people who plant bombs in shopping malls.
Is it not "legitimate" in the same way to kill terrorists?
Corrections welcome if I am wrong.
That pretty much tells you everything you need to know. Definitions of "terrorism" that extend to sabotage against occupying or invading militaries and their allies are meaningless and hollow dilutions. At that point the discourse has been reduced to something like "violence is scary".
This use is also interesting (and galling) because it frames disarming as an unacceptably violent act.
There are some definitions of terrorism that leave room to designate attacks against professional agents of state violence as "terror", e.g., attacks on soldiers who are off-duty, attacks on civilian police forces, attacks on nominally civilian intelligence organizations like the CIA, etc.
Imo such uses of the words "terror" and "terrorism" should be considered carefully, because sometimes they are meaningful or useful, but often they are essentially attempts to hoodwink the public. Effectively they are designed so that any attack against an occupying army by a faction too weak to muster a permanent standing army of equal strength falls into the "terrorism" category, which means invasion is "war" but resistance is "terrorism".
The notion of "civilian" or "non-combatant" isn't always straightforward, either. In the history of the PKK, for example, one of the "civilian" forces targeted by bombings and shootings were a local militia whose sole purpose was suppressing popular unrest among local Kurdish populations who were forbidden from speaking their own native languages, celebrating their holidays, etc. Formally these militias were not part of an army. But their scarcely concealed function was suppression of the local population, unlike (for example) a proper civilian police force whose role is at least nominally to promote public safety, assist vulnerable (weak, elderly, disabled) citizens with daily life, investigate crimes, mediate/de-escalate disputes, etc.
Anyway, it's worth sitting down and thinking through a few different serious definitions of terrorism and asking yourself what use they are. One or more definitions will likely stand out to you as particularly useful when it comes to thinking through things like the safety of innocents, the morality and bounds of acceptable political activism, and other topics that might directly affect your comfort and safety. You'll often find that governments and large press organizations try to trade on the emotional impact of those definitions while operating under rather different ones that are more convenient for themselves.
Everyone's a terrorist nowadays.
Title: A Statement by A/I Collective About US Sanctions
Can we all agree that this is an assault on the First Amendment?
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Whether this specific post is about Iranian connections to these groups, I don't know, but that's why I said assume for that aspect of it.
The comment got flagged though, which is good since it lets me know it's a sensitive issue. That tells me I should spread it 10x harder.
(If you're opposed to antifascists what does that make you?)
Having to explain why fascism is to be fought against...
Ugh, what a world. Not even science-fiction writers dared to write such a nonsensical reality.
Anti fascist => anti dictatorship.
Anti fascist means that you don't like fascism and that you are not going to let it happen passively.
(Tired of explaining the obvious. But I guess that somebody has to.)
A dictatorship mechanically leads to a situation where the governing group is working for their own wealth, thus in this case the "group" is the governing class. The extent and definition of that class is voluntarily limited so that wealth and power converges to them.
Now you see it? Yes that is a fascism, meaning that:
dictatorship => fascism
And the reverse stems from the "groupism" (i.e. tribalism) of fascism, which entails that you need exclude large portions of the population from the political system.
As this "group" definition becomes narrower and narrower (in order to make more wealth converge to the alleged "true humans" of its center), it becomes a harsher and harsher dictatorship, and finally a strongman regime.
fascism => dictatorship
"Antifa" factions in the Spanish Civil War ultimately did not win and accidentally enable a Spanish DPRK, but they still were perfectly capable of being and doing evil, such as committing mass rape and shooting of nuns.
Anti-fascists are not concerned with the magical weight of this in-group designation. They are concerned with all things non-fascist.
If somebody says something nice and does nothing, that's good.
If at the same time somebody does something bad, that's bad.
That does not remove the evaluation (nice or bad) of the speech alone.
Saying "I am against this thing that is objectively despicable" is GOOD.
So, saying to be anti fascist is good.
Saying to be anti fascist and doing fascist things is bad.
I don't know how much more obvious things I am supposed to explain...
I guess there is no limit to it.
OP's point is that a group's name does not necessarily hold any link to their activities, so an "anti fascist" group could very well be doing fascist activities themselves, name notwithstanding.
And seeing slop where there is not, you are being rude to me without purpose.
Not everybody is born in an English-speaking country.
I laid down the ideas logically, maybe that is what sounded foreign to you.
By the way you are the person writing nonsensical stuff such as "Antifa is a terrorist organization", while everybody is repeating tirelessly that it is just an adjective meaning to be opposed to fascism:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49483072
No any such organization exists. It is a movement, and a description one can describe one's self or actions: "anti-fascist".
But of course, their logic for sanctioning-by-association would mean that they all - Trump, Bessent, Rubio etc. - with their innumerable contacts with "violent terrorist groups and regimes" everywhere around the world, and just themselves really - should have been sanctioned, arrested, tried, or just disposed of like the US does with so many it dislikes.
> A/I (Autistici/Inventati, pronounced [au’tistiʧi]-[iŋ’vɛntati], or [iŋvɛn’tati]) was born in 2001 from an encounter of individuals and collectives of the autonomous anticapitalist movement interested in technology and active in the digital rights struggle. We believe that this world is far from being the best world possible. We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals.
> All of our services are provided for free, without any form of control or commoditization of the personal user data. We don’t receive any form of compensation for our work. We are volunteers exploiting the experiences we accumulated over years of technological, political and legal research while doing radical activism, and we are motivated and inspired by the principles of solidarity and self organization.
From their about page:
> A/I was born over 20 years ago to provide internet support (through website hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists, chat, blogs, and much more) to activists and collectives coming from the world of grassroot and social movements. Our principles are fairly straightforward: the world should not be run on money, should be rooted in solidarity, community, mutual help, equal rights and freedom, and social justice. Easy, isn’t it? We support individuals, collectives, communities and groups whose political and social activities fit within this worldview and who share with us some fundamental principles: anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-militarism. On top of that, one has to share our basic attitude towards money and the capitalistic world: a deep feeling of uneasyness and unrest.
US sanctions Italian hosting provider Autistici Inventati
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451343
US Government designates host of noblogs.org a "global terrorist"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49464391
"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 of centrally hosted services and persistent doxxable identities is nearing a close. It was inevitable that governments would meddle more, and more, and more - implicitly treating communications are something other than speech due to how encompassing the digital world has become - and now here we are.
This is, to be clear, lying nonsense.
Adjusting for Purchasing Parity, an imperfect measure, that still only like 600 billion, significantly lower than the United States.
brother we're not discreet about it, the US is a stain on the world and the world would be more stable and better off if it disappeared, it is the biggest organizer of violence, arms dealing, murder, corruption and every single one of your leaders has been a scourge inflicted on the world. It's not a deep, hidden conspiracy.
It also turns out that only one side of these two has the means to wage war and is also the biggest arms dealer in the world. Bully gets called mean names, boo hoo :(
We have promoted peace in Europe through NATO. We're trying to achieve a similar Europe-like stability in the Middle East so it isn't constantly at war, often caused by Iran proxies.
What country is it that you're defending? Iraq? That country that invaded its neighbors, lit all the oil fields on fire, committed genocide and buried all the bodies in countless mass graves, attempted to kill the US president, attempted to blow up the World Trade Center and abducted women then raped them while recording it to show the recordings to their family to shame them? Is that what you're defending? Please tell me, I want to know.
Oh no, it couldn't be Iraq. Maybe it's Iran! Do you want to go down the list of the kind of country Iran is? How about Afghanistan? North Korea?
The world is not a very nice place. Make sure you know what you're defending. We have free speech in the US and people can do their own journalistic research and reporting even if it goes against our own government. These other countries don't have free speech, so they can spread all kinds of lies about the US and ban any other opinions inside their countries. That means people become indoctrinated and find it more difficult to think for themselves to get closer to what the truth is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...
Maybe read how de Gaulle viewed the US "promoting peace in Europe" or how the British did after the US stole the Suez canal and kicked the British out of the Middle East.
It was an opportunity to weaken Iran which is a far worse problem in the Middle East than Iraq was. Iran had fired most of its airforce pilots for not being Islamic radical enough and with their airforce in shambles, Saddam saw an opportunity. Then Iran had to rush to rehire their old airforce pilots regardless of their dedication to the revolutionary cause or regime just to fight back.
Russia was trying to turn Iran communist, so it spread the message that Britain was taking advantage of Iran's oil and stealing the country blind in order to help overthrow the government.
The Islamic revolutionaries and the communists helped overthrow the government.
Then the Islamic revolutionaries executed the communists after they complained that they weren't being given an opportunity to help administer the country.
The Islamic revolutionaries were basically chanting "neither east, nor west". No capitalism taking advantage of Iran's resources, no Russian communists taking control of their government.
From there, the revolution now had a state and it could leverage the state's resources to export and fund its revolution to other countries which it has done extensively.
The politics of billionaires as a group is not leftism, nor is it rightism. The politics of billionaires is self-serving authoritarianism. From each camp, they pick the sides of issues that stand to increase their own power, taking stakes in them as if they are horses. They will gladly support woke groupthink as long as it's getting results, and then readily switch to supporting anti-woke groupthink when society has had enough and the winds shift.
The net effects from both phases are losses from our individual liberty, which have been accumulating for decades, and are presumably the source of your rightful anger. But please come to your senses!
There have been some television networks that also had public licensing to broadcast over the air, but that requires a broadcast license which has stipulations of serving the public interest. To maintain this license, you require locally relevant content, a variety of viewpoints expressed and they cannot distort the news.
Increasingly, shows like Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and The View which are all broadcast over the air with public licenses, became more than simply interview shows with interesting guests. They became actual political hit jobs that masquerade as news while day in day out insulting politicians and spreading provably false out of context lies which people could debunk themselves with their own research. Yet, these networks used this entertainment loophole as if it was a blank check to go against the public interest broadcast license.
No doubt, people can argue the same about politicians themselves, but politicians aren't restricted to this legal standard, because they need the flexibility to achieve whatever they think the country needs at the moment. Public broadcasting is its own thing and does allow for a significant range of content, so long as you adhere to the standards.
If PBS ran a decent journalistic report investigating some problem in an administration that is in the public interest and is an entirely different thing than these political hate shows that all seem to echo the exact same thought with different words. They can exist just fine, but I fundamentally agree that it stretches the definition of what is acceptable public interest programming for over the air broadcasting.
Putting pressure on them to change up their programming is probably a good thing for the country. What ever happened to the old high quality high integrity debate shows and intellectual interviews? It's all insults or propaganda now and "I don't know, they're crazy!", so nobody understands what's going on in the world or why it's happening. It's like they make it obvious that they have no interest in informing you, because if you understand it, you can't hate it as much as they need you to.
It would be fine for those networks to continue running those shows, but they would have to move it off to some other channel that isn't broadcast using an over the air license.
As for the constitution, they are surrounded by lawyers and if they overstep something, they back off. They are applying unitary executive theory as a solution to a slow congress to address the many critical issues facing the US in our time, one of which is demonstrating to China that we can act, which is one more element of deterrence to prevent them from starting World War 3.
Companies are largely pro-American and if they feel like woke helps resolve some kinds of political tensions that have been dividing America, then they will feel like that is the patriotic thing to do. When it turns out that is actually Marxism in disguise aimed at destroying the country, they push back. These things just happen slowly and it takes time to adjust.
Streisand effect at work again
> We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals
Yes, they select the users. But clearly to exclude services to those they would judge as bad actors!
What paragraphs inclined you to think that?
A good friend of mine was charged with providing material support to terrorists for providing similar donations. And all his donations were prior to the US designating the recipients as terrorists. The government's arguments were "Yes yes, but you knew what you were supporting even though we hadn't designated them as such..."
Hope you're not in the US.
He likely would have beaten the terrorism charges, but for the lesser charges it wasn't clear that he'd get a better prison sentence than the one he was being offered.
He took the deal and pleaded guilty.
Also, lawyers cost money - perhaps he couldn't afford to keep fighting through a trial. I also have another friend who had the same charges leveled against him (not for donations, but volunteering services). He did fight the charges and got acquitted. I don't know if it's true, but I heard it cost him well over $1M for his legal defense.
[1] Trials like these take a long time to prepare for, by both parties.
* https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
* https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
And - the list of people that were originally put in this category when G.W. Bush issued this executive order has 29 people/organizations: Usama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaida, and various affiliated/related organizations.
So, yesterday it was Bin-Laden, today it is some Italian left-wing tech guys, and tomorrow it might well be you or me. Get ready to be branded a terrorist at some point.
For context, the organization is "left-wing" as in "hosting antifa", not as in "giving unfortunate people a social net". Very far to the left, self recognized radical activists.
And The current US administration was like "we don't care that running a webserver for activists is legal in Italy, we will just declare them terrorists".
Which is precisely why it's important that criminals and even terrorists have rights and due process. Else they can just declare YOU a terrorist and suddenly you have no rights.
Well, a proto-fascist government would consider hosting anti-fascist websites as being "far left".
The actual Treasury Announce here - https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0616/
"The Autistici Inventati is an Italy-based far-left organization that provides a range of technological tools and services to violent left-wing extremist groups, including website hosting on foreign servers, encrypted email accounts, chat and video conferencing, and digital architecture associated with its “Noblogs” platform. Autistici Inventati identifies itself as an “anti-fascist” and “anti-militarist” organization opposed to capitalism and exclusively provides its services to vetted individuals, collectives, and groups it perceives to be aligned with its ideology, including to sanctioned terrorist organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been designated by the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for its use of terrorist tactics leading to thousands of deaths in Türkiye, Iraq, and Syria since its establishment in 1984.
Autistici Inventati is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods and services to or in support of, an act of terrorism."
The US would also like to use the equivalent of the PKK in the large Kurdish part of Iran against Khamenei.
Nothing to say of using the PKK rebranding of SDF in Syria as well as receiving "global terrorist" Al Jolani in the White House.
MEK is probably just 300 really old guys now, they have strict rules against marrying outside the org.
Marxism came first. Mussolini was a Marxist, then developed Fascism as a reaction to it.
When Marxist talk about "reactionary forces", what do you think it means?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism
Furthermore, these organisations operate in what they perceive to be Fascist and/or Capitalist societies, so why state opposition to something that is not "there" and has been pretty much gone from the global scene for nearly forty years?
In conclusion, yes, you have a point. But given the reasons above I find it really hard to get worked up over it and Anarchists do not generally get along with Leninists, Stalinists, or Maoists anyway.
In the most popular streaming show atm (new season of Reacher), a main plot point is CIA and State Department and Green Berets involvement in a village massacre in Indonesia in the 90s (in the land of the tv show), this is of course a reference to the CIA and State Department indirectly murdering 1 million Indonesians 1965-1966.
They have not.
This is NOT a competition nor a championship about which dictatorship can inflict the most pain and destruction to the world.
Nobody is rooting for such a "winner".
Criticize all the despicable actions of such stinky regimes, regardless of if they are in Putin's Russia, in Trump's US, or wherever else.
We are NOT in a race to the bottom.
We shall never forget our values, as Humans and as Earth-dwellers.
> Off topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
So you’re incorrect. HN isn’t off bounds for all political posts, but yes, they do have to have an “interesting new phenomenon”.
The U.S. sanctioning a decades old technology collective is clearly new. Whether it’s “interesting” I can’t speak to because that’s subjective to every individual, but that’s where the useful voting system comes in.
Have you ever opened the website of any B2B software/services provider? By your logic, they're all the most suspicious people on earth, because none of them seem to be able to explain what they actually do.
You're getting a negative response because ignoring that and implying that they're secretly doing sketchy things makes it look like you're doing bad faith criticism
They are very clearly providing IT support for free to anti fascist organizations.
I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make, when their infrastructure (AWS) was shut off due to the government labeling them terrorists due to some users (who Parler had banned) using the service.
Can you see how it's different from an explicit sanction or an arrest?
"HN cheering", true or not, doesn't really matter in the end, either.
Rather than a vague insinuation that this group has taken some action deserving of economic blackballing, perhaps you could point to some specific action this group has done?
You say provide tools for communication. Presumably that's every communication platform worldwide - almost undoubtably some sort of terrorist has used each of them.
As per a government who puts cycling and expressing distaste for inflation in the same camp.
Well, they are innocent until proven guilty.
> They are making and providing tools that enable communication specifically for Far Left groups, some of which are terrorist groups.
By all means, present something that shows they are knowingly supporting terrorist groups so we might judge for ourselves.
I mean, we have organizations that supported the January 6th terrorists that haven't had anything done to them, so I'm looking for something more serious than murder, storming the capital, riots, attacking the police force, and attempted assassination of a Vice President.
I think that second (speculative, of course) step would be the more worrying precedent: if the use of technical infrastructure also used by designated groups was formally made to be incriminating/right-waiving. Why wouldn’t that apply to Signal, for example? The OP suggests the dividing line should be between true infrastructure open to all, including unsavory actors, versus tools that advertise services to a particular faction. It’s not an entirely disagreeable distinction, but I think in practice it’s rather fuzzy (Moxie of signal is/was rather far left himself, if I recall).
EDIT: Re-reading the document, the state department emphasizes that a/I “manually vets all potential users.” OP’s distinction stands for now.
Signal doesn't knowingly and deliberately provide services to any organization, let alone one formally designated by the US and the EU. The whole point of Signal is to eliminate all pretenses of the service knowing who its users are or what they're doing. To the extent that's also true of Autistici Inventati, the OFAC designation is invalid.
[0] https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
They are sanctioned, okay, and? What happens practically.
In the USA - the consequences should be only related to USA pertinent actors. The newspapers in Italy say, "there is no judgement against them in Italy".
That is not a sustainable strategy in the long term. Sure after this news they will get lots of donations, but long term it is not something that is realistic.
Since they are now "sanctioned" by the US you cannot legally donate to them even if you wanted to...*[0]
[0] *Unless you now know why this collective needs crypto more than ever.
they've been around 25 years, which is nothing to sneeze at
There are many of us who do not live in the US, so many still can. Just not through paypal.
What was that...
muummuummmmemmmeuuuu...
BANG