Another victory of cypherpunks against US hegemony

Original: Liu Jiaolian

Overnight, BTC continued to rebound to 62k. Last night, the internal reference once again pulled out the timeline of Mt.Gox compensation over the past six months, as well as semi-quantitative analysis, to illustrate a truth, that is, some things are not bad, but are just used by short sellers with ulterior motives to make a fuss, take the opportunity to create panic. Jiaolian calculated for everyone in the internal reference in May, and with just the amount of Mt.Gox, it would not take a depth of 60,000 dollars to digest and absorb it. What's more, these legendary chips have not flowed out yet, okay? People scare people, scare people to death.

Yesterday, big things happened one after another. Wikileaks official Twitter posted that Julian Assange was finally released and was about to leave the UK and return to his hometown, Australia.

The cell in Belmarsh's maximum security prison is only 3 meters long and 2 meters wide. Assange was isolated and imprisoned in such a small space for 23 hours a day (only 1 hour for activities outside the prison), for more than 5 years, 1901 days and nights! It is hard to imagine what kind of inhuman torture this is! In Assange, the British Empire and the United States have both torn off all the disguises of modern civilization, and spit out the "human rights" that they use to accuse others all day long into the toilet and flushed it into the sewer.

Who is Assange? Why does the United States, the global hegemon that "covers the sky with one hand" in today's world, fear and hate him so much, and want to get rid of him as soon as possible? What kind of life intersection does he have with Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin?

When I wrote "The History of Bitcoin" in 2020, I used a whole chapter in Chapter 6 to introduce Assange and the leak website "Wikileaks" he founded.

"Julian Assange, an Australian programmer and hacker, is the founder, editor-in-chief and spokesperson of the famous leak website "Wikileaks" (wikileaks.org). WikiLeaks was founded by Assange in 2006 and is committed to helping "whistleblowers" around the world publish revelations, so that highly confidential and anti-human crimes that cannot be told can be made public.

"Assange's creed is what he once said on his personal blog: "The more secretive and unfair an organization is, the more revelations will cause fear and panic in its leadership and planning agencies... Because, by its very nature, an unfair system will inevitably attract opponents. And in many ways, they do not have the upper hand. Large-scale revelations will make this unjust system extremely vulnerable to those who seek to replace it with a more open form of governance. ””

Assange almost single-handedly pasted eight big words firmly on the forehead of the great United States - saying all the good things and doing all the bad things.

He has been a member of the cypherpunk organization for a long time. In the second chapter of "The History of Bitcoin", "Cypherpunks", chapters 4-7, a total of four chapters, Jiaolian introduced the glorious deeds of cypherpunks who have taken up cryptographic weapons and fought against hegemony since the early 1990s.

Among them, the fourth chapter on exporting arms introduced that as early as 1991, when American programmer Phil Zimmermann developed the civilian-grade PGP encryption algorithm, the US Department of Justice was ready to punish him.

Is it absurd? Is it magical? The United States, which allows individuals to carry guns, does not allow people to master the 128-bit encryption algorithm, and does not hesitate to threaten them with felony!

This is not only a satire on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (the right of individuals to bear arms), but also a great irony on American democratic rights. A mathematical algorithm has made the empire so vulnerable that "only the state officials are allowed to set fires, but the people are not allowed to light lamps."

No, this precisely shows the brilliance of the American elite ruling class, that is, they attach more importance to thought control than to gun control. American law can allow the American people to be armed but idiotic, but it will never allow the American people to have the opportunity to use high-intensity encryption algorithms to transmit thoughts and facts without government surveillance.

Ordinary people think that bullets and pistols are very dangerous. In the eyes of the American elite ruling class, encrypted thoughts and truths are 10 million times more dangerous than bullets and pistols. Bullets and pistols will only make the American people fight and kill each other more efficiently; while encryption algorithms may make the American people awaken and unite to tear down the empire.

Zimmerman played a trick and escaped. He used the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (freedom of speech) to print the source code of the encryption algorithm in a book, which was published publicly in 1995. The tiger behind him opened its bloody mouth, but bit on the armor and had to give up in disappointment.

Nearly 30 years have passed, and the bottom line of human rights in the empire has been lowered a lot. What's more, Assange is not an American. He cannot be protected by the civil rights stipulated in the U.S. Constitution that ordinary Americans enjoy, but has to be hit hard by the "long-arm jurisdiction" of the U.S. judicial iron fist. For this kind of rogue behavior with serious inequality of rights and obligations, who can Assange go to for justice?

Assange and the forces that support him won the victory after an arduous struggle. However, the price of regaining freedom is huge. Assange exchanged his release by pleading guilty. If he refused to plead guilty, the U.S. Department of Justice would have detained him until death. His guilty plea created an unprecedented success case for the U.S. Department of Justice: shackles were put on the freedom of the press that the empire had long boasted about. The US government can use the 1917 Espionage Act to arrest journalists around the world and convict them as long as they "obtain information, record images, or reproduce descriptions of any information relating to national defense with the intent or reason to believe that such information may be used to the detriment of the United States or to the benefit of any foreign country."

In the future, if a foreign journalist publishes a negative news story about the United States, or exposes the fact that American soldiers killed civilians, does it count as "harming the United States"? Of course it counts. The US Department of Justice can issue a global warrant for the journalist to be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.

"If criticism is not free, praise is meaningless."

Assange's experience is a heavy blow to the freedom of the press and freedom of speech in the United States. These words were not said by the author, but by Robert Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate for the 2024 US presidency:

"Julian Assange reached a plea agreement and will be free! I am so happy. He is a hero of his generation.

"The bad news is that he had to admit to conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information. This means that the US security agencies have successfully criminalized journalism and extended their jurisdiction to non-US citizens around the world.

"Julian had to accept this fact. He had a heart disease and would have died in prison. But the US security agencies set a terrible precedent and dealt a heavy blow to press freedom."

Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, is only too aware of the moral standards of the US government.

So, when Satoshi Nakamoto, who is also a member of the cypherpunks, learned that Assange was looking for an alternative donation channel for the WikiLeaks website whose payment channel was blocked by the US government and intended to use BTC, he was very calm and not as excited as other community users.

On December 5, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto replied, begging WikiLeaks not to try to use Bitcoin. He believes that Bitcoin is still a baby in its infancy, and the popularity brought by WikiLeaks may destroy Bitcoin.

However, as written in the seventh episode of "The History of Bitcoin", "Bitcoin is a decentralized, open-use, censorship-resistant system without permission and registration. Even the inventor Satoshi Nakamoto cannot censor and prevent WikiLeaks from using Bitcoin."

WikiLeaks still launched the BTC donation channel and was reported by the media.

On December 11, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto left a message on the forum saying, "It would have been better to get such attention under any other circumstances," and "WikiLeaks has stirred up a hornet's nest, and a large group of hornets are flying towards us." Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has disappeared from the public eye.

These cypherpunk heroes have made their great contributions to the global anti-hegemony cause in their own different ways. Assange is attacking head-on, Snowden is blasting from the inside, Zimmerman is flanking, and Satoshi Nakamoto is digging for the roots.

They are all heroes of the people of the world. The people will remember them forever.

Now, Assange is on the last leg of his flight from Saipan, a US territory, to Australia. Wish him a safe journey!