[kwlug-disc] The Open Technology Fund is a front of the U.S. government.

[Mikalai Birukou]

> The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is one of the most influential and 
> celebrated organizations in the hacking and internet freedom 
> communities. Well over two billion 
> <https://www.usagm.gov/networks/otf/> people globally use OTF-produced 
> software, including communications app Signal and web browser Tor, 
> services that are specifically marketed to privacy-conscious consumers 
> looking to circumvent government censorship and surveillance. Yet its 
> close links to the U.S. national security state raise many worrying 
> questions about whether the world is making a mistake by trusting the 
> organization and its products.
>
> https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-open-technology-fund-makes-privacy-apps-staffed-spies/279147/ 
> <https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-open-technology-fund-makes-privacy-apps-staffed-spies/279147/>
>

TLDR; If you are hooked on this kind, detox


Ok. Let's make zeroth reply within article's aesthetic of implications 
and suggestions for logical fallacies:

a) Is this a hit piece on Tor, timed right when it is getting blocked in 
Russia?

b) Is this a hit piece in retaliation to new sanctions imposed on 
Lukashenko's regime in Belarus?


Personally, I am insulted by some sections. Insult has the following 
form. Lukashenko or any other dictator, when faced with populace just 
says into everyone's faces that these people of their own countries have 
no free will, no desires, and if they do anything against, it can only 
be a result of influence from the outside. Very dehumanizing rhetoric 
that allows police on the street to do inhumane things to fellow citizens.

And we haven't even started talking about perspective of American 
reader. Note how grenade is supposed to through shrapnel in all 
directions, similarly these kinds of articles throw emotional bombs so 
that meticulous dislodging takes way more time than it took to write 
this pack of logical fallacies, praying on our human biases.


I'd be honest. I used to be hooked myself on these things, from RT, till 
2013, till Ukraine events. Then heavy dissonance hit: objective truth 
from reality on one side, and the likes of aforementioned article on 
another.


If you have been pushed into a particular thought by this article. Do 
articulate it here, with chained quotes. Either you will find missing 
links yourself, cause that is one kind of fallacies used here, or, we'll 
tell you missing events around Tor that are miss-characterized here.

Seriously, either detox from this, or, get Russian/Cuban/Venezuelan 
passport, and denounce citizenship(s) elsewhere. Else, if we are 
inconsistent, we let lies in places, poisoning shared environment.

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