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Depends on how you see it - Russia has one of the loosest gun policies in Europe. Russian citizens might buy firearms for self defense, but its true the use of long-barreled weapons for purposes of self-defense is prohibited. An individual cannot possess more than ten guns unless part of a registered gun collection, and guns that shoot in bursts and having more than a ten-cartridge capacity are prohibited. People who acquire firearms for the first time are required to attend six and a half hours of classes on handling guns safely and must pass federal tests on safety rules, and their background is checked. Anyhow, Russia is a very corrupt society, so you can get the legal gun license just paying for it if you have enough money. Its not cheap though, so you really need a lot of cash. Not a problem for oil tycoons and kingpins.

That's called "hedging".

The whale bought quite a lot today

Anarchism is not socialism, and a workers federation wouldn't mean a "workers state" (being "state" a synonymous of government) - that's nonsense. In an anarchist society there is no central authority, no government, all decisions are taken directly by the workers in assemblies, there are no "public servants" or politicians - in an anarchist society everybody is directly involved in the decision making, every single individual is a political entity. The fundamental basis of anarchism is non-hierarchical free association, and this is why "anarcho-capitalism" is an oxymoron, as capitalism is hierarchical by very nature.

First of all, anarchism is a philosophy. An anarchist would never give orders, and would never accept orders: not from his "president", not from his "boss". Anarchism is about individual freedom, it is about the people being in control (of their time, their work, etc.) during every single moment of their life.

Anarchism worked very well in Aragón (northern Spain) between 1930 and 1938, until they were slaughtered by both Stalinist-led troops and fascists, who joined forces to destroy the "anarchist threat" (2 million people fought for anarchism in Spain during the civil war). During this time in Aragon there was no state, no private ownership of means of production, no police, no military, and an incredibly low crime rate. Please note we are not speaking about a "Kibutz" or a small town, we are speaking about a region with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. They even printed their own "money" (basically vouchers) and traded with the rest of Spain, which in that time was a Republican State. If you are interested in this amazing part of history, obviously forgotten by history books, I recommend you "Anarchism, Libertarian Communism and the State: C.N.T. in Zaragoza and Aragon", written by the British historian Kelsey Graham.

Its good indeed, and its one of the reasons why outright banning inanimated objects (including drugs) is never the right answer.

Unfortunately not everybody will be willing to use the Bitcoin blockchain as we/the devs would like. If someone creates something that bloats the UTXO set, they might just do not care about what the devs think about it.

How we solve THAT problem?

I'm sure that worked wonders for you, and made you much open minded, curious and analytic. When we are presented with opposite truths, especially when kids, we develop critical thinking skills as we need them to assimilate and understand. When the truth presented to us is univocal, usually we just accept it.

I hear you. My point is that being the US a place where there are so many individuals self-conscious of their rights and armed with guns precisely to protect themselves from the abuse of Government thugs, you would expect a reaction if the government just milks his citizens, outright stealing from them to commit mass murder. That's a pretty big attack to your freedom, isn't it?

Still, population having guns doesn't stop the US government, they keep stripping you naked of your rights, milking you, and using your money (which they are outright stealing, right?) to commit horrendous murders.

Look at Obama now, he is saying "Syria is not similar at all to Iraq, we will just bomb them to protect civilians"... Its clear that the best way to avoid civilians to be murdered with Syrian chemical weapons is to murder some civilians with American drones and tomahawks. I know many of you agree this is ludicrous, and that most of you are informed and know that those weapons came from Saudi Arabia and thus this was probably a "rebel" action... But still, you say guns protect you from your Government, but I see no reaction to this awful situation. What would you say about that?

Your definition of capitalism is just wrong.

Capitalism means "private ownership of means of production". An individual may work in a factory, but he does not own the factory, he does not control the production nor the fruits of his labor.

Communism just means "public ownership of means of production", in this case being "public" a synonym of state.

In anarchism the workers are the ones owning the means of production and controlling directly the production process and the fruit of their labour.

In fact, Bakunin said in the XIX Century that communism was going to "the biggest lie in this century", as for him it was just a form of "state capitalism". The crucial point was the time of the workers. In capitalism, you will rent your time ("wage slavery") and do whatever you are told to do, or GTFO. In communism, the state apparatus will dictate what you need to do with your time, and you will not have a word on how the fruits of your work are used. In anarchism there is no ruler (not private, not public), the workers decide first hand how to organize productivity and what to do.

@BunworthBanshee: only uninformed retards believe the chemical weapons attack was launched by Assad. You know, even the ONU said there was no proof that he did it...


Iran might be the final goal, but its just too early. I'd bet that before trying to go against Iran the USA needs first to control also Syria, Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan.

The US will just bomb Syria and send some random drone attacks to make sure nobody else dies. You know, its all about innocent people and their lives, its a humanitarian mission - as usual!

Glad Obama is such a smart, game-changing president with a very big heart (yes, we can!), and not that cold-blooded Bush psycho who was just into oil and $$$.

On a serious note: I think they might throw some bombs and wait and see, they might just be checking out Russia's and Iran's reaction. IMO there is no way they would ever go for a terrestrial occupation as per Iraq or Afghanistan, Hezbollah is too strong in Syria and they have plenty of money and weapons. US population ("the tax payers") are fed up of war, most do not buy that was indeed Al Assad who used chemical weapons as the ONU said there was no proof whatsoever, so the US cannot definitely afford another Iraq/Afghanistan... Or Vietnam. In my opinion they are just "testing the waters".

Best thing in the world would be to read to our children many stories, each one coming from different places and cultures, and see how they react to each one. Beautiful but quite difficult task, especially nowadays as everything is pretty much globalized and uniform.

99% of mass-distributed content for kids is bloated with brainwashing propaganda. Das Blaue Von Himmel was socialist propaganda, Walt Disney is capitalist propaganda, and you can count examples like those by the thousands. Do not forget that in most cultures entertainment for kids = educating, and "educating" is a tricky word.

That's why I never understood how parents can feed their small children with all that mainstream products without even taking a look at them. And the few that take a look at them, don't even seem to realize the obvious subtext in those stories.

Its a good summary, Syria has an enormous strategic importance in the area for geopolitical reasons.

You know how this works: the bad guys are supposed to be the muslim fundamentalist, Al Qaeda and such (you know, those who organized 9/11 and all that stuff), but they were also our friends when there was a war to be fought against the commies, or right now, as we need to destroy a moderate Muslim country like Syria together with our beloved allies the Islamic fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia... Its all about oil and taking a strong position in the area, as the China/Iran/Russia fellowship is making a lot of money there and you know this is all about money, right?

Anyhow, good thing we have those Al-Qaeda guys, they are our ace up in the sleeve, when we need to terrorize our citizens we use them, when we need to take down a Government here and there we use them too, and at the end of the day this is why they exist!

It seems all the refunds come from the same address, that would be less than 70 Avalon were refunded. Does this mean that the immense majority of people kept their machine? And wow, if you follow the different address you will see hundreds of k's of BTC going through some of those addresses. That's tens of millions of $... Avalon, you did good indeed....

LOOOOOL, now I totally get it - good one lucif!!

Yep, just as in Iraq, a country where women went uncovered and in skirts to the university, and that was just bombed back to the stone age.

And what about the destruction of the National Library, one of the most valuable in the world, which was the memory (now lost forever) of a 5,000 years old civilization... Wikipedia says those crazy Saddam nutjobs burnt it to destroy their secret archives which they hided between the clay tables written thousands of years ago in ancient cuneiform... Feels great that now civilization arrived to Iraq, Saddam is no longer a deadly threat to us, the good guys, and good Iraqui will finally be able to illustrate themselves and live in peace... God bless!

The point here is I'm not seeing any complete report on what happened in that meeting, just vague statements that resemble a condescending pat on the back to the community: "do not worry guys, we're hanging out with all the three letter agencies and we are doing great!"

That's BS. If they feel they represent Foundation members and "the community" by extension they should be absolutely transparent, from the very beginning - I'm surprised this "friendly" meeting was not publicly announced on beforehand. If they prefer to do things "behind closed doors" then maybe they just represent themselves and their own agendas, in which case I do not understand how they got so much cheering and "well done, guys!" in here.

TL;DR: if they do not publish a complete report of that meeting this smells very fishy and IMO it is nothing to be happy about.