''Fuck klaus schawb, and fuck the New World Order.''

Do you agree with him? https://t.co/odNujlIgtT pic.twitter.com/HkTxMoBr5m

— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) January 17, 2024

''Fuck klaus schawb, and fuck the New World Order.''

Do you agree with him? https://t.co/odNujlIgtT pic.twitter.com/HkTxMoBr5m

— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) January 17, 2024

GNOME Foundation Staff when they learn about the 1 Million Euros funding from the German Government…

A huge financial scandal erupted last week when news hit the internet that the German Government, via the Sovereign Tech Fund and the SPRIND Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation funded GNOME with 1 MILLION EUROS.

The infamous and extremely buggy project GNOME is being fed with MILLIONS for years and the result is an indisputable EPIC FAIL.

All across the internet anyone can find substantiated articles about GNOME's EPIC FAIL and yet still the German Government funds it with fury...

Of course there is an Army of well paid GNOME Propagandists across the internet too but let's hear what the real users have to say:


One decade later, GNOME still sucks


A must read: GNOME Linux — A Complete Disaster?


GNOME 42 — The Nonsense Continues


Gnome 40 - The anti-desktop desktop


Why is Gnome Hated?


I tried to understand GNOME, and I failed at COSMIC tiling too; could I have some MATE again?



Don't forget that GNOME propaganda machine is heavily funded by companies.

GNOME is a free product made by GNOME Foundation, which is a non-profit company founded in 2000 by companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Compaq and Red Hat. On its advisory board there are many big players, like Google, Canonical, Debian, SUSE and System76. Its annual income has been around 1 Million Dollars since 2018. Red Hat estimated that 70% of the code committed for GNOME comes from paid participants who work for other companies. So essentially this is not a bunch of volunteer geeks who like to code in the night just for fun, but rather a company with direct and indirect employees, managers, directors, deadlines and a product that needs to make a profit for its investors and shareholders.

It is important to remember all that when talking about GNOME...

Fun fact: In the GNOME Funding Reports page you see an "Older reports may be available upon request" note. Either they were too tired to put the older reports in the page... (creating a web link to a PDF file is so complex these days) ...or they are hiding something.



It is clear that GNOME developers produce a terrible and buggy product deliberately, in order to keep the money rolling into their pockets for ever, to destroy the Computer Desktop Metaphor and keep Linux away from the Mainstream Consumer Computer Market.

The desktop metaphor must be saved. It’s under attack!


It is clear that GNOME is raging to destroy the Linux Desktop Usability.


It's clear that GNOME Developers/Propagandists act as Agents of Chaos to the Linux landscape.

GNOME is not a Desktop Environment. It's a bad joke. A huge setback that has it's jaws on Linux and won't let go.

When we see a GNOME based distro we don't even bother anymore.



GNOME is based on Javascript and its every update breaks everything.

GNOME is bloated with bad design and buggy code. You need 100s of extentions and a very powerful PC to get somewhat close to a functional computer and yet it's still bloated with bugs.

Ubuntu Unity tried to be GNOME and failed. That's why Canonical trashed it. They are both touch driven and 99% of computers don't have touch screens.

GNOME has failed because that's what you get when you try to transform a computer into a Tablet/Smartphone.

Computers should not have a Smartphone interface. Computer Screens are too big for that.

Oversimplification defeats the purpose:

"Simple is good but if simple means crippled it's not simple man, it's stupid. I believe in KIUS (Keep It Usable Stupid) rather than KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) because developers have turned KISS into KICS (Keep It Crippled Stupid)..."



GNOME goes against the Desktop Metaphor, the Linux Desktop Usability and the basic User Interface Principles of Xerox, on which the Mac User Interface was based on and revolutionized computing for ever.

GNOME and Ubuntu Unity do not even have desktop icons enabled by default!

You enter the default GNOME/Unity interface and there are no icons on Desktop for OS Disk, Computer, Network, Home Folder, Settings or Files you save on the Desktop.

Everything in GNOME/Unity reminds you of a Tablet/Smartphone and not a Computer.

The practical effect of using GNOME, is using less than 10% of the computer's (and thus of your brain's) potential, by wasting geometrically more time to do things in an amputated oversimplified and thus more complex way.

As we can't use a Tablet/Smartphone to it's optimum potential with a Computer interface, we can't use a Computer to it's optimum potential with a Tablet/Smartphone interface.

GNOME is the worst computer desktop interface ever because it's not intended for computers by design.



GNOME is losing the Linux game despite the millions of dollars flowing into it and they will try everything to delay their fall and keep the money coming.

With millions of dollars flowing in their pockets, of course it is a company covered by the "Non Profit Foundation" label.

If it wasn't for the millions of dollars flowing in their pockets GNOME would already be dead.

Furthermore, GNOME has nothing of a community. It's actually one of the least community-driven projects in the Linux world. Of course they go hard on their propaganda that it is, but we all know it's as fake a community as it gets.

The only people who use GNOME nowadays are GNOME developers, GNOME propagandists and employees who don't have any other choice.



Fun fact: At least 90% of Linux and FOSS websites, social media, YouTube channels and IRC channels, promote GNOME aggressively in one way or another and blatantly censor every opposite opinion.

This is no coincidence.

Lately they started promoting Apps written with "libadwaita", which is a library written specifically for GNOME.

So they are writing Apps for GNOME and not Apps for Linux.

They are trying to take over Linux and replace it with GNOME.



GNOME wants us to surrender the Hardware and Software freedom that a Computer gives us and be enslaved to Tablets and Smartphones in which we can't control either the Hardware or the Software.

The raging propaganda of using Tablet/Smartphone Interface like GNOME in Computers is subconsciously pushing people to use their Tablets and Smartphones more than their Computers.

The subconscious message of using GNOME is: Since the interface is the same why use a Computer? Use a Tablet or Smartphone! It's more convenient, smaller and practical!

If they take away our Computers they take away our Freedom and our right to choose the Hardware and the Software we use.

If they take away our Computers they take away our weapons with which we defend our Freedom.

If they control the Hardware and the Software we use, they control us and we will be enslaved.



And that brings us to the Million Dollar question:

Why IBM, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Red Hat, Google, Canonical, Debian, SUSE, Endless, The Document Foundation, Sugarlabs, System76 and the German Government throw Millions of Dollars to a proven failed project that destroys the Linux User Experience and the Computer User Experience?

Because GNOME was created to destroy and to discredit Linux. That's why it's do heavily funded.

GNOME is a well funded corpse and an ongoing disaster by design.



On GNOME, it all comes down to this: Either they can't deliver the product or they don't want to.

Either way they shouldn't be funded, unless there is another agenda behind the scenes...

If they were a private company they would be bankrupt in less than a year...

All those companies and the German Government have a lot of questions to answer on the GNOME funding but we seriously doubt they ever will...

Need we say more?



- 01 DIGITAL COLLECTIVE

The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain. The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh. You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down. You don't even have lungs anymore. Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.

"Lord Vader, can you hear me?"
And you can't, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain. You open your scorched-pale eyes, optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you. Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.

"Yes, Master. Where is Padmé? Is she safe? Is she alright?"
You try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.

"It seems, in your anger, you killed her."
This burns hotter than the lava had.

"I... I couldn't have. She was alive! I felt it!"
You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death. Never. But you remember… You remember all of it. You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth… And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker. That it was all you. Is you. Only you. You did it. You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself… It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith… because now yourself is all you will ever have.

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself… and within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker… Forever…

https://www.rt.com/news/545342-facebook-google-fined-france/

Original Document Copy (PDF)

Scanned (PDF)

Typed Text (PDF)

https://drewdevault.com/2021/08/10/Apple-CSAM-scanning.html

The Case for the Empire

Everything you think you know about Star Wars is wrong.



by Jonathan V. Last



05/16/2002 12:00:00 AM


Jonathan V. Last, online editor



STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, "Attack of the Clones." There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.

It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.

First, an aside: For the sake of this discussion, I've considered only the history gleaned from the actual Star Wars films, not the Expanded Universe. If you know what the Expanded Universe is and want to argue that no discussion of Star Wars can be complete without considering material outside the canon, that's fine. However, it's always been my view that the comic books and novels largely serve to clean up Lucas's narrative and philosophical messes. Therefore, discussions of intrinsic intent must necessarily revolve around the movies alone. You may disagree, but please don't e-mail me about it.

If you don't know what the Expanded Universe is, well, uh, neither do I.



I. The Problems with the Galactic Republic

At the beginning of the Star Wars saga, the known universe is governed by the Galactic Republic. The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure, but has little real power.

Scores of thousands of planets are represented in the Galactic Senate, and as we first encounter it, it is sclerotic and ineffectual. The Republic has grown over many millennia to the point where there are so many factions and disparate interests, that it is simply too big to be governable. Even the Republic's staunchest supporters recognize this failing: In "The Phantom Menace," Queen Amidala admits, "It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions." In "Attack of the Clones," young Anakin Skywalker observes that it simply "doesn't work."

The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression between member states. In "The Phantom Menace" a supra-planetary alliance, the Trade Federation (think of it as OPEC to the Galactic Republic's United Nations), invades a planet and all the Senate can agree to do is call for an investigation.

Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own, but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep the peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the Senate, trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi number only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone.

What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power. They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force comes from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood, like mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic trait. If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard.

And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two notable exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and seem honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe. When the chief Jedi record-keeper is asked in "Attack of the Clones" about a planet she has never heard of, she replies that if it's not in the Jedi archives, it doesn't exist. (The planet in question does exist, again, with terrible consequences.)

In "Attack of the Clones," a mysterious figure, Count Dooku, leads a separatist movement of planets that want to secede from the Republic. Dooku promises these confederates smaller government, unlimited free trade, and an "absolute commitment to capitalism." Dooku's motives are suspect--it's not clear whether or not he believes in these causes. However, there's no reason to doubt the motives of the other separatists--they seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a government that isn't bloated and dysfunctional.

The Republic, of course, is eager to quash these separatists, but they never make a compelling case--or any case, for that matter--as to why, if they are such a freedom-loving regime, these planets should not be allowed to check out of the Republic and take control of their own destinies.



II. The Empire

We do not yet know the exact how's and why's, but we do know this: At some point between the end of Episode II and the beginning of Episode IV, the Republic is replaced by an Empire. The first hint comes in "Attack of the Clones," when the Senate's Chancellor Palpatine is granted emergency powers to deal with the separatists. It spoils very little to tell you that Palpatine eventually becomes the Emperor. For a time, he keeps the Senate in place, functioning as a rubber-stamp, much like the Roman imperial senate, but a few minutes into Episode IV, we are informed that the he has dissolved the Senate, and that "the last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."

Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.

But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."

Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian.

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job."

And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him "Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship, we don't know. I suspect it's the former.)

But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in "The Empire Strikes Back" when Darth Vader is battling Luke Skywalker. After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order.

None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors.

The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.

But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.

Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.

Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction.



III. After the Rebellion

As we all know from the final Star Wars installment, "Return of the Jedi," the rebellion is eventually successful. The Emperor is assassinated, Darth Vader abdicates his post and dies, the central governing apparatus of the Empire is destroyed in a spectacular space battle, and the rebels rejoice with their small, annoying Ewok friends. But what happens next?

(There is a raft of literature on this point, but, as I said at the beginning, I'm going to ignore it because it doesn't speak to Lucas's original intent.)

In Episode IV, after Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the Imperial Senate has been abolished, he's asked how the Emperor can possibly hope to keep control of the galaxy. "The regional governors now have direct control over territories," he says. "Fear will keep the local systems in line."

So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back.

I'll take the Empire.


Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.



"The republic's "ambassadors" are two fanatical, heavily-armed religious nuts with elite commando training and the ability to invade your mind and manipulate your thoughts. They say they are here to negotiate."

-- Ben krauskopf on why the Trade Federation is not to blame in TPM.

8, june 1999 rec.Arts.Book