Mardy (Entratas super politica)

Un editoriale di Marco Travaglio

Alberto Mardegan — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 17:37:28 GMT

Nonostante io non legga più Il Fatto Quotidiano (per i motivi spiegati qui, che restano tuttora validi), continuo a imbattermi negli editoriali di Marco Travaglio, che spesso apprezzo. Oggi invece mi sono imbattuto nell'introduzione del suo nuovo libro “Scemi di guerra”, e ve ne riporto un estratto che ho trovato particolarmente incisivo.

Abbiamo abolito la storia. È vietato raccontare ciò che è accaduto in Ucraina prima del 24 febbraio 2022: gli otto anni di guerra civile in Donbass dopo il golpe bianco (anzi, nero) di Euromaidan nel 2014 e le migliaia di morti e feriti causati dai continui attacchi delle truppe di Kiev e delle milizie filo-naziste al seguito contro le popolazioni russofone e russofile che, col sostegno di Mosca, chiedevano l’indipendenza o almeno l’autonomia. Il tutto in barba ai due accordi di Minsk. La versione ufficiale, l’unica autorizzata, è che prima del 2022 non è successo niente: una mattina Putin s’è svegliato più pazzo del solito e ha invaso l’Ucraina. Se la gente scoprisse la verità, capirebbe che il mantra atlantista “Putin aggressore e Zelensky aggredito” vale solo dal 2022: prima, per otto anni, gli aggressori erano i governi di Kiev (l’ultimo, quello di Zelensky) e gli aggrediti i popoli del Donbass. Fra le vittime, c’è il giornalista italiano Andrea Rocchelli, ucciso dall’esercito ucraino… Abbiamo abolito la geografia. Proibito mostrare la cartina dell’allargamento della Nato a Est negli ultimi 25 anni (da 16 a 30 membri)… Eppure, che la Nato si sia allargata a Est, accerchiando e assediando la Russia, minacciandone la sicurezza con installazioni di missili nucleari sempre più vicine al confine, in barba alle promesse fatte a Gorbaciov nel 1990, fino all’ultima provocazione di annunciare l’imminente ingresso nell’Alleanza dei vicini di casa della Russia – Georgia e Ucraina – è un fatto storico indiscutibile…

L’altra cartina proibita è quella dei Paesi che non condannano o non sanzionano la Russia, o se ne restano neutrali: quasi tutta l’Asia, l’Africa e l’America Latina, cioè l’87% della popolazione mondiale. Ma al nostro piccolo mondo antico occidentale piace far credere che Putin è isolato e noi lo stiamo circondando. Sul fatto che Cina, India, Brasile e altri paesucoli stiano con lui o non stiano con noi, meglio sorvolare: altrimenti lo capiscono tutti che le sanzioni non funzionano… Solo abolendo la storia si può credere al presidente Sergio Mattarella quando ripete che “l’Ucraina è la prima guerra nel cuore dell’Europa nel dopoguerra”. E Belgrado bombardata anche dall’Italia nel 1999 dov’è, in Oceania? E chi era il vicepremier del governo D’Alema che bombardava Belgrado? Un certo Mattarella… Abbiamo abolito il rispetto per le altre culture. In una folle ondata di russofobia, abbiamo visto ostracizzare direttori d’orchestra, cantanti liriche, pianiste di fama mondiale, fotografi, atleti (anche paraolimpici), persino gatti e querce, soltanto perché russi. E poi censurare corsi su Dostoevskij, cancellare dai teatri i balletti di Cajkovskij, addirittura estromettere la delegazione russa dalle celebrazioni per la liberazione di Auschwitz. Come se il lager l’avessero liberato gli americani o gli ucraini e non l’Armata Rossa… i trombettieri della Nato propagandano la bufala dell’“euroatlantismo” e gli scemi di guerra se la bevono, senz’accorgersi che mai come oggi gli interessi dell’Europa sono opposti a quelli dell’America.

A peace plan for Ukraine

Alberto Mardegan — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 19:33:56 GMT

Among the peace plans proposed by various European and U.S. politicians, to be frank, I haven't read a single one which I would consider even remotely feasible. My impression is that such plans have been redacted more for a need to fool one's voters and present onself as a peace operator (whereas one factually supports sending of weapons and tightening of sanctions) than for a genuine peace effort, since every politician that had spent even just a few minutes to document oneself on the situation around Ukraine would perfectly know that these peace plans are not just unacceptable by the Russians, but plainly unpresentable.

A believable peace plan must first and foremost take into account the reasons that pushed Russia to invade Ukraine and, above all, those who push the Russian people to support the war. It's certainly legitimate, and even reasonable, to doubt the official reasons: on the contrary, it's very likely that the reasons who push Russia to continue this “special operation” are, at least in part, others, economical in nature and to the benefit of a few especially powerful individuals (arm producers above all). We can put our heart at rest, and accept the fact that we'll never get to know the real reasons; but, on the other hand, it's not even so important to know them, after all.

What we really need to know is the mood of the Russian population, and especially the reasons why president Putin's popularity has risen after the invasion of Ukraine. The mainstream information we get in the West is not helpful at all in this, because it's since 2014 that it omits reporting important facts about the war in Donbass. Well, nowadays the Russian people are constantly fed images of civilians dying in Donetsk and in other cities of the Donbass, right in the center of the cities, where there are no military targets. We can call it propaganda, sure, but the facts are real and are just an aggravated continuation of what has been happening for the past 8 years, all well documented by the OSCE mission and by the Office of the High Commissioner of the Human Rights of the United Nations¹.

Besides, the massive transfer of weapons and the episodes of discrimination against Russian artists, athletes, personalities of the culture and entertainment, sometimes against the very Russian language, these are all widely publicized by local mass media and get the Russians convinced that their country is fighting an existential war against a horde of fascists, and, militarily, against the whole of NATO.

If the West had really the will to restore peace it should work to destroy this representation of itself and disarm the Russian propaganda by removing the facts on which it's built. Specifically, I'm persuaded that many of the following points would be well received by the Western population and would demotivate the Russian people (including many of the soldiers stationed at the front) in fighting this fratricidal war:

Removal of every discrimination against Russian culture and its representatives and performers.
Promise that Ukraine won't be let into NATO or in other military alliances that would go beyond the commitment to reciprocal defense (that is, no to joint military drills or foreign bases in the territory of Ukraine, yes to a promise of military intervention in case of attack).
Pausing the shipment of weapons until Ukraine removes the title of hero of Ukraine to Stepan Bandera and other members of the nazist organisation UPA.
Pausing the shipment of weapons until Ukraine stops bombing civilian settlements devoid of military installations.

It should be noted that none of these points require collaboration or agreements between states (even joining NATO can only happen after the unanymous vote of all current members, as Turkey reminds us), so they all could be immediately implemented by any willing state. The bigger the number of Western countries pushing forward these policies, the more uncertainty will grow among the Russian population, and will ultimately transform into incomprehension and dissatisfaction, since this would destroy the ideological reasons that make the Russians support the conflict.

If we are to speak of a peace plan, agreed among NATO, Ukraine and Russia, then it could be developed along these lines:

Ukraine condemns the nazist ideology (therefore Bandera and friends), accepts to open an international commission of inquiry (including Russia as well) over the massacres of Maidan square and Odessa.
Ukraine grants the status of second official language to the Russian language, similarly to how Swedish language is treated in Finland².
Ukraine enacts laws to guarantee a limited autonomy to the 5 regions currently under Russian control (including Crimea) and amnesty for all those rebels that are not found guilty of war crimes (in other words, a sort of Minsk accords extended to all the occupied regions).
Ukraine promises not to host military forces or equipment from other countries in its territory, and to not participate in joint military drills, without the consent of the Russian federation. It can, however, join defensive military alliances.
Ukraine promises to never enact sanctions against Russia, nor to require visa from Russian citizens in order to cross its borders.
The Russian army withdraws and gets temporarily replaced by the army of a third country, not member of NATO, chosen by Ukraine.
New referendums, under the supervision of international observers (including Ukrainians and Russians) in the 5 contested regions. Times will be established by Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine commit to recognize and implement their results.
The peace mission introduced in point 6 gets wrapped up.

It's of fundamental importance understanding that territorial questions are only a secondary matter, and that what is most pressing for the Russian people is to have good relations with the neighbouring countries: not having to worry about coups, colour revolutions stirred up by the West or about other attempts to use Ukraine as a weapon against Russia. If, for example, there were a Russian region that desired to separate itself from the federation and join Belarus, I'm convinced that this could happen in a peaceful way without serious repercussions, since the relationships between the two countries are good and Belarus is not perceived as a threat. This was also the situation with Ukraine before 2014³, and it's the situation to which we should strive to return to.

See for example the report for the period May-August 2018, page 5, point 22. More reports can be found in this list. ↩
Note that Swedish in Finland is the native language for just 5% of the population, whereas in Ukraine Russian is the native language of about 30% of the population. ↩
Not exactly, since there had already been attempts at colour revolutions resulting in anti-Russian governments. But I hope you'll pass this oversimplification of mine here. ↩

The Media

Alberto Mardegan — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 20:29:28 GMT

Ah, the media. No words from me are necessary here: just read these two articles, then read their titles again, then wonder.

Just wow.

Quando le scientia manca de argumentos

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 19:25:39 GMT

E ben, io lo confessa: io es un de ille negationistas qui non crede in le scientia. Al minus, si on associa le parola “scientia” con le Organisation Mundial del Sanitate (OMS, o WHO in anglese).

Jam desde plure annos io ha perdite le fide in iste organisation, ma un nova que io legeva recentemente me ha stimulate a declarar publicamente mi adversion pro le OMS: in iste articulo, le capite del OMS declarava que le idea de attinger le immunitate de grege per relaxar le limitationes al diffusion del virus COVID-19 non es ethic.

Le referimento al ethica me surprendeva. Io non poteva recordar, que io unquam audiva le OMS parlar de ethica, ante iste momento. An le OSM non es un organisation scientific? Si illo lo es, le evocation del ethica como justification de un argumentation sembla demonstrar que il non ha factos scientific pro supportar le these.

Ma anque si nos concede que le personal del OMS pote — a titulo purmente personal — facer considerationes de charactere ethic, como pote nos conciliar iste declaration de Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus con le silentio super un quantitate de practicas e experimentos scientific, que multe personas considera esser contrari al ethica? Esque experimentar le vaccinos super populationes del tertie mundo es ethic? O experimentar los super le stratos plus indigente del population (voluntarimente, on dice, ma on les compensa con alicun beneficios) es ethic? Reciper enorme contributiones financiari del companias que developpa medicinas e vaccinos, e pronunciar se super themas medic e virologic, es isto ethic?

Contra potentes nemo est munitus satis;
si vero accessit consiliator maleficus,
vis et nequitia quicquid oppugnant, ruit.

(Fedro, libro secunde, capitulo sexte)

Elezioni: diffidate dei finti sovranisti

Alberto Mardegan — Sun, 19 May 2019 15:37:40 GMT

Da un anno a questa parte la parola “sovranità” ha acquistato importanza nel dibattito politico, e l'epiteto “sovranista” è spesso affibbiato agli intellettuali e ai politici, a volte come dispregiativo, altre volte invece rivendicato dal soggetto stesso come un attributo virtuoso. Tra questi ultimi, tuttavia, si nascondono alcune personalità che di sovranista hanno solo uno slogan e una mezza idea che sbandierano ad ogni comparsa televisiva, mentre si candidano in un partito, sia esso la Lega o il Movimento 5 stelle, i cui vertici restano saldamente fedeli all'Unione Europea e alla NATO.

Cambieremo l'Unione Europea dal di dentro

Diretta FB con i candidati Elia Torrisi (Più Europa) e Francesca Donato (Lega)

Quando sentite un politico fare questa affermazione, potete star certi che si tratta di una persona che ha un'idea molto confusa su cosa significhi “sovranità”. Promettere di tentare di cambiare l'UE dall'interno significa promettere di premere qualche volta il pulsante nelle sessioni del parlamento europeo in modo da farsi sembrare un ribelle, ma senza mai scalfire l'idea che vuole le istituzioni europee scavalcare quelle nazionali.

Ascoltate per esempio l'intervista a Francesca Donato, candidato della Lega, raccolta nel video che trovate qui sopra; accostata al candidato di Più Europa le differenze si fanno estremamente tenui. Certo, vi sono divergenze sull'idea di come l'UE debba operare, ma nessuno sembra mettere più in dubbio il fatto che il nostro paese debba continuare ad operare all'interno dei dettami imposti da un sistema sovranazionale.

“Vogliamo un Europa più democratica”, si dice, senza spiegare come si possono conciliare interessi nazionali tanto diversi: se per quasi tutti i paesi dell'unione, ad eccezion fatta di Italia, Spagna e Grecia, è conveniente poter accedere alle arance e all'olio prodotti in Nordafrica, un voto democratico supporterebbe l'attuale abbattimento dei dazi.

Si parla anche di uniformare la fiscalità, affinché non esistano paradisi fiscali all'interno dell'Unione Europea; ma davvero possiamo pensare che Olanda, Irlanda, Lussemburgo e altri paesi possano accettare di vedersi alzare le tasse dall'Unione Europea?

E come risolvere il problema delle delocalizzazioni all'interno dell'UE? Ritorna anche qui la parola "uniformare", che raccoglie tuttavia un significato molto più utopico di quanto possa sembrare: un serio processo di uniformazione delle varie situazioni lavorative, che non miri a un'appiattimento dei diritti al ribasso, dovrebbe passare per l'introduzione di dazi all'interno dell'UE, regolati in modo da stimolare i paesi ad innalzare le condizioni lavorative (ovvero: ti tolgo i dazi sulle esportazioni solo quando le condizioni nel tuo paese migliorano), ma questo sarebbe in diretta contrapposizione con le forze capitalistiche che attualmente sono al potere. In altre parole, non avverrà mai.

Euro o no euro?

La Lega candida anche un brillante economista, Antonio Maria Rinaldi, che in più occasioni ha criticato il sistema Euro (come la sopracitata Francesca Donato, a capo del progetto Eurexit). Sembra tuttavia che la volontà di uscire dall'euro sia un po' scemata da quando le candidature sono state annunciate, preferendo parlare di “riformare il sistema euro”.

I sovranisti al guinzaglio di Trump

Le personalità candidate dalla Lega vantano un curriculum di tutto rispetto, e pure le idee che portavano avanti (specialmente prima della candidatura) erano per me del tutto condivisibili. Tuttavia a mio parere si sono candidate nel partito sbagliato, un partito guidato al guinzaglio da Trump (che a sua volta è il burattino di Netanyahu) e che difficilmente seguirà la volontà dei suoi elettori. Mi piacerebbe poter chiedere ai candidati leghisti se supportano le sanzioni contro il Venezuela, se i Palestinesi hanno diritto ad un loro stato, e molti altri quesiti ai quali (immagino, ritendendole persone intelligenti) le loro risposte sarebbero molto diverse da quelle di Salvini. Avrebbero il coraggio di professare apertamente le loro opinioni? E in caso di voto, avrebbero il coraggio di disobbedire al padrone?

Non che la situazione nella sponda del Movimento 5 stelle sia molto migliore: benché al suo interno vi siano persone informate e rette (una su tutte, Manlio di Stefano), all'atto pratico il partito non ha dato mostra di voler cambiare lo status quo sul piano internazionale; sul Venezuela c'è stato un timido tentativo di alzare la testa, ma sanzioni alla Russia, attaccamento all'UE e alla NATO restano ben saldi.

Employing a nazi sympathiser - RedHat under scrutiny

Alberto Mardegan — Mon, 06 May 2019 19:30:44 GMT

Update: According to some rumors, RedHat has swiftly acted and the protagonist of this story is no longer in their ranks. You still might want to read this post, though, as it was not much about facts, but opinions. :-) - 15.05.2019

Politics is hard, and when you mix politics with other, more mundane aspects of your daily life, the fight between political ideas, freedom of speech, and other principles reach such a complexity that finding clear-cut answers becomes quite hard.

Let's take for example the case, uncovered by the Ukrainian journalist Anatoly Shariy, of a RedHat employee who appears to be a Nazi sympathiser, openly posing doing the Nazi salute right in Berlin. It will be interesting to see how (and if) RedHat will react to this information; there are also other spaces to watch, given that the guy in question has been giving talks in several conferences and is a very active member of the Eclipse project.

Let's put aside the fact that in Germany exposing Nazi symbols is a crime, and let's suppose that the guy did the Nazi salute in some other place where that's not illegal; what would your reaction be, if you where the employer, or a conference organizer, or if you had some position of authority in the open source project that this guy is contributing to?

On a personal level, taking a distance from this fellow and cutting all ties would be a rather understandable step (unless, of course, you share his views); but on a professional/business level, would that be the appropriate decision? If your answer is positive, without hesitation, then this post is for you.

Showing a nice image

People have been fired or removed from their posts for much less than this, that is true. Two cases which come to mind are James Damore, fired from Google for advancing the idea that the low women representation in the IT industry might be due to some biological traits, and Brendan Eich, who ceded to pressure and resigned from its post of CEO of Mozilla after the news of his past donations to an anti-gay movement went public. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar cases out there, but these are the ones I happened to notice at the time. And I don't like how these cases ended.

While the two cases are extremely different from each other, the common denominator is that -- in my opinion -- the companies (or the person itself, in Eich's case) took a decision based exclusively at the perceived PR outcome, and not on a matter of principle. And what is worse, is that this way of handling disagreement is a great threat to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

The world is full of racists, misoginists, homophobes, antisemitics, and, in general, of people embracing ideologies which we despise. But I'm convinced that the only way to fight these ideologies is opening a personal, one to one, dialogue with the individual in question; getting to know their background, the reasons why they came to believe in such things, and trying to find a way -- ideally, by providing yourself as a virtuous example -- to instill a doubt into their convictions, and eventually to demolish them.

The firing of someone who has expressed some non-welcome ideas acts as a threat to everyone else sharing the same views, and will lead to the result that the problem will be swept under the carpet: fire one, and you'll never know about the other dozens.

The benefits a good fight

I can imagine some of you screaming in disagreement: “But if you don't get rid of them, the whole working environment becomes poisonous: employees will no longer feel at ease (not to mention customers!)”. True, but we can take other actions, other than just fire the employee: we can actually talk. First of all, we can get him to openly state his position. It's possible (and I think this nicely applies to Damore's case) that we misunderstood what he really meant, or maybe he didn't express himself properly, or (even better) he has already changed his mind. But if that's not the case, I believe there can be a good opportunity to actually improve the situation: get people to talk.

I'm probably being naive here, but if I were the employer I would ask all the employees to report, anonymously, whether they feel comfortable continuing working with this guy. Then, organize one to one (private) meetings between this person and all his colleagues, of at least five minutes in length, and maybe repeat the whole round of conversations one more time, a couple of weeks later. And finally, get once again everyone's anonymous feedback, and draw the conclusions.

The reason why I wrote that I'm naive is because I think we'd see a clear improvement in the answers, and we'd probably contributed, if not in freeing one person from a poisonous ideology, at least in instilling some doubt.

Back to reality

Even if they read my post, I'm quite positive that RedHat will fire this guy: being in the same open source community as Google and Mozilla, the push to react in a similar way as their peers is just too strong (and that's why I condemn how the previous cases have unfolded: they traced a road which has now become too hard to avoid).

(In the specific case I confess I woudn't regret it, and -- despite all what I've written above -- I believe that firing this employee would be the proper retribuition: not for being a nazi, but because this guy had a school teacher in Ukraine fired, after he publicly accused her of showing an old soviet song to her pupils; a song that was not even about communism, and which is not at all forbidden in Ukraine!)

Cammino quindi penso - 2019-02-16 - Un messaggio ad Alessandro Di Battista

Alberto Mardegan — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 06:50:53 GMT

Non ci serve più Europa, né tantomeno i risultati elettorali dell'omonimo partito.

Cammino quindi penso - 2019-01-25 - Venezuela, Maduro tra forche e altari

Alberto Mardegan — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 11:22:00 GMT

Le informazioni che arrivano dal Venezuela dipingono Maduro come un dittatore che affama il suo popolo; altri invece ritengono che lo stia eroicamente difendendo contro l'imperialismo americano. Cercando di sfuggire dalla propaganda del potere, ma anche di non idealizzare un capo di stato che ha grosse responsabilità sulla situazione del suo paese, mi sono imbattuto in questo articolo interessante, scritto da un giornalista che ben conosce il Venezuela: leggilo qui.

Cammino quindi penso - 2018-12-19 - Blockchain, a che ci serve?

Alberto Mardegan — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 13:06:00 GMT

Il governo italiano sembra davvero interessato ad investire denaro pubblico per studiare la blockchain (la tecnologia che sta alla base di BitCoin) e trovarne qualche utilizzo. Quella che sembrava una ridicola trovata pubblicitaria diventa realtà.

Why you shouldn't encrypt all your private communications

Alberto Mardegan — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 17:18:00 GMT

I was at the LinuxPiter conference a couple of weeks ago, and among the many interesting talks, a couple were about cybersecurity, privacy, encryption. The main point of these talks was roughly this: end-to-end encryption is getting easier to setup, so we (the technical audience at the conference) can start protecting all our private communication and hopefully help bringing the technology to a state where it's more accessible to the masses.

The reasons why people want to encrypt their private communications are varied: sometimes it's about hiding one's communications away from an oppressive government or from big corporations; other times it's about avoiding personality theft or stalking; but in general, the core point is that it's my private communication, and no other eyes than mine and the intended receivers's should have any right to see it. And this sounds pretty reasonable indeed.

However, some reading into the history of the technologies used to achieve this result has left me doubting. And actually, as this article's title says, I've slowly grown convinced that I should fight the battle on the opposite front, and convince people not to pursue the goal of encrypting their private digital lives. Which will probably get you suspecting that I've gone out of my mind, to propose not supporting something that nearly the entire technical community recognizes as valuable. But if you bear with me a little longer, I'll try to explain.

Let's start with this quote by Edward Snowden:

“Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”

I do care about my privacy and, furthermore, I'm not such a hypocrite to say that I don't have anything to hide: quite the opposite, there are plenty of things I don't want people to know about me. I'm not arguing against the right to one's privacy, and I do use encryption when storing sensitive data on my computer or when sending out passwords to people. And I've long stopped sharing bits of my private life on the big social networks, which I mostly use in write-only mode for spreading political propaganda (and I invite you to do the same, unless you have already left them: these places must die). What I am objecting to is mass encryption of all of your communications, just for the sake of making them inaccessible to everyone else.

I don't want to hide things from the government. I definitely want to hide as much as possible from corporations and other individuals, but I do want the state officials to be able to access any private conversation of any citizen. I do not want mass surveillance, but if there are serious reasons to suspect that a person could be involved in some crime, then I want the state to be able to look into the suspect's conversations — while exercising maximum care so that these are not leaked to the press and, in general, to people who don't need to know about them. Call me naive or an idealist, I still hold the state responsible for my own safety and the sole guarantor of justice. Should state officials abuse their position and either leak the private communications of the citizens or — worse — use them for blackmailing, this is something that should be investigated and punished, but I don't believe that it is the norm. Considering Snowden's revelations about the extent of the mass surveillance program in the U.S. and seeing how little of this information has been revealed or used by malicious state officials makes me optimistic in thinking that this is a secondary problem.

Surely someone could point out that not all governments are trustworthy: totalitarian regimes suppress dissent, while encryption could help the oppressed speak freely and organize themselves. The first part of the sentence is certainly true, but the second part reveals, in my opinion, a wrong evaluation of the reactionary movements. Let me explain it more clearly with one example.
My western readers would probably include Russia (the country in which I live) in the list of the “totalitarian regimes” I mentioned above; but you might be surprised to know that the West's favourite opposition character, the nationalist Alexei Navalny, who is getting jailed every other month for minor offences, is quite open in his criticism, and provocatively organizes actions that he knows will get him into trouble, with the goal of getting maximum visibility and exposing what he believes are unreasonable laws. If on one side there could be some value for revolutionaries to use encrypted communications during the initial phases of their action, on the other, the real change can only be brought forward with the involvement of the masses — which means one needs open talks.
And even if we limit ourselves to the early phases of the organisation of a reactionary plan, I do believe that using encryption carries the bigger risk of alienating one's potential allies, which were not part of the conversation, who might easily be led to believe (the conversation not having been released) that the participants in these secret talks were after some criminal plan or were getting support from some foreign country.

Picture this: at the airport security check (maybe in a country whose government you don't trust the least), you are asked permission by the officials to open your luggage for a search. If you refuse, they'll confiscate your luggage, but they'll let you return home free; if you agree, you'll be able to return home free, and with your luggage.

And we get to the real criminals. No matter how some politicians are abusing the topic for their own profit, it remains a fact that terrorism exists and terrorists operate in our cities. If we all encrypt our conversations, we practically preclude the security services from performing a screening which could help them focus their attention on potential suspects; and whether the terrorists encrypt their conversations has little impact: the very fact that a conversation is encrypted could raise some suspicion (which doesn't mean that the security services would hunt down everyone who uses encryption! — but their online behaviour could be monitored for some time).
Furthermore, I don't buy the story that these technologies are good because they can help those who fight against injustices in some remote oppressive country; on the contrary, I have a strong suspicion that the reason why these technologies are pushed forward it to protect the corrupted financial world from having their deeds exposed, here at home. Well, maybe that's not the goal, but indeed those people would benefit from it, at our expense.

Finally, let me spend a couple of words on encryption technologies, because I believe that their history matters and that we should be aware of who stands behind them. Suppose that you were a Russian dissident, and the GRU sponsored the development of some technology that promises full anonymity and secrecy; would you use it? I hope you agree with me, if I say that you'd have to be a complete fool to use it, no matter how many independent agencies have analyzed the technology and found it to be impenetrable. The lamb would never live in a house built for him by the wolf, no matter how comfortable or solid it looks like.
That's why, if I had to name one particular privacy enabling technology which I recommend you not to use, that would be Tor. Developed in the '90s by the U.S. Navy to be used by U.S. intelligence agents embedded in foreign countries, the Tor project is still being funded by the U.S. government and its usage is being promoted worldwide, in order to make it harder for foreign government to identify the American agents; because it goes without saying that, if the U.S. agents were the only people using Tor, then foreign security services would have a rather easy time spotting them. Now, if you are perfectly fine with the U.S. government being able to read your secret communications, by all means do feel welcome to use Tor. But if you are a dissident in either the U.S. or an allied country, be it a Western European country, Japan, Israel or Saudi Arabia, then I'd think twice before using it. And even if you lived in Russia, China or Iran, well, the same fact of connecting to Tor carries the potential risk of exposing you as a rebel or as a foreign agent.

That's why I don't encrypt my online conversations, and I don't strive to be anonymous online. No matter how bad the government we live in might be, I'm deeply convinced that the state is the only authority that can protect us; and if we don't trust it, or if we want to act against it, then we'd rather do it openly, suffering all the consequences that might arise, but having done all our best so that other people might find the courage to join our cause.