Here is the decree which recently came into effect, that I assume was the instigating event for this report. http://government.ru/media/files/A5X9GSAYrpA.pdf

It explicitly state a number of physical conditions which shall preclude an applicant from receiving a drivers license. Astute readers will note that this has no explicit mention of either transsexual or transgender people, fetishism, exhibitionism or voyeurism.

However, the document refers to mental conditions, as specified in ICD-10, the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases, 10th Edition, see: http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/ , which does include some "Disorders of Sexual Preference" ( see: http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2015/en#/F65 ) that include the listed notions.

Whether this supposed adoption of an international standard for recognizing mental health disorders is done cynically, and only as a roundabout tactic to prevent trans people from driving, it is difficult for me to say. Likewise I would say it is difficult for the BBC, however the given title is much sexier than "Russia adopts international mental health standard in driver's licensing directive."

I not sure this comes from Snowden documents actually.

Cory Doctorow, writing for BoingBoing here stated:

Another expert said that s/he believed that this leak may come from a second source, not Edward Snowden, as s/he had not seen this in the original Snowden docs; and had seen other revelations that also appeared independent of the Snowden materials.

Bruce Schneier agreed with Doctorow's assessment in this article.

On the other hand, this email in the TOR dev mailing list correlates info in the rules file to known changes in tor infrastructure and suggests that the rules file would have been up to date when Snowden was contacting Greenwald.

In any case the provenance of this file isn't established and I didn't see anything in the article that confirmed its authenticity.

We've seen recently that there is a wide gap between what banks should not do and what they do not do. You'll forgive me if I am not immediately convinced :P

Thanks for the insightful criticism. I'll try my best to address some the points you make.

1. Alternate Currencies

I only have the following to say on this topic, it's not a complete thought so please be gentle: The value of legal tender is that it is valid for all debts private and public. Alternate currencies have value among the groups that value it. To use this value outside the group, it must be exchanged. This necessarily means gatekeepers and rentiers who exploit their positional privilege to increase their wealth. *Edit: Also this would be the effect of the Disenfrachisement critique writ large.

2. 'Cashless society' does not equal 'cash prohibition'

Maybe a bit sensational but I'm trying to get all this down to elevator pitch length.

In fact I do believe that the two are identical. Take the example of JackTheBandit's mother. She has been prohibited from using her hard earned cash to pay for carriage on the M60. Previously she was allowed to, now she is not. The upshot is that her cash is a little bit less valuable now than before. The cashless society will be upon us when, after a progressive series of such prohibitions, cash is deprecated to the point of being valueless. Also the expression 'cash prohibition' helps to refocus the conversation on the fact that this policy is taking away rights that we previously had.

3. Rent Redux

The economic rent that transaction processors already extract is factored into the cost of things that you buy. I doubt their contribution to the effort required to furnish the item to you is worth the x% that they charge. Further, they likely charge a similar x% at every step along the way that was taken to produce and deliver the item. All of these costs must eventually be recouped through the sale price. The project of cash prohibition is a classic case of rent-seeking as it is an attempt to impose ownership over a resource that didn't previously have an owner for the purpose of exploiting the positional privilege. Unfortunately this point is a bit obscure but I think it is the second most important one. I would greatly appreciate any help to make it more concise and meaningful.

You can listen to the interview here

It's part of the Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show

While I have to agree with you in general, it seems to me that reporters have really dropped the ball on this. I think I read and listen pretty widely but I haven't heard this point mentioned anywhere. (This is really the reason why I decided to post.. )

I hate to admit it but it appears that the goal of raising outrage seems to have overtaken good reporting even on what I would consider more enlightened and non-partisan outlets.

Thanks for the awesome reply.

There's no doubt that this decision is problematic. I am however concerned by the way this is ultimately being presented.

An employee of an organisation that claims the religious exception would be quite likely to believe that their plan did not cover the stated methods of contraception, when in fact it does, it's just paid for by a different entity. I feel that left-leaning elements in the media are therefore doing women a great disservice by reporting on this decision the way they are.

If this is really true why do we see so much outrage over the notion that women are being denied contraceptive care by their employers?

What is the provenance of this file? How did Applebaum et al. get their hands on it?

I strongly recommend listening to the talk linked above. DeHaven-Smith makes some mention of a smear campaign against critics of the Warren commission who were decried as conspiracist (and communist for good measure) as the beginning of the use of the term as a pejorative.

Hello Ronintetsuro,

My understanding of conspiracy was shaken radically when I heard a recording of a talk given by Lance deHaven-Smith, Professor for Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University (Edit: updated timestamp) . I will do my best to paraphrase what he says:

1. Conspiracy is a valid legal concept in many jursidictions. We use it all the time to denote groups of people coming together to commit crime. It is not some marginal, esoteric concept that belongs to the tin-foil-hatted.

2. Conspiracy Theory (and by extension Theorist as one who ascribes to it) has come to denote, usually with negative connotations, for a hypothesis that some result is the effect of a collusion of individuals participating in a Conspiracy.

3. Blanket rejection of all conspiracy theories essentially supports either a theory of one individual's action: the notion that the effect in question was achieved by a single person; or coincidence: the notion that said result is the effect of unrelated, uncoordinated forces.

Under this framework, the official explanation for the events that occurred on the morning of September 11th, 2001 is in fact a theory that suggests conspiracy - many hijackers conspired to act simultaneously to overtake several aircraft and fly them into prominent buildings.

Of course the above example is not what is meant when the term 'Conspiracy Theory' is thrown around in public discourse. The term has come to mean something more akin to a loosely supported paranoia about dominant groups or paradigms.

Some people have suggested that this exposure (hee hee) of Weiner's is an attempt to build momentum and sympathy for an electoral run by his wife Huma Abedin.