la liberté avant tout
In scenes straight from a 1984-esque dystopian thriller, armed policemen from the Spanish Guardia Civil descended into the streets of the Catalonian region over the weekend to halt a planned referendum for independence. Clubs were whirled in the air, polling stations demolished, and voters shoved to the ground. At last count, more than 1,300 people…
Putting into action the protectionist rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced on Tuesday a tariff of more than 200 per cent on Bombardier’s C-Series regional jet. The initial complaint was lodged by Chicago-based aerospace company and defence contractor Boeing, the largest U.S. exporter of goods and the top recipient…
Bitcoin is an Experiment About “The Payday” Not its Potential as Money Republished on Live Trading News
Photo from the “Defend Your Wallet” campaign in the Republic of Georgia (Source: Georgian Students For Liberty) By Yaël Ossowski | LinkedIn Medium For the better part of four years, I’ve worked with hundreds of volunteer activists across the world. An overwhelming majority of those I met, trained, and advocated alongside were not paid for the…
Bitcoin Has Become About The Payday, Not Its Potential Republished on The Mission
Bitcoin Has Become About The Payday, Not Its Potential Live now on HuffPost Canada.
By Yaël Ossowski | Devolution Review Admitting you’ve changed your mind is daunting. Even more so when you’ve poured money, time, and effort into promoting a particular cause and idea. For me, that time has come with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and the promise of the underlying Blockchain technology. In the beginning, Bitcoin was something of…
Cryptocurrencies aren’t a store-of-value nor safe haven for anyone’s assets. They’re experiments. In the beginning, Bitcoin was something of a revolution to me. The digital currency represented everything from my rebellious youth. It was a decentralized, denationalized, and digital currency operating outside the traditional banking and governmental system. It used tools of cryptography and connected…
Robots for a $15 minimum wage. Help support the movement for our fellow androids by wearing this shirt and advocating for higher minimum wages to get us more jobs. Robots for a $15 minimum wage. Help support the movement for our fellow androids by wearing this shirt and advocating for higher minimum wages to get…
Once again, the eyes of the nation, and indeed the world, are transfixed on the tale of the American south. The dust of the violent and deadly clashes in the streets of the college town of Charlottesville between right-wing and left-wing fascists has settled and self-reflection has begun. For many around the world, the American…
On this episode, Todor and Yaël debate Man versus Machine. What happens when the machines take over? What about our simulated realities? Are we already taken over by algorithms? Are social networks actually expanding, or are we filtering them even more to cater to only specific interests and people? Plus, some thoughts on the dystopian…
By Yaël Ossowski | Metropole Magazine On Saturday, July 1st, in a muted and highly uncontested leadership election in Linz, Austria, 30-year-old Sebastian Kurz secured 98.7 percent of the vote to head the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) before October’s elections. A mere three days later, the headlines surrounding Kurz were far less flattering. A scandal…
Green NGOs are peddling dangerous junk science By Yaël Ossowski | spiked On Earth Day this year, in London and close to 600 other cities across the world, an estimated 1.1million people took to the streets to defend the idea of science-based policymaking. Protesters called for ‘science over ideology’, the use of ‘peer-review in politics’,…
By Yaël Ossowski | PPE.life On my last train ride between Prague and Vienna, that twice weekly jaunt I’ve commandeered for the sake of studying economics, I put down my red wine and closed my half-finished Word document to check my phone’s signal and make a call. When I saw that I had left my…
By Yaël Ossowski Last Saturday, in a muted and highly uncontested leadership election in Linz, Austria, 30-year-old Sebastian Kurz secured 98.7 percent of the vote to head the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) before October’s elections. Well-dressed and soft-spoken in a posh Viennese accent, the young Minister of Foreign Affairs and Integration unveiled his platform and…
By Yaël Ossowski | Devolution Review Being a sole flame cast against a hall of mirrors has always been an excitable affair. Customs and ordinary occurrences are strange and new. There’s a deep yearning for understanding the deeper meaning of each word, each syllable, and each dialect spoken from anyone’s mouth. Even if comprehension is…
by Yaël Ossowski | Jun 30, 2017, 8:00 PM | Washington Examiner If we were to prioritize threats like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the world’s biggest enemies would reside in the bottoms of soda cans and within the lining of cigarettes. Launching his American Cities Initiative at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Annual…
This episode of the podcast focuses on religion, both its impact on society, and how it can be used to shape culture. We catch up on our travels in South Korea, Greece, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and try to figure out how to speak Asian languages. Shownotes: Serifos, Greece: http://blog.yael.ca/post/161233852864/in-megalo-livadi-on-the-greek-island-of-serifos Seoul Searching: https://youtu.be/wbyMahgNJgY North Korea: https://www.wsj.com/articles/otto-warmbier-american-detainee-released-by-north-korea-has-died-1497905282…
In Megalo Livadi, on the Greek island of Serifos, one finds the remnants of the first-ever Greek worker revolt. It took place in the mines of the Société des mines de Seriphos-Spiliazeza, the French-founded mining company later purchased and run by German Emilios Gromman. Angered by poor working conditions and intense labor without end, Egyptian-educated…
The Republic of Georgia is known internationally for its radical approach to policy and governance. But with the latest anti-tobacco measures in front of the Parliament, it risks losing that reputation as quickly as it earned it. The bill before the Parliament now would ban smoking in public places, restrict advertising, strictly regulate e-cigarettes, and…