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Red Triangle Technology Collective begins operations!

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Posted by Matt D. Harris on Oct 5, 2011 in Anarchism, Class War, Featured | 0 comments

The Red Triangle Technology Collective has officially begun operating today, moving towards implementing phase 1 of the plan!  We’re currently focusing on getting our websites designed and implemented, getting a logo, and fundraising to be able to implement phase 1. We announced several weeks ago our intent to launch right here at Gonzo Times, and outlined some core principles and goals.  With the formal plan, released yesterday, we’ve refined these ideas and made public our tentative budget for phases 1, 2, and 3.

What is the Red Triangle Technology Collective? More than anything else, it’s a means by which we can become independent from corporate and state-controlled communications mediums. From Facebook to Google, Verisign to Yahoo, relying on entities which are sympathetic to the ruling class for our entire network is a strategy for fail.

We need our own solutions – by us, for us, with our needs and principles in heart and mind. That’s what RTTC is.

You can contact us via facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RedTriangleCollective.

Here’s our plan:

The purpose of the Red Triangle Technology Collective is to provide a no-cost hosting solution for radical projects and websites. This will enable people who are not able to afford a commercial provider to begin developing their ideas on the web. It will create opportunities to grow radical ideas, projects, and communities without reliance on an individual’s or collective’s ability to foot a bill, and for those collectives which do have financial resources, it will enable them to, when necessary, focus those resources towards achieving their core goals rather than to peripheral costs such as web hosting.

The radical hosting co-op project will be worker-managed, with workers democratically (via consensus when feasible and possible, and via voting when not) making the majority of non-technical decisions regarding the management of the co-op. This includes things like projects to provide services for, criteria for services, memberships in the co-op, and potential future expansions into new areas. Technical decisions will be made by the engineering team on a consensus basis.

In order to make this plan easier to read, we’ve divided the plan into 3 phases. Upon reaching phase 3, we become essentially modular, enabling us to dynamically upgrade to meet our needs. Phase 3 entails our own rack space and bandwidth where servers which we own will be located. This is easily upgradeable to meet future demands well into the next decade.

Within phase 1, we will be launching our social networking site based on the Friendika software, which enables users to have a profile within our network as well as also connecting globally with friendika users on every friendika site worldwide, diaspora users, and facebook users. Friendika is a decentralized (like diaspora) social network suite which also enables connectivity with other social networking protocols including diaspora and facebook (which diaspora does not do.) As facebook becomes more and more difficult to use, more and more activists and activist communities will seek to move away from it towards more privacy and security focused alternatives. We believe that we will provide the best alternative, and still allow them to integrate to facebook while maintaining a safe distance from facebook. Further, as friendika enables integration to diaspora users as well, this will allow our user-base to engage with diaspora users worldwide. Also in phase 1, we will offer high-security hosting of websites both on the public internet and on Tor hidden services, of highly secure real-time chat (to which anonymous access via Tor will be available), and of domain name hosting supporting a high level of security. We’ll also be donating some bandwidth to the Tor project in the form of a non-exit relay node.

Upon entering phase 2, we will add hosting via cpanel/WHM on a new server. This server will host a majority of sites, as most do not require the high-security environment provided by the ultra-secure host. Further, this platform will be significantly easier to use, enabling more non-technical people to enjoy our services. Phase 2 will also herald the addition of our high-security email hosting platform. We will also introduce the Radical Advertising Platform during phase 2. RAP will allow sites to share web traffic and interest among their core demographic: other radicals! RAP is a no-cost solution, where any website hosting RAP ads will also have their banner placed in the rotation which will be displayed on other participating sites.

Phase 3 will enable us to provide even greater services, as we move into the realm of high-end hosting and high-security conferencing above and beyond chat, with SIP offerings as well as a much higher level of service. This means that we will also be able to provide phone support for end-users based on support staff availability. Finally, phase 3 will enable continued, sustainable growth for the foreseeable future.

Another goal is to generate open-source code which will be shared freely with the world. Most code created by Red Triangle members for the collective’s systems and services will be released under the terms of the BSD license. This will serve to advance the technological development of radical software projects around the world.

Thus far, we’ve decided on a name through democratic means, and procured our domain names: redtriangletc.org and redtriangletc.net.  On the technology end of things, we’ve set up Infrastructure Server #2, running secure IRC for real-time communications and an FTP service for internal file distribution and for distributing our open-source software and patches which will be made available freely to all, as well as providing redundant secondary DNS for all of our hosted domains. It also hosts a Tor relay node providing over 1.5mbps of bandwidth to the Tor network to support the greater community.

You can read the full plan document in PDF format via our FTP service.

We’re also ready to accept contributions to help us reach phase 1.  We’re using paypal for this right now, and you can support us by visiting http://ftp.redtriangletc.net/pub/docs/contribute.html.

 

Jewish group seeks halt to Mormons’ proxy baptisms.(News)

Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL) November 11, 2008 Byline: Associated Press NEW YORK Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database to make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must “implement a mechanism to undo what you have done.” “Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable,” said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

“We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion,” Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. “We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough.” Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, are over. He said his group will not sue, and that “the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion.” In 1995, the church agreed not to perform baptisms or other rites for Holocaust victims, except in the very rare instances when they have living descendants who are Mormon. see here new family search

Church spokesman Mike Otterson said Michels decision to publicly denounce the church seems like a unilateral termination of the discussion.

Posthumous baptism by proxy allows faithful Mormons to have their ancestors baptized into the 178-year-old church, which they believe reunites families in the afterlife.

Using genealogy records, the church also baptizes people who have died from all over the world and from different religions. Mormons stand in as proxies for the person being baptized and immerse themselves in a baptismal pool.

Only the Jews have an agreement with the church limiting who can be baptized, though the agreement covers only Holocaust victims, not all Jewish people. Jews are particularly offended by baptisms of Holocaust victims because they were murdered specifically because of their religion.

Michel suggested that posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims play into the hands of Holocaust deniers.

“They tell me, that my parents Jewishness has not been altered but … 100 years from now, how will they be able to guarantee that my mother and father of blessed memory who lived as Jews and were slaughtered by Hitler for no other reason than they were Jews, will someday not be identified as Mormon victims of the Holocaust?” Michel said Monday. this web site new family search

Under the agreement with the Holocaust group, Mormons could enter the names of only those Holocaust victims to whom they were directly related. The church also agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims already entered into its massive genealogical database.

Otterson said the church has kept its part of the agreement by removing more than 200,000 names from the genealogical index.

But since 2005, ongoing monitoring of the database by an independent Salt Lake City-based researcher shows both resubmissions and new entries of names of Dutch, Greek, Polish and Italian Jews.

The researcher Helen Radkey, who has done contract work for the Holocaust group, said her research suggests that lists of Holocaust victims obtained from camp and government records are being dumped into the database.

She said she has seen and recorded a sampling of several thousand entries that indicate Mormon religious rites, including baptisms, had been conducted for these Holocaust victims, some as recently as July.

“Ive seen a steady procession of Jewish Holocaust names, especially names with camps linked to them, going to the International Genealogical Index,” said Radkey, who acknowledges that she has limited access to the records. “Theres no possible way of knowing exactly how many names, but its substantial.” Church officials say a new version of the database called New Family Search will fix the problems. In the works for six years, the new database will discourage the submission of large lists of unrelated individuals. It will also separate names intended for temple rites from those submitted purely for genealogical purposes, the church states in a letter sent to Michel on Nov. 6.

“The names of any Holocaust victims we can identify in the database are to be flagged with a special designation not available for temple ordinances,” the letter states.

The church also proposes jump-starting a monitoring committee formed in 2005 to review database entries. The committee has met just once since 2005.

In May, the Vatican ordered Catholic dioceses worldwide to withhold member registries from Mormons so that Catholics could not be baptized.

Associated Press Writer Jennifer Dobner reported from Salt Lake City.

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