Oslo Freedom Forum

Humans Rights, Global Corruption, and Bitcoin

I am at the Oslo Freedom Forum this week, an event I have been curious about for a number of years. I met the very likable founder, Thor Halvorssen, a while back, through the Blockchain community. This is the OFF’s fourteenth annual gathering. The event combines very profound, moving testimonies of activists fighting against authoritarian regimes around the world with a focus on Bitcoin (BTC) as a tool that can be used to fight corruption and repression. The Chief Strategy Officer of OFF, Alex Gladstein, is a major proponent of BTC as an instrument of political liberation as well as “financial freedom.” (Here is a long article by him, and his interview with Glenn Greenwald). I hope to explore his ideas in more depth, later.

Yesterday was the first day of the conference. I thought I would share some running coverage, commentary, and some ideas that it inspires. Recently, authoritarianism is rising up all over the world, a scary development. Some of the speakers — including Scott Carpenter, from Jigsaw, a Google division that develops tools to support “open societies” — argue that Russia’s war on Ukraine is not just another conflict: It is a crucial threshold in world history. I tend to believe this as well.

As Agnes Callamard (follow her on Twitter), the Secretary General of Amnesty International said on a panel, Putin intends to smash the old liberal, rules-based order and replace it with global rule by lawless power. The war on Ukraine has at least temporarily reinvigorated the alliance between liberal Democracies, which have lost faith in their own ideals and principles over the last decades. But it is unclear how long this coalition can hold, or whether those values can have a legitimate renaissance.

As Callamard also discussed, the NATO alliance has, so far, failed to create a united front against Putin with countries around the world. India, Mexico, China, and most of Africa has stayed neutral. The rest of the world — the Global South — is sick of the the West’s double standards. For instance, under the Bush administration, the US made itself immune from prosecution for War Crimes in The Hague. We refused to participate in chemical weapons treaties. We did little to prevent atrocities in Syria, Chechnya, Yemen, and so on.