Cash and economic freedom are inseparable, in fact freedom as a whole is inseparable.
To move to a cashless society may appear to make life easier, but also means a loss of freedom thus opening the doors to digital Totalitarianism.
So why do we still need to those pesky things called “dollar bills” ?
Without cash, totalitarianism is the next thing that will follow once a society accepts a cashless society.
Listen. I am going to be honest and say that I use pay pal and shop over the internet like thousands of other people. I think it is great and it is very convenient.
BUT… this enhanced convenience also means loss of control – cashless means automatic
By having a cashless society, it allows banks, governments and thieves to take it from you.
Example – Cyrus Bank Bail-Ins
You might remember back in 2013, banking clients in Cyprus experienced a “bail-in”.
What happened is that the banks there were partially helped by the IMF and the European Central Bank, but they did not make up the total.
So where did the banks get the rest of the money they needed?
Yep from the clients. It was one of the condition that the IMF and ECB levied on the banks. So they made the bank clients forfeit some of the money that was their money, which was entrusted to the bank.
This was done unilaterally – the depositors simply lost a chunk of their money. One moment it was there in the bank, next moment it is gone.. POOF out of the bank.
There was no warning, no meetings, no press release. It just happened and money was stolen.
So the message to depositors is clear- when you put money in a bank you are a “creditor” of the bank and if it goes bust you are at the bottom of the list of creditors.
Making a payment using a part of your body is no longer science fiction. These are exciting days in the world of biometrics and payments. Visa and MasterCard are both working on specifications that will impact consumers globally.
Let’s take a quick tour around global world of biometric payments:
- In Nigeria, biometric data is captured by the government and centralized, enabling banks to verify the customer’s identity
- More than 80,000 biometric ATMs are in use across Japan identifying accountholders via palm or finger vein scanning
- In 2013, Citibank introduced biometric ATMs in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and they’re also live in Brazil and Poland
- More than 400,000 USAA customers have opted in to use fingerprint, face or voice recognition with the company’s mobile app
- Barclays is using finger vein readers to authenticate key corporate banking customers.
Look no further than MasterCard’s pilot in the Netherlands last summer for proof that password fatigue is real. Volunteers had no qualms about using biometrics to make purchases. In fact, registration for the pilot maxed out within a day and enrollment surged past the planned 750 participants. ABN AMRO Bank was so happy with the results of the trial that it has continued offering biometric payments online for its customers.
Visa is actively working to add the security and convenience of biometrics – palm, voice, iris and face – to chip card transactions. The organization’s new specification provides a framework for biometrics to be used as a cardholder verification method with EMV chip payments. That means the users of 3.3 billion EMV chip cards around the world may soon be forgetting their PINs. The specification supports match-on-card biometric authentication, so the biometric isn’t exposed or stored in any central database.
“There is increasing demand for biometrics as a more convenient and secure alternative to signatures or PINs, especially as biometric technologies have become more reliable and available,” said Mark Nelsen, Visa senior vice president of Risk Products and Business Intelligence. Building the biometric option on top of the EMV chip standard provides a common, interoperable foundation, he explains.
MasterCard plans to launch biometric payments in North America sometime in 2016, and a global expansion will follow in 2017. By mid-year, U.S. financial institutions will be able to participate in MasterCard Identity Check, a suite of solutions that leverages advanced technologies to prove a consumer’s identity and simplify online transactions.
Zika, which bioterrorism expert Dr. Francis A. Boyle described as a souped-up bioweapon, could spread to thousands of international tourists visiting the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympics and lead to martial law scenarios across the world.
Zika is rapidly spreading throughout Rio de Janeiro, with scientists baffled by this “new, different, and vastly more dangerous” strain that’s overwhelming the Brazilian military’s efforts to contain the disease, yet both the International Olympic Committee and the World Health Organization are severely downplaying the risk of Zika.
But President Obama has seemingly prepared for such an outbreak by signing an executive order to apprehend Americans who merely show signs of “respiratory illness.”
In particular, Obama’s order allows for the detainment of Americans who display “severe acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.”
Of course, the order is so broad that during a Zika outbreak, people who have a common cold could be targeted by the government.
And it’s likely that other governments would also react to an outbreak in the same manner, and the threat of a Zika pandemic spreading outside Latin America is very real, according to Harvard scientists.
“Simply put, Zika infection is more dangerous, and Brazil’s outbreak more extensive, than scientists reckoned a short time ago, which leads to a bitter truth: the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games must be postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession,” the Harvard Public Health Review warned. “…The International Olympic Committee writes that ‘Olympism seeks to create … social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.’ But how socially responsible or ethical is it to spread disease?”
Global corruption costs trillions in bribes, lost growth … Public sector corruption siphons $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion annually from the global economy in bribes and costs far more in stunted economic growth, lost tax revenues and sustained poverty, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. – Reuters
The IMF has just announced that doing away with corruption worldwide is “critical for the achievement of macroeconomic stability.”
The Reuters article informs us that this is “one of the institution’s core mandates.”
Our perspective is far different.
From what we can tell, the IMF and the World Bank act as a kind of macroeconomic tag team, enticing third world countries with massive loans and then ripping apart whole economies when the loans aren’t paid back on time.
John Perkins is no stranger to making confessions. His well-known book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, revealed how international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, while publicly professing to “save” suffering countries and economies, instead pull a bait-and-switch on their governments: promising startling growth, gleaming new infrastructure projects and a future of economic prosperity – all of which would occur if those countries borrow huge loans from those organizations.
Far from achieving runaway economic growth and success, however, these countries instead fall victim to a crippling and unsustainable debt burden.
- Authorities raise the alert level at the Ruapehu volcano due to increased seismic activity.
- the volume of gas emanating from the volcano and the lake water temperature created by the crater has increased.
- New Zealand's North Island home of "Super Volcano" Reporoa Caldera, the colossus Mt Ruapehu and the White Island volcano.
- Earthwindmap showing large amount of both carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) output
The New Zealand authorities today raised the alert level at the Ruapehu volcano, known for featuring prominently in the 'Lord of the Rings' movies and located in the central region of the North Island, from 1 to 2 due to increased seismic activity.
Experts decreed a yellow alert for the air traffic in the region and asked climbers and trekkers to avoid the area until further notice, according to Radio New Zealand.
In addition to the increased tremors, the volume of gas emanating from the volcano and the lake water temperature created by the crater has increased.
However, volcanologist Geoff Kilgour, of the New Zealand government agency GNS said that the probability of a Ruapehu eruption is low.
Ruapehu is an active stratovolcano or conical volcano of 2,797 meters in height, located some 240 kilometers northeast of Wellington, which had strong eruptions in 1895, 1945 and 1995-96, with lower activity in between.
Experts decreed a yellow alert for the air traffic in the region and asked climbers and trekkers to avoid the area until further notice, according to Radio New Zealand.
In addition to the increased tremors, the volume of gas emanating from the volcano and the lake water temperature created by the crater has increased.
However, volcanologist Geoff Kilgour, of the New Zealand government agency GNS said that the probability of a Ruapehu eruption is low.
Ruapehu is an active stratovolcano or conical volcano of 2,797 meters in height, located some 240 kilometers northeast of Wellington, which had strong eruptions in 1895, 1945 and 1995-96, with lower activity in between.
1 comment:
And now this disgusting development:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/obama-administration-public-schools-transgender-students-access-bathrooms/story?id=39081956
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