The US Dollar, the first pure fiat world reserve currency, has lost almost all of its value against gold, falling from $1 to around $1680 per ounce.

It’s now looking increasingly likely that the record-high price of $1680 on June 8 represented the peak of a financial fraud that is now slowly unravelling. The interesting question is: where will the price decline stop?

Most assets have a “fundamental” value: the value that reflects the practical use to which that asset can be put. You can always live in a house regardless of what happens to the real estate market, so we can be confident that house prices won’t fall to zero. Similarly, if the price of gold fell too much, people could always use it to make jewelry, so gold is a relatively safe investment.

The puzzling thing about the US Dollar, is that the currency doesn’t seem to have any fundamental value at all. True, you can currently purchase many goods and services with Dollars. But despite the volume of Dollar-denominated commerce being high, Dollar-denominated prices seem to be driven up by the current rounds of quantitative easing (money printing).

The US Dollar is different from traditional currencies. The fact that there are 300 million Americans who use dollars for their day-to-day transactions creates a floor for the value of dollars. Most of us don’t pay much attention to the exchange rate between dollars and other currencies, because we’re used to thinking of dollars as our fundamental unit of value. And even if we wanted to stop using dollars, it would be hard to do since most of the people around us won’t take anything else. So, despite a major screw-up by the Federal Reserve, we can still count on the value of dollars not falling very much. This logic of course, will also apply to the new pure digital currency ‘Bitcoin’.

In contrast, there’s no significant community of people who conduct commerce exclusively (or even primarily) in Gold. And you can’t eat, live in, or make a fire out of Gold. And this means there’s no logical stopping point to Gold’s price increase. So far Gold enthusiasts have been buying Gold as the price increases, convinced that the price will go up eventually. But as the hoped-for Dollar rally has failed to materialize, more have gotten discouraged or bored and cash out the Dollar, pushing the price of Gold up further. This process has been going on for a couple of months, and now it appears to be accelerating. I suspect the Dollar is terminal.

http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/08/07/the-bitcoin-crash/

The responses to Bitcoin from different camps that encounter it have been fascinating to read. Bitcoin, like the Internet, is a mirror reflecting the philosophy of the person who is talking about it.

Libertarians see it as a way out.
Statists see it as a way of receiving the blessings of the state.

and so on…

One of the many interesting sets of thoughts swirling around Bitcoin is the idea that somehow, the State must be involved in Bitcoin, and there are people out there who are keen to try and shoehorn any legislation or rule that is out there to fit the Bitcoin case.

Take a look at this:

FinCEN Brings KYC Requirements To Bitcoin?

The U.S. Department of the Treasury (“FinCEN”) issued a Final Rule making non-bank providers of pre-paid financial instruments subject to comprehensive Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations similar to depository institutions.

Why this particular rule, and not the first amendment of the constitution? Cryptography, it has been argued, correctly, is a form of speech that falls under the first amendment protections guaranteeing your right to write whatever you want.

Bitcoin is made up of cryptographic signatures that can be printed out as text. This means that they are clearly protected speech and not financial instruments.

Why should FinCEN have anything to do with Bitcoin at all? If FinCEN applies to Bitcoin, should it also not apply to Baseball cards?

Baseball cards or comics or YuGiOh cards could be used as money because someone somewhere values them.

They could be stored in a vault and then certificates issues against them that could be traded automatically at online exchanges.

Does that mean that these certificates are money? Does that mean that FinCEN rules should apply to them?

Of course it doesn’t. Applying FinCEN rules to Bitcoin, quite apart from the immorality of these regulations, is improper and ridiculous.

The regulations affecting “stored value” now use the term “prepaid access” which is more broad and technology-neutral. Though FinCEN has not formally asserted that Bitcoin would fall under prepaid access regulations, earlier contact with the agency referred to bitcoins as a form of stored-value. If correct, then Bitcoin sales to U.S. customers would likely be a regulated activity per this Final Rule.

The new regulations become effective on September 27, 2011, 60 days after its July 29, 2011 date of publication in the Federal Register.

This is absurd. Who made contact with FinCEN, and where is the written record of this contact? Who did the contactor represent, and whoever she was, she did not represent ‘Bitcoin’ or any of its users, but was acting on her own. The details of that contact are something that would be interesting to read.

To comply with the Final Rule, providers of prepaid access must register with FinCEN. Because bitcoins are decentralized, it is uncertain who a provider would be. Might every exchanger be considered a provider, for instance?

This is all springing from a false assumption, that Bitcoin is a store of value that FinCEN has jurisdiction over. It is not.

Also under the Final Rule, sellers of prepaid access must collect personal information from customers, maintain transaction records, file suspicious activity reports and comply with other requirements of money service businesses (MSB). Last month FinCEN issued a ruling that was intended to clarify the definition of an MSB and includes the possibility that even businesses outside the U.S. conducting money transfer over the Internet could still be classified as U.S. MSBs. Additionally, the definition no longer requires that an MSB be a business — any individual who receives funds in exchange for a stored value might be considered an MSB.

This is of course, absolutely absurd. Even if you concede that FinCEN has jurisdiction over U.S. companies and persons that deal in Bitcoin, to assert that people and companies outside the USA would need to register with FinCEN betrays a complete lack of understanding of the concept of jurisdiction.

Its like those very sad webmasters in the UK who put up DMCA takedown notification pages on their sites. The DMCA does not apply anywhere in the world other than in the United States of America, and no webmaster, publisher, company or person is required to obey its strictures who is not based in or who does not have servers in the USA.

If FinCEN actually tries to attack Bitcoin, and then tried to demand that entities outside the USA register with it, they should be met with this type of response.

Though the ruling has exemptions to not impact the typical prepaid debit card found at grocery stores, for example, the exemptions would likely not apply to Bitcoin. These exemptions give a pass to providers and sellers when the following conditions are met:

• The funds cannot be transmitted internationally.
• Funds cannot be transferred from one user to another.
• No additional funds can be loaded except from a depository source (e.g., from a bank).

There is no way to limit where bitcoins can be spent and the value is easily transferred from one person to another so Bitcoin will not likely be considered exempt from the AML regulations.

Bitcoin, being a form of speech, should not be regulated by anyone. In the same way that you have protections against fraud (someone misrepresenting some reproduction Baseball cards to you as genuine, or someone stealing your YuGiOh cards) you have those same protections with Bitcoin. If someone defrauds you or breaches a contract they have with you, take them to court or arbitration.

The state is not needed to control Bitcoin, police it, regulate it or have anything whatsoever to do with it. It has, like the internet, grown in popularity all by itself, will grow in utility just like the internet has by virtue of people adopting it and using it, and any interference in it is illegitimate on its face.

Following these regulations will be a serious burden to sellers. For instance, compliance requirements as specified in an article by Perkins Coie LLP include:

Identifying information includes the customer’s name, date of birth, address and identification number. Sellers must retain this information for five years from the date of sale.

The records must be easily accessible and retrievable upon request from FinCEN, law enforcement or judicial order.

The bigger impact of following AML may not necessarily be the cost of compliance but instead will be the likely result — to effectively de-anonymize Bitcoin.

Following these regulations is unthinkable. Even if you accepted that these regulations were in some mysterious way beneficial, it would not and could not stop people from trading Bitcoins client to client, without identifying themselves to a parasitic third party.

When Bitcoin usage reaches critical mass, there will be trillions of transactions happening on a daily basis. The people who serve as enter and exit points for it would be recording meaningless details that would serve no use whatsoever after the first purchase of Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is not anonymous, despite what people think. There are services out there however, that can make it completely anonymous, and these will be improved and will multiply in number as the precise nature and level of anonymity in bitcoin becomes well understood by everyone. In the same way that The Anonymizer, Hide My Ass and the many proxy services that have come into being to cater for those who want anonymity, its a safe bet that the same entrepreneurs will apply their knowledge to the problem of making Bitcoin completely untraceable.

As for the cost of compliance, only US companies will be forced to pass the expense of these ridiculous regulations on to their customers. It will mean that customers, who see high prices due to regulation as damage and route around it, will choose exchanges outside the USA, simply because it is cheaper. This will create another tier of middle man in America; businesses that will take your money and then interface with foreign exchanges for you, rather like the Dorian Grey services we have written about.

Ironically, these new regulations may drive even faster Bitcoin adoption. These restrictions may cause many retailers to discontinue offering the prepaid cards that can be used at ATMs internationally. Since global redemption of stored value is a service that is legal to offer, is in huge demand and is something that Bitcoin does well — using digital currency might become the more popular alternative.

Unintended consequences!

And of course, as Bitcoin passes critical mass, it will become absolutely impossible to clamp down on the international flow of ‘money’, since Bitcoin is a peer to peer system.

When the global economy becomes dependent on Bitcoin, as it does now on SSL, no politician will dare raise a finger to control (damage) it, just as it is now completely unthinkable to regulate the cryptography behind SSL, as the French tried to do and which Dominic Strauss-Khan put pay to.

A more immediate consequence will likely be the employment of lawyers to specifically consider how this Final Rule affects Bitcoin.

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/8412471372/fincen-prepaid-access-final-rule

Maybe so. Certainly there are people out there who are desperate to interface with the State when it comes to Bitcoin.

One way or another, the State is not going to control Bitcoin. Either because it is not in their financial interest to do so because it is a world-wide phenomenon, or because they cannot possibly stop the hundreds of millions of people who are going to be using it.

There are 2,095,006,005 people on the internet. That is 30.2% of all the people on earth and an increase of 480.4% in ten years.

If only ten percent of all people use Bitcoin. No. Lets say five percent. That is 104,750,300 future users of Bitcoin. There is no reason why this number cannot not be achieved, and of course we are working only with today’s assumptions; there is no knowing what new innovations related to the block chain that are around the corner. Or innovations in the shape of client that people will be using. Imagine new versions of Google Chrome or Firefox that are not only browsers, but Bitcoin clients.

Every browser, doubles as a Bitcoin client.

Think about that for a moment. An HTML5 Bitcoin client, with an interface designed by Google or Mozilla. Easy to use and absolutely everywhere; on every computer in the world, by default.

One thing is for sure, there is no going back.

People have complained that ‘the next Google’ could not come out of Britain, because Britain is toxic to business.

If Bitcoin is going to be the biggest revolution since the internet itself, and the British establishment are desperate to entice companies to set up here and take root, then any regulation on Bitcoin (or for that matter, Internet Business which is serious business) is, to put it lightly, not a good idea. In fact, the smart thing to do would be to draw an arbitrary area on the map in London, and declare that area an Internet Free Trade Zone, where there are no restrictions, taxes or regulations, for a period of 150 years.

This would instantly attract every Internet business on the planet to the UK. There would be an unprecedented inflow of brains and money into London, making it the ‘Internet Capital of the World’.

Or, you could regulate Bitcoin, and be an also-ran gaggle of losers, while Hong Kong, Dubai and other jurisdictions suck up all the brains, money, skills and entrepreneurs.

To sum up, Bitcoin is to money as PDFs are to hardback books. Bitcoins are speech, not financial instruments. The State has no business interfering in Bitcoin in any way, and US regulations and laws do not apply to people and companies outside of the continental USA.

It appears that Anonymous is not releasing its mothelode containing 4GB of News of the World emails, because it may ‘prejudice the case’.

This is an error.

Seeking justice from a court that is run by the State is not rational in this case, and here is why.

Lets say that News International is found guilty of a crime and then is fined 500,000 pounds, or 5,000,000 or 50,000,000… so what?

What if both the Murdocks are sacked; once again so what?

News International continues to promote and lie on behalf of the bogus war on terror, the bogus war on drugs, democracy, lies in general, the erosion of liberty and it continues its unequivocal unquestioning support for the regime(s). A small fine is the most you can expect from any judgement a court might hand down, and of course, this is reasonable. Just because they have done some bad things, that doesn’t give a court the right to completely annihilate their business.

Justice in this case would be a total and completely effective boycott of News International by properly informed public. It would destroy them comprehensively and utterly, based on nothing more than their own words, as contained in the email motherlode.

No court in any country that wants to preserve its patina of ‘fairness’ can ever deliver this deathblow result, which would be real justice. Consider what happened to the jewellers Ratner’s who were almost put out of business overnight thanks to the honest words of its head in a single speech. That was all it took.

Anonymous has in its hands, a weapon that could be millions of times more powerful than the single utterance of the boss of Ratner’s. The News of the World has been listening in to the voicemails of thousands of people, now their communications are going to be probed. This is true, like for like justice. See Retributive Justice.

Libertarians understand that the State should not be the sole dispenser of justice, and that justice is a service, just like any other. The same people that murder men in other countries protect themselves with the courts that they effectively own. This is why Tony Bliar will never be brought before a British court to answer for mass murder, even though he is guilty of that crime as an accomplice and instigator.

Seeking justice from inside the matrix on its terms and inside its controls cannot, by definition, be real justice; it can only be a simulation of justice.

Anonymous can do whatever they like with the docs they have obtained. They took the risk to get them, and its up to them how they want to dispose of them, wether that is doling them out piecemeal, deleting them or releasing them in their entirety.

What they must understand is that they have the power to dispense justice themselves, by releasing the docs. The question that immediately comes to mind is are they being influenced by the media outlets they are working with:

who knows?

One thing is for sure; working with newspapers is retarding their movement, which is the job of the Mainstream Media gatekeepers like the Guardian.

For the record, justice does not mean violence. The State and its fear soaked control addicts conflate justice dispensed outside of its courts with violence to frighten people away from the idea that justice is a service. Justice does not mean hanging or imprisonment or other violence, it means (in general) an equitable settlement of partie’s claims, based on the facts of a grievance, that is mutually satisfactory.

If the Anons wants justice, they should let everyone make up their own minds wether or not News International is a fit company to receive their money. The only way to do that is to release the documents in full.

Consider this. There must be information in that 4GB motherlode that might be useful to a victim of the State, that has no meaning to you as you gate-keep the gigabytes of information.

Imagine that some poor person without the connections or resources to fight the oligarchy / State has been suffering under their heel; lets say someone powerful wants his land or his house, and has framed him up to steal it from him. The evidence of this might be in a motherlode of files that you are poring over, that you might miss because it doesn’t seem important; but it is important to that man who is being victimised.

An even more germane example would be evidence that the News of the World has run a smear campaign against a person or company; the evidence is in there waiting to be released to vindicate the vilified person. Even more interesting would be an expose of all the PR companies that have been feeding stories to the News of the World. We all know that Facebook has been caught running a PR campaign against Google, can you even begin to imagine the number of emails from PR companies that must be in that motherlode, and how they will completely expose the way newspapers simply churn out stories that are fed to them? That would be a real public service, and no one would ever read a newspaper with the same eyes ever again. The spell of churnalism would be broken forever, and everyone reading a newspaper story would immediately, instinctively put up a barrier between them and the print that keeps the story from entering their consciousness uncritically. From then on, the first thing everyone reading a story would ask before and after reading it would be, “Now, I wonder who is paying for this story”. It would constitute an unprecedented healthy scepticism that would spread throughout the world.

All this from the release of a single tarball.

That is justice.
That is moving forward and never going back.
That is progress.
That is solving problems.

Everyone needs to have access to everything for the dam holding back justice to be broken.

Finally, some who agree with the stance that Anonymous takes on things still believe that democracy is a good thing. They claim that the Norwegian president saying that the answer to violence is more democracy is correct. This is patently false. Democracy itself is violence:

The answer to violence is to say “NO” to violence.

That means “NO” to all violence and coercion, no matter where it comes from.

Democracy is violence and coercion. You cannot be against violence and for the violence of the State at the same time. If you are for the State, and for democracy, then you are for all the bad things that come out it, its violence and all the bad stuff that you quite rightly want to see and end of. You cannot, or at least, should not, hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. Unless you are a quantum physicist.

This is a difficult concept to understand at first, but once you grasp it, it becomes clear that the answer to violence can never be more violence, especially the unprecedented mechanised industrial scale violence of democracy and the State, which is more violent than any mafia gang or any organised entity in the history of the worl.

It will be interesting to see what happens to that 4GB file, especially when Topiary, who has apparently just been arrested, is made the next victim of the standard and insidious mainstream media character assassination that is done to everyone like that. You need only look at what happened to Julian Assange for a good example of how mainstream media deliberately sets out to poison the perception of people, and of course, evidence of a coordinated PR effort to smear Assange could very well be in that motherlode.

Think about it!

Its a terrible thing when people are murdered. It does not matter who is doing it or why, it is a crime, a savage and terrible crime. It is however important to put this shooting in Utøya into the correct context straight away and then to think about it clearly and carefully.

Some people are saying that the ’emotionlessness’ with which this gunman murdered his victims is “midnboggling”.

Why?

Why is it that when an individual commits murder everyone becomes breathless, shocked and ‘cant sleep at night’, but when its done with drones or soldiers there is a greatly reduced amount of outrage?

What is the difference between this man committing murder and people sitting in an office somewhere commanding a drone to kill men women and children in a wedding party, just as dispassionately, calculatingly and emotionlessly? We have all seen the leaked footage of operations in Iraq where the controllers of the drones calmly murder people and speak in measured, relaxed, dispassionate voices as they do so. The fact that people can do this should not be surprising to anybody, especially when they believe they have a just cause.

The just cause the desk bound drone murderers are using is that they are ‘taking out’ the leaders of a group that could in the future, pose a threat to ‘their nation’. As you will see below, this is exactly what people are speculating this Utøya murder was about; the prevention of dangerous future political action.

The stock rationale given for lack of equivalent response to the murder of different people inevitably circles around the idea that brown people are not thought of as full human beings, whilst Norwegians, being ‘white’ are, or that war is ‘justifiable killing’ whilst individuals killing is not. None of this off the shelf thinking really matters; the only thing that matters is your reaction to murder, and your ability or inability to empathise with other human beings, especially if you want to see an end to politically generated murder.

When people are cut down, as in the case of “Collateral Murder” your feelings for those that are murdered should be identical to the feelings you have when you see people in Oslo blown to bits, or students attending a political camp on an island slaughtered.

There is absolutely no difference between these events; they are all unjustifiable, immoral and repugnant murder and if you have stronger feelings because you personally have been to the places where the attacks happened or have some other ‘real connection’ to the event, then there is an urgent adjustment that needs to be made to your ability to empathise with the plight of other human beings. The only exception to this, where stronger feelings are a correct, natural and explicable response, is when you witness a murder in person, or a member of your own family is killed. No one can be expected to be rational when something like that takes place, but for all other murders, wherever they happen, when you are watching film of it or reading a report of it, your reaction should be exactly the same. Your ‘real connection’ to other people is no less real because you have not met them or been to their houses or cities. That is how real human beings feel about other human beings.

Once again, there is nothing surprising or staggering about the methodical and emotionless killing of human beings. It is done every day, sometimes on an industrial scale, by people just like you and me. When man gets it into his head that the only way to have order is the use of violence, there is nothing that he will not do, no lie he will refrain from telling himself and no level he will not sink to.

People are speculating that this killer wanted to wipe out the next generation of socialist leaders. Violent people have no problem in doing this; the end justifies the means, and the State does exactly the same thing. This is the motivating thought behind the drone attacks and it is also (for example) the true origin of inheritance tax.

Inheritance taxes are explicitly designed to prevent wealth from accumulating in the hands of families. In order to achieve this end, the State uses violence to make sure that this wealth accumulation does not happen. The State does not kill to achieve this end, but they use violence as a means to it. If you are for inheritance taxes, then you are of the same mindset as the people who think that it is a fit and proper solution to a political problem to murder individuals or a whole generation of nascent leaders who will inevitably turn out to be socialists. You are for violence.

This is the hard truth that people do not want to swallow; immoral violence at different levels is behind the edifice of the State, and all Statist thinking, its fallacious justifications and immoral actions. If you are for any of it, no matter what the justification, you are violent.

People are asking, “What kind of psychopath has that kind of forward-thinking planning?” The answer is, the same sort of psychopath that orders regime change, and like Madeline Albright, is prepared to order the deaths of children to achieve U.S. policy objectives because, “we think the price is worth it”. The same sort of psychopath that kills millions of people for dollar and oil supremacy. The same sort of people who devise plans to kill ‘their own citizens’ so that they may have a pretext to go to war. In other words, the people who run the State.

Once again, why do people rail against individual psychopathy but not the small army of psychopaths that man the controls of the State, who have a proven track record of mass murder, extrajudicial killing, rendition, torture and rape and every other unspeakable crime that can be committed? Why the sleepless nights, the speechlessness, the loss for words, the histrionics over people in one country, but not for people in another country, being killed on a much greater scale and at a greater frequency?

All of these people are human beings with the same rights, they eat the same way, think the same thoughts, have families… they are indistinguishable from each other on a human level, so why does everyone who goes berserk over a small number of students, not literally go insane over the daily murders carried out by the State?

Madeline Albright said straight out that she is willing to kill children, just as was done in this case, to achieve an end, and yet, when this is said right to your face, as murderers from the State have openly said again and again, the reaction is nowhere near as shrill and tear filled as when something terrible that is personal (that isn’t really personal at all, just more local, ‘close to home’) happens. This is wrong, especially when in the belief system of the people who are having this disproportionate response, it is held that the State is a creature acting under the direction the voting public; where murder is done on their behalf, in the name of ‘the people’.

It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

What also doesn’t make any sense is the prominence these stories get. The number of people who die from these events is statistically insignificant when compared to all the other forms of unnatural death. Why is everyone putting these deaths up on a pedestal? Surely the murders of the State should be put on the same level, and that level should be off of the front page? More people die from bee stings, peanut allergy, alcoholism, road accidents and many other unnatural causes, so why not put these deaths on the same level? Why report them at all? The threat to you is not grater than the threat of other unnatural causes, so to place these deaths higher than other deaths is simply base emotionalism, sensationalism and irrationality.

These murders are terrible, revolting and unjustifiable. They are just as terrible, revolting and unjustifiable as the murders of the State. These murders however, should not be used a a pretext for anything other than a thorough investigation into the murderer and his motivations. There should be no new legislation, no increased surveillance, no Police State strictures. NOTHING in response to this other than a criminal investigation.

Your chances of being killed in this way are infinitesimally small. The magnification of this event into something bigger than what it actually is, is trillions of times more harmful to you, your descendants and your life than the event itself.

Do not magnify this event; it is not any more or less important than any other murder. It is not more significant, statistically or morally. It is just as repugnant as other murders and just as statistically probable.

Any emphasis upon it that is greater than the emphasis that is given to the murders of the State is itself immoral and repugnant.

Finally, people are beginning to realise that all is not quite right with these events. The photos of the perpetrator are “picture perfect”, his background and messages “intended to be found”. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. But then again, so does the State, and its mass murder. You must take three steps back and also cast the same skeptical, critical, logical eye on the existence of the State itself, its murders, excuses, pretexts, fictitious enemies and bogus justifications for what is plainly immoral.

If you do not do this, then you are not thinking logically, but are being emotionally manipulated into believing that somehow, a man murdering 80 plus people is different to the State murdering 80 plus people, and that because of this, you must accept changes imposed upon your life.

It just isn’t true.

Oh dear me.

It looks like the French are facing the New Labour disease of super Orwellian ID Cards to supplant their existing ID Card system.

Did you know that you cannot buy a SIM card in France without presenting State ID? Appalling!

It seems to me that they need to have a little Stonor Saunders injected into their ‘debate’, and Google Translate is more than happy to oblige:

+++++++

Cela a été envoyé à moi.

Ceci a été écrit à l’origine par STONOR SAUNDERS Frances.

Frances Saunders est l’ancien rédacteur en chef des arts du New Statesman, auteur de La Guerre froide culturelle, Diabolical Anglais et Le Diable Courtier et a été attribué William la Royal Historical Society de Gladstone Prix?commémoratif. Elle vit à Londres. Il vaut bien lire et si vous souhaitez, s’il vous plaît le transmettre à autant de personnes que vous le pouvez.

«Vous avez entendu ce que la législation créant cartes d’identité obligatoires franchi une étape cruciale dans la Chambre des communes. Vous pouvez penser que ID cartes ne sont pas de quoi s’inquiéter, puisque nous avons déjà de photos d’identité pour nos passeports et permis de conduire et une carte d’identité ne sera pas différente de que. Qu’est-ce que vous n’avez pas été dit est la pleine portée de cette identité proposée Carte, et ce qu’il signifie pour vous personnellement.

La carte d’identité proposée sera différente de n’importe quelle carte que vous tenez. Il sera être connecté à une base de données appelée le RIN, (National Identity Register), où toutes vos données personnelles seront stockées. Il s’agira notamment de numéro unique qui sera émis pour vous, vos empreintes digitales, un scan de la arrière de votre œil, et votre photo. Votre nom, adresse et date de la naissance sera évidemment aussi y être stockées.

Il y aura des espaces sur cette base de données pour votre religion, le statut de résidence, et de nombreux autres faits privés et personnels à votre sujet. Il est illimité espace pour tous les autres détails de votre vie sur la base de données NIR, qui peut être étendu par le gouvernement avec ou sans d’autres actes de Parlement.

En soi, vous pourriez penser que ce registre est inoffensif, mais vous seriez tort de venir à cette conclusion. Cette nouvelle carte sera utilisée pour vérifier votre identité contre votre entrée dans le registre en temps réel, chaque fois que vous le présenter à «prouver qui vous êtes».

Tout lieu que vend de l’alcool ou des cigarettes, chaque bureau de poste, tous les pharmacie, et chaque banque aura un terminal de carte NIR, (tout comme les lecteurs Chip and Pin qui sont partout maintenant) dans lequel votre carte peut être “glissée” pour vérifier votre identité. Chaque fois que cela arrive, un record est faite à la PIR de l’heure et le lieu que la carte a été présentée. Cela signifie par exemple, qu’il y aura un dossier du gouvernement de chaque fois que vous retirez plus de £ 99 à votre succursale de NatWest, qui maintenant ID demande pour ces transactions. Chaque fois que vous avez à prouver que vous sont plus de 18 ans, votre carte sera glissée, et un enregistrement fait à la PIR. Restaurants et licences hors exigeront que votre carte est glissée de telle sorte que chaque reçu indique qu’ils vendaient de l’alcool à quelqu’un de plus de 18, et que cela a été prouvé par l’accès au NIR, les indemnisant à partir
poursuites.

Les entreprises privées vont avoir accès à la base de données NIR. Si vous voulez postuler pour un emploi, vous devrez présenter votre carte d’un coup. Si vous voulez demander une carte Oyster à Londres Underground, ou un la fidélité des supermarchés carte ou un permis de conduire, vous devrez présenter votre Carte d’identité pour un coup. Va de même pour obtenir une ligne téléphonique ou une téléphone mobile ou d’un compte Internet.

Oyster, DVLA, BT, et de Nectar (par exemple) fonctionnent tous de bases de données très détaillée de leurs propres. Ils seront autorisés à accéder au NIR, comme tous les autres entreprise sera. Cela signifie que chacune de ces entités seront en mesure de enregistrer votre numéro unique dans leur base de données, et placer tous vos déplacements, enregistrements téléphoniques, des activités de conduite et les habitudes d’achat détaillée sous votre numéro unique de NIR. Ces bases de données, qui peut facilement s’adapter sur un stockage appareil de la taille de votre main, seront vendus aux tiers légalement ou illégalement. Il sera alors possible pour une entité non-gouvernementales pour créer une dossier détaillé de toutes vos activités. Certes, le gouvernement aura l’accès à tous les clandestins d’entre eux, ce qui signifie qu’ils auront une complète record de tous vos mouvements, de combien et quand vous vous retirez de votre compte bancaire pour les médicaments que vous prenez, jusqu’au niveau de quelle sorte de pain que vous mangez – tous accessibles via un numéro unique dans une base de données centrale.

C’est tout à fait un bond significatif à partir d’une carte d’identité simple qui montre votre nom et le visage.

La plupart des gens ne savent pas que c’est le vrai caractère et la portée des proposé de carte d’identité. Chaque fois que les détails de comment il fonctionnera sont expliquées pour eux, ils changer rapidement d’être ambivalente envers elle.

Le gouvernement va vous obliger à entrer vos coordonnées dans le NIR et de réaliser cette carte. Si vous et vos enfants veulent obtenir ou renouveler votre passeport, vous serez obligé de prendre vos empreintes digitales et vos yeux scannés pour le RIN, et une carte d’identité sera émis pour vous si vous voulez un ou pas. Si vous refusez de prendre ses empreintes digitales et oculaires numérisées, vous ne serez pas en mesure d’obtenir un passeport. Votre carte d’identité sera, juste comme votre passeport, ne pas être votre propriété. Le ministre de l’Intérieur aura le droit de révoquer ou de suspendre votre identité à tout moment, ce qui signifie que vous ne pas être en mesure de retirer de l’argent sur votre compte bancaire, par exemple, ou faire tout ce qui vous oblige à présenter votre carte d’identité émise par le gouvernement.

Les arguments qui ont été mis transmise en faveur des cartes d’identité peuvent être facilement réfutée. Cartes d’identité NE SERA PAS arrêter les terroristes; chaque Espagnol a une carte d’identité obligatoire, de même que les Bombers de Madrid, et probablement la plupart des les criminels 9 / 11. Les cartes d’identité ne sera pas «d’éliminer la fraude aux prestations», qui en comparaison, est faible par rapport au coût astronomique de cette proposition, qui seront évalués en milliards selon l’Ecole LSE (Londres des Economics). Ce schéma existe uniquement pour exercer une surveillance totale et contrôle sur le citoyen britannique ordinaire libre, et ce sera remplir les poches des les entreprises qui créeront des systèmes informatiques au détriment de la votre liberté, d’intimité et de l’argent.

Si vous ne saviez pas toute la portée du système de carte d’identité proposée avant et vous sont instables comme je suis à ce que cela signifie vraiment pour vous, à cette pays et son mode de vie, je vous exhorte à l’email ou une photocopie cela et lui donner à vos amis et collègues et tout le monde pense que vous devez savoir et qui se soucie. Le projet de loi a procédé à ce stade en raison de l’absence de renseignements exacts et complets sur cette proposition soient rendues publiques. Ensemble et main dans la main, nous pouvons informer la nation toute entière, si tous ceux qui reçoit ce qu’elle transmet. ”

Ce message n’a rien à voir avec la politique – il est à faire avec notre liberté. Mais ce sont les politiciens qui dans l’ignorance vont voter pour la carte d’identité et donc nous rapprocher de l’Etat de police qui semble être le but de notre actuelle Gouvernement. S’il vous plaît transmettre ce message – et d’utiliser votre prochain vote Élection générale pour se débarrasser des gens qui veulent détruire notre chéri démocratie.

Envoyer le traducteur de cet article, un Bitcoin à cette adresse: 14ScQgQRi2U5o6cdAJNhgyzY6w5UtwmX16

There is another interesting article over at Lew Rockwell about Bitcoin, which is a transcript of a conversation with Doug Casey, who we have blogged about before. This man is a truly great speaker and thinker, and as proof of this, I direct you to watch Mr. Casey in action.

In the interview, Doug Casey says something truly astonishing, because if it is true, it means that the next iteration of Bitcoin is already here and is sure to fulfil the promise of a decentralised, unregulated, freedom and pure value centred money. Here is the line that I am talking about:

So, way before the dollar value of Bitcoins stepped off a cliff last weekend, I was telling people who asked me that I didn’t use them and didn’t plan to use them.

Frankly, I can’t see why anyone would, when there’s already an electronic digital currency like Bitcoin but backed with gold: GoldMoney. I should disclose that I’m a small investor in the company.

http://lewrockwell.com/casey/casey89.1.html

My emphasis… What?!

An electronic digital currency like Bitcoin, backed with gold?!

I had to find out more about this!

GoldMoney has a good looking website:

http://www.goldmoney.com/

It says its ‘simple and secure’ and that you have ‘Complete ownership of the metal you buy’.

Better and better!

But where is the ‘download’ link? I want to start using it right now!

When you click on ‘Find out more about how to get started with GoldMoney’

Ooookkkkkk.

OnMouseDown we are not presented with a link to some software but instead we are displayed the following:

At GoldMoney we make it very easy for you to conveniently buy, own and store precious metals. The first step is to sign up for free to open a Holding, which is a personal record of your activity in GoldMoney and the metal you own. After a short verification process, you can transfer money to fund your Holding and start buying metals to preserve your purchasing power.

You have to sign up for a ‘holding’, complete ‘identity verification’ and then transfer funds.

Personal Record?
Verification process?

This doesn’t sound like Bitcoin at all!

It gets worse.

They then ask you for your country of residence. What on earth has that to do with MY MONEY?

And then it gets even WORSE:

Country of Residence

Depending on the country you live in, you can sign up for different types of Holdings. GoldMoney accepts customers from 93 countries. If your country of residence is not one of the countries listed above, unfortunately we are currently unable to accommodate your application. If you are temporarily living in a country not listed above but your primary country of residence is on the list, please contact us to discuss your situation. For example, if you are an international aid worker temporarily assigned to a non-listed country but your primary residence is in the UK, we will most likely be able to accept you as a customer.

If you move to another country after you open a Holding, please take into consideration that this could affect the type of Holding you are able to have.

Netherlands & Netherlands Antilles

Due to a review on the rules applicable to the sale and storage of precious metals, we are currently unable to accept applications from Dutch residents.

Sucks to be Dutch then. I guess that the Dutch don’t have any property rights. I guess that if I am Dutch, I can’t spend money on the internet, with this ‘Bitcoin like’ money. What?

And then it gets unimaginably worse:

We claim that we are from Italy, and then say submit. You then get this:

Enter your name and contact details during the sign-up process

Upload a scanned image of a bank statement or bank cheque before the initial funds are sent from your bank account

Upload a scanned image of your photo ID (passport, national ID card or driver’s license)
Send a certified copy of your photo ID and an original bank statement or utility bill along with a completed CAP Form (letter or A4-size) to us by post

Additional verification of your identity and the source of your funds may be required depending on your circumstances and the Holding value

Unbelievable.

And this, given the interview, is the most surprising thing of all:

Security and integrity

As a company regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission, GoldMoney complies with anti-money laundering legislation, which requires GoldMoney to know the identity and residential address of each of its customers. We make use of a Customer Acceptance Policy (CAP), to ensure the security and integrity of the GoldMoney system. More information about the CAP and how to sign up for your GoldMoney Holding can be found in our CAP FAQ.

But in the interview, Casey says:

That’s why the U.S. government and its media lapdogs have been so antagonistic to Bitcoin, claiming it’s primarily of interest to drug lords who want to use it as soap for their money laundering. They always mention it in conjunction with Silk Road, which claims to allow purchase of any drug through mail order, using Bitcoin as its payment system. I have no problem with that, but it’s a totally impractical idea in today’s world. It’s just an idea intended to scare witless Americans. Frankly, I’m disgusted at the fact money laundering is even accepted as a crime; thoughtless people believe whatever they’re told. It’s not a crime, by any rational definition. But that’s another subject for another day.

Well, I certainly agree with that sentiment; there is no such thing as ‘money laundering’… but I digress.

This service is as far from Bitcoin as you could possibly be. There is no software to download, you cannot buy and sell it from anywhere without restriction, you have to integrate with the state at a very intimate level, indeed, they cannot even offer this service to everyone, even Europeans like the Dutch, thanks to the State.

What if the State says that all gold in private hands is to be confiscated, as they did in 1933, and as they appear to be heading for right now. Is this company, for ‘Security and Integrity’ going to simply go along with the State and steal your money?

Who knows. Who cares.

I would never put my money into a service like this where the State is alerted of all your details and ‘holdings’. They offer no utility whatsoever in comparison with Bitcoin. You cannot spend your GoldMoney at retailers directly, you can only redeem your stored gold for cash, which you then have to either take in person or spend through another intermediary if you want to buy something from Bangalore. And of course, there are the myriad fees and taxes you have to pay each time you move YOUR MONEY around between these entities.

This is the reason why Bitcoins are valuable. There is no service like it anywhere.

You can get started with them instantly.
You do not have to identify yourself.
You can use them from any location.
You can send them to any location.
You can fund them with any currency.
You can spend them immediately.
Your transactions are private.
There are no taxes on transactions.
Transaction fees are so small as to be irrelevant, and if you are a miner, you get the fees back from other users.

All of these features and more make Bitcoin a tool with a very high level of utility. Bitcoins are scarce, and you need them if you want to make purchases without the onerous and illegitimate predations of the State.

If the ideas of Liberty are spreading, and they are, Bitcoin will have a very large and primed population of users who recoil at something like GoldMoney.

The utility of Bitcoin, which is a function of the number of users who want it, will entrench it, or at the very least, the idea of it.

We will never go back to government run money, just as we are not going back to music pressed on vinyl. The quality of sound has been sacrificed for Digital Convenience, and more music than ever before is in everyone’s hands, accompanied by a new economy where the middle man is being killed off. Digital music is here to stay, and so is Bitcoin. The middle men are going out of business, and everyone is going to benefit.

The frictionless utility of Bitcoin, like the experience of finding music, books, films and software and then downloading them immediately is something that once you taste it, changes your perception forever.

No one who uses Bitcoin is going to accept GoldMoney as ‘digital currency like Bitcoin’. Its like saying buying DRM’d iTunes files for 99¢ is like sharing FLACs on IRC / Dropbox with your friends (sorry, I slipped into ‘tecchie speak’ as the illiterates call it. What I mean is the experience of downloading and sharing unencumbered music files that you can play anywhere, freely, between friends and colleagues for nothing, is not at all like paying money for files from Apple, where what you get are files that you cannot share or use on all of your music devices. Apple is a cumbersome, restrictive and invasive intermediary vendor that spoils your music experience. Is that better? I can only dumb it down so much… sorry!).

The genie is out of the bottle, just as it is with file sharing. Eventually no one will pay for entertainment files. It will be culturally unacceptable and commercially impossible. Similarly in the near future, no one will accept that you cannot spend your own money whenever you want, however you want, without anyone other than you and the recipient having a say in it.

Bitcoin, or its immediate decedents will provide the secure infrastructure for this, and most certainly not GoldMoney or services like it.

This does not, obviously, invalidate the immutable, irrefutable idea that the best money is gold. All it means is that on the internet, if you want to spend money, the best way to do it is Bitcoin. It is the easiest, the most Libertarian styled, the most secure (yes, the most secure, all the recent problems with Bitcoin users have not been due to a problem with Bitcoin, but with the people who are running it and the incorrectly managed computers that they control) and transparent way of spending money.

Finally, it seems like the Ghandi rule is sweeping through the Libertarians who at first, instinctively and irrationally railed against the idea of Bitcoin.

The people on the wrong side of history appear to be very quickly moving from the laughing stage, and are already past the fighting stage it seems.

Bitcoin has already won.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

UPDATE!

Jon Matonis hit the nail on the head about this company back in 2009. His article is just the sort of thing that journalists cannot produce, and that the best Bloggers are good at; concise, rational even handed, insightful and purely fact based writing that spells it out just as it is. Read it!

And check out this informative, in depth interview with Mr. Matonis: Jon Matonis on Agorist Radio

It is now clear where the lines dividing freedom minded people on the issue of Bitcoin are drawn.

On the one side, you have mostly older computer illiterates who are out of their comfort zone, and on the other, you have younger computer literate people who are comfortable with both free market ideas, sound economics and computers.

The former camp, the computer illiterates, all use the same form of argumentation and fallacious reasoning to attack Bitcoin, including straw men. Here is a good example:

Approximately 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said good money must be:

• Durable
• Portable
• Divisible and consistent
• Have intrinsic value

The astute reader will immediately realize that Bitcoin does not possess any of those characteristics and was subject to trouble from the getgo — not to mention the security issues that immediately arise with anything computer– and Internet related. A computer generated currency is not durable, as the recent hack demonstrates. And it’s certainly not portable. Can you imagine bringing your computer to the door to pay for your next Chinese food delivery? You get the idea for the remaining characteristics.

[…]

http://howestreet.com/2011/06/grim-decade-employment/

The straw man here is the line about Chinese food delivery. There is no reason of course, why you could not pay for your Chinese food in advance by Bitcoin. Its like saying, “imagine ordering books by computer from a company, lets call it ‘Amazon’. Imagine the delivery man having to keep change for all the sales! Its a security nightmare. IT WILL NEVER CATCH ON!”

The astute reader recognises faulty reasoning when he sees it, and is not persuaded by straw men.

As for the Aristotelian qualities that money must have, lets go through them for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is durable. In fact, because it is not a physical good but is instead, an idea fixed in media, it can last for an indefinite time as long as it is copied to another medium. You can keep backups of it, which of course, you cannot do with physical money. Once again, the fact that you can have two copies of your money and cannot spend it twice is the breakthrough of Bitcoin.

Anyone who says Bitcoin is not portable, is not thinking clearly. Bitcoin is the most portable ‘money’ ever created. It can be sent anywhere in the world in an instant. There is no other money like it in the world in this respect.

Bitcoin is divisible. Each coin can be divided into one million equal parts. Bitcoin is consistent in value, if we accept that the value of a commodity is related to its supply.

The only test Bitcoin fails, some would argue, is that it has no intrinsic value. Lets go to the dictionaries to be absolutely sure:

What Does Intrinsic Value Mean?
1. The actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value. Value investors use a variety of analytical techniques in order to estimate the intrinsic value of securities in hopes of finding investments where the true value of the investment exceeds its current market value.

[…]

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp#ixzz1PzdrOzEy

In finance, intrinsic value refers to the value of a security which is intrinsic to or contained in the security itself. It is also frequently called fundamental value. It is ordinarily calculated by summing the future income generated by the asset, and discounting it to the present value. Simply put, it is the actual value of a security as opposed to the market or book value.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_value_(finance)

An intrinsic property is an essential or inherent property of a system or of a material itself or within. It is independent of how much of the material is present and is independent of the form the material, e.g., one large piece or a collection of smaller pieces.

[…]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic

I think the last one puts the nail in the coffin of the argument that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value.

Bitcoin has intrinsic value, by definition, because the system has value to the people who use it. It also has intrinsic value, by definition, because the amount of material in a thing is not relevant to wether or not a thing has intrinsic value; Bitcoins are immaterial, and they are part of a system that has value.

The fact that a single exchange, MTGox was hacked does not demonstrate that ‘A computer generated currency is not durable’; this is another instance of fallacious thinking. For fun, can you pick the correct one?

Once again all of these fallacious arguments are being made on the internet, and the irony of this appears to be lost on the people making them.

Even if Bitcoin is only used by one one hundredth of the entire internet population regularly, the number of people using it will be enough. More than enough. “For what?” I hear you ask… anything we need.

The people who build the systems that change the world do not need luddites, computer illiterates and sticklers to urge them to do what they do. The internet was built by a small number of people, and it has spread everywhere. Bitcoin was devised by one person, and it has already changed everything.

While we are at it, there is another prediction that has gone out of the window, the lone wolf inventor was declared extinct a few years ago, the claim being that the research and development costs involved in creating new things meant that unshaven men in their garages would not be able to produce world changing technologies.

How wrong they were. Bitcoin and Bittorrent are only two examples.

This is true for Bitcoin and the systems that are going to come after it. You need only look at at a widely adopted system like Skype, which is a decedent of ideas behind Gnutella, which itself was a decedent of Napster.

This is another problem that afflicts the discussion of Bitcoin; not only do very few people have a knowledge of how software works in general, but even fewer know about the recent history of some of the amazing tools we now take for granted.

Take a look at Nautilus, the file browser. Did you know that a company raised 11 million dollars to develop it? The company was called Eazel, and now we all benefit from that massive investment whenever we use the file browser in our Linux desktops, since Nautilus is now free and open source. Before this company, file browsers on Linux were not so user friendly. The people who invested in Eazel might not have made a profit, but that is not the point. The point here is that a world class piece of software was released that made something that was hard much more easy. The same dynamic can happen with the Bitcoin client, and when it does, we are going to experience massive, permanent disruptive change.

When thinkers like Mark Shuttleworth or Justin Frankel or a consortium of developers with many millions of dollars in the bank decides to fork and polish Bitcoin, you are going to see the emergence of a new version of the Bitcoin client, which will be as usable as the Skype client, that will sit on top of the existing Bitcoin network. Adoption will then go exponential, and all the short sighted people who claimed that it will never catch on will be forced to eat their words.

This new Bitcoin client will not only address all of the problems of the present client, but it will introduce new features that will make the adoption of Bitcoin accelerate; like being able to print out your Bitcoins so you can spend them like paper money.

Thinking is hard. Reading and understanding technical specifications is not easy; you have to spend many hours cross referencing different documents, each of which is liable to cause you to have to read other difficult to digest documents.

If you are not willing to do this, its not a problem; the world will go on without you. Thats why all these people are able to send out email newsletters, publish websites and make Skype calls without knowing how it all works or the history of the tools they are using.

What you cannot do however, is claim that something, in this case Bitcoin, cannot work when you are not capable of understanding it or even worse, are unwilling to make the effort to research it properly, and then expect people to take you seriously.

Something as important, significant and world-changing deserves proper attention and analysis, not flippant twaddle masquerading as insight.

MTGox, we discover, was the victim of an internal leak of their database. They were not hacked, and they are the victims of a criminal act of theft.

The facts in this matter do not concern the people who are gloating over this event. There are a group of people who are violent in nature, and who despise Bitcoin because they understand exactly what it represents; a direct threat to their sick and violent society which is based on coercion, the absence of freedom and the application of force.

Imagine a world where everyone had access to personal force fields via an artificially created gland that was made to grow into their abdomen by a nano machine / virus. These force fields could be activated either by the fear response or by the direction of your will, in the same way that you use your will to direct your arm to throw a ball.

Everyone would be able to protect themselves from any sort of physical attack, and all would be able to use similar technology to protect their houses.

It would then immediately become impossible for the State to send their agents to your house to rob you with bailiffs. They would no longer be able to force you to pay anything that you did not want to pay, and you would be able to protect yourself and your property from the other criminals and predators that are not sent out by the State.

In such a world, all flows of money would be voluntary by default. There could be no coercion of any kind, since violence against the person and her property would have been abolished by the advent of force fields.

The entire world would switch from one based on violence to one based on voluntary exchange.

This is exactly what Bitcoin is doing.

It is going to make it impossible for the state to stop people transacting at a distance, in any amount that they choose. It is going to remove the State from the equation as the unwanted third party in all transactions.

This is the true source of the animus against Bitcoin, and it explains why people like Tim Worstall and the other writers are dismissing Bitcoin so flippantly. Here is what I am talking about. These are quotes from an article by Tim Worstall that has just appeared:

The Bitcoin community faced another crisis on Sunday afternoon as the price of the currency on the most popular exchange, Mt.Gox, fell from $17 to pennies in a matter of minutes. Trading was quickly suspended and visitors to the home page were redirected to a statement blaming the crash on a compromised user account. Mt.Gox’s Mark Karpeles said that the exchange would be taken offline to give administrators time to roll back the suspect transactions.

Tim Worstall asserts that Bitcoin is finished because a single exchange has technical problems if this is the level of expertise operating at Forbes, you might be forgiven for taking everything that they publish with a big pinch of salt. There is no relation between the fictitious ‘Bitcoin community’ and MTGox, in fact, its a stretch to assert that there is a Bitcoin community at all. Is there an ‘internet community’ simply because people who peer on the network can send email to each other?

Not a good start!

For the record, Tim Worstall works as a consultant and dealer in scandium and other exotic metals. We can assume that he knows a little about how exchanges work, that there is normally more than one exchange for every commodity, and that you can get a feel for the price of a commodity not by looking only at one exchange, but by looking at them all at the same time.

He must also know that Bitcoin is in its infancy, and as other exchanges open, the problem of a single exchange running into difficulty will greatly suppress the triggers that initiate widespread panic. He should also know that a single technical fault in an exchange cannot be translated into a true loss of value in whatever it is the exchange deals in.

These fundamental facts and logic must be known to him, so why has he written this piece? What is the purpose of it?

The initial problem leading to the price collapse was that one user tried to sell more than the market could absorb. For of course the value of anything is determined by the balance of supply and demand for it. Thus the price crashed (and you can see a chart of how quickly it did here). However, it appears that this isn’t the only problem:

This demonstrates Mr. Worstall has at least a basic grasp of economics and how markets work. What he does not tell you, is that the sales were made not by one user, but by over 400 users simultaneously, who were all being controlled by a single attacker. Facts are stubborn things. Had this breach not taken place, the quoted price for Bitcoins on MTGox would not have dropped as it did. Worstall cannot distinguish between a wrongly quoted price and the true price of a commodity in a market.

Since I began writing this, it has emerged that details of more than 60,000 users have been stolen from the Mt Gox exchange. The compromised information includes hashed passwords.

No, the doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the Bitcoin experiment, but it’s a pretty good indication of it.

This is a baseless assertion, which other violent Statists will use in a faulty appeal to authority attack (“it came from Forbes, a trusted source”) against Bitcoin.

This event is not an indication of anything, other than that some of the user accounts at MTGox were exposed. If we apply this faulty logic to the other recent mass disclosures of usernames and passwords, we should expect Worstall to come up with similar nonsense lines:

The recent hack of SONY, where the credit card numbers, dates of birth and real names of TWENTY FIVE MILLION users were copied…
The recent hack of SEGA…
The loss from HM Revenue and Customs…

• So, That’s the End of Credit Cards Then
• So, That’s the End of SONY Then
• So, That’s the end of SEGA Then
• So, That’s the end of Her Majesty’s Government Then

Do you see what I did there?

Take a look at this if you want to gain some perspective on the matter of large scale data breaches, something that the Tim Worstall’s of this world seem to lack:

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6712283280/major-data-breaches.

The MTGox event doesn’t even appear on the radar.

While we are at it, in the case of Parliament, the breach of the government data really should have instantly spelled the end of ContactPoint and the ill conceived, ill fated ID Card, but of course, it did not. Also, the breach of 25 million credit cards should put pay to the Coalition’s absurd plan to use credit cards as ID Cards to access government gateways. We have written about this recently:

Credit card fraud is rampant, and using credit cards to interface with the state will allow everyone with a fraudulent or duplicated credit card to masquerade as someone else when identifying themselves to a government portal.

Look no further than the recent SONY breach where the credit card details, dates of birth, names and addresses of SEVENTY MILLION people were copied.

The population of Britain is 61,838,154 – 2009 That means that a number of people, larger than the population of Britain had their credit card details copied.

It means that if such a thing happened in the UK, every single person who identifies themselves to the state with their VISA could be impersonated with ease. This means more benefit fraud, GUARANTEED.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=3031

but that is another story.

The fact of the matter is that writing irrational pieces like this cannot be an accident. This is not an opinion piece, though the hatred of Liberty oozes out of every vowel. I want to know who is directing these drones to write hit pieces against Bitcoin. I am not the only one (not that that means anything in and of itself) to suspect that the organised chorus of anti Bitcoin propaganda, and it is propaganda, is just too perfectly in tune to be the random warbling of computer illiterates. Or maybe they are all perfectly brainwashed to the same tune piped out by the Government schools and State mandated curricula? Who knows?

Here is another piece in the key of Fail; Fortune ran this piece recently which everyone can see is a, “…thrown together and completely fact-optional piece. Seriously, this reads like somebody who spent 2 hours reading other news coverage headlines and decided to fill in the rest with make-believe.”

Oh dear.

The mainstream media and its gatekeepers have a terrible problem on their hands. They cannot tell a story without directing people to the facts that will disprove their propaganda. They are only a click away from every hit piece they write.

Anyone with curiosity can Google Bitcoin for themselves, download it and then run it. They can start accepting Bitcoins. They can integrate it into their websites and start getting paid for anything that they do.

Once they get a first hand feel for it, the lies that are being propagated about Bitcoin are instantly washed away. As more people use it, and the client improves, it will become harder and harder to lie about Bitcoin, and then the MSM drones will have to capitulate and start accepting it themselves. Once this happens, it will be forbidden by the editors of these rags to write an anti-bitcoin piece, because they would be being paid in Bitcoins themselvs.

That will be the tipping point; just as the newspapers all decided they needed to have online editions of their lie machines on the internet, and when they adopt anything, like social networking and Twitter feeds, eventually they will all have to accept Bitcoin or its successor. This is absolutely inevitable. For those that are interested, all of the websites of the newspapers are running some sort of Open Source Software. They might not like the economics or the philosophy of ‘free’ but they are all using it to spread their lies.

Forbes.com is running Apache on Linux and so is fortune.cnn.com. Both of these organizations would have railed against Open Source software from every possible angle, with FUD, “its not as secure as proprietary software”, “the business model cannot work”, “its not ready for the desktop” etc etc, and yet, they have all capitulated, and no one even discusses it any more, save to note how far and wide the software is spreading.

This is how these people operate.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

We are at the ‘ha ha’ stage now. It is only a matter of time before Tim Worstall or some other hack calls for Bitcoin to be banned or regulated. And for the record, you can replace Tim Worstall’s name with the name of any journalist that has written a piece like this. Even people who claim to be scientific in their thinking manage to write garbage about Bitcoin. They all share the same attributes (lies) and one is replaceable with any other, and the newspaper name or slant doesn’t matter either. I could cite dozens of shabby articles, but why bother, they are all pretty much identical in theme, deception, sneer and ignorance.

For there are certain things that we want from a currency. A medium of exchange, a store of value, we’d also like to it be liquid and security is important as well.

Once again, we have the ever present WE of the collectivists. What Worstall means by ‘security’ of course is the unfettered ability of the State to be able to interpose itself in all transactions so it can tax. Without it, his beloved collective dies, and Bitcoin is the first actual financial tool that could pull it off. This is why everyone who loves and lives by the State, its predations, its illegitimate regulations, its stolen loot, its bureaucracy and all the other vile stuff in its ecosystem where violence is the lubricant, hates Bitcoin with a passion.

With Bitcoin, people have the choice to opt out of their sick society. Bitcoin is the force field that protects the individual’s money from the State. Its mass adoption would collapse the income of the State, forcing it to completely re-assess its relationship with people everywhere. On a side note, we can expect the State to ramp up the violence to eleven on the dial, before they throw in the towel.

No currency can have all of these features (and humans have used some pretty odd things as currency over the centuries, from copper sheets to cowrie shells via butter, salt, gold, silver and even pieces of paper with Dead Presidents on them, surely the final lunacy?) to perfection but a currency which doesn’t have any of them in appreciable quantities isn’t going to last very long.

This is simply not true. There can be a currency that has all of these features; just because you cannot imagine it that does not make it so. Three years ago, anyone you asked would have told you that the double spending problem could not be solved, because digital files are infinitely copyable. Lo and behold, a single man with a vision has solved the problem and his solution has applications beyond currency. Computer illiterate collectivists cannot even begin to see the sort of world that would emerge out of the idea behind Bitcoin. No matter. The world will change wether they like it or not.

As for odd currencies lasting a long time, did you know that the longest running currency was the tally stick? A strip of wood with notches cut in it that was then split in half; one half being spent out and the other reserved by the issuer.

The tally stick system lasted seven hundred years as a form of money.

Bitcoin can be used to send stored value across the world, in the same way that tally sticks were used. It can last a long time, and bring many benefits to the people who use it. Bitcoin, and the ideas that drive it are in no way ‘over’.

Bitcoins aren’t secure, as both the recent theft and this password problem show.

This is simply false, and betrays a complete ignorance of what Bitcoin is and how it works. All of the problems that have been falsely attributed to Bitcoin have not been a problem with Bitcoin itself, but have instead, been directly related to the platforms in which it is being used.

MTGox had a problem with their physical security; nothing to do with Bitcoin itself. The man who lost 50,000 Bitcoins had them stolen from a laptop running Microsoft Windows, either by physical access or remotely by a Trojan; nothing to do with Bitcoin itself.

Even if someone finds a flaw in the Bitcoin client, the idea of it is sound and has changed everything forever.

More people today are thinking about what money is, and understand what Fiat Currency is and how it is evil and institutionalised theft. That is thanks to Bitcoin. More people today have a real grasp of how simple money transfer over the Internet could and should be, if only the State would get out of the way. That is thanks to Bitcoin.

PayPal and the Credit Card companies and their processors are shaking in their boots; you will never have your Bitcoin account frozen. You do not have to make any declaration of any kind, swear an oath, divulge personal information or suffer any State mandated humiliation to start receiving and spending Bitcoins worth millions of dollars. There are no artificial limits on how much Bitcoin you can receive and spend, and where you can spend it and what on. The only loser in all of this is the State and its army of cronies, clients, parasites and thugs.

The next Rebecca Black on YouTube will put her Bitcoin address in the description, and she will reap millions from her fans… even the ones who hate her.

Actually, thats an argument against Bitcoin, sorry.

They’re not liquid, nor a store of value, as the price collapse shows and if they’re none of those things then they’ll not be a great medium of exchange either as who would want to accept them?

This is, of course, nonsense. Lets take it one by one:

“They are not liquid”

What Does Liquid Asset Mean?
An asset that can be converted into cash quickly and with minimal impact to the price received. Liquid assets are generally regarded in the same light as cash because their prices are relatively stable when they are sold on the open market.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liquidasset.asp

Bitcoins, are becoming more and more liquid every day. You can trade them in the street, and there are services popping up that help you find people who want to sell or buy Bitcoins close to you, using geolocation.

“nor a store of value”
This is demonstrably false. If you can spend Bitcoins, they are a store of value by definition, just as the tally stick was, just as gold is and paper money is. This is nonsense on stilts, and we have addressed this before when we took apart Grant Babcock’ assertions.

“as the price collapse shows”
There was no price collapse, this is a falsehood. MTGox, a single exchange, suffered a technical problem not related to Bitcoin itself, and the price recovered immediately. The trades are going to be reversed where possible, and as you can see in this video:

the price at that broken exchange recovered. This is not reporting, or real journalism. It is utter rubbish.

“they’ll not be a great medium of exchange either as who would want to accept them?”
You can file this under the same nonsense like, “guitar bands are finished” (Beatles) or “no one wants internet access, because no one is on it yet”, or “the internet will amount to nothing” Clifford Stoll.

Note, attentive readers, that Clifford Stoll’s famous, “it will never catch on” piece appeared in Newsweek, a world class mainstream media lie machine, with a vested interest in killing anything that stops people from being free, reading the truth or from them selling dead trees. They have been dragged kicking and screaming into the future…. but you know this!

True, Bitcoin does still offer anonymity:

Not really, but why should we expect you to get this right?

but then so do copper sheets to cowrie shells via butter, salt, gold, silver and even pieces of paper with Dead Presidents on them.

There are moves afoot and plenty of evidence to prove you wrong Mr. Worstall. Just ask this gentleman who was stopped at an airport simply because he was carrying his own money. So much for the anonymity of cowrie shells and fraudulent pieces of paper with Dead Presidents on them.

It’s difficult to see what the currency has going for it.

http://blogs.forbes.com/timworstall/2011/06/20/so-thats-the-end-of-bitcoin-then/

Its only difficult to see what Bitcoin has going for it if you are an ignoramus in the literal sense of that word.

If you understand how cash works, then you should understand what Bitcoin offers its users and what it has ‘going for it’. But I think this article’s author knows full well what the potential of Bitcoin is, which is exactly why he has written this piece as he has.

No one born in 1963, who writes for ‘newspapers” and trades metals as a profession doesn’t know what the internet has done for man. People like that have experienced the internet revolution first hand, as it has transformed the way everyone works, plays, communicates, learns, spends money and thinks.

Bitcoin, its future iterations and its inevitable successors, are going to change the world again, in ways that are very difficult to predict, though we can have a crack at it for fun. It is a fact that Bitcoin already has changed the world.

One thing you simply cannot do in the face of something like this is intone, “it will never work” or “I can’t see the point in it”. These sorts of predictions, especially when they are related to technology are almost always wrong or short sighted, and in today’s day and age, with all of the experience of the last two decades under our belts, such an attitude is inexcusable stupidity.

I just came across this very wonderful post on copyright, excerpted here. Read the rest of it, its a classic, and do spread it.

A Crescendo of Copyright

Natural Finale and Reprise

Rejected by The Rethink Music Conference, April 2011, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

Abstract

• A prologue – mankind’s culture and copyright in perspective

Copyright’s 18^th Century Overture

• 1709 Queen Anne’s privilege of copyright
• 1787 the philosophy of Paine and the (natural) rights of man
• 1790 the prestidigitation in which a privilege is inveigled as a natural right

Copyright’s Confrontation with Cultural Liberty reaches a crescendo

• C19-20 the printing industry’s exploitation of its privilege
• 1990s the propertisation of published intellectual works as an entrenchment
• 2000s the piracy of published intellectual works as a natural liberty
• 2010s the persecution of the people for their piracy (cultural liberty)

Copyright’s finale, and the reprise of natural rights

• 20?? the prospectus for mankind’s future

Prologue

The extent of mankind’s primordial cultural activity stretches back at least half a million years, but thanks to repeated erasure by glaciation we start the notable cultural events calendar at 50,000_BC.

51,709 years later a nascent empire and its pampered press have the impudence to decide that mankind’s cultural commonwealth would be so much better if a law was created to prohibit people from copying each other.

There are a few words for the precursory, unbridled cultural intercourse that still remain in the English language, though they are almost obsolete: ‘folksong’, ‘folkmusic’, ‘folktales’, and ‘folklore’. These primeval springs are still known to a few among us and can be found seeping through the pre-renaissance foundations upon which our modern culture stands.

Today we have the luxury of looking back over the last three centuries of ‘protection’ to see how much richer our culture has become, being effectively manacled and enclosed by corporations such as Disney. Permitted the liberty only to create purely original works, albeit with some tolerance for cultural cross contamination (if not too flagrant), we enjoy a far more creative and diverse culture. Or rather, this is what Queen Anne’s Stationers’ Guild and its descendant publishing corporations would persuade us is the consequence of her wise enactment of law to ‘protect’ published works from the grubby hands and mouths of the great unwashed.

Nothing to do with the printers’ monopolies then…

Let us see the historical accident of copyright in perspective:

65,000,000BC	Primates
2,000,000BC	Homo Erectus
500,000BC	Division into Neanderthal & Homo Sapiens
200,000BC	Homo Sapiens’ ancestral basis
140,000BC	Glacial retreat after 40,000 year long glacial period
50,000BC	Dawn of mankind’s culture: language, music, drawing, etc.
32,000BC	Cave paintings
30,000BC	Neanderthals extinct
20,000BC	Glacial retreat after 50,000 year long glacial period
17,000BC	Lascaux Cave Paintings
10,000BC	Holocene – modern epoch
9,000BC	Jericho
8,000BC	Stonehenge site’s significance
3,100BC	Stonehenge construction begins
2,611BC	First Egyptian Pyramid
753BC	Foundation of Rome
300BC	Library of Alexandria
48BC	Library of Alexandria accidentally destroyed by Julius Caesar
300	Book format outnumbers scroll format
1282	Water powered paper mill
1403	Corporation of London forms Stationers’ Guild
1440	Development and use of printing press begins
1492	Europeans discover New World
1536	Erasmus dies – 750,000 copies of his works sold
1557	Stationers’ Guild granted control over all printing
1572	Fall of Inca Empire
1695	Stationers’ Guild loses control upon expiry of the Licensing of the Press Act 1662
1703	Daniel Defoe endorses commercial piracy of his work – if true copies
1709	Queen Anne Establishes the Privilege of Copyright
1787	US Constitution
1790	Madison re-enacts Statute of Anne (tweaked for the US)
1791	Thomas Paine deprecates privileges
1814	Steam powered printing press
1837	Babbage designs Analytical Engine
1937	Relay computers
1943	Valve/Tube computers
1953	Transistor computers
1969	Internet begins with two nodes
1971	Microprocessor computers
1991	World Wide Web begins
2000	The people obtain the means of mass reproduction and communication
2010	The successors to the Stationers’ Guild seek possession of the Internet via ACTA
2011	Copyright recognised to be ineffective vs the people’s cultural liberty/piracy
2015??	Copyright is reformed to exempt individuals in the digital domain
2020??	Copyright is reformed to exempt individuals
2025??	Copyright is reformed to exempt the digital domain
2030??	Copyright is repealed
2031??	The author’s exclusive right to their writings is properly secured at last – ethically

Seen in a proper perspective, copyright is a legislative misadventure borne of political expediency and commercial self-interest. It is a hiccup in mankind’s history and, in the face of the diffusive nature of information, is coming to an abrupt and natural end.

[…]

read the rest of this epic, classic, brilliant, informative and insightful post here:

http://culturalliberty.org/blog/index.php?id=276

No wonder it was rejected, it is so true it jumps off the screen and knocks you off your chair!

Some people believe that the design of Bitcoin is flawed, and that it cannot work. David Kramer is one of them and has made an interesting post over at Lew Rockwell, about Bitcoin. Lets take a look.

I’m sure by now many of you have heard about Bitcoin. The fact that it’s called “virtual currency” gives you an idea about its actual value as a real medium of exchange.

This isn’t true; the only thing that gives you an idea about its value as a medium of exchange is what you can exchange it for. Right now you can trade a bitcoin for 26.141 Federal Reserve Notes. This is the truth about what the value of a Bitcoin is right now.

While many people who are touting it on Facebook are enamored with the fact that it was voluntarily created by the marketplace (i.e., is not forced down our throats by a private central bank), I’m afraid that those people are losing sight of how a real medium of exchange arises in a free market.

Bitcoin was developed as a way to exchange between people in a cash like fashion at a distance, without a central clearing authority. It was created because there is a need for this service, which has been recognised since the days of Dr. David Chaum’s E-Cash.

The people who work on this project were not directed to by anyone, and no one told the man who made the breakthrough that this is what he should be doing. This is yet another example of free people solving problems for themselves, and that is a good thing.

We should point out that Satoshi Nakamoto could have patented this idea but choose not to; instead, he released his idea and the software he wrote to implement it as Open Source, so that everyone everywhere can benefit from his concept. This is a noble act, and it is proper that we recognise this.

A medium of exchange arises from something that had a material use/value in the market prior to becoming a medium of exchange, i.e., it was also a good being bartered for other goods and services. Over the centuries, gold and silver won out as the two most preferred mediums of exchange—with gold holding the number one position due to it being more scarce than silver.

You could argue that the electricity and the CPU cycles that are used to generate bitcoins had a use in the market prior to their use to create a Bitcoin, but we will leave that for today.

Over the centuries, gold and silver have been settled upon as the best medium of exchange by the market, and this is still true today.

Now fast forward to the twentieth century, which is happening right now. How can I transmit gold (or any thing that I and another person want to trade) without double spending, anonymously, to a person that is half way around the world, without a central clearing authority? Before Bitcoin, this was not possible, and now it is.

Bitcoin, whilst not conforming strictly to the definition of what money is, is a very useful tool to exchange value. It takes some understanding and knowledge of mathematics to grasp exactly how it works and why it is so brilliant, but even without that knowledge, it can still be used by everyone eventually.

Mr. Kramer can use email to send and receive messages without understanding SMTP or POP syntax. He can write blog posts without understanding HTTP requests or MYSQL, and most certainly he will be able to use credit cards and buy books from Amazon whilst his transaction is protected by SSL. None of these things, these very complicated things, need to be understood fully before you can grasp their importance. SSL, upon which the entire commerce infrastructure is built, is nothing like putting a paper document in an envelope to be mailed by the government monopoly postal system and yet, it is used every day to secure documents in transit. PGP and Public Key Cryptography is used every day to sign documents in a way that means they cannot be forged; signing a document with Public Key Cryptography is not the same as putting your ‘John Hancock’ on a piece of paper, but it is a quantum leap in a different direction that has uses way beyond what signing a piece of paper can do for you.

This is what Bitcoin is all about; it is a breakthrough in sending and receiving acknowledgement of ownership.

Anyone who scoffs at this is simply not seeing the big picture.

What was Bitcoin’s prior material use/value? Zero. It is just bits in a computer.

This is a straw man argument. David Kramer’s post, and the two links in his update to Murray Rothbard’s books (one of which I have read; ‘What has Government done to our money?‘) are just ‘bits in a computer’ and yet, these bits can be used to transform the thinking of men. Bitcoins when they are stored on a device, are represented by bits, but it is what those bits represent and their relationship to other bits on other people’s computers that is important. This line of Kramer’s shows that he really does not understand what computers are, how they work and why Bitcoin is a breakthrough.

And what’s with the “fixed” amount of Bitcoins? Who determined the “proper” amount? A computer programmer?

And why not a computer programmer? This is exactly the same as Lacy Clay saying Thomas DiLorenzo cannot talk about economics ‘because he is an historian’. For what reason are computer programmers excluded from inventing something that has a potential use in economics? Or should this be left only to the high priests? This is not a serious argument against the design of Bitcoin. Clearly there needed to be an upper limit to the number of Bitcoins in circulation, otherwise it would not be useful as a way of transmitting ‘money’. The person who designed Bitcoin, a computer programmer, set the upper limit. If the market will not accept this limit, then the system will not be used. But I digress.

Data is infinitely copyable. There is no limit to the number of times data can be copied. This means that any token in a system of exchange can be copied at will by anyone with access to the system at any level. This is where the problem of double spending comes from, and part of the breakthrough in Bitcoin is the solution to this problem, which computer programmers have been searching for for decades.

When you have even a slight grasp of how data and computers work, and you understand that the double spending problem has been solved, your first reaction would be to gasp, as the enormity of what Bitcoin is dawns on you.

Only the free market can voluntarily determine how much of a real medium of exchange is needed in the marketplace over time.

This is true, but once again, this has nothing to do with Bitcoin. By releasing Bitcoins slowly over time, by the efforts of the people who use it, there can never be a flood of Bitcoins. Satoshi Nakamoto must have grasped on some level, if not entirely, that money is a commodity, which is why he designed Bitcoin to be mined in this way, instead of starting off with 21,000,000 coins in circulation all at once. All we know about his thinking is what we see in his software and in his original proposal. We have between now and 2142 to see what the market voluntarily determines how much of a real medium of exchange Bitcoin is, and if the number of bitcoins is too small or too big. Whatever the outcome, there is nothing stopping someone else with another system from supplanting or improving on Bitcoin, by whatever means they can come up with.

While the idea of attempting to get rid of the Bankster monopoly on creating money out of thin air is commendable, Bitcoin is also money created out of thin air. Bitcoin is just substituting one bogus medium of exchange for another.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/89471.html

Declaring Bitcoin to be ‘Just Another Bogus Medium of Exchange’ is not an argument and is clearly false. It is also not true that Bitcoins are created ‘out of thin air’. Bitcoin is new and unique, and that is a fact; even if you believe it to be bogus, you have to demonstrate why it is bogus.

If you want to refute Bitcoin (or anything for that matter) you have to address the facts about it. Here is an example of someone who has done precisely that.

Tav addresses how Bitcoin works, acknowledges its breakthrough, demonstrates an understanding of economics, identifies what he believes the specific flaws in Bitcoin are, and explains why he concludes it cannot work, clearly and with precision. Here is another critique and another by the same author.

If you want to contribute something meaningful and useful that is the way to do it. There are arguments swirling around the ‘hoarding problem’; it would be nice to read a good analysis of hoarding and how it applies to real money like gold and silver, and how those dynamics apply to Bitcoin. In any case, I don’t care much for people who refuse to think hard about subjects like Bitcoin; something that is voluntary, harmless, an exiting breakthrough and which has massive potential even if in this iteration, it fails.

We have seen the failure of other systems, like Chaumian E-Cash before. Each of these iterations causes analysis, innovation and new products to emerge. This is something to celebrate, to think hard about, to address with logic and facts and indeed, to even try out on your own computer so that you actually have a grasp of what is involved in it.

Finally, whatever happens with Bitcoin, the individual wins.

If Bitcoin becomes the de-facto way of spending money on the internet, displacing all other systems like Credit Cards and PayPal, the public wins, and the State loses. That is win.

If Bitcoin fails because the State outlaws it, hatred for the State increases. That is win.

If Bitcoin fails for economic reasons, it will not be tried again in this form and the lessons learned will be folded into the next iteration. That is win.

If Bitcoin fails for technical reasons, same again, the lessons learned will be used in the next iteration, which is win.

Whatever way you choose to look at it, Bitcoin is a good thing.

+++++++ UPDATE! +++++++

In a well considered article, which I linked to above, “BitCoins: All Buzz, No Substance” by Grant Babcock, the problems with Bitcoin as perceived by the author are addressed. In listing his objections to Bitcoin, he actually argues for it. Lets take a look.

A given good’s exchange value has a tendency to snowball.

This is happening with Bitcoin right now.

If I believe that a larger number of people are willing to trade for a good, I am more willing to trade for that good myself.

This is happening right now with Bitcoin.

Eventually, we expect a single good or a handful of goods to emerge as the predominant media of exchange; they are then called monies.

This may happen with Bitcoin on the internet. If enough people download the client and accept it, and websites use the simple tools needed to accept it, we can expect it to emerge as a form of money. Bitcoins, by Grant’s own reasoning, are no different to coconuts, feathers, tally sticks or cowrie shells.

Historically, goods such as cigarettes, precious metals, shells, and many others have emerged as monies.

And so why not digital certificates that cannot be forged or ‘printed’ (mined or generated) beyond a certain number (21,000,000)?

People’s willingness to treat an item as money is based on experience. They forecast that a good will be accepted in trade tomorrow because it was accepted in trade the day before and the day before that.

And so, if enough people accept Bitcoins, they will treat it as money de-facto by this definition.

If we follow this chain back in time, eventually we arrive at a point where the commodity is has not yet been used as a medium of exchange and is only wanted for its use value.

This is true of Bitcoins; digital certificates and signatures have been around for many years; they were never before thought of as money in and of themselves (though you can buy certificates for money; ask Mark Shuttleworth about how he became a billionaire by selling ‘just bits on a computer’).

The principle that the value of a currency can be traced back to a time when it was not yet a currency but just a commodity like any other is called the regression theorem, and interested parties can read more about it in Human Action Ch 17 § 4.

If you do not like tracing Bitcoins back to digital certificates, you could trace them back to the electricity used to make them. Or is electricity not a commodity because it is not physical? It is intangible, but is transmissible… hmmmm!

Typically once a commodity becomes a money, a variety of certification agencies will emerge.

Bitcoin has this, of course, in the form of its decentralized P2P clients. That is the breakthrough; no centralised certification agency.

Suppose for example that our money is gold — examples of certification might be an imprint on a gold coin stating its weight and where it was minted, or a piece of paper entitling the bearer to a certain amount of gold at a trusted repository.

A stamp on a bar of gold is meaningless, as we have seen with the tungsten centered fake gold bars. Bitcoin, in this respect, is superior to gold because each Bitcoin is absolutely certified.

This certification makes the commodity an even better money than it would have been without the certification. The certification is bundled with the commodity and traded, but is in principle distinct; the coin and the stamp in the coin are different “things.”

Indeed. As you can see, all the arguments presented here for gold as money, apply to Bitcoins as money.

Just as the computers and the internet changed the way letters and books are made and distributed and read, money is being changed in the same way.

This means that if you want to read a physical book, you still have to go out an buy one, or have it posted to you. If you want money in the real world, you should use gold and silver coins only.

If you want to read a book on your iPad, you get a PDF copy from somewhere on the internet, and then read it on your device. This does not mean that ‘PDFs are not books’ and no one with any sense says this. PDFs are for e-readers. That is their nature, its what they are for and the medium where they make sense is the computer.

If you want to send money to your cousin in Jodhpur, you take your gold coins to a shop in Manchester, turn them into Bitcoins and then send them. Your cousin can then turn them back into gold, or he can buy goods and services with them on the internet. Bitcoins are to money as PDFs are to books. Its not hard to understand, and the wow factor comes in when you understand that whilst PDFs can be copied ‘double spent’ ad infinitum, Bitcoins cannot, even though they are both digital.

That is simply incredible and its why everyone is so exited about them. Add to the mix the anonymity, the lack of central authority, the transparency in both the client software and the network, and you begin to see just what a revolution this is any why the word ‘revolution’ is appropriate.

Finally read this excellent analysis of gold vs Bitcoin by Anthony Freeman.

Chinese translation of this article.

Thanks to a lurder (yes, ‘lurder’) who knows just what buttons to push to cause a BLOGDIAL post to emerge, we have this amazing piece of violent assertion from http://www.theartistscharter.org/

Lets pull it to bits.

We the undersigned, writers, artists and musicians, along with our fans and those millions of people worldwide who work in or are otherwise supported by the creative industries say as follows:-

We have the right to earn a living from our work.

True.

We reiterate that basic human right to work enshrined in Article 23 (1) of the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and by virtue of Article 23(3) of that declaration to ‘just and favourable remuneration’ for our artistic endeavours.

False. Rights do not come from the UN. You have no ‘right’ to remuneration; you own your own body, and no one has the right to control you or force you to work under terms that are not agreeable to you. Those are the only rights you have with respect to your labor. There is no such thing as ‘just and favourable remuneration’; there is only what you will agree to work for and what you will not agree to work for. What that amount is for any particular task is up to you and the person who is hiring you to decide through negotiation.

We seek to make technology a friend and not an enemy of our creativity.

I doubt it.

We ask to be allowed to make a living, whether through performing, writing or recording music, derived from the power of our ideas and the commercial use of our talents.

You have a right to do what you want, on any stage or any medium. You already have this right, and should not ask to be ‘allowed’ to ply your trade.

We say it is a fact that the protection of our creative output depends substantially on copyright law, and we urgently call on all governments to assist us in the legal protection of our collective artistic output from piracy and other unauthorised infringement.

This is a lie.

It is absolutely not a fact that the protection of creative output depends substantially on copyright law. This is a myth, one that has been dispelled by by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine in Against Intellectual Monopoly and others.

When these people ask for all governments to ‘assist’ them, they are actually saying that they want the state to violently put grandmothers in gaol (for example) for copying from objects that they own.

They are asking for the State to do violence for them. This is wrong in every way that something can be wrong.

There is no such thing as ‘collective artistic output’. You own the physical objects that you produce. Once you release them, and someone else buys them or obtains them legitimately, you have no right to tell them what they may or may not do with their property. That means that you have no right to tell someone that they cannot make a copy of a record for someone else, or that they may not re-sell a book they have bought, or that they may not make copies of their own wedding photos or do anything of any kind with something that they legitimately own.

In sum, you have no right to suppress the rights of others by violence because you want to make money.

It is self-evident that any commercial enterprise requires revenue flows to not only survive, but thrive, innovate and take calculated risks.

True.

We say that the internet service provider industry must accept its share of responsibility for the rampant abuse of copyright online. Easy unauthorised access to our material goes unchecked every day across the world and infringers do not seek our consent when sharing our works.

False. Internet Service Providers provide access to the internet. It is not their responsibility to police their users, any more than it is the business of the operators of telephone services to spy on their users on behalf of a malignant and violent group.

ISPs are not part of some imaginary Socialist collective, with responsibility to everyone everywhere. They are private businesses with responsibility to their shareholders only.

Our creative industries are facing unsustainable revenue losses due to weak or unenforced copyright laws. This means one thing and one thing only: millions of jobs lost and young talent ignored.

There are no ‘our creative industries’. The record companies are dying because the world has changed thanks to computers and networks. This is a good thing that will benefit everyone, including the people who make music, write books and do other creative things that can be digitized.

You sound just like the fear-mongers who said that the VCR would, “kill the film industry“, or the clowns who said that, “home taping was killing music“, or or that phonograph records would kill off sheet music sales or that sheet music would kill live performance. All of those were lies, and what you are saying now is also not true. There is a long history of artists and ‘music industry’ people getting it totally wrong when it comes to technology, and this rather ill informed declaration is just another example.

Creative people (the ones who are really creative, and not just lazy, ignorant, unintelligent, computer illiterate luddites) will find a way to adapt to the new reality and thrive off of it, just as previous generations did with the advent of recorded music, VCRs, home copying and every other innovation that helped people spread ideas and wealth.

You people just don’t get it.

While our industry has collapsed to annual revenues of less than US$20 billion, the ISP industry has more than doubled its revenues in the last five years to US$250 billion — due in large part to infringement of our artistic works.

This is a lie. The ISP industry has grown because more people need access to the internet, no matter what is on it. As for the collapse in revenues, even if it is true (which it often is not) the opportunity the internet presents to creative people is without precedent; all that is needed is for you to go out and harness it. You do not need anyone’s permission, all you need is some software and… creativity.

We demand our indisputable right to copyright protection be no longer ignored. ‘Free’ should not come at such a terrible cost.

Copyright is not indisputable, and it is not a right. Copyright it is very disputable, and is in fact, entirely illegitimate. No matter how loud you shout, your buggy whip business model is dead and dying. New people are supplanting you, and while you waste your time trying to prop up the zombie corpse of the old business model they are getting on with the task of inventing the new ways of making money from music, that you will inevitably have to accept.

Stand with us to ensure the creative industries survive.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/artistscharter/

Standing with you means standing up for and supporting violence and immorality. No thanks!

Here it is, again, the book that you must read to understand the true nature of the State, its laws and the violent truth behind them. If you cannot read, there is always a nice video for you to digest.

Thanks to Old Holborn, we just read this breathtakingly wonderful piece. It says many of the things we have been going on about for years:

• Demonstrations do not work
• The State has no right to control you
• The State has no power to control you unless you consent
• StopWar and the like just don’t get it
• Doing nothing is better than marching
• If everyone simply stops cooperating, the State dies
• Only a small percentage of the population needs to quit the system for massive beneficial change to take place

You read BLOGDIAL, so you know what I am talking about.

This piece comes from TPUC. We really are heading for a significant tipping point, where a confluence of factors is going to unleash everyone. This will be a good thing, because Britain is full of locked up potential that if released, would transform the entire world.

Here it is, in full:

A direct challenge to the authority of the State

by bogbeagle » Mon May 30, 2011 8:54 am

Hi chaps. Haven’t posted here for some time, but I’d like to introduce to you a new “strategy” which has potential … well, I think so.

It’s a pretty long post, but I’d ask you to persevere and tell me whether you think the logic of my argument is sound. And, is my proposal sound?

Let me precis … I propose that we can demand, of government, the answer to an “impossible” question. That, if asked publicly, this question is sufficient to undermine the “assumed authority” of government.

A refutal of Government’ authority

I’ve always been told that I am “governed and taxed by consent”.

And, when you think about it, this must be true.

It stems, of course, from the Christian’ idea that we are each born free and of equal worth. Now, if two people are equals, it follows that one may not direct the other, nor impose his will upon that other, except with the consent of both parties. When no such consent is present, it must be the case that one ‘man’ is imposing his will by force, or the threat of force. In effect, that would mean that one ‘man’ has enslaved the other to his bidding.

So, to avoid that accusation, Western governments have invented the idea of “consensual governance” … wherein each of the governed agrees to abide by the rules, sanctions and taxes which are laid down by “Government”.

There is little doubt that this relationship serves many people adequately. It’s also true that few people ever question its validity; that’s why we are known as “sheeple”, I guess.

Logically, if I am “governed and taxed by my consent”, there absolutely must be a mechanism by which that consent may be withdrawn. If no such mechanism exists, then the concept of “consensual governance” is clearly untrue; I would be governed without my consent and thus be a slave to the will of other men. There are parallels with the slave-owning society of the C18th, if you’ll just ponder awhile.

A strategy

My strategy has two prongs:

1 … A concerted and public demand that the “Government” inform me of the mechanism by which I may withdraw my consent to its governance. If no such mechanism exists, then said “Government” should state that I am, in fact, its slave. I would, in effect, be challeinging the Government’s “lawful authority” to govern.

2 … An attempt to unify the disparate campaigning and lobbying groups, each of which is hindered by the same, fundamental, deficit. That is, each group is suffering a deficit in Liberty. If the members of the “stop-the-war” group can be shown that their cause is the SAME as that of the “I-want-to-smoke-weed” group, then the number of those who would live as Free people, will swell; and at some point, their mass will become critical.

OK, the first prong involves a direct challenge to government itself. Traditionally, those who would be Freemen, have sent off their affidavits and been thoroughly ignored … am I right? Well, that’s the treatment that I received, anyway.

This time, we must act in concert and very publicly. But, this will not involve travel or mass demonstrations, or confrontation. No, I suggest that we use the Royal Mail and the Internet (our best friend).

I propose that, en masse, we flood the PM and our MPs with demands (recorded delivery) that they tell us how we withdraw our consent to governance. Of course, they cannot truthfully reply, since their reply must either tell us that we are enslaved OR furnish us with the freedom to opt out of the State. I’ve thought about this for quite some time now, and I’m confident that any and all answers, which they might construct, ultimately lead to the same truths … we are enslaved. The thing is, we have to force them to admit it or else retire embarrassed and blustering. The facts of this strategy should motivate thousands more people to question their status within the community. Now, I do expect that 90% of the public could not give a toss, but if just one percent sit up and take notice … well, that’s 650,000 people.

Running in tandem with this mass “interrogation”, would be our internet campaign to promote the concept. This will be largely via the alternative media (we all know the value of the MSM, by now). I’m thinking of numerous campaigning websites, Zerohedge, Max Keiser, Adam vs the Man, Freedomain Radio, Alex Jones … you get the idea. We have to put the PM and our MPs in a position such that a refusal to comply with our demands is simply untenable … they will then be forced to bullshit. They’ve no other option, because they DARE NOT speak the truth of the matter. We, of course, anticipating the bullshit answers, will have raised and dismissed them, publicly, before the politicians have even uttered them.

As to the unification of campaigning groups. Let me give you an exemplar. I’m sure that it’s obvious to you that a Free man of good conscience would not support an unjust war. But, that’s exactly what we are forced to do, via taxation. And, “forced” is the right word to use.

It serves the ends of the peace campaigner to withdraw his consent to taxation, when the money is being used for evil ends.

So, too, with the campaigner who wants to smoke his weed (or whatever). As a Free man, it is clear that the State has no business in defining what substances he may ingest. And yet, the State assumes de facto ownership over his body by compelling him to ingest only that which the State deems acceptable.

Each of these two campaigners is suffering from a common deficit .. a Liberty deficit.

I don’t know whether it’s possible to make that case to them. I don’t know whether their other concerns will over-ride my arguments. It could be that the peace campaigner also wants to have the State extort money from other people and give it to him in the form of benefits. If that’s the case, then it’s a clear example of “having your cake and eating it”, since it is impossible to have your own Liberty whilst denying it to others … except by the use of force. Well, that’s a moral dilemma for them to ponder. I’d suggest that you’ve no business in labelling yourself “peace campaigner” whilst encouraging the State to extort money from others, on your behalf. But that’s just me!

In passing, I feel that it’s important to avoid confrontation with the executive arm of the State. Our campaign should be one of ideas. The State is well prepared to fight a campaign of riots and bottles, but woefully unable to challenge logic. How can it challenge the Truth?

Now, I don’t know where this might lead. It could be another dead-end. But, I think that the logic is unassailable. What is your opinion?

——-

My opinion is that you rock, you are 10000% correct, and if this takes off, you will have pushed the button.

We return to the subject of health and rights.

There exist many groups with well-intentioned wishes to provide assistance on a global basis to people they classify as ‘less fortunate’ or ‘undeveloped’.  These groups actively lobby for certain global health policies which fit with their own, morally-defined and often colonialist world-view..  The list of these groups is endless (start with WHO, UNICEF, UN-Women, DFID, WHA, UNDP, World Bank…. and go from there).

These groups are lobbying, with much success, for policies such as the global fortification of flour and iodination of salt.  They promote lifestyle interventions in developed and developing nations (often without any strategic input from representatives of these nations; hence the new colonialism), are demanding global regulation of the food industry (reducing salt, sugar, restricting advertising, banning trans fats and so on), banning alcohol adverts and demanding punitive taxes, and are pushing very hard to achieve a reduction to <5% of global population as smokers in the next 5-10 years through similarly aggressive measures against the tobacco industry.

These policies are listed here, albeit briefly, so that you may think of how one may go about trying to implement one of these policies globally.  First the policy process is developed in various agencies (over several years minimum), lobbied for through more agencies, pushed at sub-UN (e.g. WHO, WHA) and then at UN level meetings and finally adopted as a global UN Treaty and implemented on the ground by those countries who choose to ratify the UN declaration.  Implementation occurs even if this means changing local law, as has been done with tobacco use in public places (see the FCTC).  This entire process costs unimaginable sums of money… and the point here is to remember from where exactly that money comes.

There is now an enormous political push for global public health governance (you can see here that this idea reached UN level many years ago, with sponsored publications from 2002. Nota bene the direct links with trade/economics).  The prospect has spawned a whole research field, with institutes and conferences to boot!

This push will of course necessitate the setup of yet another organisation to coordinate research, implementation and monitoring of policy.  However, these global bodies are always skint, and member nations are failing to keep up their UN subscriptions.  But this little fact does not put off those interested (and self-interested) parties, oh no!  And why not?  Because they all know that there is a vast source of money out there which can be accessed if only they can persuade the other politicians (since at this level the interested parties are all represented by politicians, no matter their previous or current professional background) to squeeze it just a little harder.  That source is the taxpayer.  And in global policy, that means every taxpayer, everywhere.

It can be concluded, from directly witnessing these types of discussions, that the main reason why the implementation of global policy (and of global public healthcare policy in particular) is taken so incredibly seriously, is that the population is considered to exist for, and is amenable to, behavioural modification and exploitation as these global bodies see fit:  ALWAYS in regard to ECONOMIC GROWTH.  The only way a policy, medical or otherwise, will be approved at UN level is if it is sold to politicians as a driver of economic growth or in terms of improving human productivity and life-years at productive age.

The terms used at this level to describe ‘people’ are dehumanising, indicative of the single value of a plebian life only in terms of contribution to economic growth.  Its contribution to the economy is far more important in driving policy than any consideration of humanitarian or ethical concerns.  There are, of course, interest groups which deal in ethics, such as the Nuffield Council on BioEthics in the United Kingdom.  They advise political groups and others, with the aim of acting as an ‘honest broker’ of information.  As such they have, for example, developed a ‘ladder of intervention’.  One may describe the ladder as running from Libertarian at the bottom to Dictatorial (or UN Treaty) at the top.  These people, some of whom I know, deal in ethics, yet it is hard to be clear whether they act pragmatically rather than ethically, exhibiting an apparent requirement to demonstrate their own relevance to politics and policy-shaping.

Whatever, a mere digression.  Returning to a coordinated global health policy, implemented from on high, the major problem is that these things cost money.

Most existing and future local (national) tax has been promised to The Bankers to compensate them for all the losses they incurred in their private businesses while exploiting the public purse.  The children and grandchildren of two continents are already beholden to as-yet unborn Bankers, indentured slaves who will grow up knowing no other life, unless they find a red pill.

So the only way a new global public health policy will be implemented – and it will be implemented, and it will not be the only policy implemented in this way – is through new, global taxes.  Global Government developing and implementing Global Policy funded by Global Taxes extorted by the same Global Government.  Are you paying attention yet?

There will soon be a global ‘Tobin Tax’ on financial transactions, although this is likely to be inconsequential and serves as window-dressing to convince the workforce that The Rich Suffer Too.

Other revenue streams under serious consideration are a global tax on aeroplane tickets, and one on internet service providers (suggested by Sarkozy, who now also wants more internet regulation).  Of couse, a new global body will be needed to manage and monitor these taxes… you can see where this leads.  At least, you’d better see!

Finally, if we manage to hold down our rising bile, suspend our disbelief and assume that there is indeed a humanitarian drive behind many global policies, we may return briefly to Ethics and Morals.  Is it ethical to extort money, however morally correct the purpose to which that money is put?  Is it ethical to ‘eliminate choice’ or otherwise intervene and thereby punish by restricting the liberty of even one person in order to benefit your own moral judgement of what is good for the majority?  Is it ethical to impose, by force, your own moral judgement on others?  In the reality of global politics, the answer to all these questions is a resounding YES.

The reason is because these questions are all filtered through the screen of greed-based economics.  Thus we see the question as “Is it ethical to impose, by force, your own moral judgements on others, if that judgement leads to economic growth (and, by default, increased upward flow of wealth)?”  In the sausage factory there are no ethics, there are no morals, there is only money.

In today’s Telegraph, we read, with not too much surprise, that The Coalition is quietly bringing in ID Cards for all, only this time, it will be ID Cards 2.0 and not Labour’s centralised NIR powered ID Cards 1.

All of the problems of the old ID Card remain however, and some new ones are introduced, which I will point out right now.

Coalition builds new national identity system

The Coalition has quietly begun work on a new national identity system, less than a year after it scrapped Labour’s derided ID cards.

Didn’t take long did it? And this latest attempt had to happen at some point, since HMG refused to rule out ID Cards for Foreigners, meaning that eventually everyone in the UK would have to be in the system because targeting only foreign looking people is racist and irrational, as we said before.

A prototype of the new system is due to be in place as soon as October this year. It will aim to reliably identify users of government websites, as part of plans to deliver more public services via the web.

This is a lie. The new system is a prototype of ID Cards for everyone. It is not just for accessing government ‘services’. ID Cards always lead to feature creep whenever they are widely deployed, for a variety of reasons; for example, so that people who sell alcohol, cigarettes, aspirin and scissors, can prove that they did a proper ID check before making the sale, the information being stored on their database, indemnifying them from prosecution. This is what it would look like:

the devil really is in the details:

This time, the receipt will not say NIR but will say ‘assured identity’. You will not be able to buy anything on the list of ‘verify before buy’ items without either showing your VISA or paying by VISA.

George Osborne believes the shift online will cut Whitehall administration costs and so help soften the blow of spending cuts over the next few years.

Several private companies that already hold personal data, including credit card providers, will be involved in the system.

There is the big difference, and the new moral problem. Previously the liars of New Labour claimed that ID Cards mandated by the state were OK because, “private companies already have much of this data”. This is a classic fallacious argument of course, and now the coalition is re-imagining it to justify ID Cards 2.0.

If you volunteer to interact with a company so that they can provide you with a service, that is one thing (and its a good thing) but when companies join with government where you will be compelled to use their services, that is fascism.

The government compels you to pay for and use it ‘services’; they are not voluntary. By partnering with VISA and other companies to identify you, and mandating that you use VISA to access their systems, they are forcing you to use the services of a company.

This is completely immoral and unjustifiable.

If government cannot deliver services on budget, then they should not be offering those services. Savings of money are not a sufficient excuse to introduce ID Cards.

Such firms have already verified their customers’ identities, so privacy campaigners hope government will not itself collect personal data, in contrast to the National Identity Register that was to be the basis of ID cards.

This is straight out of a PR pack I imagine. The laws of the universe, having not changed since the death of Labour’s ID Card, mean that when you identify yourself to the state in this new system, you will be issued a unique number by them, or by the issuer of the card.

That number will travel with you from the moment you sign up till the day you die. That number will act as a primary database key to track all of your purchases, interactions, money transfers and every time you show the card.

It is exactly the same problem that the old ID Card system had, except this time, the financial and technical burden of running the system is being outsourced to VISA, Nectar and the other crony capitalist, fascist companies that are selling their customer databases to the state.

You will have no opt out in this. Even if VISA require that you consent to having your card used to identify you at a government portal, and they are not compelling you to use a VISA ID Card 2.0 service, the fact of the matter is that you will be compelled to interact with them because the state will mandate, backed with violence, that you identify yourself using the new system.

Visa is known to be involved in the plans and is conducting trials that would allow its customers to log in to government websites using credit card details.

This is yet another step in the transition to a completely corporate state, where companies overtly are in charge of the government at every level.

“Currently customers have to enter multiple login details and passwords to access different public services, sometimes on the same website,” said Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for the cross-government plan.

“This involves significant duplication, is expensive to operate and is highly inconvenient for users.”

If that is the only problem, then switch to Open ID; one login for all your websites. Or stop using the web to deliver ‘services’. These justifications are paper thin transparent nonsense.

He also claimed the new scheme, dubbed “identity assurance”, would also make it more difficult for fraudsters to dupe the benefits and tax systems.

This is a lie. If it is not a lie, then he needs to say precisely why this is so. Credit card fraud is rampant, and using credit cards to interface with the state will allow everyone with a fraudulent or duplicated credit card to masquerade as someone else when identifying themselves to a government portal.

Look no further than the recent SONY breach where the credit card details, dates of birth, names and addresses of SEVENTY MILLION people were copied.

The population of Britain is 61,838,154 – 2009 That means that a number of people, larger than the population of Britain had their credit card details copied.

It means that if such a thing happened in the UK, every single person who identifies themselves to the state with their VISA could be impersonated with ease. This means more benefit fraud, GUARANTEED.

The government has informed privacy campaigners such as the pressure group NO2ID about the plans, in an attempt to avoid the civil liberties outcry that ultimately destroyed ID cards.

This preemptive strike will not work. The genie is out of the bottle about the dangers of ID Cards.

But Guy Herbert, NO2ID’s general secretary warned that “the devil will be in the details and especially the legal details” of the new scheme. He said the Cabinet Office had not yet offered details despite its tight schedule.

“It’s not a bad thing in itself to check that the person you are talking to is the person you want to talk to,” Mr Herbert said.

“But whatever the good intentions at the outset, the fear will always be that the bureaucratic imperative to collect and share more data about the public will take over.”

And that’s not the half of it. I’m sure that he said much more that was not quoted in this piece.

Identity assurance will be implemented from August next year as part of major government initiatives such as forthcoming radical reforms to the benefits system and improvements to online tax assessments.

They will use your credit card transaction history to ensure that you are not spending more than you should be according to your tax return. This is a part of the move to ‘real time taxation’ that was quietly mooted recently. It doesn’t get any more sinister than this.

It will then gradually be extended so users will be able to use the same login for all public services online.

Telegraph

Once again, there is no need to use credit cards to do this; Open ID will suffice if this is the real problem, which of course, it is not.

Personally, I think that most credit card holders, after having been educated about online fraud for years, and instilling in themselves a healthy paranoia about putting their card details into a form online, will understand exactly what it means to identify yourself with your VISA or MasterCard. They will understand immediately that this is a threat, because credit cards are money and people guard their money more jealously than they guard their privacy.

Of course, this has some other side effects.

What about the people who do not have credit cards? Either they will be excluded from receiving government services to which they are entitled (and they are the ones who use them the most), or VISA will be made to issue everyone with a VISA card hastening the death of cash, that other project hight on the agenda of the State.

It is a win-win deal for both VISA and the state:

• The State gets an ID Card system they do not have to manage
• The State eliminates cash which is untraceable and un-taxable
• VISA gets to run the de-facto new electronic currency of Britain

In the mean time, it is only the productive, credit worthy tax payer who is going to be guinea pigged, fleeced, max-taxed and tracked as he dutifully interfaces with this new system… if he doesn’t have any brains.

This is the wrong time, societally, to introduce this. The biggest ever act of civil disobedience has just happened, people are fed up to the teeth with crony capitalism, inflationism, bailouts warmongering and corruption.

Go ahead. Keep pushing.

The Hargreaves report on intellectual property recommends setting up a ‘digital exchange’ for the clearance of copyright. Here is the full text of the report, broken into chapters served as PDFs. You are free to copy them and distribute them at will.

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Creation Under Competition
Chapter 3: How Competition Works
Chapter 4: Innovation Without Patents
Chapter 5: The Intellectual Monopoly Apologists
Chapter 6: The Evil of Intellectual Monopoly
Chapter 7: The Devil in Disney
Chapter 8: Does Intellectual Monopoly Increase Innovation?
Chapter 9: The Pharmaceutical Industry
Chapter 10: The Bad, the Good, and the Ugly

Its about time that the state has the power to violently prevent you from exercising your property rights removed from it.

In the UK, it is illegal to make a copy of a CD you own for your own use. That is completely immoral; if you own a CD it is your right to copy it, destroy it, lend it or do anything else you like with it.

If you concede that the state is legitimate in telling you that you cannot make a copy (rip a CD to MP3s) then you must also concede that you should be forbidden from destroying a CD, if the maker of that CD demands that you do not do that.

This is how absurd the copyright laws are.

There are companies in the USA that specialise in ripping your CD collection for you.

You send them your CDS, and in a matter of days, you get your CDs back along with a DVDR of MP3s containing rips of all your tracks. These companies, the service they provide and the benefits they produce cannot happen in the UK, thanks to its absurd statutes.

The Hargreaves Report will sweep all of this away in one motion. Its recommendations on patents will result in cheaper drugs and medical care for everyone, making the beloved NHS more cost effective; if you love the NHS, you should hate patents.

There is only one problem with all of this, naturally, and as soon as you read the Hargreaves Report linked above, you will instantly know what it is.

Finally, if you want to attract business to this ridiculous ‘Silicon Roundabout’ push, persuading businesses to locate to Britain, you must remove all the barriers to entry that people recoil from, like punitive non-dom regulations and other absurd anti business nonsense, of the kind that Google say would have prevented them from starting their business in the UK.

I guarantee you that there are companies, right now, that are starting up that shun Britain because it is anti business, and that there are companies in development here that once they start to fly, will fly away from Britain in order to avoid being bogged down by the entrenched anti business climate. Skype was based in Estonia for a reason.

Think about it.

That acephalous, elusive, networked, autonomous, intelligent and revolutionary construct Anonymous, has published a statement called “An Open Letter to the Citizens of the United States of America”, wherein they demonstrate that Anonymous is rapidly iterating towards Libertarianism.

They have a few more cycles to go however.

We have written about Anonymous before; it is interesting because it is a fulfilment of the prescient observations of Jean Baudrillard, with his assertion that there is a “mass”, with characteristics closely matching what Anonymous is and how it reacts to stimuli.

This statement is significant not only because it demonstrates that Anonymous is moving towards the locus of Libertarianism, it is also interesting in the type of thinking displayed at this iteration; Anonymous clearly understands far more than previous generations, but it is still hampered by some fundamental illusions, misconceptions and illogic, and this has prevented it from coming up with a coherent statement.

Anonymous has lofty goals. It clearly, explicitly, is seeking Natural Rights. This is a very specific goal, and one that is not compatible with some of the goals listed at the end of the statement.

Thankfully, Anonymous is full of highly intelligent, computer literate people who, once exposed to the truth, accept it as the truth, just as computer programmers must accept the syntax of a language if they are to use it, and mathematicians must accept that 1+1=2.

Let us parse through this announcement, correcting it and analysing as we go along…

Dear us citizens,

The people who live on the ‘North American Continent’ are human beings; they are not citizens or slaves of the United States Government, living in farms like cattle. It is crucial, when attacking these problems, that the persons thinking about them understand what human beings are, and what their true relationship to government and other human beings is.

Human beings are not the property of other human beings. They are individuals with inherent rights that do not come from government. Being ‘born a US citizen‘ is tantamount to being born into slavery. Anyone who wants Natural Rights for themselves rejects the idea of being born a citizen, of any state, no matter what it is called, or how that state came to be.

We, Anonymous would like to offer you, America, the opportunity to join and support our movement.

This offer cannot be made to ‘America’. It can only be made to the individuals who happen to live in what has come to be called ‘America’.

We are a group that formed on the internet – one that knows no constructs or absolutes, and one that has recently grown exponentially.

There most certainly are absolutes. There is right and wrong; stealing is wrong, for example. There are constructs also; Natural Rights is one of them. You cannot on the one hand, say that there are no absolutes or constructs, and then on the other, call for Natural Rights.

We would like to introduce an Operation. An Operation that involves Americans getting our Natural Rights and dreams back.

Your Natural Rights cannot be taken away from you. They can only be denied expression. For example, the property rights you have in paper can be denied to you if you choose to write an essay or print instructions that the state determines that you may not distribute. You have the absolute right, at all times, to own and publish; the state merely uses violence to stop you from exercising that right.

Right now, you can help by passing on the Information. Information is power. Share the power of the Information with other like minded individuals. The more people we represent, the more Power we have, both as individuals and as Anonymous. Thank you for your time and power.

I would suggest that information, that is true, needs to be shared between the like minded and the yet to be like minded.

CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Many events have taken shape over the course of only a few years, and slowly our system has been working towards the gains of itself rather than the gains of the people.

It is completely wrong to characterise the State as ‘our system‘. It never was, is not, and never will be ‘our system’. Even if it were to become some sort of collectively owned, internet mediated Communist Utopia, this is completely contrary to Natural Rights.

The State does not work towards the gains of itself; it is not a living entity with its own goals, separate from those at the levers of the controls. The State is the violent apparatus through which a small number of people (who are indistinguishable from Mafia gangsters save in scale), rob, steal murder and destroy for their own personal gain.

Before you try and understand any of the problems facing free people, it is essential that you understand the true nature of the source of the trouble; the State. It is also crucial, when trying to describe this problem, to not use collective pronouns when talking about it. It is not ‘our taxes’ or ‘our schools’ or ‘our government’. These things are the property of the State. You do not own them, do not control them, and should not refer to them with a collective pronoun. Ever.

While we have all watched and rallied against the system working against us, there have been other gains of the system that have gone without a peep as back-room deals and and bargaining allow for the passing of legislation and research funding that has resulted in the loss of more liberties such as censorship, phone and internet surveillance and eminent domain laws.

There is nothing wrong, in principle, with back-room deals. This message from Anonymous was, no doubt, written in such a back-room fashion; in private as it were. The assumption here is that the State is legitimate in principle, and that if its dealings were done in the light of day, this would ameliorate the problems faced by the human beings living under them. This is completely incorrect; the State is not legitimate, and wether or not its laws, deals and strictures are negotiated in public or private is immaterial to this fact.

Research ‘funding’ is of course, stolen loot redirected to corrupt scientists and crony capitalists. Censorship is the violent curtailing of property rights in paper, CD ROMS servers and bandwidth. Surveillance is a similar violation to censorship, since it involves interfering with private property to carry it out. Eminent domain is simple theft.

All of these violations have one thing in common; they all come from the State. When you peel away the layers of illogic, groupthink and brainwashing, the State emerges as the common enemy and problem behind all the usurpations, violence and evil that Anonymous opposes.

Not to mention the higher taxes, lower wages, and loss of work due to exports deals.

Taxation is violent theft by the State. Wages are a private contract between two people or a person and a company. You cannot on the one hand, call for Natural Rights, and then in the same breath, call for the violent State to guarantee you high wages by threatening violence to those who provide jobs. This is pure illogic.

Loss of work, in every form save natural disasters and entrepreneurial miscalculation, is caused by the State and its distortion of economic activity through its minimum wage laws right up to the Federal Reserve, fiat currencies, legal tender laws and monopoly on setting interest rates. Anonymous seems to understand this partially, as ‘End the Fed‘ is high up on its list of priorities, but you cannot call for the end of the Federal Reserve system, and then say that the State should guarantee wages or interfere in economics. There is some confusion here, that will hopefully be cleared away in the next iteration.

We repeat the history of our mistakes instead of evolving our society.

There is no ‘we’ in any of this, only individuals with Natural Rights. There are no collective mistakes, and there is no ‘our society’, collectively owned by everyone. These are collectivist brainwashing terms, used to prevent people from understanding the true nature of the problem by stopping them from identifying the State as the cause of all problems.

Generations in the past spoke of what we face as current issues, the only difference being that of our technological achievements. We have forgotten such words our society has found guidance and value in:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This is very problematic for anyone who wants to exercise their Natural Rights. The pursuit of happiness is not a right, and rights are not secured by or granted by government. The State cannot derive power from the governed; this is a fallacy. The State cannot do things that individuals cannot do, and cannot be ceded powers that individuals do not have. You cannot, by dint of a vote, cede the power to steal, murder and destroy to the State, because you do not have that power yourself.

The declaration of independence is a beautiful document, no doubt about it, but it is fundamentally flawed in its outlining of what rights are and where they come from, and what makes government legitimate.

No one has a right to institute a government that controls people who do not consent to be governed by it, no matter how it is formed. This document can only lead to tyranny, and that is exactly what has come to pass; a monolithic Federal Government that murders at will, like an out of control monster.

This document, and its ideas should be rejected by all people who desire the expression of their Natural Rights, for as soon as you accept its principles, you are on the way down a slippery slope to despotism, theft and every vile thing that decent people loathe today.

“In the past few months, Anonymous has made headlines through the actions of a few. The media tries to instill fear of which Anonymous is as a “group”, and in the process failed to recognize it as an “ideal” that is gaining momentum.

Ideals are good, as long as their foundation is sound.

Anonymous is an ideal that the people can use to further help other people.

People helping other people is good. Voluntarism and Natural Rights is the key to prosperity. Statism, collectivism and coercion are pure evil and should be rejected by all decent people.

In this case, you’re not being heard and transparency in government operations is non-existent in many matters.

Once again, if someone is stealing from you right in front of your face, transparently, it is still immoral theft. The fact that theft is hidden or not is not material. The meme of ‘Transparency‘ is Statist brainwashing designed to keep you from coming to the conclusion that the State itself is illegitimate. There are many such brainwashing terms, ‘have your say‘, ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’ – all of these are patent nonsense. If you are having your money stolen from you, and you have your say in where it goes to any extent, this does not mean that you have not been violated by theft. If the money that was stolen from you was accounted to you, i.e. “we stole 58% of your pay-check this year”, this does not erase the immorality contained in the fact that money has been stolen from you through violence.

All of this brainwashing must be eradicated and the actions of the State put into their proper context, if you are to attack this problem correctly.

Mobilize yourself to find your information, and we’ll be giving you resources to further help you. Take the information you find and tell your government your demands.

It is not ‘your government’. You have no right to demand that the State take its stolen money and do your bidding.

We want AMERICANS to wake up! We want AMERICANS to read! We want AMERICANS to think,and above all question all things! We want AMERICANS to analyze, criticize, critique and learn to read between the lines, to expose and to deconstruct! We want you to believe in the infinite power of the people! We want you to learn that we’re all truly brothers and sisters in humanity regardless of all the artificial barriers that have been set up to separate us!

Waking up is a good thing, but make sure that you wake all the way up and not just half way, like in Inception.

If you are going to read, read Murray Rothbard’s Libertarian Manifesto as a starting point to your complete awakening. Its easy to read and understand, and after you have read it, you will never think about government and rights in the same way again.

It is crucial to question all things, but you must make sure that you really are questioning from the correct frame of reference, and not inside a box provided for you by the State and its brainwashing schools.

“Think For Yourself, Question Authority” -Timothy Leary

Reject authority, end the State.

Inform. Educate. Guide. Evolve. Wake up the People. The time for the next step in our species’ social evolution has come!

Social evolution is nonsense. Man has one nature and one nature only. The people who call for social evolution are of the same ilk as the Fabian Socialists, who want to destroy the family and recast populations into inhuman morasses of degradation and total control.

To effectively reform the system that has enslaved us, we must consider following the advice and

The system cannot be reformed, because it is fundamentally flawed and immoral. Government cannot draw legitimacy from the people; this is a lie, and anyone that understands Natural Rights already knows this.

example of those who have preceded us. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and JFK are good places to start.

Abraham Lincoln was a monster, and should only be held up as such.
Teddy Roosevelt was pure evil.
JFK gave us the NASA moon landing.

All of this thinking is the result of brainwashing in government schools, especially the nauseating worship of Abraham Lincoln.

All took fierce positions against central banking, government corruption and corporate power.

This simply is not the whole story, and as you move towards the Libertarian position, the great historians who are Libertarians will dispel many myths for you. JFK through executive order 11110 tried to attack the criminal and fraudulent Federal Reserve System directly, and some say, this is why he was executed. Andrew Jackson put pay to The United States Bank that took root in the USA.

Finally, for the record, the moon project of John F Kennedy was a boondoggle where billions of stolen dollars were diverted to corporations to build the systems for NASA, for example. That is government corruption and corporate power writ large.

Americans and many other people are steeped in the myths dogmas and untruths found in the religion of the State. They accept as fact its assertions and its telling of history as related in its government schools, and it was very difficult before the internet to break through and get at the truth of it all. Now there is no excuse. You have the internet, you have the ability to read and can reason. You have no choice but to accept the world as it actually is.

The time has come for us to unite, the time has come for us to stand up and fight! You are Anonymous!

We are in the information era.
We are Anonymous,
We are Legion,
We do not forget,
We do not forgive,
Expect us.

For great justice.

Below: Grievances and demands
A starting point for reform could be established by citing a list of worthy objectives provided by ampedstatus.com;

These objectives are contradictory, based on violence, and stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of what rights are and where they come from.

Enforce RICO Laws

RICO Laws are illegitimate:

Under RICO, a person who is a member of an enterprise that has committed any two of 35 crimes—27 federal crimes and 8 state crimes—within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering. Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all monies and interest in any business gained through a pattern of “racketeering activity.” RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of such an enterprise to file a civil suit; if successful, the individual can collect triple damages.

It has been speculated that the name and acronym were selected in a sly reference to the movie Little Caesar, which featured a notorious gangster named Rico. The original drafter of the bill, G. Robert Blakey, refused to confirm or deny this.[1] G. Robert Blakey remains an expert on RICO;[2] his former student Michael Goldsmith also gained a reputation as one of the nation’s leading RICO experts.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

And they are a perfect example of the illegitimacy of the state, for a number of reasons. Without listing all of them, you should be suspicious that the author of this odious piece of legislation is now one of the foremost experts in RICO law.

Break Up the Big Banks

The phrase ‘break up’ gives you a clue to wether this is moral or immoral. This is nothing more than a call for violence to be carried out by the state on behalf of the mob. The state should not be interfering with economics. If you want to run your own bank, that is your affair; the state should not have the power to license, regulate or control banks or deposits in any way whatsoever. They should not insure deposits, bail out banks or do any of those things. If you do not accept this, then you are not for Natural Rights.

End the Fed

The Federal Reserve System is a creature of the State, and it should be abolished. The State should not have a monopoly on the creation of money.

Break Up the Mainstream Media / encourage citizen journalists

Once again, this is a despicable call for violence to be carried out by the State on behalf of the mob. Decent people who are for Natural Rights do not call for violence to be done to others, under any circumstances. The State should not be interfering in people’s affairs by encouraging one type of trade over another; in the UK, they call this ‘picking winners’. If you want to be a journalist, that is an entirely private choice, where you exercise your right to own and distribute paper, or own space on a server connected to the internet. It has nothing to do with government whatsoever.

End Closed Door Lobbying

The state itself should be ended; lobbying is nothing more than a pimple on the hideous face of the real, and very ugly problem.

Increase Government Transparency

See above.

End Corporate Personhood

People who understand Natural Rights know that you have the right to contract with others on terms that are suitable to you and your partners. This is an absolute right, derived from your property right in yourself and what you have lawfully acquired.

The idea behind corporations is that groups of people create a vehicle through which they can invest in a project without fear that should the enterprise fail, the investors would not be liable for the debts of the project. Before this idea, if your business suffered losses, you could lose all of your stored capital which may have taken your entire life to accumulate. Limited Liability protects you from this sort of catastrophe, and anyone can take advantage of incorporation; its not just ‘for the rich’.

There is nothing wrong with this in principle, as long as everyone who deals with every entity involved knows what they are becoming involved with and enters into agreements voluntarily.

If you have a particular dislike of corporations, then it is your choice not to deal with them. What you cannot do is impose your personal opinion on others with violence.

The railing against corporations is one of the pillars of the socialists, who have insinuated their diseased thinking into the minds of otherwise right thinking people. As soon as you scratch the surface of this thinking with a Libertarian fingernail, the lie of the ‘end corporate personhood’ argument becomes abundantly clear; this is Statism, coercion and violence under the cloak of ‘power to the people’. Its nonsense from beginning to end.

Amend Campaign Finance

Democracy is illegitimate. Majority rule is illegitimate. This is a call from inside the framework that holds that government as it is currently structured is legitimised and made moral by voting. It is not, never has been and never will be legitimate or moral, and so how campaigns are financed are totally irrelevant, when we consider that the true aim should be the ending of the State itself.

Verify All Votes

Votes, wether they are verified or not, do not confer legitimacy to governments. Once again, this is a call from inside the matrix, within a framework designed by the State to stop you from understanding that voting itself is illegitimate.

Investigate War Profiteers

The State is the source of all war. End the State and you end war. Investigating war profiteers is pointless while the State persists.

Investigate War Crimes

Rubbish. End the State.

End the Wars

End the cause of war; the State.

Restore Civil Liberties

The State is what restricts your liberties. End it, and the restoration of your liberties will follow as day follows night.

Uphold the Constitution

The constitution is a document that binds people who have not given their consent to be governed by it. That is illegitimate on its face. Worship of the Constitution and the principle that a State is legitimate when it has one is deeply ingrained in the minds of the brainwashed.

Clean Air, Water & Food

See Lew Rockwell’s Environmental Manifesto. The State cannot provide these things for you.

Reduce Healthcare Costs, Profiteering

This is straight out of the immoral Socialist thought process. There is nothing wrong with Profit. If you want to help people, it is up to you to help them. You cannot call for the state to steal to help people.

Make Healthcare a Human Right

Healthcare is a good, not a right. Rights cannot be created out of thin air by the State.

Improve Education For All, Reduce Costs

Once again, like healthcare, education is not a right, it is a good. Literacy and academic achievement have been destroyed by the State and those who call for ‘Education for all’. Costs have skyrocketed precisely because the violent statists have brayed for the State to step in and make Education a ‘right’. The State should be completely removed from the business of education. If there even is a State.

Reform Prison System

Many of the acts the State defines as crimes are not crimes at all. America has the world’s largest prison population because prison is a business outsourced by the State. Without the State, this problem would, like many others, disappear.

Reform drug laws (Stop spending so much money on drugs! NYC spent $75million alone on marijuana arrests.

The source of this is, again, the State. All laws in this area are illegitimate. They should not be ‘reformed’ they should be abolished, along with the State that created and enforced them.

Immigration Reform

In a place where there is no State, immigration is not a problem. You need to understand that immigration is only a problem because there is a State. There are arguments to the contrary. Either way, the State is not the answer to any problem, no matter what it is.

Rebuild Infrastructure

Translation: “steal more money to give to contractors to fix roads and bridges and lay down fibre optic cable”. Be careful what you ask for, because by doing so, you create more of the problem that you are trying to get rid of. You cannot be against Eminent Domain, but at the same time, be for stealing property so that roads can be built on them by the State for ‘infrastructure’.

Protect Internet Freedom

There would be no problems of censorship, interception and internet freedom were there no State to cause these bad things like net neutrality.

Empower States’ Rights

No. States do not have rights, only men have rights. There are no gay rights, black rights, women’s rights or animal rights. Only man has rights, and all men have the same rights. Remember this quote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. That much of it is true. All men ARE created equal, without distinctions in terms of their rights. This is different to being entitled to any sort of service by your fellow man of course.

End Corporate Welfare

End the State that steals money to give it.

Fair taxes for everyone!

No. Stealing is never ‘fair’, and the word ‘fair’ is another brainwashing term.

Enforce corporate responsibility

There is no such thing as ‘corporate responsibility’, and in any case, you cannot be against the idea of corporations and FOR corporate responsibility at the same time!

Force corporations to apply local labor laws in their global operations

Which is it, for or against corporations? As for ‘labor laws’, they are all illegitimate strictures of the State, and unwarranted immoral interference in economics.

Strengthen environmental laws and force corporations to clean up their act

More calls for violence.

Work for a real separation of church and state – and a real split between corp and state?

There should be no State to separate from the church. And if there are no corporations, as is being asked for, there would be no corporations to separate from the State.

Reinstate Habeus Corpus

End the state that arrests people for non crimes like Prostitution and smoking marijuana.

Allow felons who have paid their debt to restore voting rights

Voting is not a right. End the State that creates felons in the first place. Realise also, that the idea of a ‘debt to society’ is completely fallacious.

Stop prison labor from competing with local businesses

End the State, and its prison industrial complex.

Additional objectives
End lifetime appointments to the SCOTUS

The Supreme Court of the United States is illegitimate, as are the laws it rules on.

Abolish the “Patriot Act”

Abolish the State that enacted it.

Abolish the lobbying system (no paid lobbyists)

Abolish the State that lobbyists attend to, and for whom they go to get their vicious laws passed, like the Mickey Mouse Copyright extension law and ACTA to name but two.

Close Guantánamo

End the state that owns it, and relinquish the illegitimately acquired property upon which it stands in Cuba.

Establish and define “financial terrorism” as a treasonous act and prosecute offenders vigorously

This is pure in the matrix thinking.

This is a call for the State to create a crime, based inside the financial system controlled by the State and its cronies at the Federal Reserve.

Without the Fed and the State, in a land where sound money flowed freely, this idea would be a nonsense. If you want to solve this problem, end the State that steals money through the printing press at the Fed, and switch to sound money in the form of gold and silver coins.

Treason is a crime against the State. Only the brainwashed and the Statists believe that such a thing is a ‘crime’. Calling for prosecution is calling for violence obviously, the end result being the perpetrators sent to the hell holes of the prison industrial complex, at the expense of the ‘taxpayer’.

This is a perfect example of thinking three levels inside the box; illogical, irrational and incapable of framing the problem correctly because all the givens are provided by the State.

If you REALLY want to do something to End the Fed and stop the criminal crony capitalist fractional reserve bankers, do what Max Kieser suggests as your next Anonymous Operation… GOLD FINGER!

Enshrine gender equality in the constitution

Freedom is not free, free men are not equal and equal men are not free. You cannot on the one hand call for Natural Rights, and then call for the constitution to enshrine ‘gender equality’ (the violent enforcement of laws upon free people) as an amendment. This error flows from the incorrect idea that women have rights that are separate from men; they do not. All human beings have the same rights; and these are all derived from the right of property.

End corporate money in the election process

See above, and pull the cable from the back of your head.

“Reduce non-emergency military funding”

The war machine is a creature of the State. There is no such thing as ‘funding’ it is theft, pure and simple.

And there you have it. There was only one item in that list that was legitimate; End the Fed.

For those who have not read any of the books, seen the lectures or read the articles cited above, you have alot of work to do, but you will be amply rewarded with an air tight way of thinking about the world at no cost to you other than your time.

As the iterations fold over and calculate in the hive mind GPU, Anonymous will come to these conclusions, as they are all inescapable now that the internet is everywhere. Thankfully Anonymous is iterating in internet time, and it will not be long before it will be calling for measures and thinking in terms that are consistent, logical and Libertarian.

The Times Education Supplement is wrongly named.

It should in fact be called The Times School Supplement. The people who work there believe that education can only happen in a school.

Of course, they are wrong, but their whole economic and ideological ecosystem revolves around children being in schools, and children being educated outside of schools means that the TES and the teachers and companies that are connected to it in one way or another by six degrees of separation, will no longer have forced access to other people’s children and stolen money from the State, which is both how they earn their living and the substrate upon which they base their every thought.

In an attempt to increase the power of the Sate and to make sure that every child becomes a profit stream for the TES and teachers, ‘journalist’ Kerra Maddern has written a thinly veiled attack piece on home education, parents, the family and anyone who rejects the idea that education can happen outside of school.

I am now going to pull it to pieces.

Analysis: Without a national system local authorities are failing to keep track of children who drop out of education, sparking fears that they may be at risk of abuse. Kerra Maddern reports

This analysis is flawed. What this woman means by ‘national system’ is a successor to the paedophile catalogue ContactPoint, the nightmare central database where all eleven million children in the UK were to be registered by force (a ‘national system’) that over one million government workers were to be given access to, and from which celebrities, the ultra rich and MPs were to be exempted.

We wrote about ContactPoint many times, pointing out the lies, faulty reasoning, computer illiteracy and immorality of it. It seems that Kerra Maddern is on the side of those sick and stupid people.

Almost 12,000 children are officially “missing” from education, a TES investigation has revealed, with many at “serious risk” of physical, sexual and mental harm.

The thinking behind this number is flawed. Just because the State does not know what a child is or is not doing, this does not mean that they are ‘missing from education’.

The whole premiss of this article starts from the incorrect position that children are the property of the State, which of course, they are not. The State has no right to know what every child is doing and where it is at all times. Only fascists and paedohiles desire such information.

Similarly, just because the State does not know where a child is, it does not immediately follow that those children are at any risk of anything whatsoever. Only in the sick minds of the statist does ‘unknown to the State’ immediately translate to ‘in potential danger’. In fact, children in the care of the State are more likely to be abused than those that are not.

Leading children’s charities and Ofsted

Ofsted, which should be abolished, exists by making money off of children. They serve no useful purpose, as we and others have pointed out. Children’s charities, who are against home education to a man, also exist by making money off of children. All of these people make a living off of children. They will do and say anything to remove the responsibility for children from parents. They are in the Child Exploitation Industry and as far as they are concerned, the parent is their number one enemy, because parents have the power to cut off their streams of revenue – children.

say they are deeply concerned by the findings, which show that 11,911 children have fallen out of the education system and that schools and local authorities do not know the location of significant numbers of these young people.

Once again, the state not knowing about the location of a child cannot be extrapolated to anything whatsoever.

The last official estimate from the Government – made five years ago – put the total number of children missing from education at 10,000, suggesting that the problem has since deteriorated.

…or that it has improved; no one knows. Of course, it is in the interests of the Child Exploitation Industry to claim that everything is getting worse, because worse means more stolen loot (State ‘funding’, ‘grants’) for the exploiters; the charities, Quangos and the cronies of the State.

The TES statistics, obtained from every English local authority through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal the challenges of trying to keep track of thousands of transient families who move between regions.

There is no ‘challenge of trying to keep track of families’; it is not now nor has it ever been the business of the state to keep track of families and children. This is a non existent problem looking for a solution; it is precisely this sort of bad thinking that caused ContactPoint to be developed. It was bad thinking then, and is bad thinking now.

Children classed as missing from education have not been taught in school for at least a month.

This is simply a lie. Education can take place anywhere, including to some degree, in a school. It is absolutely impossible that the author of this piece does not know about all the facts swirling around the Graham Badman Report; that scandalous and outrageous report that galvanised an unprecedented revolt amongst home educators. It is impossible that she does not know about what home education is, how it works (so well) and all the issues around it. For her to now say, without qualification, that children who are not in school are missing education, and to mean it, is not credible. She must be deliberately misstating the facts to bolster her faulty argument. Very shameful, shabby behaviour.

Some are victims of over-crowding in schools, with local authorities struggling to find them places. Some are being taught at home, while others are school “refusers”. But local authorities say more than 1,500 others are “untraceable”. This has prompted concerns for their safety.

Once again, just because they are ‘untraceable’ it cannot be assumed that they are not perfectly safe and well, and this is not sufficient cause to put every child in Britain in a national database like ContactPoint, which is what the author is suggesting.

Even if you did create a system like ContactPoint, there would be no way to police it, keep the records up to date etc, and of course, no database, ID Card or technological solution can keep anyone safe. This is the central flaw in the thinking of people like Kerra Maddern; they have a child-like magical belief in technology and the State; it is stupid, dangerous and expensive, both in terms of money and Liberty.

Large urban areas have the highest numbers of children missing from education. Experts from Barnardo’s and the Children’s Society say that not enough is being done to ensure that vulnerable pupils remain in school.

These two charities would of course say that not enough is being done, and that children belong in school. They are a part of the industry that exploits children. They are hardly going to say that they are not needed, since out of the eleven million children in Britain, a vanishingly small number are at risk, and most of these are discovered and dealt with by the systems that are already in place. Why, if they were to say that, they would be out of a job, and could not extract more stolen loot from the State.

The Children’s Society claims that they are motivated by their Christian values. On the page describing this and the one that follows it, the word ‘parent’ does not appear. You can make of that what you will; the fact of the matter is the coalition ‘austerity’ measures are cutting off the funding from these ‘charities’ and they are desperate to justify the money they are getting. That means they have an interest in spreading fear about children – the source of their income – as far and as wide as possible. That is why we have seen a spate of questions in the House of Commons recently, and an article in the bird cage liner The Independent, which, mysteriously, quotes the exact number of ‘missing children’ that the TES does. Did the TES do its own investigation, or have they been given this number and the ‘facts’ by a PR company?

Make no mistake; these articles, questions in the house and what is to follow do not appear by coincidence or accident; someone is paying a PR company or staffer to coordinate all of this propaganda. You can tell by the similar wording in each article, the similar numbers and the similar conclusions in each article.

While each local authority has to keep a census of how many children are “missing” in their area, there is no national system for tracing children or transferring information between councils when they move.

Yes, that is correct. ContactPoint was proposed as that system, and it was rejected as inherently immoral, impossible to secure and a completely bad idea.

A legal duty to identify children missing from education was imposed on local authorities four years ago, but there is no requirement for parents to tell councils when they change address.

There should be no legal duty to identify children missing from education. Education is the duty of the parent, not the responsibility of the State.

The ID Card and NIR would have allowed councils to keep track of the location of all families; when you changed address, if you did not inform the State, you would have been fined £1000. The mass uprising against ID Cards caused that scheme to be abolished also. Kerra Maddern wants the paedophile catalogue and the ID Cards to be brought in so that her mythical ‘children missing education’ can all be rounded up and frog marched into school.

This woman is on the wrong side of history. And everything.

Leicester has the highest single number of children officially missing from education – a total of 2,611. Of these, 313 are waiting for a school place, but council officers are investigating why 2,298 are not attending lessons. Many attended state-run nurseries but have not moved into primary schools.

The fact of the matter is this; Leicester cannot run the schools it is already in charge of. They do not have enough places for all the students that desire one. If they find all these phantom children, where are they going to put them?

This is a perfect example of the illogic of the State and people like Kerra Maddern. The State system is hopelessly broken, and yet, they want everyone to be forced into it. They decry the decline of society, the feral children running wild, but do everything they can to undermine the authority of the parent and the central role of the family.

These people are completely insane.

The city council says its high numbers are the result of a “ruthless” process to trace the whereabouts of all children. “If we don’t know where they are, we do everything we can to find out where they have gone,” says head of behaviour and attendance John Broadhead. “Other local authorities do not do as much, but we treat this very seriously.”

Unbelievable. They are ‘ruthless’ in tracking down their prey. Remember there is no evidence whatsoever that the people they are hunting are in any danger of any kind. The only crime they have committed is that they once lived in or went to school in Leicester, and then stopped living or going to school in Leicester. These people spend stolen money and resources to hunt perfectly innocent people down, whilst for years their schools have been falling apart. Other local authorities have better schools, perhaps, because they spend their time and resources on teaching instead of playing at bounty hunters.

The council employs one member of staff just to track down missing children, assisted by 20 education welfare officers. Headteachers can alert the local authority to pupils who cannot be tracked down via a live database, introduced five years ago.

Absolutely astonishing. Twenty one people are paid a salary to track people down, whilst the schools are failing. They spend money on a database to track children, instead of spending money on pupils. Of course this is exactly what happens when you are spending other people’s money. In a properly functioning country where Liberty exists, these people would not be able to misallocate other people’s money, and the schools would be highly efficient and entirely productive places.

You couldn’t make up this insanity if you tried… unless you were from Leicester. You must realise also, that this spending is discretionary, “Other local authorities do not do as much, but we treat this very seriously.” that means they are choosing to spend money on this rather than the education they are providing in schools.

The TES investigation shows that a total of 67 local authorities claim they have no missing children and 29 have fewer than 20. But Kent County Council is unable to trace 618 children, Leeds reports 558 and Camden more than 100 (see tables, right). Because there is no national system, different authorities record children missing from education in different ways, making it difficult to understand the reasons so many have fallen out of the system.

This is the ‘problem’ that ContactPoint was going to solve. Once again, this is the discredited ‘national system’ that everyone came to understand as an unacceptable intrusion into the lives of the British people. Clearly Kerra Maddern didn’t get the memo. Or perhaps the contractor who got paid to develop ContactPoint is trying to drum up business for ContactPoint 2.0 through Kerra Maddern and her ‘journalist’ friends?

Who knows?

Someone is paying for this PR, that is for certain. Follow the money; see who is buying all these articles and then you will find out who is pushing for this.

Former Barnardo’s chief executive Martin Narey says the situation is “deeply troubling”. “School is somewhere that every child needs to be every day,” he says. “For many of our most vulnerable young people it is the only stability they know, the only time when a little chaos is taken out of their lives, the only time when they are required to behave reasonably.

We already know that Martin Narey thought that the peadophile’s dream database ContactPoint was a good idea:

It has been welcomed by children’s charities and organisations, including Barnardo’s, KIDS and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. Martin Narey, chief executive of children’s charity Barnardo’s, said it [ContactPoint] “would make it easier to deliver better-co-ordinated services”.

[…]

http://irdial.com/blogdial/?p=1747

School is NOT a place where EVERY child needs to be every day. This is just simple minded NONSENSE, and Martin Narey knows it. There are only a small number of reasons why he would say something that he knows is completely wrong. He is either deliberately setting out to deceive, or he is completely incompetent.

Everyone and their dog is sick of the lying, spinning, sickening child exploitation industry. The light at the end of the tunnel is the economic collapse, which will hopefully sweep these parasites away once and for all.

“It is the one place where poor life expectations can be reversed. So for thousands of children – inevitably those most in need of education – to be missing from school is deeply troubling. We need to keep children in school or, when removal is necessary, as it sometimes is, ensure alternative provision is always made available in a timely manner.”

No. Charities need to be funded only by charitable contributions from the pubic, and never from stolen money supplied by the State.

The job of a charity, in the case of education, is to facilitate education, either in school or in other places where it may take place. It is not the business of charities to force children to go to school, or to lobby the State to force children to go to school or to do any of those things that involve coercion.

This is why the charities that exploit children are fundamentally immoral; they use stolen money and attempt to coerce people into doing things that they would rather not do, instead of restricting their activities to helping people. These are not charities at all, but are instead, Crony Charities, similar to the Crony Capitalists that operate in serpentine symbiosis with the State.

Children’s Society policy director Enver Solomon says: “It is vital children don’t disappear from the school roll. There’s a danger this could happen to vulnerable pupils if schools just focus on attainment and their welfare is overlooked.

The school is not the parent. The State is not the parent. Schools should only focus on attainment; that is what they are for. Parents and families are solely responsible for the welfare of children.

“The most marginalised children have the most complex needs: they must be given additional help to remain in education.”

If you want to help them, stop taking stolen money from the state and help them. Stop trying to undermine the family and destroy home education.

Ofsted has also been critical of local authorities for failing to work together in identifying and helping children who drop out of school (see box, opposite). Patrick Leeson, the inspectorate’s director of education and care, says: “Children and young people who are not receiving education are at serious risk of under-achieving and falling behind. When their whereabouts are unknown they may be particularly at risk of physical, emotional and psychological harm.

This is of course, a lie. Ofsted is in danger of being abolished; they are flailing around their tentacles trying to insert them into every aspect of life that involves children, and with their sharply toothed suckers, attaching themselves so that they cannot be removed. They already provide useless ‘inspections’ of all schools; if they could somehow wiggle their way into home education and children missing education, the stream of salaries would be ongoing and enormous.

“Ofsted inspectors have found that local authorities, schools and partner agencies need to share information more effectively and systematically to identify children and young people who are missing from education, particularly when their whereabouts are unknown, and to take concerted action to remedy the situation.”

Ofsted’s brief does not include inspecting children who are not in school. They exist to inspect schools and generate reports. All of these disparate groups, that have the exploitation of children in common, fake charities, Ofsted, the TES, Local Authorities, all have a vested interest in getting information on children and then sharing that information. Doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that all of these different groups, all with a profit motive, are all calling for the reinstatement of something that has been roundly denounced?

New arrivals to the country account for a substantial group of those missing from education, according to councils. In Sheffield, for example, 460 children without places are from Slovakia, and are receiving council help in applying for school places.

Then these people are not ‘missing from education’ they are waiting for school places. No ‘national system’ like ContactPoint will help them get school places, and they are not in any danger by Kerra Maddern’s own definition, since they are known to the State.

Other children are not in school because their parents refuse to send them.

And that is their ABSOLUTE RIGHT. and sometimes its their DUTY also.

In Peterborough, 248 pupils are missing from rolls having turned down offers of places, mostly because the schools were too far away from their homes.

So these people will also not be helped by a national system either; they have been offered places in schools that are too far away; they are known to the state, the parents want their children to attend schools and the State could not accommodate them. These children are not in any danger whatsoever either.

This article, by listing the types of children missing, is whittling down the numbers considerably. If they did the rest of their homework, they would find that the number of ‘children missing education’ who were also in danger is vanishingly small in proportion to the eleven million children in Britain. There is no money in that calculation however.

Children from the traveller community are at particular risk of vanishing from the education system.

The traveller community, as has recently been seen, contains children that are perfectly safe, girls who are chaste and very strong families where divorce is a rare exception. Look at the phrase ‘traveller community’; these people are a community of the type that the rest of Britain so badly needs; one made up of strong, self reliant families made up of people who know who they are and who are not ashamed of who they are. They know their own minds, are not afraid to speak their minds and are perfectly happy just as they are. They do not want or need your ‘education system’ or anything else that your ‘culture’ has to offer.

Linda Lewins, vice-president of the National Association of Teachers of Travellers, says it is “vital” that traveller education services are maintained by local authorities. “Children from the gypsy and traveller community are much more likely to miss school,” she says. “Many families notify teachers they are leaving, but the local authority often finds it difficult to discover where they have gone.”

The National Association of Teachers of Travellers is a group established in 1980, “in order to address the isolation of teachers of Travellers and to support and encourage their work”. In other words, they have a vested interest in keeping track of the children of Travellers, so that they can get access to them and receive a salary. If Travellers and their children cannot be tracked, then the numbers of traveller children attending school by force will drop, and this is bad for business.

All you need to know about this group is summed up in this paragraph from their site:

NATT+ is now the nationally recognised voice of Traveller Education Services. It represents and supports members at a national level by addressing Gypsy, Roma and Traveller issues with a number of organisations including the DCSF and other government departments.

My emphasis. Birds of a feather, flock together!

A Department for Education spokeswoman said it expects local authorities to identify children missing from school and to allocate places as quickly as possible.

An unnamed spokeswoman, who doesn’t know what she is talking about.

But with no plans to put in place a robust national system to track and identify missing children, a rapid decline in their numbers appears unlikely.

ContactPoint is not coming back, should not come back, and is not needed. If you want to send your child to school, you can do so, though there may be a waiting list in some places, and you might not get the school you want or one that is close to your home.

If you do not want to send your child to a government school, or any school at all, that is entirely your business, and the State should not take any interest in you or your problems, or successes.

SAFEGUARDING – Families are strangers to councils

Ofsted inspectors found in a report published last year that many councils were failing to fulfil their safeguarding duties because they did not know enough about children in their areas.

Here we go again with the Orwellian doublespeak

It is clear that something is most definitely ‘up’.

These paid PR pieces appearing in different newspapers is a coordinated campaign to introduce ContactPoint 2.0, which is the only solution to this non-problem.

It will mean that mandatory registration of home educators will be back on the table at some point, under the absurd pretext of ‘safeguarding’.

Thankfully, all the arguments against this have been thoroughly explored and documented. If you have anything to say about it, it will be possible to refute any of Kerra Maddern’s and the other propagandist’s untruths by referring to the many documents that were generated in the last three years and that are on line.

It is nauseating that Kerra Maddern, the lazy editors who reprint press releases verbatim don’s have the intelligence to think about these subject clearly. Its also nauseating that they have no moral centre, no understanding of rights or the proper role of government. Finally, its nauseating that we have to go over this again, when it seemed like the tide had turned and everyone except the unrepentant monsters in the shadow cabinet finally understood just how evil the Big Brother nanny State was becoming.

It seems, once again, that some people like Kerra Maddern didn’t get the memo. This can be forgiven; not everyone is paying attention to everything or is born intelligent.

As for the others who exploit children for money….