[Kanekoa] Central Bank Digital Currencies are the Bullet Train to Digital Concentration Camps: “If you can move every human into a digital concentration camp, empty their bank account any time you want, and tell them what they can and cannot spend money on, you've got complete control."
The White House published a "comprehensive framework" on Friday attacking decentralized cryptocurrencies while promoting a U.S. government-controlled programmable Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), per an official press release.
Agencies that were chosen to lead the ongoing working group for the research and possible development of a CBDC include the Federal Reserve, the National Economic Council, the National Security Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Treasury Department.
CBDCs are digital currency issued directly from a nation-state’s central bank and serve as legal tender.
Critically, CBDCs are controlled by governments and therefore represent the polar opposite of the ideas — decentralization, open-source software, permissionless, peer-to-peer transactions — that made Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such a revolutionary technology.
As you can guess, CBDCs will be tied to user identities and Digital IDs, which will allow for total surveillance by the State and eliminate any chance of financial privacy.
According to the Atlantic Council’s Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker, 112 countries, representing over 95 percent of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC.
11 countries have already launched a digital currency including Nigeria and numerous Caribbean nations.
14 countries are testing pilot programs including South Korea, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and China which is set to expand its use of the Digital Yuan in 2023.
Pompliano’s comments mirror those made by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Neel Kashkari who, speaking at a panel hosted at Columbia University, said that he had no idea what problem centralized digital currencies solved for American citizens.
“What is it that a CBDC can do that Venmo can’t do?” Kashkari asked. “Well, I can see why China would do it.”
“If they want to monitor every one of your transactions, impose negative interest rates or directly tax customer accounts,” he said. “You can do that with a Central Bank Digital Currency, you can’t do that with Venmo.”
#2
Canada has already proved that they can and will shut people down from accessing the financial system as a punishment. Russia being punished in the same way means they'll do it to whole countries, too.
Digital dollars mean that they can track every single penny you earn or spend, and easily disconnect you the moment you spend on anything they don't like (donating to the truckers). Police in the future won't even have to chase suspects, they'll just turn off your phone and wait for you to show up at the police station to avoid starvation.
#3
Nothing in all of the progressive/marxist schemes to destroy the United States is more dire or less well understood than this. It is literally a real existential threat to freedom and democracy.
And they are well on their way to convincing a majority of our citizens that it is safe and convenient, after all, "its the government running it so it has to be safe, right?"
Stephen Kinzer, 'Poisoner In Chief,' Chapter 3, Willing and Unwilling Subjects. Pages 43-44.
Teams of Bluebird interrogators flew regularly to West Germany to conduct their experiments. Most often, they did their work at Camp King and the nearby "black site" at Villa Schuster. German researchers would later identify other secret prisons where Americans also carried out extreme experiments. One was in Mannheim, near the baroque palace from which princes ruled the Palatinate. Reports have placed others in Berlin, Munich, and the outskirts of Stuttgart.
At these secret prisons, Bluebird interrogators worked without any outside supervision. This set a precedent that marked a breakthrough for the CIA. By opening prisons, the Agency established its right to detain and imprison people in other countries, but to interrogate them harshly while they were in custody without regard for the U.S. law.
LIGARIUS: What's to do?
BRUTUS: A piece of work with will make sick men whole.
LIGARIUS: But are not some whole that we must make sick?
BRUTUS: That must we also.
- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
[TAC] On Sept. 19, 1796, the American Daily Advertiser published George Washington’s farewell address.
When people remember or discuss the address, they most often recall his warning against political parties, his admonition to avoid permanent, entangling foreign alliances, and his insistence that "religion and morality are indispensable supports" to political prosperity.
His warning on factions is almost eerily prophetic:
"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism."
It sure sounds familiar, doesn't it? Most people start with a faction-first mentality - and support or oppose government actions based on who is doing it. And the Constitution is in shreds as a result.
But wait, there's more. Washington continued:
But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
If we aren't there right now, we're so close it might be indistinguishable.
Most people read right over what might be an even more poignant warning in Washington’s address; a warning we failed to heed to our own detriment - for generations.
Washington advised that we should hold tight to the original Constitution and avoid giving in to the temptation to turn it into a "living, breathing" document that changes at the whim of whoever holds power.
As Washington put it, we must "resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts."
Washington wrote that "one method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown."
We see these alterations in the Constitution all the time — mostly courtesy of the federal courts as they have expanded various clauses to "authorize" federal actions that were clearly left to the states and the people. They've twisted restrictions on power and used them to authorize the monster state of today.
Thanks to these constitutional "alterations," the federal government has interjected itself into almost every area of our lives, from dictating how much water flushes down our toilets to the kinds of plants we can grow in our back yard.
Of course, we can’t place blame solely on the courts. Not even close.
Presidents have seized a wide range of unconstitutional powers, further altering and undermining the constitutional system.
And Congress has done its part, punting much of its responsibility to the executive branch by passing broadly worded bills that allow executive branch bureaucrats to essentially write the law after the fact.
Washington warned us that these kinds of alterations would undermine the system. In fact, he called them a "weapon" by which freedom is destroyed.
Thomas Jefferson, who helped convince Washington to stay on for a 2nd term, had a similar warning:
To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
Washington wrote that "time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions." He warned that constantly changing the meaning of the Constitution through government action would ultimately prevent any kind of stable system from developing.
"Experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable."
We certainly see this tendency today. The federal government makes up its own rules as it goes, completely untethered from any foundational principles or absolute limits.
The founders and old revolutionaries called this arbitrary power - and it's how they defined tyranny. That's why it was one of the most important of the listed grievances in the Declaration of Independence.
Those who embrace the idea of a "living, breathing" Constitution argue that it must be flexible to "change with the times." Washington wasn’t ignorant of this fact. He admitted the need for flexibility, but insisted change must happen within the Constitutional system itself through the amendment process, not via political maneuvering by the government itself.
"If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield." [Emphasis added.]
Sadly, Washington’s advice has not been followed. Not even close.
Virtually every change to America’s constitutional system has been by usurpation. The "federal" government has run up trillions upon trillions in debt. It fights unconstitutional wars across the globe. It spies on virtually everybody and violates the right to keep and bear arms.
It reaches into every corner of your life, attacking your liberty at every turn.
Washington was right. Whatever transient benefit the federal government may have brought by these actions has been "overbalanced" by evil. And until the people start heeding these warnings, it's only going to get worse.
[FrontPage] Or the importance of second thoughts.
September 16, 2022
by David Horowitz
PREFACE Christopher Hitchens was a unique and, in many ways, irresistible individual, and eventually a friend. I say “eventually” because we started off as ideological antagonists, he, a lifelong admirer of Leon Trotsky and member of the destructive left, and I, a “second thoughter,” who had become a dedicated antagonist of the movement he never left. The fact that we were friends is a tribute to Christopher, who had a graciousness and humanity that made our friendship possible. I have never encountered another leftist who didn’t allow their political prejudices to strip them of their humanity and decency when dealing with human beings whose opinions differed from theirs.
As Christopher was dying unbeknownst to me, I was writing an essay which was both a portrait of him and an attempt to confront the inconsistency of his ideas. I called it “The Two Christophers, Or the Importance of Second Thoughts,” and consider it one of the best things I have written.
The article appeared 12 years ago in Frontpagemag.com, but when I went to locate it on the Internet I discovered it had been “removed” for violating the political standards of the fascists who control the WayBackMachine, who have erased the existence of Frontpagemag.com by removing its archives from the web. What has been done by the tech fascists to bury their political opponents on Wikipedia, Google – and all search engines – is a national tragedy, and ominous portent for the future. Had he lived, Christopher would have been nauseated and horrified by what his political friends have done in the fraudulent name of “social justice.” This is what Christopher thought he was fighting against as a radical all his life. Unfortunately, he could not have been more wrong.
THE TWO CHRISTOPHERS
(I had just finished the draft of this essay when I heard the terrible news that my friend Christopher had a cancer whose prognosis was dire. My heart and thoughts go out to him, as they would to a brother. I have known Christopher as a man of great courage and decency and have an affection for him that is not adequately disclosed in the intellectual argument that follows. As an argument Christopher I am sure will welcome it as a test of his mettle and a testament to the way in which he has – and will continue – to challenge us all. —DH)
I first met Christopher Hitchens in 1970 when I was editing Ramparts Magazine, which was then the largest publication of the left. Christopher was ten years my junior and fresh out of Oxford, embarking on his first adventure in the New World. When he stopped in at my Berkeley office looking for guidance, one of the questions he asked me in all seriousness was, “Where is the working class?” Only the devout left — the “holy rollers” as I by that time thought of them – could still think this mythical entity was an actual social force in a nation where social classes were relics of the past, and populists had declared every man a king. But rather than make an issue, I directed my visitor to the local Trotskyists, who were true believers, failing to realize that Christopher was one of them.
Our next encounter took place a dozen years later and was not nearly as pleasant. By then I had rejected most tenets of the leftist faith, although I had not publicly abandoned its ranks. We met at a small lunch with Nation editors Victor Navasky and Kai Bird, and one or two others. Before long the conversation turned to the Middle East and I found myself confronting what we referred to in those days as a political “gut check.” What was my attitude, Christopher wanted to know, towards Israel’s invasion of Lebanon? The Israeli offensive was designed to clear out PLO terrorists who had entrenched themselves behind an international border in southern Lebanon and were shelling towns in Israel (while destroying Lebanese society in the process). Good leftists already were regarding Israel as an “imperialist” pawn of the United States and oppressor of Palestinians and therefore were opposed to Israel’s effort to protect itself. I rose imprudently to Christopher’s provocation: “This is the first Israeli war I have supported,” I said, thereby ending any fraternal possibilities for the remaining conversation.
Two years later, my co-author Peter Collier and I voted for Ronald Reagan, and three years after that we organized a “Second Thoughts” conference bringing together other former radicals who had become advocates of the anti-Communist cause. Christopher came to the conference with his Nation cohort Alexander Cockburn to attack us. In the column he filed after our event, he described our suggestion that second thoughts might be superior to first ones as “smug,” and singled out my remark that supporting America’s enemies should be considered treason, as “sinister.”[1] He subsequently elaborated his feelings about second thoughts in the course of a brutal article on the writer Paul Johnson, sneering at his “well advertised stagger from left to right,” which Christopher regarded as the venal maneuver of someone “who, having lost his faith, believes that he had found his reason.”[2] (And why not?)
But times change, and subsequently Christopher himself became associated – not entirely correctly — with a generation of post-9/11 second-thoughters. Revising some of his attitudes towards the left and its loyalties, he had vaunted a patriotism towards America he would once have thought of as, well, sinister. A climatic moment in this odyssey – or so it should have been – was the publication of an engrossing memoir of his life, which has been heretical at both ends, and which he called Hitch-22. Among its other virtues, the book provides a fertile occasion for those of us who preceded him to take a second look at our own second thoughts, and measure the distances that we, and our one-time antagonist, had come. The above is only a tenth of what was written. Read the rest at the link
[Townhall] Crimes against children are inexpressibly evil. For decades, the FBI has been uniquely situated to identify, investigate, and arrest the people and groups involved in the trafficking and sexual abuse of our most vulnerable. And, FBI agents do this critical work in-spite of the tremendous personal costs incurred by close proximity to a crime of such horrific aspect. The men and women of the FBI work these kinds of cases as well as a gambit of violations that would quail people of lesser commitment. It was my honor to serve for twenty years alongside the best and brightest that our country has to offer.
However, the good that FBI case agents do on a daily basis is obfuscated by the fog of infamy created by the malfeasance of some in FBI leadership. To ignore this is a betrayal of the integrity and bravery of those who defend America from her enemies both foreign and domestic. Agents hold themselves to the highest standards and still demand the same from their leadership. It is a disservice to them and an affront to their sense of integrity to excuse, blunt, or cloud the facts surrounding the current culture of partisanship.
It is no easy thing to objectively analyze a beloved institution, the G-man sanctum, and come to the inescapable conclusion that the core FBI values of fidelity, bravery, and integrity have been betrayed to political masters. An agent’s fidelity is to the constitution and to no other. Agents do not swear an oath to a political party or to a political leader. To pander to party, in an attempt to subvert the democratic process, is an existential threat no less dire than the threat posed by agents of espionage. Hyperbole? Selling classified secrets to a foreign power may result in grave damage to national security, but to destroy the nation’s faith in the franchise and in its critical institutions is to diffuse a poison without antidote — it’s an act of fratricide and severs the fundamental bonds that unite a federation of states. No foreign power could strike so grave a blow as that perpetrated by those charged with the duty to preserve, honor, and champion our civil rights.
A few days ago, Brian O’Hare — President of the FBI Agents Association — penned a Fox News opinion piece admonishing the public to "pay attention to facts, not politics." O’Hare produced a few paragraphs in defense of the work of the FBI and suggests that the political weaponization of the FBI is fiction.
[Real Clear Wire] Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz was busy this week, releasing three separate reports on Monday alone. Each detailed misconduct by a different assistant United States attorney: One finds a federal lawyer trying to use his position to avoid a drunk driving charge; another finds a government attorney getting drunk and physically belligerent at a meeting with foreign officials; the third, and most disturbing, finds an assistant U.S. attorney exposing his genitals "in a public place," and sexually assaulting a "civilian" on a date.
Who were these federal prosecutors? The summary reports don’t say. A spokesperson for the Office of the Inspector General told RealClearPolitics that it could not release their names. RCP has filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for their identities.
The Justice Department doesn’t hesitate to publicize the names of those it accuses of wrongdoing. At least when those accused do not work for Justice. Last Friday, for example, the DOJ office of Public Affairs issued a press release announcing that the department had filed a discrimination lawsuit against the owner and managers of a Milwaukee rental property. Though a court has yet to rule against those accused of harassing a gay, disabled tenant, the DOJ press release named them.
Compare that with "Investigative Summary" number 22-104, in which the inspector general determined that an assistant United States attorney was driving under the influence when he (or she) was pulled over by police. The investigation found that the prosecutor had tried to pull rank on the local cops, "referring to the AUSA’s title in an attempt to influence local police officers." When that didn’t work, the drunk federal lawyer shouted obscenities and kicked the door of the police car.
These were violations of federal ethics regulations according to the IG, who found the assistant U.S. attorney’s actions also ran afoul of the standards of conduct required of federal employees, including that they "not engage in criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct, or other conduct prejudicial to the Government." The AUSA remains unnamed.
[WAPO] The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules. Excuse me Greenfield, but I believe you have a piece of toilet paper attached to your shoe.
Oh dear. That didn’t go well.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter. Paging Mr. Igor Danchenko. Would Mr. Danchenko please report to the white courtesy phone. Mr. Igor Danchenko.
The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. The legal team of Mr. Elon Musk has not commented on this story but is said to be smiling and exchanging high-five's.
The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s "imperialist" war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries. Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers. Yes, I would say 6 January could be considered to be "recent."
I don't know if some corrupt POS in the polygon of cluelessness ordered it himself or it came down from the supernational corpo masters but it's hilarious.
#2
"Mr. Undersecretary. We are being misrepresented as some kind of superpower out there! And the enemy as some kind of dirty invasive humorless faggot! It's completely topsy turvy, sir!"
#7
Wapo is where the spooks and pentagon leak. This seems more like a PR statement, "We hear your concerns." I dont think their sweeping audit will result in much change. The change that will happen is that they will hide their social media assets better from public view. Hybrid Warfare / Cognitive Warfare will not end.
#9
I think they are going to cancel a couple of submarine builds to see if they can stack up enough cash to coax Rachael Maddow out of semi-retirement.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/20/2022 23:06 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Stephen Kinzer, 'Poisoner In Chief,' Chapter 3, Willing and Unwilling Subjects. Pages 43-44.
[TAC] On Sept. 19, 1796, the American Daily Advertiser published George Washington’s farewell address.
[WAPO] The 
