Barack Obama:
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.
Ronald Reagan:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.
Ahem…
Nuff said?
Mainstream news is reporting hit piece after hit piece on BITCOIN. It’s a non-stop parade of pundits all coming out to scream the horrors of bitcoin and how it is nothing but a bubble.
But remember, these are the same kinds of pundits that rallied around the dot-com bubble singing its praises, and the same pundits that failed to see the subprime mortgage housing bubble until it was too late. Their credibility is lacking, to put it politely. Just to illustrate the degree of ignorance, allow me to indulge in a few laughs…
Here’s an article from The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/comment/9975539/Bitcoin-is-clearly-a-bubble.html
‘Bitcoin is clearly a bubble’
Many people in the developed economies yearn for a financial system that does not have the option to rob them.By Andrew Oxlade
9:06PM BST 05 Apr 2013
That is why gold has been so much in demand during the financial crisis – and popular with shrewd sceptics in the years before.
The clarion call of those “gold bugs”, shrill in normal times, sounds more reasonable in the “new normal” – the age of unrestrained money printing and financial repression (using monetary policy to shift the wealth of citizens to government).
This explains why Bitcoin – a global “cyber currency” – has exploded in popularity. The temptations of this phenomenon are easy to grasp: we crave an opportunity to hold wealth in a currency that cannot be devalued by printing more of it.
Bitcoin, alas, is not that. More Bitcoins can be created by those who have a powerful enough computer, although there is apparently a ceiling on the total currency.
People are ignoring the warnings, with the price charging higher. It is clearly a bubble – a tempting vessel for money, arriving during the perfect storm of currency debasement and the seizure of savings in a eurozone state – Cyprus.
As in every bubble before – from the South Sea Company bubble of 1711 to the dotcom boom and bust at the end of the millennium – investors eagerly part with their money on the conviction that prices will rise and they’ll step off at the right time. But no one knows whether today is the day investors wake up to their error.
The wise money will steer well clear.
In the highlighted portion, the author demonstrates utter ignorance about bitcoin. No, there is not an “apparent ceiling”. There is a hard ceiling limit of 21 million bitcoins that can possibly be created for the rest of eternity.
In talking about “those who have a powerful enough computer,” he again illustrates utter ignorance about bitcoin and further ignorance about technology in general. The predicted end of bitcoin mining (digitally “printing” or creating bitcoins) will end around 2140. Now, it is possible that quantum computing or some other as of yet uninvented form of computing could shorten that significantly. However, it doesn’t really matter as the difficulty factor in mining bitcoins increases as more are created, and it doesn’t particularly matter whether you are dead for 10 years or 100 years when the last bitcoin is mined. You’ll probably still be dead.
When the author says, ” The wise money will steer well clear,” I really have to wonder, if he’s that ignorant, would the best bet be to do the exact opposite of what he’s advocating?
But he’s far from the most ignorant or the most hostile out there. There is a great abundance of nay-sayers. Every day there is a new hit piece, so why not just pick another one at random to have a little fun with?
Venture Beat came out with a pack of lies. Oops? Did I say lies? I meant… No. I meant lies.
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/coinbase-phishing-bitcoin/
Coinbase phishing attacks are the 3rd Bitcoin security problem this week
Sorry, but the security issue has nothing to do with bitcoin.
There have been Paypal phishing attacks pretty much non-stop since Paypal began. How would this be for a headline?
Paypal phishing attacks are the 300 millionth US dollar security problem this week
Perhaps just a tad insane? The recent security issues surrounding bitcoin are not bitcoin related issues. But, what they do illustrate is that bitcoins are VALUABLE and that people will go to great lengths to steal bitcoins. If bitcoins had no value, would people try to steal them? Hardly. These kinds of dishonest hit pieces insult one’s intelligence, as the authors must really believe that you are either incredibly stupid (if you’re in IT or a geek) or incredibly ignorant (we are all ignorant of many things) to believe such blatant lies.
One of the dominant themes in bitcoin hit pieces is that bitcoin can be used for “illegal activity”. Here’s a CNBC hit piece as an illustration:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100618934
Bitcoin Great for Narco-Dollar Traffickers: Pro
Published: Friday, 5 Apr 2013 | 7:58 AM ET
By: Matt ClinchDigital currency bitcoin has seen a spike in interest coinciding with a huge rally, but it has divided opinion greatly with analysts differing on whether it’s an advancement in the monetary system or just a large Ponzi scheme that should be avoided.
Davide Serra, founder and CEO of Algebris Investments, is firmly in the latter group, likening the recent surge in bitcoins to tulip mania in the 17th century, when the market for plant bulbs reached extraordinarily high levels in the Netherlands before suddenly collapsing.
“If you’re a narco-dollar trafficker you’re going to love it, because basically it’s a way to smuggle money through,” Serra told CNBC Friday.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency allowing users to exchange online credits for goods and services. While there is no central bank that issues them, bitcoins can be created online by using a computer to complete difficult tasks, a process known as mining.
“Someone who tries to buy it comes on TV, pushes the story and hopefully tomorrow you can sell it for a higher price. That’s not a currency—that’s a ponzi scheme,” Serra said.
According to Serra, the system relies on selling bitcoins at a later date to “a greater fool.”
“No central bank, no pension fund, no institutional investor will ever put a dollar into this thing,” he said.
The hit piece continues, but of course it comes out swinging with the “bubble” angle, then goes on to slander it by associating it with narcotics.
The funny thing is, haven’t the fiat currencies been used for a lot longer for drugs? Where was the hit piece on “Canada dollar gaining popularity with drug traffickers” or other similarly insane article title? Bitcoin is a medium of exchange and is hardly responsible for whether people want to buy or sell drugs.
Now for his comment on central banks, pension funds and institutional investors… I happen to know of at least 1 deal that is being put together with exactly those people in mind, and that what the author has stated is simply false, if not a flat out lie. (While I would love to comment on the deal, it is confidential. I simply happen to know enough about it.)
Countless articles call bitcoin a bubble, but I have yet to see anyone address the underlying assumptions that would justify that claim. Perhaps if the standards that have been applied to other markets applied to bitcoin, then certainly there would be a common foundation for those claims to rest on. But those standards do not exist the same for bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a free market currency, and there is nothing like it in the world. Well, there are some other crypto-currencies, but other than those, none.
Not even gold & silver are comparable anymore. JP Morgan has paper silver short positions that dwarf the amount of available physical silver. No, silver and gold are already highly manipulated outside of actual gold and silver through paper shorts. Can this happen to bitcoin? Yes. Will it? The jury is out on that one. The market is only going up, so short positions simply don’t make sense right now. The market needs to level off with less upward volatility for shorting to become possible. There are some exchanges that make it possible, though we are nowhere near seeing that quite yet.
Some other markets, have caps on how much a stock can go up or down. That doesn’t exist for bitcoin as we’ve seen.
Bitcoin is also new to the market and there is a very limited supply of them available. What we are seeing is the initial valuation of the bitcoin after a couple years of testing the waters.
There is a great deal of investment in bitcoin from a lot of people. While mtGox is the largest exchange, the currency itself is decentralized, is not subject to regulation, cannot be regulated, and has no single point of failure like centrally controlled currencies do, i.e. the central banks that can tank currencies through printing money, e.g. Zimbabwe, the United States of America (the Federal Reserve). With the freedom that comes with bitcoin, and the massive investments from so many people world wide, and a lack of any single point of failure, it is hard to imagine a downside to bitcoin. Ooops. Nope. Not if you’re part of the establishment and are threatened by bitcoin, then bitcoin itself is a downside.
That bitcoin threatens the established powers in banking, finance, and government has not been entirely lost by all the establishment pundits. Some are very aware.
Bitcoin Really Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State
…Nonetheless, Bitcoin raises some interesting questions. One is whether it might undermine the modern state — which, for many of its libertarian-anarchist advocates, is the whole idea…
From the horses mouth, to your screen. The pundit there still doesn’t quite understand that tax is theft though…
Taxation: How do governments collect taxes on transactions in Bitcoin? The answer is they don’t, and they can’t. Crypto-currency’s strong protections on anonymity make it impossible for any state to know who is buying what, who is paying whom, who earns what, and who has what in savings. That poses a direct challenge to the power of states to levy taxes.
The problem is that Bitcoin makes tax evasion easier. States could enforce reporting of Bitcoin income for individuals and businesses, as they try to do for cash, which is also hard to track. But encryption and the peer-to-peer network structure make Bitcoin even harder to follow than physical cash, and digital cash is much better than the physical kind for storage and transactions, so the scale of the challenge could end up being much bigger.
Few articles even bother to put any thought into bitcoin, so I must hand it to Mr. Soltas, as he has apparently taken the time and effort to actually understand what bitcoin is and what it can do for us. Even if he’s on the wrong side of the fence about tax there. 
He ends his article with a wonderful taste of what could be:
In the next chapter of the history of currency, money might very well turn on its creator, and roll back government.
There are a few other well thought out articles and reporting on bitcoin in the MSM, but most of them miss the point about freedom. Instead, they try to slur freedom with accusations of “tax evasion” (i.e. refusing to allow yourself to be financially raped by the local criminal organization that many people call “government”) or “illegal activities” or “drugs”.
The hit pieces will continue. There is a lot at stake here. The most important of which is freedom.
Cheers,
Ryan
Frackin’ Reserve is now available for Android!
In an effort to try and help educate people about the inevitable mathematical fraud of fractional reserve banking, I’ve released an Android version. It’s 100% free. Pass it around, and let’s END THE FED!
Frackin’ Reserve lets you simulate what happens in the money cycle with fractional reserve banking. It demonstrates how banksters print money out of thin air and how that money very quickly mushrooms into massive quantities of debt.
Make sure to check the articles listed below as they fully explain the fraudulent nature of fractional reserve banking.
“Once a nation parts with the control of its credit, it matters not who makes the laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” — William Lyon MacKenzie King
You can find Frackin’ Reserve for Android in the Google Play store here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.renegademinds.frackinreserve
As with all other versions, I’ve made the full source code is available for free. There are notes in there to help you compile it as it requires some very minor tweaks to compile (you must have a strong name file).
DOWNLOAD: Frackin Reserve Android source code
However, in a massive departure from my norm, I did put Google ads in the version that you download from the Google Play store. (I pretty much never put any kind of advertising in my free software, and am generally not very fond of ads in my own software or web sites.) It takes a lot of time and effort, and I figure that if I want to keep up with some of this activism, I need to try and make some money from it in order to off-set the costs of me spending my time elsewhere trying to make a living. I do hope that people appreciate that I’m not trying to get rich or anything – just trying to pay bills. While I thoroughly enjoy this, it takes away from development time for other things that I need to put food on the table. (If you would like to help support Frackin’ Reserve, please consider having a look at my commercial audio software to help musicians learn new songs – Guitar & Drum Trainer.)
Here are some screenshots on tablets and phones, with both older and newer versions of Android for the phone screenshots. Click to zoom on any of them.
For versions for other platforms and articles on fractional reserve banking, please see below.
Windows: Frackin’ Reserve
Linux and Mac OS X: Frackin’ Reserve
Web Edition: Frackin’ Reserve
You can download the entire package of all device software here (excludes the web version):
ALL PLATFORMS: Frackin’ Reserve
Just extract the file, go into the platform folder, and choose what you are looking for, either the program that you can run, or the source code.
Articles:
Part 1 – The Mechanics of Fractional Reserve Banking
Part 2 – What is Money?
Part 3 – “How” Fractional Reserve Banking Creates Money and “Why” it is Fraudulent
Part 4 – Run on the Banks? Or Run on the People?
Part 5 – Compound Interest as Invisible Slavery
Part 6 – Summary & Additional Resources
Please remember to rate Frackin’ Reserve and pass it on to friends and family. When enough people discover just how evil fractional reserve banking is, together we can END THE FED and end the control of the money supply by private banksters.
Cheers,
Ryan
It doesn’t take much to see that mainstream media is loaded with different messages and philosophies. The only thing one really needs is to be aware that they are there, and to know what some of them are. Afterwards, it’s as simple as recognizing the messages when you see them. Most often the are very subtle and disguised inside of an issue. That is, the message is an underlying principle. Then there are other messages that are blatant, in your face, screaming cries to rally you to action.
The following is a short clip from a television show where a very distorted and anti-human philosophy is presented. It takes advantage of a sad story to evoke an emotional response. This is a well known propaganda tactic – to make emotional appeals and to associate emotions rather than logic. The fact is that it works very well and has been used successfully for decades.
Here’s the transcript of the clip:
I used to coil razorwire back home.
We had wolves that would, uh, come down out of the forest and try to eat our sheep.
My dad said we had to keep them out, but, every month or so I would come out and I…pfff…
They would get tangled in the wires sometimes.
They’d chew their own paws off.
That’s, uh, that’s really when I got it. You know?
It isn’t their fault, right?
They’re just being who they are.
We’re the problem.
We’re the ones that want everything to be human.
Now we’ve covered the whole damn world in razorwire, so where are… where’re the animals supposed to go?
But today, you came up with a better way to help them…
to get them back to a time with no humans in it.
The message is pretty simple:
It’s a pretty sick, self-loathing message. One has to wonder what kind of twisted logic leads to this sort of message.
However, it is far from uncommon. The same message can be found in the media on a daily basis. If you would like to try and find some, start reading just about any Environment column in any newspaper or any online news website. It shouldn’t take you long to find a few examples.
For another quick example of predictive messages in media, see here.
Cheers,
Ryan
“Brute Force FreeNAS” is a simple, quick utility to get back a forgotten user name and password.
It works very simply. You must enter a list of possible user names that you had for your FreeNAS and a list of possible passwords. The utility then combines them all (in a Cartesian product) and brute forces your FreeNAS web interface until you are logged in. Once you’re logged in, you then know which user name and password is correct.
Further instructions on how to use it are in the program. You can download it here:
Why did I write this?
Well, I had a problem where I couldn’t login. For some reason, there was an error in my FreeNAS box, and the proper login didn’t work. So, I started to write this utility, thinking that I’d forgotten the right login, and knowing that I knew or could guess the right user name, and the right password, but not the right combination of the two.
I then had further problems, and had to hard reset my FreeNAS box. And therein lies the key… Once I had reset it, I was able to login. However, I was already writing the utility, finished it, and tried the proper login then. However, since it works, and does what it is intended to do, I’m releasing it for others to use.
Make certain to read the instructions in the program.
The code in included in the download for anyone that wants to tweak it or whatever. There is no license – this is in the public domain. I have noted some code in there that I used from elsewhere to get some things done.
Notably, there’s a very cool bit of code that lets you do an N-ary Cartesian product, which is the core of this program as it combines the user names and passwords. You can find that here:
http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2010/07/28/linq-cartesian-1
I first found that article and piece of code while creating some custom software to create a corpus for the Samsung S Voice artificial intelligence – the Samsung version of Siri. I needed an N-ary Cartesian product, and not just a simple cross join on 2 sets.
Anyways, hopefully that helps someone out there.
Cheers,
Ryan
Sometimes I hate “the cloud”, and other times I love it. One thing I really love about the cloud is that it is more often than not just storage with no actual computing. This makes it much nicer when web sites try to hide data from you, because they simply put the data in the cloud, and all you need to do it pluck it out from there.
I’ve come across this situation a few times in the last week or so. Some web site tries to hide information that I’m looking for. Rather than give me simple data, they fart around with it and put it in pretty Flash SWFs or in a graphic. Since I really do prefer the actual raw data so that I can look at it and manipulate it however I like, I need to hack through some of the most pathetic security you can imagine.
It’s pretty simple, and anyone can do it. You only need to know enough HTML to locate where the data is on the page, and then know enough to pick out a URL to the information that’s stored in the cloud or on a CDN (Content Delivery Network, e.g. Akamai).
Here’s how…
I’ve done this for XML files that held the raw data I wanted as well as video files (MP4s). Who in their right mind would choose to watch a video that they paid for in their browser when they can simply download the video and watch it in a decent video player?
Here’s an example of an XML file with data that I plucked out of a site:
The data was from a Flash file which made it useless to me as I actually want to manipulate the data so that I can look at it from different perspectives.
But, you can see the funky URL there. It’s probably an account number of something. Who knows? Who cares?
Here’s a screenshot of where I found the URL (click for a larger version):
You can see how the chart is highlighted there, and the URL is in the EMBED tag.
This works for a surprising number of sites. They seem to make it very hard to actually get the data in anything other than a format that they find pretty. Some sites do this to prevent you from uploading videos somewhere else. Some sites try to present the data in a formatted way, but probably don’t want you to do it, because then you’d be competition. So, stopping you from getting the data is the only way.
Anyways. That’s just a quick way to get data in a raw, more usable format.
Cheers,
Ryan
Illustration by April Russo
Graham had heard all about “Frank’s Dogs” from a bunch of friends that were raving about them. Kim had raved to Graham, “The best hotdog you’ll ever taste!” And that was probably the worst thing Graham had heard.
But the county fair didn’t come around more than once a year, and this time, Graham was determined to get one. And maybe a cool beer or 12 to go with it.
He set off for the county fair, paid the admission fee, and started wandering about the fair grounds looking for “Frank’s Dogs”. Rides, games, food booths, crafts booths, farmers’ produce booths, preserved goods… All manner of fun was there to be had.
Passing “Ryan’s Relish” and then “Marvin’s Mustard”, Graham spied “Frank’s Dogs” and made a beeline for it. The line was a bit longer than he really wanted to bother with, but, “What the hell,” he thought, “I’ll at least be able to say I tried one.”
Graham waited and waited. The looks of sheer joy on people’s faces as they left with their hotdogs only made him hungrier.
By the time he got to the booth, he was pretty hungry. “One hotdog, please,” Graham asked of the young woman behind the counter. “Here you go. That’ll be $15.” Graham’s jaw fell slack. “What the…” he stopped himself before screaming out several profanities, then figured that he’d waited so long that he might as well just pay the exorbitant price. “Here you go,” said Graham, handing the woman a $10 and $5 bill. Glancing up, he saw the menu consisted of only 1 thing: Hotdog $15.
Stepping aside for the next person in line to get to the counter, Graham looked for condiments, but found nothing at the booth. There was an odd pay machine though, and it looked like it accepted coins. Examining it closer, Graham saw the sign, “Napkins $4″. A glazed look overtook his face with his jaw still slack. “Damned if I’ll pay $4 for a napkin,” he said out loud. A few people turned and gave him scornful looks. Amongst the murmurings of the crowded line, Graham thought he could make out something like, “Pfft, cheapo!” and “If you can’t afford Frank’s dogs, don’t buy them.”
Walking back the way he’d come in with his hotdog from Frank in hand, Graham thought to himself that there was no way he was going to spend $15 on a stupid hotdog and not have some decent mustard on it at least. Some sauerkraut or onions would be nice, but mustard was a must!
Stepping up to the counter at “Marvin’s Mustard” he saw a plethora of mustards. Hot. Spicy. With horseradish. Creamy. All manner were available. Graham sampled a few, then settled on “Marvinelously Mild” and asked for a medium sized jar that would still fit in his pocket, even after a few pints of beer that he fully intended on having. After all, having spent $15 on a hotdog, what was another $6 for a nice sized jar of gourmet mustard?
The clerk at the counter handed him the jar, took his money, and seeing that he had a hotdog, offered him a flat, wooden popsicle stick to spoon out some. “We don’t have any plastic knives. I hope this is ok,” the clerk remarked. “Works for me,” replied Graham, “And where can I find a beer tent around here?” The clerk began to give Graham directions as Graham popped open the lid of the mustard, scooped out a generous portion, and slathered it on his hotdog. Putting the mustard jar in his jacket pocket and thanking the clerk, Graham turned around to go grab what would probably be more than a few beer.
Graham took a step towards the beer tent, and looked down at his hotdog, satisfied that he had finally gotten his “Frank’s Dog” after years of hearing people blather on about them.
No sooner had he tried to raise his delicious, but expensive, treat to his mouth, than someone grabbed his wrist, yanked it forward, and wiped the mustard off Graham’s hotdog.
“I’m sorry sir. But that’s not a regular hotdog. You’re not permitted to accessorize it with condiments that aren’t pre-approved by Frank.” Incredulously, Graham slowly looked up at a young man wearing a “Frank’s Dogs” shirt.
Graham protested, “But it’s my hotdog. And let go of my wrist!”
The man let go of his wrist and continued, “I see that you have some of Marvin’s Mustard there. Please note that you are in violation of the Frank’s Dog’s eatery agreement, and you must now eat your hotdog in front of me as you’ve already been found in violation. Any further attempt to put unauthorized condiments on this Frank’s Dog will force me to call the police.”
“Huh?” Graham couldn’t believe his ears.
The man in the Frank’s Dogs shirt continued, “Listen, just eat your Frank’s Dog. I don’t want to have to call the police, but I will if I have to.”
“The POLICE?!?”
“Yes. The police.”
“What for? I should call them on you!” Graham stood stunned in disbelief.
“Sir, you cannot simply use any condiment that you want on a Frank’s Dog. There are rules and policies that you must follow.”
“Policies?!?” Graham was simply paralyzed by what he heard, and hadn’t even noticed that once the man had scraped the mustard off from his hotdog, had also let go of his hand.
“Yes sir. You see, you don’t actually own that Frank’s Dog. It belongs to the Frank Company. You merely are paying for the limited right to eat it as it is delivered to you. No more. No less.” The man motioned with his hand for Graham to eat his hotdog.
“Wait a second… I paid $15 for this f***ing hotdog, and I’ll g*****n well eat it as I f***ing see fit!”
The man sighed, as though he’d heard that before. “Hey, I’m just doing my job here. This isn’t my fault. I need food on the table just as much as you do, and, well, this is doing it. I can only tell you what I’m allowed to tell you, and I will have to call the police, and they will put you in jail. Please just eat your Frank’s Dog.”
Graham heard the desperation in the man’s voice and eyes. He wasn’t kidding. “How the heck do I go to jail for putting mustard on this?”
The man sighed and responded, “The product is the exclusive intellectual property of Frank’s Dogs and subject to the terms and conditions of use. Any violation of the terms and conditions of use will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Graham’s eyes had now focused across the way at “Frank’s Dogs” where he saw another sign that was much larger than the menu, and began to wander towards it. The man followed along-side him. Stepping up to the edge of the counter on the left side of the line, he read the heading, “Terms and Conditions”. The text below was in a much smaller font, and barely readable. Graham grabbed the counter and leaned over it to see that the wide sign extended down to the grass on the ground.
Spinning around to face the man, Graham exclaimed, “You mean that this isn’t my hotdog?”
Sighing again, the man responded, “No. It does not belong to you. You have the right to eat it as explained by the ‘Terms and Conditions’ listed behind you. And amongst those terms and conditions are restrictions on the condiments that you can garnish your Frank’s Dog with.”
“It’s a hotdog!” Graham exclaimed. “Who cares?”
“Sir, it’s a Frank’s Dog, and special conditions apply. Please just eat your Frank’s Dog so that I’m not forced to call the police. The recipe and method of cooking are the proprietary property of Frank’s Dogs, and your purchase of a license to eat a Frank’s Dog is implicit acceptance of the Terms and Conditions.”
Graham looked blankly at him and asked, “So, I suppose you’ll be adding drinks with special terms and conditions as well?”
“Actually, we already have, it’s just that today we ran out of the kool-aid.”
********
I hope you liked the story, and more so, I hope it helped to cast some light on some current issues with intellectual property (copyright, trademark, patent, licensing, etc.). There are attacks on your freedom right now, and they are not significantly different than those in the story above. If you think that the above story is outlandish or an exaggeration, well, I really am sorry, but it isn’t. These laws already exist. Please stand up for your rights. Stand up for freedom.
The following is a short list of some excellent web sites where you can find out more about the issues:
http://www.fsf.org/
http://www.gnu.org/
http://torrentfreak.com/
http://www.techdirt.com/
http://www.eff.org/
Thank you,
Ryan
With Canada tumbling in a downward spiral into a police state, is it any wonder that students would give thug police a straight arm salute? The reference is obviously to the Nazi police state, and completely lost on some Jewish groups that apparently don’t understand that it happened before, and it can happen again, and it can happen here. (And I’m quite honestly sick of hearing people whine about how offended they are by everything and anything. Why not “always look on the bright side of life” instead of finding reasons to be offended?)
The Huffington Post reported in an article (source):
The appearance of so-called Nazi salutes at Quebec student protests was condemned by a Jewish-rights organization that asked people to refrain from using the hurtful gesture.
Some protesters have been using it repeatedly in recent weeks to mock Montreal police at demonstrations in which chanting crowds have referred to local officers as the “SS,” called them fascists and compared them to Nazi police for their alleged brutality.
…
While the gestures are meant as an insult to police — and not as any expression of support for Nazism — B’nai Brith Canada says that’s no excuse.
…
“We condemn, in the strongest of terms, this inexcusable display of hate by Quebec student protesters that has outraged the Jewish community and demonstrated just how low the level of public debate has fallen on the streets of Montreal,” CEO Frank Dimant said in the statement.
Ultimately, this boils down to some people being overly sensitive and in dire need of growing a bit thicker skin.
The Nazi holocaust of the European Jews is very, very far from unique in history. Anyone that would deny that obvious knows almost no history. But more than simply not being unique in history, it was hardly unique in the 20th century even.
Since the term “holocaust” has effectively been hijacked to specifically mean the “holocaust of the European Jews in Nazi Germany,” it’s pretty much a useless word now to mean what it originally meant. Well, perhaps unless you want to have people whining about how they feel insulted because you used a word correctly. The new term to replace “holocaust” is “democide” (source):
The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
In the 20th century 262,000,000 people fell victim to their own governments (source). In the 20th century, the Nazi regime ranks a distant 4th place behind China, the U.S.S.R., and Colonialism (source):
Is it then shameful to use “Stalin” or “Stalinist” or “Stazi” as a derogatory term? Hardly. I’ve never met a Russian that was remotely thin skinned about anything.
The democide of the Chinese people by Mao isn’t really well known, and as such, those comparisons are really never made, or rare if ever. So there’s not much to say about how that would be offensive, though given what I know from Chinese friends of mine, I rather doubt that they would be offended.
The atrocities inflicted on European Jews, homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped people, political dissidents, gypsies, and pretty much anyone else that the Nazis didn’t like, are similarly not unique. They weren’t unique in the 20th century, and they most certainly aren’t unique in history.
Where and when would you guess this picture was taken?
The picture was taken in 1865 in Andersonville, Georgia, USA (source). The man in the picture, a Union soldier, actually survived.
And the list goes on with countless cases of governments murdering their own people.
That B’nai Brith would attempt to censor students in Montreal is abhorrent. I say that because their analogy is pretty solid. It hasn’t come to the mass murder of Canadians, but the signs are clear. The rise of police states or tyrannies follows a fairly uniform path, and Canada is marching down that path just as the Police States of America are. This is hardly surprising though as Ottawa often seems to follow London and Washington D.C. like a lost puppy when it comes to laws, regulations, and foreign policy. Sure, they may not lead the charge to murder people in other countries, but they’re seldom far behind.
New legislation in Quebec has effectively made protesting illegal (source). A demonstration in May was declared illegal after a few Molotov cocktails were thrown (source), which effectively punishes everyone for the acts of a few people. Last time I checked, I wasn’t responsible for what you did, and vice versa. Police brutality is on the rise. One only need look at what is happening in Montreal (source - video). Apparently “safety during protests” now means teargas, batons, mace, running people down with cars, and kidnappings. The police in Canada basically have a license to murder people in cold blood. The video here shows a man crawling on his hands and knees after being shot, only to be shot a couple more times. When do Canadian police stop shooting? When they run out of bullets of course!
Freedom of information is being restricted more in Canada (source), making government less transparent and more secretive.
Bill C-30 in Canada is opening up the doors for Big Brother with utterly insane levels of privacy invasion. You can get a few questions answered about that abomination here.
Just which of those belongs in a peaceful, respectful, tolerant, and free society? Which of those doesn’t resemble the Nazis?
From the original article:
“The gesture is shocking because we are historians and we know that we’re not in the same historical or political context,” Licop said. “But the problem is that it’s a profound lack of respect to the victims of Nazism and the genocide of Jews during World War Two.”
That the political/historical context isn’t the same is trivial. One time and place is not another time and place. This is not information. It is trivial. However, the fact remains that the same kinds of things that happened in the 1920′s and 30′s are starting to happen in Canada. So yes. The analogy holds.
Again from the article:
Dimant, of B’nai Brith, put it even more bluntly.
“We’re talking about the Montreal police force, we’re not talking about Nazis here,” he said in an interview. “And to try to make any comparison makes a mockery of the Holocaust.”
Which is entirely missing the point. If anything Dimant is making a mockery of those deaths by refusing to allow them to be remembered as a warning for the future. Dimant is effectively imprisoning the memory in the past and condemning it to obscurity by limiting the meaning of those deaths to be purely isolated to that single time and place. How could anyone be more disrespectful of the victims of the most famous democide in history than by refusing to recognize that their deaths could serve as a warning for future generations?
Again from the article:
Audrey Licop, spokeswoman for The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, says the fascist greeting was used by the Nazis in the 1930s and was mandatory for citizens in Nazi Germany.
And we should all salute August Landmesser:
Again from the article:
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs says the decision to use the Hitler salute, in the Montreal protests, is not an act of hatred — just one of ignorance.
“These are clearly not support for Nazism or intended as anti-Semitic displays,” said spokesman David Ouellette.
“It’s much more a function of the ignorance about history and the over-heated rhetoric that has plagued the current crisis in Quebec.”
How is it ignorant to recognize the signs of a rising tyranny and to connect the dots? Again, this is entirely missing the point. Canada is on the path to tyranny, just as the US and many other countries are, and to point that out is very far from disrespecting the victims of the Nazi holocaust. If anything, it is a tribute. Their deaths are not forgotten. The lessons of the past are not forgotten. This is a tribute to them!
The sad fact is, Canada is heading full steam down the path of tyranny. The students protesting in Montreal can see it. B’nai Brith apparently can’t.
What those that condemn the students for effectively amounts to saying, “You’re not remembering the dead the way we want you to remember the dead, so you’re disrespectful and offensive.”
I wonder if anyone finds that offensive?
The holocaust wasn’t unique by any means. It has simply been studied more than other instances of democide. We honour the dead by remembering them, and working to avoid their fates. Certainly, we honour the victims of the Nazi holocaust far more than the other 97% of victims of democide in the 20th century, all 262,000,000 of them. Perhaps we should reflect on the fates of those people as well. They were no less human than you or me.
And in case you’re curious, I’m not Jewish, but my ancestors on both my parents’ sides were targeted for genocide. So don’t tell me about how I don’t understand what it’s like to have my ancestors murdered. I fully understand what it is to have ancestors targeted for extinction. I just don’t dwell on it. And don’t tell me how I don’t understand what it’s like to be discriminated against. I know full well from first hand experience there.
Cheers,
Ryan
This series of articles on fractional reserve banking started with an introduction to the mechanics of fractional reserve banking. The important points were:
We then looked at one perspective on the difference between money and wealth, and defined money as an instrument to facilitate trade and commerce.
Part 3 accelerated by explaining the exact mechanism by which fractional reserve banking works, and exposed it for the fraud that it is. It illustrated that by taking advantage of float time, in the same way as check kiting, fractional reserve banking is a temporal pyramid scheme.
If you haven’t already, download the Frackin’ Reserve simulator program, visit the web edition page, or click here for a pop-up with the web edition.
But if you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit. — Josiah Stamp
In Part 1 we looked at the mechanics of fractional reserve banking. In Part 2, we looked at money vs. wealth. Part 3 looked at how and why fractional reserve banking is fraudulent, and illustrated how it is structured like a pyramid scheme. Part 4 looked at 2 basic ways in which the system falls apart, either through a run on the banks, or the banks forcing depressions on the people and then stealing their wealth. Here in Part 5, we look at compound interest and how it is an invisible form of slavery.
In addition to simulating fractional reserve banking, the Frackin’ Reserve program also illustrates simple and compound interest. Simple interest is calculated by setting the interest periods to 1, and the compounded method to "Annually". Setting "Compounded" to any other option shows compounded interest, the formula for which is:
Where:
Amount = the final amount to calculate
Principal = the initial, borrowed principal
Rate = the interest rate as a decimal (not a percentage)
Periods = the number of times to calculate the compounded interest in for the term (e.g. 12 for a term of 1 year when compounding monthly, or 365 if compounding daily)
Term = the total length of time for the loan in years
While Thomas Edison may have pioneered douchebaggery, he was at least smart enough to know just how sinister interest was. And this is another predatory hallmark of fractional reserve banking.
