War On Cash Intensifies: Citibank To Stop Accepting Cash At Some Branches

Less than a week after India’s surprise move to scrap its highest denomination cash notes, another front in the War on Cash has intensified down under in Australia.

Yesterday, banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia’s $100 and $50 bills would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.”

(How convenient that a bank would propose something that’s good for banks!)

This isn’t the first time that the financial establishment has pushed for a cashless society in Australia (or anywhere else).

China’s Secret Plan to Control the Internet | China Uncensored

Hi, welcome to China Uncensored, I’m your host Chris Chappell.

The Internet! Some of you watching may not have even been alive at a time when the Internet wasn’t everywhere. But I remember such a time. When computers were mysterious novelties, completely misunderstood by popular media.

Electric Dreams was popular, right? Anyway, the world has now changed in weird, wild ways. Because Internet.

The War on Cash Is a War on Your Freedom to Opt Out

Cash is a proxy for the freedom to maintain some privacy in an era of Big Brother repression, surveillance and the suppression of dissent.

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Our first question should be: just how big a share of our financial universe is cash? The answer is: vanishingly small. Look at this chart of total credit in the U.S. economy–$63 trillion–and total cash: $1.45 trillion. Cash is the thin red line at the bottom of the chart–it barely registers.

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If cash is such a small share of money and assets, why are governments so keen to ban cash?

The Cold War Never Ended

It’s true the Cold War never ended. It’s technically the third world war and a new phase of it. It’s also one of the Origins of the Fourth World War. It’s sadly what most Americans don’t know and what most Americans don’t want to hear. Communism did not die simply because a wall was torn down in Berlin, but the visual effect psychologically convinced hundreds of millions.

The author of this article, who’s a bit late in the game, would benefit from decades of JR Nyquist analysis:

JR Nyquist Financial Sense Online archive

JR Nyquist website

 

A lot of conservatives have expressed shock and disorientation at the revival of enthusiasm for socialism, not to mention the shattering of the consensus for free trade, low taxes, open markets, freedom of expression, and so forth. It is clear—and I wrote a long memo about this at AEI about five years ago that I cannot now find—that we all made a major mistake in the early 1990s when the Cold War ended in thinking that the triumph of free markets and liberal democracy was permanent. (Anyone remember The End of History?)

Poland Is Key to a Safe Europe, and Putin Knows It

Good news in Eastern Europe is hard to come by these days with Russian President Vladimir Putin playing the bully in Ukraine and elsewhere, along with tens of thousands of fleeing Syrians and other Muslims seeking refuge in Europe.

But I can report that an organization of young conservative Poles, committed to economic freedom and a robust civil society, is working tirelessly to transform ideas into action, much as the conservative Young Americans for Freedom did in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s through its support of limited government and free enterprise and political leaders like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

These young Poles call themselves Students for the Republic of Poland.

The Resurrection of Marx – End of Britain?

Jeremy Corbyn, the infamous Karl Marx admirer, has been elected UK opposition Labour leader.  Corbyn is really communist who professes an admiration for Karl Marx. He is the new face of Britain’s opposition Labour party which will help to make a British EU exit more likely. The Marxist sophistry is rob anyone who has more. They never understand that we all provide our piece of the economy that creates the whole. Many are starting to realize that this could be the downturn for Britain.

This Time It Is Different

What’s crucial to also understand here is that the United States is not a democracy anymore. America had left democracy and capitalism decades ago through a slow transition that has converted itself into a socialist state. Most people never noticed because they were too busy watching Sunday NFL games or following the Kardashians.

In effect, when people claim democracy and capitalism has failed, they are dead wrong. If America is not a democratic country anymore, then democracy could not have been what failed.

What has failed is socialism — and America is paying the ultimate price for transitioning to it. This ultimate price is usually what erases empires.

 

 

For years, I have warned that we will face our worst nightmare – the collapse of socialism. In the death throes of this abomination that even the Ten Commandments listed as a serious sin, equal to “thou shalt not kill”, government will become the ugly beast that will devour society to retain power. Of course, they will never see themselves that way, but they will justify in their minds that stripping us of our freedom, rights, privileges, and immunities, is necessary to maintain socialism for the good of the people.

We are running out of other peoples’ money, as Margaret Thatcher warned. Karl Marx, who sought to change society by sheer force, set all this in motion. What has taken place is really scary, for indeed they have altered society far more than anyone dares to ponder.

1 year from now, freedom dies worldwide

After the usual impeccably choreographed all-night “negotiation,” delegates of almost 200 nations at the latest annual U.N. climate yak-fest – this time in Lima, Peru – reached the usual agreement not to agree on anything except that the process by which they profit must continue.

Not one delegate made any mention of the fact that every single one of the mad scientists’ predictions about the global warming and consequent planetary doom has failed to happen.

Notwithstanding record increases in CO2 concentration, global temperature has stubbornly failed to rise at all for 18 years, two months and counting.

The rate of warming in the 25 years since the first report on the subject in 1990 by the U.N.’s climate panel has been less than half what its useless computer models then predicted.

Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US

An eerie and well-laid out article from 2006 that warrants attention. What this article doesn’t take into account is that the USSR underwent a controlled and planned strategic collapse to dupe the West into thinking that it was going to become democratic and full of freedom, no longer a threat. As explained by Anatoliy Golitsyn, America has been sold New Lies for Old the entire time and fell for the Perestroika Deception. Slide 23 hints at it, but misses the mark. Over 92% of Golitsyn’s predictions came true, yet alarmingly received very little attention.

While the undertones of the article may seem pro-Soviet or Communist to some in an ‘America vs Russia’ framework, it remains objective in illustrating the final point(s) in principal of how the USSR panned out and how America might pan out. It doesn’t take into account

Most of the article will be posted here for documentation purposes, the remaining portions can be found on the source link.

 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.

How A Country Dies

Those living during the decline of Rome were likely unaware that anything was happening. The decline took over a couple of hundred years. Anyone living during the decline only saw a small part of what was happening and likely never noticed it as anything other than ordinary.

Countries don’t have genetically determined life spans. Nor do they die quickly, unless the cataclysm of some great war does them in. Even in such extreme cases, there are usually warning signs, which are more obvious in hindsight than at the time.

Few citizens of a dying nation recognize the signs. Most are too busy trying to live their lives, sometimes not an easy task.  If death occupies their mind, it is with respect to themselves, a relative or a friend. Most cannot conceive of the death of a nation.

Xi Jinping may be more ambitious than Mao: Lee Teng-hui

China’s president, Xi Jinping, may be even more ambitious than the country’s late founder Mao Zedong when it comes to challenging the United States for global leadership, Taiwan’s first directly elected president said Thursday.

“Do you really believe Xi wants to democratize?” Lee Teng-hui asked rhetorically in response to a student from Soochow University in Taipei who asked whether Taiwan would consider unification with the mainland if Beijing underwent political reforms.

What Xi wants is more power and influence over world affairs, Lee said, and aims to replace the US dollar with the renminbi as the global trade settlement currency.

The United States of Decline

America is unraveling at a stunning speed and to a staggering degree. This decline is breathtaking, and the prognosis is dim.

For starters, Obama now rules by decree. Reportedly for the 27th time, he has changed the rules of Obamacare singlehandedly, with neither congressional approval nor even ceremonial resolutions to limit his actions. Obama needs no such frivolities.

“That’s the good thing about being president,” Obama joked on February 10. “I can do whatever I want.” In an especially bitter irony, Obama uttered these despicable words while guiding French president François Hollande through Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson — a key architect of America’s foundation of limited government.

Defense Department guide calls Founding Fathers ‘extremist’

A Department of Defense teaching guide meant to fight extremism advises students that rather than “dressing in sheets” modern-day radicals “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place,” and describes 18th-century American patriots seeking freedom from the British as belonging to “extremist ideologies.”

The guide comes from documents obtained by Judicial Watch and is authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a DoD-funded diversity training center.

Open letter to the American people: We Soviet emigres have already seen this movie

Am I to believe that I have wasted forty years of my life in this country trying to explain the nature of dictatorship and what it meant to have been born and lived in Stalin’s paradise the first half of my life?

Have I failed to pass on to you my first-hand knowledge of the misery of millions of those gullible, trusting Russian people, who fell prey to the fiery, well-rehearsed speeches of those eloquent Marxist social-revolutionaries, who promised fraternity, equal rights, free medicine, free education for all, good life, and sharing the wealth of the rich only to find themselves trapped for life in that socialist, inhuman, criminal “experiment.” What did the Russians get instead? Lies, empty promises, high unemployment, and more lies.

Sounds familliar?

What Keeps the Free Market Free?

If you want to understand the basis for freedom and the free market then you should listen to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s Oct. 5, 2011 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to Scalia, our freedom is secured by way of the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, he says, we aren’t adequately passing along the secret of the Constitution to the next generation. Scalia frequently meets with students from the best law schools and asks them, “How many of you have read the Federalist Papers?” Never more than about 5 percent raise their hands. About this, Scalia says, “That is very sad…. Here is a document that says what the Framers thought they were doing. It is such a profound exposition of political science … yet we have raised a generation of Americans who are not familiar with it.”

Scalia goes on to ask why America is a free country and what sets it apart. According to Scalia, most people will say that the Bill of Rights is the basis of our freedom. Scalia shook his head, “If you think that a Bill of Rights is what sets us apart you’re crazy. Every banana republic in the world has a Bill of Rights. Every president-for-life has a Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights … of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was much better than ours.” Scalia reminded his listeners that a Bill of Rights is merely “words on paper, what our Framers would have called a ‘parchment guarantee.’ And the reason is that the real Constitution [is a structure] … and a sound constitution has a sound structure…. The constitution of the Soviet Union did not prevent the concentration of power in one person or in one party. And when that happens the game is over….”

“The real key,” said Scalia, “is separation of powers.” The system was built for gridlock, and that’s a good thing. According to Scalia, America is not about democracy. In fact, the Framers didn’t like democracy. Checks and balances was what really mattered to them. Unchecked power could not be permitted. Such power tends toward corruption. This ancient principle was best stated by Lord Acton in 1887, who famously wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He pointed to the murderous actions of English monarchs, and one might point to a larger history in which powerful men and women have killed and plundered without being held accountable.

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Critics of the U.S. Constitution say it is an instrument of class oppression – made by the rich to the disadvantage of the poor. They deny the reality of separate powers under the Constitution. For them, the inequalities of the market economy must be corrected by government intervention. A century ago Le Bon wrote of the difficulties involved in “reconciling Democratic equalization with natural inequalities.” As Le Bon pointed out, “Nature does not know such a thing as equality. She distributes unevenly genius, beauty, health, vigor, intelligence, and all the qualities which confer on their possessors a superiority over their fellows.” When a politician pretends to oppose the inequalities of nature, he proves to be a special kind of usurper – personifying arrogance in search of boundless power.

Logically, the establishment of universal equality would first require the establishment of a universal tyranny (a.k.a., the dictatorship of the proletariat). A formula for doing all this was worked out in the nineteenth century, and was the program of Karl Marx. Le Bon warned that socialism might indeed “establish equality for a time by rigorously eliminating all superior individuals.” He also foresaw the decline of any nation that followed this path (i.e., see the Soviet Union). Such a society would aim at eliminating all risk, speculation and initiative. These stimulants of human activity being suppressed, no progress would be possible. According to Le Bon, “Men would merely have established that equality in poverty desired by the jealousy and envy of a host of mediocre minds.”

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It is doubtful that many people today understand the basis for our economic freedom. Many students are not properly educated today, as Justice Scalia testified. Political forces are at work aiming at a fundamental re-interpretation of the Constitution, and these forces dominate education and the media. The time may not be far off when we entirely forget the secret of our prosperity along with the secret of liberty.

Full article: What Keeps the Free Market Free? (JR Nyquist)