MK – Page 27 – iftttwall

The 1% Has Started to Embrace Bitcoin – Why It Matters

Other than widespread fascination over its meteoric price rise, much of the discussion around Bitcoin in 2017 has revolved around questions over the future direction of the protocol, most specifically the highly charged scaling debate and the implementation of SegWit. With the forthcoming fight over the 2x part of SegWit2x, the blocksize issue remains unsettled and the community will remain firmly focused on this issue over the coming months, as it should.

While I have my own opinions on the subject (I’m against forcing a blocksize increase just because some companies agreed to it), I don’t spend enough time on Bitcoin to consider myself any sort of authority on the matter. Therefore, I pretty much keep my mouth shut and let people who spend all their time on the topic have at it. That said, when I feel I have something to add to the Bitcoin conversation I certainly don’t shy away, which is what inspired today’s post.

A headline that caught my attention yesterday was the following published by CNBC: Real Estate Project in Dubai to be the ‘First Major Development Where You Can Purchase in Bitcoin’. Upon reading the article, it certainly appears the move is in large part a marketing gimmick (a smart one), but I don’t think it’s just that. I believe those involved in the development genuinely find Bitcoin interesting and want to support it, which is consistent with a significant conclusion I’ve arrived at based on many other data points. 2017 has been the year when an increasing portion of the 1% finally started to embrace Bitcoin. Not a huge percentage by any means, but certainly enough to affect the price. We can call them the early(ish) adopters of the wealthy class. Specifically, the developers of this real estate project highlight the fact that adoption of Bitcoin amongst people with significant financial resources is happening faster than many realize. So why does this matter?

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The Political Environment I Want to See

Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

– Edward Snowden

Today’s post will focus on the political environment I’d like to see, not in my ideal fantasy world, but within the context of the system we have today.

As things stand, we’re being bombarded relentlessly about how divided we are as a people and how these divisions have become insurmountable. By constantly focusing on genuinely divisive social issues, the media creates a self-fulfilling prophesy, which merely serves to divide us further. Allowing ourselves to be pitted against one another redirects much of our political energy, and ensures we will never unite and face the real existential threats to the nation.

The truth of the matter is this. We as Americans have a legacy that consists of certain key principles enshrined in our Constitution. The most important of these are the first ten amendments to our founding document, known as the Bill of Rights. These simple yet timeless unalienable rights of U.S. citizens informs us that we have certain liberties that should never be infringed upon no matter what emotional state the public or politicians happen to be in at any given moment. They protect us not just from the government, but also from the periodic unrestrained, authoritarian passions of each other.

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Why Aren’t We Discussing the Things We Agree On?

The political environment since Trump’s election seems to get worse and worse by the day, as much of the American public becomes increasingly divided, embittered and downright insane. People across the political spectrum are enthusiastically fueling this destructive behavior in their varied quests to show how right they are and how hopelessly wrong everyone else is. Meanwhile, those who truly wield power in our society continue to laugh all the way to the bank.

Earlier today, I came across a prescient and powerful article written by Pamela B. Paresky in Psychology Today titled, Angry About the Election?

Although the piece was composed only a few weeks after the 2016 election, the writing was already on the wall and she identified and warned about the dangerous direction we were headed in. Here are a few choice excerpts:

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Liberty Links 9/2/17

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Must Reads

Time to Give Up on Identity Politics (This starts off slow, but it’s one of the best articles I’ve ever read on why identity politics is poison, Salon)

The Photos the U.S. and Saudi Arabia Don’t Want You to See (The New York Times)

How to Distinguish Between Antifa, White Supremacists, and Black Lives Matter (Really important article, The Atlantic)

What Is to Be Done? (Fantastic article by Barrett Brown, Motherboard)

Telecoms Knew About Spying Loophole for Decades, Did Nothing (The Daily Beast)

Nurse Alex Wubbels Refused (This woman is a hero, Simple Justice Blog)

I Criticized Google. It Got Me Fired. That’s How Corporate Power Works. (Barry Lynn writing in The Washington Post, support this guy)

The Hypocrisy of Antifa (Excellent piece by Jonathan Turley, The Hill)

The Far Right is Losing Its Ability to Speak Freely Online. Should the Left Defend It? (The Guardian)

The Great Pot Monopoly Mystery (Hard to know how much of this is true, but interesting, GQ)

U.S. Politics

See More Links »

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Antifa is Playing Right Into the Hands of a Burgeoning Police State

Many people involved in politics swear by the notion that “the ends justify the means,” which is typically the sign of a self-serving actor attempting to justify questionable if not downright evil action in order to get what he or she wants. While pursuit of “the greater good” is often put up for public consumption, the driving force behind this sort of action is almost always personal gain of some sort. This is what most politicians do for a living, which is why they are justifiably hated by the general public.

The moment you justify one very wrong action to achieve a noble goal, what’s to stop you from next even more unethical action, or the next and the next? Nothing. This is what’s so dangerous about going down such a path. Indeed, those who fight monsters often end up becoming the exact thing they claim to be fighting. The world doesn’t benefit from this, only the person who has gained power as a result does, at least superficially. Ultimately, even that person doesn’t benefit when all is said and done. A person who attains their goal by sacrificing principles is a tormented, miserable person. They may seem to “have it all” from the outside, but deep down they hate themselves and what they’ve become. There is no peace. I believe karma eventually catches up to everybody one way or the other.

– From May’s post: Do Ends Justify the Means?

One of the primary motivating factors that drove me to start writing publicly on a daily basis, was a recognition that the chaos and cultural lack of cohesion resulting from the thievery of the financial crisis and the increasingly corrupt, socioeconomic paradigm we live under would provide the pretext for “the state,” whether governed by a Democrat or Republican, to further dismantle civil liberties and usher in a country increasingly defined by less freedom. This was a motivating concern under Obama and it remains a motivating concern under Trump.

As I’ve warned repeatedly over the years, at some point the “war on terror” would be brought home to the good ol’ USA, with all enemies suddenly being labeled domestic terrorists. This is happening right now, thanks in large part to all the media hysteria about antifa and neo-Nazis.

Personally, I try to keep things simple and think it’d be wise if others did did the same for the sake of our future. I believe offensive violence is almost never justified, while self-defense almost always is. The purported objective of any group is irrelevant. The worst tyrants in the world always claim to be working for “the people” as they lock people up in gulags or concentration camps to torture and kill them. Ends don’t justify the means. The means are everything.

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Is the CIA Writing Legislation for the U.S. Congress?

Today I want to highlight a troubling bill moving through Congress that seems inspired by a thuggish, authoritarian speech given earlier this year by CIA head Mike Pompeo.

I found that speech so disturbing at the time, I wrote an entire piece taking it apart. Below is an excerpt from that talk which is relevant to this piece:

WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.

It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.

Pompeo said that in April. Fast forward a few months, and let’s take a look at what the U.S. Senate is up to.

From The Daily Beast:

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Google Has Become a Major Threat to Democracy in America

About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”

Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

When Google was founded in 1998, it famously committed itself to the motto: “Don’t be evil.” It appears that Google may have lost sight of what being evil means, in the way that most monarchs do: Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent. As Lord Acton famously said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.” Those with too much power cannot help but be evil. Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony.

In recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views. And as the New York Times recently reported, it has become invested in building curriculum for our public schools, and has created political strategy to get schools to adopt its products.

It is time to call out Google for what it is: a monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas.

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach. We, as citizens, must respond in two ways. First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional antimonopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

– From Zephyr Teachout’s powerful arcticle: Google Is Coming After Critics in Academia and Journalism. It’s Time to Stop Them.

The mask has finally come off Google’s face, and what lurks underneath looks pretty evil.

2017 has represented a coming out party of sorts for Google and the control-freaks who run it. The company’s response to the James Damore controversy made it crystal clear that executives at Google are far more interested in shoving their particular worldview down the throats of the public, versus encouraging vibrant and lively debate. This is not a good look for the dominant search engine.

The creeping evilness of Google has been obvious for quite some time, but this troubling reality has only recently started getting the attention it deserves. The worst authoritarian impulses exhibited at the company appear to emanate from Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, whose actions consistently seem to come from a very dark and unconscious place.

Today’s piece focuses on the breaking news that an important initiative known as Open Markets, housed within the think tank New America Foundation, has been booted from the think tank after major donor Google complained about its anti-monopoly stance. Open Markets was led by a man named Barry Lynn, who all of you should become familiar with.

The Huffington Post profiled him late last year. Here’s some of what we learned:

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Ivy League Professors Issue Rallying Cry to Students – ‘Think for Yourself’

There are plenty of unconscious humans, many of whom happen to inhabit positions of great wealth and power, committing all sorts of horrible deeds to their fellow humans on a daily basis. I’ve spent much of the past five years highlighting such behavior, but we’ve arrived at a point where it’s time to give increased attention to the multitude of conscious, deeply caring people trying to make a positive difference within our current very challenging and hostile environment.

As I was thinking about what to write about today, a recent comment posted to last Thursday’s post, Why Am I Doing This?, really connected with me. I have reposted it in full below.

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Stop Asking the Federal Government to Label Groups You Dislike ‘Terrorists’

This past weekend, my brother and his girlfriend came out to visit and it once again reminded me of what really matters in life. I’ve noticed that having friends and family in town forces someone like me to disconnect from the 24/7 news cycle more than usual, which I always find to be extraordinarily healthy.

On the few occasions that I checked in with Twitter, it seemed as if half the stream was yelling hysterically about antifa and the other half was fear-mongering about neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Both groups seemed utterly deranged and intent on fostering the very destructive environment they claim to be fighting. As I’ve made clear since I started writing many years ago, I’m completely against violent solutions to our problems. It doesn’t make a difference to me whether that violence comes from insecure white dudes with swastika tattoos, or cowardly “anti-facsists” dressed up like video game ninja characters assaulting people. Why does it seems so difficult for people to just condemn both groups for the unconscious goons they are without picking a side.

One especially concerning thing I’ve noticed recently, is a push by many of those who would self-identify on the “right” end of the political spectrum for the government to identify antifa as a terrorist group. I couldn’t think of a more idiotic strategy if I tried — unless your goal is to give Trump, or whoever comes next, an excuse to further entrench and institutionalize our already existing and unconstitutional surveillance state. As I noted on Twitter:

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