Guest Post by Simon Black
Two decades ago, General Tommy Franks– commander of the original US invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001– was asked his opinion about a civilian bureaucrat named Doug Feith.
Feith was an academic policy wonk who, despite never having served in the military, was a staunch warmonger who was happy for other people to go fight and die in foreign lands.
General Franks was a straight-talking Texan who wasted no words in his opinion that Feith was “the dumbest fucking guy on the planet.”
Over the years of this publication, I have, from time to time, submitted some candidates for what I call the ‘Tommy Franks Award’.
As you can imagine there’s pretty stiff competition for the dumbest f’ing person on the planet, especially these days. But I feel especially compelled right now to nominate the World Economic Forum.
Traditionally the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland has been a pageant of wealth and power.
If you’re there, you’ve made it… at least in the eyes of the global elite; it’s nothing but billionaires and politicians. And in the past, the event was typically just photo ops and pointless speeches.
But lately the World Economic Forum has been much more active in cranking out horrifically stupid policy ideas.
For example, the Forum wants human beings (i.e. us peasants) to be conditioned to eat WEEDS and insects in order to save the planet.
The Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab also penned a book last year entitled Covid 19: The Great Reset, which pushes for a radical agenda involving Green New Deals, strict people controls, “solidarity” taxes, debt defaults, and more.
As Schwab announced last year alongside Prince Charles (who is totally relevant with respect to global economic matters),
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. . . In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
They’re not even hiding their agenda– they’re boldly stating that they want to ‘reset’ the economic system that is responsible for the greatest amount of prosperity that has ever existed in the history of the world.
And over the next few days, the World Economic Forum is unveiling more about its Great Reset initiative.
Yesterday they held a live virtual panel entitled “Resetting Digital Currencies”. And, naturally they sought out the finest ‘experts’ in cryptocurrency, including:
– The CEO of Western Union, a company whose last financial innovation was when they put the Pony Express out of business in 1861;
– The Governor of the Bank of England, a central bank whose entire existence is the complete opposite of the decentralized cryptocurrency ethos; and
– Her Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. Yes I’m serious.
Talk about an EXPERT panel!
Honestly it was pretty astonishing to watch. The Queen started off with a completely incomprehensible rant about how the Dutch guilder was the original ‘stablecoin’ because it held its value for so long.
This is just totally inaccurate from a historical perspective; there were plenty of other stable reserve currencies long before Holland even existed. But I’ll let that one slide.
Later, the panel dove into the real meat of their argument: cryptocurrencies are bad because poor people in Africa can’t use them.
The Queen once again piped up, stating that “digital currencies [depend] on smartphones”, and because most people in Africa still have lower grade ‘feature phones’, they don’t have the opportunity to transact with crypto.
Wrong again!
Feature phones have been able to store and transact Bitcoin and other currencies for at least SEVEN years.
And open source wallets like Electron Cash have been available for even the most basic feature phones since mid-2018.
The Queen and her friends are totally wrong. Just about everyone in the world can use crypto.
But they continue to repeat these incorrect statements– I believe the technical term is “baseless assertions”. They claim that crypto is not “inclusive”, which is code for ‘social justice’.
That’s total nonsense. Aside from gold and silver, crypto is the most inclusive asset class in world history. Almost anyone can own it.
What’s not inclusive is the traditional financial system; there’s over 1.7 billion people worldwide who can’t access bank accounts or basic financial services– ironically, according to the World Economic Forum!
Furthermore, if they really care about ‘inclusive finance’, traditional currencies are totally not inclusive.
US Dollars, for example, are exclusive to the United States, a handful of dollarized countries, plus governments, wealthy individuals, and big corporations.
It’s not like some poor person in Africa has regular access to dollars. They’re at the mercy of their local currency, and however much the government wants to inflate it.
And in addition to manipulation and inflation, traditional currencies can also be subject to capital controls. Nothing about this is ‘inclusive’.
Nevertheless, the World Economic Forum elitists continue to repeat their baseless assertions about cryptocurrency.
In reality, they’re terrified of it, because cryptocurrency represents a rejection of the system that they control.
People aren’t stupid, they know they’ve been betrayed.
Corporations have betrayed them by going completely woke. Politicians have betrayed them by abandoning individual liberty and fiscal restraint. The media has betrayed them with its lack of truth and transparency. Tech companies have betrayed them through blatant censorship.
Trust is at an all time low. So why should anyone have any trust in the currency or financial system?
Crypto is a natural alternative for anyone who’s fed up with the people who pull the strings.
This isn’t about price… or even a single currency; Bitcoin, for example, has a number of flaws, though there are plenty of other promising options that still present substantial upside potential.
This is really about the concept of decentralization: taking power away from people who have constantly abused it, and redistributing that power freely across the market.
Some of the greatest advances in human civilization, from the Reformation in the 1500s, to the early days of the Internet, were based on decentralization.
But these people stand for the opposite. They love centralization and concentration of power… especially when they’re the ones in power.
Now they want to tell us what currencies we can/cannot use, which weeds we should be conditioned to eat, and how we should ‘reset’ capitalism.
Perhaps it’s the World Economic Forum that requires a Great Reset.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
The sad fact that government authorized/mandated fiat currencies around the world and throughout history are a pathetic scam does NOT mean that crypto-currencies are not also a pathetic scam.
Remember that a fundamentally solid, dependable, durable medium of exchange good for preserving wealth and ensuring social stability is not goal of any of these mutts. One way or another, that want all you have and all you will ever earn. They want you to give it to them voluntarily. They are not your friends.
I missed your solution in that brilliant diatribe.
Otto, I did not quote it, but the solution is very old. Attributed to some Jew, over in Jerusalem. Words to the effect of “Render unto Casar what is Caesar’s…”. I take that as a call to remember what is really and eternally important, and what is not and to practice that meaningful differentiation in my life. Nothing you can trade for with any currency on earth has irreducible, eternal value.
Take the words of that guy in Jerusalem to heart, and you will have your solution. Others surely have solutions as well.
The solution is to take the so-called “Security Strip” (gales of suppressed laughter in Davos) in money, and instead of making it out of Mylar (tsunamis of laughter in Davos), making it out of gold. Or silver. (gasps of shock in Davos). But that would be too simple, and simple is forbidden to the people who bring you 5,000 page bills in the dead of night and ram them down your throat in Congress.
Yeah, tell me who has all the gold?
I’ve got an entry for the “dumbest fucking guy on the planet”: Stanley McChrystal. This prick stopped sucking MIC teat just long enough to call 74 million wonderful (if naive) Trump voters racists. This, from a man who a few years before was in Afghanistan killing innocent and nearly defenceless brown people. Oh, and by the way-he lost.
He got a little outside his lane and needed a gentle reminder, he seems back on track now with statements like that.
A little outside his lane by insulting his Commander in Chief in an obscenity-laced comment to a Rolling tone reporter- as if it would not be repeated. That does indeed qualify as the DFGOTP(and he is quite lucky he did not 1. face a curt martial, and 2. lose his military pension.
Simon should stick to things he understands. ALL cryptocurrencies hang their security and decentralization “hat” on blockchain.
Just an FYI, blockchain was discovered/developed in the late 80’s / early 90’s by the NSA. There was a push to develop true random number generation in order to generate crypto keys. (A little background here, no number generation is TRULY random. After a long enough timeframe a pattern WILL emerge.) This blockchain was then “leaked” to the “public” and whaddayaknow cryptocurrencies were developed on technology developed by a fictitious Satoshi Nakamoto.
If you think that Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency using blockchain is “secure”, then I got some encrypted bridges to nowhere to sell ya’. If and when it becomes advantageous for GovCo to pull the plug on cryptocurrencies, they will do it. All at once.
Oh and one last thing. If something looks like a commodity and acts like a commodity….it’s NOT A CURRENCY.
Just Sayin’
But you still have a bank account right?
Huh?
If you have safe encryption, the inventive ingenuity required to come up with the “blockchain” is close to zero.
In fact, I thought up something similar when once wondering over the benefits of using WORM (write-once) media in backups. They are mostly pointless, because although you cannot change the WORM media anymore once written, what keeps you from making an exact copy onto another (new) WORM except changing a few bytes you want to falsify, then replacing the original WORM media?
So you would need to create checksums (CRC) right after finalization of each written WORM, and either store those at a higher authority (where you couldn’t change them afterwards, or at least not without an audit trail); or you would need to write older WORM checksum onto your newest WORM to at least ensure no in-the-middle retroactive changes can be done by anyone.
Am I a genius? No.
When Obama picked Biden as VP, I told people he picked the dumbest white man he could find. So dumb that people wouldn’t assassinate him. Don’t worry some kind of fed coin or Chinese crypto is coming our way. Another way to limit your freedom and privacy.
If you want to trade your labor and stuff for imaginary electronic currency , go ahead.
And you dont? Something tells me you do.
They, our Globalist masters upchucked their Crypto edict yesterday.
You will play.
It’s rushed and poorly conceived, we bear witness to a rare inflection point in which they are playing catch up.
An opportunity exists for decentralization, think about that for a minute.
You are on a pithy roll with this thread, Otto.
Practicing to be like Stucky.
EVERY SINGLE THING put out by IT Tech enables centralized control. You go on and believe that cryptocurrency represents “decentralization”. I’m here to tell you that Bitcoin is about as decentralized as Facebook and Twitter.
Not gonna argue the point with you but just so you know I’ve by in IT and Cybersecurity for almost 40 years. I MIGHT know just a little bit about it.
Also, I’m not ANTI cryptocurrency. I’m ANTI what it’s being represented as. It’s NOT a currency and it will NEVER be one. Just take a look how fast GovCo. took down the dark-web “masterminds” and confiscated their “digital currency”, when they started infringing on GovCo’s monopolies of drugs and guns.
Just Sayin’
You know there are 10000 crypto’s right. Would you consider that decentralized?
I do.
Should I be free to use whichever I prefer, or should I be forced to use the plantation scrip dejour?
Decent article detailing how that lame panel is wrong in details.
But the real reason cryptocurrencies – bitcoin etc aren’t a solution is because transaction capacity and costs are low and high, respectively.
Cash transaction capacity: infinite. Visa transaction capacity: 60K/second. Bitcoin transaction capacity: 7/second.
Cash transaction cost: zero. Visa transaction cost: 2%. Bitcoin transaction cost: $7.78. Yes, you read this correctly: at current bitcoin price, the actual cost for each bitcoin block processing is $7.78. This is what is fiat paid to the bitcoin miners to do their work (and is how the bitcoin pool increases from 18M now to the design limit of 21M).
Bitcoin is not for McDonalds.
That is what XRP is for or Stellar or McCoin when it comes out.
I doubt Simon has much of his “wealth” in cryptocurrnecy? I seem to recall his own real property in various countries, real physical land and producing assets are safer. Nothing is fool proof as those with force can always take it.
At some point in the near future there will be technology that would obsolete cryptocurrency encryption. That and entry/exit nodes mean that these “currencies” were never functional for their purpose.