This is yet another enlightening article, Jordan, as you highlight yet another way that psychopaths are trying to completely enslave humanity.
But can anyone here help to alleviate my concern that, if I invest in Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies along with hundreds of millions of other folks, the CON-TROLL-ers will take down the internet and prevent us from accessing our own investments?
I agree great article and nice to understand why my portfolio is dropping without having to wade through memes on Reddit.
Regarding this question, I don't understand how the net works that well but I believe it was designed to survive a nuclear attack. Plus in some regions protestors are able to circumvent the commies by generating a shared collective bandwidth, though within a limited geography. So I think there are ways, and the math behind crypto is rock solid.
Thanks, Eric. It makes sense about the design of the internet, and I read that a couple of tech geniuses are working on an even more stable, non-hackable "internet" called Qortal. Too much jargon for me to read on their website, but it sounds like a more innovative system overall and I imagine that means better for cryptocurrency, too. I will follow through on my stalled exploration of investing in crypto. I had opened a Coinbase account a few months ago, only to find out that it is hooked in with the central banks, so I'm forging a new path.
You will probably need to use a service with customer identity requirements to get started, but then you will be able to send your coins off to wallets that are anonymous.
"On one side, you have those who stand for human freedom, which is best represented in monetary terms by Bitcoin. On the other side, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is one of the most powerful actors on the world stage that is fighting for the cause of total top-down authoritarian rule".
There are more than two sides to this story.
On which side does trusted, responsive, responsible, government stand?
On which side does national solvency stand?
On which side does anti-money laundering stand?
We, as heirs to the Roman political tradition, have always assumed that governments will be oppressive and have thus equated 'freedom' with anti-government activities. We have usually been right and, today, more so than ever.
The Chinese, as heirs to the Confucian political tradition have always assumed that governments will be compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people. They have usually been right and, today, more so than ever.
Thus our Roman government–always better at politicking than governing–is reaching its nadir just as their Confucian government–always better at governing than politicking–is reaching its zenith.
And this difference between the Western and Chinese tradition is why science and industrialization happened in the West. Whereas China's bureaucracy strangled the Song dynasty nascent proto-industrial revolution in its cradle.
I don't understand. Are you saying the CCP is the bastion of compassion? Try telling that to Falun Gong, Uyghurs, or anyone else that happens to believe there's a higher power than the CCP.
Study up on Falun Gong before you give them any credit. Falun Gong’s “spiritual leader,” Li Hongzhi, is a textbook case of a cult leader. The Jilin, China-born Li, who lives in New York City and a permanent resident of the United States, claims that he acquired “supernatural powers” at the age of eight in China. These powers include the ability to walk through walls and levitate. Li claims that extraterrestrials have invaded the minds of humans and it has led to a reliance on computers overseen by massive corruption.
In a couple of recent articles in The Epoch Times, Falun Gong appears to be taking credit for launching Covid-19, which runs counter to the anti-Beijing propaganda emanating from Pompeo, White House trade official Peter Navarro, and leading congressional Republicans. On March 11 and April 26, 2020, The Epoch Times ran two editorials suggesting that Covid-19 was not a virus caused by the Chinese government, but one intended to destroy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its international supporters. The articles states:
“The spreading of the virus shows a clear pattern, which is, it is selectively targeting the CCP and is aimed at eliminating the CCP and those who are pro-communist or who have close ties with the CCP. All regions that are hard-hit by the virus outside China are those having intimate ties with the CCP, those who have supported the CCP in terms of trade, investment, or helping the CCP improve its international image. Likewise, individuals who have been the CCP’s supporters often find themselves vulnerable to the CCP virus.” The article suggests that New York City became a hot zone for the virus because of its financial links to the Chinese government and the presence of the United Nations and Wall Street, the latter accused of being a “behind the curtains financier helping the Chinese Communist regime prolong its life.”
The Falun Gong articles also contain a stark warning for New York City: “the priority is to start cleansing the CCP infiltration from New York.”
The Uyghurs are doing fine. The current propaganda campaign is an attempt to rescue an expensive failure to radicalize them, as US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981:
"The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state. I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority”. 8/31/18
While all of this might be true (not as convinced about the Uyghurs), it's also true that the CCP is not an innocent victim, trying to make the world a better place. This idea that the Chinese government is "compassionate" and devoted to the wellbeing of its people is only true so long as you swear fealty to the party. I was in Hong Kong when the CCP kidnapped booksellers for selling books banned in China. It's no worse but certainly no better than all of the other authoritarian regimes.
I was in London when Julian Assange was being held, after two years, in a high security wing of Belmarsh Prison for? Embarrassing the US Government?
Those guys in HK were not 'booksellers.' They were pornography smugglers who had been caught twice and warned by Chinese Customs. The last straw was smuggling political pornography (fictional, unlike Assange's reports).
The only people who have to swear fealty to the Party are the 93 million members of the CPC, as you well know. They get no financial benefit from doing so, and are on call, 24x7, for volunteer work. Those 48,000 first responders who flew into Wuhan? All Party members.
If these guys in HK were "porn smugglers", it's still an evil act for CCP authoritarians to stop them, unless they were smuggling something of a non-voluntary/violent nature or pedo shit. So even there the CCP would be in the wrong and just further suppressing human freedom, (unless it was worse than just "smuggling porno", which would put CCP on the ethical side of things--for once).
Cult or not, governments have no right to suppress them. Freedom is a human right. If the US government were going after Scientology nuts that'd be bad too. Just leave people alone. And I only hope the 'organ harvesting' thing is fake, but if it's only the CCP denying it and there's no evidence that it's a propaganda story, that's not very credible.
The last time the Chinese government let a (Christian) cult get out of hand 30,000,000 Chinese were killed and the empire never recovered. Suppressing religious insanity has been a Chinese government responsibility for 2000 years.
Not familiar with this particular event but I'd be interested in reading about it.
I mean there's an easier way to deal with this kind of thing usually... they could just, ya know, leave people alone and let them live freely? As long as they aren't being aggressive towards other people it's fine. Hard to justify killing (or any violence at all) to stop people from doing things that only impact themselves.
Usually when governments have a problem with religion, it's because it challenges their own authority.
You can't understand because there's nothing rational there to be understood. This old guy is out of touch with reality. Claiming the Chinese have "usually been right" to trust governments to be "compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people" can only be cognitive dissonance triggered rationalization, or just the latest lies of another boot licker.
Except, of course, for the evidence. There are more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, and imprisoned people in America than in China.
China's infant mortality, 5.4 per thousand births, is lower than ours, and Chinese children's healthy life expectancy is longer than American kids and they will graduate high school three years ahead of them.
That's the result of being "compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people”. For real.
Also for their list of crimes against humanity, I forgot to add the dystopian social credit score trash and artificial inflation of their currency, which effectively keeps their people poor and a de facto slave nation in some sense. We could go on of course. The point is not that other governments are perfect but that CCP is definitely not "compassionate, responsible or devoted to anyone's well being other than their elites/leaders".
What 'crimes against humanity' do you imagine they have committed? As to Social Credit, 95% of Chinese are enthusiastic about it. So would you be if you studied it.
For individual citizens, it is 90% carrot and 10% stick– the stick being embarrassment and inconvenience.
Not so for companies and government officials, both of which can suffer loss of licenses and careers if a sufficient number of citizens condemn the way they do business.
Its impact will be similar to that of the Cultural Revolution, which emancipated 400 million peasants by teaching them to read, write, and vote.
It's a commercial emancipation, that really does give power to the people.
JW Mason described Social Credit as it might be implemented in the West: "People get very excited about China’s social credit system, a sort of generalization of the “permanent record” we use to intimidate schoolchildren. And ok, it does sound kind of dystopian. If your rating is too low, you aren’t allowed to fly on a plane. Think about that — a number assigned to every person, adjusted based on somebody’s judgement of your pro-social or anti-social behavior. If your number is too low, you can’t on a plane. If it’s really low, you can’t even get on a bus. Could you imagine a system like that in the US? Except, of course, that we have exactly this system already. The number is called a bank account. The difference is simply that we have so naturalized the system that “how much money you have” seems like simply a fact about you, rather than a judgement imposed by society."
Obviously you're well enough informed on China to know who Mao Zhedong is, or the Tiananmen square massacre, obvious suppression of human rights and freedom in general, so I'm surprised you'd even ask "what crimes against humanity". Maybe you meant to type "which crimes...". The list could go on of course, but that seems to be enough.
I suspect the 95% "enthusiastic" about social credit are lying about it so (or the number is just blatantly false) so they aren't targeted for cancellation themselves. Even if it were a good thing, as you claim, history has shown that governments always find ways to turn a small thing into tyranny. It's just another tool of control in the form of a Trojan Horse, and I hope the Chinese people really aren't as brainwashed as the China-supported North Korean government has their people (or, perhaps just terrified to dissent).
It's an interesting argument you make for it so I can see how it might appeal to some, but I still think it's incredibly naive to expect the suggested results coming out of it. There's major problems with a system like this under the complete control over an oppressive government. There are *always* negative unintended consequences when governments tamper with complex systems that were not predicted - even if (and maybe especially) their intent was truly positive. Economics history is littered with examples.
You need to ask how free citizens really are to condemn institutions or government officials for starters. Also you should look up Serpentza.
Well, here's the problem. If you're well read on economics and history it's not hard to think of much more believable and often simpler explanations for those things than "the CCP fixed or prevented them". If your first instinct is "government fixed it", that's extremely naive and simplistic. The situation is far, far more complex and interesting than that.
Many of those things were caused by the stupidity of the US government and politicians (not maliciousness or a "lack of compassion/responsibility/devotion"), or are due to unique characteristics of US that other nations simply do not need to deal with. The aftermath of abusing 10% of an imported foreign population via slavery (kept alive by evil politicians); corporate-government cronyism suppressing smaller competition and enabling environmental destruction; immeasurable damage done to the economy by the Federal Reserve (ex. Great Depression and the mountain of immoral legislation to "fix" it); unexpected response of government interventions into the economy (ex. WWII wage controls which coupled health plans to employers, as one small example among many).
China's government has its own share of such stupidity and evil which harms their population and the rest of the world. The old "one child" policy just created problems of another nature and required unethical violence to enforce; destruction of the environment and apparent complete lack of concern for world and local pollution in their quest to become a world power as fast as possible; completely irresponsible space program decisions and activities endangering astronauts, space infrastructure, and polluting low Earth orbit for years to come; harassment and aggressive actions against their neighbors risking war over petty power struggles (which has the stink of pre-WWII Germany); allowing rampant abuse of animals, political dissidents, Hong Kong and other protesters, women(allegedly) and the alleged 'organ harvesting'. They've had a late start compared to the US but, oh, they're doing a great job catching up.
The best one can argue is that it's a "road to hell paved with good intentions", but even that doesn't work well when you consider greedy politicians and bureaucrats who demonstrably put themselves first to the detriment of others.
Hey, I'm no fan of China or anything but why in this piece did you ignore our own Treasury? Coins are dropping not because of China, imo, but because of Yellen.
This is yet another enlightening article, Jordan, as you highlight yet another way that psychopaths are trying to completely enslave humanity.
But can anyone here help to alleviate my concern that, if I invest in Bitcoin and/or other cryptocurrencies along with hundreds of millions of other folks, the CON-TROLL-ers will take down the internet and prevent us from accessing our own investments?
I agree great article and nice to understand why my portfolio is dropping without having to wade through memes on Reddit.
Regarding this question, I don't understand how the net works that well but I believe it was designed to survive a nuclear attack. Plus in some regions protestors are able to circumvent the commies by generating a shared collective bandwidth, though within a limited geography. So I think there are ways, and the math behind crypto is rock solid.
Thanks, Eric. It makes sense about the design of the internet, and I read that a couple of tech geniuses are working on an even more stable, non-hackable "internet" called Qortal. Too much jargon for me to read on their website, but it sounds like a more innovative system overall and I imagine that means better for cryptocurrency, too. I will follow through on my stalled exploration of investing in crypto. I had opened a Coinbase account a few months ago, only to find out that it is hooked in with the central banks, so I'm forging a new path.
You will probably need to use a service with customer identity requirements to get started, but then you will be able to send your coins off to wallets that are anonymous.
So I can stick with Coinbase to get started?
I would think so. I use Kraken.
Thanks, Eric. I have heard of Kraken and will look into it further.
bitcoin is disease. only mentally challenged think it's freedom.
"On one side, you have those who stand for human freedom, which is best represented in monetary terms by Bitcoin. On the other side, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is one of the most powerful actors on the world stage that is fighting for the cause of total top-down authoritarian rule".
There are more than two sides to this story.
On which side does trusted, responsive, responsible, government stand?
On which side does national solvency stand?
On which side does anti-money laundering stand?
We, as heirs to the Roman political tradition, have always assumed that governments will be oppressive and have thus equated 'freedom' with anti-government activities. We have usually been right and, today, more so than ever.
The Chinese, as heirs to the Confucian political tradition have always assumed that governments will be compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people. They have usually been right and, today, more so than ever.
Thus our Roman government–always better at politicking than governing–is reaching its nadir just as their Confucian government–always better at governing than politicking–is reaching its zenith.
It's about competence and commitment.
And this difference between the Western and Chinese tradition is why science and industrialization happened in the West. Whereas China's bureaucracy strangled the Song dynasty nascent proto-industrial revolution in its cradle.
That was then. This is now. China now leads the world in most sciences and technologies.
"governments will be compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people"
LOL
You're delusional
See my reply, above.
I don't understand. Are you saying the CCP is the bastion of compassion? Try telling that to Falun Gong, Uyghurs, or anyone else that happens to believe there's a higher power than the CCP.
Study up on Falun Gong before you give them any credit. Falun Gong’s “spiritual leader,” Li Hongzhi, is a textbook case of a cult leader. The Jilin, China-born Li, who lives in New York City and a permanent resident of the United States, claims that he acquired “supernatural powers” at the age of eight in China. These powers include the ability to walk through walls and levitate. Li claims that extraterrestrials have invaded the minds of humans and it has led to a reliance on computers overseen by massive corruption.
In a couple of recent articles in The Epoch Times, Falun Gong appears to be taking credit for launching Covid-19, which runs counter to the anti-Beijing propaganda emanating from Pompeo, White House trade official Peter Navarro, and leading congressional Republicans. On March 11 and April 26, 2020, The Epoch Times ran two editorials suggesting that Covid-19 was not a virus caused by the Chinese government, but one intended to destroy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its international supporters. The articles states:
“The spreading of the virus shows a clear pattern, which is, it is selectively targeting the CCP and is aimed at eliminating the CCP and those who are pro-communist or who have close ties with the CCP. All regions that are hard-hit by the virus outside China are those having intimate ties with the CCP, those who have supported the CCP in terms of trade, investment, or helping the CCP improve its international image. Likewise, individuals who have been the CCP’s supporters often find themselves vulnerable to the CCP virus.” The article suggests that New York City became a hot zone for the virus because of its financial links to the Chinese government and the presence of the United Nations and Wall Street, the latter accused of being a “behind the curtains financier helping the Chinese Communist regime prolong its life.”
The Falun Gong articles also contain a stark warning for New York City: “the priority is to start cleansing the CCP infiltration from New York.”
The Uyghurs are doing fine. The current propaganda campaign is an attempt to rescue an expensive failure to radicalize them, as US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981:
"The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state. I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority”. 8/31/18
https://supchina.com/podcast/legendary-diplomat-chas-w-freeman-jr-on-u-s-china-strategy-and-history-part-3/
While all of this might be true (not as convinced about the Uyghurs), it's also true that the CCP is not an innocent victim, trying to make the world a better place. This idea that the Chinese government is "compassionate" and devoted to the wellbeing of its people is only true so long as you swear fealty to the party. I was in Hong Kong when the CCP kidnapped booksellers for selling books banned in China. It's no worse but certainly no better than all of the other authoritarian regimes.
I was in London when Julian Assange was being held, after two years, in a high security wing of Belmarsh Prison for? Embarrassing the US Government?
Those guys in HK were not 'booksellers.' They were pornography smugglers who had been caught twice and warned by Chinese Customs. The last straw was smuggling political pornography (fictional, unlike Assange's reports).
The only people who have to swear fealty to the Party are the 93 million members of the CPC, as you well know. They get no financial benefit from doing so, and are on call, 24x7, for volunteer work. Those 48,000 first responders who flew into Wuhan? All Party members.
If these guys in HK were "porn smugglers", it's still an evil act for CCP authoritarians to stop them, unless they were smuggling something of a non-voluntary/violent nature or pedo shit. So even there the CCP would be in the wrong and just further suppressing human freedom, (unless it was worse than just "smuggling porno", which would put CCP on the ethical side of things--for once).
It was a very targeted porn: subversive, fictional pornography about leading government officials. That's a double no-no.
Cult or not, governments have no right to suppress them. Freedom is a human right. If the US government were going after Scientology nuts that'd be bad too. Just leave people alone. And I only hope the 'organ harvesting' thing is fake, but if it's only the CCP denying it and there's no evidence that it's a propaganda story, that's not very credible.
The last time the Chinese government let a (Christian) cult get out of hand 30,000,000 Chinese were killed and the empire never recovered. Suppressing religious insanity has been a Chinese government responsibility for 2000 years.
Not familiar with this particular event but I'd be interested in reading about it.
I mean there's an easier way to deal with this kind of thing usually... they could just, ya know, leave people alone and let them live freely? As long as they aren't being aggressive towards other people it's fine. Hard to justify killing (or any violence at all) to stop people from doing things that only impact themselves.
Usually when governments have a problem with religion, it's because it challenges their own authority.
You can't understand because there's nothing rational there to be understood. This old guy is out of touch with reality. Claiming the Chinese have "usually been right" to trust governments to be "compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people" can only be cognitive dissonance triggered rationalization, or just the latest lies of another boot licker.
Except, of course, for the evidence. There are more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, and imprisoned people in America than in China.
China's infant mortality, 5.4 per thousand births, is lower than ours, and Chinese children's healthy life expectancy is longer than American kids and they will graduate high school three years ahead of them.
That's the result of being "compassionate, responsible, and devoted to the wellbeing of their people”. For real.
Also for their list of crimes against humanity, I forgot to add the dystopian social credit score trash and artificial inflation of their currency, which effectively keeps their people poor and a de facto slave nation in some sense. We could go on of course. The point is not that other governments are perfect but that CCP is definitely not "compassionate, responsible or devoted to anyone's well being other than their elites/leaders".
What 'crimes against humanity' do you imagine they have committed? As to Social Credit, 95% of Chinese are enthusiastic about it. So would you be if you studied it.
For individual citizens, it is 90% carrot and 10% stick– the stick being embarrassment and inconvenience.
Not so for companies and government officials, both of which can suffer loss of licenses and careers if a sufficient number of citizens condemn the way they do business.
Its impact will be similar to that of the Cultural Revolution, which emancipated 400 million peasants by teaching them to read, write, and vote.
It's a commercial emancipation, that really does give power to the people.
JW Mason described Social Credit as it might be implemented in the West: "People get very excited about China’s social credit system, a sort of generalization of the “permanent record” we use to intimidate schoolchildren. And ok, it does sound kind of dystopian. If your rating is too low, you aren’t allowed to fly on a plane. Think about that — a number assigned to every person, adjusted based on somebody’s judgement of your pro-social or anti-social behavior. If your number is too low, you can’t on a plane. If it’s really low, you can’t even get on a bus. Could you imagine a system like that in the US? Except, of course, that we have exactly this system already. The number is called a bank account. The difference is simply that we have so naturalized the system that “how much money you have” seems like simply a fact about you, rather than a judgement imposed by society."
Obviously you're well enough informed on China to know who Mao Zhedong is, or the Tiananmen square massacre, obvious suppression of human rights and freedom in general, so I'm surprised you'd even ask "what crimes against humanity". Maybe you meant to type "which crimes...". The list could go on of course, but that seems to be enough.
I suspect the 95% "enthusiastic" about social credit are lying about it so (or the number is just blatantly false) so they aren't targeted for cancellation themselves. Even if it were a good thing, as you claim, history has shown that governments always find ways to turn a small thing into tyranny. It's just another tool of control in the form of a Trojan Horse, and I hope the Chinese people really aren't as brainwashed as the China-supported North Korean government has their people (or, perhaps just terrified to dissent).
It's an interesting argument you make for it so I can see how it might appeal to some, but I still think it's incredibly naive to expect the suggested results coming out of it. There's major problems with a system like this under the complete control over an oppressive government. There are *always* negative unintended consequences when governments tamper with complex systems that were not predicted - even if (and maybe especially) their intent was truly positive. Economics history is littered with examples.
You need to ask how free citizens really are to condemn institutions or government officials for starters. Also you should look up Serpentza.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FjGDCgcBBE
Well, here's the problem. If you're well read on economics and history it's not hard to think of much more believable and often simpler explanations for those things than "the CCP fixed or prevented them". If your first instinct is "government fixed it", that's extremely naive and simplistic. The situation is far, far more complex and interesting than that.
Many of those things were caused by the stupidity of the US government and politicians (not maliciousness or a "lack of compassion/responsibility/devotion"), or are due to unique characteristics of US that other nations simply do not need to deal with. The aftermath of abusing 10% of an imported foreign population via slavery (kept alive by evil politicians); corporate-government cronyism suppressing smaller competition and enabling environmental destruction; immeasurable damage done to the economy by the Federal Reserve (ex. Great Depression and the mountain of immoral legislation to "fix" it); unexpected response of government interventions into the economy (ex. WWII wage controls which coupled health plans to employers, as one small example among many).
China's government has its own share of such stupidity and evil which harms their population and the rest of the world. The old "one child" policy just created problems of another nature and required unethical violence to enforce; destruction of the environment and apparent complete lack of concern for world and local pollution in their quest to become a world power as fast as possible; completely irresponsible space program decisions and activities endangering astronauts, space infrastructure, and polluting low Earth orbit for years to come; harassment and aggressive actions against their neighbors risking war over petty power struggles (which has the stink of pre-WWII Germany); allowing rampant abuse of animals, political dissidents, Hong Kong and other protesters, women(allegedly) and the alleged 'organ harvesting'. They've had a late start compared to the US but, oh, they're doing a great job catching up.
The best one can argue is that it's a "road to hell paved with good intentions", but even that doesn't work well when you consider greedy politicians and bureaucrats who demonstrably put themselves first to the detriment of others.
Hey, I'm no fan of China or anything but why in this piece did you ignore our own Treasury? Coins are dropping not because of China, imo, but because of Yellen.