Category: Keep Cash Alive

Demonetisation is population control

facebook bans Journal Neo article critiquing Vatican

An article titled, The Dangerous alliance between the Rothschilds and the Vatican has been banned by facebook for not meeting community standards.

Lyn Forester de Rothschilds is a key player in the
Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican.

The article outlines a key alliance between the world’s richest people and the Vatican to create an “inclusive” capitalism that protects the poor and the planet in line with Pope Francis recent dictates.

It criticises the alliance on a number of levels, primarily for the manner in which global agendas have a habit of entrenching power elites in the name of doing good. It compare Pope Francis global agenda with the twelfth century Crusades and highlights connections between, Lyn Forester de Rothschilds, Jeffrey Epstein and the Clintons.

While Neo Journal’s approach concentrates on these seedy connections and the shadowy reputation of some activities by these global philanthropists, The Generator has concentrated on specific problems – such as the concentration of resources in the Doomsday Project, the arbitrary harshness of Modi’s cashless India, and the underlying role of the very small number of people who actually direct the world’s financial systems.

Regular followers of The Generator know that we are rigorous about checking and providing sources and debunking conspiracy theories. That has occasionally put us at odds with facebook – https://thegenerator.news/china-shuts-the-door-on-facebook/ and https://thegenerator.news/soul-sex-facebook-saga-continues/ but has stood us in good stead when reporting controversial issues.

9 January, 2021
Swedish implant microchips in craze to go cashless

Cash free is the hip way to transact in Stokholm

From the Financial Post via John James Newsletter

More than 4,000 Swedes have gone the microchip route as cash use fades and the government scrambles to figure out the effects on society and the economy. The central bank, which predicts cash may fade from Sweden, is testing a digital currency — an e-krona — to keep firm control of the money supply. Lawmakers are exploring the fate of online payments and bank accounts if an electrical grid fails or servers are thwarted by power failures, hackers or even war.

7 January, 2019
Getting ahead of Bitcoin

Whether you are an investor, a programmer or an entrepreneur BitCoin will radically and directly change your life in the next couple of years.

School teachers, activists and artists might not be directly in the firing line but Bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain, is going to affect us all. The questions are how and how fast.

This article answers your basic questions about the blockchain and tells you where to go for more in-depth information

What is this thing called Blockchain?

If you doubt the radical changes that technology has wrought on society in the last three decades, just watch the queue for wifi at the Guangzhou Airport. We are so addicted to the Internet it is the first thing we organise when we get to our accommodation on a weekend away, move house, or plan where we will spend the day working “out of the office”.

The Blockchain is the next layer of the network that already connects us and enables our communal activity.

The telecommunications network allowed us to speak to each other, leave messages and then, by 1964, send electronic signals and printed documents. The microchip allowed us to use personal productivity software to do things that had previously required volumes of pen and paper. The combination of the two allows us to maintain our diary, perform our banking, watch movies, take photographs and share all of that activity with loved ones, friends and colleagues over a hand held device. Most of us now see the smart phone and our connection to the network as an essential accessory in our daily life.

Now, that networked computer has been empowered by the addition of a public record of all the transactions we perform. That public record is called the blockchain and it provides an accurate, immutable history of relevant online activity that will change the nature of trust. That reliable and permanent record of all transactions will rapidly replace the public record, institutions and governance in ways that we can only begin to imagine. It will be applied to supply chain logistics, as well as all transactions where a chain of custody, provenance or proof of ownership is importance.

Think about it.

We currently keep our money in a bank because we trust the bank to keep it safe. As that money has become completely virtual, we connect to the bank simply to record our transactions so that we can check our balance and make spending decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information. Now that the network itself has an accurate, up-to-date record of all our transactions and our account balance, the role of the bank is significantly reduced.

And that is just the role of the BitCoin. Imagine the same technology applied to documents that record ownership. Every online photograph can be registered and every use of it tracked using the blockchain. Lab results, works of art, any object worth protecting can be protected by the blockchain. A complete chain of custody, provenance, or transaction history can be recorded automatically as an object moves through different hands.

This can be applied to the storage of personal health records, the maintenance history of a car, the tagging of electrical appliances, viewing of online files.

This transition will take some time, just as the smartcard has taken some time to replace cash. When we think about the transition from credit cards, through eftpos to smartcards and cashless transactions and then the current wave of cardless transactions we can see that these revolutions have long lead times and then very rapid implementations once the technology reaches a critical mass. Each wave of that transition had its own impact on the businesses involved and the impact over the last two decades has been remarkable.

We are now reaching the point where BitCoin has moved out of the experimental and speculative phase into mainstream investing and blockchain applications are being implemented in organisations worldwide and the technology is being built into mainstream operating systems and development environments.

What do you need to know?

RIght now the world of virtual currency is exploding. Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are disrupting the financial landscape and entrepreneurs are exploring a brave new world of distributed applications to facilitate business models that were considered fanciful half a decade ago.

The adventures of BitCoin have been well publicised – if not well explained – and most of us understand that something big is afoot, but we are not sure exactly what.

The good news is the basic technologies are now well established and understood and a second generation of books explaining it all has emerged. Luckily, these books are targeted at specific audiences: Entrepreneurs, corporate managers, programmers, academics and investors. There are quick-to-read books that cost little and explain things simply as well as in-depth books to help you to make strategic decisions or, at least, decide strategically where to focus your further investigations. The

This article introduces you to the cream of the crop. We have deliberately selected books available both physically and as ebooks. We have provided links to Amazon so that you can load them directly into your Kindle at a couple of clicks, but given you the details needed to shop around and get them in your preferred format, from your preferred provider as fast as possible.

Conclusion

Some people prefer to do their own research, others to get information packaged in a dense and digestible package, tailored to their needs. The introductory texts discussed here provide a quick introduction in such a manner, though the very short ones do not provide much more depth than a weekend session with Dr Google.

If you are after an introduction to Blockchain, rather than simply BitCoin, Alan T Norman’s Blockchain Explained is my value-for-money recommendation. You can buy the Kindle edition directly for $US3.14 by clicking here. It is too detailed for some readers, though. Shorter books include Brian Reel’s BlockChain: Starting Guide for Beginner’s and Artemis Caro’s BlockChain: The Beginner’s Guide

As you would expect, the three O’Reilly publications are more serious works at a more serious price. Each text has a specific audience:

Blockchain: Blueprint for a new economy is the theoretical high level text aimed at strategic thinkers, Mastering BitCoin is the technical text aimed at tech savvy readers interested in financial applications and Decentralised Applications is aimed directly at programmers in the distributed application space.

19 March, 2018
Church and State collude to worship money

From The Cage – 6th September 2016

We have had quite a few stories about the role of money in the news recently. This week it was the Universal Basic Income in Finland. Last week it was the attempt to eliminate cash in Sweden and the tactical undermining of the US dollar by Russia and China.
The premise of the Cross this morning is that the worship of money has replaced the worship of God. That the death of God has largely occurred because money is the new deity.
One of my day jobs is grilling citizens about their financial position for a well known research company. We ask them everything from their attitude to legalizing marijuana to their marital and parental status, but more than a third of the questions are about finance. What I have learned from that experience is that most people understand that civilization is in trouble. They get climate change, they get environmental damage, they understand that global capitalism is amoral at best and more likely immoral.
They know all this, but they head off to work every day, they borrow money from banks, they dance with debt, and they accept the incarceration and torturing of refugees because they are afraid. They know that the poor are going to suffer most when the shit hits the fan and they don’t want to end up at the bottom of the heap.
The challenge for those of us who want progressive reform, who want to create a fairer world, based on community not corporation, built on purpose and not profit, funded by a steady state economy not the fairy tale of infinite economic growth … the challenge for you and me, dear listener, is that we have to somehow break the cycle of fear, the race to the finish line. They fear the angry, hungry hordes who have been exploited so we can enjoy cars, phones and plane trips while they work for $1 a day making our clothes, our cars, our household appliances. They worry that the injustice will be reversed, that the first will be last and it really is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
That is the madness and the brilliance of the populist politician. That is the fundamental premise of capitalism. The old Monty Python joke “What did the Romans ever do for us,” goes to the heart of the problem. Unless there is a real alternative to the Cage people willingly lock themselves in, hoping they are safer in the Cage than they are in the wild.
This is also the fundamental basis of law, policing and property. The state emerges to protect or expand itself. It alienates people from their natural relationships with the earth, and offers them the bounty of property, regular food and an easier life. And the act of creating boundaries, of creating property requires the policing of those boundaries, the regulation of that property and so policing emerges.
The state evolved from tribalism to kingdom by the creation of agriculture to support a military caste. The evolution of empires required the invention of slavery and then taxation. Instead of simply destroying the neighbours in the quest for plunder, we learned to enslave them instead.
The incorporation of religion into the apparatus of the state, elevates the ruler into the priest caste and places them above the military caste. It is a more effective way to subjugate the population than by violent oppression. Two weeks ago we discussed the rise of Christendom in Europe as a way of taming and thus harnessing the violence of the Norsemen, the Normans who had emerged from Scandinavia in Viking long boats and dominated England, France and Italy. By blessing them and turning their attention to Jerusalem under the banner of the Cross, the Abbots of Europe managed to preserve their wealth and dominance of Continental politics.
The invention of a rule of contract law and double entry book keeping in Venice elevated secular society above the simple machinations of the church and Venice cynically stole a whole French army destined for Jerusalem and shipped them to Constantinople instead to smash the Christian Turks who threatened their trade.
We will come back to that after this message from our deity

25 February, 2018
Who drove India’s play for a cashless society

Over the course of 2017, India made a vigorous attempt to drive its diverse population toward a cashless society. Prime Minister Modi was regularly quoted as claiming that it would support his overall objective to reduce corruption and improve transparency in the economy. This is widely seen to have failed.

Arguments abound about the pros and cons of the cashless society but the most vigorous have been that it was an attack on the poor who are least equipped to move away from traditional payment methods. The Conversation, for example, published a detailed analysis of the impact on the poor using the example of a local recycling business, among others, to prove the point.

Indians stand in a queue outside a bank to withdraw cash in Ahmadabad, India, in December. AP Photo/Ajit Solanki

Naturally, there was a geopolitical dimension to the move, with US organisations assisting the Indian government to implement and promote the policy in an attempt to thwart Chinese influence in India. One of the best researched and reasoned of these pieces appeared in Global Research in January 2017, two months after the initial move by Mobi’s government, then republished with more evidence in November.

For the purposes of this article, the significance is that the drive to a cashless society is certainly convenient for customers, and can be sold as a method for creating greater transparency in the economy but it ultimately shifts power toward those who control the financial system, whether that is a national government or international financial corporations.

As an informed customer, you need to decide, do you support the centralisation and automation of transactional data on the basis of your personal convenience, or do you resist such centralisation in the interests of privacy and independence. Of course, there is the separate argument that the system we are building goes well beyond individual concerns and we should all participate in the matrix for the greater good. Just be sure you have your blue pill before you make the decision.

7 December, 2017
Cashless India program attacks world’s poorest

Prime Minister Morodi’s justification for a Cashless India

India’s rapid move to a cashless society was part of Prime Minister Morodi’s campaign against corruption and tax avoidance but the consequences of the sudden cancellation of all 500 and 1,000 rupee bills has led to an economic crisis and widespread accusations that it is an attack on the poor. With uneven access to digital and financial services the enforced move to a digital economy is leaving hundreds of millions of people behind. 17% of Indians own a smart phone and only 11% have a credit or debit card. Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in the streets, locking down banks and government offices.

Chakravorti, who co-authored a report titled “The Cost of Cash in India,” found that, “most Indians lack the means to use cashless alternatives irrespective of their desire to do so.”

“The digital infrastructure in India is so horrendously poor,” Chakravorti says. “The majority of people don’t have access to smartphones. Large numbers of them cannot read or write. Mobile connections are extremely poor. Even the people in the city, for them connections are terrible.”

A New Delhi shop keeper has lost 80% of his business due to the crisis

Chakrovorti says policy-makers pushing a cashless society are “essentially putting the cart before the horse. The country needs to invest in its digital infrastructure before it pushes people to digital payments.”

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/12/21/506330351/india-wants-to-go-cashless-but-its-easier-said-than-done

The point of this new act being that no longer will it be necessary to offer payment to employees in cash. It will be possible to pay via cheque, or electronic transfer into a bank account. The aim is, of course, all rather tied in with the demonetisation campaign and the move toward a cashless society. If wages are being paid in a manner easy to check then the tax system can be expected to benefit. And given that vast swathes of India’s economy are entirely informal it’s obviously in the government’s interest for this to happen.

In a further push to cashless economy, the Central cabinet has approved the ordinance for paying wages via electronic means — which means that the government has given its nod for cashless salary. Accordingly, the government approved to amend Section 6 of the Payment Of Wages Act.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/12/21/india-repeals-the-truck-acts-in-move-to-cashless-society/#722161f36413

It was a move that could have brought India’s economy to a shuddering halt. Indeed, the seemingly endless queues outside banks, and the difficulty of spending cash at shops and stalls may have seemed like it did. But the decision to demonetise the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes was just one in a series of moves that will push India towards a digital economy.

http://theconversation.com/india-taking-a-step-on-the-road-to-cashless-economy-70309

22 December, 2016