The Freedom Search

Last March, the State of Utah passed the Legal Tender Act, thus making it legal to allow payments using gold and silver coins minted in the US.

After that, other 12 states passed similar bills, and returning the US into a gold backed economy gains support every day.

Thanks to this, residents of Utah will be able to use gold-backed Visa debit-cards:

This could come about through establishment and activation of a privately owned state depository that will accept (and value on a continual basis) gold and silver coins, including coins with high numismatic value. The holdings of an individual or business at the depository will provide the backing for dollar purchases run through the Visa debit card, but could work equally well for precious-metal-backed Visa purchases abroad, denominated in foreign currencies.

Read the complete story at Human Events: Utah spurs gold rush.

On my daily feed round I came across this, from The Atlantic: Time to panic about federal debt limit.

It starts comparing american economy to an airplane with engine problems

just barely maintaining altitude above the tree line. Although the plane is holding its own, if almost anything else goes wrong, it will crash.

And then ends with demands of more “stimulus”. Well, american economy (and we should include most of european contries, specially greek, portuguese and, oh yeah, spanish) are like an airplane… not with engine, but with FUEL problems.

Flying in circles only does one thing: it keeps spending fuel. Being aware that fuel quantity is always limited (btw, are not the same people warning us about peak oil?), the pilots should stop wandering and start looking for a piece of land to bring the plane down and get everyone (The People) out the plane safely.

If pilots keep rounding and rounding, demanding increase the debt ceiling (aka asking for a refill), the only thing that could will happen will be that the plane WILL spend all the fuel, and it will crash, and there will be casualties.

No more stimulus, no more bailouts, no more bullshit.

Recently we got new computers. I named mine “Jeff”, in a tribute to Thomas Jefferson.

From one of my late discoveries, Ilana Mercer, I would like to share her today’s article, A July Fourth toast to Tomas Jefferson—and the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

Jefferson, in particular, was adamant about the imperative “to be watchful of those in power,” a watchfulness another Whig philosopher explained thus: “Considering what sort of Creature Man is, it is scarce possible to put him under too many Restraints, when he is possessed of great Power.”

“As Jefferson saw it,” expounds Mayer, “the Whig, zealously guarding liberty, was suspicious of the use of government power,” and assumed “not only that government power was inherently dangerous to individual liberty but also that, as Jefferson put it, ‘the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.’”

To be watchful of those in power has been one of the issues since Greeks invented democracy. However, failing to do so can lead to the very situation Greece is facing now, and even worse, to any totalitarian regime, which could rise up ‘legally’ and with a tremendous applause if we incur in dereliction of our civic duties of being watchful of those in power.

But anyway, let’s make a toast to the venerable Thomas, whose Declaration of Independence was published and read aloud 235 years ago.

To Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

PS: David McGregor, from Sovereign Life, wrote an essay named “July 4: a promise betrayed” sometime ago, but it’s worth reading today.

Did you ever thought what is under the “Police State” expression? Well, some days ago I found this on BoingBoing, a video in which a police officer arrest a woman in her yard (illegal trespassing?) simply for being there with a camera.

I thought that guy was insane.

Today, thanks to a hint, I discovered this:

Seriously, there’s something really fucked up with these so called ‘law and order’ officers.

Watch the whole pack of videos in Police: the largest gang in America. I couldn’t.

A year ago I was writing about the possible future of the European Union, starting with Greece’s bailout and ending with a prediction of what could be happening in Spain.

I depicted an hypothetic dark future for the country, developing in autumn 2010. Well, autumn passed, and so did winter, and now spring came… and the possible scenario went worse than advised.

After Greece, Ireland was bailed out, and within past two weeks, Portugal has been on the edge, falling out yesterday, at last.

All sources tell that Spain is different. That Spain won’t need any bailout, because is doing the homework. Let me explain that homework.

Unemployment rates hiked up 0.8% in march, to reach more than 4.3 million. The highest record, doubling since the start of the financial crisis back in late 2007-2008.

The rating of Spanish debt became so awful that only its issuer, this is the Government of Spain, wants to buy it. And indeed bought it! Using 80% of the money for, allegedly, paying worker’s future retirements. That’s a nice ponzi scheme, isn’t it?

Spanish baking system was bailed out back in late 2008. Construction sector, the top responsible for the enormous burst, has been also bailed out. Now, the banks are asking more money, and it will be granted.
And all of this will be paid (is intended to be) with tax-money…

Spanish government, circumventing the Parliament, passed the Sustainable Economy Bill, thus opening the door for internet monitoring and arbitrary disconnection of users, in order to fight piracy. It also passed the Law on equal treatment and Non Discrimination and some other totalitarian crap. This made the Spanish blogosphere boiling and there are some campaigns asking “Do not vote them”, mentioning corruption on political parties, etc…

After all this, Spanish PM, Mr Zapatero, told the world he won’t be racing for re-election, but he stays until finishing his term next year. Next candidate (which will be elected in a primaries), will not be responsible at all for any of this turmoil and crapping out of the country, and all will be fine to start a new propaganda campaign for 2012.
The other major party, Popular Party, sees how the polls gives them almost absolute majority.

Both parties started to agree self-assuring policies: Spamish MP can retire after 7 years’ service at the parliament, getting 100% of their retirement monies (casual workers have to retire at 67, after at least 20 years of work, and it’s not clear they will perceive anything due to the ponzi scheme depicted above).
Spain’s local councils will be elected next May 22nd. Both parties agreed not to talk about the other party corruption issues, despite (or shoud I say ‘because’?) both parties are presenting corrupt candidates, many of them under current trial processes, to this election.

All of this makes anyone to be, at least, suspicious about the predictions of Spanish Finance Minister and/or government, the same whom years ago said that “there was absolutely nothing named ‘financial crisis’ or anything alike”, the same whom dared to say that Spain was out of that inexistent crisis because they fore-casted the GDP to rise 0.1%… and after all went down again. The same whom were talking about achieving an employment rate of 100%, but only achieved an unemployment rate of 20%…

Spain is different indeed. And as it happened with Greece, Ireland and Portugal, three countries which did not needed any bailout at all whatsoever, they all requested it at the end. And so it will happen with Spain. The later, the worse.

This morning, I was in a good mood. Day advanced… and now I’m pissed off by this country and its rulers.

The senate passed a bill on internet controlling and censorship, collectivist pseudo internet-freedom groups totally blinded by their stubbornness in gringo intrusions (always according to their interests… when a US court rules ‘in favour’ of their interests, Democracy works with Providence)… a socialist government taxing almost the air and showing companies the exit-door… a total and utter crap of a country as you see.

Anyway, I don’t think this lasts so much…. if this was a civilised country. As it is not, may be it’s time to start looking other places in the world… may be New Zealand? It’s the farthest place on Earth from here…

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On Tuesday, the Spanish blogosphere was thriving with the domain hijacking of one website linking to sport events and retransmissions.

While some spoke of outrage to the Spanish sovereignty, others wondered if a prosecutor located in the United States, launching a petition under U.S. law, against a server hosted in the United States had to do something with the Spanish sovereignty.

Finally, as TorrentFreak published yesterday, it seems that all this happened because the most watched sporting event of the year … in the United States, will take place next Sunday: the Super Bowl.

And U.S. copyright authorities began seizing domains in what is already known as The Super Bowl Crackdown.
But as much as the Spanish justice has appointed, twice by the way, that activities of the site in question are legal in Spain, or as much as it does not link directly to emissions in the United States … both the domain and hosting are located in the United States, which puts them under U.S. jurisdiction.

It would be interesting to know on behalf of who acted the N.Y attorney. Of himself… or if it was at the request of anyone… as happened with Easy DNS and Amazon in the early hours of the Wikileaks case.

Once known who initiated the movement, we can speak of interference … or not.

The rest are even more examples of the topical anti-Americanism from some people who, on the other hand, consider Obama as the Messiah and savior…

Odd country.

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A currency has value because everyone involved has confidence in it, and everyone agrees to give it value. It may be precious metals or stones, shells or bits of painted paper.

In the Internet, this usually works in a three-party way: seller, buyer and a financial institution processing the operation. This institution, as PayPal or any other, acts as a trusted middle-man, increasing transaction costs and limiting the minimum transaction size.

Bitcoin is a p2p digital currency, without any central authority issuing more money or tracking transactions. You generate your own Bitcoins using free cycles of your computer processors, and later use them to pay for services… or get paid in Bitcoins if you sell something. Even you can change them for other currencies like USD or EUR.
As this is a relatively new currency, there are not much places accepting it, but it’s growing and growing.

Bitcoins will not be a substitute for any major currency, but can be a useful mean. At the end, there will be a total of 21 million bitcoins.

I’m giving it a try.

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One of the greatest and terrible fallacies that some people crow out there is that the Internet is anonymous.

I’m not going into technicalities, but simply point out that anonymity on the Internet does not exist or is very difficult to achieve. And that is exactly what happens with false passports.

But under the usual propaganda, author-rights management companies, the entertainment industry, paranoids and progressive politicians panopticon lovers build up excuses to launch their tirades and disciplinary proposals. The (pen)ultimate, creating an Internet ID.

I say penultimate because the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace been developing since last summer.

Last January 7th, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said that

We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.

Praise the Messiah, who cares about and wants us to get rid of those evilish passwords, you know, the weakest point of a security system: humans.

That collaterally we enter the era of voluntary but compulsory transparency (if you do not want a Trusted Identity is because you are hiding something and you’re probably a terrorist) has nothing to do with Progressive Governments giving steps toward totalitarianism and absolutism, it is a conspiracy theory. And this paragraph contain high doses of sarcasm, if not noticed.

The original story can be read on ReadWriteWeb.

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While news agencies, papers and on-line media are burning with the last news coming from the live ‘revolution’ in Tunis, some of the most recalcitrant socialist ‘activists’ started to point their fingers to Hosni Mubarak, the kelptocrat President of Egypt, and start counting the seconds remaining for his overthrow.

What they seem to avoid is that Mr Mubarak, as the very same Ben Ali, the kleptocrat ex-President of Tunis, are True Socialists, members of the local Democratic Party, and both parties have full membership in the Socialist International.

Anyway, despite this complete lack of noticing the reality, or the incredible willingness of ignoring it, this is sure to happen: Ben Ali is out, and will negotiate his future with some delegate from the Socialist International. His heir Ghannouchi is already commanding the country, preparing to reap what he has been sowing these years. Mubarak will keep on with his business, pumping money out of Egypt to his accounts. And, finally, the Useful Idiots will keep their pointing to nowhere… as True Idiots.

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