it gets lonely at "the top,"

...[I dig canals with spoons and build stone pyramids with 100,000 slaves]...

State of Emergency in Frankfurt ECB Protests



This entire experiment with the Euro is literally going down in flame.

Pacific Islands

Sea-level data for the Pacific Islands suggest that sea level in the region fell, possibly in two stages, between AD 1270 and 1475. This was associated with a 1.5 °C fall in temperature (determined from oxygen-isotope analysis) and an observed increase in El Niño frequency.

North America

Winters, during the El Niño effect, are warmer and drier than average in the Northwest, northern Midwest, and northern Mideast United States, so those regions experience reduced snowfalls. Meanwhile, significantly wetter winters are present in northwest Mexico and the southwest United States, including central and southern California, while both cooler and wetter than average winters in northeast Mexico and the southeast United States

El Niño is credited with suppressing hurricanes, and made the 2009 hurricane season the least active in 12 years.

As far as I know Tor never got compromised given the guy hosting the hidden service didn't do anything stupid, ... , if u run Tor with no javascript etc in a safe OS and dont reveal private information you are safe imo.

How did they locate the hidden services?

So we are left asking "How did they locate the hidden services?". We don't know.
...
Unfortunately, the authorities did not specify how they managed to locate the hidden services. Here are some plausible scenarios:

Bitcoin deanonymization

Ivan Pustogarov et al. have recently been conducting interesting research on Bitcoin anonymity.

Apparently, there are ways to link transactions and deanonymize Bitcoin clients even if they use Tor. Maybe the seized hidden services were running Bitcoin clients themselves and were victims of similar attacks.

Attacks on the Tor network

The number of takedowns and the fact that Tor relays were seized could also mean that the Tor network was attacked to reveal the location of those hidden services. We received some interesting information from an operator of a now-seized hidden service which may indicate this, as well. Over the past few years, researchers have discovered various attacks on the Tor network. We've implemented some defenses against these attacks, but these defenses do not solve all known issues and there may even be attacks unknown to us.

Another possible Tor attack vector could be the Guard Discovery attack. This attack doesn't reveal the identity of the hidden service, but allows an attacker to discover the guard node of a specific hidden service. The guard node is the only node in the whole network that knows the actual IP address of the hidden service. Hence, if the attacker then manages to compromise the guard node or somehow obtain access to it, she can launch a traffic confirmation attack to learn the identity of the hidden service. We've been discussing various solutions to the guard discovery attack for the past many months but it's not an easy problem to fix properly. Help and feedback on the proposed designs is appreciated.

*Similarly, there exists the attack where the hidden service selects the attacker's relay as its guard node. This may happen randomly or this could occur if the hidden service selects another relay as its guard and the attacker renders that node unusable, by a denial of service attack or similar. The hidden service will then be forced to select a new guard. Eventually, the hidden service will select the attacker.

Furthermore, denial of service attacks on relays or clients in the Tor network can often be leveraged into full de-anonymization attacks. These techniques go back many years, in research such as "From a Trickle to a Flood", "Denial of Service or Denial of Security?", "Why I'm not an Entropist", and even the more recent Bitcoin attacks above. In the Hidden Service protocol there are more vectors for DoS attacks, such as the set of HSDirs and the Introduction Points of a Hidden Service.

Advice to concerned hidden service operators

As you can see, we still don't know what happened, and it's hard to give concrete suggestions blindly.

Final words

The task of hiding the location of low-latency web services is a very hard problem and we still don't know how to do it correctly. It seems that there are various issues that none of the current anonymous publishing designs have really solved.

In a way, it's even surprising that hidden services have survived so far.

Knowledge can't be stolen. I covered this in my seminal essay, Demise of Finance, Rise of Knowledge...

Knowledge Anneals

Unsophisticated thinkers have an incorrect understanding of knowledge creation, idolizing a well-structured top-down sparkling academic cathedral of vastly superior theoretical minds. Rather knowledge primary spawns from accretive learning due to unexpected random chaotic fitness created from multitudes of random path dependencies that can only exist in the bottom-up free market. Top-down systems are inherently fragile because they overcommit to egregious error (link to Taleb's simplest summary of the math). Given Kurzweil's sensationalized magnum opus is the technological singularity, it is surprising that he is apparently not well studied in the field of social knowledge formation.

Kurzweil states that the brain is composed of a finite number of pattern matchers and that humans train to be exceptional (unique) to think deeply about some subject matter. Whether Kurzweil is implying that computer brains could have more pattern matchers and/or process information from the environment faster thus obtaining higher levels of cognitive capability from more input entropy so as to attain the claim that computers will vastly outpace human knowledge, he fails to understand a basic fact that simulated annealing (SA) is the only known global optimization algorithm when the subject matter is not known a priori. SA requires many simultaneous, independent small (imperfect trial and error) steps. The free market optimizes better than top-down because the larger number of actors anneals better. So again, the computer brains at best can supplement the supply of humans, but they can't overpower the free market. Frankly I am shocked that Kurzweil didn't realize this, since my A.I. studies in the 1980s is where I first learned about SA.

The knowledge creation process is opaque to a single top-down perspective of the universe because to be omniscient would require that the transmission of change in the universe would propagate instantly to the top-down observer, i.e. the speed-of-light would need to be infinite. But an infinite speed-of-light would collapse past and future into an infinitesimal point in spacetime— omniscient is the antithesis of existential. In order for anything to exist in the universe, there must be friction-in-time so change must propagate through resistance to change— mass. The non-uniform mass distribution of the universe is mutually causal with oscillation, which is why the universe emerges from the frequency domain. Uniform distribution of mass would be no contrast and nothing would exist. Taleb's antifragility can be conceptualized as lack of breaking resistance to variance amplification.

Why talk about Knowledge Age when I was referring to Tribal Age?

...

I am not entirely wrong, sir. I just got sweaty to many times to think that food and shelter are granted. They are not and knowledge age will not change that, unless abominations take place.

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Mar 18: Armstrong admits finance has always required risk-less rents on society
From:    iamback
Date:    Wed, March 18, 2015 7:48 am
To:      "Armstrong Economics" <armstrongeconomics@gmail.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Armstrong has now documented that the elite banksters have an incentive to take control of finance away from governments and into their own hands, e.g. a one-world reserve central bank.

My seminal essays explained that Finance (usury and debt) are the paradigm of ignorant, passive capital (a.k.a. stored monetary capital) extracting risk-less rents from the productive sector by subjugating the collective to fungible stored monetary wealth (which is always power-law distributed, thus giving rise to socialism). It is not a question of desire, the paradigm demands it be risk-less because debt is only mathematically possible with fractional reserve banking, which is an inherently bankrupt paradigm. This was possible when non-fungible knowledge production was not the dominant component of production; which was the case in the stone, bronze, iron, agricultural, and industrial age epochs. But the Knowledge Age inverts this fundamental economic relationship.

The true solution is not a one-world central bank controlled by the banksters under the ruse of international partnership. Rather it is the grassroots rise of the computer revolution enabling the individual mind as economically dominant! I pray that Armstrong will have an epiphany.


http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/03/18/austria-to-default-of-debt-of-10-2-billion-euros/

The documents of the Medici family clearly state “to deal as little as possible with the court of the Duke of Burgundy and of other princes and lords, especially in granting credit and accommodating them with money, because it involves more risk than profit”. Distinctly, it is clear that the text continued showing that the Medici did not wish to lend to the princes of Europe for there was no way to collect a debt from a sovereign. The contract continued warning “many merchants in this way fared badly” and that “our fathers have always been wary of such involvements and stayed aloof, unless it was a matter of a small sum lent to make or to keep friends.” The Medici policy was “to preserve their wealth and credit rather than enrich themselves by risky ventures.”

The Baring Brothers folded. The Rothschilds, despite the conspiracy theories, have been replaced by the modern merchant banking style firm Goldman Sachs. I cover in detail the rise and fall of every banking family with documentary proof – not wild rumor and speculation.

This is history unfold once again in Austria. Sorry – the Rothschilds are not in the game this time. Not a single firm that has ever gotten involved with government has survived.

First you have to keep clearly in your mind what money is and its function in society. Think in terms of individuality but also in terms of group development safety and survive. Lets see the developments.

=First Round
A desires a box which is in possession of B.
A takes the box by force or deception, lessening B possessions and group safety.
A is punished, reassuring B and increasing group safety.

For example, if a corporation purchased a huge library of software modules or books, written by different authors, the managers could create nothing with this without the authors (or others) who are knowledgeable of these modules or books. If these authors were not already organically interacting, then they would not be able to at any price, unless there was interoperability knowledge potential enumerated by some knowledgeable person(s). Thus always the knowledge is owned by the knowledge producers. When a knowledge producer is gone, the knowledge previously produced is destroyed, if it was not adopted by another sufficiently knowledgeable producer.

The Inverse Commons explains that unlike sharing of hard resources, the sharing of knowledge increases the value of the shared knowledge. Current knowledge becomes more valuable as it gains more future potential uses, and only autonomous knowledge actors can maximize diverse use cases of interoperability.

Software has minimal financing requirements, e.g. one or two humans with computers can write software that launches a $millions start-up. I did this once or twice by myself with no employees (e.g. CoolPage.com by 2001 if in Shadowstats inflation-adjusted dollars).

Knowledge Investing

Since the ownership of knowledge can't be transferred with money, financing incurs the risk of guaranteeing knowledge to spontaneously create itself where it did not already exist. No level of guaranteed interest rate can compensate for this lack of knowledge in the act of financing. What attracts savers to be passive capitalists is the economy-of-scale, where the due diligence effort (i.e. knowledge production) applied does not rise significantly with the amount saved (i.e. loaned) at interest. The collective politics will guarantee (insure) the return by debasing the money as necessary to pay for the lack of knowledge production— another evidence that financing is a centralization paradigm because knowledge can't be owned with money.

Whereas, equity investment has no guaranteed return and requires knowledge production.

“Equity investments” that are based on consistent dividends, are essentially a low knowledge production investment decision with a semi-guaranteed return similar to financing. It is instructive to note that as of 2008 “No stockholder has made a real inflation-adjusted penny in equity in Coca-Cola in 46 years.”.

Passive capitalists will find it nearly impossible to venture into high-tech knowledge investing, because they necessarily must approach it from the financing perspective, as their objective is to deploy large quantities of capital passively, i.e. to approach the theoretical constant marginal utility of gold. For example, Buffett's BYD (which makes electric cars) investment has performed poorly. A scientifically knowledgeable person knows that the energy-density of batteries is not ROI competitive with petrol.

One general rule for investing in knowledge production, is to invest close to what you know well. Because knowledge is inherently local and autonomous. If there is some popular investment theme, then it must have a very low relative knowledge production— the extreme case is depositing money in the bank, where the depositor doesn't even care how the money is invested.

iamback has argued that finance and thus usury was useful (in the past) as a means of increasing prosperity and via allowing economies of scale to be created in situations where without usury individuals would be unable to collect sufficient capital to engage productive ideas.

He has also argued that finance eventually attempts to steal from/suppress knowledge as it becomes increasingly irrelevant as we move into an era where knowledge rather than fixed passive capital dominates production and productivity.

He is thus arguing that usury was needed to jump start the industrial revolution however going forward it will increasingly become a scourge. I have copied the relevant sections from his essay Rise of Knowledge (link in the opening post of this thread).

you expect everyone to have read your memoirs?  Then call people idiots that have not done so?

Side issue, I made a long post about going to the sea instead of staying on land for all of this

Calling people idiots is just kind of iamback's thing. Even those who agree with his overall thesis would be hesitant to defend his social etiquette.

The general assumption you make seems to be that with usury, some entities will accumulate tons of capital, and will then utilize that capital to somehow push civilzation forward.

Another example is, the gilded age in America occurred *because* the increase in technology and industrialization created these wealthy people.  It wasn't the other way around as you seem to talk about.  Wealth did not get trapped in the top 1/10th of 1% (which occurs in usury) and then these people created everything.  There's no reason to expect that to happen.  Usury creates misallocation of capital.

Reading Anonymint posts is like reading some kind of disinformation bot from the US government where half the stuff sounds intelligent, then the other half is propaganda praising the values of usury.

This quote was basically stolen from "The Bell Curve", or related book like that I've read before.  It's generally terminology used to promote ethnocentric majorities for countries to prevent collapse of the social order.  To liberals, something like this sounds racist, but usually holds true in human sociology.

Heiamback talks about "grassroots technological anonymous crypto-currency", I wonder if by this he means Bitcoin or a totally anonymous currency without a public ledger like Monero.

But even here something very interesting is happening that I think will eventually derail the FATCA project. You see, the agreements that the US has signed with other countries call for the exchange of tax data to actually be… well… an exchange. But there will be no exchange because there’s no procedure in US law for that to happen. In other words, the IRS can demand that other countries send it data, but there’s no legal mechanism in place for the IRS to force US financial institutions to send information to foreign tax authorities.

...

Meanwhile, finance ministers in Germany, China, India, and other countries are starting to ask, “Where’s the data on our citizens investing in the US?” And there’s a deafening silence on the US end of that question. The US can’t force its banks to provide this information, and barring a sudden change of heart by the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, the earliest this could change is in 2017, after the 2016 elections.

Obama Proposes Relief for Some Expatriates

Now the Obama administration has proposed a modest reform of the grossly unfair system of citizenship-based taxation in its 2016 budget presentation. Certain individuals who were dual citizens at birth would be permitted to expatriate under a considerably easier process than currently applies.

...

Does Obama Really Feel US Expatriates’ Pain?

...

But I don’t think Obama gives a rat’s ass about Americans living abroad. He’s much more concerned about making FATCA a success, so he can fulfill his campaign promise of “shutting down” what he calls “offshore tax havens.” And FATCA – the centerpiece of this plan – faces real threats, as I wrote about in this essay.

Now there’s another threat. In Canada, two US-Canadian dual citizens at birth have filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government. The lawsuit demands that the Canadian courts declare it illegal for the Canadian government to discriminate against US-Canadian dual citizens. The FATCA intergovernmental agreement between the US and Canada does discriminate – it forces Canadian financial institutions to release more information to the IRS than they are permitted to disclose to the Canadian tax authorities.

If this litigation succeeds, it could prove disastrous for FATCA – not just in Canada, but globally. But if Obama’s proposal becomes law, it would weaken the plaintiffs’ arguments – perhaps sufficiently to have their claims thrown out of court.

Will Armstrong deny the research of Anthony Sutton and now the revelation he posted to his own blog?

Does Armstrong have an open-mind to information that disagrees with his world-view that the elite don't cooperate globally?

Q: Do you believe that there has been suppression of technology? Has it been major or minor?

AS - Yes there has been suppression but its going to be impossible to suppress the new emerging paradigm.

Q: The Federal Reserve, the House of Morgan, House of Rothschild and Skull and Bones are they related?

AS - Best source for this is a book by me THE FEDERAL RESERVE CONSPIRACY, 1995 CPA, PO Box 596, Boring OR 97007

Q: What do you see for the future?

AS - Chaos, confusion and ultimately a battle between the individual and the State.

The individual is the stronger; and will win. The state is a fiction sanctified by Hegel and his followers to CONTROL the individual.

Q: Can you tell the story of how you learned of Skull & Bones? And how you felt?

AS - I knew nothing of S&B until I received a letter in the early 80's asking if I would like to look at a genuine membership list. For no real reason I said yes. It was agreed to send the package by Federal Express and I could keep it for 24 hours, it had to be returned to the safe. It was a "black bag" job by a family member disgusted with their activities.

For the benefit of any S&B members who may read and doubt the statement; the membership list is in two volumes, black leather bound. Living members and deceased members in separate volumes. Very handsome books.

I spent all night in Kinko's, Santa Cruz , copied the entire volumes and returned within the 24 hour period.

I have never released any copies or identified the source. I figured each copy could be coded and enable S&B to trace the leak.

How did I feel? I felt then (as I do now} that these "prominent" men are really immature juveniles at heart. The horrible reality is that these little boys have been dominant in their influence in world affairs. No wonder we have wars and violence. Skull and Bones is the symbol of terrorist violence, pirates, the SS Deaths Head Division in WW Two, labels on poison bottles and so on.

I kept the stack of xerox sheets for quite a while before I looked at them—when I did look—a picture jumped out, THIS was a significant part of the so called establishment. No wonder the world has problems!

Q: Did any of Hitler's economic policies threaten the interests of the international bankers, and if so did that play a role in his downfall?

AS - Hitler's economic policies were OK'd by the bankers right through the war...ITT, Chase, Texaco and others were operating in Nazi-held France as late as 1945. In fact Chase in Paris was trying to get Nazi accounts as late as 1944. When we got to Germany in May 1945, I remember seeing a (bombed-out) Woolworth store in Hamburg and thinking, "What's Woolworth doing in Nazi Germany?" While we were bombed and shelled it was "business as usual" for Big Business. Try the Alien Custodian Papers.

See my BEST ENEMY MONEY CAN BUY for more.

Union Banking is very important. I made a documentary for Dutch National TV some years ago. It got all the way through the production process to the Dutch TV Guide...at the last minute it was pulled and another film substituted. This documentary has proof of Bush financing Hitler—documents.

Maybe my Dutch friends will still get it viewed, but the apparatus reaches into Holland.

New evidence is surfacing that General George Patton was assassinated by the US government to shut him up for Patton’s position was clairvoyant to say the least that the Germans were not our enemy, it would be Communist Russia.

The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

...

Mr Bazata also suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, poisoned the general.

...

In order to placate Stalin, the 3rd Army was also ordered to a halt as it reached the German border and was prevented from seizing either Berlin or Prague, moves that could have prevented Soviet domination of Eastern Europe after the war.