Economic Totalitarianism

[TPTB_need_war]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8MO7fkZc5o

Robert Trujillo band member of Metallica since 2003 and I both attended Culver City High School and graduated in 1983. You can ask him about my wild parties in high school on Dobson Way. I did happenstance on at least one Metallica head banger concert in a small venue in the San Fernando valley in the 1980s (as best as I remember, although I was probably very drunk), although I don't think Trujillo was affiliated with the band at that time. Good times. Hope to do it again soon  

[TPTB_need_war]

OROBTC, I am changing my opinion on the value of UNREGISTERED guns (all registered guns will be seized by the government), but only if concomitant with a community of armed men for defense (not all alone which is certain to be overrun):

I estimate 60 - 80% probability of radical global chaos coming and persisting for the remainder of my life, beginning roughly in 2018 in earnest and worsening again after 2024. I don't think it will be absolute loss of governance and society every where. But it is very difficult to predict all of the ramifications and situations are likely to be very fluid and changing, so any one regional advantage could at some point turn against you.

The best advice I have is try to move before the SHTF to a warmer area that is either too wet (thus some drying trend won't cause total drought) or a more rarely a warmer area that is too dry that might experience an increase in precipitation due to changes in prevailing winds or something. I don't have the data on which areas were best in the last Little Ice Age. Can any one dig up this data?

And then you need to make a decision whether you trust society in that area to remain civilized; if yes then go for populated areas and depend on community. If not and you can afford it, then maybe go for your own ranch heavily defended by sturdy male family (or perhaps robots will be available soon to employ as a defensive army).

Seems right now one of the most productive activities we men could do is start to acquaint ourselves with each other and making compacts to be neighbors and bond together to be able to provide the economy-of-scale to have a small rural community defense and diversification of food production and trading.

Photo of some of the nutcases we will be up against:

that's the question. It seems impossible for this to happen. I can buy a pound of rolled oats for 30 cents, you could quadruble the costs and life would go on*.

You apparently lack appreciation of the significance of both marginal prices in economics, and also the non-linear effects of chaos.

1. With marginal prices in Economics 101...

2. When the population has become dependent on high economies-of-scale in farming, distribution, credit, government, corporations, etc., and that is taken away by mother nature and or widespread war/pestilence..

[OROBTC]

...

TPTB

Where did you get that picture of my family?  Calling them nutcases, you have the nerve...

My family is much better prepared than I am, as you can see.  Alas, in my case, my guns (ammo too) were lost in a boating accident, why a year ago IIRC.  Rather than get the police all riled up about guns out there at the bottom of the sea, I thought I would just let them corrode away.  Most unfortunate.

Oh, I lost all my precious metals on the same boat-ride.  And everyone told me that it was so much better to take all that stuff with me rather than leave it all behind in some dark place at home.  How naive.  Now I have to start over.


EDIT: My Bitcoins too.  After all, carrying all that weight of firearms and PMs, it just seemed natural to take along my hardware wallets too.  Live and learn.


EDIT 2: There is a guy I know in another state who can help me re that unregistered business.......

[TPTB_need_war]

OROBTC, please document your boating trip with receipts and also show where you filed the "lost gun" report on time, otherwise you will be charged with a crime (a recent ex post facto law under emergency terrorism powers granted to the President by the bought congress and kangaroo courts) and housed in this prison which we can't really maintain with food, otherwise known as a concentration camp.

Your family members are associated with terrorism and you are being taken into custody on suspicion of aiding and abetting terrorism. You have no right to an attorney.

Edit: my point is you need to be as invisible as possible to the State (as it can overpower you) and your male community needs to be as strong as possible against marauding nutcases. If you depend only on the State for the latter, then well you end up dead if the State can't maintain law & order (or the State itself goes F.U.B.A.R.).

Edit#2: I suggest another narrative. I long ago sold my registered guns and some of my traceable precious metals, and here is the paperwork to prove it. I paid all my taxes. The remaining precious metals are stored here and here is the paperwork. As for the precious metals I sold, I used the funds to manage daily expenses which I paid in cash as evident by my cash withdrawals from ATMs over this time. I lived a fairly high life during the recent years (and if the State already knows where you live, I say also some diversifications into land and improvements on the land). No I didn't covertly obtain precious metals nor cryptocurrencies with that cash by purchasing mining equipment with the cash. I believed in documented precious metals instead.

Edit#3: very careful with entrusting secrets to "friends" who can turn against you when they need to survive.

Edit#4: my overriding point is that traditional forms of diversification could be entirely useless if what we face in the future is a 309 year cycle event. Smooth this point is also directed to you. I guess CoinCube also.

[entertheabyss]

Someone please post a link to this post over in the Monero thread so they can come over here to address it. I don't want to shit on their thread. I am not criticizing Monero per se. I am technically criticizing I2P when deployed against a high-powered adversary such as the NSA. I am disappointed in whom ever made this decision for marketing reasons (apparently) without sufficient engineering investigation.

I2P (which is relied on by Monero to insure your anonymity) has updated their detailed summary of potential attacks. That looks really bad (as I had expected). I wouldn't trust for that for obfuscating who sent a message to whom in the face of a powerful adversary and neither do they:

https://geti2p.net/en/comparison/other-networks

Mixminion and Mixmaster are networks to support anonymous email against a very powerful adversary. High-latency messaging applications running on top of I2P (for example Syndie or I2PBote) may perhaps prove adequate to meet the threat model of those adversaries, while running in parallel along side the needs of low latency users, to provide a significantly larger anonymity set. High-latency support within the I2P router itself may or may not be added in a distant future release. It is too early to say if I2P will meet the needs of users requiring extreme protection for email.

What they are really saying at the above quote is that the underlying I2P network is low-latency hogwash that can't protect against a high-latency adversary and that if someone builds a high-latency system (whether they run it on I2P or not is irrelevant), then you may be protected. Well duh! I2P isn't high-latency mixing and doesn't protect you. I doubt I2PBote does either. I am studying I2PBote and once again the design is not fully documented. I2PBote appears to store messages in a DHT and uses optionally high-latency relaying to provide the anonymity, but absolutely no details are given and the relaying may not even be sufficiently implemented or utilized (too small of mix set) to be of any use.

I2P was designed by the folks who did P2P file sharing apps. They did not design I2P to be anonymous to powerful adversaries, rather they designed it to be a performant, low-level network layer for basic privacy.

Stay away! Don't trust I2P for that threat model!

Thus Monero is not yet anonymous against a high-powered adversary (such as the NSA) unless you use a connection to the internet that can not be correlated to you nor to any activity you do from that connection (e.g. Google's cookie in your browser, logging into any website, etc). This is because if an identity is attached to a sent transaction (via the lack of IP address obfuscation), then it is known that identity is associated with the sender of that transaction, regardless of the ring signature mixing on chain.

Most users have no clue what they are doing and will not likely be anonymous against a high-powered adversary in Monero even if they think they are using an unregistered connection to the internet. And if widely the case, then this can cascade into reduced anonymity sets for everyone thus even destroying the anonymity for those who were careful enough.

You see this shit is very complex and it can't be done with such nonchalant attitude. It requires serious technical documentation and analysis.

I am not angry at any one per se; we are running out time and we should be working together to solve the problem instead of playing marketing battles here. We need to stop attacking each other. I am not attacking Monero. I am just stating technical facts.

You know they added I2P because I mentioned last year in a forum there where smooth et al were present or lurking that IP address wasn't obfuscated. I think fluffypony picked up on my criticism and pushed for adding it, but I am not really sure who did. Ever since then, I've been telling smooth that I2P is not sufficient against a high-powered adversary. It is one year hence and we still haven't solved the problem.

As AnonyMint I was the guy in the Anoncoin thread in 2013 (as kLee can attest) making the point their I2P integration lacked high-latency protection against timing attacks. Now 2 years later we are still in the same predicament.

Look I am just one guy. You can't expect me to do the work that requires dozens and dozens of highly skilled programmers working for years. I can only do so much. I am working 100+ hours a week and doing my best. I will try to fix all this shit but I won't be able to do it alone.

P.S. what got me off on this tangent was searching for a better alternative to Bitmessage, but unfortunately I think maybe there is none when obfuscating the link between sender and recipient. In terms of encrypting messages so only sender and recipient can read (and not concerned about linking the identities of sender and recipient), then I2PBote looks better than Bitmessage because it has a 512-bit ECC encryption option (thus maybe providing a few more years of historical protection, perhaps even against early, less powerful quantum computers that may come) and better usability features.

To demonstrate how naive users are, I had asked a programmer for his Bitmessage address and he told me bitmsg.me! Cross that guy off the list for potential employment. He doesn't even understand how using a website would eliminate the entire point of using Bitmessage in the first place (unless of course that website is using client-side Javascript encryption and receiving all network messages from the server and attempting to decrypt them client-side and not relying on the server hosting bitmsg.me to do that instead, which may be the case but I doubt it).

Edit: I am reading I2P's technical documentation. They are talking about maybe implementing some high-latency delays for version 3.0 (they aren't even at version 1 yet since starting in 2003), and worse is they plan to let the sender set the delays at each hop of the garlic layer! I guess they don't realize that this will allow a high-powered, omniscient attacker to flood inbound tunnels with specifically timed delays so they can unmask the tunnel! These I2P devs should not be trusted about anonymity.

I think you need to read a bit more about i2p, its designed for more than just filesharing. its a darknet anonymous network, kind of like onionland but better. i2pbote is a great p2p serverless email network built on top of i2p with encrypted headers. I use it myself and integrated it into my darknet exchange. i2p eepsites support multihoming and easy to use router connection limits to help minimize the ddos issues with tor marketplaces.

saying that i2p wont protect you from the NSA is silly and oversimplifying things. The question to ask is "does i2p remove the link between altcoin spend signatures, blockchain data and address geodata from the clients true IP" the answer is yes it does. Im not sure how to reassure you that i2p is immune to the NSA, but good luck demasking the IP of an anoncoin i2ponly client.

[entertheabyss]

Electromagnetic shielding around your computer can defeat this.

If the NSA has determined your location, you are already probably toast.

They key about IP obfuscation anonymity mixing is the NSA not knowing who is doing what.

I plan to be retired by the time the NSA starts trailing me. My essential work will be done over the next several months, then turned over to other devs to carry on. I need to make sure ALL of those other devs can not be identified.

As for future-proofing, then wider keys such as 512-bit ECC and super singular isogenies against quantum computing can be considered.

No we don't have to give up. There won't be any place on earth to emmigrate to. This totalitarianism is global this time. You have 3 axis powers pretending to be antagonists who are really working together to enslave the people, and between them their militaries can reach any corner of the globe. China has a huge standing army to deploy to South America, Africa, etc.. They will hunt you down.

lol

[trollercoaster]

http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/01/u-s-vs-china-tax-system/

http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2014/06/30/china-agrees-fatca-compliance.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2015/01/13/chinas-fiscal-roadmap-tax-like-america/

Fatca is the seed planted by uncle Sam which will eventually develop into a global tax system, it builds the foundation for them to launch their NWO coin, to streamline tax collection and crush terrorism, tax evasion and underground activities which the masses will be begging for after the global economy melts down.

[TPTB_need_war]

I think you need to read a bit more about i2p, its designed for more than just filesharing. its a darknet anonymous network, kind of like onionland but better. i2pbote is a great p2p serverless email network built on top of i2p with encrypted headers. I use it myself and integrated it into my darknet exchange. i2p eepsites support multihoming and easy to use router connection limits to help minimize the ddos issues with tor marketplaces.

saying that i2p wont protect you from the NSA is silly and oversimplifying things. The question to ask is "does i2p remove the link between altcoin spend signatures, blockchain data and address geodata from the clients true IP" the answer is yes it does. Im not sure how to reassure you that i2p is immune to the NSA, but good luck demasking the IP of an anoncoin i2ponly client.

I will respond to your naive ignorance in a detailed white paper. You need to read more and comprehend more technical information than you apparently do. I don't have time to deal with you in a non-technical discussion in a forum. Those who trust my knowledge will understand you are wrong.

[TPTB_need_war]

Fatca is the seed planted by uncle Sam which will eventually develop into a global tax system, it builds the foundation for them to launch their NWO coin, to streamline tax collection and crush terrorism, tax evasion and underground activities which the masses will be begging for after the global economy melts down.

You sir are very astute and understand what is really going on.

[TPTB_need_war]

Received the following information in email from the embassy in Manila. Freudian slip?

THE EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES IS TRANSMITTING THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION THROUGH
THE EMBASSY WARDEN SYSTEM AS A PUBLIC SERVICE TO AMERICAN CITIZENS IN THE
PHILIPPINES. PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS MESSAGE TO ALL U.S. CITIZENS IN YOUR
ORGANIZATION OR NEIGHBORHOOD.

war·den
ˈwôrd
noun
a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or thing or for ensuring that regulations associated with it are obeyed.
"the warden of a local nature reserve"
NORTH AMERICAN
the head official in charge of a prison.

Those reading Armstrong's blog read the following already.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/34287

Here are the new laws in Spain:

1. If you photograph security personnel and then share these images on social media: up to €30.000 fine (particularly if photo exposes violence used against a member of the public). This fine could increase depending on the number of Instagram or social media followers you have.

2. Tweet or retweet information or the “location of an organized protest” can now be interpreted as an act of terrorism as it incites others to “commit a crime” (now that “demonstrating” in many ways has become a crime). Sound “1984”-ish? Read about Orwell and his time in Spain.

3. Snowden-like whistle blowing is now defined as an act of terrorism. If you write for a local publication, be careful what you print, whom you speak to, and whether the government is listening.

4. Visiting or consulting terrorist websites – even for investigative purposes – can be interpreted as an act of terrorism. Make sure you use “Tor” browser, reject cookies, and don’t allow pop-ups. Not to mention, don’t post it on your Facebook timeline!

5. Be careful with the royal jokes! Any satirical comment against the royal family is a new crime “against the Crown”. For example, “What did Leticia and the Bishop have to say after they ––“ (SORRY CENSORED).

6. No more hassling elected members of the government or local authorities – even if they say one thing in order to be elected, but then go and do the exact opposite. Confronting them about this hypocritical behavior. Even if you see them in the street chatting to a street cleaner, dining at their favorite expensive restaurant, or having their shoes shined by that physics graduate who cannot find a decent job in the country, hassling them about their behavior is now a criminal offence.

7. Has your local river been so polluted by that plastic factory along the edge that all life has extinguished? Well, tough! Greenpeace or similar protests are now finable from €601–€30.000.

8. Protests in a spontaneous way outside Parliament are now illegal. For example if Parliament passes a hugely unpopular bill, or are debating something extremely important to you or your community, it is now finable from €601 – €30.000. Tip: Use Google Maps to protest just around the corner – but don’t tweet the location!

9. Obstructing an officer in the course of their business, “resisting arrest”, refusing to leave a demonstration when told, or getting in the way of a swinging baton are all now finable offences from €601 – €30.000.

10. Showing lack of respect to officers of the law is an immediate fine of €100 – €600. Answering back, asking a disrespectful question, making a funny face, showing your bottom to an officer of the law, or telling him/her that their breath reminds you of your dog’s underparts is now, sadly, not advisable.

11. Occupying, squatting, or refusing to leave an office, business, bank or other place until your complaint has been heard as a protest is now a €100 – €600 fine (no more flash mobs).

12. Digital protests: Writing something that could technically “disturb the peace” is a now a crime. Bloggers beware, for no one has yet defined whose peace you could be disturbing.

[Hueristic]

Received the following information in email from the embassy in Manila. Freudian slip?

THE EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES IS TRANSMITTING THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION THROUGH
THE EMBASSY WARDEN SYSTEM AS A PUBLIC SERVICE TO AMERICAN CITIZENS IN THE
PHILIPPINES. PLEASE DISSEMINATE THIS MESSAGE TO ALL U.S. CITIZENS IN YOUR
ORGANIZATION OR NEIGHBORHOOD.

war·den
ˈwôrd
noun
a person responsible for the supervision of a particular place or thing or for ensuring that regulations associated with it are obeyed.
"the warden of a local nature reserve"
NORTH AMERICAN
the head official in charge of a prison.

LOL

[TPTB_need_war]

This is the most interesting article I've read in a long time:

http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Perspectives/How-China-renationalized-its-economy

State-corporate fascism via taxation. Welcome to Economic Totalitarianism in China. This is the model of the coming NWO.

Professor Michael Pettis's (China expert) response, and my counter-points:

Michael, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I admire so much your willingness to discuss openly in your blog. Two counter points without claiming you are "wrong", because I am not sure any of us have all the requisite data.

1. The article claimed or implied that SOEs were claiming higher net profits (at least after taxation).

2. Until we factor in the reversal in the "wealth effect" (Δmarket cap ≠ Δmonetary capital invested) due to bursting of debt and speculative bubbles, we can't account for what portion of the GDP is not real. The large capitalists can position their power and monetary wealth (two different forms of wealth) such that it sustains across such corrections. In other words, the masses can be running around like hamsters on a wheel, going effectively no where while the large capitalists siphon off all the power.

[minor-transgression]

@TPTBNW - I finally figured you out - you are an optimist!

Some background information re China:
Prof Steve Keen expects a crash in China within the next two years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKy6_yy3C3U
“This is the talk I gave at the FT/Alphaville conference in London, covering why we crashed in 2008"

I would have thought that Martin Armstrong, after what he has been
through, would have a better insight into our future. He seems to believe
that if socialism is eliminated all will be well. It looks to me that he
may need to take another look at the output from his models.

I'm watching these ripples working their way back towards where the stone
will hit the water circa 2020 at the very latest. I *think* the ripples are there
because TPTB are moving back to high ground and they don't have much time
to get things done.

I haven't worked out what this means for bitcoin, but I'll get there. 

[TPTB_need_war]

@TPTBNW - I finally figured you out - you are an optimist!

Correct. So many people thought I was spreading doom assuming I was pessimist, when in fact my goal was to wake people up and generate the demand for solutions.

I stay busy on finding a solution to anything that threatens me, including Multiple Sclerosis.

Some background information re China:
Prof Steve Keen expects a crash in China within the next two years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKy6_yy3C3U
“This is the talk I gave at the FT/Alphaville conference in London, covering why we crashed in 2008"

Asia will decline from 2016 to 2020. Asia will bottom in 2020 and it will rise while the West will continue spiraling down for decades. But that doesn't mean Asia will a refuge for Westerners. I believe the Asian Union will enforce our home country's expropriation on us. Non-asian men can not obtain citizenship in Asia (except Cambodia but I believe these will be revoked later).

I would have thought that Martin Armstrong, after what he has been
through, would have a better insight into our future. He seems to believe
that if socialism is eliminated all will be well. It looks to me that he
may need to take another look at the output from his models.

He recognizes that. He has stated nothing will be a permanent solution. He is just trying to find the least painful way forward. (but imo his "solutions" are all wrong)

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33825

COMMENT: ...The Founding Fathers put restrictions in place to shackle government, but that didn’t seem to work for very long either. How long would it be before the 5% cap is moved to 7%, 10%, then 12%?  Or they could simply change the calculation of GDP to boost their ability to spend.

The income tax was originally touted as only a tax on the “rich” or the top 1%. Now here we are with the average American having at least a third of their income confiscated and consumed by unproductive bureaucrats. Nothing ever changes.

REPLY: We are talking about a palatable solution, not a revolution. Ideally, you are correct. We should eliminate career politicians. But we must comprehend, they would never eliminate their own jobs. The best we can hope for is that the older ones will vote to end career politicians, imposing term limits on their way out the door. So how do we save our future without revolution and bloodshed?

The solution presented is one that assumes there are no benevolent politicians, but ones who would vote for something that makes the basic changes we need without driving a stake through their own hearts. So this is by no means the PERFECT solution, only a palatable one.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/34699

The only way to prevent this type of system was to adopt what the Founding Fathers did in the USA – two-year terms for Congress – because there was no pay and they met only for a few weeks each year. That was closer to a citizen government. The mistake was this should have been hard-coded into the Constitution for once they tasted power they began to pay themselves, becoming career politicians. Jefferson agreed to Hamilton’s proposal of a national debt, provided it was paid-off. This was actually accomplished, as illustrated above. You can see there was no national debt and there was no direct taxation (Income Tax) until 1913.

To solve the problem, there should be NO career politicians and the government should be barred from borrowing money. Those are the key issues. Claiming to make a gold standard or some other nonsense to make “sound” money is pointless. You cannot create sound money with taxes and borrowing intact. We had a gold standard and that failed because politicians borrowed and spent more than there was when gold was fixed at $35. Therefore, a gold standard will always flop because you are trying to use that as a restraint upon government. Deal with the problem directly, for indirect means will never succeed.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/24607

There is no single form of government that will ever be perfect. Whatever its form, government will self-corrupt and both sides will fight between the people and government perhaps eternally. The best form of government for brief periods of time are benevolent dictators, monarchs, or emperors, such as Julian II, who even decreed that whatever laws he passed must also apply to himself. Such individuals are rare indeed and once they are gone, the system will revert back to its corrupt state.

[generalizethis]

There is no single form of government that will ever be perfect. Whatever its form, government will self-corrupt and both sides will fight between the people and government perhaps eternally. The best form of government for brief periods of time are benevolent dictators, monarchs, or emperors, such as Julian II, who even decreed that whatever laws he passed must also apply to himself. Such individuals are rare indeed and once they are gone, the system will revert back to its corrupt state.

Can't we migrate to corporate states where you buy the government you want?

Are our lives about to be so infused/guarded/controlled by technology that it isn't impossible to believe that future generations won't live their lives the same way you live (via avatar) in a video game? Of course the worst crime in these systems of government by computer design won't be murder or theft, but hacks that allow for you to manipulate game/life play. If you violate a patch, you simply won't be able to live in the communal environment. If you turn off your DRM, you won't be able to see your virtual family again. Turn off your computer, and you'll get to see that your house in now a cage and the computers are building their world outside and your resource allocation is as meager as a mouse living in a cage--

back to the maze [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFwhEvVqnA]....

[trollercoaster]

the fine for drink driving here has increased to $40 000, starting aug 1

[TPTB_need_war]

But it doesn't distract too many brain cells to comment on Armstrong's continued myopia on the manipulation the axis powers are doing by pretending to be antagonists. I wish someone would email this rebuttal to Armstrong and demand he justify his nonsense. I got tired of emailing him.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/34968

IMF Says Greek Debt Should be Foregiven

Even the IMF has come out now and warned that Greece may need a complete debt write-off. That is sending an economic earthquake through Europe for it undermines the political position of Merkel entirely. There is no doubt about this, Greece cannot pay and cannot raise taxes yet simultaneously still have any viable economy. This is the collapse of Socialism.

So why has the IMF turned around? If Greek’s debt is not written off, the harsh economic conditions being imposed will merely send Greece into the waiting arms of Russia. This is now becoming political with the IMF agreeing with the Obama position.

What you need to understand is that the grand plan (further behind the curtain than Armstrong has access) has been ever since the Euro was created, is that the irreparable debts would be consolidated onto the entire EU balance sheet. The plan all along was a new world order government and financial system, with the 10 Kings regions from the Bible (European Union, Asian Union, North American Union, South American Union, etc) as the next step towards that goal.

So this above with the IMF, Russia, Merkel is just more of the usual Hegelian dialectic (a.k.a. good car salesman, bad car salesman) ploy wherein there appears to be antagonists, but in reality they are all just pretending and squeezing the masses in between a rock and a hard place so the ultimate result is towards the shared goal of TPTB in all regions and nations.

So the IMF will pretend to be the good guys, so Germany will be forced to accept unifying the debts of Europe in order to prevent Greece from falling to the bad guys Russia.

Sheesh, Armstrong is as gullible as a 5 year old sometimes.

Edit: this interview is illuminating:

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece

[trollercoaster]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/codename-citicoin-banking-giant-built-three-internal-blockchains-test-bitcoin-technology-1508759

From the horses mouth: Moore said: "We have up and running three separate systems within Citi now that actually deploy blockchain distributed ledger technologies. They are all within the labs just now so there is no real money passing through these systems yet, they are at a pre-production level to be clear.

"We also have an equivalent to bitcoin up and running, again within the labs, so we can mine what we call a 'Citicoin', for want of a better term. It's in the labs, but it's to make sure we are at the leading edge of this technology and that we can exploit the opportunities within it."

[TPTB_need_war]

Oh golly, from 58% chance of being unmasked to only 5.1%  

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/tor-astoria-timing-attack-client/

Who wants to risk their life and limb(s, toes, fingers, eyeballs, and tongue) to a 5.1% dice roll every time they transmit sensitive data over the internet  

Tor and I2P are fundamentally flawed for being NSA-proof. You'll need an entirely different design.

[minor-transgression]

Also from http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece

“So what we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. So no citizen ever knows what is said within. … These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.”

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling with peoples lives is going on in this establishment.
Where are my winnings?

If you believe that this group has more functionality than a chocolate teapot, I have some islands you may want to buy.

And do not become too fixated on MA he is dealing with reality in his own way.