CASHLESSNESS

Economist John Adams exposes the lies and propaganda behind the Australian Government's covert plans to trap Australians in a corrupt banking system.

CASHLESSNESS

Banning cash so you pay the bank to hold your money is what the IMF wants

Government moves to ban cash transactions above $10,000, there's a theory gaining traction that the real motive for the cash ban isn't the so-called "black economy", but rather, to give authorities greater control over your behaviour during recessions.

THE ESCHATON

The last act of the human comedy

The Industrial Revolution, starting about 250 years ago, saw human beings extract fossil fuels by tapping into a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of coal and petroleum.
The energy from fossil fuels provided unparalleled wealth and military superiority to the planet’s industrialized north, which used its power to subjugate most of the rest of the globe to cheaply extract resources and abuse cheap labor.
The population rapidly climbed to over 7 billion. The air, water and ice have seriously degraded under the onslaught as the planet shifts from one climate to another, a climate that will no longer be hospitable to human habitation.
The only existential question left is how we will choose to wait out the finale. But to pose that question is to defy the cultural mania for hope, the yearning for collective self-delusion. If reality is grim, you banish it. You invent impossible scenarios of inevitable salvation. Which explains how we ended up where we are.

CASHLESSNESS

Travellers want to try facial recognition technology to pay

Commuters are willing to use facial recognition technology that charge them each time they get on and off their mode of transport.

The technology has already become part of everyday life in China — in some cities it is used to verify commuters’ identities through camera technology installed at train stations.

Visa’s and Stanford University’s new Future of Transportation: Mobility in the age of the Megacity report, quizzed more than 20,000 people in 19 countries including Australia and found 54 per cent of Australians would be willing to try facial recognition or bluetooth technology when commuting.

CASHLESSNESS

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:16-17 (KJV)

The Mark of the Beast may be getting closer with the rapidly growing acceptance of implanted microchips.

In Sweden, cash is almost extinct
... and people implant microchips in their hands to pay for things

Few countries have been moving toward a cashless society as fast as Sweden. But cash is being squeezed out so quickly — with half the nation’s retailers predicting they will stop accepting bills before 2025 — that the government is recalculating the societal costs of a cash-free future.
“No cash accepted” signs are becoming an increasingly common sight in shops and eateries across Sweden as payments go digital and mobile. Source: Financial Post.

CONSCIOUSNESS

Pea plants conditioned like Pavlov's dog

A researcher has been breeding dissent from the science community with a series of experiments she believes proves that plants are making intelligent choices and listening to sounds.
Biological intelligence expert Monica Gagliano from the University of Sydney said it was possible to train plants in same way as a dog.
Dr Gagliano said her most “disturbing” find involved a fast-growing and climbing pea plant that developed a Pavlovian response.

LUCIFERIAN AGENDA

 Max Spiers was staying with Monika Duval at her unit in Warsaw, Poland when he began vomiting a dark fluid. 

Conspiracy theorist died after 'vomiting dark fluid'

Max Spiers, a British journalist who specialised in conspiracy theories UFO sightings, government cover-ups and paranormal phenomena, died after vomiting up dark fluid, an inquest has heard.
He was staying with his colleague Monika Duval in Warsaw, Poland when he fell ill in 2016.
Ms Duval provided a statement to the inquest that said Mr Spiers had complained to her about “satanic groups” being after him.
Mr Spiers' mother Vanessa Ms Bates told blogger Taj Gill her son had contacted her in the days leading up to his death with concerns about his well-being. She claimed he told her: “If anything happens to me, investigate.”
A British toxicologist said the amount of oxycodone in his system at the time of death was twice the normal amount.

MARK OF THE BEAST

UK businesses planning to implant microchips in staff

British companies are planning to microchip their employees in order to boost security and stop staff from accessing sensitive areas of the business.
Biohax, a Swedish tech firm, has diclosed it is in talks with a number of UK legal and financial services firms to implant workers with human chip devices. One prospective client, which the company said could not be named, is believed to be a major global auditing firm with "hundreds of thousands of employees".
The chips, about the size of a grain of rice, cost £150 each and are similar to those used for pets. As well as restricting access to controlled areas, microchips could be used to buy food from the canteen, enter the building or access printers.

CASHLESSNESS

My 'precious': A month with the Bankwest halo payment ring

Letting your bank literally get under your skin will take some getting used to by the public, so for now we are being offered wearable options.
Bankwest was the first in Australia to offer the ring to customers when it launched at the beginning of the year, but Mastercard Australasia president Richard Wormald said several other banks, including some of the big four, were looking at it as well.
While right now it's a gimmick, it, or something like it, will soon become the norm.
"I've been wearing my ring long enough I'm beginning to feel a deep connection to it. The ring loves me and I love the ring. I swear to serve the master of the precious," says Hamish Hastie.

CASHLESSNESS

Again, let's focus on coffee shops and nail salons and forget about the corporate giants who pay almost no tax by offshoring profits and by other means.

Businesses are operating as cash-only to avoid paying tax

According to research by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), two-thirds of consumers believe cash-only small businesses are profiting from getting away with paying less tax.
An ATO blitz last year forced seven out of 10 cash-only businesses to increase the amount of tax paid, totalling $200 million in tax and penalties.
About 20 per cent of cash-only businesses say providing card payments is too expensive.
Leading GST and tax expert Ken Fehily, who also advises the ATO and Treasury, said Australians had good reason to be suspicious of cash-only businesses.
He said small business’ avoidance of tax is “exceptionally widespread”.
The Black Economy Taskforce (an initiative of the federal Treasury) estimates the ‘black economy’ to be worth as much as $50 billion, more than twice what the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated in late 2016.
Mr Worthington said many businesses only accept cash, with some classic examples including massage parlours, nail salons and tattoo studios.
“If it’s only accepting cash, you’ve got to question the validity of that business and whether they’re paying tax,” he said.
“They could be avoiding paying their GST tax, or avoid paying tax altogether, full stop.
“There is no legitimate reason other than to selfishly allow themselves to earn more money.”

MEANWHILE …

Mossack Fonseca: inside the firm that helps the super-rich hide their money

Since 2008, and the global financial crisis, cash-strapped exchequers [treasurers/finance ministers] had been trying to get their hands on billions in potential tax revenue hidden offshore.
How serious these attempts were was a matter for debate.
What wasn’t in doubt were the vast sums involved. According to the US economist Gabriel Zucman, 8% of the world’s wealth – a vast $7.6 trillion – was stashed in tax havens.

CASHLESSNESS

$100 note should be dumped to starve black economy

Australia's shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said many $100 banknotes were being used by criminals and that Australia should consider ditching the "kermit" all together.
University of New South Wales economist Richard Holden agreed.
"They're a vehicle for tax evasion and they're a vehicle for illegal activities," he said. "One of the main reasons people hold $100 bills is to hide them from tax authorities."
He said doing away with the predominantly green $100 note would help the Government to start to refill its depleted coffers.
"Some very credible estimates said if you got rid of all cash in Australia you would boost tax revenues by about $6 billion a year or more," he said. "So if you got rid of the $100 bill you might boost revenues by half of that."

IDENTITY THEFT

Alarm as biometric data added to government database

Experts are warning people that they now risk losing control of their biometric identity entirely as commercial interests, governments and organised crime gangs all move to capture more personal metadata for their own gain.
Biometric data may already be vulnerable to misuse by criminals and terrorists, as the proliferation of mobile cameras combined with social media and ubiquitous CCTV feeds mean we're caught on screen more than ever before.
Technology and legal expert Professor Katina Michael said one of the biggest risks of the collection of biometric data was not deliberate misuse by government agencies, but rather vulnerabilities in the way biometrics work.

CASHLESSNESS

India is Digitalizing Everything From Cash to Citizen Identification

Last November (2016), as part of a controversial master plan to make India a cashless and digitized society, the Prime minister Narendra Modi announced that Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes were to be demonetized, which effectively stripped the value of 86 percent of the country’s circulating cash.
The move could curb corruption and “black money” in India as well introduce a more robust, effective tax system.
The decision has significant ramifications not only for India, but for the rest of the world as well.
The move will prove an interesting experiment to observe for other countries looking to go cashless, such as Sweden, which has seen a 40 percent reduction in cash and coin in circulation.

M FIELD

Man finds long-lost brother by chance

David walks into a Noosa café and sits near a man who irritates him for hogging all the newspapers. Eventually the two begin talking and realise they are brothers. Both called David.

CASHLESSNESS

Government floats $100 note removal

Australia looks set to follow in the footsteps of Venezuela and India by abolishing the country’s highest-denomination banknote in a bid to crack down on the “black economy”.

Speaking to ABC radio on Wednesday, Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer flagged a review of the $100 note and cash payments over certain limits as the government looks to recoup billions in unpaid tax.

Monday’s midyear budget update will include the appointment of former KPMG global chairman Michael Andrew to oversee a black economy taskforce. The black economy accounts for 1.5 per cent of GDP, given many cash payments are untaxed.

COSMOLOGY

New model points to an oscillating universe

Before the Big Bang there was another universe and a new one will emerge after ours collapses

In a new model of cosmology, the universe we see is just one in a cycle of many universes. Each of these universes has its own phases of expansion, contraction and a Big Bang.
Researcher Mir Faizal said, "Our spacetime is only an approximation to some purely mathematical theory describing reality, and the geometry of spacetime emerges from this theory.
"The fact that the geometry of spacetime is bounded by a minimum length and a maximum energy can be used to study quantum gravitational effects on cosmology, and doing this we have been able to study the pre-Big Bang cosmology".
The team took two inputs – that spacetime breaks down at a minimum length and that it is not possible for any object in this spacetime to have an energy beyond a certain maximum energy – and applied it to the thermodynamical description of general theory of relativity. What they ended up with was four distinct phases of the universe, supporting the idea of a cyclical universe.

CASHLESSNESS

Cashless society will come at a devastating cost

Within a generation, notes and coins will almost certainly be redundant — not just in practice but made so by law.
Shops and other businesses will be banned from accepting them. Banks will no longer distribute them.
Physical currency will be consigned to history, gathering dust on the shelves of collectors’ shops and in the recesses of our couches.

And the consequences will at once be brilliant and grave.

CASHLESSNESS

SA town of Burra runs out of cash


Residents and visitors to a town in South Australia's mid north have been left without any access to cash over the weekend, which is starting to affect tourism and business, locals say.

CASHLESSNESS

Debt row for Bitcoin man

Reported bitcoin 'founder' raided by Australian police 

151209

Police have raided the home of an Australian entrepreneur and academic identified by two US tech publications as one of the early developers of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin and who could be figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto

On Wednesday afternoon, police gained entry to a home belonging to Craig Wright, who had hours earlier been identified in investigations by Gizmodo and Wired, based on leaked transcripts of legal interviews and files. Both publications have indicated that they believe Wright to have been involved in the creation of the cryptocurrency. 

Who is Craig Wright?

Bitcoin Foundation is “effectively bankrupt,” board member says

One of the newly elected board members of the Bitcoin Foundation—the 2.5-year-old organization that was meant to bring order to the famously open source and freewheeling cryptocurrency—has declared the group "effectively bankrupt."

…

The non-profit’s own tax filings from 2013 show that it ended that year with over $4.7 million in total assets—nearly five times as much as it had at the same time the previous year. It has yet to release financial details for 2014.

…

Of its original five founders, one is now in prison (Charlie Shrem), another oversaw the collapse of the largest Bitcoin exchange (Mark Karpeles), and yet another has since left the US for a Caribbean nation known for offshore banking (Roger Ver). Of the original board members, only Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen has remained.

…

In a Saturday blog post, the new member, Olivier Janssens, claimed that the group has been hiding this financial distress from its membership. As he wrote:

The Bitcoin Foundation hates transparency. If they would have been transparent then everyone would know there is no money left. Something I think the members have a right to know, wouldn’t you think? Members have a right to know that the current board failed to tell them the truth, and that their way of running the organization resulted in it going bankrupt. But instead of taking responsibility, they want to find the next executive director that will come up with another magic plan. Ironically, being transparent from the start might have prevented this whole thing to begin with.

Failed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox gets U.S. bankruptcy protection
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The failed Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, received court approval on Tuesday to begin Chapter 15 bankruptcy proceedings in the United States as it awaits approval of a settlement with U.S. customers and a sale of its business.
Mt Gox was once the world's leading exchange for trading the digital currency, but shut its website earlier this year after saying it lost some 850,000 bitcoins - worth more than $500 million at current prices - in a hacking attack.

It subsequently said it found 200,000 bitcoins.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

 

Spy poisoning: suspect ‘to talk’

ONE of the suspects in the London murder of the former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is willing to co-operate with the inquiry into his death, the hearing heard yesterday.

Mr Litvinenko died from radioactive poisoning three weeks after meeting former Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun at a Mayfair hotel in November 2006. Kovtun and Lugovoi are suspected of slipping radioactive polonium-210 into Litvinenko’s tea. Both deny involvement and remain in Russia.

COSMIC CONNECTIONS

Replica of Ernest Lawrence’s first cylcotron, on exhibition in the CERN Globe of Innovation.
Like the original, it is only a few centimetres across Photograph: Wimox/Wikimedia

Sizing up a new particle accelerator, and the 'cosmic stupid' limit

Now, let us assume that the effective cross section for the inelastic scattering of two cosmic rays is of the size of the Universe.

Physics is in an interesting position, now that the Higgs boson has been discovered. The “Standard Model” doesn’t predict any more new particles, no matter how tiny, and it could be considered internally complete. However, it is very far from being a theory of everything, failing to account for such major experimental facts as gravity, the different amounts of matter and antimatter in the universe, and the 85% or so of stuff that seems to be “Dark Matter”. It also struggles with neutrinos.