Bitcoin and Other Delusions
By Richard Girard
I would laugh at the libertarians and their pretensions of the use of "bitcoin" and other cybercurrencies, if the idea of people-created, cybercurrencies would not ultimately be used as an excuse for the mega-corporations to push for a world-wide, universally accepted--in reality compulsory--currency. This world-wide money--the "credit" of so many sci-fi stories--will--during the conversion from national to universal currency--destroy what is left of the middle class in the Western Democracies, and make 'bitcoin" and the rest de facto counterfeit money.
The libertarians and others seem to think that they can somehow hide out on the "dark web," the ninety percent of the Internet that is not accessible to the everyday user. What these "cybergurus" seem to not realize is that they are allowed an existence on the World Wide Web by various government agencies in the U.S. and elsewhere in order to hide the more nefarious schemes of those government agencies, and blame any disruption of the Web on these 'cybergurus." This is the impression that I have from years of keeping my eyes and ears open for pieces of information such as that publicized by "60 Minutes," the weekend of April 19, 2015. But how much of this is a diversion from other important matters?
We are all horrified with the police murders of so many males of Afro-American descent in the last month. Walter Scott, Justus Howell, Phillip White, Eric Harris, and Freddie Gray, have all died because of police arrogance and bigotry in the last month. But we ignore the multiple instances of sexual assault and rape against women in this country by law enforcement. Police sexual misconduct is the second most commonly reported abuse of authority by law enforcement officers in this country, according to the Cato Institute. This is almost certainly due to the American public's refusal to recognize that women are victims of police misconduct in any form. As Tony Morrison so recently opined in Britain's The Daily Telegraph, about whether racism is over in America, "...I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, 'Is it over?', I will say yes." When I see white police officers convicted of raping prostitutes regularly, and not convicted of a lesser charge, then I will begin to believe that women have begun to make progress towards equal rights.
I hate to tell all of the second generation feminists out there this, but the sex workers--especially the prostitutes--are the canaries in the mine shaft. The vast majority of prostitutes, in spite of religious and law enforcement authorities attempts to convince us otherwise, are not trafficked, did not start as under-aged runaways, and do not have pimps.
In my March 24, 2012 OpEdNews article "Making Sex a Crime," I pointed out that the total number of individuals trafficked into this country for all purposes, including sex, every year, is between 14,500 and 17,500. But trafficking of tens of thousands for sex makes better headlines, and scares the hell out of parents; who hear the wildly exaggerated numbers of as many as 2.5 million people trafficked in this country every year for sex, guarantees lavish budgets for the vice squads across the nation, even though it exceeds law enforcement's own numbers for the total number of prostitutes in this country by 300 percent. The more realistic number, of around 1500, while still appalling, is barely worth the last page of the front section of the paper, and certainly not worth extravagant budget increases to the Vice Squad.
In my article, I wrote the following (words in brackets added for clarity):
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