Redefinitions of Currency 3: Kim Dotcom's Scary Tweets

Image Source: Greg Sandoval/The Parallax.

Kim Dotcom (aka Kim Schmitz), the Finnish-German-Kiwi Internet pirate, has decided that the USA is going to go the way of Venezuela. Dotcom is piloting a new crypto-powered ecosystem, K.im, and his own branded KimCoin, to reward content creators. This month, the Megaupload and Mega founder, Assange ally, Deep State foe, and founder of the Internet Party has also been writing scary tweets about the future of the US and global economy.

Dotcom has an axe to grind, because his companies' copyright violations led in July 2018 to a New Zealand court ruling that he could face extradition to the United States for racketeering, money laundering, fraud, and criminal copyright charges. While this gives him a motive to trash talk the US, and he is fundraising for a new project to cover his legal bills, Dotcom really believes that America's economy is about to go bust.

He has thought so for awhile. Originally, the hacker was based on the top floor of the five-star Grand Hyatt Hotel in Hong Kong. But Dotcom moved to New Zealand because he felt it was the best place to start and raise a family during and after World War III. As he put it:

"You wouldn't want to be stuck in a penthouse at the top of a hotel tower when it's end days. ... That's why I was looking for a place. And I thought that if I had somewhere in the South Island, shielded by mountain ranges on both sides, I would install a really sophisticated solar power plant. I was thinking if I had something like that, you could survive. New Zealand strategically is the safest spot in the world. It has everything that is required to sit it out and start again."

Dotcom is not alone. The very rich are talking about the end of the world and building bunkers in preparation. They see the future just like the backwoods and doomsday cult preppers, except billionaires build nicer bunkers.

1 TRILLION DOLLARS in additional US Govt debt PER YEAR!

US spending is funded by lenders who will never get paid. US Empire will collapse followed by a world wide economic collapse. https://t.co/kdtB0GnewP

Shift your USD into Gold & Bitcoin asap before USD becomes toilet paper. https://t.co/a5UIuhJvUT

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 9, 2018

Trust me. Buy crypto and gold. Your USD will become worthless. With US economic collapse all old money currencies will crash.

Times will get tough. But you’ll be fine if you hedge some of your assets in preparation for the crash.

The big crash is coming 100%.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 12, 2018

“We have significantly reduced our investment in US assets. In fact, the dollar, which is considered to be the international currency, becomes a risky tool for payments”

— Finance Minister of Russia

The US debt burden has become unmanagable. Watch USD when China drops US debt.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 12, 2018

The average total debt per family in the US is now at 845000 USD.

The average unfunded liability in the US is now at 938000 USD per taxpayer.

Anyone who thinks US debt can be solved with economic growth, new debt or printing more dollars is an idiot. US Empire will default.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 12, 2018

Many economists agree. The US economy and US dollar will collapse under the enormous US debt burden. The pyramid game is coming to an end. Crypto and precious metals will go up when everything else falls. I think it’s going to happen in the next 2 years. https://t.co/kdtB0GnewP https://t.co/3PlheQeQHg

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) August 19, 2018

Redefinitions of Currency 2: Crypto Venezuela

Venezuela: then and now. Image Source: Total Crypto.

To paraphrase Chris Dixon, technology has changed the underlying drivers of wealth; once, wealth was determined by commodities; then it was decided by politics; and now, wealth is based on mathematics. There is no better indicator of that shift than in Venezuela.

Fiat collapse: Venezuela's currency crisis (20 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Return to the world's oldest economy: Venezuela's economic crisis fuels sex trade (23 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Venezuela: New currency fails to curb hyperinflation | Al Jazeera English (22 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Venezuela is currently Ground Zero for bad news. In one month, the president, Nicolás Maduro, dodged a historic first drone assassination attempt on a world leader. The country survived a 7.3 magnitude earthquake. Millions of Venezuelans are migrating to neighbouring countries, which are becoming less and less welcoming.

The hacktivist group Anonymous dismissed the Maduro assassination attempt as a government hoax, perhaps similar to a recent incident in Zimbabwe; note the discrepancy in footage that showed - and did not show - Maduro's wife, Cilia Flores, from two different cameras. Note also that the source of the differing footage is the Russian network RT (Ruptly) and these could be two separate occasions. Otherwise, this means that there were two versions of the footage of the attack, which were filmed separately. Anonymous - LA VERDAD sobre supuesto atentado contra Nicolás Maduro 2018 [Anonymous - THE TRUTH about alleged attack against Nicolás Maduro 2018] (5 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Maduro's popularity is in the toilet; back-chamber rumours are circulating that he knows secrets about Hugo Chávez's death, that he is in league with the devil, and that he is not a true Venezuelan, but perhaps was born in Colombia, and in any event - it is whispered - he will die soon, though not by assassination. Other rumours are circulating the president tried to escape Venezuela in secret on 26 August 2018, knowing that the situation is irreparable. The cult of personality may not provide a suitable replacement, since alternatives to Maduro, like María Gabriela Chávez, are not popular either.

Space and Struggle to Become Responsible

Vice President Pence Unveils U.S. Space Force Plans (C-SPAN) (9 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

The news is full of space headlines. On 9 August, the American Vice President Mike Pence announced that the United States will build a sixth branch of its armed forces, a "space force" to "prepare for the next battlefield." The full statement is here.

Millennial Extremes 14: Next Gen Tech and the Bering Strait Connection

Image Source: InterBering.

The blog is back after a break! Today's post is about a mega-project which illustrates how early generations of imperialists have passed to torch to Millennial globalists.

If the Channel Tunnel ignited the hopes of a European generation when it opened in 1994, the Bering Strait Tunnel is an engineering scheme which could similarly transform geopolitics and revolutionize transportation. The dedicated site, InterBering, expects "Tourists will be able to cross between the U.S. and Russia in just 15-20 minutes." The most colourful aspects of the plan include proposed five star hotels along the route:

"Where the tunnels pass under America's Krusenstern Island (Small Diomede), a railway station can be built allowing passengers elevator access to the island. A world-class hotel would provide them with a mid-Strait vista of the confluence of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. A stay at this iconic hotel, along with a journey on the magnetic levitation train serving it, will become a tourist attraction in its own right. A similar facility can be created on Russia's neighboring Ratmanov Island (Big Diomede)."

Bering Strait Tunnel proposal. Image Source: InterBering.

Time and Politics 27: The Outsider's Future Return

ZIMBABWE RALLY EXPLOSION, WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? (24 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Earlier today, in the run-up to national elections, the Zimbabwean president survived an assassination attempt. I have a new post up at my other blog, The Dragonfly, about how I wrote letters to defend his political opponents when I was a teenager.

• Fates of the Unpeople: How Future Leaders Face Alienation, Censorship, Discrimination and Oppression in their Early Days 

The post also concerns state, corporate, or social oppression of citizens perceived to be dangerous, criminal, or agents of unwanted change. Through isolation, silencing, discrimination and erasure, these individuals are forced for a time to watch the world from an externalized perspective. For the ones that survive, I maintain that this changes their outlook and larger motivations forever.

This is relevant when considering the plight of Julian Assange; shadowbans and censorship on social media; tech giants' obviously discriminatory and politicized campaigns against 'fake news'; and the silencing of journalists and commentators who are deemed unfriendly to any main line. One could also point to political refugees and immigrants, cut off from their parent societies, and entering the limbo of detention camps and subsidized homes as they attempt to start new lives in foreign countries.

In this post, I consider that past alienation - whether endured by individuals on the political left or the right - may shape so-called unpeople or outsiders into future leaders. In other words, those whom we oppress, isolate, and silence today may, through that experience, define our reality tomorrow.

See all my posts on Time and Politics.

Elections and the Erased Citizen

41-year-old Iván Duque, Colombia's new president from the center-right Democratic Center party. Photo dates from 11 March 2018. Image Source: Voa News.

The Colombians have just chosen a conservative candidate in national elections. Newsweek:

"With 84 percent of the vote in, Iván Duque of the center-right Democratic Center party won Colombia’s second presidential run-off Sunday in a post-war electoral process after more than 50 years of internal conflict, defeating left-leaning candidate Gustavo Petro of the Colombia Humana coalition. This is also the first time the South American country chose a female vice president."

Today, at my other blog, The Dragonfly, I reflect on the fate of activists and journalists who disappeared in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. More than 51,000 people in Colombia are registered as disappeared or missing, in a story of erased citizens that continues to this day.

Colombia's Duque Says Limits on Trade Would Hurt Emerging Economies (23 March 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Colombia election: Ivan Duque may jeopardise FARC deal | Al Jazeera English (16 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.

Away from Blog

Tsuchiya Hikarii . pic.twitter.com/csxW0Mgn77

— Mordecai (@MenschOhneMusil) October 3, 2017

Today is the blog's eighth birthday! Here is the first post. I will update the best posts list shortly.

To celebrate, I am going on summer vacation until 8 August 2018. In the interim, I may publish occasional posts at my other blogs. On return, I will continue commenting on the current topic of artificial intelligence and global security.

Lessons from Building the Outer Brain

The NYT reported that smart assistants can be (re-)programmed by ultrasonic signals, which are inaudible to their owners. Image Source: NYT / Lynn Scurfield.

There have been several headlines about AI and robots in recent weeks. All of them involve a gap between what we want to see in technology (and in ourselves) and what we don't want to see.